The Talk Show American

THE TALK SHOW AMERICAN: 08/27/2006 - 09/03/2006

Saturday, September 02, 2006

American Traitor Appears in Al Qaeda Video

An American thought to be an al-Qaida activist appeared in a videotape with the terror group's deputy leader Saturday and called on his countrymen to convert to Islam and for U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Adam Yehiye Gadahn, is a 28-year-old American, who the FBI believes attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan and served as an al-Qaida translator.

It was the second time Gadahn appeared in the same video with al-Zawahri. In a July 7 video marking the one-year anniversary of the terror attack on London commuters, Gadahn appeared briefly, saying no Muslim should "shed tears" for Westerners killed by al-Qaida attacks.

Gadahn spoke for nearly the entire video, wearing a white robe and a white turban, sitting in front of a desk with a computer and Islamic religious books in a room with a white wall.

Gadahn delivered a lecture on Islam and the "errors" in Christianity and Judaism. He also the United States is losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and told U.S. soldiers they are fighting President Bush's "crusades."

"Instead of killing yourself for Bush ... why not surrender to the truth (of Islam), escape from the unbelieving army and join the winning side. Time is running out so make the right choice before it's too late," he said.


Al-Zawahri gave only a brief introduction to the video, calling on Americans to convert to Islam. "To the American people and the people of the West in general ... God sent his Prophet Muhammad with guidance and the religion of truth ... and sent him as a herald," he said.

Little is known about Gadahn's role in al-Qaida. A Californian who converted to Islam, he disappeared soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2004, the FBI announced it was seeking Gadahn in connection with possible terrorist threats against the U.S., but adding it did not have information linking him to any specific terror activities.

"You know that if you die as an unbeliever in battle against the Muslims you're going straight to Hell without passing 'Go,'" Gadahn said on the video, addressing American soldiers. "You know you're considered by Bush and his bunch of warmongers as nothing more than expendable cannon fodder ... You know they couldn't care less about your safety and well-being."


"We send a special invitation (to convert to Islam) to all of you fighting Bush's crusader pipedream in Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever else 'W' has sent you to die. You know the war can't be won," he said, using Bush's nickname.


Gadahn also urged other Americans to convert to Islam.

"It is time for the unbelievers to discard these incoherent and illogical beliefs," he said. "Isn't it the time for the Christians, Jews, Buddhists and atheists to cast off the cloak of the spiritual darkness which enshrouds them and emerge into the light of Islam?"


Gadahn and al-Zawahri appeared in separate parts of the video, which was released by al-Qaida's production wing, As-Sahab. Gadahn spoke with his face uncovered, resembling FBI photos, with his name and nom de guerre - "Azzam the American" - written in titles in Arabic and English next to him. Arabic subtitles translated his comments.

Besides the July 7 video, Gadahn is believed to be a masked figure who appeared in two previous videos not officially from al-Qaida, one given to ABC television in 2004 and another a few days before the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the 2005 tape, the speaker - who had black cloth draped over his face, leaving only his eyes visible - threatened new terror attacks in Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia. The 2004 tape praised the Sept. 11 attacks and said a new wave of attacks could come at any moment.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Highly Enriched Uranium Found at Iranian Plant

The global nuclear monitoring agency deepened suspicions on Thursday about Iran�s nuclear program, reporting that inspectors had discovered new traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian facility.

Inspectors have found such uranium, which at extreme enrichment levels can fuel bombs, twice in the past. The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that at least some of those samples came from contaminated equipment that Iran had obtained from Pakistan.

But in this case, the nuclear fingerprint of the particles did not match the other samples, an official familiar with the inspections said, raising questions about their origin.

�We need to be very concerned that Iran may well be undertaking experiments, and may be undertaking the construction of centrifuge machines, out of sight of I.A.E.A. inspectors.�
Robert Joseph, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security


Highly enriched uranium, containing 80 percent or more of the rare uranium-235 isotope, is considered bomb grade and can be fashioned into the core of a nuclear weapon.

Secret Iraq WMD Report



This now unclassified portion of the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) report on pre-1991 Iraqi Chemical Weapons Recovered in Iraq reveals some chilling points concerning weapons not recovered but assessed to exist.

* Munitions recovered - 500.
* Some contained degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
* Pre-Gulf War munitions are assessed to still exist outside of coalition control.
* Remaining uncontrolled weapons could be sold on the black market.
* Terrorist and Insurgent groups inside and outside of Iraq desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.
* Condition of weapons uncertain. Some stilll potentially lethal. Many degraded.

The full 34-page NGIC Report was initially published on April 4 of this year, but partially declassified (The 7 pages available HERE.) on July 31.

Subsequent to the publication of the NGIC report, PJM has learned the following. In early August on a patrol north of baghdad, us soldiers made another startling and important discovery. Searching near an Iraqi construction site, the troops uncovered at least 240 chemical weapon shells. Although they had not been filled with any agents, they were still more remnants from Saddam�s WMD stockpiles.

For those keeping score, this most recent discovery raises the total number of chemical weapons found in Iraq since 2003 to more than 700.

As referenced above, the full 7-page PDF document may also be downloaded FROM THIS LINK. (1.1 megabyte)

Background on the report can be found @ Saddam�s WMD
Why is our intelligence community holding back?
by Peter Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum (WSJ)

U.S. still disposing of Saddam's stockpiles

When U.S. soldiers invaded Iraq in 2003, they discovered huge ammunition dumps but left many of them unsecured. Today, American explosives experts are still destroying weapons stockpiles hidden around the country, and materials looted from them are still being used for roadside bombs, the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops.

About 450,000 tons of captured ammunition - mostly artillery, mortar and tank shells - have been destroyed so far, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Even so, the flow of munitions to insurgents hasn't stopped, and coalition forces find new arms caches virtually every week.

At the beginning of the war, American forces didn't stop to secure or destroy the weapons dumps they found because there simply weren't enough troops, plus the insurgency hadn't started. Many military planners expected Iraqis to welcome U.S. troops as liberators and a friendly government to take over soon.

The American military started to destroy the hidden munitions in July 2003, as the insurgency began. The task was enormous from the start.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein "was burying stuff all over the countryside," said Bill Sargent, the manager of the Army Corps of Engineers' Coalition Munitions Clearance Program, which is in charge of destroying the hidden ammunition.

The effort has cost about $1 billion and more than 18 million hours of labor so far. How much ordnance remains undiscovered is anyone's guess, officials said.

The program has included nearly 1,200 private contractors, more than 1,500 Iraqi workers and 10 U.S. government employees. Most of their work focused on destroying the ammo stocks at six large munitions depots. American troops were left to secure and destroy the smaller sites, which may have numbered more than 10,000, according to some estimates.

"I think there's just so many sites that nobody knows where they're all at," Sargent said.

About 105 substantial sites - each containing at least 100 ammunition-storage bunkers - had been found in Iraq by mid-October 2003, according to a briefing in Baghdad at the time. In one northern sector alone, U.S. troops found nearly 1,100 weapons and ammo caches in the first seven months of the war.

Some American military officers conceded that there weren't enough U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq to secure all the materiel stockpiles they'd found.

"There are so many weapons caches all over this country," said one officer, who asked not to be named at the time because he was speaking critically of American policy. "There are not enough troops. We don't have enough troops to guard them."

Demolition work at the six large depots wrapped up last March when contractor teams working for the Army Corps of Engineers blew up 248 tons of ammunition. They've turned over 19,000 tons to the Iraqi army and are training Iraqi soldiers in ordnance maintenance and disposal at a site north of Tikrit, the only one of the six large depots that will remain open. Smaller contractor teams have fanned out to work at another 25 to 30 sites around Iraq.

Their efforts have made it much harder for insurgents to obtain explosives, Sargent said.

"We've taken out a lot of stuff, and it's getting harder for them," he said. "They really have to go out and hunt for it now."

However, the insurgents continue to make bombs. Attacks with homemade bombs have nearly doubled since January, according to information obtained from U.S. officials.

Statistics compiled by the American-led military command in Baghdad indicate that 1,482 incidents with improvised explosive devices - as the military calls homemade bombs - were recorded in January. Of those, 834 exploded and 620 were found and cleared before they went off; 28 were found to be hoaxes.

The Path to 9/11: A Must See Movie




ABC is going to air a mini-series called "The Path To 9/11" on September 10 @8 PM EST and Sepetmber 11 @ 8 PM EST.

According to ABC:

The miniseries will take viewers behind closed doors at the CIA, the FBI and the White House and into the world of Richard Clarke, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Sandy Berger and CIA Director George Tenet, among others. Viewers will follow the international manhunt for elusive bomber Ramzi Yousef (Nabile Elouahabi, Eastenders) and meet several key players in the 9/11 saga, including: John O'Neill, the career FBI agent who spent years zealously chasing bin Laden; then-ABC newsman John Miller (portrayed by Barclay Hope, Stargate SG-1), who interviewed bin Laden; Emad Salem and other key Muslim informants who aided the U.S.; and Ahmed Shah Massoud, commander of the Northern Alliance, a crucial American ally and the person bin Laden feared most.


But Insiders say:

"And from what I have been told, the film really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration in doing anything about militant Islamofascism or terrorism during its administration. It cites failures of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and Sandy Burglar. And apparently there were a bunch of Clintonoids in the audience who just went nuts during this screening, among them Richard Ben-Veniste, and Ben-Veniste confronted -- Michael Barone was there, too, who loved it. Richard Ben-Veniste was there and confronted my friend -- his first name is Cyrus, who produced this thing, and from what I'm told it got really vicious with Ben-Veniste being very aggressive and my friend held his ground, and it is suspected by people who were there that there will begin soon an all-out campaign to discredit this film before anybody sees it. I'm not surprised why Clintonoids would want to discredit this."

Rush Limbaugh


"One gripping scene shows Massoud's forces--and CIA agents surrounding bin Laden's encampments and then being called back when National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give a go-ahead for the operation. That scene, according to 9/11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean, an adviser to the film, is a conflation of a number of events; during the question period, commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, perhaps the most partisan member of the commission, said that it misrepresented what actually happened. But, as Kean pointed out, the Clinton administration did decline a number of opportunities to get bin Laden."

Michael Barone


Expect the Clinton Democrats, the leftist liberals, Moron.org, and Michael Mooreon, etc., to be all over this movie crititquing it as propoganda for the republican party to boost it's declining poll numbers. That is how they will portary the film to attempt to discredit it.

U.S. Muslims Warn of Threat From Within

After the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, distraught U.S. Muslim leaders feared the next casualty would be their religion.

Islam teaches peace, they told anyone who would listen in news conferences, at interfaith services and, most famously, standing in a mosque with President Bush.

But five years later, the target audience for their pleas has shifted. Now the faith's American leaders are starting to warn fellow Muslims about a threat from within.

The 2005 subway attacks in London that investigators say were committed by British-born and -raised Muslims, and the relentless Muslim-engineered sectarian assaults on Iraqi civilians, are among the events that have convinced some U.S. Muslims to change focus.

"This sentiment of denial, that sort of came as a fever to the Muslim community after 9-11, is fading away," said Muqtedar Khan, a political scientist at the University of Delaware and author of "American Muslims." "They realize that there are Muslims who use terrorism, and the community is beginning to stand up to this."


Muslim leaders point to two stark examples of the new mind-set:

_A Canadian-born Muslim man worked with police for months investigating a group of Islamic men and youths accused in June of plotting terrorist attacks in Ontario. Mubin Shaikh said he feared any violence would ultimately hurt Islam and Canadian Muslims.

_In England, it's been widely reported that a tip from a British Muslim helped lead investigators to uncover what they said was a plan by homegrown extremists to use liquid explosives to destroy U.S.-bound planes.

Salam al-Marayati, executive director of Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group based in Los Angeles , says working closely with authorities underscores that Muslims are not outsiders to be feared. It also gives Muslims a way to directly air their concerns about how they're treated by the government.

"We're not on opposite teams," al-Marayati said. "We're all trying to protect our country from another terrorist attack."


In 2004, his group started the "National Anti-Terrorism Campaign," urging Muslims to monitor their own communities, speak out more boldly against violence and work with law enforcement. Hundreds of U.S. mosques have signed on, al-Marayati said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, ran a TV ad campaign and a petition-drive called "Not in the Name of Islam," which repudiates terrorism. Hundreds of thousands of people have endorsed it, according to Ibrahim Hooper, the group's spokesman.

After the London subway bombings, the Fiqh Council of North America, which advises Muslims on Islamic law, issued a fatwa _ or edict _ declaring that nothing in Islam justifies terrorism. The council said Muslims were obligated to help law enforcement protect civilians from attacks.

"I think everyone now agrees that silence isn't an option," Hooper said. "You have to speak out in defense of civil liberties, but you also have to speak out against any kind of extremism or violence that's carried out in the name of Islam."


But many Muslims say they're being asked to look out for something that even the U.S. government struggles to define: What constitutes an imminent threat?

Khan said he has heard of cases in American mosques where imams have expressed extreme views in sermons and worshippers have confronted the prayer leaders about it.

"But beyond that what else can we do?" Khan said. "Do we need to hire a private detective to put on this guy? If five guys came to me and said, `Muqtedar, let's get together. Let's blow up this and that,' then I would call the police. But the community does not understand surveillance."


Imam Muhammad Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, said he has tried to address this problem in the eight mosques he oversees in the Orlando area.

He regularly invites law enforcement officials to speak with local Muslims and encourages mosque members to come to him with any suspicions, even if they overhear something said in jest. Musri says he also speaks regularly with local FBI and police to establish a relationship in case a real threat emerges.

"Here in Central Florida, talking to most people, they are literally upset by the actions of Muslims _ or so-called Muslims _ overseas in Europe and the Middle East, because they say, `We wish they would come and see how we're doing here,'" Musri said. "We know who the real enemy is _ someone who might come from the outside and try to infiltrate us. Everybody is on the lookout."

Thursday, August 31, 2006

MoveOn.org Caught Applying A Double Standard

The liberal group attacks 3 Republicans for voting for military spending bills, but endorses Democrats who voted the same way.

Summary

MoveOn.org Political Action attacks three Republican House members in TV ads saying they were "caught red-handed" supporting money spent on Halliburton contracts and wasteful Iraq projects. But a majority of Democrats voted the same way on most of the same measures, usually overwhelmingly. MoveOn endorses one Democratic House member who voted the same way 10 out of 14 times, and two senators who voted for the same measures every time they reached a recorded vote in the Senate.

Another ad says the same three Republicans were "caught red-handed" taking donations from military contractors while failing to support penalties for contractors who overcharge. In fact the donations were relatively small and MoveOn offers no evidence the votes were influenced by money. Furthermore severe penalties already exist for fraud against the Pentagon. What the targeted Republicans opposed were Democratic proposals to increase penalties.

Analysis

A Double Standard

"Dumping Billions" shows dump trucks dropping bags of money in a desert while an announcer questions what happened to $300 billion Congress sent to Iraq � including $18 billion for Halliburton and $9 billion that's "just plain missing." The ad then says that "our Congressman . . . has been caught red-handed voting for all of it," as a black-and-white picture appears with the Congressman's hand painted red.

To begin with, none of the three targeted Republicans voted specifically for money for Halliburton, and obviously there's no line item for "missing" money in appropriations bills either. The ad faults them for voting for "all of it," meaning all the money spent in Iraq. The problem here is that Democrats generally voted the same way. Even three lawmakers whom MoveOn is specifically endorsing often voted for the same bills being criticized here.

On its website MoveOn lists 14 votes among the three ads � votes on defense appropriation bills and emergency supplementals for the war in Iraq. By casting these votes, according to MoveOn.org, these Republicans have been "caught red-handed." However, Democrats usually voted the same way, overwhelmingly. On only 2 of the 14 votes did a majority of House Democrats vote in opposition, both votes on the $87 billion Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental approrpriation that came up in the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign. Even these got 82 and 83 Democratic votes, respectively. On the rest, an average of 165 House Democrats � better than three out of four � voted the same way as the Republicans that MoveOn is attacking.

MoveOn endorses three incumbent lawmakers, Democratic Senators Robert Byrd of West Virginia and and Bill Nelson of Florida, and Democratic Rep.Sherrod Brown of Ohio (who is running for the Senate this year). How do these lawmakers hold up against MoveOn's own standard? Not well.

Of the fourteen votes, Brown voted with Sweeney, Kuhl, and Bass ten times (and was listed as "not voting" once). Byrd and Nelson had six opportunities to cast recorded votes on identical conference reports, and voted in favor every time. By MoveOn's own logic, their candidates have been "caught red-handed" too, just a bit less often than the three Republican targets.

National Guardsman Brutally Attacked

PARKLAND, Wash. -- The Pierce County Sheriff's Department is searching for five people who allegedly attacked a uniformed National Guardsmen walking along 138th Street in Parkland Tuesday afternoon.

The soldier was walking to a convenience store when a sport utility vehicle pulled up alongside him and the driver asked if he was in the military and if he had been in any action.

The driver then got out of the vehicle, displayed a gun and shouted insults at the victim. Four other suspects exited the vehicle and knocked the soldier down, punching and kicking him.

�And during the assault the suspects called him a baby killer. At that point they got into the car and drove off and left him on the side of the road,� Detective Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff�s Department told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.


The suspects were driving a black Chevy Suburban-type SUV.

The driver is described as a white male, 25-30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, heavy build, short blond hair, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, and armed with a handgun.

The vehicle's passengers are described as white males, 20-25 years old. Some of the suspects wore red baseball hats and red sweatshirts during the attack.

The Pierce County Sheriff's Department is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and charging of the individuals involved. Informants can call 253-591-5959, and callers will remain anonymous.

Army Meets Its Retention Goal

Staff Sgt. Michael Obleton has already done two tours in Iraq, dodging roadside bombs as he drove trucks in Army convoys across the hostile countryside.

He may even return to the front again - a possibility that never occurred to him when he first joined the active Army in 1997, long before the 2003 Iraq invasion and the onset of what has become an increasingly unpopular war.

Obleton knows about the Bush administration's often-touted long war on terror, and he's seen the Iraq insurgency up close. But he's determined to continue the fight. So on Thursday he will stand by the flagpole at Kentucky's Fort Campbell, raise his right hand, and swear once again to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies."

As he recites his oath of service, administered by the Army's No. 2 ranking officer, Gen. Richard Cody, Obleton will become the 64,200th Army soldier to re-enlist this year - allowing the Army to meet its retention goal a full month before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

"The Army is a good career, there are a lot of benefits," he said this week from his post at Fort Campbell. "This is something I signed up for. It's a job. (The war) doesn't worry me."

Both the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve expect to meet their re-enlistment goals for this fiscal year, which are 34,875 and 17,712, respectively. Both totals are slightly higher than last year's goals.

'This War Will End in the Defeat of the Terrorists'

President Bush on Thursday predicted victory in the war on terror at a time when Americans are disillusioned with his strategy, likening the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism with the fight against Nazis and communists in the last century.

"The war we fight today is more than a military conflict," Bush told thousands of veterans at the American Legion convention. "It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."


Bush described the current violence in the Middle East and the recently thwarted attack to blow up planes over the Atlantic Ocean as part of the same movement that resulted in the Sept. 11 attacks .

"As veterans you have seen this kind of enemy before," Bush said. "They are successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be.

"This war will be difficult. This war will be long. And this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists," Bush said.


Bush acknowledged the unsettling times _ marked by sectarian violence in Iraq, war along the Israel-Lebanon border and terrorists allegedly plotting to blow up planes between Britain and the United States.

"The images that come back from the front lines are striking and sometimes unsettling," he conceded. "When you see innocent civilians ripped apart by suicide bombs or families buried inside their homes, the world can seem engulfed in purposeless violence."


Bush said those who were responsible for bringing down the World Trade Center are united with car bombers in Baghdad, Hezbollah militants who shoot rockets into Israel and terrorists who wanted to bring down the flights between Britain and the United States.

"Despite their differences, these groups form the outline of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology," he said. "And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam."


"The world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran," the president said. "We know the depth of suffering that Iran's sponsorship of terrorists has brought. And we can imagine how much worse it would be if Iran were allowed to acquire nuclear weapons."


Bush delivered his starkest threat yet to Tehran.

"There must be consequences for Iran's defiance," he said, "and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapons."

Court OKs Anti-Bush Shirt at School

A U.S. student who sued school officials after he was made to censor his T-shirt that labeled President Bush "Chicken-Hawk-In-Chief" and a former alcohol and cocaine abuser won an appeal Wednesday to wear the T-shirt to school.


The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Zachery Guiles, who through his parents claimed his free speech rights had been violated when school officials made him put duct tape over parts of his T-shirt that showed a Bush image surrounded by cocaine, a razor blade, a straw and a martini.



Guiles, who as a seventh grader in 2004 wore the T-shirt to Williamstown Middle High School in Vermont once a week for two months after purchasing it at an anti-war rally, appealed the case after a lower court ruled in favor of the school.

The school argued the images were offensive because they undermined the school's anti-drug message.

The T-shirt read "George W. Bush" and "Chicken-Hawk-In-Chief" with a picture of the president's face wearing a helmet superimposed on the body of a chicken.

The back of the T-shirt showed lines of cocaine, a martini glass and smaller print that accused Bush of being a "Crook," "Cocaine Addict," AWOL," "Draft Dodger" and "Lying Drunk Driver."

The appeals court said while the T-shirt "uses harsh rhetoric and imagery to express disagreement with the president's policies and to impugn his character," the images depicted "are not plainly offensive as a matter of law."

"We conclude that defendants' censorship of the images on Guiles's T-shirt violated his free speech rights," the ruling said, noting the T-shirt was censored after only one parent with opposing political views complained.

"Guiles's T-shirt did not cause any disruption or confrontation in the school," the ruling said.

The court agreed with the lower court that ruled Guiles' suspension from school should be expunged from his record.

President Bush 'assassinated' in new TV docudrama

This is the dramatic moment when President George Bush is gunned down by a sniper after a public address at a hotel, in a gripping new docudrama soon to be aired on TV.

Set around October 2007, President Bush is assassinated as he leaves the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago.

Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its 'War on Terror'.

The 90 minutes feature explores who could have planned the murder, with a Syrian-born man wrongly put in the frame.

Peter Dale, head of More4, which is due to air the film on October 9, said the drama was a "thought-provoking critique" of contemporary US society.

He said: "It's an extraordinarily gripping and powerful piece of work, a drama constructed like a documentary that looks back at the assassination of George Bush as the starting point for a very gripping detective story.

"It's a pointed political examination of what the War on Terror did to the American body politic.

"I'm sure that there will be people who will be upset by it but when you watch it you realise what a sophisticated piece of work it is.

"It's not sensationalist, or simplistic but a very thought-provoking, powerful drama. I hope people will see that the intention behind it is good."

The film will premier at the Toronto Film Festival in September and was written and directed by Gabriel Range.

Feds challenge 9/11 conspiracies

In the wake of growing skepticism, the U.S. government is taking the unusual step of responding to conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, headquartered in Gaithersberg, Md., investigated the causes of the collapse of the twin towers.

Yesterday NIST announced it had posted a "fact sheet" addressing alternative theories about the World Trade Center fires and collapse.

The government's response comes in response to accusations and suspicions of increasing numbers of Americans that the official explanation of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 � that 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four U.S. jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, with a fourth being downed in rural Pennsylvania � are wrong. In fact, a shocking new Scripps Howard poll shows a third of Americans believe the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

On its website, the National Institute of Standards and Technology posed 14 questions regarding the 9/11 terror attacks and answered each in detail. For instance, one question asked:


Why did NIST not consider a "controlled demolition" hypothesis with matching computer modeling and explanation as it did for the "pancake theory" hypothesis? A key critique of NIST�s work lies in the complete lack of analysis supporting a "progressive collapse" after the point of collapse initiation and the lack of consideration given to a controlled demolition hypothesis.
Here's is the government's response:


NIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST�s dedicated Web site. This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers.
Some 200 technical experts � including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia � reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse.

Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers. Both photographic and video evidence � as well as accounts from the New York Police Department aviation unit during a half-hour period prior to collapse � support this sequence for each tower.

NIST's findings do not support the "pancake theory" of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system � that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns � consisted of a grid of steel "trusses" integrated with a concrete slab; see diagram below). Instead, the NIST investigation showed conclusively that the failure of the inwardly bowed perimeter columns initiated collapse and that the occurrence of this inward bowing required the sagging floors to remain connected to the columns and pull the columns inwards. Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon.

NIST's findings also do not support the "controlled demolition" theory since there is conclusive evidence that:


the collapse was initiated in the impact and fire floors of the WTC towers and nowhere else, and;

the time it took for the collapse to initiate (56 minutes for WTC 2 and 102 minutes for WTC 1) was dictated by (1) the extent of damage caused by the aircraft impact, and (2) the time it took for the fires to reach critical locations and weaken the structure to the point that the towers could not resist the tremendous energy released by the downward movement of the massive top section of the building at and above the fire and impact floors.
Video evidence also showed unambiguously that the collapse progressed from the top to the bottom, and there was no evidence (collected by NIST, or by the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department or the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions in the region below the impact and fire floors as the top building sections (including and above the 98th floor in WTC 1 and the 82nd floor in WTC 2) began their downward movement upon collapse initiation.

In summary, NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view.

Read More Here:NIST and the World Trade Center
Read The Fact Sheet Here:Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster

Proof: The ACLU vs. America

The ACLU thinks that parents have no right to know if their pregnant underage daughter is seeking an abortion.

vs. America

80% of Americans think that parents have the right to know if their minor daughters are seeking an abortion. (CBS News Poll July 13-14, 2005)

The ACLU believes anyone, for any reason at any time should be allowed to abort a child.

vs. America

75% of Americans believe that there should at least be some restrictions on abortion. (CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll June 24-26, 2005)

The ACLU opposes abstinence education.

vs. America

96% of American parents with children under 17 want their kids taught that abstinence is the best approach to sex.
93% of American parents with children under 17 want their kids taught that having sex leads to disease and pregnancy.
85 % of American parents with children under 17 want abstinence to be taught with at least equal emphasis as contraception receives.
79% of American parents with children under 17 want their kids taught that teen sex leads to harmful psychological and physical effects. (http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/bg1722.cfm)

The ACLU has fought to have constitutionally-sound displays that include the Ten Commandments removed from public property.

vs. America

75% of Americans believe that the Ten Commandments should be displayed on public property. (CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll June 24-26, 2005)

The ACLU is on record as supporting polygamy.

vs. America

92% of Americans think polygamy is morally repugnant. (The Gallup Poll May 5-7, 2003)

The ACLU has filed cases across the nation to redefine marriage against the repeatedly expressed will of the people and, now the overwhelming affirmation by even Left-leaning courts that the state is justified in retaining the definition of marriage. (Note: the ACLU got smoked in an attempt to prevent Tennesseans from even having the opportunity to express their will at the polls this year.)

vs. America

21 states have recently voted to protect marriage by an average of 70%: Alaska 68%, Hawaii 69%, Nebraska 70%, California 61%, Nevada 67%, Arkansas 75%, Georgia 76%, Kentucky 75%, Louisiana 78%, Michigan 59%, Mississippi 86%, Missouri 71%, Montana 67%, North Dakota 73%, Ohio 62%, Oklahoma 76%, Oregon 57%, Utah 66%, Kansas 70%; Alabama 81%; Texas 76%

The ACLU believes that children should be trapped in failed public schools, even inner-city children whose parents desperately want to escape the captivity of government education.

vs. America

69% of Americans believe that parents should be able to choose their child�s public school rather than being assigned based solely on residence location. (http://www.edreform.com/_upload/2005ncsw-poll.pdf).
63% of Americans believe that parents should be able to choose the best school for their child, whether public or private. (Zogby International Polling July 2002)

The ACLU opposes personally-initiated prayer in school and moments of silence as well as individual acknowledgement of religious beliefs at public events.

vs. America

83% of Americans think prayer should be permitted during school activities including graduation ceremonies. (Gallup/CNN/USA Today Poll June 25-27, 1999)

The ACLU has filed lawsuits and threatened cities and schools all across the country to prevent Christmas from being openly celebrated in public fora.

vs. America

96% of Americans celebrate Christmas
87% of Americans believe Christmas displays should be allowed on public property.
(FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll December 3-4, 2003)

The ACLU has attacked Mt. Soledad memorial in San Diego since the the very beginning of Bush the Elder�s Administration because it includes a cross. This is just one of countless examples of the ACLU�s seek and destroy mission to eliminate all religious symbols from public grounds.

vs. America

76% of San Diegans voted to save the Mt. Soledad National War Memorial from the ACLU�s attack on behalf of a single atheist. That atheist, Jim McElroy was quoted as saying following the vote: �It still doesn�t mean a damn thing,� he said, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. �Voters should have never voted on it. It�s a waste of taxpayers� money.�

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Plamegate over

By Linda Chavez

So now we know. The man behind the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity was not presidential adviser Karl Rove, nor Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is under indictment for allegedly obstructing the investigation into the leak and lying to investigators. It turns out the leaker was former State Department deputy secretary Richard Armitage, a man much loved by the media precisely because he could always be counted on to tell tales out of school. In his own words, Armitage is "a terrible gossip," an admission he made during the Iran-Contra congressional hearings in 1987. The credit for unearthing this information goes to David Corn and Michael Isikoff in their forthcoming book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War."

Corn admits that Armitage was "a war skeptic not bent on revenge" against Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for publishing a 2003 article critical of administration claims that Iraq was trying to secure materials used in building nuclear weapons. But instead of acknowledging that Armitage's role in the leak undermines the whole conspiracy theory that the White House would stop at nothing -- even jeopardizing national security -- to get even with its foes, Corn says the Plame affair "remains a story of ugly and unethical politics, stonewalling, and lies."

The real ugliness -- indeed, cowardice -- is that the original culprit who leaked Plame's name never came forward publicly to explain himself. Although Armitage did reveal to federal prosecutors that he gave Plame's name to Novak, he did so only when he may have worried that he could become the target of the investigation after Novak noted in a column, three months after the original story, that his source was "no partisan gunslinger." Nonetheless, Armitage let sharks in the press circle the West Wing looking for blood for the next two and a half years, knowing he was the real blabbermouth.

Worse yet, Scooter Libby now faces possible jail time for allegedly misleading statements in an investigation into a non-crime committed by someone else, a person, in any event, who was already known to federal prosecutors. The real crime here appears to be this malicious prosecution.

CA Lawmakers approve financial aid to illegal immigrants

Students who came to the country illegally could apply for state financial aid when they attend California colleges and universities under legislation approved Tuesday by the Assembly in a party-line vote.

Supporters said immigrant children who have graduated and completed at least three years of high school in California should not be penalized for their parents' decision to bring them to the U.S. illegally.

�It is one small measure to help these kids that are working their butts off to live the American dream,� said Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, D-South Gate.

The bill would build upon existing state law that allows the same group of students to qualify for in-state tuition at California public schools and community colleges based on high school attendance, rather than U.S. citizenship or state residency.
Critics said offering financial aid to illegal immigrants would short-change needy American students already competing for a small pot of money.

�We're talking about limited resources here,� said Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine. �There's only so much that can go around. It's a slap in the face to people who have followed the rules.�


Lawmakers approved SB160 by a 43-27 vote, with no Republicans supporting it, and sent it to the Senate for final approval. Aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he had taken no position on the bill.

ACLU looks to block ban of protests at funerals

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio is asking a federal judge to block a new law prohibiting protests or picketing within 300 feet of funerals.

The law, whic h goes into effect Monday, is too broad and would cause confusion, said Jeffrey Gamso, legal director for the ACLU of Ohio.

"If a political group wanted to have a demonstration on Main Street and a funeral procession was driving by, they would not be permitted to continue, even if the protest has nothing to do with the funeral," he said. "That is clearly too strict and would severely limit free speech."

House Bill 484, sponsored by Rep. John Boccieri, a New Middletown Democrat and Air Force Reserve major, was passed in response to the growing number of protests at military funerals, particularly by demonstrators affiliated with the Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.

"I think they�re totally misguided on this," Boccieri said of the ACLU, a group he often agrees with. "It does nothing to curb the content of the speech. It just respects the privacy of a family that wants to grieve."


The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, asks Judge Donald Nugent to block the law with a preliminary injunction.

Iraqi says had to change t-shirt before US flight

An Iraqi architect on Tuesday said he was forced to change his t-shirt before boarding a flight in New York because the shirt had "We will not be silent" written on it in Arabic and English.

Raed Jarrar wrote on his Internet blog (http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com) that he was required to change out of the shirt prior to boarding a JetBlue flight from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to California this month because officials told him people were offended by the shirt.

In an interview with New York Public Radio on Tuesday, Jarrar said, "I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes and I know that these things happen. But I'm shocked that they happened to me here, in the U.S."

Jarrar could not immediately be reached for comment.

JetBlue said it was investigating the August 12 incident.

"We're not clear exactly what happened," JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin said.

The American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee said the U.S. Transportation Department and the Transportation Security Administration were also investigating the incident after the committee lodged complaints on behalf of Jarrar.

GDP Increases Slightly in Spring

The economy grew at a 2.9 percent annual rate in the spring - better than first estimated but nowhere near the brisk pace logged in the winter, another sign of slowing business growth. Inflation marched higher.

The latest snapshot of economic activity, released by the Commerce Department Wednesday, showed that gross domestic product in the April-to-June quarter increased slightly more than the 2.5 percent pace first reported a month ago. That upgrade mostly reflected an improvement in the country's trade picture and stronger inventory building by businesses.

The upward revision, though, didn't change the big picture of the economy: In the spring, it slowed sharply from the first quarter's 5.6 percent pace, the strongest growth spurt in 2 1/2 years, as consumers and businesses tightened the belt.

Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the best barometer of the country's economic standing.

The second-quarter's showing was slightly less than the 3 percent pace that analysts were expecting.

Gasoline prices could keep falling

Gasoline prices are falling fast and could keep dropping for months.

"The only place they have to go is down," says Fred Rozell, gasoline analyst at the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS). "We'll be closer to $2 than $3 come Thanksgiving."

Travel organization AAA foresees prices 10 cents a gallon lower by the end of next week. It reported a nationwide average of $2.84 Tuesday, the lowest since April 20.

It's good news for consumers and the economy. Continued lower prices "may act like a tax cut" and stimulate spending, says Richard DeKaser, chief economist at National City in Cleveland. He calculates that higher energy prices the first six months cut growth of consumer spending 1 percentage point.

The U.S. average for a gallon of regular peaked this year at $3.036 Aug. 10, according to OPIS/AAA daily surveys. That's slightly under the high of $3.057 Sept. 5, a week after Hurricane Katrina battered petroleum production in the Gulf of Mexico and caused fears of fuel shortages.

Behind the current drop:

�The end of summer. Driving slows, reducing demand for gasoline. And federal requirements for clean air, summer-blend gasoline end next month, making gasoline cheaper to refine and import.

�Sluggish demand. Gasoline use in the first eight months of the year is up 1% vs. a year ago, less than the 1.5% to 2% growth that's typical, says Michael Morris, analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "Wholesalers are trying to get rid of product. The growth in demand for gasoline has really tapered off," he says.

Wholesale prices are falling faster than retail gasoline prices, meaning stations are making more money than when prices were $3. Wholesale prices Tuesday ranged from $1.77 to $1.79 a gallon, well below the $2-plus prices typical until recently.

�Petroleum traders, worried that prices are too high to last, are selling their holdings. That pushes prices down. They also believe hurricanes won't disrupt Gulf of Mexico production, OPIS senior analyst Tom Kloza says.

Crude oil, which accounts for roughly half the price of gasoline, ended New York trading Tuesday down 90 cents, at $69.71 a barrel. That's the first time it's closed at less than $70 since May 4.

Americans back anti-terror racial profiling

Most Americans expect a terrorist attack on the United States in the next few months and support the screening of people who look "Middle Eastern" at airports and train stations, a poll showed on Tuesday.

The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute said 62 percent of Americans were "very worried" or "somewhat worried" that terrorists would strike the nation in the next few months while 37 percent were "not too worried" or "not worried at all."

The poll of 1,080 voters, conducted August 17-23, comes as many Americans are jittery after British authorities foiled a plot to blow up planes but is broadly in line with other surveys on expectations for another attack since September 11.


By a 60 percent to 37 percent margin, respondents said authorities should single out people who look "Middle Eastern" for security screening at locations such as airports and train stations -- a finding that drew sharp criticism by civil liberties groups.

"It's an unfortunate by-product to the fear and hysteria we're hearing in many quarters," said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy organization.

"It's one of those things that makes people think they are doing something to protect themselves when they're not. They're in fact producing more insecurity by alienating the very people whose help is necessary in the war on terrorism," he said.

Quinnipiac's director of polling, Maurice Carroll, said he was surprised by the apparent public support for racial profiling. "What's the motivation there -- is it bigotry, or is it fear or is it practicality?" he said.

Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union say racial profiling has been on the rise since the September 11 attacks. Arab and Muslim men are often profiled for investigation and Sikhs have frequently been mistakenly perceived as being of Middle Eastern origin.

The ACLU last week accused security officials at New York's John F. Kennedy airport of racially profiling Muslims.

"You really need some indication of individualized concern before you target someone for closer examination," said Dennis Parker, an ACLU director. "One of the reasons for the U.S. Constitution was to protect the rights of minorities."

The poll also said most Americans rank the September 11 attacks as more significant than the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Fifty-six percent cited September 11, while the Japanese attack that brought the United States into World War Two was named most important by 33 percent of the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

But the poll shows a deep split between young and old. September 11 is named most important by 72 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34, but the proportion falls to 42 percent for people over 65.

Illegals Find US Border Tougher To Cross

On her first try, Mari Paz said, she clambered over the barrier and walked only a short distance before U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted her. On her second, she slipped through a hidden door. She later tried crawling under the border and sneaking across hidden inside a van.

Mari Paz, who asked that her last name not be used, had left central Mexico bound for Houston, where she hoped for a joyful reunion with the son she hadn't seen in five years. Friends told the 50-year-old woman that the illegal journey wouldn't be all that difficult.

But nearly one month, half a dozen attempts and an injured knee later, a family reunion no longer figured in her plans; last month Mari Paz hobbled onto a plane to return home.

America's vast frontier with Mexico remains a highly porous landscape, where migrants by the hundreds of thousands cross annually. But stepped-up patrols, more barriers and high-tech monitoring have made the boundary impenetrable for many people.

Those who are turned back, like Mari Paz, are often less physically fit and middle-aged. They freeze from fright atop fences. They hurt themselves on nighttime journeys through gully-rutted terrain. They run too slowly to elude Border Patrol agents who spot them with remote cameras.

"This is where my dreams ended," said Mari Paz, at the border barrier in Tijuana. "Because of this fence, I haven't been able to see my son."


U.S. Border Patrol officials said the recent buildup has made it harder to cross and appears to be discouraging people from attempting it. From May 15, when President Bush announced the deployment of National Guard troops on the border, to July 23, the number of apprehensions for illegal crossings dropped 25 percent from the same period a year earlier.

"The perception, I believe, that is occurring in Mexico and, frankly, even further south of Mexico," said Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar, "is that our capabilities have increased dramatically."


Federal authorities do not have data showing how many people fail to make it across. But, in one of the few studies touching on the issue, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, found that as many as 8 percent of about 1,000 migrants in their study failed to cross.

Sara Hernandez, a 49-year-old from Guadalajara, said the fear of getting hurt would keep her from trying again to cross the two fences that separate Tijuana from San Diego.

"The first fence I jumped. But I never dreamed there would be another one, and that it would be so, so tall," said Hernandez, who fell from the top and sprained her ankle. She eventually went home.


Jorge Perez Diaz, 48, first came to the United States 25 years ago by walking along the beach from Tijuana. But when he tried crossing last year in the rugged hills east of San Diego, he was forced back by Border Patrol agents.

The fatigue he experienced was enough to discourage Perez from making another attempt to reunite with his wife in San Jose, Calif. "I'm too old now to walk across these mountains," he said.

Fearing long, brutal treks through the desert, people not in peak physical shape often head to urban areas. That's where they confront America's most fortified borders.

At the San Diego-Tijuana border, the two fences � the first 10 feet high and the second 15 feet high � line most of the frontier. Stadium lighting illuminates shadowy canyons. Motion sensors have been seeded across hills and beaches. Most recently, video surveillance cameras have been erected, and National Guard troops have arrived.

The number of apprehensions in the San Diego area jumped 18 percent in the period from Oct. 1 through Aug. 7 over the same period a year earlier.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

NASRALLAH'S BLUNDER

WELL, what do you know: What was presented as a "Great Strategic Divine Victory" only a week ago is now beginning to look more like a costly blunder. And the man who is making the revisionist move is the same who made the original victory claim: Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.

In a TV interview in Beirut Sunday, Nasrallah admitted second thoughts about the wisdom of capturing the two Israeli soldiers, an incident that triggered the war: "The party leadership never expected a response on such an unprecedented scale and volume [by Israel]," he said. "Had we known that what we did would lead to this, we would certainly not have embarked upon it."

For a roundabout way of eating humble pie, this was not bad for a man whom Western media have portrayed as the latest Arab folk hero or even (as one U.S. weekly put it) a new Saladin.

Why did Nasrallah decide to change his unqualified claim of victory into an indirect admission of defeat? Two reasons.

The first consists of facts on the ground: Hezbollah lost some 500 of its fighters, almost a quarter of its elite fighting force. Their families are now hounding Nasrallah to provide an explanation for "miscalculations" that led to their death.


Throughout southern Lebanon, once a stronghold of Hezbollah, pictures of the "martyrs" adorn many homes and shops, revealing the fact that many more Hezbollah fighters died than the 110 claimed by Nasrallah. What angers the families of the "martyrs" is that Hezbollah fighters had not been told that the sheik was starting a war to please his masters in Tehran, and that they should prepare for it.

The fighters found out there was a war only after the Israelis started raining fire on southern Lebanon. In fact, no one - apart from the sheik's Iranian contacts and a handful of Hezbollah security officials linked to Tehran and Damascus - knew that Nasrallah was provoking a war. Even the two Hezbollah ministers in the Lebanese government weren't consulted, nor the 12 Hezbollah members of the Lebanese National Assembly. The party's chief policymaking organ, the Shura (consultative assembly), hasn't held a full session since 2001.

The "new Saladin" has also lost most of his medium-range missiles without inflicting any serious damage on Israel. Almost all of Hezbollah's missile launching pads (often placed in mosques, schools and residential buildings) south of the Litani River have been dismantled.


Worse still, the Israelis captured an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters and political officers, including several local leaders in the Bekaa Valley, Khyam and Tyre.


The second reason why Nasrallah has had to backtrack on his victory claims is the failure of his propaganda machine to hoodwink the Lebanese. He is coming under growing criticism from every part of the political spectrum, including the Hezbollah itself.

Last week he hurriedly cancelled a series of victory marches planned for Beirut's Shiite suburbs after leading Shiite figures attacked the move as "unmerited and indecent." Instead, every village and every town is holding typical Shiite mourning ceremonies, known as tarhym (seeking mercy), for the dead.

Nasrallah has tried to rally his base by distributing vast sums of Iranian money through his network - by the end of last week, an estimated $12 million in crisp U.S. banknotes. But if Nasrallah had hoped to buy silence, if not acquiescence, he is being proved wrong. Some Lebanese Shiites are scandalized that they are treated by Iranian mullahs as mercenaries, and see Nasrallah's cash handouts as diyah (blood money) for their dead. And a dead man whose family receives a diyah cannot claim the status of "martyr" and enjoy its prerogatives in paradise.

As the scale of the destruction in the Shiite south becomes more clear, the pro-Hezbollah euphoria (much of it created by Western media and beamed back to Lebanon through satellite TV) is evaporating. Reality is beginning to reassert its rights.
And that could be good news for Lebanon as a nation. It is unlikely that Hezbollah will ever regain the position it has lost. The Lebanese from all sides of the political spectrum are united in their determination not to allow any armed group to continue acting as a state within the state.

The decent thing to do for Nasrallah would be to resign and allow his party to pick a new leader, distance itself from Iran and Syria, merge its militia into the Lebanese army and become part of the nation's political mainstream.

In last year's elections, Hezbollah ended up with 12 seats in the 128-seat National Assembly, thanks to a series of alliances with other Shiite groups as well as Christian and Druze parties. As the scale of Nasrallah's blunder becomes clearer, it is unlikely that Hezbollah would be able to forge such alliances in the future.

Student With Dynamite on Plane Released

A college student who packed a stick of dynamite on a flight to Houston from Argentina was granted bond Monday on a federal charge of carrying an explosive aboard an aircraft.

No future court appearances were scheduled for Howard MacFarland Fish, a 21-year-old junior majoring in biology at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.

Fish had been in federal custody since early Friday when agents found a stick of dynamite � as well as a black powder-based fuse and a blasting cap � in his checked luggage upon his arrival to Houston on a Continental Airlines flight that originated in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His carry-on luggage contained two more fuses.

Fish told authorities he got the explosive devices during a tour of a mine in Bolivia, an affidavit said.

Court favors Christian literature on campus

A federal court of appeals unanimously struck down a Florida school board policy barring students from distributing religious literature on campus.

Represented by the public-interest group Liberty Counsel, student Michelle Heinkel of Cypress Lake Middle School in Fort Myers had sought permission to distribute religious and pro-life literature about the "Day of Remembrance," set aside to remember unborn children killed by abortion.

But Superintendent James Browder of the Lee County School District denied the request, citing a board policy prohibiting students from distributing literature that is political, religious or proselytizing.

The next year Heinkel repeated the request � this time joined by Nate Cordray, a student at Riverdale High School � and was turned down again.

A federal district court upheld the policy, but the court of appeals found it unconstitutional.

In its unanimous decision, the upper court ruled that the policy's ban on all political and religious literature was an unconstitutional content-based restriction.

The court also ruled the policy gave too much unrestricted discretion to school officials to deny speech.

Erik Stanley, chief counsel of Liberty Counsel, pointed out public school students have a right to free speech outside of class sessions.

"A school's desire to squelch speech because of discomfort with the message is unconstitutional," he said.


Liberty Counsel's founder and chairman Mathew Staver, who argued the case before the district court and on appeal, said "religious and political speech are twin sisters, without which we have no freedom."

"Public schools may ban obscenity and libel, but religious and political speech does not stop at the schoolhouse door," he said. "Banning religious speech sends the wrong message that religion is taboo or second class, which proposition neither this court nor the Constitution is willing to tolerate. Educators need education about American history and the Constitution."

ACLU wants to destroy vets' memorial

An individual from San Diego who is "discomfited" over a veterans' memorial has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to renew its attack on the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial.

The Thomas More Law Center said yesterday it is preparing to defend the cross memorial from a new attack by the ACLU, this time in U.S. District Court in California.

A 17-year-long battle apparently reached a conclusion earlier this month when Congress approved and President Bush signed legislation giving ownership and control of the memorial to the federal government. That essentially should have ended a state case over the monument that had been pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because the federal government is not subject to the state statutes at issue.

However, Law Center President Richard Thompson said the attack has been renewed in the federal courts, with the ACLU's recent filing, which seeks the removal of the memorial's cross.

"The very freedoms that these veterans died to protect are being perverted by the ACLU and used to deprive them and their grieving friends, families and comrades the honor and solace they deserve," said Thompson.

The earlier state claim identified the city of San Diego as defendant, Thompson said. The new lawsuit names Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and was filed on behalf of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, a Jewish doctor who served two years in the Navy, his Muslim wife who came to this country four years ago, and an individual resident of San Diego.

That person, the lawsuit said, bears the burden of being "discomfited" by the memorial.

The legal situation is being reviewed, Thompson said.

"We won't let the ACLU destroy this country and dishonor our war veterans," he said.

The case has been pending for years. Then in 2004, Congress passed and the president signed into law federal legislation designating the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial "a national memorial honoring veterans of the United States Armed Forces."

A subsequent special election in July 2005 saw the citizens of San Diego vote overwhelmingly � 76 percent � in favor of donating the memorial property to the federal government for use as a national veterans memorial.

But a California superior court judge stopped the transfer, saying it violated the state constitution.

Then this month, President Bush signed new federal legislation, which immediately "vested in the United States all right, title, and interest in and to, and the right to immediate possession of, the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial."

The Law Center said the purpose of this legislation was to preserve the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial, including its centerpiece memorial cross, which has been in its present location since 1954, for future generations of Americans.

"While our brave servicemen and women are fighting on foreign soil to protect our freedoms, the ACLU is destroying our Constitution and the freedoms it represents in the courts of this country," said Charles LiMandri, the West Coast Regional Director for the Law Center.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Violence in Baghdad Cut in Half

Violence in Baghdad has dropped by nearly half since July, when U.S.-led forces launched an operation to pacify the capital, a U.S. general said on Monday, while acknowledging a spike in bombings in the past 48 hours.

U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell also said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki would assume operational control of Iraq's armed forces by next month in what he called a significant step toward Iraq taking responsibility for its security.

Caldwell said troops had cleared 33,000 buildings, seized more than 700 weapons and detained 70 suspects during the three-week-old operation to quell violence in Baghdad.

The daily murder rate had dropped 46 percent from July to August and car bombings were at their lowest rate for eight months, he said, while noting a spate of car bombings and shootings at the weekend which killed dozens.

"Insurgents and terrorists are hitting back in an attempt to offset the success of the Iraqi government and its security forces and divert media attention from Operation Together Forward,">/strong> he said.

One sign of the improved security situation was "the unusual number of weddings in the streets of Baghdad", children riding bicycles, and the reopening of shops, he added.

Iran Nuclear Intentions Revealed

Saturday news reports indicate Iran is opening a heavy-water production plant.

Though President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists he wants nuclear power purely for peaceful purposes, the only nuclear power plants close to operation in Iran are the two Russian-built reactors in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast.

Both are light-water, not heavy-water, reactors; and they produce far less bomb-grade nuclear waste.

Heavy-water reactors are preferable for bomb research and production.

So, why is Iran building any heavy-water plants and why have they begun construction on a heavy-water reactor (in addition to the light- water reactors in Bushehr) if all they are building are nuclear power facilties?

It is yet another indication that Iran's nuclear research goes beyond civilian power needs.

Tehran: We'll never stop atomic development

Iran said on Sunday it would never stop uranium enrichment despite a looming U.N. deadline designed to ensure it cannot develop nuclear weapons.

But chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani reiterated Iran's stance that it was ready to hold talks on its nuclear program. Six world powers have offered a package of economic incentives to the Islamic Republic if it halts uranium enrichment.

"Iran will continue its uranium enrichment. We want to produce our own nuclear fuel," Larijani was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA. "We will never stop it."


The U.N. Security Council has told Iran to suspend atomic fuel work by August 31 or face possible sanctions. The West suspects Iran is secretly trying to make nuclear weapons but Tehran says its only aim is to generate electricity.

Uranium enrichment can be used to produce fuel for nuclear power stations or material for nuclear bombs.

The Islamic Republic says international sanctions would only propel oil prices higher still, damaging the economies of the industrialized world.

"Any measure to deprive Iran of its right will not change our mind about our aim," said Larijani.

Al-Qaida member: Hezbollah backed by evil

A speech allegedly made by Sheikh Abu Abdul Rahman has surfaced on a jihadi pro al-Qaeda website in which Rahman is cited as condemning the "infidel Hizbullah" and "the most corrupted regimes of Syria and Iran."

The speech was posted on the Islamist Muntada internet forum, frequently used by British Muslim al-Qaeda sympathizers, and was described as being a "summary of an address by Sheikh Abu Abdul Rahman speaking from Lebanon."

It is unclear whether the speaker identified as Rahman on the forum is a reference to al-Qaeda's second in command in Iraq, Abu Abdul Rahman al-Iraqi, and whether the senior al-Qaeda figure actually delivered the message from Lebanon.

The statement does, however, represent the seething resentment of Sunni al-Qaeda, directed at what it sees as an attempted Shiite takeover of the jihad campaign in the Middle East.

In the speech, Rahman espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories inspired by the Russian forgery, the protocols of the elders of Zion: "We know very well from our history that the Jews target to occupy Lebanon, Syria and even the north of the Arabian peninsula even up to Iraq to the river of Furaat (Euphrates)."

However, he then turns his wrath to Hizbullah, Iran, and Syria, calling them "infidel entities," and arguing that they are preventing Sunni jihadis from attacking Israel.