Letter Never Sent

From World Net Daily:

Non-state actors have adopted their own rules of warfare to justify what they do, even as we justified Nagasaki. To us, Timothy McVeigh is a mass-murderer and a terrorist. To McVeigh, the United States was the enemy on which he had declared war, and he attacked a U.S. command post with unfortunate “collateral damage” – i.e., the kids in that daycare center. Seeing himself as a soldier, McVeigh was no more remorseful than the British bomber pilots who did Dresden.

Of Nagasaki and Dresden, we say, “That was war!” But Osama bin Laden declared war on us, and al-Qaida says it is waging war to drive Americans out of their region, as we once drove the British out of ours. We reply, “You are terrorists!” They reply: Before 9-11, our targets were U.S. embassies, Marine barracks, the USS Cole and Khobar Towers – all political or military command sites.

Regarding the detainment of Joel Mowbray by State Department thugs:

On Friday, after Mr. Mowbray cited the cable and said he had it with him, Mr. Boucher said:

“I do have to point out, sir, that you’ve written a lot of things and said a lot of things recently. You said that visas are decided by travel agents, and that’s not true, is it? You said that this is the only country that we do accept documents from third parties, and that’s not true, is it? You’ve said that performance of Foreign Service officers is measured on courtesy, and that’s not true, is it? So let’s be careful about the facts.”

Mr. Mowbray responded, “I am being careful, and no need to smear the work.”

I’d like to punch Boucher in his smug prep-school face.

The Pentagon wants to weaken congressional oversight, the checks and balances of our system, and wants more ‘freedom’.

The Pentagon has proposed eliminating requirements for filing hundreds of reports on its activities to Congress every year. Pentagon officials also are drafting proposals to ban strikes by contract workers, eliminate federal personnel rules protecting civilian workers at the Pentagon and bypass environmentalists in Congress.

Some proposals are more provocative. They include allowing the Pentagon to send its initiatives directly to Capitol Hill before other agencies could review them. Once there, the legislation would require Congress to vote quickly, with only limited debate.

John Walker Lindh’s lawyers made a deal with prosecutors and Lindh pled guilty to aiding the Taleban effectively ending the trial. This is disappointing since it gives the US propaganda machine an apparent win in case that should have been used to showcase the routine cruelty and bloodthirst of the mercenary American military. Those pictures of Lindh strapped to that cot and bound like some sort of S&M slave were disturbing. This deal means that the US will not be held accountable for the mistreatment of an American citizen. As part of the plea agreement, Lindh withdrew any claims of mistreatment by the military. Stupid. Stupid.

I actually saw this exchange while watching a State Department briefing with that piece of crap, Richard Boucher, on CSPAN. It’s crazy what happened after.

Evidently, the reporter, Joel Mowbray had received a classified directive showing that the State Department had implemented a ‘Visa express’ program for Saudi nationals which means Saudis were able to enter the US without the normal scrutiny given to international visitors. This is a huge fuck up by the State Department since almost all of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis. Basically, the US opened the backdoor to terrorists who just waltzed in. Anyway, after the briefing Mowbray was detained by State Department thugs no doubt at the behest of Richard Boucher. Crazy.

Mowbray had challenged Boucher on his account of events at State this week, which had to fire its longest-serving career diplomat in response to the congressional uproar created by Mowbray’s reporting on the “Visa Express” program (the program gives the Saudis easy access to U.S. visas — see Mowbray’s reporting here.

Mowbray read from a classified cable that had been leaked to him and that contradicted Boucher’s spin (both Mowbray and the Washington Post quoted from the cable earlier this week). State Department officials were not amused. Very not amused.

When Mowbray was leaving the briefing, a State Department official, accompanied by four guards, asked him to stay to answer a few questions. Mowbray said he could come back later. The official said, no, they wanted him to answer a few questions immediately.

When Mowbray began to get the feeling that he couldn’t leave even if he wanted to, he asked, “Am I being detained?”

When a diplomatic security official — who had showed up on the scene — told him “no,” Mowbray announced that he was leaving.

At which point, the guard stepped in front of Mowbray and said, “Now, you’re being detained.”