Not.
Since when did the CIA stop frisking informants?
As we learn more about the suicide bombing of CIA officers in Afghanistan, it seems that time-honored safety precautions were broken:
[The bomber] fed the agency honest-to-goodness actionable intelligence about jihadis to build up his credibility, to the point where he came to be regarded as their best asset in years. They looked the other way when he posted on jihadist online forums, accepting his assurances at face value that he was only saying what he was saying to fool the enemy ”” even though, of course, he wasn’t. Finally he told them that he had big news about Zawahiri, which drew a phalanx of CIA officers eager to land the biggest of the big fish. So eager, in fact, that he reportedly wasn’t given a polygraph before being taken to the base and was allowed to skip checkpoints before arriving at the rendezvous point.
This is every bit as shocking as the lapses that allowed the underwear bomber to get as far as he did. Actually, it’s a great deal more shocking, because this is the CIA in the field that we’re talking about, not a group of bureaucrats at computers in DC and a bunch of underpaid screeners at an airport.
It is axiomatic—even to laypeople—that in intelligence work, even if you’ve gotten some low-level information from an informant, that person might be setting you up and lulling you into a false sense of security, the better to betray you in the end. Yes, there has to be some sort of trust developed, but it must always be hedged with reservations. In other words, never fail to take the usual precautions and search for weapons. This rule was apparently violated. Another basic rule that was apparently violated is known as “don’t bunch up” (i.e. congregate in groups in the informant’s presence).
So, why might these rules have been broken? Perhaps the great excitement over the idea that the informant had information on a very big fish indeed—Zawahiri—caused the CIA operatives to let down their guard. Maybe there also was something about this particular informant, who was a well-educated Jordanian doctor, that engendered a sense of bonding and therefore trust (of course, Zawahiri is also a doctor, as have been no small number of other terrorists, as the CIA no doubt knows).
Although the Obama justice department has worried the CIA with threats of lawsuits over decisions made during the Bush administration about so-called “torture,” it’s hard to see how that could have impacted on this event, except to lead to a certain amount of demoralization.
But there’s another policy of the Obama administration that might have had an effect. Obama has been pushing the idea that, if we were just kinder and gentler in approaching other cultures and even potential enemies, they are more likely to be won over. This notion might have trickled down and influenced CIA policy in Afghanistan, with the goal of creating an atmosphere that would let this informant know he was trusted by dropping certain elementary security precautions.
When I heard the story, it reminded me somewhat of an event that occurred on September 9, 2001, the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan leader of the anti-Taliban movement. In the aftermath of 9/11, that killing was widely regarded as a preparation for the WTC and Pentagon attacks two days later, and the US retaliation against Afghanistan that was likely to follow.
Why do I say it’s similar? The assassins, North Africans masquerading as journalists and cameramen, spent weeks near Massoud’s camp, pressing for an interview with him and apparently gaining the trust of some of his entourage. Massoud and his staff were veterans of many assassination attempts and were highly aware of the need for tight security. But for some unknown reason the two “journalists” were not subject to the usual measures when the time finally arrived for the interview:
But the security was surprisingly slack. No one searched the men or examined their video camera. Massoud, who had survived assassination attempts, asked the men only where they came from and how they got there.
Massoud paid with his life for this moment of laxness. The country of Afghanistan paid as well, since it is often thought that his presence as a highly respected and admired figure might have helped unite Afghans under his leadership.
We’ll never know. But Massoud’s death, as well as the more recent deaths of the CIA agents, teach us one thing, and that is that anyone in such a position must never let down his/her guard. It has often been said that in order to succeed, “We have to be lucky all the time — but they only need to get lucky once.” It’s true that luck sometimes has something to do with it. But so does skillful execution. In order to prevent them from getting “lucky,” we must follow the security rules stringently, with no exceptions.
[ADDENDUM: See also this (hat tip: Artfldgr).]
They must be gluttons for punishment…
…because those Guantanamo prisoners are petitioning to be allowed to stay there.
What’s behind the Cafferty tirade on CNN?
Pigs fly, and liberal CNN pundit Jack Cafferty is very angry at Obama for breaking his campaign promise about health care debate transparency:
[See a transcript here.]
Not only is Cafferty unequivocal in calling Obama a liar, but he’s pretty blunt when he says, “Here’s hoping the voters remember some of this crap when the midterm elections roll around later this year.”
Cafferty has clearly had it right now with the Obama administration. But why is he going so far as to break ranks to say this? I don’t pretend to know, but here are my guesses:
(1) It’s not just that Obama lied, it’s the obviousness of the mendacity. There’s no wriggle room on this one; anyone who’s been paying any attention for the last two years knows it’s a bald-faced lie. And in addition, there’s been no explanation for it, and no excuses. The administration is simply ignoring the lie as though it doesn’t matter, and insulting the press in the bargain. This makes pundits who liked and supported Obama look foolish, and they don’t like to look that way. Thus, the anger—it’s personal now.
(2) I’m not familiar with Cafferty’s stand on health care reform, but my guess is that he may have wanted it to go much further than the current bill, and therefore is angry because that point of view will not be heard. Note that Cafferty begins this way:
How dare they? President Obama, Democratic leaders have decided to bypass a formal House and Senate conference committee in order to reconcile those two health care bills. Instead, White House and Democratic leaders will hold informal ”” that’s another word for secret ”” negotiations, meant to shut Republicans and the public out of the process.
The “public” that’s being shut out isn’t just the Republicans. If it had been, somehow I very much doubt that Cafferty would be speaking out against the process, despite the broken promises. But shutting out everyone else—including liberals and the press—well, “how dare they?” indeed!
The C-Span snub: more Big Lies, anyone?
So, is the breaking of Obama’s well-known and oft-repeated C-Span promise, and his concomitant refusal to address that fact, a function of his contempt for the American public? Is it his idea that the majority of Americans won’t notice or care, just as they seemed not to care about his lies during the campaign? Is it the arrogance of unchecked power? Or all of the above, and more?
Here’s a transcript of Press Secretary Gibbs’s exchange (if you can call it that; I’d call it a verbal flipping the bird) with the press when MSM reporters uncharacteristically tried to press him on the matter. I saw a clip of the back-and-forth on TV that I can’t find online, or I’d embed it here. But it showed a closeup of the face of CBS’s Chip Reid asking some of these questions, and he appeared to me to be simmering with anger towards Gibbs, although he controlled it well.
The press hasn’t gotten nearly angry enough. The Washington Examiner makes the point that:
The most radical expansion of central government power in American history is happening right under these journalists’ noses, and yet they raise not a peep of protest when the doors close, effectively barring them from doing their jobs at a critical juncture. Where are the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and the Radio and Television News Directors Association? These august organizations vigorously and rightfully protested former Vice President Richard Cheney’s secret meetings with oil company executives in the early days of the Bush administration. They also wailed loud and long about the Bush administration’s abuses, many real and some imagined, of the Freedom of Information Act.
To be sure, many of the reporters on the Hill gripe and complain to each other and to their editors about these closed-door meetings. And many of them stand keeping vigil outside the doors, waiting for Reid or Pelosi to come out and offer them a morsel of information. But that’s not good enough.
Nope, it’s not. The piece ends with the following, “[S]how some cojones, people.” I second the motion. But despite Reid’s simmer, I sure wouldn’t sit on a hot stove until they do.
In the meantime, Obama’s Chicago Way seems to be to clam up when you’re made to look like the liar that you are, and imagine (probably rightly so) that you’ll get away with it.
Gibbs has to be one of the worst presidential press secretaries in history, although Obama may be quite pleased with his smarmy, condescending manner. Gibbs is the bad cop to Obama’s “good” one; the real picture of Obama’s Dorian Gray. I almost feel sorry for Gibbs—almost, but not quite. If he had a shred of integrity he’d resign. And now I understand why the unlikeable Gibbs holds this post; how many people would be able to swallow their pride and lie like that to cover Obama’s tracks?
I hope the answer is “not many.” But I’m beginning to think it’s “quite a few.”
Smart people
Are you a smart person? I’m not.
And about that peak oil…
…Take a look at this.
Universal Voter Registration
Is this what’s behind the Democrats’ boldness in defying the American public? Do they believe that, once Universal Voter Registration is rammed firmly in place, they’ll be unbeatable?
Cautionary words from Hitler’s Germany: They Thought They Were Free
[Every now and then I may post an excerpt from Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free. The book, first published in 1955, is an exploration of Germans’ attitudes in the period leading up to WWII and including the war and its immediate aftermath. It features interviews with ten “typical” Germans, conducted a couple of years after the war’s end, and offers extraordinary and often relevant insights into how it was that Hitler came to power and stayed there so long. Here is my general discussion of the book and its author, who was a man of the left. To understand the following excerpt, it is helpful to know that for the purposes of the book, Mayer refers to the ten interviewees as his “friends.” ]
National Socialism was a repulsion of my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government—against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving. It was the final fruit of the common man’s repudiation of “the rascals.” Its motif was “throw them all out.” My friends, in the 1920’s, were like spectators at a wrestling match who suspect that beneath all the grunts and groans, the struggle and the sweat, the match is “fixed,” that the performers are only pretending to put on a fight. The scandals that rocked the country, as one party or cabal “exposed” another, dismayed and then disgusted my friends…
While the ship of the German State was being shivered, the officers, who alone had life preservers, disputed their prerogatives on the bridge. My friends observed that none of the non-Communist, non-Nazi leaders objected to the 35,000 Reichsmark salaries of the cabinet ministers, only the Communists and the Nazis objected. And the bitterest single disappointment of Nazism…was the fact that Hitler had promised that no official would get more than 1,000 Reichsmarks a month and did not keep his promise.
My friends wanted Germany purified. They wanted it purified of the politicians, of all the politicians. They wanted a representative leader in place of unrepresentative representatives. And Hitler, the pure man, the antipolitician, was the man, untainted by “politics,” which was only a cloak for corruption…Against “the whole pack,” “the whole kaboodle,” “the whole business,” against all the parliamentary parties, my friends evoked Hitlerism, and Hitlerism overthrew them all…
This was the Bewegung, the movement, that restored my friends and bewitched them. Those Germans who saw it all at the beginning—there were not very many; there never are, I suppose, anywhere—called Hitler the Rattenfé¤nger, the “ratcatcher.” Every American child has read The Pied-Piper of Hamlin. Every German child has read it, too. In German its title is Der Rattenfé¤nger von Hameln
[NOTE: Additional excerpts will follow at intervals.]
Pelosi’s been reading her Goebbels
C-SPAN wrote a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday asking that TV cameras be allowed to film negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate versions of healthcare reform legislation.
But Pelosi said Congress has already been transparent throughout the process.
“There has never been a more open process for any legislation,” Pelosi said at a press conference.
Yes, and I’m the Queen of Sheba.
Check out the comments section for the article; I have never seen such intense rage before from virtually every single commenter, and this in a thread that now numbers over 1500. No one is defending Pelosi, probably because the liberals who ordinarily would be inclined to do so are angry at being shut out of the negotiating process as well. What many of the posters there are saying about Pelosi can’t be repeated on a family blog. And just think—this woman is third in line for the presidency.
The biggest problem isn’t Pelosi’s egregious lying, however, nor the contempt in which she obviously holds Americans, although both are indeed huge problems. But even worse, the checks that should limit her are not in place, because despite Pelosi’s outrageous and—yes, un-American—behavior, there’s no chance that the House of Representatives will find enough votes to call for her removal and the election of a new (and better??) Speaker, and there’s every likelihood that the MSM will keep mum about her excesses and mendacity.
I wrote “Goebbels” in the title of this post. But while it’s true that he discussed the technique, and most people attribute the idea to him, it actually was none other than Hitler who first voiced the concept, in Mein Kampf:
All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true in itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
Note that Hitler was not saying he was about to use the Big Lie. In the original context, the quote was imputing its use to his favorite enemies, the Jews and the Marxists, which of course (at least regarding the Jews) is a Big Lie itself. Then, during the war, Propaganda Minister Goebbels accused the English of being practitioners:
The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
In 1984 Orwell had this to say about what he referred to as “blackwhite:”
To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed.
I think the latter description fits Pelosi; my guess is that, although on a certain level she knows she’s lying, she temporarily and strategically believes her own lies, in the time-honored leftist manner described here. But does Pelosi believe the technique will work, and that the American public will buy those lies? Or if not, does she believe it doesn’t matter, because right now she’s got the power?
[NOTE: Michelle Malkin calls Pelosi and company vampires:
Meet the Beltway bloodsuckers. They convene in the dead of night, when most ordinary mortals have left work, let their guard down, or are lying asleep in bed. Pale-faced and insatiable, the nocturnal thieves do their nefarious business in backrooms and secret chambers. Their primary victims? Taxpayers, the free market, and deliberative democracy.]
Post-holiday thanks
Now that the holidays are over (see all those Valentine candies in the stores?), I’d like to offer a big heartfelt thanks to all of you who placed Amazon orders for Christmas and Chanukah gifts through this blog, and also to all those kind souls who donated to me via Paypal. I hope to be worthy in the coming year!
What sort of criticism of Obama is considered acceptable?
None.
Good old Andrew Sullivan is on the case of those who saw this official White House photo of Obama as condescending and arrogant:
Obama’s supporters see the pose as James Bondish—although I can’t see how that would eliminate arrogance; after all, wasn’t James Bond condescending and arrogant, albeit in a charming and attractive way?
But Sullivan isn’t having any of it:
I tried to puzzle this one out and can just about see how an elusive photo of a tired Obama reacting to something unknowable might make him look tired or arrogant or something.
And then I realized why this photo immediately strikes some people are damning. Obama is a black man who looks as if he is condescending to a white man. That’s political gold.
So, anyone who sees this as condescending is ipso facto racist. As for me, the moment I first looked at the photo, what came to my mind was something quite different: Mafia don. But I suppose that’s racist as well—towards Italians, or Sicilians, or Mafiosi, or whatever. Although some of my best friends are…
So Obama can’t be called condescending, especially if he’s looking at a white man, without the caller being called racist.
But what if Obama were to look condescendingly at a black man? Could we call him condescending then? No; if we did, we’d be guilty of saying Obama’s an Uncle Tom, looking down on his own race. And that would be, um, racist of us.
What if we said some things Obama does are stupid? You know, like what Democrats said about the stoooopid Bush, his predecessor? Clearly, that would be racist, because we’d be saying black people are less intelligent than white people (except, of course, for Bush, the stupidest white person of them all and perhaps the stupidest person on earth).
What if we said Obama’s a leftist? That would be McCarthy-esque, as well as racist, because everyone knows that “leftist” or “socialist” is a code word for black. Lest you think I’m making that up, please revisit this.
And then there’s “liar.” When Joe Wilson tried it, Maureen Dowd heard it as, “You lie, boy!” Racism is in the ear of the listener.
Call Obama inexperienced, and it’s the same thing: young, as in “boy,” as in—well, you get the drift.
There was a lot of this going around during the campaign and in the early days of Obama’s presidency. But it appeared to have died down in recent months, mostly because there were clearly so many bona fide reasons to criticize Obama, and also because the “racist” charge got very old and tired and ineffective.
But here it is again; what could that mean? Perhaps Obama’s supporters are feeling old and tired and ineffective—as tired as he looks in the photo?