FDD

Coalition Against Terrorist Media Calls on Egypt, Saudi Arabia to Stop Broadcasting Terrorist Television

Following Egypt’s decision to pull an Iraqi television station accused of supporting terrorism from its NileSat satellite system, the Coalition Against Terrorist Media -- a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies -- today called on Egyptian and Saudi officials to remove two other stations used to support terrorism, Hezbollah’s al-Manar and Hamas’s al-Aqsa, from their state-controlled satellite networks.

Sistani the Moderate (AM)

Over the last couple of years, there has been some spirited debate about whether Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is an authentic Muslim moderate who is a huge plus for the Bush administration's democracy project, or, as I have maintained (see, e.g., here and here), an Islamic fundamentalist of the familiar anti-Semitic, anti-infidel, anti-gay variety who embraced "democracy" (i.e., not real democracy but popular elections) because it was the easiest route to Shiite rule...the first step on the road to a Shiite Sharia state.

Now, former Reagan administration official John Agresto is weighing in.  Agresto, who appeared on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday, has a new book out, Mugged by Reality, which is a memoir of his recent nine months of service in Iraq as an adviser to the education ministry.  Here is some of what he has to say about Sistani:

We insisted that the Ayatollah Sistani was surely a "moderate" and a friend to civil and religious liberty despite all the hard evidence to the contrary. Let me repeat my previous observations and predictions: The Ayatollah Sistani is an Islamist bent on establishing a theocracy not far removed from that found in Iran. He is an open anti-Semite and a not-too-subtle anti-Christian. He threw his support behind democratic elections because they were the handy vehicles for imposing religious authority all over Iraq. Nor is he the only one, or even the worst, only the most prominent. Yet while I believe the evidence is as clear here as it is in the case of [Ahmad] Chalabi, we only see what we want to see, not what's visible. In our religious lives, hope may well be a virtue — but in foreign policy it is more often a sin, a temptation to willful blindness.

Notes & Comments

Senator Joseph Lieberman observes that Gen. David Petraeus has now been confirmed by the U.S. Senate and has embarked on a mission of enormous consequence in Iraq. With that in mind, surely members of Congress should give him and his troops a chance to show what they can accomplish.

You can read Cliff May's latest Notes & Comments here.

What a Difference a Day -- and an Assassination Attempt -- Makes (AM)

One sobering result of the Taliban's attempt to murder Vice President Cheney in Afghanistan is that the New York Times has tamped down — at least for a day — its standard caricature of the dark, secretive Veep. 

Compare the following. This is from yesterday's pre-bombing coverage of Cheney's Pakistan trip:

The vice president’s office asked news organizations that knew of Mr. Cheney’s upcoming trip, and the small number of reporters traveling with him, to withhold any mention of his travels until after he had left the country. That request went far beyond the usual precautions as American officials travel into and out of Pakistan....  It was unclear if the request reflected Mr. Cheney’s well-known penchant for secrecy — he said nothing in public during his visit — or an increasing unease by the Secret Service about how freely Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives are moving in Pakistan. There have long been doubts about the loyalties of some members of Mr. Musharaff’s intelligence service, and assassination attempts against him have been linked to Al Qaeda.

Now, here's today's post-bombing coverage of Cheney in Afghanistan:

Mr. Cheney’s trip to the region had been shrouded in unusual secrecy. News organizations that were aware of Mr. Cheney’s travels were asked to withhold any mention of the trip until he had left Pakistan. This appeared to reflect growing concern about the strength of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the region, and continuing questions about the loyalties of the intelligence services of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

ME:  Whaddya know, no mention today of Cheney's "well-known penchant for secrecy." Apparently even the Times now grasps that the Veep had pretty good reasons to be discrete. Maybe Cheney's not nuts!  Maybe the Taliban and al Qaeda really do want us dead after all. Who knows — maybe tomorrow the Gray Lady will even acknowledge that the Patriot Act and the NSA program are not sinister power grabs but modest, sensible precautions against people who are hellbent on killing us.  Naaaaaaahhhhh.

Walid Phares Discusses New Book at Heritage Event

FDD Senior Fellow Walid Phares will discuss his new book, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy, at a pre-launch event organized by the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, February 27.

The book explores the beliefs of two opposing camps, one standing for democracy and human rights, and the other rejecting the idea of an international community and calling for jihad against the West.

To RSVP to this event, please visit the Heritage Foundation website.

Victoria Toensing: "Trial in Error"

In Sunday's Washington Post, FDD's Victoria Toensing unraveled the case against Scooter Libby -- and offered her own "bills of indictment."

Notes & Comments

Just days after the Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as the new American commander in Iraq, 246 members of the House voted to oppose providing him with the human resources he has said he needs to do his job. Whatever your views on Iraq -- how we got in and how we should get out -- does that make any sense?

Continue reading Clifford May's Notes & Comments.

Little Noticed (RWC)

Talk about “retro”! The news these days reminds me of 1967 not 2007.  Case in point:

Authorities last week found a series of three bombs hidden in the aqueduct that supplies water to millions of people in Southern California. 

If you have ever driven out through the far San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles heading towards Bakersfield, you have passed the huge California Aqueduct which carries water from Northern California into the naturally arid South.

When I was a young reporter in California in the 1960’s not a fortnight would go by when I wouldn’t read an intelligence report of a bombing attempt by radicals against power transmission lines, city reservoirs, electrical substations or the California Aqueduct. 

I mean think of the “Weathermen” or the “Symbionese Liberation Army” –which, by the way wasn’t much of an army. In fact it was much less than a platoon, more the size of a squad -and made up of crazy, self-important Berkeley leftists, more than half of them girls, and most of them killed along the way.  But their legacy seems to linger.

The latest incident received little attention from the media, but the pipe-bombs were planted next to a large valve at a branch of the aqueduct in the Mojave Desert North of LA. They were discovered by police who have made frequent checks for such things since 9/11. It was successfully disarmed.

Media Round-Up

FDD's Mark Dubowitz reports on his recent trip to Germany, sponsored by the German media company Bertelsmann. The company, Europe’s largest media conglomerate, sponsors a number of programs focused on German-Israeli-Jewish relations.

Also, Alykhan Velshi discusses the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; Tony Badran, Syria and Lebanon.

USS New York (CM)

It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center.

It is the fifth in a new class of warship --designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft.

Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, LA to cast the ship's bow section. When it was poured into the molds  on Sept. 9, 2003, "those big rough steelworkers treated it with total   reverence," recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. "It was a spiritual moment for everybody there."

Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the "hair on my neck stood up."  "It had a big meaning to it for all of us," he said. "They knocked us down. They can't keep us down. We're going to be back."

The ship's motto? "Never Forget"

Please keep this going so everyone can see what we are made of in this country!

The Murtha Plan (ML)

The Murtha plan is an attempt to codify a Rumsfeld target of two years at home for every year deployed in combat -- considered a necessary part of recruiting & retention in the out-years.  From this target has arisen a myth that there is some military necessity for the 2-to-1 ratio.  This is false.  A few myths need to be untangled here. 

One Democratic staff committee report recently stated:

Army doctrine calls for 2 units to be held in reserve (for rest and training) for every unit deployed.  As of today, the Army has only one unit in reserve for every unit deployed—a ratio history shows cannot be sustained for any length of time without serious adverse consequences to the force.

History cannot show that a 1-to-1 ratio is unsustainable, because the current system of a fully modular and rotational "total force" that is only partially at war is entirely new. And in fact, there is nothing necessarily bad about a 1-to-1 ratio, because what it means is that half the force at any given time is not mobilized for deployment. 

It is often said that a unit needs one year back home for training for every year it spends abroad.  This is false. What Army doctrine calls for in terms of training as a unit is a period of several weeks meant to integrate new recruits (who have already undergone basic training) and get the whole unit used to working together.  The rest of the "rest and training" period is best understood as peacetime activity.

Another common myth is that because many units are reporting at low levels of readiness, they are not fully combat capable.  This ignores two things. 

First, because there is no reason to waste resources rotating tanks and artillery pieces that are largely fungible, units leave much of their equipment behind in Iraq and Afghanistan for incoming forces to fall upon when they get there.  It is by design, then, that the units report "not ready" when they rotate back to the United States.  As one Marine officer explained to me, what happens during the peacetime "rest and training" period is that units pool their resources so that they can train effectively with the kinds of equipment they will find when they arrive in theater. 

Second, peacetime units are not meeting their targets during the rest period because wartime has pushed those targets sky-high—and they reflect the military's judgment of what they would ideally want every unit in a uniform force to have for every possible environment and contingency.  But as Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace said in recent Senate testimony, there are 40,000 armored vehicles of all kinds in Iraq that didn't even exist 5 years ago.  To lament that the force had higher readiness five years ago than today ignores the fact that both the metrics and the inventories of equipment are astronomically higher now than they were then.  And units reporting "not ready" because they don't have the latest equipment they ideally want can still draw on huge stockpiles of older equipment that is almost as good as the new.  It may not be as precise, it may be messier, you may have to use more firepower -- but you will still have victory. 

As articulated in the the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, our planning construct now calls for being able to fight an entire conventional campaign in addition to our current commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Such a campaign night not be able to do regime change, but it would be able to secure a decisive victory.  And rest assured the force is there if we need it.  What the military has to worry about is recruiting and retention in the out-years, and the plan to increase the size of the active force by 2 whole divisions in the next several years substantially relieves that pressure now. 

The Murtha Plan (AM)

Let's hope if any effort to prescribe conditions for troop deployment -- such as the "Murtha Plan" about to be proposed by Rep. John Murtha according to today's Washington Post -- ever reaches a president's desk, that president -- whether it is President Bush or any future president, Republican or Democrat -- has the good sense to veto it. It would be unconstitutional.

The president is commander-in-chief. That is not just a title; it is an assignment of constitutional duties that may not be performed by any other branch. 

Congress can deny him funding; it cannot exercise commander-in-chief functions.  Rotating troops and assigning materiel for military engagements is an executive function -- just like deciding which target to hit, which hill to take, and which captives to detain.

If Congress wants to end the war, Congress can end it by de-funding it. Then the president has to bring everyone and everything home -- and members of Congress can then be politically accountable to the voters for the decision to abandon the battlefield before the President believed the mission was completed.  Congress, however, cannot manage, much less micro-manage, the exercise of commander-in-chief authority in connection with military engagements that are authorized either by Congress or under the President's inherent Article II authority. It is for the president alone to exercise that power.

And what if the United States is invaded, or if our forces and interests are attacked overseas (as, for example, they have been repeatedly since 1996, and as they are currently being attacked from Iran and Pakistan, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan)?  The Supreme Court has held since the Civil War era Prize Cases that the president has not only the authority but the duty to respond to provocations against the United States, regardless of whether Congress has acted.  But would a president be expected to wait to dispatch forces until the Murtha two-year lay-off has run its course?

In The Federalist No. 73, Hamilton explained that the Constitution armed the executive with vigor and irreducible powers in order to defend against “the propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other departments.”

Smart guys, the Framers.

Clifford May: "Munich Memories"

Last weekend FDD President Clifford May joined a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers attending the 43rd Wehrkunde Conference on Security Policy in Munich, Germany. This year’s topic was “Peace through Dialogue.”

Among the issues addressed: security in the Middle East, Iran and Pakistan, NATO’s disposition and global responsibilities, Germany’s presidency of the EU and the G-8. In his column this week, May analyzes the major speeches.

The North Korea Deal Stinks (ML)

This is the money quote in the Washington Post's update, which reports that the North Korea deal

marked North Korea's first concrete commitment to carry out an agreement in principle, dating from September 2005, to relinquish its entire nuclear program.

Let's separate the points actually agreed from those left to be agreed in the "next phase of denuclearization":

North Korea agreed to shut down the hard-water reactor at Yongbyon and seal it within 60 days.  (No "initial steps" agreement on inspections, or the separate uranium program, or...anything else)

The 5 counterparties to the talks (U.S., China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia) agreed to deliver 50,000 tons of fuel oil.

In addition, the U.S. agreed to "resolve" the Banco Delta Asia dispute (in which North Korean funds suspected to be part of a money-laundering scheme were frozen in a Macau bank) within 30 days.

Teach the Students Well

Pupils at the King Fahd Academy in London have allegedly been heard saying they want to "kill Americans," praising 9/11 and idolizing Osama bin Laden as their "hero."

Where would they get such ideas? Here's a clue: The school uses Saudi textbooks which describe Jews as "apes" and Christians as "pigs." The principal of the school has admitted that -- and has refused to withdraw the textbooks.

Continue reading Cliff May's weekly Notes & Comments.

CIA: Maybe It's Not Really Iran But Rogues Inside of Iran Killing Americans (AM)

Eli Lake has this in his New York Sun report this morning on the long-awaited Defense briefing about Iran's war-making in Iraq (italics mine):

[W]hile the specific intelligence on the explosive formed projectiles is no longer disputed in the intelligence community, the CIA is questioning whether their export from Iran represents a strategy of the regime or the rogue actions of one of its security services, known as the Quds Force. According to reports from the briefing in Baghdad yesterday, American commanders said Iran's export of the bombs to Iraqi Shiite militias was a deliberate strategy of the regime, noting that the Quds Force reports directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Sure. Khamenei has reaffirmed that "Death to America" is Iran's motto, Ahmadinejad says a world without America is achievable, we have 30 years of evidence of the Iranian regime acting on those assumptions, and we know the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and its Quds (Jerusalem) Force have long been the mullahs' arms for exporting their revolution. But when we catch the Iranians red-handed killing American troops in Iraq, the CIA figures it may not really be the regime but rogue elements. One can easily see why Doug Feith is getting grief for not taking everything the CIA says to the bank.

Frontpage Magazine: "Braving Campus Radicals at UC Davis"

FDD Undergraduate Fellows at the University of California-Davis invited former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat to describe his life in radical Islam last week to a sold-out crowd at Freeborn Hall. Lee Kaplan writing for Frontpage Magazine has the story of plans to sabotage his presentation -- and what the organizers did to ensure his voice was heard before 1,300 students and faculty -- his largest campus audience yet:

A curious thing happened when Walid Shoebat arrived for a speech at the University of California at Davis last week. Shoebat, the former PLO terrorist who now speaks out against terrorism and militant Islam, not only faced his largest ever audience at a college campus -- a sold-out crowd of over 1,300 people -- but he actually got to deliver his remarks without interruption.

This was hardly a foregone conclusion. Only one week earlier at the University of California at Irvine, Middle East expert Daniel Pipes had his remarks disrupted by students from the Muslim Students Association, who chanted and yelled before finally being escorted from the auditorium.

The MSA’s sister organization at UC Davis had planned a similar welcome for Shoebat -- only worse.

Continue reading Kaplan’s account here.

Pentagon's Inspector General Issues Report on Prewar Intelligence

In an article today on National Review Online, FDD's Andrew McCarthy argues that the Pentagon's new report on prewar intelligence "would have us believe that critiquing such intelligence, rather than swallowing it whole, is somehow 'inappropriate.'"

Claudia Rosett Investigates Former U.N. Envoy to North Korea

In a detailed expose on FOX News, FDD’s Claudia Rosett traces the “long and murky” career of Maurice Strong, one of the U.N.’s most controversial figures. Strong, who stepped down in 2005 as the UN.’s special envoy to North Korea, played a key role in “what the U.N. has become today” — from Oil-for-Food to the latest scandals involving U.N. funding in North Korea.

During his career, Strong launched a number of large-scale projects and dubious reforms that, Rosett reports, “nurtured the U.N.’s natural tendencies to grow like kudzu into a system that now extends far beyond its own organizational chart. In this jungle, it is not only tough to track how the money is spent, but almost impossible to tally how much really rolls in — or  flows through — and from where, and for what.”

“All this,” Rosett explains in her article, “is just a sampling of the tangled nest of personal relationships, public-private partnerships, murky trust funds, unaudited funding conduits, and inter-woven enterprises that the modern U.N. has come to embody — and which Maurice Strong has done so much to create.”

"Minority Rule"

In his latest column, FDD President Clifford May argues that the fanatics in Iraq are "neither opposed nor even seriously condemned by the international community."

Iran and the U.S. "Parallel Universe" (AM)

A great post by Steve Schippert at ThreatsWatch.org regarding the administration's shrinking from its promise to release a dossier on Iran's activities in Iraq (I wrote about it earlier this week, here). Steve imagines a scenario in which, rather than the U.S. finding Iran making trouble for the U.S. in Iraq, the Russians find the U.S. making trouble for Russia in Iran — Russia, in the analogy, having invaded Iran to overthrow the regime for fomenting terror in Chechnya. As he suspects, things would be handled a bit differently.

Also worth noting: the killing of five U.S. soldiers on January 20 in Karbala.  It begins to look more and more like an Iranian operation — far too sophisticated to have been carried out by Sadr's goons, and not in an area where al Qaeda could conduct such an operation.  Did Iran use the IRGC's Qods forces to kill American troops in retaliation for U.S. raids and captures of Iranian personnel in Baghdad (December) and Irbil (January)?  (Bill Roggio's take, here, also worth reading.)

Hamdan Case (AM)

It looks like Salim Hamdan — Osama bin Laden's driver whose case resulted in the Supreme Court invalidating the president's military commissions only to have Congress reinstate them last year — is finally headed for a military commission trial. Ditto the Aussie jihadist David Hicks (at least, he's David Hicks in the sympathetic press accounts since his capture for fighting alongside terrorists; in Australia, he was actually known as Mohammed Dawood) and the Canadian jihadist Omar Khadr (of the Khadr family with longtime ties to bin Laden; Omar, at age 15, is said to have killed an American soldier and wounded several others with a grenade).

Estimates are that perhaps 20 percent of the 400 or so Gitmo combatants will eventually face a commission trial. The best way to show that they are worthy proceedings is to get on with them. Convicted combatants will get to have their cases reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. While war critics rail at the purported "legal black hole" that Gitmo supposedly is, this will mark the first time in American history that enemy combatants will have a right of resort to a civilian court of the United States to have their cases reviewed.

Al-Aqsa TV

FDD's Jonathan Snow describes Hamas's media empire in today's Providence Journal.

Africa Command

FDD's  Peter Pham explains the Pentagon's new Africa Command today on National Interest Online.

North Korea

As host country of and chief donor to the U.N., surely the United States has the right -- maybe even the obligation -- to raise the question of why North Korea, on its present course, should be allowed to remain in the U.N. at all.

Continue reading Claudia Rosett's column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Notes & Comments

In this week's Notes & Comments, FDD President Clifford May analyzes the recent firing of Charles Stimson, the assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.

Iraq War Debated in the Senate

Sen. Lieberman on the Senate Floor:

What we say here is being heard in Baghdad by Iraqi moderates, trying to decide whether the Americans will stand with them. We are being heard by our men and women in uniform, who will be interested to know whether we support the plan they have begun to carry out. We are being heard by the leaders of the thuggish regimes in Iran and Syria, and by Al Qaeda terrorists, eager for evidence that America’s will is breaking. And we are being heard across America by our constituents, who are wondering if their Congress is capable of serious action, not just hollow posturing.

This resolution is not about Congress taking responsibility. It is the opposite. It is a resolution of irresolution...

If you believe that General Petraeus and his new strategy have a reasonable chance of success in Iraq, then you should resolve to support him and his troops through the difficult days ahead. On the other hand, if you believe that this new strategy is flawed or that our cause is hopeless in Iraq, then you should vote to stop it. Vote to cut off funds. Vote for a binding timeline for American withdrawal. If that is where your convictions lie, then have the courage of your convictions to accept the consequences of your convictions. That would be a resolution.

The non-binding measure before us, by contrast, is an accumulation of ambiguities and inconsistencies. It is at once for the war but also against the war. It pledges its support to the troops in the field but also washes its hands of what they are doing. It approves more troops for Anbar but not for Baghdad.

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot vote full confidence in General Petraeus, but no confidence in his strategy. We cannot say that the troops have our full support, but disavow their mission on the eve of battle. This is what happens when you try to wage war by committee. That is why the Constitution gave that authority to the President as Commander in Chief.

For the Senate to take up a symbolic vote of no confidence on the eve of a decisive battle is unprecedented, but it is not inconsequential. It is an act which, I fear, will discourage our troops, hearten our enemies, and showcase our disunity. And that is why I will vote against cloture...

We heard from General Petraeus during his confirmation hearing that war is a battle of wills. Our enemies believe that they are winning in Iraq today. They believe that they can outlast us; that, sooner or later, we will tire of this grinding conflict and go home. That is the lesson that Osama bin Laden took from our retreats from Lebanon and Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a belief at the core of the insurgency in Iraq, and at the core of radical Islam worldwide. And this resolution — by codifying our disunity, by disavowing the mission our troops are about to undertake — confirms our enemies’ belief in American weakness...

Today, in the depths of a terrible war, on the brink of a decisive battle for Baghdad, let us have a serious debate about where we stand and where we must go in Iraq. That is the debate we should have — but it is not the debate that this resolution would bring.”

More here.

Iran Policy

FDD's Andy McCarthy asks tough questions about our Iran policy in today's National Review Online.

Walid Phares in TV Documentary

FDD Senior Fellow Walid Phares discussed the threat of radical Islam to America in a new television documentary, Radical Islam: Terror in Its Own Words, which premiered Saturday, February 3 at 9 p.m. EST and at midnight on the FOX News Channel. You can watch it here.

Terrorist Surveillance Program

FDD's Andy McCarthy discusses the N.S.A.'s Terrorist Surveillance Program today on National Review Online.

Andy launched FDD's new Center for Law and Counterterrorism last week at the National Press Club.

Al Arabiya (RWC)

The Arabic Satellite TV network Al Arabiya, based and funded in Dubai, has some big and complex problems.

The Palestinian authorities’ governing Islamist party, Hamas, has threatened serious violence against Al Aribya.

Reporters and technicians have stopped working in the Gaza Strip for fear of their lives.

Al Arabya is stuck in the middle of a kind of weird vice, speaking metaphorically:

They constantly upset the West with biased and inflammatory coverage, particularly of the War in Iraq and of unrest in Palestine.

But they come under fire from Arab governments, too.

Al Arabiya aired it anyway. Then they had to send home close to fifty employees from Gaza whose lives were threatened by gunmen.

CLC Launch (RWC)

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (I’m the Vice Chairman) opened a Center for Law & Counter-terrorism the other day. Sounds boring but it’s not going to be.  It will be run by Andy McCarthy, who is that rare being, a lawyer who communicates gracefully with the written word.  He can write! I don’t mean subpoenas ducas tecum and turgid and thickly-reasoned motions like most of these legal folks. He can do that.

I mean he writes prose that hums in its simple declarative sentences and makes point after point with clarity and force.

The man is both lucid and wildly prolific: churning our newspaper and magazine columns by the dozens and more commentary than you could shake your swagger-stick at.

And this is one of the preeminent former federal anti-terrorism prosecutors in the country.

Last week Andy and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies held a kick-off symposium at the National Press Club in Washington. It ran all morning and I was in the audience. 

They debated questions about the War in Iraq, and the Global War on Terror, and whether this country needs a National Security Court. My take on that is that it does.  And this IS a war, with combatants in civilian clothes, posing as normal citizens, hiding among the populace like the dangerous creeps that they are.

As someone said at the symposium:” Why is it a war?” The answer is,  we have an enemy with motive, with evil intent and enormous resources. We need military means to protect ourselves and our country.

How is this different then fighting the Mafia?  Uh, it is totally different. We don’t send the US Air Force, or remote controlled armed-drones with rockets, to fly over Sicily or parts of New Jersey to take them out, now do we?

Traditional criminal law won’t effectively address the problems of crazed terrorists.

Steward Taylor, the lawyer and writer from the National Journal and Newsweek spoke. He was excellent, smart and nuanced as always

Voice of America (RWC)

There’s a dumb idea being floated around Washington.  I hope it dies soon.

It is this: to eliminate Voice of America broadcasting to Latin America and fold it into TV and Radio Marti, the surrogate station designed with Cuba as the target.

It is unsaid but likely that the currency of this thought has been motivated by the pro-Castro radicalization of Venezuela by Castro-clone Hugo Chavez and his leftist friends in governments in Ecuador and Bolivia.

But it is really motivated by animus towards the VOA and a desire to tinker with success.

I’m a supporter of Radio Marti and always have been. I once had responsibility for its broadcasts into Cuba as I was the director of the Voice of America through the end of the Cold War.

Despite its enemies in the Democratic Party and on the political left, Radio Marti has always served a genuine purpose in bringing information to the closed society that is Cuba. Marti has always been worthwhile, despite what its enemies say, and despite its regular jamming by Castro’s government.

But, the Voice of America already has effective broadcasts to Latin America. They are partly through shortwave, (which is more important than most of us realize, since we live in such a more sophisticated media environment) and through placement of VOA programs on local stations in Latin American countries, in Spanish.

Radio and TV Marti are in place for Cuba, work well, and should be supported. To try and expand them to all of Latin America, and in the process destroy VOA in that hemisphere, which is what this is about, would be a terrible mistake. One in a long line of mistakes about international communication and public diplomacy by our federal government, beginning with the destruction of the US Information Agency.

Danger Zone

Sunday's Danger Zone will host an impressive group:

R. James Woolsey: Jim Woolsey, the former Director of the CIA, providing his analysis about the greatest threats to U.S. National security, with particular focus on Iraq, Iran, and the need for America to achieve energy independence.

James Lyons: Admiral James "Ace" Lyons, the former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, discussing the need to simplify, clarify, and strengthen the Rules of Engagement, which in their current bureaucratic state of amorphous legalese, unnecessarily endanger the lives of U.S. Forces.

Qubad Jalal Talabany: Ambassador Talabany, representative of the Kurdish Regional Government -- and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabany -- providing the KRG's political perspective on the war in Iraq, to mirror his Congressional testimony earlier in the week.

Lt. Col. Bill Cowan (Ret.): Retired Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan, a regular fixture on Danger Zone and a veteran of three tours of duty in Vietnam, is a FOX News Channel contributor and an internationally acknowledged terrorism expert.

FBI Special Agent Mark Rossini: FBI Special Agent Mark Rossini, who will be profiling Ayman Zawahiri, al-qaeda's second in command -- his detailed terrorist activity, known accomplices, financial resources, last known whereabouts, and the bounty placed on his capture or death.

Danger Zone airs from 9-10 p.m. Sundays on WMAL (AM-630) in the Washington, D.C., market and can be heard live on the Internet.

If you miss Sunday's broadcast, check back next week for the audio. For past episodes click here. 

Danger Zone is NOW available for podcast here.

Feedback? Ideas? Insights? Guest suggestions? Email Danger Zone.

 

On Iran (ML)

Iran has done absolutely nothing in recent weeks or months that it wasn't doing last year and two years ago. We have known for a long time that cross-border attacks against American forces are being conducted by fighters from the sanctuary of Revolutionary Guards bases in Iran; that Iran is training anti-American fighters directly and through proxies; and that it is supplying them with weapons, including the sophisticated IEDs now causing a preponderance of American casualties. 

The Return of the "Nigerian Taliban"

FDD's Africa expert Peter Pham has an article on Nigeria in today's World Defense Review. He writes:

While the attention of most Africa security analysts and policymakers has been focused recently on the campaign to root out the militant Islamists of Somalia's Islamic Courts Union, evidence has emerged that another radical group – previously thought extinguished – was stirring again on the other end of the continent in Nigeria.

On January 16, Media Trust Ltd., was arraigned before the High Court in the capital of Abuja, accused of three counts of terrorism. The director, a Muslim cleric (or mallam) by the name of Mohammed Bello Ilyas Damagun, who was described by prosecutors as belonging to a group dubbed the "Nigerian Taliban," was charged with receiving funds from al-Qaeda, sending recruits abroad for training, and aiding terrorist activities within Nigeria.