New York Times Downplays Muslim Fort Hood Terror Plotter

Well that's a surprise.

At Fox Nation (via Memorandum).

I checked the Times' homepage Friday morning, and there was no mention of Naser Abdo on the front page. In hard-copy, the paper's report appeared on Page A11, "Soldier Held Amid Claim of Terror Plot at Fort Hood." Had Private Abdo successfully carried out an attack, the Democrat-Media-Complex would have provided cover, minimizing Islamist influence and attacking counter-jihad bloggers as bigots.

Note: The Times has a report in its Saturday hard-copy edition on Page A15, "Soldier Arrested in Suspected Bomb Plot Had Series of Disputes With Army." I just caught this linked prominently at the homepage, so I guess that's progress.

Army Private Naser Jason Abdo, in Court Appearance, Shouts Name of Fort Hood Shooter Major Nidal Hasan

At LAT, "Accused plotter shouts out name of Ft. Hood killer at hearing."

See also Right Truth, "Naser Jason Abdo." And Ironic Surrealism," and Ironic Surrealism, "Muslim Soldier Turned Jihadist Naser Abdo Part II: Yelled “Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009″ In Courtroom -Under Investigation For Making Anti-American Comments While on Duty [Updated]."

RELATED: at Christian Science Monitor, "Accused Fort Hood plotter got bombmaking recipe from Al Qaeda."

PFC Nasser Abdo and Iraq Veterans Against the War

Hmm, the antiwar left's got some splainin' to do, and here's the hot-under-the-collar denial of ties to Private Naser Jason Abdo: "IVAW STATEMENT ON NASER ABDO ARREST":

Abdo is not now and has never been a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Shoot, he didn't need to be. The folks at IVAW were happy to set up Abdo as another Bradley Manning, and now they're throwing him under the bus. See Weasel Zippers, "Anti-War Group Scrubs Website of Involvement With Muslim Soldier ."Arrested For Plotting Second Ft. Hood Terror Attack…"

See also Alana Goodman, "Fort Hood Suspect Had Left-Wing Fan Base."

And the main reporting on this is at This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here. See, "IVAW and Abdo," "IVAW release, and Mother Jones," and "Abdo’s accomplices." (Via Memeorandum.)

Presidential War Powers

Harry Reid's a blithering idiot. I have no idea how he was ever elected to public office. It's not so much his position on the War Powers Resolution, but that it's at odds with his claim that the public wants the troops home from Afghanistan. Frankly, Americans are weary of overseas commitments altogether, but at least the Afghan deployment enjoyed broad bipartisan support to begin with, back in the day. With Libya, the administration took the easiest route to do something --- anything --- in North Africa and the Middle East amid the wave of revolutions taking place in the "Arab Spring." And there's been little public consensus on major U.S. role in Libya.

This guy sucks:

Unfortunately, a Ron Paul wing in the GOP is joining with the Dennis Kucinich Demo-nuts to push for action on the Resolution. A lot of folks in the right blogosphere have made something out of this as well, and it goes to the lack of vital national interests at stake, and that's understandable. That said, John Yoo's got a new piece up on the Commander-in-Chief's authority on the use of force, "The GOP Plays Politics With the War Powers Resolution," and Yoo's the man:

Congressional Republicans should not try to outdo Mr. Obama in a game of unprincipled one-upmanship. But that's precisely what key GOP leaders have done. Earlier this week, House Speaker John Boehner sent a letter to the White House accusing Mr. Obama of violating the War Powers Resolution. "The Constitution requires the president to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'" he wrote, quoting the president's responsibilities under Article II of the Constitution. "And one of those laws is the War Powers Resolution, which requires an approving action by Congress or withdrawal within 90 days from the notification of a military operation."

Mr. Boehner's claim ignores the Constitution's fundamental nature as supreme law. As Chief Justice John Marshall declared in the foundational case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Constitution is "a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means," and any act of Congress "contrary to the constitution is not law." If the Constitution gives the president the executive authority to use force abroad, Congress cannot take it away. Surely Mr. Boehner agreed with this proposition before the current president took office. He, for instance, never claimed that President George W. Bush's exercise of broad executive powers in the war on terror violated the Constitution. Nor does he appear to have thought that legislative authorization of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was constitutionally necessary in 2001 and 2002.

Not to be outdone, House Republicans Roscoe Bartlett, Dan Burton, Howard Coble, John Duncan, Tim Johnson, Walter Jones and Ron Paul joined with Dennis Kucinich and other Democrats this week and filed suit in a D.C. federal court seeking to halt U.S. military operations in Libya. They may see themselves as purists, but they are not demonstrating fidelity to the Constitution by launching a legal effort that they know to be utterly futile ....

RTWT.

Added: See Allahpundit's write up on the New York Times' story, "NYT: Obama overruled top Pentagon, DOJ lawyers on Libya war powers" (via Memeorandum). And check JustOneMinute, "Obama Goes Shopping For Legal Advice." It's the hypocrisy that's stunning.

CIA Detainees 'Produced Enormous Amounts of Valuable Intelligence Information' in Decade-Long Manhunt for Osama Bin Laden

Two key updates on the waterboarding controversy.

First, Weasel Zippers has the longer version of the clip below. Secretary Rumsfeld has clarified his messaging: "Part Two: Yes, Waterboarding Helped Get Osama""

Rumsfeld says waterboarding "absolutely" produced enormous amounts of information intelligence. And be sure to check that link to Weasel Zippers, which includes a segment from O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo," smacking down Alan Colmes.

And the Los Angeles Times has a careful analysis and complex analysis of the evidence-gathering process, and credits the coercive interrogations at Guantanamo as providing the initial clues about Bin Laden's courier, "Trail to Bin Laden began with CIA detainee, officials say":

An Al Qaeda suspect who was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques at a secret CIA prison in early 2004 provided a clue, the nom de guerre of a mysterious courier, that ultimately proved crucial to finding Osama bin Laden, officials said Wednesday.

The CIA had approved use of sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity, water dousing and other coercive techniques at the now-closed CIA "black site" in Poland where the Pakistani-born detainee, Hassan Ghul, was held, according to a 2005 Justice Department memo, which cited Ghul by name. Two U.S. officials said Wednesday that some of those now-prohibited practices were directed at Ghul.

Ghul was not waterboarded nor subjected to near-drowning, the most notorious interrogation technique and one that critics describe as torture.

Two other CIA prisoners — Al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his successor, Abu Faraj Libbi — gave their interrogators false information about the courier after they were waterboarded repeatedly, U.S. officials said.

Those lies also played a role in the decade-long manhunt, however. Over time, they were viewed as evidence by CIA analysts that Bin Laden's top deputies were trying to shield a figure who might be a link to the Al Qaeda leader's hide-out, according to U.S. officials briefed on the analysis. "The fact that they were covering it up suggested he was important," a U.S. official said.

In the end, intelligence gleaned from interviews with numerous detainees, high-tech eavesdropping and surveillance, and other investigative spadework provided insights on people close to Bin Laden. No one source or bit of intelligence was so decisive or critical that it instantly solved the puzzle or ended the painstaking hunt for the world's most wanted terrorist, officials said. They stressed that none of the three most critical pieces of information — the courier's name, the area of Pakistan in which he operated and the location of the compound in which Bin Laden was living — came from detainees.

The nuances of that complex chain of events were often lost Wednesday amid a renewed public debate about the efficacy and morality of coercive interrogations that the CIA carried out under President George W. Bush.

"I think the issue has been mischaracterized on both sides," said a former CIA official who was involved in internal debate over the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques program at the time. "The people who say 'enhanced interrogation techniques' directly led to catching Bin Laden are wrong, and the people who say they had nothing to do with it are also wrong."

That closing remark there is probably about the best we're gonna get. Waterboarding was a key factor, but not the decisive factor. No one source was crucial; the range of methods and our ability to use them was central.

ANSWER Coalition's Brian Becker: 'Violence Sometimes Is Necessary’

It's not that this stuff is surprising, but that the media is so ridiculously biased when it comes to reporting violent rhetoric.

The clip below is from The Blaze, "Dark Rhetoric: Nonviolence Is Not Always the Answer; American Socialist Leader Calling for Revolution Says ‘We Are Not Pacifists, Violence Sometimes Is Necessary’":

And check out this piece at New York Review, "We Don’t Know the Language We Don’t Know." It's a report on the March 19th White House protest against the wars. All the usual suspects were on hand, including Code Pink Obama money-bundler Jodi Evans. The "language" reference is to Daniel Ellsburg, who argues that Americans don't know Pashto, so we'll lose in Afghanistan. It's more complicated, but we'll hold off on that for another time. Anyway, ANSWER's Brian Becker was there, talking up a revolution right here at home:

Then Brian Becker of the Answer Coalition, a socialist group that sponsored some of the biggest peace demonstrations before the Iraq war, tore into the Libyan intervention, which had begun with the launch of a hundred cruise missiles that morning. “We have to learn the lessons that are so crystal clear, as Obama and the Pentagon and France and Britain prepare in the next few hours to start dropping bombs on the people of Libya in the name of democracy,” Becker said. “Let’s know this: Libya is the largest oil producer in Africa, and there’s no possible way that if the US goes into Libya that it’s ever going to come out.” Libya must be the masters of their own destiny, he continued. “We ourselves reject the idea, fed to us once again, that US imperialism, with all of its guns and bombs and missiles, is going to help an oppressed people. The only help we can give to the people of Libya and Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen is to make our own revolution right here!” (Whooping and cheering.)

Ralph Nader, Formerly America's Premier Consumer Advocate, Now Just a Run-of-the-Mill Obama-Hating Antiwar Communist

I'd say "Bush-hating antiwar communist," but G.W. long ago split the scene. This is Obambi's war, and he's starting to rouse the deeper layers of the neo-communist contingents. And if it were just Daniel Ellsberg that'd be one thing. He's been known as a fellow-traveler for some time now. But Nader was the Green Party's presidential candidate in 2000, winning something like 3 million votes nationwide. He's a reformer who's purportedly done much to improve life for Americans. Say it ain't so Ralph! You're making Noam Chomsky proud with that rant about war crimes, sheesh! Just don't go nuclear on Israel, will ya? Consistency might at least help your legacy. But if you go aggro Jew-hater on Jerusalem that's it. You'll be remembered by anti-Semitism instead of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Or wait, been there already, Ralph? "Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism." Okay, fine. I can see why you're so well liked over at communist Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

Anyway, see the full report at The Hill (via Memeorandum):

Progressive Heads Explode as Olbermann Exits Stage Left — Or, Stage Right?

Yeah, Keith Olbermann was out at MSNBC because he wanted more money, that damned capitalist pig. All those years of progressive rants topped off with pure hypocrisy. It's too good, really.



But by the looks of the progressive reaction across the web, Obermann's departure was the biggest conspiracy since "Bush died and people lied." (More on that here.) Moonbattery has the roundup of heads exploding on Twitter. But pea-brained progressive Green Eagle ups the ante, hilariously, "Goodbye Keith":

In all my reporting on the idiocies and lies of the wingnuts, here's one thing I found just too boring and stupid to follow: the fact that, virtually every day, there are stories about a supposed attempt by the left to silence right wing talk radio, and TV liars like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Despite the fact that there is not a shred of evidence for this claim, they go on with this nonsense endlessly, like the equally fictional war on Christmas.



Well, here's the reality of press suppression in this country: MSNBC just fired their top-rated broadcaster. And make no mistake about the reason: it was solely because he dared to tell the truth in public. And if you think Rachel, Ed Schultz, and that clown O'Donnell don't get the message, you really are fooling yourself. If Keith is expendable they all are. It is apparently tolerable for CNN to employ the right wing hatemonger and professional liar Erick Erickson. But being a moderate liberal is too much for this country to allow anyone a public voice.



But of course, whoever owns these networks has the right to fire anyone they want, right? And thanks to the sainted Ronald Reagan, no one owns the media anymore but the rich. How many times have you heard decisions like this justified by claims that "it's just business" or that it's all about profits and not about the person's political views at all? Well, I'd like someone to explain to me how it's all about profits when a network fires its most highly rated star.



This is not a minor moment in our history as a nation. It is a major legitimation of the right to stifle dissent. It is a giant step toward fascism; and I am not using the term figuratively. When it becomes acceptable for the rich and powerful to stifle dissent, totalitarianism is on the way.

Oh brother. Could you just make that "goodbye cruel world!"



Wait! I'm supposed to be civil!



Anyway, more from Kyle-Anne Shriver, "Don’t Cry for Olbermann":

That’s it, folks. Keith Olbermann is — and always has been — nothing but a loud-mouthed, adolescent wannabe. In short, it’s not hard to see why Comcast balked at paying little Keith more money. What is difficult to imagine is why they ever put him up against an accomplished journalist like Bill O’Reilly in the first place.



As hard as I’ve tried, I’ve never really been able to hate Keith Olbermann. He clearly has various and quite intricate female “issues.” He has never been married. His love of fame and money and loose morals have left him with nothing more substantial than his own potty mouth for comfort. And he is getting old fast.



So, maybe I will cry a bit for Olbermann and leave you, dear readers, with this one admonishment:



Whatever you do, Mommas and Daddies, don’t let your sons grow up to be Olbies.



Nothing whatsoever good could ever come of following this reprobate off the cliff into a life of nothing whatsoever worthwhile or in the least bit desirable or admirable.



And that’s all I have to say about Keith Olbermann. I’m just so glad I’m not his mother.

The Left's Opportunistic Antiwar Movement

A good clip, from Reason.tv:

It's obviously true that the antiwar movement of the early 2000s was an anti-Bush, anti-GOP campaign. But what's not mentioned is that the ANSWER folks are an all-purpose perpetual protest organization. They latch on to any developments on the far left and attempt to seize the initiative. That happened at the outset of the protests against Prop. 8 and also during the anti-S.B. 1070 protests in Arizona. And while Democrats have clearly dropped any pretense of being antiwar during the Obama interregnum, these same partisans have little compunction against allying with Stalinists of the ANSWER sort. It's all about timing. ANSWER keeps itself afloat with non-stop outrage, but they're just one segment of the broader progressive left that is anti-American and neo-communist. Code Pink would be a good example. Friendly with President Obama, they advocate extreme positions on the revolutionary left. Recall what John Tierney wrote in 2005:

The irony of the modern “peace” movement is that it has very little to do with peace — either as a moral concept or as a political ideal. Peace is a tactical ideal for movement organizers: it serves as political leverage against U.S. policymakers, and it is an ideological response to the perceived failures of American society. The leaders of anti-war groups are modern-day Leninists ...

And speaking of ANSWER, they're gearing up for their 8th anniversary protest march in Hollywood: "STOP THE WARS: Resist the War Machine! — 8th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq."

Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.

Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.

I covered last year's protest, which saw about two thousand demonstrators on hand. I expect to be there again this year, so expect more top-quality coverage.