Obama Suppressed Bin Laden Documents to Help Reelection

The Bin Laden raid on May 2, 2011, yielded “the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever,” according to a senior US military official.  There were 10 hard drive, nearly 100 thumb drives and a dozen cell phones, not to mention DVDs, audio and video tapes and loads of other material.  However, what happened next, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, should really shock you.

 In May, 2012, President Obama said, “The goal that I set—to defeat al Qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild—is now within our reach.”  This statement was backed by 17 documents that the CIA released which supported the statement.  The Defense Intelligence Agency, our uniformed military intelligence, saw facts on the ground that contradicted this narrative.  So the DIA, asked for access to the Bin Laden documents to resolve the difference between what they saw on the ground and what the CIA publicly was saying.

A small DIA team of analysts got limited, read only, access for a short period of time.  They were not allowed to make any copies.  Their conclusion based on the documents was that Al Qaeda had doubled in size by May, 2012.  Since that wasn’t what the White House wanted to hear, all further DIA access to the Bin Laden documents was shut down and the DIA was orderd to stop further analysis based on the Bin Laden documents.

Recently, more of the Bin Laden documents were released during the public trial of a Bin Laden associate in Brooklyn.  There are now about 24 documents available to the public.  They show negotiation between Al Qaeda and Pakistani Intelligence.  They show cooperation between Al Qaeda and Iran.  They show initial efforts to take advantage of chaos in Libya to build Al Qaeda cells there.

Since the Obama administration is unlikely to make good use of the documents, they should be made public.  Rep. Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, inserted a provision in the 2014 intelligence authorization bill that requires the documents to be released.

The original suppression of DIA access to the Bin Laden documents put party politics over national security.  The Obama administration should not be allowed to continue to promote its own political interests at the cost of the nation’s security. 

Link to Article (subscription required)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/stephen-hayes-and-tomas-joscelyn-how-america-was-misled-on-al-qaedas-demise-1425600796

Death By Terrorism Unlikely, So No Worries?

Some people say that since the odds of being killed by a terrorist right now are much less than being killed by lightning, we shouldn’t spend much time worrying about it.  This position, that we don't need to fight terrorism because so far the odds of being killed by a terrorist are very, very low, reminds me of a bad joke. A man jumps off the Empire State Building. Half way down he comments, "OK so far!"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413932/why-terrorism-more-frightening-lightning-charles-c-w-cooke

Feckless Policies May Leave No Time To Recover

In the article linked below, Professor Thomas Sowell remarks that today’s feckless policies mirror similarly feckless policies of the 1930’s.  The Isolationism in the US and the appeasement of Hitler in Europe lead to World War II.  He then notes that during the war, the Allies took a long time to make up for the position their feckless policies left them in.  He commented that in a modern nuclear war we may not get the chance to make up for our mistakes.  I would like to explain further why that’s the case.

During World War II the Allies were able to trade space for the time needed to build up the armed forces we needed to win. In those days, flying across the Atlantic or Pacific was done in a B-17 bomber with a cruising speed of 182 miles per hour. Since the bombers range was only 2,000 miles you needed refueling bases to get all the way across. The need for airbases was the reason for the island hopping campaign in the Pacific. Today, a B-2 bomber has a cruising speed of 560 miles per hour and, with air to air refueling, can fly nonstop from its base in Missouri to anywhere in the world. While the distances are the same, the time you can get for a given distance is much less. And, as Professor Sowell says, the destructive power of nuclear weapons also destroys military forces much more quickly than conventional weapons did in World War II. War today is a come as you are affair with very little room for second chances. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413953/nows-no-time-happy-talk-thomas-sowell

Jihadists Don't Have to Be Popular

I think it doesn't matter how popular Jihadists are. While I generally detest Mao Tse Tung, his saying that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" is generally an accurate description of how Jihadist groups influence politics. Jihadists threaten not only opponents, but also their entire families with torture and death. Very few people have the courage of Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel, or the members of the plot to kill Hitler. Win or lose, the results are usually fatal. Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The members of the plot to kill Hitler were tortured to death, executed slowly or, in the case of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, forced to commit suicide. Egyptian President Abdel el Sisi knowingly took an increased risk of assassination when he gave a speech against Jihadist terrorism at Al Azhar University on January 1, 2015. While such efforts to change Islam from the inside deserve our sympathy and support, there is very little we can do to influence the internal conversation. The only way the West has of stopping Jihadist terror is to kill as many as we can as fast as we can. Jihadists kill men, women and children indiscriminately if they don't worship in an approved manner. Jihadists are rabid dogs, and rigor mortis is the only cure for their ideology. If the casualty rate is high enough that the futility of Jihadist terror is obvious, recruitment will fail to keep up with the losses. I think the reason Osama Bin Laden is no longer popular is because he's dead. We should be reducing the popularity of other Jihadist figures in the same way

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396697/muslims-and-islamists-victor-davis-hanson

Obama Afraid to Go To Paris?

In my Air Force days, we had a saying, "No guts, no glory." The administration did not have the guts to send any important people to this open air event because they are cowards. This administration has courage only when it refuses to negotiate with Republicans. It will negotiate with just about anyone else. Terrorists, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Mad Mullahs, nuclear proliferators and Russin backed Ukrainian Rebels who shoot down civilian airliners are all people this administration thinks it can deal with. The people the administration will negotiate with have one thing in common. They all are armed and extremely dangerous. Republicans, despite propaganda to the contrary, are not a serious physical threat. So they are perfect targets for a no negotiation stance. This is the most cowardly administration in history.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-republicans-inconsistent-attacks-on-obamas-paris-response/2015/01/12/bd223d0a-9aa8-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html

Democrats' Problems Dealing With Reality

This article in Politico (see link below) shows how Democrats have a problem seeing and dealing with reality. Their policies are destroying the economy and endangering the country. Oil and gas prices have come down in spite of Democrats' efforts to stop drilling, stop pipelines and limit emissions in the name of saving the planet from global warming. Unfortunately, their climate models don't match their data with any statistical significance, so we get expensive energy and Al Gore makes millions off of his Mean Green agenda. The end results of Liberal policies can be found in Detroit, where their one party rule lead to a spiral of decay and finally bankruptcy. The reason Liberals see a war on women and pervasive racism is that they really have nothing else to offer. As Mark "Uterus" Udall found out in Colorado, the war on women doesn't work anymore. The facts of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner refused to cooperate with the Liberal narrative. The evidence showed Brown was the aggressor. Brown tried to grab the officer's gun while the officer was inside his car and Brown was charging the officer on foot when the fatal shot was fired. The supervising police sergeant at Garner's arrest, a black woman, had to be edited out of the picture. The Garner arrest turned out to be a cigarette tax enforcement action, which got a lot of Conservatives to say that nobody should die for cigarette taxes and that big government requires intrusive tax enforcement. The election of Tim Scott, a Black Tea Party Republican, as Senator in South Carolina was not covered at all. The Liberal narrative says Republicans, the Tea Party and redneck whites in the South are all racist. Tim Scott couldn't possibly exist, so he had to be ignored. The President said Al Qaeda is on the run. So the Benghazi attack was a demonstration that turned into a riot, not an organized terrorist attack by an Al Qaeda affiliate. The Iraq War was over because the President said so. The administration then ignored ISIS until it got so big it overran over half of Iraq. This article reads like a pep talk by the coach of a 20 point underdog team before the big game. It ignores the insults and injuries Democrats have inflicted on angry white rednecks like me. Maybe they don't understand that why we are angry has a lot to do with what Democrats said and did to us.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/poll-democrats-2016-blue-collar-unmarried-women-voters-114313.html

Global Warming Explains Bergdahl Trade

I have finally figured out the real reason for the Bergdahl trade.   I now know that the release of the Taliban 5 is part of our Dear Leader's environmental strategy. The Chicago Machine Prodigy is recycling terrorists! I'm sure Tom Steyer and all the other Mean Greens are thrilled at this new way to preserve the environment. Think of all the carbon dioxide released in the breathing required to produce one terrorist. This policy should be continued until Global Warming is stopped cold, period! (snark)