Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

In anticipation of their surrender strategy becoming substantially less popular in the wake of another terrorist attack, the Democrats are all claiming that the threat of terrorism was nonexistent — notwithstanding 9/11, the Cole bombing, the bombing of our embassies, the bombing of the World Trade Center, the Achille Lauro, etc. etc. — until George Bush invaded Iraq.

Ann Coulter - 7-18-07

Quote of the day - Richard Miniter

[S]tarting in 1993, Rep. Bill McCollum (R., Fla.) repeatedly wrote to President Clinton and warned him and other administration officials about bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. McCollum was the founder and chairman of the House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and had developed a wealth of contacts among the mujihedeen in Afghanistan. Those sources, who regularly visited McCollum, informed him about bin Laden's training camps and evil ambitions.

Richard Miniter - interview with NRO - September 11, 2003.

CNN 9-11 coverage; Jeff Greenfield; the day America's luck ran out

Click here for previous commentary of CNN's 9-11 news coverage.

As I noted earlier, CNN reran (on its "Pipeline" website) its coverage of the September 11 attacks. Another item I noted was the commentary of Jeff Greenfield. At one point, Greenfield listed some of the attacks that had occured during the previous few years, such as the first WTC bombing (in 1993), the USS Cole and the foiled millenium bombing. He stated that we had been lucky thus far, but today was apparently the day that our luck had run out. [I believe I am paraphrasing pretty closely here.]

I think a parallel is developing with current events in Iran. We have been lucky thus far that Iran (or Al Qaeda, etc.) has not delivered a nuclear device for detonation in Manhattan. The day will come when our luck runs out again and it will make 9-11 look mild by comparison.

As CCN viewers listened to Greenfield's comments on 9-11-01, I imagine many of them wished we had done more to protect ourselves after each of the previous events that he listed. We have that chance now. We have the chance to disarm Iran NOW before its nuclear program is complete and before it destroys a major American city. We have the chance to avoid the mistakes of the 1990's. I don't want to find myself sitting in front of a TV someday listening to future commentators tell us that our luck has run out yet again as we desparately await news from a 10 mile radius around a flattened and glowing New York City.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

If the Clinton era was characterised by anything, it was public passivity – sometimes because people were content (the economy), sometimes because they were ambivalent (abortion), sometimes because they just didn’t want to know about it (his sex life), sometimes because they were scrupulously non-judgmental to the point of ennui (altogether now: “Everybody does it”).

Mark Steyn - September 22, 2001

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

It's easy to fly in a guy in a suit to hold a meeting. Half the fellows inside the Beltway have Middle East "peace plans" named after them. Bush flew in himself a year or two back to announce his "road map." Before that it was Cheney, who flew in with the Cheney plan, which was a plan to open up a road map back to the last plan, which would get us back to "Tenet," which would get us back to "Mitchell," which would get us back to "Wye River," which would get us back to "Oslo," which would get us back to Kansas.

Mark Steyn July 16, 2006

TWA flight 800 - ten year anniversary

Today is the tenth anniversary of the destruction of TWA flight 800 near Long Island.





There have been many theories as to what happened. The government eventually provided some explanation that no one can remember. One thing that the establishment agrees upon is that the crash was definitely not caused by terrorism, despite bomb powder found on a seat cover and numerous eyewitnesses. I remember the bomb powder story coming out in the mainstream press in September 1996, only to be quickly retracted later that day or the next day.

I think that Al Qaeda became frustrated in the 1990's because we continuously characterized their airline attacks as accidents. 9-11 was partially the result of bin Laden's desire to create an attack that could not be mistaken for an accident.



I also believe that if, on 9-11, only one plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, the government would have characterized the attack as an accident. Try to imagine the official response from the government and the MSM/DNC in that scenario. Those who pointed out the presence of multiple arab travelers on the plane and numerous cell phone calls from passengers in the moments before the crash would be dismissed as paranoid conspiracy theorists. Afghanistan would today be ruled by the Taliban and Iraq would be ruled by Saddam Hussein. There would have been no crackdown on domestic terrorists. And there would have been many additional unexplained airline crashes in the United States ever since.

Remember also, the MSM/DNC game plan as it relates to terrorist attacks that occured prior to 2001 (and how we can combat that game plan):

For the benefit of the left and the MSM/DNC, here is a chronology:

(1) Global terrorism occurred many times over the past thirty or more years.

(2) We began to fight back, including the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

(3) The MSM/DNC began a relentless campaign to reverse the order of ## 1 and 2 in the minds of the public. That is a very difficult task. Judging from the last election, this strategy has worked with only 47% of the voters.

previous anniversaries down the memory hole - TWA flight 847, Achille Lauro, African embassy bombings.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

During all the time the Great Men were shuttling back and forth, a kind of toxic globalization occurred: The Palestinian "movement" (insofar as there ever was a genuine nationalist movement) became infected and eventually annexed by hard-core Islamism and the Palestinians' most depraved terror techniques were exported to every corner of the world. You can build a "security fence" in the region, but what we might call Palestinianism has leapt the psychological fence and incubated in radicalized Muslim communities worldwide: It's not just Palestinians but also Yorkshiremen who now blow themselves up on public transit.

Mark Steyn - July 16, 2006

World Trade Center anniversary/ Waco anniversary

Big hat tip to Atlas and Debbie Schlussel for remembering the anniversary of the first World Trade Center attack on February 26, 1993.

The MSM/DNC would like us to believe that terrorism started only after the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, just like hurricanes started only when George Bush became President.

The original WTC attack (1993) killed 6 people and injured 1,000 others. The story dominated the news for about one day and a half.

The reason this story dominated the news for only one day and a half can be found in the response of the Clinton administration. Two days after Islamic radicals began the attack that eventually killed 3,000 Americans and destroyed the 2 towers, the Clinton administration swung into action. The administration attacked some people in a compound near Waco, Texas. America would become bogged down in the Waco fiasco for the next two months until most of the compound residents would be burned alive and the WTC attackers would be forgotten. Two years later, Tim McVeigh destroyed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in retaliation. Lost in all of this unnecessary tragedy was the continued efforts of the Islamic terrorists to destroy the United States. 9-11-01 was the eventual result.

Thirteen years and two days ago.




Thirteen years ago today.

U.S.S. Cole anniversary

Michelle Malkin asks bloggers to note the anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole. She has a thorough roundup.

As I said earlier this week in reference to the Achille Lauro anniversary:

The MSM/DNC prefers to remain silent about this anniversary because it wants us to believe that terrorism began during the Presidency of George Bush - just like hurricanes.

Achille Lauro anniversary; Leon Klinghoffer; Abu Abbas; Tailhook

Debbie Schlussel reminds us of another forgotten anniversary today. Twenty years ago this past weekend, Palestinian terrorists under the direction of Abu Abbas hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered a wheel chair bound American named Leon Klinghoffer. [The anniversary of Klinghoffer's murder is October 8th.] The MSM/DNC prefers to remain silent about this anniversary because it wants us to believe that terrorism began during the Presidency of George Bush - just like hurricanes.

Achille Lauro - subject of 1985 terrorist hijacking






The Achille Lauro was destroyed in 1994 by an unrelated fire. I do not know of any terrorist connection to that fire. The left knows of no connection between George W. Bush and that fire.

The fire that destroyed the Achille Lauro occurred several weeks after George Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994 - why didn't Bush prevent this tragedy? Where is the Halliburton connection?



But I digress -

There is more info at Debbie's blog.

After the hijacking, American jet fighters captured the terrorists as they attempted to escape.

Abu Abbas was later captured by U.S. forces after liberating Baghdad. Ann Coulter wrote an excellent summary of the whole incident and the left's continued struggle to appease the terrorists and punish the American military who captured them:

In 1985, Muslim terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and threatened to kill the passengers and crew unless 50 imprisoned Palestinians were released by Israel. The terrorists doused American and British women with gasoline and taunted them with matches. They forced passengers to hold live grenades. When their demands were not met, the terrorists shot a wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoffer, and forced other passengers at gunpoint to throw him overboard in his wheelchair.

Oliver North and Admiral Kelso then conceived and executed the plan to capture the terrorists.

Adm. Frank Kelso, the officer in charge of America's Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, ordered his men to carry out the mission. In no time flat, Tomcat fighters had taken off from the U.S. aircraft carrier Saratoga. After refueling in midair and guided by Hawkeyes, the Tomcats caught up with the EgyptAir flight. The fighters stealthily trailed their target for a while in total darkness, their lights off, even in the cockpit. Then the Tomcats swooped in on the EgyptAir flight, surrounded the plane, and forced it to land at a NATO base on Sicily controlled by the United States.

The New York Post headline the next day was: "GOT 'EM." Reagan said: "I salute the Navy."

And then Abul Abbas was released by the Europeans -- whom liberals insist on approval from in this war. Abbas dashed to safety in Iraq under Saddam Hussein -- whom liberals have assured us was not harboring terrorists. Republican presidents keep catching terrorists while liberals keep sending them back.

emphasis added

The American left responded to the capture of the terrorists by punishing Admiral Kelso with the trumped up tailhook scandal.

If there is a parable of how liberals support the enemy, this is it. Adm. Kelso, whose men carried out the dauntless EgyptAir interception, was cashiered out of the Navy because of "Tailhook." Feminists don't care about Saddam Hussein and his rape rooms. But they were hopping mad at Adm. Kelso for walking through the Tailhook convention to say hello to his boys -- boys who captured Leon Klinghoffer's murderers.

The many lessons from this anniversary have much relevance for the war on terror:

Now liberals are demanding that the Europeans be let into Iraq so they can release some more terrorists, while liberals do their part at home, carving up the colonels and admirals who capture people who murder Americans.

Read the whole Coulter and Schlussel articles and send them to the next person you hear demanding that we leave Iraq.

USS Iowa shunned by San Francisco.

The San Francisco board of supervisors has vetoed plans to place the USS Iowa on display in San Francisco bay. The decision was made on ideological grounds.

This is old news. The decision was made a month ago (and discussed on the internet at that time). I don't know why Yahoo, Rush Limbaugh and Hannity were discussing this item today. I must have missed some angle that makes the subject news today instead of last month.

near Pearl Harbor 1952

The Iowa was in the center of the battle to homosexualize the military in 1989 when an explosion tore through one of its main gun turrets, killing 47 sailors. The Navy's original report attributed the explosion to sabotage by a homosexual sailor upset over a jilted lover (I believe both men served on board at the time). The report was quickly rebuffed and attacked by the MSM/DNC and was quickly retracted by the Navy. The original report continues to generate MSM/DNC hate pieces online and elsewhere.

The official line today is that we don't know what caused the explosion, but the only cause we can rule out is homosexual sabotage. The affair reminds me of numerous airplane crashes in the 1990's (TWA 800, Egypt Air, etc.). The cause of the crashes remains a mystery, but the federal government quickly ruled out terrorism. Maybe if four different battleships had suffered from simultaneous similar explosions, the official story would not be so benign.

An anniversary buried down the memory hole - 1998 embassy bombings

A big hat tip to the indispensable Debbie Schlussel, who reminds us of the terrorist bombings in East Africa on August 7, 1998. On that date, two U.S. embassies were bombed in Nairobi and Tanzania. More than 200 people were killed and thousands injured.


seven years ago today

These bombings predated 9-11 by three years. At that time, there was still time to prevent 9-11. These and other bombings gave us all of the justification we needed to confront the terrorist threat head on. Clinton's response was to bomb an aspirin factory in Sudan. The Taliban remained in place in Afghanistan and Osama was free to use Afghanistan as a training base for another three years.




But the MSM/DNC, otherwise known as the Clinton Legacy Rehabilitation Project, has chosen to ignore this anniversary. Think of what you saw on the morning news programs today. Were most of the features even in the same ballpark as this item in terms of importance?

The slightest emphasis on today's anniversary would destroy the MSM/DNC meme, which blames George Bush for all terrorism. Even the slightest mention of this story would remind Americans that terrorism began BEFORE the U.S. led invasion of Iraq.

For the benefit of the left and the MSM/DNC, here is a chronology:

(1) Global terrorism occurred many times over the past thirty or more years.

(2) We began to fight back, including the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

(3) The MSM/DNC began a relentless campaign to reverse the order of ## 1 and 2 in the minds of the public. That is a very difficult task. Judging from the last election, this strategy has worked with only 47% of the voters.

That task requires the MSM/DNC to bury many facts down the memory hole. The victims in Nairobi and Tanzania are mere inconveniences to be forgotten in the MSM/DNC's mad rush to play politics and rewrite history.