Useful Fools

The Democrats, the press and some members of the 9-11 commission are howling for Condoleeza Rice to testify publicly under oath to the committee, even though she has already given 15 hours of private testimony. The White House is resisting, saying they don’t want to set a bad precedent.

The New York Times, the bastion of truth and respectability, lists 2 past instances in which National Security Advisers have testified publicly, not to an independent commission, but to Congress. Furthermore, they don’t point out that these cases were both criminal matters, and no National Security Adviser has ever testified under these conditions about policy matters. Furthermore, the principle to be protected is the ability of advisors to be able to discuss anything, no matter how politically unpalatable, with the President. The New York Times also ignores that issue.

To the Times, the case is closed. Others did it, Condi should too.

But with the New York Times these days, not all the news is fit to print.

The Drudge Report adds the following relevant tidtbit that the Times must have lost to computer failure or something:

On July 29, 1999, Richard Clarke was scheduled to appear before the Senate Special Committee on the Y2K computer scare.

Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) chaired the hearing, and made the announcement that Richard Clarke would not be appearing before the committee — due to a directive by the National Security Council.

…

The congressional record; Senator Bennett:

….

Last night, into the evening, we were notified that the legal staff of the National Security Council had determined that it would be inappropriate for Mr. Clarke to appear. I have just spoken to him on the telephone. The rule apparently is that any member of the White House staff who has not been confirmed is not to be allowed to testify before the Congress. They can perform briefings, but they are not to give testimony. And that in response to that rule, Mr. Clarke will not be coming.

The reason the commission wants Condi to testify is due to the same Mr. Clarke’s self-refuted claims! Mr. Clarke refused to testify using exactly the reasons that Condi is using.

The irony is stunning. So is the New York Times journalistic incompetence.

Syria, a major safe harbor for terrorists and a chemical weapon armed country may be about to stop supporting terror and perhaps give up its WMDs.

This represents a triumph for the forces of diplomacy, especially France and the United Nations
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As we have been investigating Kerry’s antiwar record, so have others. The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal summarizes this nicely.

Kerry is a liar. This should come as no surprise given his outrageous testimony to the Senate in 1971 where he slandered America and gave the standard enemy propaganda line.

For quite a while he successfully covered up his participation in a meeting where the VVAW, an organization in which he was an officer, discussed assassinating US Senators. But that cover-up has come apart, as former comrades and FBI files prove that he was there. One of his comrades reports that Kerry tried to get him to change his report of Kerry’s presence. Now Kerry says he can’t remember the meeting where such an outrageous plan was debated and where Kerry reportedly resigned from the VVAW. Do we really want a presidential candidate with early dementia?

And, it looks like he may be lying about having resigned from VVAW also.

In an eerie event reminiscent of those years, some of the FBI files have been stolen from the historian who had them!

This guy is a real piece of work!

Rather than clog up Roger Simon’s excellent blog comments, I am putting here a quick statement on Kerry.

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The politics will hopefully get a little more balanced if the American people find out (past the biased media) how most Vietnam Veterans and other vets and active military feel about Kerry for siding with our enemy, and slandering his “brothers in arms” and his country in 1971. Unlike the charges against Bush, we have solid proof - transcripts, videotapes and audio of Kerry discussing his visit to the North Vietnamese representatives in Paris, of him subsequently urging the US to immediately accept their terms, and his statement (on behalf of our enemy) that our troops would be given safe passage out of the country (in other words, he gladly carried the enemy’s surrender terms). Wait until the American people hear his sneering tones when he describes his country’s policies as equivalent to those of Genghis Khan (his words), of his claiming that atrocities were commonplace and part of US policy, of his assertion that we used weapons against the “oriental humans” of Vietnam that we would never use against Europeans, of his mischaracterizing of Vietnam Veterans as mentally ill victims, of his statement that we can’t fight communism all over the world, and many, many more lies.

Our nation needs a leader who has character. Kerry is not the one. His combat decorations are trumped by his opportunistic and treacherous post war behavior. Benedict Arnold was a much more significant warrior than Kerry, after all.

Kerry’s record on national defense issues is consistently poor. The Viet Cong weren’t the only enemies he sided with. The Sandinistas were another, and there have been more. Have you ever heard him criticize Fidel Castro?

At the time he said foreign leaders supported him, Kim Jong Il was running the text of his speeches in North Korea, so we know who they would vote for.

These are all facts and they bear on the nature of the man who might become president. But if this information gets out, the Democrats will accuse Republicans of “going negative” and the “politics of personal destruction” and all sorts of other things. The hypocrisy stinks!

John Kerry has a serious character defect for a potential president: He lost his sense of humor. I watched Bush give quite a funny and self-deprecating performance at the annual Correspondent’s dinner last night. But the always serious long faced Kerry missed the point (like usual).

His campaign released the following memo:

“How Out of Touch Can This President Be?

“George Bush insulted me as a veteran and as a friend to many still serving in Iraq. This act lowers the dialogue about weapons of mass destruction. War is the single most serious event that a President or government can carry its people into. No weapons of mass destruction have been found and that is no joke - this is for real. This cheapens the sacrifice that American soldiers and their families are dealing with every single day.” — Brad Owens (Iraqi War Veteran, US Army Reserves)
Hey, I’m a veteran, why didn’t he ask me? Having a sense of humor appears to be a disqualification to be a Kerry supporter.
Speaking at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington last night, President George W. Bush showed a stunningly cavalier attitude the correct phrasing is “gave an amusing performance” toward the failed search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Administration’s rush to war.

“Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” Bush mimicked, as a slide of the President looking under furniture in the Oval Office appeared on the screen.

That’s supposed to be funny?
Yeah… it was really funny. Especially in context which was, of course, left out of this press release.
If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he’s even more out of touch than we thought. Unfortunately for the President, this is not a joke.
Joke’s on you, Kerry-don’t-forget-I-was-in-Vietnam. You just don’t get it.
585 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last year, 3,354 have been wounded, and there’s no end in sight. Bush Turned White House Credibility into a Joke George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven’t found them, and now he thinks that’s funny?
To anyone with a sense of humor who actually saw the performance, yes, it was. It’s traditional for the speaker at this event to make fun of current events. We now have one more reason that you shouldn’t be elected, Mr. I’m-A-Highly Decorated-Veteran-Kerry - you might speak at that event, and bore us all to death.

Of course, Kerry probably forgot his own joke, just like he forgot that he attended a meeting where assassinating senators was proposed (Drudge):

“Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle,” Kerry joked in 1988. The Massachusetts Democrat then said, “There isn’t any press here, is there?”
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BBS Reports the death of terrorist Abu Abbas as:

Abbas: Palestinian Throwback

Throwback? I guess this means that Palestinians have abandoned terror? No, it means that they just target Israelis now.

BBC has a clear agenda in this article: to discredit the idea that Saddam had been harboring international terrorists. In all but the BBC’s alternate universe, of course, Abbas was an international terrorist. Hence they had to mangle principles of clear writing to avoid labeling him a terrorist.

His capture in Baghdad in April 2003 was used by the United States as evidence that Iraq had been harboring international terrorists, and his detention an example to others in the post-11 September, post-Saddam climate.

Turning a blind eye to anyone who has a record like his - and his group did murder an elderly, disabled man - was not an option for a US administration.
It would have been much easier to say “Turning a blind eye to this terrorist.” They also fail to mention that the “elderly, disabled man” was murdered because he was a Jew, instead quoting Abbas’ excuse that “he was inciting and provoking other passengers”
He came from a different era.
Really?
But he was not quite the big catch in the the[sic] Americans were seeking for their “war on terror”.
This is an attack on the US war on terror, otherwise unrelated to the story. Note the scare quotes. As an aside, note the poor editing.
He ended up in Baghdad because there was nowhere else for this aging militant or terrorist leader to go.
Well, at least they proved they can spell “terrorist”, but which is it, BBC: “militant” or “terrorist?” Political correctness forced this strained construction.

Another Palestinian, Abu Nidal, the most famous in his day for acts of extremist violence and a man who rejected any settlement with Israel, also ended up in Baghdad.

The proper appellation is terrorist, you BBC twits!

Either the reporting about Clarke’s book is dishonest, or Clarke is. Having not read the book, this article will simply address the impression given by the news media that the Bush administration did nothing about Al Qaeda prior to 9-11.

Clarke was a long time civil servant who was the Clinton administration’s senior anti-terrorism advisor and was demoted in the Bush administration.

The following is excerpted from a FOX News transcript of a background briefing (cleared for released today):

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From John Kerry’s own 1971 Testimony:

I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government
Kerry ignores the fact that the PRG is merely a puppet of the North Vietnamese (DRV)
and of all eight of Madam Binh’s points
In other words, the enemy negotiating points
it has been stated time and time again, and was stated by Senator Vance Hartke when he returned from Paris, and it has been stated by many other officials of this Government, if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned.

I think this negates very clearly the argument of the President that we have to maintain a presence in Vietnam, to use as a negotiating block for the return of those prisoners. The setting of a date will accomplish that.

As to the argument concerning the danger to our troops were we to withdraw or state that we would, they have also said many times in conjunction with that statement that all of our troops, the moment we set a date, will be given safe conduct out of Vietnam.
Safe conduct is what you give a defeated army after they surrender, which is what Kerry is advocating.
The only other important point is that we allow the South Vietnamese people to determine their own figure and that ostensibly is what we have been fighting for anyway.

I would, therefore, submit that the most expedient means of getting out of South Vietnam would be for the President of the United States to declare a cease-fire, to stop this blind commitment to a dictatorial regime, the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime, accept a coalition regime which would represent all the political forces of the country
The coalition would actually be between the North through their wholly controlled and created puppet government, the PRG, and the actual South Vietnamese government. At the time of this argument, polls in Vietnam showed that the vast majority of Vietnamese preferred to stay with the Thieu government, which they knew was not nearly as oppressive as the communists.
which is in fact what a representative government is supposed to do and which is in fact what this Government here in this country purports to do, and pull the troops out without losing one more American, and still further without losing the South Vietnamese.
Anybody who understood communist tactics knew that this coalition government would rapidly be controlled by the communists, and South Vietnam would cease to exists.

At this point, you have to ask yourself: “Was Kerry a total fool, or was he an traitor?”

So, if you’re voting for Kerry, which do you prefer? The fool or the traitor

The Los Angeles Times has an article [free registration required] about some of the FBI surveillance files on John Kerry’s anti-war activities. The article manages to ignore the most relevant damaging information, and paints Kerry in the best light - for example twice reporting that the FBI ceased its surveillance because Kerry was not involved in violence. Front Page Magazine has a more detailed and damning article (below the LA times article).

The LA Times, apparently not satisfied with its performance during the recall election, seems to be trying to lower its credibility to that of the New York Times. Here are excepts and comments:
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Tasty Manatees has done it again! I spent over an hour yesterday photographing the signs of the Useful Fools at the Phoenix demonstration (see other article on this blog), but nothing comes close to Tasty Manatees’ coup. Check it out!