BREAKING NEWS: Abu-Jihaad CONVICTED In US Navy Terror Case

Chalk up one for the good guys. A Navy Sailor Hassan Abu-Jihaad, 32, was convicted of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense information. He leaked details about ship movements to suspected terrorism supporters, an act that could have endangered his own crewmates. Abu-Jihaad is an American-born Muslim convert formerly known as Paul R. Hall . He faces up to 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced May 23.

Abu-Jihaad, was a signalman aboard the USS Benfold, he of passed along details that included the makeup of his Navy battle group, its planned movements and a drawing of the group's formation when it was to pass through the dangerous Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf on April 29, 2001.

Abu-Jihaad was charged in the same case that led to the 2004 arrest of Babar Ahmad, a British computer specialist accused of running Web sites to raise money, appeal for fighters and provide equipment such as gas masks and night vision goggles for terrorists. Ahmad, who lived with his parents where the computer file was allegedly found, is to be extradited to the U.S.

Federal prosecutors said he sympathized with the enemy and admitted disclosing military intelligence. But they acknowledged they did not have direct proof that he leaked the ship details.

Authorities said the details of ship movements had to have been leaked by an insider, saying they were not publicly known and contained military jargon. The leaked documents closely matched what Abu-Jihaad would have had access to as a signalman, authorities said.

Prosecutors say investigators discovered files on a computer disk recovered from a suspected terrorism supporter's home in London that included the ship movements, as well as the number and type of personnel on each ship and the ships' capabilities. The file ended with instructions to destroy the message, according to testimony.

Source :Ex-Sailor Convicted in Terror Case

Below is more on the Case from IPT

Ex-Sailor's Leak Case Goes to Jury

by IPT
IPT News
March 3, 2008

Months after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors docked in Yemen, a battle group led by the USS Constellation prepared to sail for the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. was saber rattling. Retaliation against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda for the Cole attack was anticipated. Unbeknownst to Navy leadership, a signalman on the destroyer Benfold was in direct communication at the time with a British-based publishing house openly supporting the Taliban and jihadi movements. He ordered graphic videos of Chechen rebels attacking and killing Russian soldiers.

Jurors are deliberating the fate of that sailor, Hassan Abu-Jihaad, who stands accused of providing material support to terrorists and of leaking information about the Constellation battle group's deployment to people devoted to killing Americans. British authorities found the plans on a floppy disk in a bedroom drawer of an Azzam Publications official in 2003. Babar Ahmad directed Azzam Publications, which marketed the videos purchased by Abu-Jihaad, along with a series of related websites.

The plans included a tentative date when the battle group would pass through the narrow Straits of Hormuz and the claim that "They have nothing to stop a small craft with RPG etc. except their Seals' stinger missiles." Finally, it said, "Please destroy message."

Prosecutors didn't say the Abu-Jihaad authored the document, but say its contents had to come from an insider. Defense attorneys counter that it could have come from a determined, but savvy search of the Internet.

Abu-Jihaad, who was born Paul Hall and changed his name when he converted to Islam, was the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces communicating with Azzam Publications, prosecutor Stephen Reynolds said in closing arguments Monday. Azzam Publications recruited people to become mujahideen and raised money to support the Taliban in Afghanistan and Chechen rebels.

However, prosecutors do not have any direct evidence showing Abu-Jihaad communicated the ships' transit plans. That, defense attorney Dan LaBelle argued Monday, is among the case's "fundamental flaws." He dismissed Abu-Jihaad's emails with Azzam Publications as a distraction and said the plan found in England contained too many errors to have come from his client.

LaBelle hired a reporter to search the Internet for public source information about the battle group's movements, finding everything from newspaper stories about its planned departure to an MIT alumni bulletin board in which someone had posted the date the group shipped out as part of a family update.

Prosecutors counter that the information in the battle group document closely follows information that only someone in a position like Abu-Jihaad would know. For example, it referenced a stop in Hawaii to pick up Tomahawk cruise missiles that was a late change in the itinerary.

"The BG [Battle Group] mission is to hold up the sanctions against Iraq, e.g. patrolling the No-Fly Zone, carry out Maritime Interception Operations (MIO) or launch strikes," the file said. "There is a possibility that the ships and submarines that are capable will carry out a strike against Afghanistan. Main targets Usama and the Mujahideen, Taliban, etc," the document said.

Prosecutors contend Abu-Jihaad admitted his crimes in a wiretapped telephone call with a federal informant in 2006. In the call, Abu-Jihaad spoke in code about "hot meals" and "cold meals." Prosecutors say the meals refer to intelligence and Abu-Jihaad could only offer cold meals because by 2006 he had been out of the Navy too long. He was honorably discharged in 2002.

"I ain't been working in the field of making meals in a long time," Abu-Jihaad said in the call. "I've been out of that quatro years."

While deployed in the Persian Gulf in July 2001, Abu-Jihaad sent another email to Azzam Publications, praising the Cole attack as a "martyrdom operation." That attack prompted new security briefings, Abu-Jihaad wrote, and increased anxiety among U.S. sailors. The email was not punctuated and contained spelling and grammatical errors:

during the brief I attended there was one thing that stuck out like thorns on a rose bush I do not know who was the originator of this either the top brass or an american politician well here is his statement "america has Never faced an enemy with no borders no government no diplomats not a standing army that pledges allegiance to no state." Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! i give takbirs because I know deep down in my heart that the American enemies that this person describe is the Mujahideen Feesabilillah. These brave men are the true champions and soldiers of Allah in this dunya …With their only mission in life to make Allah's name and laws supreme all over this world.

A response came from "just another slave of Allah at Azzam Publications." It complimented Abu-Jihaad for his email, adding "the Kufar know that they cannot defeat the Mujahideen (the warriors of Allah). I trust you are doing your best to make sure that the other brothers & sisters in uniform are reminded that their sole purpose of existence in this duniya is purely to worship our Lord and Master, Allah (SWT)….Keep up with the Dawah and the psychlogical (sic) warefare (sic)"

LaBelle said it wasn't reasonable for someone who had leaked such sensitive information about his own ship to send such a note to the very people he allegedly provided the secrets. And he argued that most, if not all, of the material his client is accused of leaking was generally available to the public.

Abu-Jihaad faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. U.S. authorities are attempting to extradite Babar Ahmad from England to try him for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Note to Islamofacists-STOP WHINING !!

When my kids were younger, I put a simple sign up in my kitchen. It had two words STOP WHINING. I would get home from work after spending an hour on the train crush between the fat guy who would try and sleep on my shoulder, and the woman who bathed in a bottle of cheap perfume and I needed a few minutes to start hearing why everything was lousy, especially because they were very lucky.

I kind of feel that way about the Islamofacists that whine about how there is so much Islamophobia in their adopted countries. Except I have even less patience for them than I have for my children (who are much cuter and much more hug-able).

What makes their claims even more tiring is they are not true. According to most polls I have seen Islamophobia is not growing. What is growing is that every time a Muslim is arrested/convicted of terrorism related charges, the whining starts again--Racial Profiling (last time I looked Islam was not a race) Islamophobia. The truth in many cases those who whine the most are the ones who are involved with terrorists such as unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF case CAIR...or in this example below:

Osama bin London’s Country Camps
By Robert Spencer

“Fifty-two. That’s not even breakfast for me.”

Those were the words of an Islamic preacher in Britain, Mohammed Hamid, who liked to call himself “Osama bin London.” Hamid was referring to the fifty-two people murdered by Islamic jihadists in the London bombings of July 2005, and was boasting that his own plots would lead to, presumably, lunch and dinner -- far more deaths. One police official, discussing surveillance tapes made of conversations inside Hamid’s home, said, “There was repeated talk of finding and killing nonbelievers.”

Hamid was a member of the “London 7,” a jihadist gang that established training camps in the British countryside, where they prepared for large-scale attacks on British non-Muslims -- and who even planned to open training camps in the U.S. as well. Two of the gang members pleaded guilty to terror charges Tuesday, but this case is far from over. Its implications ought to be studied closely by government and law enforcement officials.

The establishment of jihad training camps in the British hinterlands raises disquieting questions with no easy answers: How many more might be there? How can they be detected? Questions like these should lead to considerations of the wisdom of the current no-holds-barred immigration policy, and of the loyalty of the larger Muslim community in Britain – questions that have never been satisfactorily answered. Exposure to the jihadist, Islamic supremacist ideology, says the self-styled British “former Islamist” Ed Husain, “that radicalism, that extremism, that ‘them-and-us’ mind set -- starts here on our streets in Britain.”

Why does it start on the streets in Britain, and what can be done about that? According to the Associated Press, “Hamid, originally from Tanzania, hand-picked recruits from mainstream mosques, inviting them for radical meetings at his home and then selecting a smaller number to attend the camps, police said.” Yet whenever law enforcement officials have broached the topic of monitoring activity inside mosques, they meet a barrage of indignation and criticism. The core problem is that, for all their ballyhooed condemnations of terrorism, peaceful Muslims in Britain and America have not moved in any great numbers to expose those who hold jihadist sentiments, much less to separate themselves from them and expel them from their mosques. There is no wall of separation in the British or American Muslim community between Muslims who accept Western pluralism and just want to live ordinary lives and those who hold to the same ideology of jihad and the destruction or subjugation of infidels to which “Osama bin London” had dedicated his life. There is no easy or reliable way to distinguish a Muslim who may be working to top the death total of the July 2005 London bombings from one who abhors the very idea.

In such an environment, new methods are needed. Yet in both Britain and America legislators and judges continue to work against legitimate and legal anti-terror initiatives. In Britain in mid-February, a judge overturned the convictions of five Muslims who downloaded pro-jihad material from the Internet. And in America, after House Democrats allowed a surveillance act to expire last week, if telecom companies monitor jihadists’ phone calls as they plot terrorist attacks, jihadists can sue the telecoms and tie them up in the courts. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey wrote last week to the House Intelligence Committee: “We have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Congress’ failure to act. Because of this uncertainty, some partners have reduced cooperation.”

Of course, not every Muslim in Britain or the United States will fall prey to the likes of “Osama bin London.” But the London 7 case demonstrates anew that the more law enforcement officials depend on the politically correct assumption that there is little or no sympathy for the global jihad among Muslims in the West, the more they put us all at risk. This week ABC sent two actors – one dressed as a veiled Muslim woman and the other playing the part of an “Islamophobic” store clerk who treated her rudely – into a store in Waco, Texas, in order to gather evidence of American xenophobia and racism. A far more dramatic documentary might be made of the London 7 case – of young Muslims in Britain actually working toward the violent deaths of their non-Muslim fellow citizens. And it didn’t seem to enter into the minds of anyone at ABC that the fact that all too many Muslims go in for such training – even in the West – may be responsible for some of the frustration and resentment that boiled over from a few obnoxious people in their “Islamophobia” documentary.

Muslims in Britain and the U.S. have skillfully portrayed themselves for years now as the victims of unjustified suspicion. The London 7 case is just the latest one to indicate that a good deal more forthrightness, a good deal more honesty, a good deal more transparency, ought to be forthcoming from them, if they really wish to deflect such suspicion. Otherwise, some later “Osama bin London” finally will top the July 2005 death count – and his grisly achievement will stand forever as an assault on innocent people that could have and should have been prevented, and one more step on the way to the disintegration of the West before the jihadist onslaught. This can be prevented. But it is getting late.

Are The Wheels Coming off the Obama Bandwagon?

If Hillary Clinton is able to claim a victory in both Texas and Ohio tonight she will be eventually be the Nominee of the Democratic Party (unless of course she lets Bill out again).

Should this scenario occur, one day when we look back on it we will say Tim Russert loosened the lug nuts on the Pseudo Messiah's tires. Russert asked legitimate questions about the bigots that Obama has been hiding in his closet, Farrakhan and Wright. Senator Obama's answer seemed at best contrived (followed by a really stupid Hillary response).

Funny thing happened right after the debate, African- American columnists began to write essays explaining that he was only playing the game (Ralph Nader said the same thing), his questionable relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko is back in the news, and proof has come out that he lied about NAFTA.

With each passing day he looks a little less like a "messiah" and a little more like your typical slimy politician. The NAFTA news he is trying to cover up by saying that the person that spoke to the Canadian government was not speaking for the campaign (he HAS learned from Clinton), he has responded to the Farrakhan issue by finding a terrorist that he would not meet with. bama has said in the past he would be willing to meet with leaders with whom the Bush administration strongly disagrees, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahm-a-Shithead and Cuban leader Raul Castrato. Yesterday though, he announced that he would not meet with Hamas.

At his press conference yesterday he was peppered with questions about NAFTA and his friend Tony and avoided everything:

Obama blamed the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton for pushing the story, something it has done in repeated news releases.

Obama refused to say how many fundraisers Rezko held for him or who attended.

"These requests, I think, can just go on forever," he said. "What we've just tried to do is respond to what's pertinent."

"If there are additional questions, we'll be happy to answer them," he said.

He then recognized a local reporter who changed the subject.

As the news conference came to an end and reporters continued to shout questions about Rezko, Obama said it was time to move on. "We're running late," he said.

No more honest call for change?

Folks, to be honest, I believe that either democratic candidate would be a disaster for America. As Newt Gingrich said last night on Fox, you can't really be sure which candidate would be easier to face. But I will tell you that Obama is finally feeling the heat. When he made all of those racist references Bill Clinton made Barak Obama an untouchable. As the front runner Obama has started to act "touchable" again. If tonight's primary give them a bit more time I believe that the Clinton machine will run him over.

KILL THE WHALES !!!

Finally there is a solution to Al Gore's worst nightmare. According to High North Alliance, the carbon footprint involved with hunting and cooking whales is less than 1/8th that of beef. So much for Save the Whales...the new Mantra is KILL the Whales. '

Eat whale and save the planet' - Norwegian lobby

A Norwegian pro-whaling lobby says a new study shows that harpooning the giant mammals is less damaging to the climate than farming livestock.

Environmental group Greenpeace dismissed the survey, saying almost every kind of food was more climate-friendly than meat.

The survey, focused on whale boats' fuel use, showed that a kilo of whale meat represented just 1.9 kilo of greenhouse gases against 15.8 for beef, 6.4 for pork and 4.6 for chicken.

"Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat," said Rune Froevik of the High North Alliance, which represents the interests of coastal communities in the Arctic.

"Greenhouse gas emissions caused by one meal of beef are the equivalent of eight meals of whale meat," the study said.

The Norwegian-based Alliance said it was the first to measure the "carbon footprint" of whaling. Fish and seafood was comparable to whale meat with relatively low emissions.

Norway and Japan, the two main whaling nations, are seeking new arguments to promote whale meat after years of condemnation from anti-whaling nations for breaking with a 1986 moratorium on all hunts meant to save many whale species from extinction.

Oslo says, for instance, that the small minke whales it hunts are plentiful in the North Atlantic and that a 2008 Norwegian quota of 1,052 animals will not harm stocks. The meat is eaten mostly as steaks or in stews.

Greenpeace said the threat of extinction was more important.

"The survival of a species is more important than lower greenhouse gas emissions from eating it," said Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace. "Almost every food is more climate friendly than meat. Most fish and seafood has similarly low emissions."

The Alliance survey, covering eight of Norway's 30 whaling vessels, said they emitted 885 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2007 by burning diesel fuel and landed 461 tonnes of whale meat. That meant an average of 1.9 kilos of emissions per kilo of meat.

By contrast, raising cows in developed nations requires use of tractors, ploughs and fertilisers to produce feed. The animals themselves generate methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in their digestive tracts.

The Alliance said that the "carbon footprint" was up to the first sale - for whales the landing point and for livestock the farm gate. Neither included processing or transport costs to shops.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) will hold a special meeting in London this week to review deadlock between pro- and anti-whaling nations.

Mr Froevik said the IWC had turned into a group devoted to banning whaling rather than allowing hunts under strict controls. "We compare it to a soccer club where the only rule is that soccer is forbidden," he said.

Impeach Pelosi for Abuse of Power !

Believe it or not for the last three weeks the United States ability to know what the terrorists have been doing has been severely limited. Technology failure? No. Have the terrorists changed their communication methods? Not really. The reason for the lapse in gathering intelligence on those who would blow us up is that Nancy Pelosi is holding National Security Hostage to her personal political aims. She is STILL blocking the bipartisan compromise on wiretapping the terrorists without a warrant. She won't even let it come to a vote (if she did it would passed). With that one selfish political act she puts the United States closer to another 9/11. That my friends, is power--abuse of power, maybe we should start an impeach Pelosi Movement.

The Case for Telecom Immunity

It’s been nearly three weeks since House Democrats endangered our national security by effectively rescinding the law that permitted the intelligence community to conduct aggressive surveillance outside the United States. That has sensible Democrats increasingly worried.

They know their House leadership has bungled this issue. The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a compromise measure by a decisive two-to-one margin. Yet, Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to allow the Senate bill to even reach the floor — where it would have doubtlessly passed. Instead, top Democrats embarrassed themselves by voting a couple of transparently politicized, legally meaningless contempt citations against Bush-administration officials and then . . . leaving for a week’s vacation. Now, we are only a few legislative days away from yet another recess, this one for two weeks over Easter.

The party’s 2008 prospects may hinge on a convincing demonstration of national-security seriousness. For members who grasp that, skipping town without addressing the perilous gap in our capacity to detect new terrorist threats is unacceptable.

There appears to be broad consensus that the intelligence community must have a free hand in monitoring non-Americans overseas. The hold-up is retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that assisted in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 warrantless-surveillance program. This feature of the Senate bill is crucial to maintaining the cooperation of the telecoms, without which we lose our technological edge over enemies who are bent on killing Americans. It would, however, end a slew of multibillion-dollar lawsuits near and dear to both Bush-bashing activists and the trial lawyers who generously fill Democratic campaign coffers.

Thus it’s worth considering several points about telecom immunity. (Again, though I am a longtime critic of our surveillance laws, I note, for the sake of full disclosure, that my wife works for Verizon.)

1. There was substantial support for the telecoms’ belief that the NSA program was lawful. The federal appellate courts which have weighed in on the issue — including the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review in its only ever decision — have stated that the president is vested with constitutional authority to conduct surveillance, without judicial interference, to protect the nation against foreign threats. (Domestic threats are different under a 1972 Supreme Court case.)

On this point, Democrats decry President Bush’s warrantless program as illegal because it transgressed restrictions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Yet, it was FISA that created the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review, the highest, most specialized court ever to interpret the statute. Most inconveniently, that tribunal has construed FISA in a way that fatally undermines the illegality canard. So Democrats ignore the Court’s interpretation (rationalizing that it is mere, non-binding “dicta”), just as they accuse Bush of ignoring FISA.

In any event, when FISA was enacted, Carter administration Attorney General Griffin Bell testified to Congress that the president still maintained his constitutional authority to order surveillance. Moreover, when FISA was amended in 1994 to include physical searches (after the Clinton administration had ordered warrantless searches to protect national security), Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick similarly testified that FISA could not remove the president’s inherent authority. If, in the emergency conditions that obtained post-9/11, a Democrat commander-in-chief had done what President Bush did, immunity for the cooperating telecoms would clearly not be controversial.

2. Beyond the theoretical case for the warrantless program’s legality, the telecoms here specifically relied on written representations from the administration that the program had been reviewed by the president and determined to be legal. We cannot expect the telecoms to cooperate in surveillance — for national security or even for normal law-enforcement purposes — if they are not permitted to assume in good faith that such written government assurances are legitimate. Why should they honor even a court order calling for eavesdropping if they have reason to believe a year from now someone may decide the court order was issued in error and that the telecoms should be subject to suit? Is the message to the telecoms to be: “Assume nothing and scrub every government request for potential legal flaws”? If it is, good luck getting surveillance set up quickly — regardless of the jihadist messages that go unheard and unread while we dawdle.

3. Democrats continue to charge that the administration wants “blanket immunity” for the telecoms (much the way they misleadingly repeated that warrantless eavesdropping on cross-border al-Qaeda communications was “domestic spying”). In fact, the proposed immunity is very limited. It applies only to telecoms that either did nothing to help the government or that helped only on the basis of a written representation by the government that the program had been reviewed by the president and determined legal. Thus, the immunity would not protect, say, a telecom that permitted surveillance on an informal request from a rogue agent without a written assurance of lawfulness — which, in fairness, is the only type of conduct over which it might be appropriate to hold them liable.

4. The immunity “compromise” floated by Senators Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) is meritless. It would immunize the telecoms from judgments against them and substitute the government (presumably, the NSA) as the defendant in the various lawsuits. This would not do much to protect the telecoms, and it would do nothing to obviate the incentives against future cooperation.

Regardless of who has to pay any judgment, the substance of the lawsuits would still be the same: the telecoms’ actions, methods, and trade secrets. The companies would still have to expose all that information in civil discovery, revealing to our enemies how we conduct surveillance. They would also still have to spend millions of dollars on counsel to manage discovery, prepare for trials, etc.

The cost for all of that, of course, would still be passed on to consumers. And though these lawsuits are preposterously cast as “public interest” cases, the suggested compromise would have the taxpayers on the hook for any judgments. That would pointlessly redistribute income from all Americans to a subgroup which has suffered no real harm. There would just be one exception: the trial lawyers. They would stand to rake in hundreds of millions of those taxpayer dollars. And what are Americans left with for providing such a payday? A telecommunication industry told loud-and-clear that no good can come out of patriotically assisting the government against terrorists.

5. Another compromise idea floated is to decouple the telecom immunity issue from the need to authorize restriction-free foreign surveillance. As a matter of intelligence, however, the two are not severable. Happily, we do not have a nationalized telecommunications industry in this country. If we did, it would not be the world’s best. The industry’s expertise is what provides our intelligence edge. It is what gives us the capacity to monitor foreign terrorists despite their Herculean efforts to conceal and encrypt their communications.

Our advantage would be a memory if we surrender on this point. The Left badly wants to preserve these ruinous lawsuits. It has only one incentive to abandon them: the knowledge that Democrats are sustaining huge political damage by impeding foreign-intelligence collection at a time when our enemies continue to plot massive attacks. If Democrats are no longer vulnerable on surveillance authority, they simply will not negotiate on telecom immunity, no matter how central it is to public safety. It’s now or never.

6. At bottom, the dispute over the warrantless-surveillance program is about the division of power between the political branches: Is it the executive or the legislative department that has ultimate authority over foreign intelligence collection? By nature, that is political question, not a legal one. In our system, such issues are supposed to be worked out through the normal democratic process: legislation and elections. They are not the province of lawsuits in which (a) the public’s interest is purportedly represented by fringe groups like the ACLU and CAIR (which hold views much different from those of the American people at large), and (b) the final policy determination is made by the judiciary — that is, the unaccountable, non-political branch.

The genius of our system is that it does not draw many fixed, immutable lines between executive and legislative authority, or between liberty and security. We have the capacity to ratchet up or down depending on threat conditions. We rely confidently on our politics and the sound judgment of the American people. Voters can remove a president or lawmakers who strike the wrong balance. But when judges get it wrong — when they are too solicitous of privacy concerns (even for foreign terrorists) at the expense of public safety, as only insulation from political pressure can make one wont to be — we are paralyzed. That’s not democracy.

Are there Arab Internment Camps in US ? Or Does Obama Need a Tin Foil Hat?

Unlike some of my friends, I don't believe that Senator Obama is a practicing Muslim. I do believe, however, that we are ALL products of our background, and his early years spent in a Muslim household helped mold a Barak Obama that tends to take the Muslim, rather than the US side of things. A great example is the commercial the Senator is running in Texas, which hints that the United States is packing up Muslim Americans and tossing them into interment camps. The guy has been reading too many CAIR brochures or maybe he just needs a new tin foil hat:

"If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work."
- Senator Barack Obama

Obama: Arab-American Families Being Rounded Up? By Lance Fairchok

In a televised twelve-second campaign spot aired in Texas, Senator Obama gives a stirring speech to a standing ovation. It is the predictable litany of American faults he will miraculously correct: literacy, expensive prescription drugs and insufficient civil liberties. However, he seems particularly concerned for Arab-Americans. "If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties."

This was an astonishing statement, an infuriating statement and a statement that speaks volumes to Obama's ideology.

Arab-American families being rounded up would not only threaten all our civil liberties, it would raise such a universal outcry, it could not long endure. Even the suggestion it could occur is a profound insult to our nation and our citizenry. It is an image of the gulag, the death camp, the dictatorship, and so inappropriate in any discussion about America, it is beneath our contempt.

Perhaps the Senator is carried away by his remarkable political ascendancy and so emboldened by the lack of critical comment in the press, he believes he can say anything. Perhaps he believes he has so mesmerized us with his oratory that we will not catch the inference of his words. Perhaps he really believes that we are that kind of country, that our people do not cherish civil liberty sufficiently to defend it for all citizens.

This despicable image of innocent families imprisoned and the ethnic cleansing it suggests is a theme the radical left nurtures. It is by design intended to portray an unjust and intolerant people, it was no error, no misstatement. It elicits moral outrage with false assumptions, endlessly repeating those assumptions until believed. It is behind the exaggeration of everything the U.S. does in the war on terror or against Islamic extremism. It is behind the hysteria over the Patriot Act.

As divorced from truth as it is, it is found everywhere in the propaganda of the left, from the Bush-Hitler signs, to the fabrications of American military wrongdoing in the press, to the invented Islamophobia in our populace. It is the motivation behind Michael Moore, Code Pink, MoveOn.Org and George Soros. It is unfortunately the message the media aids and abets.

This moral contrariness gives us American "progressives" embracing dictators and terrorists such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Iran's Ahmedinejhad and Syria's Bashar al Assad. It finds equivalence between defending America and Al Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorism. It believes malevolent evil can actually be stopped with dialogue and compromise. It gravitates to a miserable "better red than dead" nihilism that allows no pride or faith in America. It excuses our enemies and indicts everything American. It is the impenitent legacy of the Carter and Clinton administrations. It is illogical and irrational and a road to failure and catastrophe.

"I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work." Yet, he also says that our country does not work, that we need change. Even as he wraps this contradiction in biblical allusion and positive words like "Hope" and "Change We Can Believe In" his underlying belief system surfaces in clues overlooked by his handlers.

The bleak fantasy of Arab-American families interred for being Arabs and, of course, for being Muslim is very plausible to the radicals that help write his speeches. Senator Obama holds a wretched America in his heart, a country he has no pride in nor wishes to preserve. If his vision starts from failure, where will it end? There is no truth in his words, just as there is no substance. One may speak well, but still speak lies. An Obama presidency would be a disaster.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
- Cicero