Obama imperils secret briefings that could prevent the next jihad attack

"The President's Daily Brief...is shared with such an extraordinarily small number of people who are in a need-to-know situation, a need-to-know position, so they can use that information to protect the country, to prevent the next possible attack."

Not anymore.

Yet another Which-Side-Is-Obama-On Alert: "Obama Imperils Intel Briefings," by Theodore Kettle for Newsmax, January 3:

President Barack Obama's executive order last Tuesday to declassify millions of secret U.S. government document delighted left-wing "open government" groups, but it may render impotent one of the intelligence community's most vital tools: the President's Daily Brief, or PDB.

Described as "the most highly sensitized classified document in the government," every one of the overnight-written reports the commander-in-chief receives each morning from the CIA and other spy agencies, going back decades, would eventually be required by law to be revealed under Obama's newly-established National Declassification Center within the National Archives.

As the White House describes the massively lengthy executive order, which approaches 13,000 words, "For the first time, it establishes the principle that no records may remain classified indefinitely and provides enforceable deadlines for declassifying information exempted from automatic declassification at 25 years."

According to the president's order, "No information may remain classified indefinitely." And while much of the order does not take effect until mid-2010, some provisions do, such as the directive that "all classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2) have been determined to have permanent historical value under Title 44, United States Code, shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed."...

Obama's order last week revokes both the Clinton and Bush executive orders, effective by the middle of this year....

Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, in a May 2002 press conference, warned of the consequences of scrapping the rule that PDBs never become public.

Fleischer described "the overall principle about the President's Daily Brief, which is shared with such an extraordinarily small number of people who are in a need-to-know situation, a need-to-know position, so they can use that information to protect the country, to prevent the next possible attack."

Bush, Fleischer added, was "concerned with the fact that if the presidential daily brief, which is a highly sensitized - the most highly sensitized classified document in the government - if that document were to be at risk of public reporting, public release, the people who prepare it will hold back and not give the president of the United States, the person who needs the most information, they will be inclined to give him less, rather than more, because they fear it will get made public, and that could compromise sources or methods."...

Has Obama now constructed a wall between himself and U.S. spy agencies, discouraging them from being candid about terrorism threats in their daily briefings - not only to him, but to future presidents?

Thanks to JihadWatch

New Yorkers cry for 9/11 plotters' executions

Outraged New Yorkers said yesterday that admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorists deserve to be put to death -- and some even volunteered for the job.

"Kill them without a trial. Just a bullet in the head and say goodbye. Why waste taxpayer money?" said Thomas Pland, 70, a truck driver from Astoria, Queens.

"If they want me to do it," he added, "I will."

Mike Keane, owner of O'Hara's Restaurant & Pub a block from Ground Zero, said: "They should have taken care of them in Guantanamo Bay. Hang them there. It would have been quicker and easier."

But first, he added, "we should waterboard them a little more."

Families of 9/11 victims slammed the White House for affording the mass murderers the same legal rights as Americans, instead of prosecuting them as foreign enemies in military tribunals.

"I'm a hundred thousand percent against this move. They're war criminals!" said retired firefighter Joe Holland, whose son, Joseph III, a commodities trader, died in the World Trade Center's north tower.

"This is crazy. This is insane. They're going to make a mockery of the whole court system 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center. They're going to scream for holy war in America."

Peter Gadiel, head of 9/11 Families for a Secure America, fumed, "I never thought we could have gotten a worse president than George Bush. But we got one.

"The president wants a circus? He should hold the trial in Lafayette Park at the White House. That makes as much sense," added Gadiel, whose son, James, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee, died on 9/11.

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was piloting one of the hijacked jets, called the upcoming trials in the city a "travesty."

"This is going to make us look like fools in the Muslim world," she said.

But retired firefighter James Riches, whose firefighter son, Jimmy, died on 9/11, said he would give President Obama the benefit of the doubt -- for now.

"Hopefully, we're doing the right thing. But if this all goes awry, I'm going to hold Obama and his Justice Department responsible," Riches said.

Views were mixed among downtown workers.

Katelyn Collins, a 24-year-old legal assistant from Brooklyn, said: "I want to see justice firsthand. I pass Ground Zero every day and see the destruction -- a giant hole in the ground."

In the political world, Republicans blasted the decision, while Democrats backed it.

"I will believe until the day I die that Sept. 11 was an act of war and not just another criminal act," former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said. "This confirms my worst expectations for the Obama administration, that they would be in denial with regard to the danger of Islamic terrorism."

Rep. Peter King (R-LI) said, "This is as bad of a decision as any president has ever made."

But Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), whose district includes Ground Zero, said trying the 9/11 plotters near the scene of the crime is poetic justice.

"New York is not afraid of terrorists, we want to confront them, we want to bring them to justice, and we want to hold them accountable for their despicable actions."

NYPost

Hoekstra: White House Blocking Investigation of Fort Hood Massacre

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, tells Newsmax that the White House intervened to keep him from obtaining critical information regarding the Fort Hood murders.

The Michigan legislator also warned that "homegrown jihadism" is a real threat to the U.S., and said a thorough investigation of Major Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood massacre, would help authorities learn how to deal with it.

Rep. Hoekstra charged in a statement on Monday that the Obama administration was withholding information and demanded that the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Director of National Intelligence preserve documents relating to the incident for use in any future investigation.

"On Friday afternoon I asked the director of national intelligence [Dennis Blair] to get a briefing," Hoekstra said. "We were already starting to hear that Major Hasan had some connection back to the Middle East, perhaps some jihadist link, and I just asked the DNI: Would you share with me the information you have available at this time?

"He indicated that he would give me a call back and let me know. He contacted me on Saturday and said, I think we're going to make this work. A couple of hours later he called back and said, between the lines, I've been overruled by the White House. There will be no briefing for you this weekend, and early next week on Tuesday we'll give you a briefing.

"Well, there was no reason why we couldn't be briefed on the information they had at that time. I get suspicious when they don't give us the information that we're looking for, especially when they're going to give it to us in a very limited form, perhaps only to me and the chairman of the whole committee. That's when my suspicions were raised.

"Now [Monday] night they did come back and brief my staff and some senators on what they knew about Major Hasan and when they knew it, but it was already after most of this information had somehow been leaked to the media."

As to why the administration might want to withhold information, Hoekstra said: "There are serious questions about whether the FBI did everything appropriately and whether there was enough information out there, enough red flags out there, that reasonable people would have assumed Hasan should have been more closely evaluated than he was.

"I don’t know if that's it or not, and I won't know or have a better idea until I've had access to all the information...

"I've just made it very clear that I want them to preserve all the documents, all the information that deals with Major Hasan, because I want to make sure that we don't get to a point where, well, we can't find that information anymore. I want a full, thorough investigation.

"I'm not looking to pin blame on anybody. I believe that radical jihadism, homegrown jihadism, is a real threat to the United States. We need to learn more about it, how to identify it, and how to stop it. This could be a classic case that will give us some of that information."

Martella noted that intelligence officials reportedly knew months ago that Hasan attempted to contact al-Qaida. Hoekstra agreed that should have raised "a big red flag," and went on to say:

"But you need to put together the whole picture. The whole picture is that it appears he had contact with overseas jihadists, including perhaps people connected with al-Qaida. He made presentations and statements to his colleagues here in the United States that would lead one to believe he might have jihadist tendencies.

"Did all of this information ever collect in one place and give us a thorough insight into who he was? Or did the intelligence community have part of it, the Army have part of it, and was it stored in three or four different places so that it never came together to provide one coherent picture of who Hasan might be and who he might become?"

Asked why the Army did not act against Hasan based on the information it reportedly had, Hoekstra said "what we have seen during this administration is a certain political correctness that just makes many of us uncomfortable.

"It was only a few months ago that the secretary of homeland security said we're not going to use the term 'terrorism' anymore. We're going to call it 'manmade disasters.'

"The bottom line here is that if we are unwilling to call terrorism terrorism, we will ever be able to deal with it, confront it, contain it, and defeat it."

Source: NewsMax

White House Mum on Gadhafi Grants

By John Rossomando

The White House declined to comment on a letter that an Illinois Republican send to President Obama demanding that he cancel funding for two $200,000 State Department grants to groups belonging to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's children.

Rep. Mark Kirk wrote the letter after the State Department notified the House Appropriations Committee on Sept. 15 of its intent to provide the foundation belonging to the Libyan dictator’s son, Saif, with a $200,000 and an additional $200,000 to Wa’ettasmeno UNDP Foundation run by his daughter, Aisha.

“Last month, when Scotland freed Abel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, Gadhafi greeted him with a hero’s welcome,” Kirk wrote in his Sept. 23 letter to President Obama. “As you know, Megrahi was accompanied back to Libya by Gadhafi's son, Saif, who was involved with negotiations for Megrahi’s release. Just weeks after the Gadhafi family celebrated the return of a terrorist for the murders of 189 Americans, the U.S. taxpayer should not be asked to reward them with $400,000. For the sake of the victims’ families who have endured so much pain these last few weeks, I ask you to withdraw your Administration’s request.” Read more ...

Source: NewsMax

Hon. Mark Kirk
Latest recipient of The MASH Award

Child Stabs President Bush to Death and Turns the White House into a Mosque in a Hamas TV Puppet Show

Bush: "Who are you? What brings you to my home? How did they let you in, boy? My guards! My soldiers! Get this boy out of here."

Child: "Nobody will take me out of here."

Bush: "Who are you to come here and threaten me?! You are on my own turf, you little child, you! Get out. My dear, bring your father, your grandfather, or your mother, so I can talk to them. Get somebody older and smarter than you. What, you came here on your own?"

Child: "You killed daddy in the Iraq war. It's true, you killed him in the Iraq war. As for my mom – you and the criminal Zionists killed her in Lebanon. You and the criminal Zionists also killed my younger and older brothers in the Gaza holocaust. I'm an orphan, you criminal!"

Bush: "What are you talking about? Where did you come from? Don't I have enough troubles already? Where did you come from?"

Child: "I have come to take revenge with this sword – revenge for my mother and my sisters. You are a criminal, Bush! You are despicable. You made me an orphan! You took everything from me, Bush! I must take revenge on you, with this sword of Islam, the Prophet's Al-Battar sword."

Bush: "No... No, my dear. I give you my word that this is it. I repent, just don't kill me. Where are my guards? Where is my people? Help! Help! He wants to kill me. Help!"

Child: "There are no guards, and your people has surrendered, Bush. I have not come alone, Bush. I have brought thousands of thousands of children from Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. You have denied all these children their fathers and mothers. That's why I have come to take revenge on you and on all the criminal traitors who collaborated with you."

Bush: "Okay, fine, that's enough. I will give you whatever you want from me."

Child: "What can you give me? All I want is one thing. Bring back my father and mother. I don't want anything from you. I don't want anything from you, just bring back my father and mother. I place my trust in Allah. I need to kill you."

Bush: "No, my dear. Enough. I will give you anything you want. I also... Enough with that. Come with all your friends to the White House. I will give you food and toys. We will sit in the White House and talk. You will get whatever you need."

Child: "You are impure, Bush, so you are not allowed inside the White House."

Bush: "What are you saying?! Why am I not allowed into the White House?"

Child: "Because it has been turned into a great mosque for the nation of Islam. I will kill you just like Mu'az killed Abu Lahab. I will kill you, Bush, because that is your fate."

Child stabs Bush repeatedly

Child: "Ahhh, I killed him."

Source: MEMRI

Emerson, a Jew who gets itA perspective of a moderate Muslim

At the risk of sounding anti-Semitic, I want to say this: either American Jews are completely clueless about the internal struggle inside Islam or they are so cowardly, that they are even afraid to voice their opinion. Or maybe it's a combination of both.

Every time there is a development that involves radical Islam, be it a Mayor of New York attending an Islamist parade, DOJ's officials attending an Islamist conference, or a protester being sued for having the balls to expose an Islamist-sponsored event at an amusement park, the American Jewish community is as quiet as a church mouse. It's like it is not even there.

The effect of this silence is devastating. Not for the Jewish community, not yet. That time is still to come. The silence affects the American Muslim community. Every time moderate Muslims are ignored and Islamists are legitimized (by either direct support from government representatives or silent support of the ADL), radicals gain ground. In the current PC climate, moderate Muslims have pretty much no choice but to keep their mouths shut.

Luckily for us, not everyone in the Jewish community is like that. There are some Jews that are speaking out. One of them is Steven Emerson, who has been warning the West about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism since before PanAm 103. Most of his current work is focused on exposing the radicals masquerading as the moderates – those radicals who are embraced by the DOJ and the Pentagon, by the mayor of New York Bloomberg (Rudy would never get into bed with terrorist supporters) and the Treasury Department, by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, by the Congress and the White House.

There is a war of ideas within Islam, and moderate Muslims are losing. Most of Muslim clergy and Muslim establishment are paid for by the Wahhabis. Moderate Muslims are being run out of Mosques and community centers, and in many cases are physically threatened. Moderate Muslims have no place in the media or public debate, because the place reserved for Muslims is filled by Islamic radicals, who attempt to make criticizing anything Islamic a taboo. According to the Islamists, a Muslim can do no wrong.
1. When a non-Muslim criticizes Islam or Muslims, he/she is an Islamophobe.
2. When a Muslim criticizes Islam or Muslim, he/she is not a real Muslim, therefore see #1.

This is a tactic used by "moderate" Muslims, the darlings of the government and the media. But how can you call someone who praises bin Laden, or has ties to Hamas, or calls for the elimination of Israel, or wants to replace the Constitution with the Koran a moderate? They are anything but moderates, however nobody except for a few people like Steven Emerson seems to notice that. But even when the Emersons of America appeal to the public, they are often being dismissed as alarmists and racists. Well, they are anything, but. You don't have to be a clairvoyant to predict the future when it comes to expansion of radical Islam and extinction of moderate Muslims. All you need to do is get your heads out of the sand.

Why our government is so forgiving and forgetful when it comes to individuals or organizations with known terrorist ties and anti-American views is beyond me. Why the Jewish leaders are so timid when it comes to the subject of radical Islam is incomprehensible.

I thank God every day for people like Steven Emerson, because they are the last glimmer of hope for moderate Muslims.

K.M.