Obama's Pandora's Box & The WSJ

I see that Karl Rove, writing at the WSJ, has reached the same conclusion as I did in the post below - that Obama's decision to criminalize political differences by prosecuting Bush era OLC attorneys for their advice on CIA interrogation methods will create a maelstrom in our politics the likes of which have not been seen in living memory. I would add that it will be a maelstrom not seen since at least April 11, 1861.

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Obama's decision to green light the prosecution of OLC attorneys for what amounts to a difference of political opinion violates his oath to support and defend the Constitution. At a minimum, as I noted below and as the WSJ notes in an editorial today, Obama has poisoned our body politic. The question is, will he act to stop it before the poison takes full hold at tremendous cost to our nation. This from Karl Rove writing in the WSJ:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.

. . . Mr. Obama seemed to understand the peril of such an exercise when he said, before his inauguration, that he wanted to "look forward" and beyond the antiterror debates of the Bush years. As recently as Sunday, Rahm Emanuel said no prosecutions were contemplated and now is not a time for "anger and retribution." Two days later the President disavowed his own chief of staff. Yet nothing had changed except that Mr. Obama's decision last week to release the interrogation memos unleashed a revenge lust on the political left that he refuses to resist.

. . . [H]e is trying to co-opt his left-wing base by playing to it -- only to encourage it more. Within hours of Mr. Obama's Tuesday comments, Senator Carl Levin piled on with his own accusatory Intelligence Committee report. The demands for a "special counsel" at Justice and a Congressional show trial are louder than ever, and both Europe's left and the U.N. are signaling their desire to file their own charges against former U.S. officials.

Those officials won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.

Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.

. . . Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.

Read the entire article. I really think that Karl Rove stops too short here. I will reiterate my concluding analysis from the post below:

I blogged on my analysis of the legal memos here. I read them in full and with an open mind. I know more than a little about the law. My conclusion regarding the OLC memos was that they present colorable legal arguments that the enhanced interrogation techniques fell short of the legal definition of "torture." I also concluded that there were some weaknesses in the analysis such that reasonable people could disagree. That said, as of yet, I have heard not a single principled argument in disagreement. I emphasize that because quite literally everyone I have seen and heard on the topic has cited no opposing precedent to support their conclusory assertions and labels that the interrogation techniques were unlawful torture. At any rate, what Obama, Soros and the far left want to do now is, as they indicated prior to the election, criminalize their disagreement. I could imagine no greater threat to the fabric of our nation. Even the attempt to do this is going to set off a maelstrom the likes of which we have never seen in this country since 1861.

It does not end there. As I see it, if Obama and his far left base succeed in successfully prosecuting the attorneys over this, then President Obama will have abandoned his most sacred duty - to support and defend the Constitution. That is the day the far left crosses the Rubicon and we cease to be a free nation. The day any one of the OLC attorneys are marched into prison because of a political disagreement can and should be the day a true civil war - one that involves violence - starts in this country. Trust me when I say that up until three days ago, never did I think it the remotest possibility that those words would ever pass my lips.

Obama may be intelligent, but he is incredibly unrealistic and naive if he does not recognize the forces he is unleashing. He would be very wise to end the threatened prosecution of the OLC attorneys immediately. This scenario could very easily spiral far out of Obama's control and it could do so quickly.

The painting at the top of this post is "Pandora's Box" by Howard David Johnson.

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Obama: Releasing Memos & Degrading Our National Security

Obama's decision to release the legal memos on interrogation techniques prepared by OLC lawyers during the Bush Administration was a wrong-headed move meant by Obama to, one, show his moral superiority to the world, and two, to satisfy his radical base who have been clamoring for years to prosecute Bush and his administration, ostensibly for war crimes, etc. It comes at a cost of the severely degrading of our national security and, with Obama's decision to allow persecution of the OLC lawyers, has opened a Pandora's Box that could well tear this nation apart.
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On Thursday last, ostensibly in response to a lawsuit filed by one of the most destructive forces in American society, the ACLU, President Obama ordered the Justice Dept. to withdraw its state-secrets objections to the release of four memos from the Bush years. These memos were drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel in response to queries from the CIA as to whether certain interrogation techniques were lawful under U.S. law and our treaty obligations.

To be clear, the government was under no true compulsion to release these memos. The State Secrets defense would have worked in this case, even if the lower Court had ruled otherwise. Such a ruling never would have survived appeal, one, because the material's release would work harm to our national security and, two, because procedurally, the appropriate members of Congress had been briefed and given their approval to the program. Obama's claim that the lawsuit justified release of the memos was an utter canard. Further, Obama ordered the release of these memos over the strong objection of five current and former intelligence chiefs.

So why do it?

Clearly, Obama was trying to establish his moral superiority with the chattering classes throughout the world. He is and was explicit about that. The NYT reported that Obama "condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again." There has been other similar moral preening since. The NYT Times also reported:

. . . Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

Apparently, the respect afforded Obama by Le Monde journalists takes precendce in his mind over American national security and the safety of its citizens. That is a luxury, if not a fantasy, that Obama can revel in simply because we have been successful in interdicting terrorist attacks since 9-11.

I think it reasonable to speculate that Obama also took this move - releasing the memos but saying initially that no one would be prosecuted over them, either at CIA or OLC - as a bone to quiet his radical base. He grossly miscalculated. It only increased their lust for blood, but more on that later.

All of this raises a series of issues. Specifically, this will do untold harm to our nation's security by degrading the effectiveness of intelligence efforts and creating an incredibly risk averse legal class. I am speaking here of the kind of legal class in that gave us the Jamie Goerlick's infamous Chinese Wall. Further, and amazingly, it presumes that we are now safe from terrorist attack. Three, it was and is a very selective release of information. Four, it ignores the role of Congress in this process. And lastly, it has truly opened a Pandora's Box, given Obama's threat to cross the Rubicon and pursue prosecution of the OLC lawyers. That is the criminalization of political differences - something unknown in this country.

As to the effect this release of memos has had on the CIA, there was this from left wing commentator David Ignatius:

At the Central Intelligence Agency, it's known as "slow rolling." That's what agency officers sometimes do on politically sensitive assignments. They go through the motions; they pass cables back and forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides.

Sad to say, it's slow roll time at Langley after the release of interrogation memos that, in the words of one veteran officer, "hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway." President Obama promised CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution.

The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk. Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard. . . .

Read the entire article. But Ignatius speaks only of the non-legal members of the CIA. What of the lawyers who have to decide whether something proposed by the CIA is legal and give guidance to the agency. Any lawyer who would willingly even render an opinion in such an instance now would be the penultimate fool. Make no mistake, the witch hunt just unleashed by Obama will turn our intelligence agencies and their legal advisors into the most risk averse organization on this planet. Our ability to gather intelligence from here forward is now seriously compromised. No need to take my word for that, you can take the former CIA Director's, Gen. Hayden. Further, we are likely to see legal advice of the kind provided by Jamie Goerlick that, in an effort to cover her legal ass, was a direct cause of the intelligence failures of 9-11.

A second issue raised is what this means for the terrorism threat. The irony of the remarks by the Obama Administration upon release of the memos and their implication is plumbed by Bill Kristol in an excellent essay at the Weekly Standard:

So: We were once in danger. Now we live in "a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009." Now, in April 2009, Obama's Director of National Intelligence seems to be saying, we're safe.

Good news, if true. And it would be an amazing tribute to the preceding administration's efforts in the war on terror--efforts that Democrats have been saying for years were making us less safe. Apparently, the old policies worked. The threat from al Qaeda has gone. We now have the luxury of "reflection," as President Obama put it in his statement, the luxury of debating and deploring what we did back in the bad old days when there was a war on. After all, "we have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history."

Leave aside how dark and painful the chapter really was. The question is, Is it over? Is the chapter in which we had to focus on preventing further attacks really through? Isn't there still a war against the jihadists on?

Of course Blair and other senior Obama officials have elsewhere suggested that the terror threat remains real, and even urgent. Why else the maintenance of the Bush era surveillance program? Why else the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, and to deploy more Predator strikes into Pakistan?

But can we then afford Obama's "dark and painful chapter" attitude, exemplified by his forgoing certain interrogation techniques in the present and future, and his exposing and deploring what was done in the past? Can we afford an intelligence director who tries to excuse his boss by telling us we are now safe?

Read the entire article. Those questions posed by Mr. Kristol are very pertinent indeed.

As we now know, this release of information by Obama - with some very pertinent redactions - was very selective indeed. While he released information on the interrogation tactics and decried them as of little value, he withheld information on the intelligence garnered as a result of those interrogation techniques. Other information released in the past week has been subject to similar careful editing, though the Obama administration has claimed inadvertence. Stephen Hayes, also writing at the Weekly Standard, takes note and sees therein the deliberate politicizing of intelligence:

I suppose, that a series of fortunate coincidences has resulted in the public disclosure of only that information that will be politically helpful to the Obama administration. It is also possible that Dick Cheney has taken up synchronized swimming in his retirement.

Read the entire article.

In order to evaluate the enhanced interrogation program in the public square, it is of obvious importance that we know 1) what, if any ill effects those subject to these techniques suffered, 2) the value of information gleaned from use of these techniques, and 3) whether the information could have been extracted without use of the techniques. As to bullet one, none of the people on whom these techniques were used have complained of any lasting effect of which I am aware. As to bullets two and three, by just about every account I have read, from George Tenet to Michal Hayden and even to the current intelligence chief - an avowed opponent of the program - the information gleaned from use of these techniques saved countless innocent American lives by allowing the breakup of plans to attack in Los Angles and New York. The New York Times today claims that its impossible to say whether the information saved lives. I seriously doubt that, but will await release of unredacted documents and further information before making a final decision.

Yet another issue, in light of Obama's green lighting of prosecution of the OLC attorneys for rendering legal opinions in this matter, is the role of Congress. Representative Peter Hoeksta notes in the WSJ today that members of both parties were repeatedly briefed on the enhanced interrogation tactics employed on three select detainees and that nary an eye - including Nancy Pelosi's eye - was batted. As Rep. Hoekstra notes, regarding calls for an investigation, it must assess Congressional approval of the program, it must include a full review of the information gleaned as a result of the program, and lastly:

An honest and thorough review of the enhanced interrogation program must also assess the likely damage done to U.S. national security by Mr. Obama's decision to release the memos over the objections of Mr. Panetta and four of his predecessors. Such a review should assess what this decision communicated to our enemies, and also whether it will discourage intelligence professionals from offering their frank opinions in sensitive counterterrorist cases for fear that they will be prosecuted by a future administration.

Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001.

Somehow I doubt the far left now holding the reins of power in Washington will be amenable to any of those areas of inquiry. Read Rep. Hoeksta's entire article.

Lastly, when Obama announced his decision to release these memos, he likewise indicated that he did not intend for anyone to be prosecuted for them. As Hot Air notes, like virtually all Obama pronouncements of principle, this one came with an expiration date. By Monday, no doubt in response to vociferous urging from his radical far left base, Obama announced open season for prosecution of the lawyers who drafted the legal memos approving of the enhanced interrogation techniques.

I blogged on my analysis of the legal memos here. I read them in full and with an open mind. I know more than a little about the law. My conclusion regarding the OLC memos was that they present colorable legal arguments that the enhanced interrogation techniques fell short of the legal definition of "torture." I also concluded that there were some weaknesses in the analysis such that reasonable people could disagree. That said, as of yet, I have heard not a single principled argument in disagreement. I emphasize that because quite literally everyone I have seen and heard on the topic has cited no opposing precedent to support their conclusory assertions and labels that the interrogation techniques were unlawful torture. At any rate, what Obama, Soros and the far left want to do now is, as they indicated prior to the election, criminalize their disagreement. I could imagine no greater threat to the fabric of our nation. Even the attempt to do this is going to set off a maelstrom the likes of which we have never seen in this country since, well, 1861 I would have to say.

It does not end there. As I see it, if Obama and his far left base succeed in successfully prosecuting the attorneys over this, then President Obama will have abandoned his most sacred duty - to support and defend the Constitution. That is the day the far left crosses the Rubicon and we cease to be a free nation. The day any one of the OLC attorneys are marched into prison because of a political disagreement can and should be the day a true civil war - one that involves violence - starts in this country. Trust me when I say that up until three days ago, never did I think it the remotest possibility that those words would ever pass my lips.

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Soros Redux

I wasn't sure what to name this post - much ado about nothing seemed equally as apropos. Regardless, the far left is bound and determined to take the current narrative on Iraq away from reality and return it to where they feverently want it to be - centered wholly on the ridiculous meme Bush lied, people died.

This from the AP:

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism

You can read the article here.

While this would have had me pounding my chest and spitting blood a year ago, at this point, when I first read this ridiculously transparent ploy - not surprisingly aided and abetted by the MSM - my eyes rolled and I was unable to suppress a yawn. Indeed, I would not even blog about it now but for the fact that it has since come out that the two non-profit journalism organizations are funded by none other than the mortal enemy of America, George Soros - a quite salient fact that escaped the MSM in their reporting on this blockbuster.

Fortunately, my fellow bloggers were not so stupifyingly bored by this report.

As to the premise of the new blockbuster release by the "non-profit journalism organization, the are not lies anywhere to be found. As the Glittering Eye points out, a "lie has three components. First, the statement made must be untrue. Second, the person making the statement must know it is untrue. Third, there must be an intention to deceive."

The problem, of course, is that Bush may have made statements that have turned out to be untrue or not quite as posited, but they were not lies because noone at the time believed anything to the contrary and there is nothing to suggest intention to decieve. This point was made most forcefully by Big Lizards:

How many of these "false statements" were, in fact, believed true by virtually everybody, Republican and Democrat alike, when they were made? How many were parroted by Democrats, including those on the House and Senate Permanent Select Intelligence Committees, who thereby had access to the same intelligence as la Casablanca? The Center doesn't tell, and the incurious media elites don't ask.

This is as close as they come in their executive summary:

Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of domestic agencies.

On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials [Eric Shinseki? Weasely Clark? Bill Clinton?], have publicly -- and in some cases vociferously ["rabidly" would be the better word choice] -- accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence.

A growing number of critics! Well, who could argue with that?

Here are a couple of inconvenient truths the AP story neglects to tell us:

"A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations..."

The Fund for Independence in Journalism says its "primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support for the largest nonprofit, investigative reporting institution in the world, the Center for Public Integrity, and possibly other, similar groups." Eight of the eleven members of the Fund's board of directors are either on the BoD of the Center for Public Integrity, or else are on the Center's Advisory Board. Thus these "two" organizations are actually joined at the hip.

"Fund for Independence in Journalism..."

The Center is heavily funded by George Soros. It has also received funding from Bill Moyers, though some of that money might have actually been from Soros, laundered through Moyers via the Open Society Foundation.

Other funders include the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts (used to be conservative, but in 1987 they veered sharply to the left, and are now a dyed-in-the-wool "progressive" funder), the Los Angeles Times Foundation, and so forth. The Center is a far-left organization funded by far-left millionaires, billionaires, and trusts.

Even the New York Times, in their "me too" article on the data dump, admits that there is nothing new in this release... just a jumble of statements, some of which later turned out to have been erroneous, others which just constitute heresy within the liberal catechism

Read the whole post. It is exceptional.

Which takes me to what is rapidly becoming my favorite blogsite, Bookworm Room. She goes after the malevolent George Soros on several grounds, only a portion of which I will quote here:

Do you ever feel that George Soros is a malevolent spider, sitting in the middle of a leftist web, trickling his money down thousands of filaments towards disparate ends, all aimed at achieving the same goal — the destruction of Israel and the end of America as the preeminent democratic power in the world? His name crops up so often, in connection with so many things that are worrisome when it comes to attacks on the administration and on Israel.

. . . With the current crop of anti-Bush articles, however, Soros is nowhere mentioned. And this pattern repeats itself over and over and over — Soros’ connection is never mentioned.

What stands in stark contrast is how the media reports about Soros himself, separate from all the pies in which he has big, money-dripping fingers. For example, here’s how the New York Times today described George Soros in a story about the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos: “billionaire philanthropist George Soros.” And how about this hagiographic description in a 2006 story about his funding of a social (socialist?) experiment in Africa:

The financier and philanthropist George Soros said Tuesday that he was contributing $50 million to support a sprawling social experiment, organized and led by the economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, that aims to help villages in Africa escape grinding poverty.

[snip]

Mr. Soros’s contribution is a philanthropic departure for him. He has largely focused on fostering democracy and good government.

Some of you might be thinking right now that this Soros is just a good guy, using his millions to help improve the world. Perhaps a little more information about his words and his goals will help explain why I think the media is cheating by calling him just a “philanthropist” who is trying to “foster democracy”:

In 1979 Soros founded the Open Society Fund, and since then has created a large network of foundations that give away hundreds of millions of dollars each year, much of it to individuals and organizations that share and promote his leftist philosophy. He believes that in order to prevent right-wing fascism from overrunning the world, a strong leftist counterbalance is essential. Asserting that America needed “a regime change” to oust President Bush, Soros maintained that he would gladly have traded his entire fortune in exchange for a Bush defeat in the 2004 election. In a November 2003 interview with the Washington Post’s Laura Blumenfeld, he stated that defeating President Bush in 2004 “is the central focus of my life”. . . “a matter of life and death.” “America under Bush,” he said, “is a danger to the world, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.” Claiming that “the Republican party has been captured by a bunch of extremists,” Soros accuses the Bush administration of following a “supremacist ideology” in whose rhetoric he claims to hear echoes from his childhood in occupied Hungary. “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ ” he explains, “it reminds me of the Germans. It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (The enemy is listening). My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me.”

Soros pledged to raise $75 million to defeat President Bush in the 2004 Presidential election, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush groups (see The Shadow Party). He gave $5 million to MoveOn.org, the group that produced political ads likening Bush to Adolf Hitler. He also contributed $10 million to a Democratic Party 2004 get-out-the-vote initiative called America Coming Together, whose directors include representatives from the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the Service Employees International Union, and EMILY’s List. He further pledged $3 million to the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think-tank headed by former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta.

[snip]

While criticizing the Iraq War for the benefit of reporters at the January 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Soros unburdened himself of the view that Nazis were now running the United States government. “America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” Soros explained. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.” Lest there be doubts that Soros was actually likening his adoptive country to the Third Reich and the Bush administration to the Nazi nomenklatura, a Soros spokesman, Michael Vachon, moved quickly to dispel them. “There is nothing unpatriotic about demanding accountability from the president,” he said of Soros’s appeal for de-Nazification. “Those responsible for taking America into this needless war should do us all a favor and retire from public office.”

[snip]

Soros and his foundations have had a hand in funding a host of leftist organizations, including the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the National Organization for Women; Feminist Majority; the American Civil Liberties Union; People for the American Way; Alliance for Justice; NARAL Pro-Choice America; America Coming Together; the Center for American Progress; Campaign for America’s Future; Amnesty International; the Sentencing Project; the Center for Community Change; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Human Rights Watch; the Prison Moratorium Project; the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; the National Lawyers Guild; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Coalition for an International Criminal Court; The American Prospect; MoveOn.org; Planned Parenthood; the Nation Institute; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the National Security Archive Fund; the Pacifica Foundation; Physicians for Human Rights; the Proteus Fund; the Public Citizen Foundation; the Urban Institute; the American Friends Service Committee; Catholics for a Free Choice; Human Rights First; the Independent Media Institute; MADRE; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Immigration Law Center; the National Immigration Forum; the National Council of La Raza; the American Immigration Law Foundation; the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee; and the Peace and Security Funders Group.

The organizations he funds are a real giveaway. Some of them are the usual targets of conservative ire: the ACLU, the People for the American Way, NARAL, etc. But some of them are a little more, shall we say, extreme. How about the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee? You remember Lynne Stewart, don’t you? She’s the lawyer who aids and abets terrorists, and ended up imprisoned for doing so. And want about La Raza? That’s an organization that would like to see unlimited immigration and, in a best of all possible worlds, the reintegration of vast parts of the Southwest and California back into Mexico. You can go through the rest of the list and reach your own conclusions about where his money is going.

Do read Bookworm's entire post as it involves much more about Soros than what I have quoted above. What I find amazing is that the media would ignore the Soros connection in their reporting. Wherever there is Soros funding, what you are going to get is propaganda aimed at harming America, pure and simple. The corrupt Lancet / Johns Hopkins study is another shining example.

I guess the reason all of the above does not drive me stark raving nuts anymore is that the only people who could possibly be moved by this latest study by "non-profit organizations" are people already completely irrational and suffering BDS. Further, the MSM failing to point out a Soros connection merely makes them look like incompetent shills. And lastly, for all that Soros is trying to do, he is so heavy handed that his tactics are bound to back-fire. Most people do not like to be played for idiots or fed untruths. Indeed, Soros probably did more harm to the anti-war movement with the "General Betrayus" ad than any other person. The only thing we need to do to counter Soros is to keep a very bright light shining on his activities. If we had known that Soros had backed the startling Lancet report at the time it was released, the reason for the incredibly bad numbers would immediately have been suspected. As long as we keep the light on him, Soros may do his causes more harm than good.

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Interesting News From Around the Web

I agree with Tom Friedman this morning: "It’s clear that the surge by U.S. troops has really dampened violence in Iraq. So don’t we now need a surge in diplomacy to finish the job?" And I would take it a step further. We need a real bi-partisan effort now to capitalize on Iraq's pax Americana, both diplomatically and with aid. But see here - tough to do when the majority party wants nothing more than to surrender.

Herd Journalism - all the major news papers reporting on the positive developments in Iraq. "Taken together, these stories amount to a consensus that the surge of additional American troops and the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by General David Petraeus has worked - and worked brilliantly." Somebody tell Reid . . . anybody following the global warming arguments know that once a consensus has been achieved, the question has been answered beyond rebuttal.

What utter idiot signed off on this. "The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments."

Sometimes its just impossible to catch a break. "Top United Nations’ scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they wildly overstated the size and the spread of the AIDS epidemic, but that all the millions of people who don’t actually have AIDS will soon drown in the rising tide caused by man-made global climate change."

The cave where Romulus and Remus suckled at the tits of a she-wolf has been found.

The problems of policing, crime and punishment in a war zone.

Soros goes Horowitz hunting.

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