HT Michelle Malkin

All eyes on the president;
top terror suspects transferred to Gitmo
By Michelle Malkin · September 06, 2006 01:03 PM

***updated...liveblogging***

Ahmadinejad threatens President Bush, via Drudge.

Buzz in Washington as the White House readies for a Bush speech in the next hour. Networks being asked to break in for live statement. "Significant news" expected between 1:30pm - 1:45pm Eastern.

Hot Air will have it covered.

***

Here we go. Not Iran-related. Speaking on value of intelligence-gathering from suspected terrorist detainees. Announces legislation to create process to try suspected terrorists as war criminals:

1:45pm Eastern. Rough transcription...

The attacks of Sept. 11 horrified our nation.

Who attacked us? What did they want? And what else were they planning?

My administration faced immediate challenges. We had to respond to the attack on our country. We had to wage an unprecedented war against an enemy unlike any we had fought before.

Nearly five years have passed since those initial days of shock and sadness.

As a recently foiled plot in London shows, the terrorists are still active. They're still trying to attack our people.

[Praises people working in homeland security.]

Another reason the terrorists have not yet succeeded is because we have changed our policies...The terrorists who declared war on America belong to no nation, wear no uniform. They operate in the shadows of society.

In this new war, the most important source of information on where they are hiding, what they are planning, is the terrorists themselves...

This is intelligence that can not be found any other place. To win the war on terror, we must be able to detain, question, and when appropriate, prosecute terrorists here in American and on battlefields around the world.

[Talks about operatives held in secret. Combatants held at Gitmo]

These aren't common criminals or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield...At Gitmo, suspected bomb-makers, terrorist trainers, recruiters, and facilitators, and potential suicide bombers.

They are in custody so they will not murder our people.

In addition to the terrorists held at Gitmo, a small number...held and questioned outside the US in a separate program operated by the CIA.

These include key architects of 9/11, USS Cole, African embassy bombings, and other attacks.

These are dangerous men with unparalleled knowledge of attacks.

[...]

Read More with continuing updates by Michelle and Hotair

Update:

HT Michelle Malkin

Update from Michelle re move by President Bush from The Corner:

Mario Loyola's take at The Corner:

The President just pulled one of the best maneuvers of his entire presidency. By transferring most major Al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo, and simultaneously sending Congress a bill to rescue the Military Commissions from the Supreme Court's ruling Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President spectacularly ambushed the Democrats on terrain they fondly thought their own. Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes.

And if that were not enough, the President also frontally attacked the Hamdan ruling's potentially chilling effect on CIA extraordinary interrogation techniques, by arguing that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is too vague, and asking Congress to define clearly the criminal law limiting the scope of permissible interrogation.

Taken as a whole, the President's maneuver today turned the political tables completely around. He stole the terms of debate from the Democrats, and rewrote them, all in a single speech. It will be delightful to watch in coming days and hours as bewildered Democrats try to understand what just hit them, and then sort through the rubble of their anti-Bush national security strategy to see what, if anything, remains.

Update:

HT The Jawa Report

Dr. Rusty has been following the developments too and chimed in with this insightful response and updates:

Terrorists Receive Geneva Convention Rights? (Update: Nope!)

UPDATE: Bush did not say what many in the press reported he would prior to the speech. Full text of speech posted below.

I'm speechless. Really.

When John from Stop the ACLU sent me the news I was shocked. But I'm not sure that the headline being run by Drudge is even accurate. The transfer of 14 people out of secret locations and to Guantanamo doesn't exactly seem to be the definition of "Geneva Convention rights". Nor does trying them in military or civilian courts. And the Gitmo captives are not POWs, have never been called that, and have never been treated as such!

We're in unchartered territory here baby.

[...]

UPDATE: Ace gets it right as he liveblogs it:

Wants Congress To Repudiate Supreme Court Decision On Granting Geneva Protections For Terrorists: Congress must list the "specific, recognizable offenses" that will invoke a War Crimes prosecution against interrogators.

Nice. Make Congress specifically say what is illegal -- and, by their omission, what is legal.

Congress dare not make belly-slapping illegal.

Put up or shut up.

This is not Bush giving in to the Left, this is Bush throwing down the gauntlet to the Left.

Two days, two great speeches. My support for Bush rising a little each day.

UPDATE: Who are the 14 detainees? The Blogfather Charles Johnson was also liveblogging this and links to this document detailing their biographies.

UPDATE: Full text of speech posted below.

[...]

Read More

HT Regime Change Iran

A very good discussion from FrontPageMag.Com

RBT

*****

Symposium: Ahmadinejad’s Armageddon
By Jamie Glazov

[...]

The Iranian Mullahs either already have, or will very soon be in possession of, nuclear weapons. This reality is horrifying in the context of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s verbalized fantasy of annihilating
Israel. Part of this fantasy, and also the inspiration for it, is the apocalyptic world vision of Ahmadinejad — and of many of his co-rulers. This vision involves the Islamic Shiite belief in the return of the Hidden Imam, who, according to some, was supposed to have returned on August 22 — which Ahmadinejad ominously referred to when speaking about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The date has passed, of course, and no Hidden Imam has yet, arguably, appeared; nor has an Apocalypse, in our literal understanding of it, transpired.

By why did the Iranian president refer to August 22? And who exactly is the Hidden Imam? How and why does his supposed return inspire the nuclear Mullahs’ visions of annihilating Israel and, eventually, the rest of the non-Islamic world? Does Ahmadinejad believe that “speeding things up” in terms of the usage of nuclear weapons will hasten the return of the Hidden Imam?

To discuss these and other questions with us today, we have assembled a distinguished panel of experts. Our guests today are:

Timothy Furnish, a Ph.D in Islamic History (Ohio State), former U.S. Army Arabic interrogator, and college professor. He is the author of "Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, their Jihads and Osama bin Laden" (Praeger/Greenwood, 2005), as well as a number of articles on Islamic messianism and fundamentalism.

Serge Trifkovic, a former BBC commentator and US NEWS and World Report reporter. His last book was The Sword of the Prophet. The sequel, Defeating Jihad, will be published by Regina Orthodox Press in April. Read his commentaries on ChroniclesMagazine.org.

Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of six books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and the New York Times Bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). His latest book, The Truth About Muhammad, is coming October 9 from Regnery Publishing.

[...]

and

Andrew Bostom, M.D., M.S. (Providence, RI), an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Renal Diseases of Rhode Island Hospital. He has published articles and commentary on Islam in the Washington Times, National Review, Revue Politique, FrontPage Magazine.com, The American Thinker, Investor’s Business Daily, and other print and online publications. He is the author of the book The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims.

[...]

Read it All

Here's a good article in the Money Section of USA Today, of all places, re the Achilles' Heel of Iranian President MAD and the Mad Mullahs. I've alluded to this before re the Iranian Joyless Generation.

It could be the failing Iranian economy will eventually topple this repressive regime. The $64 question is will this occur before this nutcase gets his nuke.

RBT

*****

Geopolitics casts pall on hobbled Iranian economy
Oil earnings mask pervasive problems deepened by sanctions

By David J. Lynch
USA TODAY

TEHRAN, Iran — They are young men, willing and able to work. But they spend all day, every day, sitting in a crummy city park waiting for jobs that rarely appear.

“It's awful. It's almost impossible to find a job. I've been looking for six months,” says 25-year-old Siamak Adyen, one of about a dozen men sitting cross-legged on a grassy strip in the Saadat Abad neighborhood.

Without a steady paycheck, their lives are on hold. Those with wives in distant provinces can't afford to bring them to the capital. Those who are single lack the money to marry and establish new households. Emptying his pockets, Adyen displays a 2,000 rial note — worth less than 25 cents. “Look! I'm a young man in this country and this is all I have,” he says, shaking his head in disgust.

As Iran hurtles toward a confrontation with the United States over its nuclear program, the nation's economy remains a dysfunctional wreck. Neither wholly free nor entirely socialist, the Iranian market is a ramshackle hybrid buttressed by lofty oil prices. One year after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president on a vow to share Iran's oil wealth with the poor, Tehran's army of jobless men is a reminder of the squandered potential that characterizes revolutionary Iran.

“We need to create jobs. Unfortunately, the government is not a good businessman,” says businessman Ali Sharghi.

[...]

ndeed, economics has long been eclipsed by other issues in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the movement that toppled the Shah in 1979, famously dismissed economic policy by saying, “We did not make the revolution to lower the price of watermelons.”

Ahmadinejad's surprise victory in last year's presidential election, however, was fueled by public dissatisfaction with the clerical regime's economic track record. During the campaign, the former Tehran mayor denounced soaring inequality and widespread corruption among Iran's clerical elite. He also attacked the “oil mafia” running the country's key industry and vowed to spread the wealth.

[...]

n classic populist fashion, the Iranian president is pursuing policies that emphasize short-term improvements at the expense of long-term economic health. In the face of double-digit inflation, he's defied economic orthodoxy by ordering interest rates lowered to make life easier for his low-income constituents. Despite soaring unemployment, he ordered a 50% increase in the minimum wage in March. He's also introduced a new marriage fund designed to provide cash for young couples seeking to wed.

But the government has taken only halting steps toward addressing the major obstacle to sustainable growth: shrinking the state's deadening influence over 80% of the economy.

Along with businesses owned outright by the state, up to one-third of Iran's economy is controlled by quasi-public charitable foundations, called bonyads. They enjoy preferential tax treatment and financing, which allow them to prosper at the expense of market-oriented private firms.

[...]

Ahmadinejad also has presided over an expansion in the economic role of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, a military unit established in 1979 to defend the Islamic revolution. A member of the guard during the Iran-Iraq war, Ahmadinejad directed a string of lucrative government contracts to the organization. In June, the Revolutionary Guard won a $2.3 billion contract to develop part of the massive South Pars natural gas field.

[...]

Amid chronic political uncertainty, many foreign companies have soured on Iran. But some, predominantly European companies, are thriving because sanctions have dampened competition and allowed them to raise prices. A typical European auto-parts maker may enjoy an extra 30% to 40% profit margin, says Albrecht Frischenschlager, managing director of Middle East Strategies, an advisory firm.

“Those who are still doing business are printing money as much as they can,” he says.

The economic landscape may be about to darken. Following Iran's failure to comply last week with a United Nations Security Council deadline to halt its uranium enrichment effort, the U.S. is seeking the imposition on Iran of limited economic sanctions. If Iran remains defiant, tougher measures could follow.

Iran is vulnerable to a cutoff of international bank loans and gasoline imports, which make up around 38% of domestic consumption. Iranian officials insist that, given Russian and Chinese reluctance to act, real punishment may never materialize. Years of coping with sanctions leave many here professing a lack of concern, whether genuine or feigned.

Yet, Iran's nuclear defiance, coupled with an unsustainable economic strategy, means the best Iran can hope for is a sort of muddling through. And that has many ruing the country's failure to realize its impressive potential. “The basic problem this country has is economics,” says economist Pourian. “Unfortunately, a lot of political issues have gotten involved.”

Read it All

HT Regime Change Iran

President Bush, The White House: Capital Hilton Hotel Speech

Iran's leaders, who back Hezbollah, have also declared their absolute hostility to America. Last October, Iran's President declared in a speech that some people ask -- in his words -- "whether a world without the United States and Zionism can be achieved… I say that this… goal is achievable." Less than three months ago, Iran's President declared to America and other Western powers: "open your eyes and see the fate of pharaoh… if you do not abandon the path of falsehood… your doomed destiny will be annihilation." Less than two months ago, he warned: "The anger of Muslims may reach an explosion point soon. If such a day comes… [America and the West] should know that the waves of the blast will not remain within the boundaries of our region." He also delivered this message to the American people: "If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future… bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender. If you don't accept [to do this], the Iranian nation will… force you to surrender and bow down."

America will not bow down to tyrants

[...]

Read More

HT Blackfive

Scroll for Update

OK I'm headed for the bookstore now!

RBT

*****

The Blog of War
Posted By Blackfive

"Can you handle the truth?...The Blog of War (Simon & Schuster) is loaded with firsthand reports from the Internet diaries of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Grab it before the Pentagon orders it burned..." - Vanity Fair, September 2006

It's been a year in the making. And because of all of you readers and supporters, it's become a reality. Finally!
[...]

The Blog of War is being stocked in stores (at Borders and Barnes & Noble) near you and available on Amazon right now. It is the work of over 50 Americans who tell their stories about the experiences around the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In it you will meet:

* The Warriors. Snipers, tankers, grunts. Readers who have never heard a shot fired in anger will come closer to knowing what it's like to enter a known terrorist safe house or patrol the streets of Baghdad.

* The Leaders. Combat leadership can be the toughest and loneliest job in the world. "Seldom is the average American subjected to decisions of right and wrong where consequences result in death," says one soldier. Watch a Corporal become a diplomat, a lieutenant a mayor, and a sergeant first class fight the quietest firefight in history.

* The Healers. Doctors, nurses, medics and corpsmen, and chaplains. You will meet the medics who staunch the blood and patch the wounds of their fellow soldiers working feverishly to keep their buddies alive, the chaplains who wage Spiritual Warfare, and the doctors and nurses fighting battles in the operating rooms.

* Heroes from the Homefront. Spouses, parents, and loved ones. Having a family member in harm's way is a very stressful and trying experience. Read how spouses and parents survive, not only the separation, but of learning that a loved one has been wounded.

* The Fallen. Not everyone makes it back home: bloggers pay tribute to those who have fallen in defense of their country – spouses mourn their husbands, soldiers mourn not only their comrades but their Iraqi friends as well, and heartbreaking last letters home are shared.

* Homecoming. Soldiers share their poignant accounts of homecoming. Some soldiers have been injured and others have wounds that can't be seen. Words can't really describe what it is for them to come back in one piece and be reunited with their loved ones, but The Blog of War conveys these emotionally charged moments as few books ever have.

* The Epilogue - We wrap up the experience by discovering where each person is today (some have left the service, four are back in Iraq, and others still are recovering from wounds).

And for those of you who've been around since 2003, you'll be pleased to find that there are some accounts in The Blog of War that you haven't read before as some of the bloggers (like RedTwoAlpha of This Is Your War ) who've been shut down by the military have provided updates not yet published.

[...]

Read More

Update:

HT Michelle Malkin

The rise of the milblogger
By Michelle Malkin · September 05, 2006 04:24 PM

I think the rise of the milblogger is one of the most important, and revolutionary, information innovations of our time.

Matt of Blackfive--Matthew Currier Burden--launches a book this week compiling front-line dispatches from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's called The Blog of War.

[...]

Read More

There's an interesting thread developing over at Winds of Change on a related issue on the War of Information.

The Smell of Death

RBT commented here and will post a new thread here in a little while. Have chores to do :--)

RBT

HT Jihad Watch

Scroll for Update

Convert or Die!

RBT

*****

The "Azzam" Threat: A prelude to Future Jihad in America

Over at the Counterterrorism Blog the ever-insightful Walid Phares has posted a preliminary explanation and analysis of the new videotape from Azzam the American, aka Adam Yehiye Gadahn. A few choice details:

The video tape issued by al Qaeda’s “as-sahhab” production, in which Ayman Zawahiri introduces Jihadist Adam Gahdan to the world as a senior speaker to the American people on behalf of the movement, should be taken seriously. Not necessarily at the level of detecting the next Terror attack but at the level of understanding this prelude to Future Jihad both in America and within the West. I wasn’t surprised at all by the 45 minutes elaboration by convert Gahdan regarding all of the issues he raised. For “Azzam al Amrikee” is the clearest specimen of Jihadism’s second generation within the US, in as much as the 7/7 videos revealed the type of future Jihadists for Great Britain’s second generation.

[...]

In short, the “Azzam” video reconfirms clearly, in an English language that academic translators won’t be able to distort, that al Qaeda’s movement worldwide and in the United States is seeking total annihilation or conversion of the enemy: American and other democracies.

[...]

Read More

UPDATE

HT Atlas of Atlas Shrugs

More from Atlas on the significance of latest AQ video and the recent letters from Iranian President MAD to German Chancellor Merkel and President Bush.

*****

AMERICA! Convert to Islam or Die

The enemy does not veer off course. The left (and the UN, and the Eurabians, and the communists) may turn itself inside out to avoid the 800lb barbarian in the room but the adherents to Islam are doing it by the book (the Koran). Islam requires that an enemy state be given the chance to convert to Islam before being attacked and killed. Very much like the letter Ahmadinejad sent to Bush here and the fatwa Osama issued back in 1998 against America.

[...]

Read More

HT Regime of Terror

Great piece just posted by Mark Eichenlaub at Regime of Terror.

*****

Partners in Terror

The recent arrest and confessions of Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi shines a light (and quite uncomfortable light for those who warned such cooperation wasn't possible due to ideological differences) on what many observers of the Iraq war warned wasn't possible: Cooperation between Iraqi Baathists loyal to secular Saddam Hussein and religiously fanatic al-Qaeda.

al-Saeedi, also known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, told his captors that he has been "'responsible for more attacks than he can remember' and has been involved in the insurgency almost from its beginning three years ago," according to officials. al-Saeedi admitted that "Al Qaeda in Iraq was cooperating with supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein 'in the fields of exchanging information and logistic support (as has been documented here and here).'"

[...]

Read More