Category — Hamas

Obama apparently has no advisors or campaign committee; or even friends, pastors, political associates or real estate buddies. His entire professional and personal life is a gossamer skein of loose and impermanent connections to people he doesn’t really know, people whose ideas are unknown to him, people who are free agents, vapors, without the slightest formal link to Barack Obama….like Samantha Power, Jerry Wright, Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, and now, Robert Malley.

In fact, one can say that Barack The Innocent is afflicted with Contingent Amnesia -that intermittent mental impairment, of politicians, which comes and goes depending upon the merit of the publicity connected to a person or issue. Get this: At the very time that Obama is condemning McCain as a senile fool for mentioning Obama’s popularity with Hamas, Obama’s mystery advisor is meeting with Hamas. Go figure. What a strange world. How ironic.

Human stain, Jimmy Carter, puckers up and plants a juicy smooch on the butts of Hamas!

Olympian incompetence?  Narcissistic egomania?  Let’s review…

UPDATE:  Is THIS the reason Carter spends so much time in the Middle East?  Is he dating again?

REPUBLICANS DENOUNCE JIMMY CARTER FOR MEETING WITH
HAMAS!

Update 1:  REPUBLICANS DENOUNCE JAY ROCKEFELLER FOR SLANDERING PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOHN McCAIN!

Update 2:  REPUBLICANS DENOUNCE HOWIE DEAN FOR AGREEING WITH ROCKEFELLER!    

(Just kidding.  From the Department of Totally Made Up News)

The White House wants to secure everyone’s borders, but ours:

The earlier package was whittled down to $59m. before Congress signed off on it and would have gone largely to non-lethal equipment and training for the presidential guard to secure the Gaza border crossings and help Fatah leaders and institutions there. Now the US, caught off-guard by Hamas’s speedy defeat of Fatah forces in Gaza, is scrambling for new ways to strengthen Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and isolate Hamas in Gaza.

Right.  Secure the Gaza border, but ignore ours.   When is President Bush going to start building the fence that’s already authorized?  They’re probably investigating how to shift those funds to the Gaza border crossings.

This Palestinian problem is on the way to solution. The UN, that stalwart band of righteous nations will quell this civil war as soon as they can extract the contingent of troops from Darfur, where they successfully raped and killed some of the dispossessed. 

Meanwhile, in Plains GA., Jimmuh Carter is donning his “Captain Feckless” spandex suit and cape to pronounce Hamas the rightful government by virtue of elections and superior firepower.

Arab countries are eyeing the chaos in Gaza with alarm, fearing that the Palestinian fighting could spread to the West Bank and further destabilize the region. The Arab League chief on Thursday called for a cease-fire, warning of disaster otherwise.

LGF–That fortress-like “Preventive Security” building in Gaza that was stormed and overtaken by Hamas today, amid a hail of gunfire and horrific murder, is apparently going to be converted into a mosque.

Hamastan and Fatahstine: a “two-state solution” — just not the one that George W. Bush had in mind.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Hamas-Fatah “unity” government with a pen stroke. In the meantime, Hamas has reportedly been executing Fatah security forces gangland-style as they push them out of the Gaza Strip. Mr. Abbas had better look into upgrading his weapon choice very soon.

It’s frightening how widespread and illogical moonbats are.  You live in Israel.  You are surrounded by radical zealots who want to kill you and destroy your country, but it’ll work out if you just negotiate.  It’s never worked before, but give peace a chance, right?

“Israel is entering another cycle of fighting and continues the foolishness of exaggerated aggression. I came here to protest because there’s a link between starving and oppressing the Palestinians and the bombings in Lebanon.”

“This is a stupid, unnecessary and evil war. Our leaders could have prevented it. eventually the hostages will be released through negotiations, but hundreds will be killed along the way in Lebanon, and I don’t know how many will die here. I think that we must make our voice heard.”

“The Israeli aggression leads to an overall war no one wants. I think that Israel should negotiate with Hizbullah and Hamas and release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages. This way this story will come to an end.”

“The choice of whether to escalate the situation or not is in our hands and the question of saving lives or not is also in our hands…there is no military solution. Only negotiations.”

It looks like President Abbas might call the referendum to implicitly recognize Israel after all:

“President Abbas will set a date for the referendum after the meeting Tuesday of the PLO Executive Committee and parliamentary caucuses,” his office said in a statement.

Hamas, which has said the referendum is not legal, reacted angrily to Abbas’ threats Monday and said there should be further talks.

“You cannot raise the sword of ultimatum, you cannot raise the issue of a referendum while you are talking about dialogue,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told reporters in Gaza. He said calling a referendum meant circumventing the elected government led by Hamas.

And why is Hamas so fearful?

Many Palestinians are uneasy about the referendum, though polls show the document would be approved easily.

The average Palestinian must be tired of this conflict. Let’s hope the referendum is called.

Update:  President Abbas gave Hamas more time.  I hope this stems from fruitful discussion and not a weakening on Mr. Abbas’ part.

Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s plan to ignore the Palestinians and do what is best for Israelis is bold and completely justified:

Unilateral Israeli moves would mean giving up remote settlements on occupied land, but also expanding bigger settler blocs, taking in swathes of territory the Palestinians seek for a state in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And apparently Palestinian President Abbas believes the plan is likely to be implemented because this is not a coincidence:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the Hamas-led government on Thursday to accept the national goal of establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank alongside Israel.

He said time was short and told a conference of Palestinian leaders that he would call a referendum if there was no agreement between his Fatah Party and the ruling Hamas in 10 days.

Are we finally recognizing that the Palestinians have been playing both sides of the fence for decades?  Everyone knew that Yassir Arafat was robbing the Palestinians blind and supporting terrorists while official diplomatic channels pretended he was a respected world leader.  It only makes sense for Israel to protect itself and unilaterally impose the borders that make the nation most secure when the other side never negotiates in good faith.  Maybe this strong message will generate some positive movement because pretending never made the situation any better.

Michael Ledeen has written a piece for National Review Online that is very instructive about where we are in our War on the Terror Sponsors. Another piece of equal value can be found at American Thinker. Both should be consulted by those desiring a more comprehensive knowledge of the overall battlefield.

Ever since 9/11, our government has been reluctant, very reluctant to speak about how Syria and Iran figure in this war. Not since the famous speech describing the presence of an “Axis of Evil” have we heard too much about Iranian support of terror. We have heard some about their pursuit of nuclear weaponry, but hardly anything about their support of our enemies inside Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, not one for displaying diplomatic sensitivity, when queried about Iran, got positively touchy feely for him, “they are being unhelpful.” “Unhelpful?” “Unhelpful?” Since when do we expect a charter member of the Axis of Evil to be anything other than an enemy. Since when do we expect a regime born in the revolution of 1979 and wet nursed to terror to cooperate with American foreign policy, that very same America who they refer to as “the Great Satan.” Which of us is looking for ANY help WHATSOEVER from the successors to the Ayatollah Khomeini?

As for Syria, reports of terror dirtballs crossing back and forth across the Syrian border are numerous. Check out the military blogs, beginning with Belmont Club for more details if you want them. A similar number of reports exist of their finding support from Syrian Intelligence. But in the presence of this clear and continuous provocation, State remains silent, as does the Pentagon.

Our enemies are drawing the only possible conclusion from our silence, especially from our inactivity in the face of their support for the killers in Iraq. That conclusion is that we DON’T WANT to extend the war to them. And thus Syria and Iran believe they have a free pass to cause as much mayhem as possible inside Iraq, for we won’t say anything, let alone do anything about it. They are bleeding us inside Iraq. They intend to make Iraq another Lebanon, from which we will surely depart. Bombings drove us out of Beirut in the 80s, and a low level terror war drove out the Israelis in the tenure of Ehud Barak.

Reports and casualties flow in daily from Iraq, which serves to inexorably draw our attention wholly towards Iraq, at the expense of the overall battlefield, the overall war. A very loose analogy can be found drawn from the titanic battle of Stalingrad. Hitler became so focused on capturing that city that it took on an inflated importance for him, not one in keeping with Stalingrad’s real and more limited strategic importance. Thus Hitler overlooked how dreadfully exposed the flanks of his forces in Stalingrad were. The Soviets built up forces on the shoulders of the German salient, and cut it off, trapping an entire German army. The point here is not to become so focused on the immediate point of contact between ourselves and the enemy, and lose overall perspective on the conduct of the war as a whole. Are we paying too much attention to events in Iraq, that we are losing sight of the overall war on terror.
That larger war involves Syria and Iran, but primarily Iran.

Our demonstrated reluctance to militarily deal with the mullahs and the Syrians flows from a fundamental misreading of the overall battlefield, and from an equal misreading of the nature of our enemy. We are not battling muslims, who one morning can no longer take our support for the zionist entity, can no longer take our rapacious, pro globalization economy, have had it with our neocrusader ways, and inspired by Al Jazeera go to Iraq and start planting explosives along the roadside. That is the MSM’s caricature of our enemy, {count on the MSM to get it wrong}. Nor are our enemies entirely Baathist diehards, who refuse to accept their loss of power in Iraq. The enemy in Iraq is displaying increased signs of sophistication, prowess and advanced training. Ask yourself, where have they aquired such training, such professionalism. They have aquired their ability in camps, and who are those camps maintained by? In which muslim states are these camps located, and who are the instructors in these camps, and where do they come from?

We are at war against muslim STATES who deem terror a prime instrument in foreign policy. They create terrorists, safeguard them, provide logistics, intelligence, financing as well as spiritual sustenance. ALL that can be done for the terrorists, THEY DO. These STATES do not harbor a few, but rather sustain and maintain entire terror ARMIES, {Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Fatah, et al}. All of Southern Lebanon has become a terror satrapy. From the maintenance of these terror armies Iran and Syria derive an artifically inflated importance on the geopolitical stage. But this is NOT a matter of sheer prestige alone, Iran in particular has been killing Americans since 1979. The Mullahs began with the taking of our embassy, but also tortured and killed CIA Resident Bill Buckley, they bombed American installations in Beirut, and the list goes on and on. Robert Baer, former CIA operative, wrote “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism,” his first book that concluded that Iran is at WAR with the United States. Baer had access to the entirety of our secret intelligence about Iran, and said no other conclusion was possible.

Iran and Syria are bleeding us right now in Iraq, let there be NO doubt about it. And the question is: What are we going to do about it. My answer to that question, as well as my prescription for waging and winning this war, will follow in the weeks and months to come.

I was planning on fisking Kerry’s speech from Thursday night but never found time to do it. Now thanks to these recent columns I don’t need to. They cover all the main points that I would have anyway.

The first is from Mark Steyn (emphasis added):

Kerry’s showing he just can’t take the heat

Both candidates gave speeches late on Thursday night. George W. Bush was more or less expected to. John Kerry didn’t have to, but reported for duty even though nobody wanted him to. Unnerved by sagging numbers, he decided to start the post-Labor Day phase of the campaign three days before Labor Day. The way things are going, Democrats seem likely to be launching the post-election catastrophic-defeat vicious-recriminations phase of the campaign round about Sept. 12.

At any rate, less than 60 minutes after President Bush gave a sober, graceful, droll and moving address, Kerry decided to hit back. In the midnight hour, he climbed out of his political coffin, and before his thousands of aides could grab the garlic from Teresa’s kitchen and start waving it at him, he found himself in front of an audience and started giving a speech. As in Vietnam, he was in no mood to take prisoners: ”I have five words for Americans,” he thundered. ”This is your wake up call!”

Is that five words? Or is it six? Well, it’s all very nuanced, according to whether you hyphenate the ”wake-up.” Maybe he should have said, ”I have four words plus a common hyphenated expression for Americans.” I’d suggest the rewrite to him personally, but I don’t want him to stare huffily at me and drone, “How dare you attack my patriotism.”

By about nine words into John Kerry’s wake up call, I was sound asleep again. But this was what he told Ohio’s brave band of chronic insomniacs:

”For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief. Well, here’s my answer. I’m not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve.”

Oh, dear . . . growing drowsy again . . . losing the will to type . . . what’s he saying now?

”Two tours of duty”

Ah, yes. As usual, he has four words for Americans: I served in Vietnam. Or five words if you spell it Viet Nam.

So we have one candidate running on a platform of ambitious reforms for an ”ownership society” at home and a pledge to hunt down America’s enemies abroad. And we have another candidate running on the platform that no one has the right to say anything mean about him.

And for this the senator broke the eminently civilized tradition that each candidate lets the other guy have his convention week to himself? Maybe they need to start scheduling those Kerry campaign shakeups twice a week.

There was an old joke back in the Cold War:

Proud American to Russian guy: ”In my country every one of us has the right to criticize our president.”

Russian guy: ”Same here. In my country every one of us has the right to criticize your president.”

That seems to be the way John Kerry likes it. Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry, except possibly Teresa, and only on the day she gives him his allowance.

Several distinguished analysts have suggested that the best rationale for a Kerry presidency is that it would be a ”return to normalcy” — a quiet life after the epic pages of history George W. Bush has been writing these last three years. Even if a ”return to normalcy” were an option, I doubt whether John Kerry would qualify. As we saw in those two Thursday speeches, Bush takes the war seriously but he doesn’t take himself seriously — self-deprecating jokes are obligatory these days, but try to imagine Kerry doing the equivalent of Bush’s gags about mangled English and swaggering. The president is comfortable in his own skin, which is why he shrugs off the Hitler stuff. By contrast, Kerry doesn’t take the war seriously because he’s so busy taking himself seriously. If ”return to normalcy” means four years of a grimly humorless, touchy, self-regarding Kerry presidency, I’ll take the war.

That’s surely why Kerry is running his kamikaze kandidacy on biography rather than any grand themes. Senator Kerrikaze is running for president because he thinks he should be president — who needs a platform? One of the most revealing aspects of the campaign this last week were the interviews given by his various surrogates. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and was asked about the swift boat veterans’ ads, and he laughed and blustered and stalled and floundered. That sounded weird. This thing’s been going on a month now, and the Kerry campaign still hasn’t come up with a form of words to deflect questions about it. If they had an agreed spin, McAuliffe and Co. would be out using it. But the seared senator feels it’s lese majeste even to question him. He can talk about Vietnam 24/7, but nobody else is allowed to bring it up.

Sorry, man, that’s not the way it works. And if he thinks it does, he’s even further removed from the realities of democratic politics than he was from the interior of Cambodia. Instead of those military records the swift boat vets are calling for, I’d be more interested in seeing his medical ones.

As for Bush, to be sure at one level his convention was a ‘’soft-focus infomercial,” just as Kerry’s was. But the infomercial came into sharp focus just often enough to clarify, piercingly, the differences between the parties. On opening night in Boston, the Democrats staged a tasteful, teary candlelight remembrance of those who died on 9/11. On opening night in New York, the Republicans put up one speaker after another — John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Silver — resolved that those thousands of innocents shall not have died in vain.

I remember a couple of days after Sept. 11 writing that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn’t whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it. Three years on, the two conventions drew the same distinction. If you want passivity and wallowing in victim culture, the Dems will do. If you want to win this thing, Bush is the only guy running.

The second column is by Jim Wooten of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (emphasis added):

Short fuse betrays KerryJohn Kerry should have slept on it. His midnight outburst following President Bush’s rousing success in defining himself, his domestic agenda and the stakes in the war on terrorism reveals a candidate who can be goaded. Not good in a president.

“For the past week, they have attacked my patriotism and even my fitness to serve as commander in chief,” said Kerry early Friday in Springfield, Ohio. “Well, here’s my answer to them. I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could’ve and who misled America into Iraq.”

Clearly seething with the TV remote control when he was to be relaxing during Republican convention week, Kerry blew at the first opportunity.

Nobody, of course, questioned his patriotism. His policies, yes. His votes during 20 years in the Senate, yes. His apparent inability to make and abide a decision, yes. His commitment to a strong military, yes. His patriotism, no.

It’s a revealing outburst. Despite the pounding Kerry took from the partisans, the weeklong break had actually served Kerry’s campaign.

The mainstream media, most Democrats and others who don’t quite grasp the significance or understand the emotionalism of events of three decades ago are dying to move on to other, more comfortable subjects. So what does he do? Rants and revives the debate about individual conduct during the Vietnam war.

When this campaign is over — and barring some disaster, Bush will win — Democrats would be well advised to re-examine the primary election process that assures candidates of the party’s nomination before they are fully known and tested. Four days of a national convention is far too little time to define an unknown, and when, as with Kerry, the carefully orchestrated definition unravels, it’s seat-of-the-pants from then on.

The Republican convention, and U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) and Vice President Dick Cheney in particular, were devastating in filling in the blanks, in defining Kerry’s 20-year Senate career. As is now the pattern — we saw it with his response to the swift-boat veterans — his approach is to ignore the charges and charge the chargers. They’re all liars, conspirators or unworthies daring to question his record. Has he not already told us that he’s inoculated against impertinent questions?

This will be a nasty campaign. Kerry’s base is angry and insistent that he project their anger to expose George W. Bush so that the whole country can see him as they do.

Their problem is that the country doesn’t. He’s a likable, modest man, endearing in his humility. He is awed that grieving families offering final farewells to soldiers killed in combat include him in their prayers “to offer encouragement to me.”

In expression and demeanor, Bush is the American ideal, the man next door who rises to the occasion, who finds his resolve in our condition. And despite the stress of crisis leadership, he retains a sense of humor about himself. He’s not an easy target for angry Democrats who despise him.

Rising to the challenge to address domestic issues, too, Bush laid out an ambitious agenda with a common theme: slowly weaning the country from over-reliance on government by encouraging greater self-reliance and by rewarding individuals for being responsible.

It’s an ambitious agenda that, like the war on terrorism, will be completed by his successors. But there’s no denying his agenda is the reflection of a vision.

“In all these proposals, we seek to provide not just a government program, but a path, a plan to greater opportunity, more freedom and more control over your own life.”

Liberals hear that as conservative jibberish. They’re wrong.

It may take it as long as it took to win the Cold War, but George W. Bush has a domestic and a peace agenda as grand as Ronald Reagan’s.

Last but not least is this Boston Herald editorial (emphasis added):

Still whining Kerry running out of time

It’s time John Kerry chooses between being a whiner and being a leader. His midnight performance Thursday and remarks at events Friday showed he’s yet to get the difference in this campaign.

Americans do not want to hear Kerry’s whining about being “attacked” and “insulted” at the Republican National Convention. Americans do not want to hear his childish claims that he was attacked first and therefore he now must attack back.

Americans do not want to hear the Democratic nominee call the commander in chief during a war where American lives are on the line “unfit for office and unfit for duty.”

They want to hear that he is as committed as President Bush to stopping fanatics from taking over American schools and slaughtering children. And if he has better ideas about how to go about doing it than Bush does, Americans want to hear those, too.

For this is what we are facing. Anyone thinking the Russian school massacre couldn’t happen here underestimates the lack of moral conscience which exists in the likes of al-Qaeda, Hamas and other extremists.

Partisan Democrats, with an air of intellectual superiority, sniff that terror is a tactic, not a cause. They do so to imply that President Bush and his supporters don’t even understand the nature of the world’s dangers, never mind the correct means to protect against them.

President Bush left no doubt that he understands completely in his acceptance speech Thursday night. “If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.” .

We bet John Kerry would like to have his Thursday microphone-clutching performance for the cameras back given the Russian horror.

His complaints about attacks on his patriotism (as opposed to the voting record critique we heard) would be merely annoying if played only against the backdrop of a political contest.

But the larger contest - between liberty and tyranny, between good and evil - is the challenge against which Kerry’s and Bush’s leadership will be measured. And on that score, Kerry’s thin-skin and oft-used tactic of claiming he’s forced to attack because of unfair smears is not only unimpressive, it’s offensive.

And it’s about time someone called him on it.

Defining differences is what campaigns are all about.

George W. Bush told the country in no uncertain terms what he will do in a second term. And he told the country how his beliefs and record differ from Kerry’s. That’s just what Zell Miller did. That’s just what Dick Cheney did. That’s just what Rudy Giuliani did. Stop whining, Senator, and start telling voters why you believe you’re right and these men are wrong.

Robbers die trying to hold-up suicide bomber:

A Hamas suicide bomber blew up two armed Palestinians who tried to rob him at gun point in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas claimed the stickup men worked for Israeli intelligence, while Palestinian security forces said the two were ordinary thieves.

Rather than give up his explosives, the bomber detonated them, killing himself and the two robbers near the border fence between Gaza and Israel.

Palestinian security officials said the the gunmen were criminals who were involved in a car theft ring that brought stolen vehicles from Israel to Gaza.

Hamas said the bomber was on his way to try to infiltrate into Israel, accompanied by another Hamas member and a guide, when they were stopped by the armed men.

The robbers forced the bomber to lie on the ground and tried to steal the bomb, but the militant detonated it, killing all three. The other Hamas man and the guide escaped.

I agree that allowing concealed weapons can help prevent crime, but this is ridiculous!

HT: Little Green Footballs

“In an interview broadcast Wednesday morning, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defended terrorist Shiite imam Moqtada al-Sadr as a legitimate voice in Iraq, despite that fact that he’s led an uprising that has killed nearly 20 American GIs in the last two days.

Speaking of al-Sadr’s newspaper, which was shut down by coalition forces last week after it urged violence against U.S. troops, Kerry complained to National Public Radio, They shut a newspaper that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq.

In the next breath, however, the White House hopeful caught himself and quickly changed direction, adding, Well, let me . . . change the term legitimate. It belongs to a voice because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment.”

The man who says terrorism is exaggerated now says aligning yourself with Hamas and Hezbollah is a “sort of” terrorism alignment. This man can not be trusted with the national security of this great country.