COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

American Hiroshima

Glenn Beck, today talked to Hamid Mir , a Pakistani journalist (and the only person to interview Osama bin-Laden after 9/11.) Mir has an interesting story about how he was warned to get out of Aghanistan because al-Qaeda and the Taliban have lined up 600 suicide bombers. The most interesting thing about what Mir is saying these days though that not only was Mir warned by the new al-Qaeda field commander in Afghanistan, Abu Dawood, to leave, but Dawood is also calling for Muslims to leave the U.S. – particularly Washington and New York – prior to a major terror attack. Hamid Mir said that Abu Dawood told him that the attack is being coordinated by Adnan el-Shukrijumah and involves WMD that has already been smuggled across the Mexican border. Mir said on Glenn Beck’s radio program today that the three recent bombings seem to bear out the warning about the suicide bombers in Aghanistan. Mir says that the attack could be imminent because bin-Laden has fulfilled the cycle of warnings required by the Koran.

From the Sep 1, Patriot Post:

Hamid Mir, the famed Pakistani journalist who obtained the only post-9/11 interviews with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, believes a nuclear attack against the United States is on the horizon, to be coordinated by the cleric-fascist state of Iran and its terrorist surrogate, al-Qa'ida. "Al-Qa'ida and Iran have a long, secret relationship," Mir says, and they've named their plans for a nuclear attack on the U.S.---using nuclear devices that Mir believes they already possess ---"American Hiroshima."

The association between Iran and al-Qa'ida, Mir says, dates to June 1996, when bin Laden joined other jihadist leaders in Tehran to discuss their goals. Others in attendance included Muhammad Ali Ahmad of al-Qa'ida, Imad al-Alami and Mustafa al-Liddawi of Hamas, Ahmad Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Egyptian Islamic Jihad's Ahmad Salah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Ramadan Shallah, Hizballah's Imad Mugniyah and Abdallah Ocalan of the Kurdish People Party. The meeting, says Mir, produced the "Committee of Three," consisting of bin Laden, Salah and Mugniyah, who would be responsible for the "coordination, planning and execution of attacks" on the U.S. and Israel. Shortly thereafter, on 23 August 1996, bin Laden issued his fatwa, "Declaration of War on Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Holy Places."

In one interview with Mir, bin Laden boasts, "It is not difficult [to obtain tactical nuclear devices], not if you have contacts in Russia with other militant groups. They are available for $10 million and $20 million." At the time, bin Laden claimed already to be in possession of such devices, and Mir believes that they may already be forward-deployed within the United States. While this information is, of course, not confirmable, and may be no more than enemy misinformation, it is plausible.

For these reasons---the nature of our enemy's threat and his determination to see our destruction---the only applicable defense is the doctrine of pre-emption.


After the bizarre, UN performances of Amadinejad and Chavez there may be more people agreeing with the pre-emption sentiment.

7 comments:

  1. Fox News is reporting that Chavez got a tremendous ovation after his venomous speech against "Imperialist America." He was received more warmly than W.

    What does this say about the UN and the world?

    Tighten your seatbelts!

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  2. Half the seats were "empty."

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  3. Thanks for reminding us of Beck.
    First time I heard him over there was soon after 9-11, and he was inside the belly of the beast talking to a terrorist leader!
    Gutsy, or Nutsy fer sher.

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  4. That's good news! It's good to know that so many see these guys for what they are; thugs!

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  5. If there is any sense of this being true. (I tend to doubt it.) But if it is so, we would pose the reverse of the NATO defense. Nato always assumed that an attack against one was an attack against all. I would propose that we identify any and all countries that could be involved, on any state level, with either supplying weapons or material or coordination of activities, and advise them they are on the list to be targeted if such a threat is brought against the US. Further advise them that the US will use strategic nuclear forces and they should assume no city or military installation in their country will not be targetted. Tell them we expect the immediate cooperation of all agencies within their country to identify, arrest and turn over to the US, any one involved in such a plan. To further my point, I would set off five sequential underground nuclear weapons at the exact time prayers were called in Mecca.

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  6. 2164th:

    I don't know how credible Mir is or if he was just fed a load.

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  7. OT, delete and elaborate into a new post if you please:
    Great American Thinker Piece.
    McCain Caved, Not the White House

    The Drive-By Media covers for McCain's miscalculation and total about-face...
    ---
    (American Thinker: The Moral Exhibitionism of John McCain)

    According to the Arizona Senator, if we try terrorists we have to give them access to all evidence against them even if it is top secret. It isn’t good enough to share secret evidence with dedicated military defense lawyers who have the appropriate security clearance. We have to share it with the defendants themselves. Senator McCain’s sense of propriety demands no less.

    Never mind that we have learned from experience that detainees can communicate with their fellow terrorists around the world under cover of attorney/client privilege by using treasonous or gullible private attorneys. This means that any secret information shared with a detainee is compromised.
    But what is national security when weighed in the balance against John McCain’s moral vanity?
    The same calculus mandates that we expose CIA interrogators to liability for using any interrogation technique the “international community” might deem degrading.

    It isn’t good enough for interrogators to stop short of torture and McCain doesn’t want to decide what is good enough.
    He doesn’t want Congress to define by statute what Americans understand to be the limits of acceptable interrogation.
    Those limits have to be as vague as possible so anti-Americans at home and abroad have every opportunity to claim we have violated them
    T
    he stated justification for McCain’s exaggerated concern with terrorist rights is incandescently idiotic and impossible to take seriously. McCain and his merry band tell anyone who will listen that we have to adhere strictly to the most expansive interpretations of the Geneva Conventions because if we fail to do so our soldiers will be abused when they fall captive.
    This defies rational response. McCain might as well be arguing that if we follow the course he proposes the Easter Bunny will bring us lots of treats.

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