Cruz vs. Jeh Johnson on Islamic terrorism
This clip features an exchange between Senator Ted Cruz and Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson that occurred during the Senate hearing on ““Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts To Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.” In it you can see what a great lawyer Cruz is, and how he maintains a calm and even tone as he wields the verbal stiletto. Johnson manages to reveal his own condescending attitude:; he seems to resent even being asked the questions:
Hear no evil
Speak no evil
See no evil
Jeh Johnson arrogantly resents wasting his time with investigations that will go nowhere and change not a thing.
Even were they so inclined, the GOP can do nothing about the traitors in the Obama administration. Impeachment is a political trial and must have both bipartisan support and a large majority of the public’s support.
Nor, should they win the Presidency again, will the GOP support going after these traitors, because they know that the next democrat President will then go after them. Jeh Johnson is well aware of all of this…
Supercilious describes the members of team obama, with the head of the team the most arrogant of them all. They lie knowing that someone like Cruz knows they are lying.
All Kabuki theater. As GB noted, nothing will come of this and there’s no reason for any Obama administration member to fear the GOP or Congress. They know they’ve won, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Happy 4th of July! Ironic isn’t it?
physicsguy:
“They know they’ve won, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Replacing that helplessness requires activism.
Some black affirmative crutch official hanging off Hussein’s back.
It was Democrats as normal Americans, who helped bring us Hussein. It is ironic now that they blame the whole system for it, like it isn’t their issue. It is very much an issue they are related to. Even if they want to or have changed party affiliations now. They are still responsible and will be held to account.
Changing the system means nothing until people look in their own hearts for evil and extinguish it.
As for “purge”, that was easy for me to see. I, unlike others, don’t need government documents to tell me what is going on.
Eric,
Unchecked immigration, with both parties in favor of a path to amnesty and then citizenship, academia overwhelmingly dedicated to leftist indoctrination and a mass media committed to propaganda… 47% and rising increasingly dependent upon various forms of welfare and a Federal government populated by enemies of the constitution. Yet you imagine that a social activist movement sure to be demonized can counteract all of that… right.
I keep pointing out that the country is being run by the Post Office.
Some might think that racist. Sorry.
GB:
Eric lays out what is needed to make a difference, an improvement, in his judgment. Activism. It’s also called work. Or you can do nothing and complain about the state of the world and the country.
Parker
They lie knowing that someone like Cruz knows they are lying.
This not first may not the last in serise of lying, the previous adminstration had a lot of lies from Hollande security to CIA further to US president office and staff to those in media
These are few for you to refresh your short memory……
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_military_analyst_program
New York Times
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iraq-war-and-stubborn-myths-1428087215
Colin Powell’s 2003 U.N. addres
Cruz may actually be more valuable where he is than embroiled in the presidential campaign circus.
Uri,
Yeah, I totally trust the NYT.
Uri,
You might want to vet your sources (i.e. the New York Times as a factual authoritative source? Without an agenda?) and please note: while Wikipedia is often a convenient source of information, it is an “open-source” base of information which means anyone can post information about anything. Before you cite it as a source for scientific or historical fact, please see Wikipedia’s own self-description and disclaimer regarding content.
Alternatively
Uri,
Alternatively, you might find the following pertinent:
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page346376
lol, actually jeh, investigated and harassed phil haney, who did all the scrutiny of the tabligh network for two years, so he’s worse than useless,
Condescension and resentment at being questioned seem to be in fashion this season. As maddening as this election season has been, at least it has laid bare the class dynamics of contemporary American society.
And notably absent from the liberal Democrat blowhard’s list of 17 possible nominees to SCOTUS – Ted Cruz.
OM,
Eric lays out what we need to do but provides no mechanism by which conservative activism may be leveraged. A lever is useless without a fulcrum.
The left’s activism works because they have captive venues through which to propagandize, i.e. the mass media, academia and public ‘education’ and, at least since Obama’s election is now using the government to enforce the implementation of its propaganda. Such as transgendered bathrooms and locker rooms.
Suggesting that we can effectively counter all of that through sit-ins, protests and lobbying a RINO, corrupt Congress is laughable self-delusion.
Recognizing and acknowledging the reality of the ‘battlefield’ isn’t “giving up”, it’s abandoning the minimization of our enemy’s weapons.
Nor is recognizing that Obama’s 54% approval rating reveals that only catastrophe will awaken enough of the LIV’s to make a real change in the direction of this nation… “giving up”.
GB:
You offer nothing but pessimism but call it “realism” and mock those who aren’t enervated or inert.
I had to stop before the end of the video.
Johnson’s affect, tone and face are reptilian and — a word I almost never use — Satanic. These people have been recruited from the lowest circles of Hell, to which they will hopefully return asap.
In the meantime, boy are we f****d.
With all due respect to Cruz – his line of questioning implies that the failure to prevent those terrorist attacks was in some way related to the terminology. I don’t like the avoidance of references to Islam. I think it’s juvenile and condescending. But I don’t know that it’s affected the way we investigate.
I mean, does it? My gut says that the FBI questions mosque-attendees more often than church-attendees. There may be people in, say, the Army who are less likely to share their suspicions about a Muslim because they think it’d come back to haunt them, but that’s unrelated. The DHS could say “jihad” every five minutes and they’d still be nervous about it. Yeah, it’d be a sign of intelligence if we could call a jihadi a jihadi, but if the government is investigating possible jihadis as they should be, then Cruz’s line of questioning was irrelevant.
I get the feeling that I just said the same thing over and over again, but I just want to be sure that I got the right point across. If we failed to pay attention to the Tsarnaev brothers because we don’t prioritize Muslim threats, then we’re making a mistake. The purging of references to Islam doesn’t prove that we’re making that mistake, though.
if you don’t call things by their right name, then you can’t identify who to target, the tabligh network that encompasses
all the cases from boston to orlando,
Nick:
Actually, that’s not what Cruz implies. He makes it pretty clear, I think, that it’s not the failure to publicly call it Islamic terrorism that’s at fault. It’s the failure to put references to Islam in the training manuals of law enforcement and intelligence, so that they know little about what they’re looking for and are actively discouraged from learning about it, monitoring it, questioning suspects about it, tracking it, or responding to tips about it.
See this. And take a look at the following:
There is no way on earth that effective intelligence about terrorism can proceed without an understanding of those terms and their significance. It is an absurdity to think so. This is not semantics; this is very very basic.
Eric lays out what we need to do but provides no mechanism by which conservative activism may be leveraged. A lever is useless without a fulcrum.
There are plenty of levers provided by Donald, Cruz, or Alternative Right movements.
They’re not united, but that’s probably asking for too much luxury now a days, with god forsaken country that hates and curses God, so they elected Hussein. Good one there.
I get the feeling that I just said the same thing over and over again, but I just want to be sure that I got the right point across. If we failed to pay attention to the Tsarnaev brothers because we don’t prioritize Muslim threats, then we’re making a mistake. The purging of references to Islam doesn’t prove that we’re making that mistake, though.
CAIR trains the FBI. When the FBi connects the dots between terrorists, CAIR erases those connections. That’s what is really being discussed here.
Cruz is just working off official documentation, you know, the stuff they didn’t accidentally “delete” on their servers.
In the meantime, boy are we f****d.
Ever see Muslims desecrating Christian altars and holy places?
Ever think what happens to a country’s connection to God, the spiritual conduit to the godhead, when the nation kills 30+ million souls using Aztec blood magic?
I do, and I’ve come to some interesting conclusions.
Demons don’t need to go back to hell, when they have hell right here on Earth, principalities and powers, where the prince of the Demoncrats is the usual.
I see the distinction you’re making, but I think we’re talking about essentially the same thing: the possibility of an incomplete investigation due to a withholding of information from training material. Cruz referred to specific investigations. In which of those cases did an investigation fall short because of training material? Did the guy investigating the Tsarnaev brothers not realize what was sketchy about Chechnya? How much further should the investigation of Mateen gone, and on what basis? That troll Ahmed Mohamad in Texas – he knew that a showing up at high school with a homemade clock would scare people, because everyone in the world can put 1 and 1 together. So I’d need to see some very specific proof that the DHS’s terminology has reduced their effectiveness.
Nick:
To look for more specifics you would probably either have to watch the entire proceedings of the committee or read all the transcripts. You can find some of the transcripts of testimony so far at this site. The problem is not just about investigating acts of terror that have already occurred, or analyzing them, it’s about preventing future ones, or gaining intelligence on the phenomenon.
For example, there’s this from Andrew McCarthy. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, start reading in particular at page 11 and read to the end. In addition, take a look at this as well as this.
Cruz didn’t make his statements in a vacuum; there was a lot of other testimony as to some of the details. Those are transcripts of only some of the testimony; I’m not sure where you can find the rest if you want more.
but I think we’re talking about essentially the same thing: the possibility of an incomplete investigation due to a withholding of information from training material.
Not quite. I’m talking about trained FBI officers and agents who already know what is going on, but they are ordered to stand down and allow terrorists to operate freely. That is quite different from a bunch of army puke incompetents out of boot camp, that need to be “retrained”. It doesn’t matter what the training document is, if the problem are the orders from the top.
Intel on terrorism doesn’t depend primarily on training documents. It depends on networking and observing known terrorists like Hasan and what not. The training documents are merely an implication, it implicates the illegal orders or treasonous orders, which are not recorded.
So I’d need to see some very specific proof that the DHS’s terminology has reduced their effectiveness.
Spoken like a lawyer for Hillary Clinton and Louis lerner, no insult intended.
They would say “show us the proof”. Where is the proof?
My answer: You Deleted the Proof, did you not.
I read Andrew McCarthy’s testimony. I’ve read his stuff before, and I respect him. I’m sure he knows a lot more than I do. He’s a seasoned prosecutor; I’m a doof on the internet. I just don’t see where the line is that he thinks we’re not crossing. Mateen was investigated, which tells you that we are investigating suspicious extremist Muslims. McCarthy says that Mateen wasn’t committing crimes. Maybe he should have been investigated further, maybe not. As McCarthy notes, we have limited resources.
What, concretely, are we not doing in these investigations that we should be doing? Referencing the administration’s commitment to their bizarre terminology isn’t an answer. I just can’t get angry about this (other than the smug look on Jeh’s face) until I hear what we’re doing wrong.
Nick:
You mention Andrew McCarthy’s testimony. You didn’t mention the other links I gave you, particularly the part about the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR. I have no idea what you’re actually asking, because I think the answers are in there. Did you read those links?
I would cut and paste some excerpts, except unfortunately they are PDF files and when you cut and paste them they come out in a very strange and-impossible-to-read format, with about one or two words on a line. So I don’t have the time to do that and re-format them. I will say that you should specifically read that last link I gave, and I’ll just offer this one excerpt (in which the formatting wasn’t as bad as in some of the other links):
When things are shut down for PC reasons and not followed up on, how can a person prove what would have happened but for the shut down? The problem is that the actionable intelligence that could have been gathered was not gathered, so how can you prove exactly what it was that wasn’t gathered and how the dots would have been connected? That’s requiring a type and level of proof that is unobtainable. But a person can still logically connect the dots that it probably would have mattered, and plenty of connections (some actionable) would most likely have been found if the leads had been allowed to have been pursued and the research was not forbidden.
It’s not just the words terrorism and jihad and the like, it’s the connections with mosques and with groups that are covers for terrorism, such as CAIR, and those connections are not allowed to be talked about (because those very groups are advising the government!)
I also think this by McCarthy is very important [emphasis mine]:
Then start reading at the top of page 14. He explains how the FBI is hampered in its investigations by following the guidelines. It’s too long to go into here, but I think it’s very clear that Mateen was missed for these reasons. I can’t prove it, because we don’t have an alternate world in which we can try it out, but it is a very very logical (and I believe almost inevitable) conclusion.
I’ve read his stuff before, and I respect him. I’m sure he knows a lot more than I do.-Nick
The problem with trusting humans is that humans are easy corrupted by evil. They also tend to be wrong, statistically speaking.
If you lack confidence and authority to decide, what makes you think anybody else is sufficient enough to replace your judgment? That lack of confidence and authority is also why you fail to make accurate assessments of the character and veracity, the wisdom or evil, of these witnesses and authorities.
I don’t place my trust in the system, especially The System, nor their apparatchiks.
Mateen was investigated, which tells you that we are investigating suspicious extremist Muslims.
He was investigated and because he had terrorist ties, the FBI were ordered to leave him alone and to allow him to operate freely. The FBI has been doing this since almost day one under Hussein. And it’s noticeable if you count the number of successful terrorist attacks on US soil for Bush II’s 8 years vs Hussein Obola’s 8 years.
McCarthy says that Mateen wasn’t committing crimes.
That didn’t stop Democrats from ordering the FBI to observe Republicans and spy on them, from FDR, to JFK, and onwards.
The FBI knows how to do domestic counter terrorism. They know how to spy and observe targets or potential terrorists, then arrest them when they’re buying bombs. Or guns. Or anything else for that matter.
The FBI prevented several terrorist attacks and arrested some idiots buying bombs or weapons from FBI undercover agents. The FBI, in 2008, weren’t incompetent or lacking “training” manuals. Suddenly they got blind all of a sudden under Hussein.
Lerner: I take the Fifth.
yeah, I’m sure you would.
As for the FBI lacking resources… heh. They have plenty of resources, provided to them by the patriot former President Bush II of the two terms.
Jeh Johnson made a point about being a lawyer in the DOD that had approval authority on drone strikes. This has proved to be a bad idea for the military morale and a good thing for our enemies, but not just because of Jeh’s wisdom, biases, and political leanings. Those factors only make the situation worse, the enemy learns how to exploit the flaws and features of having lawyers (JAGs and worse) in control, while civilians and our military are ignored.
“Morale: When Lawyers Rules The Battlefield”
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20160705.aspx