Thread: Climate of hate, world of double standards

Climate of hate, world of double standards

When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger.

When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone.

These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.

Tiller’s suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, was white, Christian, anti-government, and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruiting center attack, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, was black, a Muslim convert, anti-military, and anti-American. Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.

President Obama issued a statement condemning “heinous acts of violence” within hours of Tiller’s death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist. An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climates of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs, and Fox News for reporting Tiller’s activities.

By contrast, President Obama was silent about the military recruiter attacks that left 24-year-old Private William Long dead and 18-year-old Private Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded. On Tuesday afternoon – more than 24 hours after the attack on the military recruiting center in Little Rock – President Obama held a press conference to announce his pick for Army Secretary. It would have been exactly the right moment to express condolences for the families of the targeted Army recruiters and to condemn heinous acts of violence against our troops.

But President Obama said nothing.

The Justice Department was mum.

And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of George Tiller.

Obama’s omission, it should be noted, comes just a few weeks after he failed to mention the Bronx jihadi plot to bomb synagogues and a National Guard airbase during his speech on homeland security.

Why the silence?

Politically and religiously-motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase “lone shooter” is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild – think convicted Jeep Jihadi Mohammed Taheri-Azar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or Israel-bashing gunman Naveed Haq who targeted a Seattle Jewish charity or Los Angeles International Airport shooter Hesham Hedayet who opened fire at the El Al Israeli airline ticket counter– but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence.

Even Jeffrey Goldberg of the left-leaning Atlantic magazine noticed the double standards. He called attention to a National Public Radio report on the military recruiter attack that failed to mention the religion and anti-military animus of the suspect. Wrote Goldberg:

“Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? We saw this a couple of weeks ago, when the press only gingerly acknowledged that the malevolent though incompetent suspects in the synagogue bombing-conspiracy case in New York were converts to Islam. How is the public served by this kind of silence? The extremist Christian beliefs of George Tiller’s alleged murderer are certainly relevant to that case, and no one in my profession is hesitant to discuss them. Why the hesitancy to talk about the motivations of the man who allegedly killed Pvt. William Long?”

The truth is that the “climate of hate” doesn’t have just one hemisphere. But you won’t hear the Council on American Islamic Relations acknowledging the national security risks of jihadi infiltrators who despise our military and have plotted against our troops from within the ranks – including convicted fragging killer Hasan Akbar and terror plotters Ali Mohamed, Jeffrey Battle, and Semi Osman.

You won’t hear about the escalating war on military recruitment centers on the op-ed pages of the New York Times – from vandalism to obstruction to Molotov cocktail attacks on campus stations across the country; to the shutdown of a Pittsburgh military recruitment office by zealots holding signs that read “Recruiters are Child Predators;” to the prolonged harassment campaign against the Marine recruiting center in Berkeley, where Code Pink protesters called America soldiers assassins; to the bomb blast at the Times Square recruiting center last March.

And you’ll certainly hear little about the most recent left-wing calls to violence by a Playboy magazine writer who published a vulgar list of conservative female writers and commentators he said he’d like to rape (the obscene slang word he used is not printable). The list was hyped by the magazine’s publicity team and light-heartedly promoted by mainstream publications such as Politico.com (founded by Washington Post reporters).

Is it too much to ask the media cartographers in charge of mapping the “climate of hate” to do their jobs with both eyes open?

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/03...imate-of-hate/

President Obama's statement that the U.S. could be considered one of the largest Muslim countries in the world has caused some commentators to note just how low we rank in terms of Muslim population. For example, Noah Pollak lists dozens of countries with more Muslims than the U.S has. So Obama was incorrect to say "one of the largest." http://www.commentarymagazine.com/bl...p/pollak/68331

More fundamentally, I think, Obama was wrong to say "Muslim countries." The U.S. could have 23.5 million Muslims instead of the estimated 2.35 we actually are thought to have. That still would not make us a Muslim country, although it probably would place us under great pressure to become one.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________

For Immediate Release June 2, 2009

INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT
BY LAURA HAIM, CANAL PLUS

June 1, 2009

Library
3:50 P.M. EDT

Q Bonjour, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Bonjour.

Q Thank you so much to welcome Canal Plus on I-Television for this first interview granted to the French press.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

Q We really appreciate it. Before we begin today, there was a terrible tragedy in France with this plane. The French people are requesting assistance from the American people. Is there anything you want to say about it, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, obviously we're heartbroken by the news, although we don't yet know exactly what happened. Anytime there's an aviation problem, I think all of us are concerned.

The United States wants to provide every assistance possible in investing what's happened. Obviously, until we know all the facts, I can't comment too much on the specifics. But I'm sure that those families who are waiting to find out what happened are going through a very difficult time right now, and my thoughts and prayers are with them.

Q I'm sure they will appreciate that, sir. Thank you so much for them.

Tomorrow we're leaving for the Middle East. It's going to be your first trip there. What do you want to achieve with this trip?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we're going to be traveling to Saudi Arabia; I'll be having discussions with King Abdullah. And then we'll travel to Cairo, in which I am delivering on a promise I made during the campaign to provide a framework, a speech of how I think we can remake relations between the United States and countries in the Muslim world.

Now, I think it's very important to understand that one speech is not going to solve all the problems in the Middle East. And so I think expectations should be somewhat modest.

What I want to do is to create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_...l-Plus-6-1-09/


Confederate Yankee http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/288096.php
Most Brilliant President Evah Declares United States is a Muslim Country


Jake Tapper has discovered that the Administration is now comfortable referencing President Obama's Muslim roots. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...ould-have.html

I count myself as an Obama critic for many reasons, but I've consistently defended the President's school record even as he attempted to minimize the public's view of his exposure to Islam. He felt—accurately—that there are a lot of religious bigots in this country that would not vote for a Muslim for President, and I'd be shocked if his own internal polling during the election didn't reflect across the board including minority voters as well, especially African-American Baptist congregations in the South and heavily Catholic Latino communities around the country.

Quite frankly, if Barack Obama had not made strong efforts to quash his early ties to Islam as much as possible, there is little reason to suspect that a post-9/11 America would have elected him President.

But the election has been over for months, and through sleight of hand, empty platitudes to be all things to all people, and an utter failure of an adoring media to do even the most basic vetting of the candidate, we've been provided with an inexperienced, pretty President that no one knows anything about.

So perhaps we shouldn't be all that shocked when an un-vetted Obama Administration starts playing up the President's Muslim roots when it becomes convenient to do so, nor should the media feign shock when they did nothing to test the veracity of his earlier downplaying of the same.

Nor should we be surprised by the President's less-than-brilliant performance as a leader, considering the fact he's never held an executive position and America selected him to be a POTUS with training wheels. He has his ideology, if not a grasp of the facts... or economics... or protocol... or foreign policy... or....

Well, you get the idea.

So I'm not surprised when a neophyte President still trapped in dorm-room university Marxism proclaims obvious stupidities and outright lies, like claiming he has "saved or created" jobs when he has been killing them hand-over-fist, or that he is President of 57 states, or that those 57 states just became Muslim overnight. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ideast-speech/

He is who you elected, America.

And you deserve every second of his Presidency.


So true, but unfortunately the 60,000,000 of us that didn't vote for him are just as screwed as the 70,000,000 that did along with the 80,000,000 that stayed home...

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Obama's Muslim sympathies

May we all now acknowledge that not only are Obama's Muslim roots genuine, but that he blatantly lied about his family's religious beliefs?

From Gateway Pundit: His father was Muslim, not atheist or agnostic. His Kenyan grandmother Sara appears also to be Muslim, not Christian. http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...lim-roots.html

Not only did Obama deny these Muslim roots; he accused others of bigotry and fearmongering when these were pointed out.

All those bitter clingers, according to Obama, had no valid basis to distrust him. They were merely fearful, because of their cultural ignorance and prejudice, of his 'furrin' name and non-white skin color.

In September 2008, candidate Obama told a Pennsylvania crowd, "I know that I'm not your typical presidential candidate and I just want to be honest with you. I know that the temptation is to say, 'You know what? The guy hasn't been there that long in Washington. You know, he's got a funny name. You know, we're not sure about him.'

And that's what the Republicans when they say this isn't about issues, it's about personalities, what they're really saying is, 'We're going to try to scare people about Barack. So we're going to say that, you know, maybe he's got Muslim connections.'...Just making stuff up.

This shows not only a fundamental dishonesty of character and a naked willingness to manipulate public perception with lies, but a contempt for the character of the American people.

Americans as a whole respect religious and cultural differences. During the campaign Obama cynically, and successfully, preyed on this virtue, and a vote for Obama was, for many, a vote against the bigots who sought to 'smear' him.

But the picture is rapidly becoming clearer. Taken all together -- the bow, the declaration that America isn't a Christian country, and this latest, that we're actually a Muslim nation -- and it's hard to deny Barack Obama's strong sympathies with the Muslim world. They are more than an accident of birth. His sympathies place his loyalty to the US into question.

That's not "just making stuff up."

http://www.punditandpundette.com/200...ympathies.html

Robert J. Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post two days ago: "Obama's rhetoric brims with inconsistencies. In the campaign, he claimed he would de-emphasize partisanship -- and also enact a highly partisan agenda; both couldn't be true. He got a pass. Now, he claims he will control health-care spending even though he proposes more government spending. He promotes "fiscal responsibility" when projections show huge and continuous budget deficits. Journalists seem to take his pronouncements at face value even when many are two-faced."

Obama has spent most of his life selling people on whatever version of events seemed most convient to him. And a person cannot lie that much without losing the ability to recognize the truth. He has mainly just gotten better at intuiting which lies will work best with which people.

Wonder if all the hysterical separation of church and state folks will be up in arms.

A few short weeks ago, Obama said we weren’t a Christian nation despite the fact that a majority of Americans, whether regularly practicing or not, still identify as Christian.

Today, he says we’re Muslim. But I guess I’m to the point where I say bring it. I vote we let Islamic nations frame our laws about abortion and gay marriage and women’s rights and see how the liberals who love Obama react to declaring us a Muslim nation.



NYTimes “Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country, Too.” http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ideast-speech/

We’re not even close. http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top...tions-map.html

That’s political math for you.


And the Obamateurism of the Day... http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/0...of-the-day-50/

It just sickens me that he won't even acknowledge what happened to these soldiers. He's their commander and cheif, he's so quick to condemn everything else, but GOD forbid a muslim commit an act of violence. He doesn't want to make the muslim world mad. I'm so sick of everyone worried about being pc, and not offending anyone. Well, anyone except white christians, that is. That's one group that doesn't seem to matter to anyone.

See also http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...rime-bill.html


Obama inks defense bill with hate crimes provision
7 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Trumpeting a victory against careless spending, President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a defense bill that kills some costly weapons projects and expands war efforts. In a major civil rights change, the law also makes it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation.

The $680 billion bill authorizes spending but doesn't provide any actual dollars. Rather, it sets guidance that is typically followed by congressional committees that decide appropriations. Obama hailed it as a step toward ending needless military spending that he called "an affront to the American people and to our troops."

Still, the president did not win every fiscal fight. He acknowledged he was putting his name to a bill that still had waste.

The measure expands current hate crimes law to include violence based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. To assure its passage after years of frustrated efforts, Democratic supporters attached the measure to the must-pass defense policy bill over the steep objections of many Republicans.

The White House put most of its focus on what the bill does contain: project after project that Obama billed as unneeded. The bill terminates production of the F-22 fighter jet program, which has its origins in the Cold War era and, its critics maintain, is poorly suited for anti-insurgent battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates targeted certain projects for elimination, putting them at odds with some lawmakers. The same spending items deemed unnecessary or outdated by Pentagon officials can mean lost jobs and political fallout for lawmakers back in their home districts.

"When Secretary Gates and I first proposed going after some of these wasteful projects, there were a lot of people who didn't think it was possible, who were certain we were going to lose, who were certain that we were going to get steamrolled," Obama said. "Today, we have proven them wrong."

In another of several examples, the legislation terminates the replacement helicopter program for the president's own fleet. That program is six years behind schedule and estimated costs have doubled to more than $13 billion.

Yet the legislation still contains an effort by lawmakers to continue development — over the president's strong objections — of a costly alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Air Force's fighter of the future. A vague White House veto threat about that never came to fruition.

"There's still more fights that we need to win," Obama said. "Changing the culture in Washington will take time and sustained effort."

Obama signed the bill in the East Room, adding some fanfare to draw attention to his message of fiscal responsibility and support for the military.

He spoke more personally about the new civil rights protections. A priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., that had been on the congressional agenda for a decade, the measure is named for Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student murdered 11 years ago.

Obama acknowledged Shepard's mom, Judy, and remembered that he had told her this day would come. He also gave a nod to Kennedy's family. Going forward, Obama promised, people will be protected from violence based on "what they look like, who they love, how they pray or why they are."

The expansion has long been sought by civil rights and gay rights groups. Conservatives have opposed it, arguing that it creates a special class of victims. They also have been concerned that it could silence clergymen or others opposed to homosexuality on religious or philosophical grounds.

On the military front, the legislation approves Obama's $130 billion request as the latest installment of money toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The far-reaching law also prohibits the Obama administration from transferring any detainee being held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba to the U.S. for trial until 45 days after it has given notice to Congress. Guantanamo prisoners could not be released into the U.S.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091028/..._obama_defense


[i]If it is a crime to assualt someone - then prosecute to the fullest extent of the law EVERY TIME. If a man is mugged and beaten senseless ... is it more wrong if you can find some nebulous reason to tack "hate cxrime" to it ? It is a "hate crime" if a white man beats a black man ...but not so much if a black man beas a white man ?

Not all terrorism: Obama tries to change subject
Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer
42 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say.

The change would be a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document is still being written and is unlikely to be released for weeks, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document is the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, as with his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the U.S. talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terrorism and winning the war of ideas.

"You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, 'We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense," National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy said.

Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives." Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terrorism, but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from the Ramamurthy or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming. Ramamurthy maintains a database of interviews conducted by 50 U.S. embassies worldwide. And business leaders from more than 40 countries head to Washington this month for an "entrepreneurship summit" for Muslim businesses.

"Do you want to think about the U.S. as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?" Ramamurthy said.

To deliver that message, Obama's speechwriters have taken inspiration from an unlikely source: former President Ronald Reagan. Visiting communist China in 1984, Reagan spoke at Fudan University in Shanghai about education, space exploration and scientific research. He discussed freedom and liberty. He never mentioned communism or democracy.

"They didn't look up to the U.S. because we hated communism," said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy speechwriter.

Like Reagan in China, Obama in Cairo made only passing references to terrorism. Instead he focused on cooperation. He announced the U.S. would team up to fight polio with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a multinational body based in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and OIC had worked together before, but never with that focus.

"President Obama saw it as an opportunity to say, 'We work on things far beyond the war on terrorism,'" World Health Organization spokeswoman Sona Bari said.

Polio is endemic in three Muslim countries — Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan — but some Muslim leaders have been suspicious of vaccination efforts, which they believed to be part of a CIA sterilization campaign. Last year, the OIC and religious scholars at the International Islamic Fiqh Academy issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that parents should vaccinate their children.

"We're probably entering into a whole new level of engagement between the OIC and the polio program because of the stimulus coming from the U.S. government," said Michael Galway, who works on polio eradication for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also began working more closely with local Islamic leaders in northern Nigeria, a network that had been overlooked for years, said John Fitzsimmons, the deputy director of the CDC's immunization division.

Though health officials are reluctant to assign credit to any one action, new polio cases in Nigeria fell from 83 during the first quarter of last year to just one so far this year, Fitzsimmons said.

Public opinion polls also showed consistent improvement in U.S. sentiment within the Muslim world last year, though the viewpoints are still overwhelmingly negative.

Obama did not invent Muslim outreach. President George W. Bush gave the White House its first Quran, hosted its first Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan and loudly stated support for Muslim democracies like Turkey.

But the Bush administration struggled with its rhetoric. Muslims criticized Bush for describing the war on terrorism as a "crusade" and labeling the invasion of Afghanistan "Operation Infinite Justice" — words that were seen as religious. He regularly identified America's enemy as "Islamic extremists" and "radical jihadists."

Karen Hughes, a Bush confidante who served as his top diplomat to the Muslim world in his second term, urged the White House to stop.

"I did recommend that, in my judgment, it's unfortunate because of the way it's heard. We ought to avoid the language of religion," Hughes said. "Whenever they hear 'Islamic extremism, Islamic jihad, Islamic fundamentalism,' they perceive it as a sort of an attack on their faith. That's the world view Osama bin Laden wants them to have."

Hughes and Juan Zarate, Bush's former deputy national security adviser, said Obama's efforts build on groundwork from Bush's second term, when some of the rhetoric softened. But by then, Zarate said, it was overshadowed by the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and a prolonged Iraq war.

"In some ways, it didn't matter what the president did or said. People weren't going to be listening to him in the way we wanted them to," Zarate said. "The difference is, President Obama had a fresh start."

Obama's foreign policy posture is not without political risk. Even as Obama steps up airstrikes on terrorists abroad, he has proven vulnerable to Republican criticism on security issues at home, such as the failed Christmas Day airline bombing and the announced-then-withdrawn plan to prosecute self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York.

Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and former Bush adviser, is skeptical of Obama's engagement effort. It "doesn't appear to have created much in the way of strategic benefit" in the Middle East peace process or in negotiations over Iran's nuclear ambitions, he said.

Obama runs the political risk of seeming to adopt politically correct rhetoric abroad while appearing tone-deaf on national security issues at home, Feaver said.

The White House dismisses such criticism. In June, Obama will travel to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and is expected to revisit many of the themes of his Cairo speech.

"This is the long-range direction we need to go in," Ramamurthy said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100407/...orism_rhetoric

Obama calls nuke terrorism the top threat to US
Robert Burns And Anne Flaherty, Associated Press Writers
Wed Apr 7, 1:21 am ET

WASHINGTON – Rewriting America's nuclear strategy, the White House on Tuesday announced a fundamental shift that calls the spread of atomic weapons to rogue states or terrorists a worse threat than the nuclear Armageddon feared during the Cold War.

The Obama administration is suddenly moving on multiple fronts with a goal of limiting the threat of a catastrophic international conflict, although it's not yet clear how far and how fast the rest of the world is ready to follow.

In releasing the results of an in-depth nuclear strategy review, President Barack Obama said his administration would narrow the circumstances in which the U.S. might launch a nuclear strike, that it would forgo the development of new nuclear warheads and would seek even deeper reductions in American and Russian arsenals.

His defense secretary, Robert Gates, said the focus would now be on terror groups such as al-Qaida as well as North Korea's nuclear buildup and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"For the first time, preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America's nuclear agenda," Obama said, distancing his administration from the decades-long U.S. focus on arms competition with Russia and on the threat posed by nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert.

"The greatest threat to U.S. and global security is no longer a nuclear exchange between nations, but nuclear terrorism by violent extremists and nuclear proliferation to an increasing number of states," he said, spelling out the core theme of the new strategy.

Obama's announcement set the stage for his trip to Prague Thursday to sign a new arms reduction agreement with Russia. And it precedes a gathering in Washington next Monday of government leaders from more than 40 countries to discuss improving safeguards against terrorists acquiring nuclear bombs.

In May, the White House will once again help lead the call for disarmament at the United Nations in New York during an international conference on strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Congressional Democrats hailed Tuesday's announcement, but some Republicans said it could weaken the nation's defense.

Rep. Buck McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said the policy change could carry "clear consequences" for security and he was troubled by "some of the language and perceived signals imbedded" in the policy.

Two leading Senate voices on nuclear strategy, Arizona Republicans John McCain and Jon Kyl, criticized the Obama policy's restrictions on using nuclear arms to retaliate against a chemical or biological attack.

"The Obama Administration must clarify that we will take no option off the table to deter attacks against the American people and our allies," the senators said in a joint statement.

From the start of his term in office, Obama has put halting the spread of atomic arms near the top of his defense priorities. But during his first year he failed to achieve a significant breakthrough on arguably the two biggest threats: Iran and North Korea.

Obama's current push for arms control initiatives is designed to strengthen international support for strengthened nonproliferation efforts.

"Given al-Qaida's continued quest for nuclear weapons, Iran's ongoing nuclear efforts and North Korea's proliferation, this focus is appropriate and, indeed, an essential change from previous" policy, Gates said.

In presenting the results of the administration's policy review, Gates said a central aim was to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy.

That will include removing some of the intentional ambiguity about the circumstances under which the U.S. would launch a nuclear strike, Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.

"If a non-nuclear weapons state is in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its obligations, the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it," Gates said. If, however, such a state were to use chemical or biological weapons against the U.S. or its allies, "it would face the prospect of a devastating conventional," or non-nuclear, military response.

That is not a major departure from the policy of past administrations, but it is slightly more forthright about which potential aggressors might fear a nuclear strike, and which might not.

"This is not a breakthrough; it's a common-sense refinement" of U.S. policy, said Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association.

Gates said Iran and North Korea in particular should view the new U.S. policy as a strong message about their behavior.

"If you're not going to play by the rules, if you're going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you," he said.

The major review of nuclear policy was the first since 2001 and only the third since the end of the Cold War. The version produced in December 2001 came just three months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

With the threat of terrorism in mind, Gates said the U.S. is not closing the door to the nuclear option.

"Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of biotechnology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment to this policy that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of biological weapons," the defense chief said.

Some private nuclear weapons experts said Obama should have gone further to reduce reliance on U.S. nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

"There's no real indication of the deep shifts in thinking necessary to begin giving up the nuclear fix," said Paul Ingram, executive director of the British American Security Information Council.

U.S. allies, however, welcomed the outcome.

"The right signal at the right time," said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

Sharon Squassoni, a nonproliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the administration's overall approach to nuclear policy, as spelled out by Obama and Gates, is clearer than those of previous administrations.

The reworked policy, she said, is a "significant but not radical departure."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing at the Pentagon news conference with Gates, said Obama has instructed his national security team to pursue another round of arms reduction talks with Russia, to follow up on the recently concluded replacement for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START agreement.

The aim would be to conduct wider talks to include for the first time short-range U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons as well as weapons held in reserve or in storage.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100407/...russia_nuclear

Obama seeks new tone in outreach to Muslim world
Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer – 33 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Less talk about "Islamic radicalism" and a lot more about doing business. In the year since President Barack Obama pledged a new beginning in the relationship with the Muslim world, the White House has begun to change the U.S. focus.

Terrorism still dominates U.S. security concerns, but the White House believes it doesn't have to dominate the conversation. Since Obama's speech in Cairo last year, the White House has tried to talk more about health care, science and education.

It's a strategy based on the belief that the prior administration viewed the world through the lens of terrorism. And when it talked to Muslim nations, it was all about winning the war of ideas. "You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, 'We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense," says National Security Council staff member Pradeep Ramamurthy.

Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives." Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terrorism but has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

Also, Obama advisers who are rewriting a document spelling out the country's national security strategy plan to leave out references to "Islamic radicalism," counterterrorism officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the document is still being written and is weeks away from release. Currently, the document declares: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

Ramamurthy's team is reaching out in a variety of ways. Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from him or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming.

Ramamurthy maintains a database of interviews conducted by 50 U.S. embassies worldwide. And business leaders from more than 40 countries head to Washington this month for an "entrepreneurship summit" for Muslim businesses. "Do you want to think about the U.S. as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?" Ramamurthy said.

Many international Muslim leaders have cheered the new tone, not just for its symbolism but because it makes it politically easier for them to cooperate with the U.S. "It's also a clear indication of President Obama's substantial understanding of the intricacies of Muslim politics," Jordanian lawmaker Hamada Faraaneh said.

On Wednesday, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh applauded indications that the Obama administration would keep religious rhetoric out of the U.S. security strategy. "It is a good message of assurance, and differs from the former American administration's position on this matter which showed no real understanding of Islamic countries," al-Dabbagh said. "This decision by Obama will help to reform the image Muslims have of America."

Public opinion polls have shown consistent improvement in sentiment toward the U.S. within the Muslim world, though the viewpoints are still overwhelmingly negative.

To deliver his message, Obama's speechwriters have at times taken inspiration from former President Ronald Reagan. In China in 1984, Reagan spoke about education, space exploration and scientific research. He discussed freedom and liberty. He never mentioned communism or democracy. "They didn't look up to the U.S. because we hated communism," said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy speechwriter.

Like Reagan in China, Obama in Cairo made only passing references to terrorism. Instead he focused on cooperation. He announced the U.S. would team up to fight polio with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a multinational body based in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and OIC had worked together before, but never with that focus. "President Obama saw it as an opportunity to say, 'We work on things far beyond the war on terrorism,'" World Health Organization spokeswoman Sona Bari said.

Polio is endemic in three Muslim countries — Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan — but some Muslim leaders have been suspicious of vaccination efforts, which they suggested were part of a CIA sterilization campaign. Last year, the OIC and religious scholars at the International Islamic Fiqh Academy issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that parents should vaccinate their children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also began working more closely with local Islamic leaders in northern Nigeria, a network that had been overlooked for years, said John Fitzsimmons, the deputy director of the CDC's immunization division.

Though health officials are reluctant to assign credit to any one action, new polio cases in Nigeria fell from 83 during the first quarter of last year to just one so far this year, Fitzsimmons said.

Obama did not invent Muslim outreach. President George W. Bush gave the White House its first Quran, hosted its first Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan and loudly stated support for Muslim democracies like Turkey.

But the Bush administration struggled with its rhetoric. Muslims criticized Bush for describing the war on terrorism as a "crusade" and labeling the invasion of Afghanistan "Operation Infinite Justice" — words that were seen as religious. He regularly identified America's enemy as "Islamic extremists" and "radical jihadists."

Karen Hughes, a Bush confidante who served as his top diplomat to the Muslim world in his second term, urged the White House to stop. "I did recommend that, in my judgment, it's unfortunate because of the way it's heard. We ought to avoid the language of religion," Hughes said. "Whenever they hear 'Islamic extremism, Islamic jihad, Islamic fundamentalism,' they perceive it as a sort of an attack on their faith. That's the world view Osama bin Laden wants them to have."

Hughes and Juan Zarate, Bush's former deputy national security adviser, said Obama's efforts build on groundwork from Bush's second term, when some of the rhetoric softened. But by then, Zarate said, it was overshadowed by the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and a prolonged Iraq war. "In some ways, it didn't matter what the president did or said. People weren't going to be listening to him in the way we wanted them to," Zarate said. "The difference is, President Obama had a fresh start."

Obama's foreign policy posture is not without risk. Even as he steps up airstrikes abroad, he has proven vulnerable to criticism at home, such as the failed Christmas Day airline bombing and the announced-then-withdrawn plan to prosecute self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York.

Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and former Bush adviser, is skeptical of Obama's engagement effort. It "doesn't appear to have created much in the way of strategic benefit," he said. Obama risks seeming to adopt politically correct rhetoric abroad while appearing tone-deaf on security issues at home, Feaver said.

The White House dismisses such criticism. In June, Obama will travel to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and is expected to revisit many of the themes of his Cairo speech. "This is the long-range direction we need to go in," Ramamurthy said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100407/...FtYXNlZWtzbmU-

Nobody said that all Muslims are terrorists.

This president, on the other hand, can't even admit that any are!!

[quote]Its just man made events or something and we have no idea who is causing it. Lets just assume its like an earthquake and express our condolences, clean up the mess and wait for the next one. God, when will he go away?! Isn't it time for Jimmy Carter to hand over his Habitat for Humanity hammer to someone new./quote]

Read http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...k-america.html


Then read on :

In a series of posts, the Strata-Sphere provides compelling evidence that the White House implemented policies that led directly to a Jihadist terror attack and a very near miss. http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/13155 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/13178

have noted many times that the events leading up to the Ft Hood Massacre and near fatal Christmas Day airline bomb attack were suspicious and incoherent with what this nation knew about three people: Major Nidal Hasan (Ft Hood Massacre), Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab (Christmas Day Bomber) and Anwar al Aulaqi (Yemen Cleric).



There are very important details about these three people which resulted in team Obama dismissing them as threats, even with the knowledge and evidence they were enemies of America and reaching out to, or supporting, bloody Jihad against this country. It was these details which were made a priority by team Obama, obliterating the mounting evidence that would have stopped the efforts of these people – if America had kept the national security posture of President Bush.

First off, none of these people were located in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq. Team Obama decided early on to arbitrarily limit the geographic boundaries of terrorism, despite nearly two decades of evidence, going back to the Clinton years at least, indicating global Jihad had truly become ‘global’.

A timeline helps illustrate the disastrous policy changes that led to the Jihadist attacks.

In March of 2009, Obama's legal team adopted new rules regarding detainment in the war on terror. It redefined the rules for fighting conventional, uniformed armies to apply -- nonsensically, of course -- to terrorists: "...the president could detain without trial only people who were part of Al Qaeda or its affiliates, or their 'substantial' supporters."



In other words, unless you carried a laminated Al Qaeda membership card and decoder ring, you were off the hook. Members of Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Ansar al Islam, Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiyah, Fatah, Darul Islam, etc. were free to launch attacks, it would seem.

The new policies ensured that the Ft. Hood shooter (Hasan) and the underwear bomber (Abdulmutallab) could not be considered material threats because they were not confirmed al Qaeda associates.

What followed were the Fort Hood massacre in November and the related Underwear Bombing attempt on Christmas Day.

As the timeline shows, once the administration took its eyes off the threats it struggled, without any hope, to catch back up. It had tied its hands and blinded itself, and Americans died at Ft Hood. Ten times as many nearly died on Christmas Day. This is not coincidence, but evidence of a pattern of criminal negligence based on naive liberal dogma.

Read Parts One and Two to get a more complete picture of the outrageous malfeasance. http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/13155 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/13178



http://directorblue.blogspot.com/201...-criminal.html

Saturday, May 1, 2010
"Eight Days In April," by Paul Krugman
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...l-krugman.html

My my, how Paul Krugman worries that our President may come under criticism from the vast right-wing conspiracy for the Eight Days In April.

The Eight Days In April during which our President twiddled his environmental clean-up and emergency response thumbs in the face of what may be the worst oil spill "since the Great Depression."

Here is what Mr. Krugman worried about in the first moments that our President's failure became the focus of media attention: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...-obamas-fault/

The Oil Spill Is Obama’s Fault

No, I haven’t lost my mind — that’s not what I believe. But you know that’s what the talk-show hosts will be saying soon, if they haven’t already started. The only question is what the story will be.

Because it would be wrong to blame a President for a disaster the President did not cause, or a failure to predict when the disaster would take place, or a slower than ideal response.

Because to play the blame game would be -- dare I say -- un-American, unfair, and un-NY Times-like. Accordingly, the following columns were written by someone who had stolen Paul Krugman's identity during the Bush administration, not by the Paul Krugman we all know and love today:

A Can't-Do Government, September 5, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/op...02krugman.html

"First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened.... Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? ... Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? .... So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job."

Katrina All the Time, August 31, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/31...gewanted=print

"Two years ago today, Americans watched in horror as a great city drowned, and wondered what had happened to their country. Where was FEMA? Where was the National Guard? Why wasn’t the government of the world’s richest, most powerful nation coming to the aid of its own citizens?"

Katrina and Bush, December 30, 2008
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/200...rina-and-bush/
"When Katrina struck, however, everyone could see the reality on their TVs. So what happened with Katrina wasn’t that the administration started to fail; what happened was that for the first time its failures were visible to all." [/quote]

A Katrina mystery explained, May 17, 2009 http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/200...ery-explained/

"One thing I remember about that time was the smear campaign carried out against anyone who suggested that the federal effort was inadequate. In particular, any suggestion that the military wasn’t doing its part was — you guessed it — denounced as an unpatriotic attack on the honor of our troops. And now we know the truth. The military wasn’t doing its part, because Donald Rumsfeld refused to deploy troops until almost a week after Katrina hit."

But not to worry, I'm sure Mr. Krugman now sees the light. I await Krugman's critique of our President, the aforementioned, "Eight Days In April." It might go something like this:

"Eight Days. In April. One day longer than the biblical story of creation. Eight days during which the President did nothing but hope the wind conditions in the Gulf would change. Eight days during which the President failed to deploy the military he had overstretched in Afghanistan. Eight days during which FEMA, neglected during the year-long health care fight, waited for orders which never came. Eight days during which the President made excuses, rather than making plans. Eight days at the end of which the failures of this administration became clear even to those who previously refused to see."

I find it hard to believe that Krugman will be as harsh on this President as he was on that President.

Because Krugman is "The Conscience of a Liberal."

Update: Krugman was right, the right-wing talk radio hosts already are playing the blame game, those *******s: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01sat1.html

... the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative. ... What we do know is that we now face a huge disaster whose consequences might have been minimized with swifter action.

And there's more from those racist wingnuts: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02gulf.html?hp

[Obama's] administration has publicly chastised BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher, yet a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.

Call it political death by timeline. http://directorblue.blogspot.com/201...-timeline.html