CIA Suicide Bomber Invited on Base, Not Searched

What the heck is going on here? We've got a "secret" CIA base and then people can stroll in without being subject to search?

The Associated Press has learned that the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a remote outpost in southeastern Afghanistan had been invited onto the base and was not searched.

A former senior intelligence official says the man was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp.

The official says a senior and experienced CIA debriefer came from Kabul for the meeting, suggesting that the purpose of the meeting was to gain intelligence.

Remarkably, an Obama administration official is using the T-word.

Leon Panetta, the CIA chief, said that the deaths were “the result of a terrorist attack” and that the victims were “far from home, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism”.

Thankfully the absurd "man-caused disaster" seems to now be out of vogue now that reality has hit home twice this week.

Report: CIA Blundered on AbdulMutallab

This wouldn't have happened if Leon Panetta was still alive.

The father of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab talked about his son with someone from the CIA and a report was prepared, but the report was not circulated outside the agency, a reliable source told CNN's Jeanne Meserve on Tuesday.

Had that information been shared, the 23-year-old Nigerian who is alleged to have bungled an attempt to blow up a jetliner before it landed in Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day might have been denied passage on the Northwest Airlines flight, the source said.

The source's comments came shortly after President Obama blamed "a mix of human and systemic failures" for the incident and directed that preliminary findings into the matter be delivered to the White House by Thursday.

Earlier this week, a senior Obama administration official said AbdulMutallab's father warned officials at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria in November that he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists.

Good to see CNN is judicious enough in its reporting to avoid using trhe dreaded M-word.

This just in. Panetta indeed is still with us. Not that anyone would notice.

The White House has published an internal memo to calm tension between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who is seeking increased control over covert operations, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

The classified order asserts the Central Intelligence Agency's direct authority over secret missions abroad, but also reminds the agency to work closely with Blair, who heads the US intelligence establishment, a US intelligence official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to the LA Times, Blair was seeking more control over missions that include drone strikes and paramilitary operations in Pakistan.

Blair and Panetta have also clashed over the last month over the role of the CIA in Afghanistan, which Blair reportedly believes is too focused on the hunt for Taliban insurgents and is de-emphasizing the collection of intelligence at the local level.

Ms. Plame Wilson's 15 Minutes Nearly Up

May this mercifully be one of the final chapters with this useful idiot.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Central Intelligence Agency didn't violate the free speech rights of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson when it refused to allow her to publish details of her possible pre-2002 work for the agency.

In an order Thursday, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's ruling that the CIA didn't infringe on Wilson's First Amendment rights when it refused a request by Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Schuster Inc., to publish details of her work with the agency prior to 2002 as part of a memoir.

"Because any information concerning Ms. Wilson's possible pre-2002 agency affiliation remains properly classified, and because Ms. Wilson is obligated by a secrecy agreement with the CIA not to disclose classified information, the district court correctly ruled that plaintiffs cannot demonstrate a First Amendment violation in this case," U.S. Circuit Judge Reena Raggi wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel.

Wilson had argued the CIA "officially disclosed" the dates of her pre-2002 service in a letter sent to her in February 2006 and her pre-2002 dates of service are now a matter of widespread public knowledge and it would be unreasonable to keep them classified.

A lawyer for Wilson didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment Thursday.

She probably wants her (cough cough) privacy.

Of course we can only hope those 15 minutes are near an end. Except we still have this coming down the pike. I'm sure with Sean Penn in it it will be fair and impartial.

Peter King Goes Nuclear on Holder: 'It's Disgraceful. You Wonder Which Side They’re On'

Yes, I've been wondering that for some time.

A "furious" Rep. Peter King, the hawkish, maverick Long Island Republican, blasted a "disgraceful" Eric Holder for opening an investigation of CIA interrogators and chided his own party for what he described as a weak response to the move in an interview just now with POLITICO.

"It’s bulls***. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on," he said of the Attorney General's move, which he described as a "declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense."

"It’s a total breach of faith, and either the president is intentionally caving to the left wing of his party or he’s lost control of his administration," said King, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security and a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

King, channeling both the sense of outrage and of political opportunity felt in parts of the GOP, defended in detail the interrogation practices -- threats to kill a detainee's family, and or to kill a detainee with a power drill -- detailed in a CIA inspector general report released yesterday.

"You're talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him – but never doing it," King said. "You have that on the one hand – and on the other you have the [interrogator's] attempt to prevent thousands of Americans from being killed."

"When Holder was talking about being 'shocked' [before the report's release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys' fingers off or something – or that they actually used the power drill," he said.

Pressed on whether interrogators had actually broken the law, King said he didn't think the Geneva Convention "applies to terrorists," and that the line between permitted and outlawed interrogation policies in the Bush years was "a distinction without a difference."

"Why is it OK to waterboard someone, which causes physical pain, but not threaten someone and not cause pain?" he asked, warning of a "chilling" effect on future CIA behavior.

"You will have thousands of lives that will be lost and the blood will be on Eric Holder's hands," he said.

Interesting how Holder's old law firm is in the business of releasing Club Gitmo terrorists and now he's aiming to prosecute the men who helped put them there.

Change!

I will say Obama's desire to change the subject while he's busy golfing sure has worked. The left is wee-weeing with joy all over themselves at the notion that our nation's heroes could be prosecuted.

Meanwhile, King isn't the only one sending out the warnings.

“This is a political act….It’s awful, just awful” said Vince Cannistraro, who headed CIA counterterrorism efforts in the early 1990s. “There’s a lot of sadness among the professionals that have been doing this…They’re scaring the hell out of people. A lot of people are going to just retire.”

Cannistraro said he viewed many of the extreme techniques, such as waterboarding, as unhelpful and unwise, at least in retrospect. But he said it was “stupid” to expose people to criminal liability for excesses such as trying to frighten a detainee by staging a mock execution in another room.

“There were a lot of stupid things done, no question about it, but do you want to prosecute them for doing the same kind of thing you saw on TV in a drama?” the former CIA official said. “We are now forgetting why they were doing what they were doing. Whether it was right or wrong is another question.”

Cheney Unloads

Cheney Statement on CIA Documents/Investigation
Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave The Weekly Standard a statement Monday night about the CIA documents and the coming Justice Department investigation.

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions. President Obama’s decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel, and his decision to remove authority for interrogation from the CIA to the White House, serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security.

Indeed.

Oh, the Horror! CIA Staged Mock Executions of Terrorists

I guess I'm supposed to be shocked or outraged by this? Well, I'm not. In fact, seems to be like some of this stuff falls short of what you might see in a gang initiation.

The CIA used mock executions in a bid to scare suspected terrorists into talking to interrogators after Sept. 11, it was reported on Friday.

One detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, also was threatened with a gun and a power drill, according to Newsweek.

The revelations come from a long-suppressed report by the CIA's inspector general to be released next week.

Sources said a draft of the report says Nashiri's interrogators brandished a gun and told him he would be shot.

The drill was turned on and held near him, said one source, adding, "The purpose was to scare him into giving information up."

Oh my, turning on a drill.

What has become of us?

Whatever the case, it seems to me ACLU attorneys revealing the faces of CIA operatives to terrorists is far worse.

No doubt the wee-weeing libs in DC will be wetting the bed over this report, but will they have the same indignation over stories like this? I doubt it.

Cheney Request for Documents Release Denied

For all the hubbub over Dick Cheney this week it sure looks like he produces results and is getting under the skin of Obama and the Democrats. This news should only ratchet things up several notches.

The Obama administration has turned down former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request for the declassification of two CIA reports on the effectiveness of the Agency’s detainee program, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. A letter dated May 7, 2009, from the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.

“In researching the information in question, we have discovered that it is currently the subject of pending FOIA litigation (Bloche v. Department of Defense, Amnesty International v. Central Intelligence Agency). Therefore, the document is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review,” Nelson wrote in the letter to the National Archives, the agency responsible for handling Cheney’s request.

The rejection of Cheney’s request will almost certainly intensify the public back-and-forth between the former vice president and the current administration. The contentious debate over enhanced interrogation exploded on April 16, when Obama authorized the release of four memos on interrogation prepared by the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. In a statement accompanying the release, Obama pointed to “exceptional circumstances” surrounding the memos that required their declassification and release. Four days later, in an interview on Fox News, Cheney revealed that he had requested the declassification of two memos that demonstrate that the techniques were effective.

Keeping these memos hidden will only embolden Cheney and make him look like he wants the truth to be know while at the same time the Democrats, most notably Nancy Pelosi, are haplessly flailing about. They've turned an issue they've wielded effectively for years against themselves.

Obama Throws a Bone to the Nutroots

Some red meat for the salivating psychopaths on the left, hellbent on destroying the people who try to protect this country.

President Obama suggested today that it remained a possibility that the Justice Department might bring charges against officials of the Bush administration who devised harsh interrogation policies that some see as torture.

He also suggested that if there is any sort of investigation into these past policies and practices, he would be more inclined to support an independent commission outside the typical congressional hearing process.

Both statements represented breaks from previous White House statements on the matter.

While the Bush-era memos providing legal justifications for enhanced interrogation methods "reflected us losing our moral bearings," the president said, he also that he did not think it was "appropriate" to prosecute those CIA officers who "carried out some of these operations within the four corners of the legal opinions or guidance that had been provided by the White House."

But in clear change from language he and members of his administration have used in the past, the president said that "with respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws and I don’t want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there."

Just yesterday, asked by a reporter as to why the administration was not seeking to "hold accountable" Bush administration lawyers who may have "twisted the law," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, "the president is focused on looking forward, that's why."

Heh: CIA Documents Shine Light on Secretive Air America

Why, I'm outraged! I cannot believe the CIA is snooping on innocent radio hosts speaking truth to power to a miniscule audience!

Oops, well that headline is a bit misleading. My question is, do those dopes at Dead Air America even realize they named themselves after a secretive CIA mission?

How amusing is that? I guess though since nobody hears Air America it can be considered secretive.

Former naval aviator Don Boecker isn't too proud to say he was scared out of his wits on that July 1965 day in Laos when he dangled by one arm from a helicopter while enemy soldiers took aim below.

Boecker had spent the longest night of his life in the thick jungle, evading capture and certain execution while awaiting rescue. The Navy aviator had ejected after a bomb he intended to drop on the Ho Chi Minh trail exploded prematurely.

His rescuers that day, however, weren't from the American military, who couldn't be caught conducting a secret bombing campaign in Laos.

They were civilian employees of Air America, an ostensibly private airline essentially owned and operated by the CIA.

Boecker, now a 71-year-old retired rear admiral, plans to tell the story on Saturday at a symposium intended to give a fuller account of an important outfit that alumni say is still misunderstood by the American public.

The University of Texas at Dallas event coincides with the CIA's release of about 10,000 previously classified Air America records, which will become part of the school library's extensive aviation collection. The CIA declassified the documents following a Freedom of Information Act request by UT-Dallas.

"These Air America documents are essential to understanding a large untold history of America's involvement in Southeast Asia," said Paul Oelkrug, a coordinator at UT-Dallas' special collections department. He said they speak to "the covert side of the Cold War."

Read the rest.

Quick, Someone Alert Jimmy Carter: Electronic Voting Not Secure

Can you believe it? Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez would actually tamper with voting machines?

The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering.

Appearing last month before a U.S. Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount, an assertion that could further roil U.S. relations with the Latin leader.

In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

I'm sure Democrats would never try any such chicanery.

Stigall, who has studied electronic systems in about three dozen countries, said most countries' machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped into boxes. However, even that doesn't prevent corruption, he said.

Turning to Venezuela, he said that Chávez controlled all of the country's voting equipment before he won a 2004 nationwide recall vote that had threatened to end his rule.

When Chávez won, Venezuelan mathematicians challenged results that showed him to be consistently strong in parts of the country where he had weak support. The mathematicians found ''a very subtle algorithm'' that appeared to adjust the vote in Chávez's favor, Stigall said.

Calls for a recount left Chávez facing a dilemma, because the voting machines produced paper ballots, Stigall said.

''How do you defeat the paper ballots the machines spit out?'' Stigall asked. ``Those numbers must agree, must they not, with the electronic voting-machine count? . . . In this case, he simply took a gamble.''

Stigall said Chávez agreed to allow 100 of 19,000 voting machines to be audited.

''It is my understanding that the computer software program that generated the random number list of voting machines that were being randomly audited, that program was provided by Chávez,'' Stigall said. ``That's my understanding. It generated a list of computers that could be audited, and they audited those computers.

``You know. No pattern of fraud there.''

Panetta Snags Key Sandy 'Socks' Berger Endorsement

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, Lake's deputy before becoming national security adviser himself, said that Panetta "was part of the decision-making process for every single issue we were dealing with, whether this was in the Oval Office with the president or the Cabinet Room -- the Middle East, Kosovo, China. He was a part of a small group of people who advised the president how to proceed on strategy and substance."

That alone is enough to disqualify him.

If you need further evidence, consider this.

WOULD you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child? That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democratic Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

Earth to President-elect Obama: Intelligence is serious. And infernally complicated. When we politicize it - as we have for 16 years - we get 9/11. Or, yes, Iraq.

The extreme left, to which Panetta's nomination panders, howled that Bush and Cheney corrupted the intelligence system. Well, I worked in the intel world in the mid 1990s and saw how the Clinton team undermined the system's integrity.

Al Qaeda a serious threat? The Clinton White House didn't want to hear it. Clinton was the pioneer in corrupting intelligence. Bush was just a follow-on homesteader.

Now we've fallen so low that left-wing cadres can applaud the nomination of a CIA chief whose sole qualification is that he's a party loyalist, untainted by experience.

The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.

Mark my words: It'll bite him in the butt.

Hot Air links. Thanks!

Clinton Retread With Little Intelligence Experience Nominated to Be CIA Director

Is there anyone left from the Clinton administration not on board the Hopenchange Express?

Well, I guess Bill Richardson is underneath it.

Seriously though, Leon Panetta?

President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday.

Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the Sept. 11 attacks by leadership changes and morale problems.

If we see Roger Clinton performing at some inaugural event, then we know the Clintons have the goods on Obama.

Democrats Reaffirm Moral Superiority, Vote to Ban Waterboarding

Sure, it gives them a chance to preen for the cameras and pander to their hardcore base--you know, those who support the other side--but in the end Bush will veto it anyway.

Forget the safety and well-being of potentially millions of Americans, they're more concerned with our image.

Congress on Wednesday moved to prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects, despite President Bush's threat to veto any measure that limits the agency's interrogation techniques.

The prohibition was contained in a bill authorizing intelligence activities for the current year, which the Senate approved on a 51-45 vote. It would restrict the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army field manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a method that makes an interrogation subject feel he is drowning.

The House had approved the measure in December. Wednesday's Senate vote set up a confrontation with the White House, where Bush has promised to veto any bill that restricts CIA questioning.

Arguing for such restrictions, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the use of harsh tactics would boomerang on the United States.

"Retaliation is the way of the world. What we do to others, they will do to us — but worse," Rockefeller said.

He's right. Next thing you know, they might chop off the heads of our soldiers or torture them in unspeakable ways.

Oh wait, they do that already.

Never mind.

"This debate is about more than legality. It is also about morality, the way we see ourselves ... and what we represent to the world."

What you represent to the world, Mr. Rockefeller, is pusillanimity on a grand scale. What you represent, Mr. Rockefeller, is fecklessness, timidity and weakness.

No wonder our enemies want more Democrats in office.

Update: Thanks to Stop the ACLU for the link. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin has the roll call, while Bryan at Hot Air discloses more unspeakable horror at Club Gitmo.

Curious to not neither Barack Obama or Mrs. Clinton showed up for the vote. How convenient. Senator McCain voted against this absurdity.

American Traitor Agee Dies in Cuba

No doubt the nutroots will be in mourning today, as the traitorous hero of the left, Philip Agee, has expired in Cuba.

Philip Agee, a former CIA spy who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975 book, died in Havana, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Wednesday.

Agee, 72, died on Monday, the newspaper said, calling him a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the people's struggle for a better world."

Agee worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 12 years in Washington, Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. He resigned in 1968 in disagreement with U.S. support for military dictatorships in Latin America and became one of the first to blow the whistle on the CIA's activities around the world.

His book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" revealed the names of undercover agents in Latin America and was published in 27 languages.

The U.S. government called him a traitor and said some of the agents he exposed were later murdered.

The scumbag should have been executed for treason.

When last heard from, he was urging Americans to break the law.

The Cubans mourn his passing.

Some background on one of the CIA agents, Richard Welch, murdered due to Agee's perfidy.

UPDATE:
LGF: Traitor Dies, Reuters Whitewashes

No One Will Miss You

Shocker: Gitmo Detainee Claims CIA Torture

As breathlessly reported by the New York Times, always eager to portray the terror vermin sympathetically.

The first of the so-called high-value Guantánamo detainees to have seen a lawyer claims he was subjected to “state-sanctioned torture” while in secret C.I.A. prisons, and he has asked for a court order barring the government from destroying evidence of his treatment.

The request, in a filing by his lawyers, was made on Nov. 29, before officials from the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that the agency had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda that current and former officials said included the use of harsh techniques.

Lawyers for the detainee, Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident, released documents in his case on Friday. They claim he “was subjected to an aggressive C.I.A. detention and interrogation program notable for its elaborate planning and ruthless application of torture” to numerous detainees.

The documents also suggest that Mr. Khan, 27, and other high-value detainees are now being held in a previously undisclosed area of the Guantánamo prison in Cuba he called Camp 7.

Those detainees include 14 men, some suspected of being former Qaeda officials, who President Bush acknowledged were held in a secret C.I.A. program. They were transferred to military custody at Guantánamo last year.

Asked about Mr. Khan’s assertions, Mark Mansfield, a C.I.A. spokesman, said, “the United States does not conduct or condone torture.” He said a small number of “hardened terrorists” had required what he called “special methods of questioning” in what he called a lawful and carefully run program.

The documents were heavily redacted by government security officials, and none of Mr. Khan’s specific assertions of torture could be read. One entire page was blacked out.

In addition to the court filing, Mr. Khan’s lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York released recently declassified notes of their first meetings with Mr. Khan, in October. The notes asserted that he had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder because of his treatment, including memory problems and “frantic expression.” They said he was “painfully thin and pale.”

Mexican Drug Cartels Smuggling Terrorists into the U.S.

Not only do we need to get that border fence up, we had better be destroying these tunnels smugglers use underground. Do you need any more evidence than this?

U.S. intel center wary of terrorist attack

The nation's largest intelligence training center changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists with the aid of Mexican drug cartels were planning an attack on the facility.

Fort Huachuca changed security measures after sources warned that possibly 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high powered weapons to attack the post, according to multiple confidential law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Times.

“A portion of the operatives were in the United States, with the remainder not yet in the United States,” according to one of the documents, an FBI advisory that was disbursed to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Justice, among numerous other law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. “The Afghanis and Iraqis shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners.”

According to the FBI advisory, each Middle Easterner paid Mexican drug lords $20,000 “or the equivalent in weapons” for the cartel's assistance in smuggling them through tunnels along the border into the U.S. The numerous tunnels supposedly ended at warehouses in Laredo, Texas, and in Arizona.

No word on the status of these terror operatives or whether they've secured driver's licenses and registered to vote in the Democrat primaries.

H/T: Hot Air.

Iran: CIA a "Terrorist Organization"

Well, if they say it, it must be so.

Iran Labels CIA 'Terrorist Organization'

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations," in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that—if ratified by the country's hardline constitutional watchdog—would become law. The government is expected to wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision.

That will be a long wait.

It appears they had assistance from the nutroots in drawing up this resolution.

Meanwhile, an LA Times nitwit declares Ahmadinejad a winner this week.

Bush Signs Executive Order on Interrogation

Hmm. Convenienetly timed before Dick Cheney takes over.

Bush Alters Rules for Interrogations

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush signed an executive order governing interrogation of terrorism suspects, prohibiting cruel and inhumane treatment, humiliation or denigration of prisoners' religious beliefs.

The White House declined to say whether the CIA currently has a detention and interrogation program, but said if it did, it must adhere to the guidelines outlined in the executive order. The order targets captured al-Qaida terrorists who have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders.

"Last September, the president explained how the CIA's program had disrupted attacks and saved lives, and that it must continue on a sound legal footing," White House press secretary Tony Snow said. "The president has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job—and keeping America safe from attacks."

The executive order was the result of legislation Bush signed in October that authorized military trials of terrorism suspects, eliminated some of the rights defendants are usually guaranteed under U.S. law, and authorized continued harsh interrogations of terror suspects.

Many restrictions, it appears, but still expect the nutroots to go insane.

Report Alleges CIA Had Secret Jails in Europe

The left is sure to get their panties in a knot over this one.

The CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate key terror suspects, shackling and handcuffing inmates, keeping some naked for weeks and reducing contact with the outer world to masked and silent guards, a European investigator said Friday.

Oh my, the horrors. Shackles and handcuffs!

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano did not address whether there were secret detention centers, but he disputed the report's characterization of the agency's activities.

"When you see words like apartheid and torture in the document, that tells you it's biased and distorted," he said. "The CIA's counterterror operations have been lawful, effective, closely reviewed and of benefit to many people — including Europeans — in disrupting plots and saving lives. Our counterterror partnerships in Europe are very strong."

Following a meeting with President Bush in Gdansk, Polish President Lech Kaczynski told reporters: "I know nothing about any CIA prisons in Poland." His predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was president in 2001-05, said: "I deny it. I've said as much several times."

Former Romanian President Ion Iliescu, mentioned in a list of ranking officials who allegedly had knowledge of the prisons, dismissed Marty's report as "stupid."

Exactly.

The report, which did not give specific locations for the alleged jails, provided graphic descriptions of conditions.

It told of prisoners being kept naked for weeks, sometimes attached to a "shackling ring" in cells. Buckets served as toilets. Masked guards who never spoke were the only contact for those consigned to four-month isolation regimes.

Cells, sometimes equipped with video cameras, were cramped and kept extremely hot or cold, the report said. Prisoners had to listen to irritating noises, including "torture music," rock or rap as well as "distorted" verses of the Quran, it said.

Just brutal, isn't it?

JFK Plot 'Tip of the Iceberg'

Some people would like to dismiss the JFK plot as the delusions of an old man who perhaps didn't have the ability to pull it off, but that doesn't mean the potential for other plots doesn't exist.

We bury our head in the sand at our own peril.

Plot to blow up JFK is 'tip of the iceberg'

The alleged conspiracy to blow up John F Kennedy airport, in New York, and a recent plot to kill soldiers at a nearby United States Army base represent only the "tip of the iceberg" of terrorist plots against America, according to US officials.

"There's a lot of activity out there," a counter-terrorism official said yesterday.

"Obviously, you don't want to tip off every suspect that they are being monitored. On the other hand, we are not going to wait until the fuse is lit."

He said that the airport plot, which sparked a lengthy FBI sting operation, was first detected by CIA operatives in the Caribbean and South America nearly 18 months ago.

"Our intelligence agencies pay careful attention to what goes on there," the official told The Daily Telegraph.

"Although a lot of the public focus is on Europe, we're also looking closely at the home-grown threat and what's going on in our own back yard."

He indicated that dozens of other plots were being monitored but that improved co-operation between the CIA and FBI - the patchy nature of which was a major criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report - was bearing fruit.

One tack the left seems to take is that these maniacs weren't close to pulling off the JFK plot.

Would they prefer we wait until the final details are set in motion?

What happense if something like this is pulled off? Well, you know what'll happen. Everyone will blame Bush, the FBI, the CIA and wonder why we didn't "connect the dots".