SUNDAY,  APRIL 19,  2009

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 3:52 P.M. ET:  From Kellyanne Conway, Republican pollster, at Human Events:

But adulation abroad and a perception of charm and charisma at home is not a mandate for the type of sweeping transformations to the domestic economy and foreign policy currently on the table. After all, candidate Obama ran on “change we can believe in,” not “revolution you must pay for.” 

COMMENT:  Very well said.  We're especially concerned here about foreign policy, where a bad decision can be potentially costly in human life, and can take a war to correct.

April 19, 2009

WE ARE STILL AT WAR - AT 10:46 A.M. ET:   From The Politico:

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden warned Sunday morning that intelligence officers will be constrained operationally as a direct consequence of the White House’s decision to release Justice Department memos detailing interrogation techniques.

Calling the matter of CIA interrogation “the real inconvenient truth,” Hayden told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" that he had argued his case against releasing the memos with several senior officials in the Obama Administration.

“At the tactical level,” Hayden said, “what we have described for our enemies in the midst of the war are the outer limits that any American would go to in terms of interrogating an Al Qaeda terrorists.”

And...

“You are going to have this agency, on the front line of defending you in this current war, playing back from the line,” Hayden said, suggesting that agents would feel constrained by the possibility of their actions being second-guessed by The New York Times, the ACLU (which filed the suit that led to the release of the memos), future presidential candidates, and others.

COMMENT:  A little maturity in the midst of all the adolescent angst of today's Washington.  I wish that, sometimes, some of the critics of the Bush administration would think of their own families as potential victims of a terror attack.  How would they feel about the CIA, and others on the front line, if their families' lives were involved?

April 19, 2009   Permalink

NATO TAKES ON THE PIRATES - AT 9:40 A.M. ET:

ON BOARD NRB CORTE-REAL (Reuters) - NATO forces foiled an attack by Somali pirates on a Norwegian oil tanker, and briefly detained seven gunmen after hunting them down under cover of darkness, NATO officials said Sunday.

It was the latest assault by sea gangs from Somalia who have hijacked dozens of ships, taken hundreds of sailors hostage and made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms -- defying an unprecedented deployment by foreign navies in the region.

The violence has disrupted aid supplies, driven up insurance costs and forced some firms to route cargo round South Africa.

Michael McWhinnie, a spokesman on the Canadian warship Winnipeg, said it, a British naval supply ship and U.S. warship Halyburton all responded after pirates attacked the 80,000-tonne MV Front Ardenne in the Gulf of Aden late Saturday.

COMMENT:  Good on NATO.  Oh, note the last paragraph.  The U.S. has a warship named the Halyburton.  Can you imagine what the psychotic left will do with that?  Halyburton?  It's CHENEY.  He's back!  They even control the ships!  Watch, someone on MSNBC will start a rumor that Halyburton is working with the pirates.

April 19, 2009   Permalink 

OBAMA WEATHERS THE STORM - AT 9:21 A.M. ET:

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama fended off calls for lifting the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba while pledging to cooperate with Latin American leaders to help the region’s poorest recover from the global economic recession.

Obama heads into the final day of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales saying they refuse to sign the summit’s final declaration because it excludes Cuba.

Obama responded throughout the meetings by saying the U.S. is on a path toward changing the nature of its relationship with Cuba, and actions toward the communist nation will be informed by a desire for democracy, administration officials said.

“Actions speak louder than words,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. Administration officials say it’s up to Cuba to make the next move.

COMMENT:  President Obama's performance at the Latin American summit strikes us as much more skillful than his actions during his Great Groveling tour of Europe, recently concluded.  The Latin American leaders have given the U.S. quite a bashing, which is a hobby down there, but, with the exception of some initial crawling, Mr. Obama hasn't given in.  Maybe there's a lesson being learned - that weakness gets you nowhere.

On the other hand, it's important that the White House ponders why these Latin American leaders, some of them world-class thugs, feel they can be so openly anti-American in Mr. Obama's presence, something they couldn't be in the presence of previous presidents.  That's lesson two.

April 19, 2009   Permalink 

WHY, HOW DECENT - AT 9:10 A.M. ET:  From AP: 

TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said an American journalist sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the U.S. should be allowed to offer a full defense during her appeal, the state news agency reported Sunday.

The statement came a day after Iran announced the conviction and sentence for Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen. It was the first time Iran has found an American journalist guilty of espionage and her lawyer said he will appeal.

COMMENT:  Looks like a possible diplomatic trap, and an old-style one at that.  Ahmadinejad makes the grand gesture to give this innocent woman a defense, then can announce her release as an act of "good will" toward the new Obama administration.  The Obamans will then trumpet it as the "first success" of the new outreach policy, even though Iran would simply be releasing someone who should never have been held in the first place.  The amen corner in the press shouts, "The messiah has done it!"  Meanwhile, in Tehran, the mullahs laugh their heads off.

You watch.

April 19, 2009   Permalink

SATURDAY,  APRIL 18,  2009

BULLETIN - AT 6:08 P.M. ET:  The United States, to its credit, will boycott the upcoming "Durban II" conference in Geneva:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration will ''with regret'' boycott a U.N. conference on racism next week over objectionable language in the meeting's final document that could single out Israel for criticism and restrict free speech, the State Department said Saturday.

The decision follows weeks of furious internal debate and will likely please Israel and Jewish groups that lobbied against U.S. participation. But the move upset human rights advocates and some in the African-American community who hoped that President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, would send an official delegation.

The administration had wanted to attend the April 20-25 meeting in Geneva, although it warned in late February it would not go unless significant changes were made to the draft text.

COMMENT:  Applause, applause.  The conference is a farce.  It has nothing to do with fighting racism.  It's dominated by some of the world's worst gangster regimes.  The president of Iran, that great fighter for freedom, will address the meeting when it opens Monday.

There will of course be the usual charges that this decision was "dictated" by the Israel lobby.  Well, cheers for the Israel lobby.  People have a right to petition the government, and they're certainly correct on this one.  Our participation would have been an embarrassment.  You may recall that the Bush administration walked out of "Durban I" in 2001, a conference that degenerated into an anti-freedom, anti-West, and anti-Semitic rant. 

Naturally, the usual suspects are appalled by this courageous move.  Marxist Congresswoman Barbara Lee, commissar of the Congressional Black Caucus, and the most left-leaning member of Congress, has registered her deep pain.  Human Rights Watch, which is nothing of the kind, is also anguished beyond words. 

The AP story identifies "human rights advocates" as upset by the decision.  The phrase is corrupt, and reflects lazy, biased journalism.  Many of these "human rights advocates" never met a dictatorship they didn't like. 

Maybe some of the Obamans are learning about the real world and the way it works.  We give credit where it's due.  Good decision.  We hope many other nations will follow.  Let's see if Obama has coattails on this one.

April 18, 2009   Permalink

THE NEWS? - AT 3:47 P.M. ET:  I was just doing a sweep of the cable news channels, as I do all the time, and I must tell you that the contrast between CNN and Fox seems to be getting greater.  Watching CNN is like watching an ad for the Obama administration.  The network is unashamed.  This afternoon one of its anchorwomen guided CNN reporters and interviewees through a laudatory prayer meeting about the wonders of Obaman diplomacy and what it is achieving.  Why, he's got the whole world in his hands.

On Fox, though, matters were more sober and balanced.  The most important comment I heard came from former Ambassador John Bolton, who said that there was some value in President Obama doing all these photo ops with people like Hugo Chavez.  In a year, Bolton said, the administration will be embarrassed by those photos, and will have learned a lesson - that nations pursue their own interests, and won't be swayed by the personality of the man in the White House.

Bolton is correct.  But, if you're in a lighthearted mood and want to see what movie-fan magazines used to be like in reporting on screen stars, flip to CNN.

April 18, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 9:37 A.M. ET:  From Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post:

on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her solution to piracy: Send your tax dollars to Somalia in foreign aid.

That's rewarding criminality. It's tribute money. We're not asking for trouble. We're on our knees begging for it.

Since the new administration took office, our enemies have surged to challenge us, from northern Mexico through the Middle East to Asia. They sense weakness. And their instincts may be right.

Oh, we're huffing and puffing on North Korea -- which really isn't an immediate problem for the United States. (If China wants a nutty neighbor with nukes, hey, let's give General Tso's chickens a chance to come home to roost.) But we won't do anything hard.

COMMENT:  Peters is correct.  We have to start measuring Obama's policies against their effect on the United States and our own safety.  We're not against negotiations here.  Reagan negotiated.  We're against negotiations in which we lose.  And we fear that there are people around Obama who have no problem with losing.

April 18, 2009   Permalink

ANOTHER WARM MULLAH RESPONSE - AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  From the Associated Press:

An American journalist jailed in Iran has been convicted of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison, her lawyer said Saturday, dashing any hopes for her quick release.

The verdict was the first time Iran has found an American journalist guilty of spying, and it was unclear how the conviction would affect recent overtures by the Obama administration for better relations and engagement with Washington's longtime adversary.

Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen, was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But earlier this month, an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation, charging her with spying for the United States.

COMMENT:  Secretary Clinton has made a pro forma appeal for her release.  Big deal.  This case could be resolved in minutes if the ruling mullahs wish it.  We should make it clear that any talks with Iran will be affected by this outrage.  Obama often comes off as weak, and he cannot simply let this stand without action.  But I fear he'll employ the same approach here as with the recent North Korean missile test - some critical words, and nothing more.  If that's true, we sink more and more into the quicksand. 

April 18, 2009   Permalink

AND NOW CUBA - AT 9:04 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — President Obama, seeking to thaw long-frozen relations with Cuba, told a gathering of Western Hemisphere leaders on Friday that “the United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba,” and that he was willing to have his administration engage the Castro government on a wide array of issues.

Mr. Obama’s remarks, during the opening ceremony at the Summit of the Americas, are the clearest signal in decades that the United States is willing to change direction in its dealings with Cuba. They capped a dizzying series of developments this week, including surprisingly warm words between Raúl Castro, Cuba’s leader, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

COMMENT:  This will undoubtedly cheer the thousands of political prisoners in Castro's prisons, just as Obama's groveling to the Muslim world undoubtedly thrills Muslim human-rights campaigners.  Not. 

We'll withhold judgment for a time.  The president also correctly warned that Cuba's repressive policies are on the table, and he warned that routine Latin American attempts to blame the United States for all problems south of our border must go.

We did engage both the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, so this is really nothing new.  The issue is what we will give, and demand in return.  A negotiation is just talk unless defined precisely.  If human freedom suddenly disappears from the agenda, then we're in trouble.  And that is my fear.  The so-called "realist" school is back in town, with its moral-equivalency chorus.  Mr. Obama must resist them.

April 18, 2009   Permalink 

UN STILL NOT PLEASED WITH WASHINGTON - AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  The United Nations, whose moral authority is overwhelming, speaks out about American practices:

VIENNA (AP) -- An Austrian newspaper quotes the U.N.'s top torture investigator as saying President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates international law.

Manfred Nowak is quoted in Der Standard as saying the United States has committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it.

COMMENT:  This guy is listed in his bios as an "Austrian human rights lawyer."  Ah yes, that great Austrian tradition of human rights.  Oh well, let's not quibble over 1938-45. 

The problem is that his opinion will give added impetus to the left-wing loons in the U.S. who want to prosecute Bush-era officials and employees.  Our techniques were enhanced interrogation methods, but I think the word "torture" really is over the top.  With the real horrors going on all over the world, obsessing over Guantanamo Bay seems like hypocrisy at its worst.  But the UN is hypocrisy defined.

April 18, 2009   Permalink