Friday, September 08, 2006

The Path To 9/11

Odd that the same people who defend every manner of baseless slander against President Bush, or any other Republican, on the basis of freedom of speech, are all for censorship when it comes to portrayals of, or accusations against, Clinton and fellow Democrats. (story) In fact, Michael Moore is considered a hero of the left while his films, loosely called documentaries, are historically inaccurate and take many liberties with the "truth".

The film is called The Path to 9/11, and the "path" starts in 1993 and leads up to 9/11/2001. Since Bush came into office in early 2001, it stands to reason that the bulk of this "path" lies in the years prior to 2001... The Clinton era. There apparently is material in the second half of the film which is less than flattering to the Bush administration, but at the time the protests and clatter over the film started many had only seen the first half of it.

Dems, liberals, et al, get it through your thick overly partisan skulls... beginning in 1993 with the first bombing at the WTC, the path to 9/11 courses largely through Clinton's front yard. The film does not deal with Iraq or any of the aftermath, just key events that led to 9/11, so it has to deal with the time Clinton was in office, more than it would with Bush. And liberals fault Bush for not admitting mistakes! What raw hypocrisy.

In case your selective memory prevents you from recalling any of that history, here is a list of attacks around the world leading up to when Bush took office. This is not a defense of Bush or an attack on Clinton, just a list of facts.

* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.

* February 26, 1993: Islamic terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with car bombs. They failed to destroy the buildings, but killed 6 and injured over 1000 people.

* March 12, 1993: Car bombings in Mumbai, India leave 257 dead and 1,400 others injured.

* July 18, 1994: Bombing of Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 86 and wounds 300. The bombing is generally attributed to Hezbollah acting on behalf of Iran.

* July 19, 1994: Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 is bombed, killing 21. Generally attributed to Hezbollah.

* July 26, 1994: The Israeli Embassy is attacked in London, and a Jewish charity is also car-bombed, wounding 20. The attacks are attributed to Hezbollah.

* December 11, 1994: A bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. It develops that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for the larger terrorist attack he is planning.

* December 24, 1994: In a preview of September 11, Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by Islamic terrorists who planned to crash the plane in Paris.

* January 6, 1995: Operation Bojinka, an Islamist plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after a fire occurred in the apartment. Noted terrorists including Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are involved in the plot.

* June 14—June 19, 1995: The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, in which 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed following an attack by Chechan Islamists.

* July—October, 1995: Bombings in France by Islamic terrorists led by Khaled Kelkal kill eight and injure more than 100.

* November 13, 1995: Bombing of OPM-SANG building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 7

* November 19, 1995: Bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan kills 19.

* January 1996: In Kizlyar, 350 Chechen Islamists took 3,000 hostages in a hospital. The attempt to free them killed 65 civilians and soldiers.

* February 25 - March 4, 1996: A series of four suicide bombings in Israel leave 60 dead and 284 wounded within 10 days.

* June 11, 1996: A bomb explodes on a train traveling on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line of the Moscow Metro, killing four and unjuring at least 12.

* June 25, 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 wounded.

* February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from several countries. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".

* November 17, 1997: Massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which Islamist gunmen attack tourists, killing 62 people.

* January 1998: Wandhama Massacre - 24 Kashmiri Pandits are massacred by Pakistan-backed Islamists in the city of Wandhama in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

* February 14, 1998: Bombings by Islamic Jihadi groups at an election rally in the Indian city of Coimbatore kill about 60 people.

* August 7, 1998: Al Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.

* August 31 – September 22, 1998: Russian apartment bombings kill about 300 people, leading Russia into Second Chechen War.

* December 1998: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, and arrest 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

* December 14, 1998: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

* December 24, 1998: Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India is hijacked by Islamic terrorists. One passenger is killed and some hostages are released. After negotiations between the Taliban and the Indian government, the last of the remaining hostages on board Flight 814 are released in exchange for release of 4 terrorists.

* January 2000: The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.

* August 8, 2000: A bomb exploded at an underpass in Pushkin Square in Moscow, killing 11 people and wounding more than 90.

* August 17, 2000: Two bombs exploded in a shopping center in Riga, Latvia, injuring 35 people.

* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

For Democrats, It Is All About Winning Power In DC.

"When gas prices rose to near record levels this summer, it was supposedly due to the incompetence of the Bush administration. Gas prices have now dropped to well under $3 a gallon where I live. If it was Bush's "incompetence" that caused the spike, does he now get credit for the decline? Market forces set gas prices, so he should neither be blamed for the spike, nor praised for the decline, but the Democrats won't see it that way.

August employment figures again show a healthy economy due largely to what Democrats call "irresponsible" tax cuts for the wealthy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total non-farm payroll employment increased by 128,000 last month, with the unemployment rate staying at a low 4.7 percent. Does the president get competence points for this? Not from Democrats.

The war on terror scored an important victory last weekend with the arrest of al-Qaida's No. 2 in Iraq, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi. Iraqi and coalition forces issued a statement that said the arrest has caused al-Qaida a "serious leadership crisis." Will Democrats and their media allies praise the Bush administration for this sign of competence in fighting the Iraq War? No, because this is about Democrats regaining power and nothing more. Were the Bush administration to announce it had discovered the fountain of youth and cures for cancer and adolescent rebellion, it wouldn't be enough.

At a symposium last spring on "Islam and the West," which was sponsored by The World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations noted, "The human species is facing a huge historical, cultural problem. … For reasons that have very little to do with the U.S., we need to face the fact that we'll be living with this for a very long time." Mead said it isn't just an Arab problem, but an Islamic world problem, which transcends borders and regions. "If you don't understand this, you're deluding yourself," he said.

Do Democrats and their media allies understand this or are they deluding themselves? What would they do differently from the Bush administration in credibly fighting this plague that transcends borders, regions and even political parties? Should Democrats win a congressional majority in the fall election, they must do more than try to frustrate the president, hoping to win the White House in 2008. The war won't wait for them to prove their competence, or incompetence. " - Cal Thomas