May 10 2010
US Attorney General Holder Discovers America Is At War With Terrorists!
Hold the presses! The United States Attorney General, Eric Holder, has made a mind boggling discovery this past week and he went on the Sunday morning talk shows to share this historic insight with the American people:
Mr. Holder acknowledged the abrupt shift of tone, characterizing the administration’s stance as a “new priority†and “big news†in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.â€
“We’re now dealing with international terrorists,†he said, …
Just amazing – who would have thought 10 years after 9-11 and nearly 20 years after the first bombing incident at the World Trade Center in NY City that this very important discovery would finally be uncovered by this young and inexperienced administration? Should we all now applaud – or weep?
In fact, what AG Holder did this weekend was a backhanded and lame effort to acknowledge this administration’s approach to national security has been a bloody (no pun intended) disaster. They have finally realized that the Taliban and al Qaeda fascists in Pakistan and Afghanistan are really serious about destroying the West:
The conclusion that Mr. Shahzad was involved in an international plot appeared to come from investigations that began after his arrest and interrogation, including inquiries into his links with the Taliban in Pakistan.
“We know that they helped facilitate it,†Mr. Holder said of the Times Square bombing attempt. “We know that they helped direct it. And I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped to finance it. They were intimately involved in this plot.â€
…
Mr. Brennan [the President’s antiterrorism advisor] appeared to say even more definitively than Mr. Holder did that the Taliban in Pakistan had provided money as well as training and direction.
“He was trained by them,†Mr. Brennan said. “He received funding from them. He was basically directed here to the United States to carry out this attack.â€
He added: “We have good cooperation from our Pakistani partners and from others. We’re learning more about this incident every day.
From what I am seeing from Holder, as he now agrees Mirandizing terrorists caught attempting mass murder inside the US is not a great idea, is the dawning of reality. After years of claiming law enforcement can stop Islamo Fascist warfare from reaching our shores, Holder is now all about fixing law enforcement because it ain’t working all that great. Why not just admit we are at war and we don’t go to war with judges and lawyers on point? Doh!
Mark Steyn really nails the whole mess playing out in DC with this blistering review of the incompetence on display in DC. Some exceptionally biting excerpts:
Last year, not one but two “terrorism task forces†discovered that U.S. Army psychiatrisat Nidal Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with the American-born, Yemeni-based cleric Ayman al-Awlaki but concluded that this was consistent with the major’s “research interests,†so there was nothing to worry about. A few months later, Major Hasan gunned down dozens of his comrades while standing on a table shouting “Allahu Akbar!†That was also consistent with his “research interests,†by the way. A policy of relying on stupid jihadists to screw it up every time will inevitably allow one or two to wiggle through. Hopefully not on a nuclear scale.
…
And, whenever the marshmallow illusions are momentarily discombobulated, the entire political-media class rushes forward to tell us that the thwarted killer was a “lone wolf,†an “isolated extremist.†According to Mayor Bloomberg a day or two before Shahzad’s arrest, the most likely culprit was “someone who doesn’t like the health-care bill†(that would be me, if your SWAT team’s at a loose end this weekend). Even after Shahzad’s arrest, the Associated Press, CNN, and the Washington Post attached huge significance to the problems the young jihadist had had keeping up his mortgage payments. Just as, after Major Hasan, the “experts†effortlessly redefined “post-traumatic stress disorder†to apply to a psychiatrist who’d never been anywhere near a war zone, so now the housing market is the root cause of terrorism: Subprime terrorism is a far greater threat to America than anything to do with certain words beginning with I- and ending in -slam.
Incidentally, one way of falling behind with your house payments is to take half a year off to go to Pakistan and train in a terrorist camp. Perhaps Congress could pass some sort of jihadist housing credit?
This well deserved derision comes about because the liberal fools in the Obama administration had a elementary-school-level grasp of what it takes to defend this great country. They thought ‘how hard could it be’? It works so well on TV!
Three successful attacks later (two of which only failed due to faulty detonators) and team Obama is cheering its successes. This transcript of Holder on ABC’s This Week is particularly nauseating:
HOLDER: Well, there certainly was a bit of that, but I think also one has to look at the overall operation. He was stopped before he was able to leave the country [AJStrata: but after depositing is WMD] because of a notification that the FBI made to put him on the no-fly list. We also had vigilant citizens who looked at that vehicle that he left and saw the smoke coming out and notified the appropriate authorities.
This was, in some ways, I think, a good example of what an aroused American populace, coupled with a vigilant law enforcement community, can actually do.
I wonder how well AG Holder will support the ‘aroused’ American populace this fall, as they head to the voting booth to begin rolling back our young president’s mistakes and missteps? Or how about this truly moronic interchange:
TAPPER: OK, Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud of the Pakistani — Pakistani Taliban appeared in a video last month saying the time is very near when a Fedayeen, or soldiers, will attack the American states in the major cities. At the time that he issued that warning, U.S. policymakers didn’t think the Pakistani Taliban had the ability to reach into the United States. They were, obviously, wrong?
HOLDER: Well, I’m not sure that we didn’t think they had that ability. We didn’t think that necessarily was their aim. We certainly have seen with the Shahzad incident that they have not only the aim, but the capability of doing that. And that’s why they have taken on, I think, a new significance in our anti-terror fight.
What kind of idiot dismisses an open threat of pending attack by using the rationale ‘we did not think they meant what they said”? Is this not an admission of total incompetence? The man should be fired for this kind of foolish thinking! You mean the Taliban and al Qaeda really do want to murder Americans in mass numbers? Whodathunkit!
At one point Holder was accidentally enlightening (and damning of this administration’s effort):
TAPPER: Shahzad was on a Treasury Department watch list since the late 1990s for bringing large sums of cash into this country. He was taken off that watch list. Did the U.S. government drop the ball?
HOLDER: No, I don’t think so. I think we have done a good job in monitoring those people who we need to identify as potential threats to the, you know, government, and I think one has to understand that in connection with the — the resolution of this plot, American law enforcement I think was very successful.
Emphasis mine. What a strange and contorted statement? One supposedly well rehearsed for this weekend’s marathon propaganda push. Was the government limiting its surveillance to potential threats to the government and ignoring threats to the American people? How could letting another mad jihadist train for months in Pakistan and successfully park a massive explosive in Times Square be called ‘very successful’? Is this man mentally all there?
Team Obama has established enough prima facia evidence of criminal incompetence and neglect with the three terrorist attacks that slipped by their legal-eagle eyes in just one short year in office. When a new Congress is seated next year, priority one has to be investigating the madness inside this administration that now goes for ‘national security’. Right now we are not a nation secured, we are a nation exposed to death and harm by the incompetent decisions of a few left-wing zealots in DC.
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AJ,
Can you find some actual science and report on this oil well thing.
Instinct – it feels wrong. Conspiracy theorists, I can be one of them, but I want some truth, and there is none in the news,
Here’s this repubx article, and yes it is alarmist,
A very grim report on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Major cover up regarding the scope and severity of the disaster. BP to be nationalized?
by DFX May 10, 2010 12:47
[link to oilprice.com]
The Cover-up:
BP’s Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster
Written by Wayne Madsen
WMR (Wayne Madsen Report) has been informed by sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Obama White House and British Petroleum (BP), which pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — more than John McCain or Hillary Clinton, are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what can be called a “mega-disaster.”
Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, are working with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. However, WMR’s federal and Gulf state sources are reporting the disaster has the real potential cost of at least $1 trillion. Critics of the deal being worked out between Obama and Hayward point out that $10 billion is a mere drop in the bucket for a trillion dollar disaster but also note that BP, if its assets were nationalized, could fetch almost a trillion dollars for compensation purposes. There is talk in some government circles, including FEMA, of the need to nationalize BP in order to compensate those who will ultimately be affected by the worst oil disaster in the history of the world.
Plans by BP to sink a 4-story containment dome over the oil gushing from a gaping chasm one kilometer below the surface of the Gulf, where the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and killed 11 workers on April 20, and reports that one of the leaks has been contained is pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources. Sources within these agencies say the White House has been resisting releasing any “damaging information” about the oil disaster. They add that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf.
Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a “national security issue.” Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for invoking national security was to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines.
From the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Coast Guard, and Gulf state environmental protection agencies, the message is the same: “we’ve never dealt with anything like this before.”
The Obama administration also conspired with BP to fudge the extent of the oil leak, according to our federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day was gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day.
However, WMR has been informed that submersibles that are monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what is a “volcanic-like” eruption of oil. Moreover, when the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick — which is larger than that being reported by the media — it was turned down. However, National Geographic managed to obtain the satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site.
There is other satellite imagery being withheld by the Obama administration that shows what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to our sources.
The Corps and Engineers and FEMA are quietly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only recently, has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. WMR has also learned that inspections of off-shore rigs’ shut-off valves by the Minerals Management Service during the Bush administration were merely rubber-stamp operations, resulting from criminal collusion between Halliburton and the Interior Department’s service, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves.
The impact of the disaster became known to the Corps of Engineers and FEMA even before the White House began to take the magnitude of the impending catastrophe seriously. The first casualty of the disaster is the seafood industy, with not just fishermen, oystermen, crabbers, and shrimpers losing their jobs, but all those involved in the restaurant industry, from truckers to waitresses, facing lay-offs.
The invasion of crude oil into estuaries like the oyster-rich Apalachicola Bay in Florida spell disaster for the seafood industry. However, the biggest threat is to Florida’s Everglades, which federal and state experts fear will be turned into a “dead zone” if the oil continues to gush forth from the Gulf chasm. There are also expectations that the oil slick will be caught up in the Gulf stream off the eastern seaboard of the United States, fouling beaches and estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, and ultimately target the rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.
WMR has also learned that 36 urban areas on the Gulf of Mexico are expecting to be confronted with a major disaster from the oil volcano in the next few days. Although protective water surface boons are being laid to protect such sensitive areas as Alabama’s Dauphin Island, the mouth of the Mississippi River, and Florida’s Apalachicola Bay, Florida, there is only 16 miles of boons available for the protection of 2,276 miles of tidal shoreline in the state of Florida.
Emergency preparations in dealing with the expanding oil menace are now being made for cities and towns from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater, Sarasota-Bradenton, Naples, and Key West. Some 36 FEMA-funded contracts between cities, towns, and counties and emergency workers are due to be invoked within days, if not hours, according to WMR’s FEMA sources.
There are plans to evacuate people with respiratory problems, especially those among the retired senior population along the west coast of Florida, before officials begin burning surface oil as it begins to near the coastline.
There is another major threat looming for inland towns and cities. With hurricane season in effect, there is a potential for ocean oil to be picked up by hurricane-driven rains and dropped into fresh water lakes and rivers, far from the ocean, thus adding to the pollution of water supplies and eco-systems.
This story contributed by the Wayne Madsen Report for Oilprice.com
Tags: energy, white house
Energy | White House
E-mail | IntelliFetch Topic
snip
I think there are millions who want to know,
thanks
The situation is bad, but that writer is hyperventilating. The big surprise so far is that so *little* of the oil has made it to shore so far. Wind is helping and so is the chemicals they are using to break up the slick.
This isn’t the first time this has happpened – IXTOC 1 blew out at a rate that was several times greater than this in 1979, off the upper mexican coast, and it pumped into the gulf unchecked for 9 full months. (I remember running into the tar balls on Padre Island) Still, even with that level of spoliation all traces were gone within 3 years and the beaches and ecosystem recovered. The earth is remarkably resilient, and this isn’t some narrow channel like happened in Alaska with the Exxon Valdez. This is open ocean. The “death of the gulf” along with “$1 trillion in damages” is nonsense. Probable cost – $1 billion to $2 billion, a lot, but BP can afford it. They’re currently earning about $1 billion a *week* in profits from other operations. So worst case is that this is going to cost BP about 2 weeks of profits.
People use the word “volcano” in order to scare – yes, this is a fluid coming out of the earth explosively, but it’s still coming through a pipe, which means it can be got back under control. It’s just not easy working with high tech equipment, almost as advanced as that used in the space program, 5000 feet underwater where no man can go. It’s a hell of an engineering challenge.
The reason there is uncertainty as to just how much fluid is coming out is that all the measurement systems were knocked out when the rig sank, and it’s surprisingly difficult to gauge volumes when you have a fluid to fluid interface 5000 feet down at 2200 psi. There’s no gauge you can stick down there to measure it directly, so you just have to let the ROV’s take pictures, measure the size of the slick, and guess. The best engineers in the world are working on this and that’s all they’ve come up with so far.
A clue to take note of when reading articles – industry parlance is always to use “BOPD”, Barrels of Oil per Day. 42 gallons to the oilfield barrel. Whenever you see someone using gallons as a measurement instead of barrels, it is always someone trying to sensationalize things and scare the public, since it makes the numbers look 42 times bigger. No one with any experience in the industry would play games like this, so I always tend to automatically discount any article where I see that trick being pulled. Of course the EPA likes to pull this crap all the time.
One last thing – BP is a UK company, not an American one. This talk of “nationalization” is nonsensical, and tells me this guy has done no basic research at all into this situation.
Read through the comments in the following thread on this blog, and you’ll find some worthwhile discussion on the matter.
Found this at “Big Government”……..could it be true?
EXCLUSIVE: Mullah Omar Captured!
Posted by Brad Thor May 10th 2010 at 5:05 pm in Defense and Foreign Policy, Exclusives, Featured Story, Military, Terrorism | Comments (15)
Through key intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have just learned that reclusive Taliban leader and top Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar has been taken into custody.
Will they turn him over to US as complicit in 911?
SORRY I FOUND THE ABOVE AT………………”Big Journalism”
I sure hope it’s true – of course I’ve always believed that the Pakistani ISI has *always* known exactly where he was, and just pretended not to know so they could go on two-timing our efforts behind our back, like they have always done.
never forget that the Taliban was created by the Paki ISI, and they’ve never cut their ties completely. (recall the bombing of the Indian embassy on behalf of the Pakistani’s a couple years back) So why have the Paki’s turned on Omar now? Are they finally sick of him, or is there some other game they’re playing?
Or is this just going to be some one eyed sheepherder who’s being set up to die so that they can pretend Omar is dead?
You can tell I don’t trust anything the Paki’s do.
WWS, this weekend Hillary Clinton told PBS, I think it was PBS that the Pakistanis knew where bin Laden and Omar were. Is this kind of a coincidence?
Well, AJ, give Holder a break. He’s a lawyer and used to telling lies convincingly. His job is to defend the actions of his client, which ultimately Obama is no matter how boneheaded they are. Then, too, he is used to getting terrorists off the hook. He has done so many times not only with Clinton pardons but up to the panther in Philadelphia. This is a major business with his law firm. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if his firm had been planning to defend the terroists in the aborted NYC trials.
I seriously doubt this guy would back down if and when we have a major terrorist plot that succeeds. He and Obama will still get on TV and make their asinine excuses and the media will still carry their water praising the non effort to stop that plot.
I am mortally tired of the media publishing sob stories and/or excuses about these killers. I don’t care if life is tough for them. It’s tough for all of us to one degree or another. That doesn’t give anyone the excuse to blow people up or shoot them down. Every time one of these radical muslims commits a crime all we hear is “lone wolf”, “disturbed person”, mentally challenged”. That’s the first thing in print. Too bad for them Shadzad confessed his guilt. I guess that really took the wind outof their sails. Hopefully, we can survive the naive, unworldly, fantasy land ideas these liberals are inflicting on this country. One wonders what kind of bubble they live in to believe the world functins as they wish it did. It is not, has never been and never will be Utopia.
I’m sick and tired of hearing about what law enforcement can do as well Barbara. So it is good to find these guys guilty, but how about finding out who they are connected to, what is coming next and a bunch of other questions we need answers to. Obama is so busy scrapping Bush policies, as if Bush were the bad guy who just hated Muslims. Obama is just damn lucky that Americans were not spread all over the streets in little tiny bits. The fact that the administration didn’t know that Yemen was a problem says it all.
Okay, I’m starting to get an idea of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon – human error was at the core, and right now all 3 companies involved – BP, Transocean, and Halliburton – are all pointing fingers at each other and saying it was the other one’s fault. (remember Larry, Moe, and Curly?)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704879704575236553480511416.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_business
Someone decided to reverse the order of some key procedures right at the end, just before the blowout. That appears to be the trigger for everything that followed – but who gave that order, and why?
What’s troubling already is that Halliburton appears to be admitting the error but claiming that they only did what they were told, which they say should let them off the hook. Maybe, maybe not.
This could even come down to a simple chain of command confusion – some one thought the work had been done and failed to verify before going to the next step, while someone else thought they were supposed to hold off.
Just like with Columbia and Challenger, sometimes the biggest disasters come down to the simplest screwups.
Like the Mai Lai incident? Just following orders?
Are you listening to today’s hearings?
In the case of the Challenger accident, I thought that advise by Morton Thiokol was ignored?