The Talk Show American

THE TALK SHOW AMERICAN: 09/09/2007 - 09/16/2007

Thursday, September 13, 2007

U.S. Preparing for Military Strike on Iran ?

Top officials in the U.S. are pushing for a military strike against Iran, Fox News James Rosen reported Wednesday.

Citing a "recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran," Fox said senior Bush administration officials have been left with no other option than to "to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government recent refusal to support additional sanctions against the rogue state has made the sanctions effort useless.

Fox reported: "Political and military officers, as well as weapons of mass destruction specialists at the State Department, are now advising Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the diplomatic approach" has failed, and that the U.S. must now "actively prepare" for a military option.

Noting a "well-placed Bush administration source," Fox said senior policy makers are reviewing the military option and say "the likely timeframe for any such course of action being over the next eight to 10 months, after the presidential primaries have probably been decided, but well before the November 2008 elections."

Last month President Bush raised the specter of a new "holocaust" if the Iranians are not checked.

He told a meeting of veterans, "Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism... And Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."

Bush Rating on Iraq Improves

Approval of President George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq war has risen, according to a poll released on Wednesday on the eve of a speech by Bush in which he is expected to endorse a plan for a gradual troop withdrawal.

Just 30 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of Iraq, but that was an 8-point jump from July, said the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

The boost came primarily from Republicans, men and independents, NBC reported.

In his televised speech on Thursday night, Bush is expected to accept the recommendation of the U.S. commander in Iraq to draw down about 30,000 "surge" forces by next summer.

Fifty-six percent of Americans said the war was not worth the U.S. casualties or the costs involved, compared with 35 percent who believed ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it, the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey found.

Asked what was the most acceptable outcome to the war, 24 percent of those polled said U.S. troops should remain in Iraq until it became a stable democracy, while 26 percent wanted the troops to leave now and 37 percent wanted them to leave within the next year, NBC reported.

500 Scientists Debunk Global Warming

According to a report in the WorldNet Daily:

More than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting the current man-made global warming scare, according to a new analysis of peer-reviewed literature by the Hudson Institute.

The newest analysis was released by Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery, who said of the 500 scientists who have refuted at least one element of the global warming scare, more than 300 have found evidence that a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to the current circumstances since the last Ice Age and that such warmings are linked to variations in the sun's irradiance.

"This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," he said.


"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people. It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease," he said.


Other researchers have found evidence that sea levels are failing to rise importantly, storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder and human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice the number of people as heat. Another result was that corals, trees, birds, mammals and butterflies are "adapting well" to the routine reality of changing climate, the analysis said.

The scientists were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, who previously has reported there has been little or no warming since about 1940. The two also co-authored the new book "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years," from peer-reviewed studies in specialties including tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.

"We have had a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it – except a moderate warning turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," added Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."


Singer said climate model-builders probably have developed a consensus of guesses. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause," he said.

He said about 70 percent of the Earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees Celsius, he said.

The analysis said the historic evidence of the temperature fluctuations includes the 5,000-year record of Nile floods, 1st Century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portray sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and cloudiness during the Little Ice Age.

Physical evidence includes oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, sea and pollen fossils and ancient tree rings.

Al-Qaida in Iraq Suffers Heavy Losses

UPI is reporting that Al Qaeda in Iraq has taken heavy losses:

Al-Qaida militants in Iraq have taken heavy losses in two joint U.S.-Iraqi raids north of Baghdad, the U.S. military reported Thursday.

In one operation involving more than 1,000 U.S. troops and Iraq Special Forces in the Hemreen mountain area and Diyala river valley, three al-Qaida fighters were killed and 80 others were arrested, the Army statement said.

The report said four of the arrested men are considered senior leaders in the terror group, Kuwait's KUNA news agency reported. U.S. air support was used to conclude the raid, after which a major weapons cache was found, the statement said.

Elsewhere in Salah Al-Din province, U.S. forces arrested 12 al-Qaida suspects and destroyed an entire house packed with explosives and weaponry, the report said.

Expert: Bin Laden Video Faked !

Neal Krawetz of Hactor Factor, an expert on digital image forensics, said in his blog that the first video contained many visual and audio splices, and that all of the modifications were of very low quality.

Most striking is bin Laden's beard, which has been gray in recent images. For this video it is black.
"As far as my tools can detect, there has been no image manipulation of the bin Laden portion of the image beyond contrast adjustment. His beard really does appear to be that color."
The Washington Post has the video.

Krawetz says the inner frame of bin Laden was resaved at least twice, and not at the same time. The images show fine horizontal stripes on bin Laden and a background indicating these came from interlaced video sources. In contrast, the text elements, such as the As-Sahab logo, appear to be from non-interlaced sources.

The September 7 video shows bin Laden dressed in a white hat, white shirt and yellow sweater. Krawetz notes
"this is the same clothing he wore in the 2004-10-29 video. In 2004 he had it unzipped, but in 2007 he zipped up the bottom half. Besides the clothing, it appears to be the same background, same lighting, and same desk. Even the camera angle is almost identical."
Krawetz also notes that
"if you overlay the 2007 video with the 2004 video, his face has not changed in three years only his beard is darker and the contrast on the picture has been adjusted."


More important though are the edits. At roughly a minute and a half into the video there is a splice; bin Laden shifts from looking at the camera to looking down in less than 1/25th of a second. At 13:13 there is a second, less obvious splice. In all, Krawetz says there are at least six splices in the video. Of these, there are only two live bin Laden segments, the rest of the video composed of still images. The first live section opens the video and ends at 1:56. The second section begins at 12:29 and continues until 14:01. The two live sections appear to be from different recordings
"because the desk is closer to the camera in the second section."


Then there are the audio edits. Krawetz says
"the new audio has no accompanying 'live' video and consists of multiple audio recordings." References to current events are made only during the still frame sections and after splices within the audio track." And there are so many splices that I cannot help but wonder if someone spliced words and phrases together. I also cannot rule out a vocal imitator during the frozen-frame audio. The only way to prove that the audio is really bin Laden is to see him talking in the video,"
Krawetz says.

Another bin Laden video was released on September 11 and was much more straightforward. There was a still image of the black-bearded bin Laden (oddly, using a frame not used in the previous video), and then, as has been a tradition at al-Qaida , there was a long, unedited video of a statement read by Azzam Al Amriki, also known as American-born Adam Pearlman, who is currently being sought for treason and thought to be living in Pakistan. That doesn't mean the 9/11-released video wasn't doctored.

Click here and mouse over the image to see Krawetz's 75 percent error level analysis of one image. As Krawetz presented at this year's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, al-Qaida has a history of doctoring background either to present propaganda or simply to disguise locations.

In a separate interview, Krawetz talks with CNET News.com about some of the tools he used in his analysis.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Bin Laden "Virtually Impotent"

Talk Show America

Political News & Commentary

Talk Show America 9/10/2007




President Bush's homeland security adviser said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaida leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.

Ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, White House aide Frances Fragos Townsend made a clear attempt to diminish the influence—or the perception-of the man who masterminded those attacks.

"This is about the best he can do," Townsend said of bin Laden. "This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes."

"We know that al-Qaida is still determined to attack, and we take it seriously," Townsend said. "But this tape appears to be nothing more than threats. It's propaganda on their part."


Townsend said experts are doing a technical analysis, looking for clues about bin Laden's health and whereabouts.

"There's nothing overtly obvious in the tape that would suggest this is a trigger for an attack," she said.

She emphasized another finding from the intelligence estimate released in July-that worldwide counterterrorism efforts have constrained the ability of al-Qaida to hit the U.S.

"We ought to remember, six years since the tragedy of the September 11th, we haven't seen another attack," Townsend said.


"We are safer than we were in 2001," she said.


New Osama Tape To Come Out