TOBY PETZOLD

Hmm. Now that Bob Woodward has painted for us a picture of George Tenet —surely advised by the Director of Central Intelligence himself— as the prophet of al-Qaedist terror to whom no one in the Bush White House would pay heed, it seems that the former DCI is now to be believed by the anti-war Left.

Why should that be? Tenet lied about the WMD issue in Iraq, right? It was a “slam dunk” and all that? So why is he now to be believed?

Because, Tattoo, it’s so much more useful now.

“Boss! Boss! De planes are coming! De planes are coming!”

“Yes, Tattoo,” Mr. Roarke gently replied. “But my administration has decided to ignore all these threats and to allow our foes to strike at the hearts of our financial and military communities.”

“But why, Boss? Why?” cried Tattoo.

Mr. Roarke looked down at the earnest midget and patted him on his head, saying nothing.

“How about a shiny new medal, Tattoo? One you can wear around your neck!”

John J. Miller at The Corner links to a really interesting article by Ari Berman in the current issue of The Nation on the doings of the Democracy Alliance —a large group of super-wealthy liberal and Leftist donors (like George Soros and Rob Reiner) who are trying to influence American politics.

As Berman reports (emphases mine):

At an October 2005 meeting at the Château Élan Winery & Resort in Atlanta, Alliance partners agreed to give $28 million to nine groups. A few were smaller, edgier, more progressive organizations, like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog that made headlines by drafting an ethics complaint against Representative Tom DeLay. But the bulk of the money went to familiar names on the DC circuit, like the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank run by Podesta, and Media Matters for America, which monitors right-wing media and media bias, headed by former conservative journalist David Brock.

The small number of groups chosen, some of whom were already well funded, and the secrecy of the process infuriated organizations excluded from the club. No one knew exactly why the nine groups had been picked. Funding progressive infrastructure was all well and good, but no one bothered defining precisely what “progressive” meant. The partners themselves, with their business backgrounds, focused on the process by which groups were funded, not what they would do with the money. “There was an almost complete lack of actual substance,” one adviser to a major donor said of the Atlanta meeting. The groups were selected to mirror the right but were far less anti-establishment than their conservative counterparts.

I don’t know what that last sentence means, but I know what this means. At the Alliance’s next meeting here in Austin last May:

A surprise guest at the meeting was Bill Clinton, whose agenda seemed to be protecting his wife. But things didn’t work out quite as planned. When Guy Saperstein, a retired lawyer from Oakland, asked Clinton if Democrats who supported the war should apologize, the former President “went fucking ballistic,” according to Saperstein. Forget Hillary, Clinton said angrily during a ten-minute rant; if I was in Congress I would’ve voted for the war. “It was an extraordinary display of anger and imperiousness,” Saperstein says.

The willingness to challenge Clinton at least temporarily reassured progressive Democrats that partners in the Alliance had a spine and wouldn’t be a front group for “Hillary ‘08.” But Clinton’s response was a not-so-subtle warning to partners to avoid divisive issues, like the war, that might harm his wife in the next presidential election. Hillary herself has had a number of one-on-one sit-downs with members of the board, as has Howard Dean.

Looks to me like the Clintons are still running things among the Democrats and the so-called “progressive” movement. They’re going to use their popularity among the money-men, Big Media, and the party’s base to completely screw the anti-war liberals and the Far Left.

Watch it happen, baby. Clinton’s third term is riding on Hillary’s back: don’t waste your time trying to derail this monster.

Just throw on your prettiest blue dress and get on your knees.

You know, kids, there’s nothing quite like rubbing an ice cube all over your lips and forehead and arms and chest to convince yourself that you’re not dying.

It’s The Roy Batty Insanity Hour, Mofo!

Get to lovin’ on it!

Although it will become a law that will eventually be struck down, the news tonight is that the Senate has passed a terrorism detainee bill by a 65-34 vote.

Which is somehow a defeat for the Bush Administration

The vote showed that Democrats believe that President Bush’s power to wield national security as a political issue is seriously diminished.

as well as a signal loss of all those rights and liberties that we Americans hold so dear.

This law will be overturned, of course, because it gives the President —and the Secretary of Defense!— the power to say who and who is not a terrorist. This is a dangerous power to give to the executive because, when we make him the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military on Earth, as well as the arbiter of a thousand different aspects of domestic policy, we are really saying that our trust in his judgement to determine who is trying to destroy us is conditional. It’s just so dangerous to give him the authority to call spades spades and pull the trigger.

The issue of habeas corpus is another reason why this thing will eventually be overturned. Americans want to deny terrorists the right to, you know, post bail and flee the jurisdiction; Democrats want to preserve the terrorists’ rights to use our legal system and the Geneva Conventions themselves —neither of which the Islamofascists even recognize or respect— to game us and make a mockery of our own right to self-preservation.

And it’s this that really pisses me off. Is it so that when we deny these mass murderers their alleged legal rights under our system of jurisprudence that we are somehow abrogating our own rights and are, in fact, lowering ourselves to their level by abandoning our ideals? That’s not a concern for me because I am not trying to murder innocent Americans or otherwise trying to destroy or undermine the government or the wider interests of the United States. If I were, then what possible right could I expect to the protections normally afforded by those I intend to harm?

Yeah, I know. The belief that treason exists is so old school —and the belief that we face real enemies who do not observe our laws is just an example of American intolerance.

Yeah? Henry Kissinger is advising the President?

An interesting revelation —if it is one— by Bob Woodward.

But if that 35-year-old-sounding news isn’t interesting enough for you, try reporting it as though you were claiming that the President was waxing the taints of syphilitic dwarves. Like Edward R. Olbermann and Loudmouth Matthews are doing.

See, when Kissinger is advising the President, it must be Viet Nam all over again.

In related news, anti-war Democrats never get elected President.

Remember that, hippies.

I don’t really like opera, even though [people of culture] are supposed to like it. I recall my feelings of vindication once when I saw Sir Kenneth Clark in his classic BBC series Civilisation say that opera was an “irrational” form of entertainment.

Nevertheless, I am ashamed of Kirsten Harms, the director of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, for giving into the threat of Muslim violence:

BERLIN (Reuters) - German politicians condemned on Tuesday a decision by a Berlin opera house to cancel performances of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” over concerns they could enrage Muslims and pose a security risk.

The Deutsche Oper in west Berlin announced on Monday it was replacing four performances of “Idomeneo” scheduled for November with “The Marriage of Figaro” and “La Traviata.”

The decision was taken after Berlin security officials warned that putting on the opera as planned would present an “incalculable security risk” for the establishment.

In the production, directed by Hans Neuenfels, King Idomeneo is shown staggering on stage next to the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon and the Prophet Mohammad, which sit on chairs.

This is just insane. When the threat of Islamofascist violence should even be anticipated in the production of a centuries-old Mozart opera, you know that something is wrong.

The fundamentalist Muslim is testing you, Europe. He is probing the limits of your self-loathing pacifist mentality.

Don’t forget the old Chinese proverb: It is far easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.   

Austin’s NBC affiliate KXAN has apparently parted ways with their extremely hot reporter Silva Harapetian. What happened? I didn’t see that coming at all!

In fact, I just saw Ms. Harapetian a couple weeks ago at the Texas State Capitol where she was interviewing mourners at the lying-in-state for the late Governor Ann Richards.

I am very sorry to see her gone. Silva is not only a miracle of modern architecture, but struck me as being very competent at her job.

Oh, well. If anybody knows where —or why— she went, please let me know.

This was some good news from yesterday:

British troops in Iraq have shot dead an al-Qaida leader who escaped from a maximum security prison in Afghanistan last year, officials said today.

Omar al-Farouq was killed yesterday after he opened fire on British soldiers who were raiding his home in the southern city of Basra, Major Charlie Burbridge said.

Maj Burbridge refused to confirm that the dead man was definitely the same person who allegedly led al-Qaida’s operations in south-east Asia, saying only he was understood to be a leading terrorist.

However, a police officer in Basra said al-Farouq was the same escaped prisoner, adding that he had entered Iraq three months ago under the name Mahmoud Ahmed and was known to be a bomb-making expert.

Some 250 British troops from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment took part in the raid on al-Farouq’s home. “We had information that a terrorist of considerable significance was hiding in Basra. As a result of that information we conducted an operation in an attempt to arrest him,” Maj Burbridge said.

“During the attempted arrest, Omar Farouq was killed, which is regrettable because we wanted to arrest him.”

Now, the heart-warming part of the story of this Muslim mass murderer is that he was only back in Iraq to visit his sick mother, who lives in Basra. Apparently, al-Farouq was willing to risk all to come back into Shiite southern Iraq after escaping his American captors at Bagram —just to see mom.

It’s touching. And probably total bullshit.

So here’s the punchline: a mass-murdering Sunni fundamentalist who was running al-Qaeda’s operations in Southeast Asia before he was captured and turned over to American troops in Afghanistan was shot to death by British troops in the Shiite city of Basra.

Basra is in Iraq, see.

I think people who insist that the War for Iraq is unrelated to the larger War against Islamofascism are ignorant assholes who don’t care about America’s national security or about administering justice to our enemies.

Kudos to Wolf Blitzer for pressing Bill Clinton’s SecDef William Cohen on a point raised yesterday on Blitzer’s program by partisan Democratic hack Richard Ben-Veniste: the Clinton Administration had a long-term understanding with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that if Osama bin Laden (i.e., al-Qaeda) attacked us again, we would target them. 

So, Blitzer asked, why didn’t the Clinton Administration attack the Taliban in response to the murder of those sailors on the USS Cole? Clinton had at least a month after the so-called “certification” of Osama’s culpability —so why no action?

At first, Cohen had tried to hide behind the certification issue, but when reminded of his boss’ policy of attacking the Taliban itself, he spluttered out some garbage about how we didn’t want to go indiscriminately bombing innocent people and losing friends in the region.

Well, Bill, that’s an embarrassment, isn’t it? Because, if you people didn’t already have a target list of Taliban government and military installations —even if it was covered with a fine layer of dust— then that makes it even less likely that you clown college drop-outs had any plan at all to deal with the threat of al-Qaeda, which your finger-wagging boss claims to have left for his successor.

No more lies from your crew. Just shut up and take your lumps.

Richard Ben-Veniste was on with Wolf Blitzer earlier this evening and he brought up the point that the Clinton Administration had warned the Taliban regime in Afghanistan on “at least three separate occasions” that if Osama bin Laden ever attacked us —you know, again— we would hold them responsible.

So when were these warnings made? Surely one of those occasions came in the aftermath of the October 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Madeleine Albright told the Kean Commission that herself. Another time was in December 1999 after the discovery that al-Qaeda-trained terrorists were plotting to bomb sites in Amman, Jordan —and after another al-Qaedist, the Algerian Ahmed Ressam, was busted trying to bring explosives into Washington state from Canada.

So when was the third occasion? Who knows? It may have been years before the East African embassy bombings or the thwarted 1999 plots. In March of 1996, when the Taliban permitted Osama into Afghanistan after his flight from the Sudan, the Clinton Administration did nothing to stop him —even though they already knew that he was a major terrorist leader and financier. And they turned down the Sudanese government when they offered him up? It’s criminal negligence.

When he finally got to Afghanistan, Osama continued with his plots and fatwas against the United States. In September 1996 —a month after Osama had formally declared war on the United States— a State Department official met with a representative of the Taliban in Pakistan, asking him to see to it that Osama bin Laden be made “unwelcome” in Afghanistan. What was the Taliban’s response? That they weren’t sheltering him. Right. He was just a friendly tourist.

Anyway, Ben-Veniste pulled a sleight of hand in his little chat with Blitzer tonight that must be addressed. Ben-Veniste, who has never been anything more than a Democratic partisan hack, revealed that, during the Kean Commission’s interview with President Bush, he asked the President why he hadn’t attacked the Taliban itself in his first eight months in office —”now that it was established” that Osama had been responsible for the attack on the USS Cole. After all, attacking the Taliban in retaliation against Osama was Clinton’s policy —even though the glowering old finger-wagger never enforced it himself.

Well! The Cole was attacked on 12 October 2000. Is this partisan hack actually claiming that Clinton didn’t know who was behind it before he left office? That’s an absolute lie. Of course he knew! Of course his counterterrorism people knew! Here’s two of Clinton’s top people, Dick Clarke talking to Mike Sheehan, right after the attack:

“What’s it gonna take, Dick? Who the shit do they think attacked the Cole, fuckin’ Martians? . . . Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?”

Clinton had more than three months to bomb the Taliban before he left office — justified by years of warnings to that regime that he would hold them responsible for al-Qaeda’s terrorism. Why didn’t he do it?

Ben-Veniste’s excuse, which is his primary work product, was that making the decision to bomb a foreign country when poor old Clinton was so soon to leave office, was just something that needed to be left to his successor. Seriously. That was the gist of Ben-Veniste’s argument. Of course, it was just terrible that Bush didn’t seem to have much interest in pursuing the matter, even though it’s an established fact that the Bush Administration continued to pressure the Taliban into giving up Osama bin Laden, but was continually rebuffed.

Why are the Democrats and Clinton apologists so dishonorable? Clinton had a policy in place to retaliate against the Taliban for many years prior to the attack on the Cole. But Clinton never followed through on his threats. Not even once. And now he and his goons are trying to rewrite —and, in the case of Sandy Berger, steal and destroy— History?

These people are clowns. And Richard Ben-Veniste is a lying partisan hack.