Gal Luft: Saudi-Sponsored Fifth Column Behind Ft. Hood Massacre?

From Gal Luft's Middle East Strategy at Harvard blog post: "How the Saudis Radicalize US Troops":

While Muslim soldiers have served in uniforms loyally for decades, it is the rising number of Wahhabi-trained and converted Muslims that is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since Wahhabism is one of the most radical and puritan strands of Islam, the penetration of Wahhabi thinking into the ranks of the military must be treated with care.

The genesis of radical Islamic thinking within the military was in the 1990-91 Gulf War, when nearly half a million soldiers and marines were deployed in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait and defend the oil kingdom from Saddam Hussein’s aggression. While the Saudis were adamantly opposed to any expression of religious practice by their guests, including a ban on Christmas carols, bible classes and Christian and Jewish prayers, they embarked on a well-orchestrated and generously funded effort sponsored by the Saudi government to convert as many American military members as possible to Islam.

According to General Norman Schwarzkopf’s aide Rick Francona,

Saudi officers appeared to have been directed by their senior military or religious leadership to spot and assess potential converts to Islam among American military members. Once a particular American was ‘targeted,’ […] a few Saudi military officers, including a military imam, would attempt to meet the American in either a purely social setting or at least outside of the work area. These approaches usually included fairly generous gifts and of course, literature about Islam. The gifts included expensive briefcases, pens, books and other personal items. Americans who decided to convert to Islam were rewarded handsomely […] including all expenses paid trips to Mecca, and payments as high as $30,000.

The commander of Saudi forces in the Gulf, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bragged in his memoir that more than 2,000 American troops converted to Islam through this campaign. “These Muslim troops are now the messengers of Islam in the U.S. forces,” said Dr. Abu Ameena Bilal Phillips, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam (1972) who worked during the Gulf war under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force while converting U.S. troops to Islam in his spare time. After the war, Phillips moved to the United States to “set up Islamic chapters in the U.S. Defense Department.”

Nearly two decades have passed since the Saudi conversion campaign, and most of the converts may no longer be in uniforms. But the seeds sown during the Gulf War have germinated, creating scores of radicalized Americans who are a threat to their comrades in uniforms as well as to their civilian communities.

Fort Hood’s Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar“—Arabic for “God is Great”—just before the shooting. As Camp Pennsylvania’s killer Akbar was being led away after the incident, fellow soldiers heard him shout: “You guys are coming into our countries and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.” Allahu Akbar, “you guys,” “our countries”—strong words which tell us that it is time to investigate what exactly happened back then in the desert and assess how serious and deep-rooted the damage is.

Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in The National Interest, has also raised the question of a Fifth Column:

Make no mistake: hovering over Sen. Lieberman’s inquiry will be the question of whether the army contains a fifth column of Muslim-Americans intent on waging a war against the war on terror on the American homeland. Done properly, it could provide a salutary look into what may well be a nonissue. But done in an inflammatory fashion, it could end up making the Army-McCarthy hearings look like a dainty tea party. Carried far enough, the ultimate target of suspicion for some could be none other than President Barack Hussein Obama, whose patriotism has already been impugned by his detractors.

World Net Daily has likewise raised the question of a Fifth Column, linked the release of a new book on the subject:

According to an explosive new book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," Hasan is just the tip of a jihadist Fifth Column operating within the ranks of the U.S. military – which is too blinded by political correctness to see the threat.

Quoting from a classified military briefing, "Muslim Mafia" reveals that this Fifth Column has penetrated "every branch of the U.S. military." The Islamist enemy has even infiltrated the al-Qaida detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Security officials at Gitmo have been investigating a possible new spy ring involving several "dirty" Arabic linguists who are accused among other things of:

* omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations;

* slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Quran;

* coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators; and

* meeting with suspects on the terrorist watchlist while traveling back in the United States.

More than 75 former Gitmo detainees have returned to the battlefield or anti-American jihad. Some met with the suspect Muslim translators. Others were privately counseled by chaplains also under investigation for security breaches.

Gitmo security officials recently met with FBI agents in Philadelphia to aid their investigation into one of the Muslim linguists under contract at Gitmo, according to sources quoted in the book who are familiar with the investigation.

They also this summer briefed members of Congress about the prison camp's internal security breaches, according to "Muslim Mafia," which is co-authored by former federal agent P. David Gaubatz and investigative journalist Paul Sperry, author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," which is being used by law enforcement and the military.

"Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian contractor and military linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo," states a copy of the classified Gitmo briefing, which was prepared in May 2009 for the FBI and CIA, as well as the congressional intelligence committees.

The report explains that "dirty" Arabic linguists have gathered classified data involving detainees, interrogations and security operations in an effort to "disrupt" Gitmo operations and U.S. "intelligence-collection capabilities."

It goes on to specifically finger the Muslim Brotherhood, which it calls a terrorist group, in the conspiracy. The Muslim Brotherhood and its U.S. operations and front groups are the subject of "Muslim Mafia."

"These actions are deliberate, carefully planned, global, and to the benefit of the detainees and multiple terrorist organizations, to include al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood," the briefing states, according to the bestselling book.

The enemy infiltration is not limited to Guantanamo.

The report strongly suggests that Islamist spies have penetrated nearly every sensitive U.S. security agency involved in the war on terror, potentially compromising intelligence government-wide.

"Persons participating in this activity move regularly between multiple contracting companies, various intelligence agencies in the U.S. government [FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, etc.], and every branch of the U.S. military."

The investigation comes on the heels of a major Muslim espionage ring that the FBI broke up at Gitmo in 2004.

The American Thinker's Selwyn Duke similarly discusses the possibility of a Fifth Column.

Given this, was it really shocking when Hasan walked among the "aggressors" and yelled Allahu Akbar before punctuating his story with a burst of violence?

It wasn't to me. You see, I knew the rough details of the event as soon as I heard about the shooting. I knew that there are jihadists among us; I knew the perpetrator was likely one of them; and I knew that a three-little-monkeys society, blinded, deafened, and dumbed down by political correctness, is allowing this fifth column to operate unfettered. I knew it not because I'm a genius but because I'm willing to profile -- also known as seeing reality as it is, not as fashions dictate it must be. And this brings us to what is most shocking.

Why was an obvious jihadist in our military in the first place, let alone promoted to major?

Well, the question has already been answered. We have become a sick society, where fantasies are favored and reality is called "racist." If there were an officer of Japanese descent in our military during WWII, he wouldn't have lasted til the next day's rising sun if he had expressed pro-Imperial Japanese sentiments. But that was then, when America was America, before she was sacrificed on the altar of the leftist dystopia in utopian clothing.

The Gall of Peter Galbraith

Is Peter Galbraith a corrupt thug?

Even if he's not, he sure sounds like one to me, judging from this account in Vermont's Rutland Herald. The ex-US official appears insensitive to the appearance of corruption, as well as unapologetic about reports in yesterday's front-page NY Times article that he stands to gain over $100 million from oil deals between Kurdistan and a Norwegian oil company:

He said he had done nothing wrong and didn't have a conflict of interest by having business and political dealings with the Kurds. "It was a straightforward business transaction," he said.

The New York Times estimated that Galbraith's oil interests in Kurdistan could net him more than $120 million, a figure that Galbraith disputed. "These numbers, I wish they were true," he said.

Galbraith said he had left his work for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was working as a private citizen when he started working for the Norwegian oil firm DNO in 2004.

Later, in August 2005, Galbraith said, the Kurds, knowing of his relationship with DNO, asked him to advise them as Iraq wrote its constitution, which dealt in part withon how to divide its oil wealth.

"I was not a negotiator. I gave them advice," he said.

Galbraith said he had always been supportive of Kurdistan's self-determination, which meant having control over its oil fields and establishing a Kurdish oil industry. Kurdistan is the northern, oil-rich section of Iraq.

His positions have always been "congruent," he said, that Kurds should control their own natural resources.

He said the news of his Kurdish oil interests had first been made public a week after he was dismissed by the U.N. and the stories first surfaced in Norway and were later picked up by American press.

He said he had no proof that it was payback for his criticism of Eide, a top ranking Norwegian diplomat, but he was suspicious about the news of the Kurdish oil interests first becoming public a week later. "I can't prove anything," he said.

Galbraith was speaking to a sympathetic audience: the Windham World Affairs Council of Vermont. He has spoken to the organization for the past seven years in the fall, he said.

He had no plans to address them this fall until he lost his diplomatic posting in Afghanistan over his criticism of the fraudulent elections in that country.

Galbraith, who spoke for more than an hour about the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, later answered questions from the audience. Of the 50 or so questions, only a handful dealt with Thursday's Times article.

But Galbraith said he had hoped to defend himself to his "friends and neighbors," and said that the financial estimates used by the Times were grossly overstated.

As an example of other mistakes he cited in "These numbers — I wish they were true," he said. The Times estimated that Galbraith stood to reap about $120 million from the 5 percent interest he held in a Kurdish oil field.

There's a similar account in the Brattleboro Reformer.

Blogger SouthFloridaLawyers says Galbraith sounds "almost...pathological":

Galbraith's defense was basically that there is no conflict -- his investments in Kurdish Oil are entirely consistent with his advocacy of Kurdish autonomy and control over their oil fields.

I couldn't help but think how disingenuous this is, and how often we see this in legal briefs nowadays.

Remember in law school how there was some loose governing feature which reigned in absurd or ridiculous arguments -- the "red face" test. You just weren't supposed to make an argument that you knew yourself was preposterous.

Yet Galbraith did just that -- the issue was not whether he personally has an inner conflict between his business investments and his public advocacy. That has nothing to do with anything.

The issue is whether it was unethical for Galbraith to pretend to be an "independent expert" and hold himself out as a disinterested observer yet fail to disclose he would personally and financially benefit from the policies he advocated.

Any moron can see this, yet Galbraith very happily and vigorously acted as if what he was saying made perfect sense.

We see arguments like this all the time in the law nowadays -- non sequiturs that have nothing to do with the issue at hand yet sound superficially appealing and noncontroversial in the abstract. Listening to Galbraith this morning I almost felt he was pathological -- he was utterly convinced that what he was saying was entirely logical and reasonable, yet it was totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Meanwhile, The Times of London ran this:

Not public at the time was the fact that Mr Galbraith stood to profit from the provisions through his arrangement with a Norwegian oil company, DNO. Months later, DNO discovered the large Tawke oil field in northern Iraq. The disclosure of Mr Galbraith’s stake fuelled Iraqi complaints that influential people in the Western powers that launched the 2003 war were trying to take control of Iraq’s oil.

Feisal al-Istrabadi, a former Iraqi diplomat and legal advisor, said the revelation cast doubt on Iraq's fragile constitutional order.

“The idea that a foreign oil company was in the room drafting the Iraqi Constitution has me reeling,” he said. “It casts a tremendous pall on the legitimacy of the process. We do not let Shell draft the constitution of Nigeria.” Mr Galbraith acted as a go-between for the Norwegian oil company with the Kurdish regional government until its oil contract was signed in 2004. He continued to be paid by DNO while advising the Kurds in negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution.

My question is: Why is Galbraith allowed to have any stake in oil deals at all? Aren't there any US anti-corruption, anti-insider trading, or anti-conflict-of-interest laws that might apply? Couldn't the Kurds use his commission to feed their people?

At least the NY Times realizes something is wrong here, judging from today's Editor's Note:

On Thursday, a news article in The Times reported on the ties between Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States ambassador, and a Norwegian oil company that operates in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. According to the article, Mr. Galbraith “received rights to an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan’s oil fields in the spring of 2004.”

Since that time, Mr. Galbraith has written several opinion articles for the Op-Ed page in support of Kurdish independence and security. These articles should have disclosed to readers that Mr. Galbraith could benefit financially from an independent Kurdistan that would not have to share oil revenues with Iraq.

Like other writers for the Op-Ed page, Mr. Galbraith signed a contract that obligated him to disclose his financial interests in the subjects of his articles. Had editors been aware of Mr. Galbraith’s financial stake, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published his articles.

In other words, this note apparently charges that Galbraith filed a false declaration with the NY Times.

UPDATE: In National Review Online, Michael Rubin points out an alleged connection between Galbraith and a reputed Iraqi arms smuggler:

The Other Partner in the Galbraith Oil Scandal [Michael Rubin]
The Norwegian press has been doing great work in investigating the Norwegian oil firm DNO's somewhat questionable dealings in Iraqi Kurdistan, during the course of which they identified former ambassador Peter Galbraith as a claimant to a share of the Tawke oil field.

The other claimant is Shahir 'Abd-al-Haq, a Yemeni businessman, who had handled DNO's business in Yemen and, at some point, also bought shares in Tawke. It is uncertain whether Galbraith and 'Abd-al-Haq were formal partners, or were just thrown together by mutual interests and holdings in the same field. What is not disputed, however, is that they are co-plaintiffs in court proceedings in London seeking compensation from DNO for having been ousted from the contracts.

'Abd-al-Haq has appeared on the U.S. radar screen before, as he helped Iraqi president Saddam Hussein subvert U.N. sanctions and import weapons. So now we have Peter Galbraith, who was an outspoken advocate for Kurdish rights in the wake of Saddam's ethnic cleansing becoming a partner with a man who helped arm Saddam. Greed makes strange bedfellows.

More on "Tawke-gate" from Walid Khaddui's Oil in a Week blog:

In any case, Galbraith succeeded in concealing information regarding his million-dollar investments in the Tawke oil field Production Sharing Agreement, signed between the KRG and DNO - a small Norwegian oil company. This continued to be the case until the leading Norwegian business newspaper “Dagens Næringsliv” exposed Galbraith’s involvement, through a series of investigative reports focused on DNO’s shareholders, after having obtained information about them directly from the Oslo Stock Exchange.

In fact, the importance of what the Norwegian newspaper has published lies in the many questions these articles have added to the ones we already had regarding the lack of credibility in the slogans adopted by the Bush administration, in what concerns fairness and transparency in the Middle East (insofar as being its aims behind the occupation of Iraq). This is in addition to raising questions about the intentions and objectives of one of the most prominent advocates of ending the Iraqi state, and about how he, Galbraith, abused his political power and engaged in questionable practices to further his business interests. Dagens Næringsliv’s reports also helped shed light on the role of American diplomats and individuals theorizing for the U.S occupation of Iraq, who exploited their political posts to have stakes in the Iraqi oil wealth.

Moreover, the reports published in the Norwegian Newspaper revealed that a “third party”, who was not initially named, was between 2004 and 2008 a partner in the production sharing agreement of the Tawke oil field in northern Iraq, and which was signed between the Norwegian company and the KRG. It was also revealed that this third party was excluded from signing the new agreement in early 2008, and that a new partner, the Turkish company “Genel Enerji”, was given a stake in the agreement. This prompted the third party to sue DNO for 500 million dollars for the losses suffered it had suffered.

It soon became evident that this third party was none other than Peter Galbraith. DNO then admitted that Galbraith, along with his Yemeni partner Shaher Abdulhak, were that third party, and that they had a 5 percent share in the Tawke oil field contract, through Porcupine, a company registered in the American state of Delaware in 2004. To validate this information, DNO then published several documents issues by Porcupine, and which bore the signature of Mr. Galbraith. Also, it should be mentioned here that Porcupine had entered in arbitration with DNO.

Moreover, the Norwegian Economic Crime Division “Økokrim” is currently investigating DNO’s transactions, which means that there is still more room to obtain more information before the end of the investigation. Meanwhile in Erbil, the “change” opposition bloc at the Kurdish Parliament called on Mr. Ashti Hawrami, the Minister of Natural Resources in the KRG, to appear before the parliament to respond to the charges made against him of involvement in a deal to sell 30 million dollar stocks to the Turkish company “Generl Enerji.”

Huffington Post article here.

PLUS THIS, from Christopher Dowd in the Boston Examiner:

Galbraith's massive financial stake in the war in Iraq and in war generally is par for the course for the entire Beltway elite. His corruption is nothing special. From generals with massive investments in "defense" firms given time on air as "military analysts" to ex CIA directors being given cushy sinecures on the boards of MIC companies to "journalists" given chairs in oil industry funded "think tanks"- from top to bottom our Beltway is a corrupt cesspool of incestuous back room deals, nepotism, back scratching, bought and paid for pens for hire, and talking heads willing to say anything on air as long as the price is right...

UPDATE: Someone I know points out that the American Enterprise Institute blog has had a post up on Peter Galbraith's Kurdistan oil connection for a month, already. An uncredited source for the New York Times' article? Also, the same someone provided this link to an English translation of the original Norwegian Dagens Næringsliv articles.

Petition: Stop Columbarium Conversion of Chicago's Three Arts Club!

Of all the icky real-estate deals I've heard of, this has to be the ickiest. The charming and beautiful Three Arts Club of Chicago--once a residence for single female artists, adorned with beautiful bas-reliefs and courtyards-- is facing a planned conversion to a columbarium for the remains of cremated Chicagoans.

Chicago Tribune story here.

ArchitectureChicagoPlus blog post here.

Crain's Chicago Business story here.

A petition drive to stop this has been launched online. You may add your signature by clicking here. The text is pretty straightforward:

To: Alderman Brendan Reilly, 42nd Ward, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Petition To Alderman Reilly
Against Columbarium Proposal
for Three Arts Club Building
1300 North Dearborn
Chicago, Illinois, 60610


To: ALDERMAN BRENDAN REILLY
42nd Ward
Chicago City Hall
121 North LaSalle Street, Room 300
Chicago, Illinois 60602
phone: 312-744-3062
email: brendan@reillyforchicago.com

DEAR ALDERMAN REILLY:

We, the undersigned, do not want a columbarium or any related facilities at the Three Arts Club building, 1300 North Dearborn, Chicago, Illinois.
Sincerely,

The Undersigned

James Taranto on the Ft. Hood Massacre Media Party Line

This essay on Best of the Web really made me think. An excerpt:

Some have detected in the Fort Hood coverage a return to a pre-9/11 mindset, and there is some truth to this. In particular, the left-liberal tendency to stereotype servicemen and veterans as psychopaths, suckers and victims is a return to form. But the bending over backward to explain away the role of religious fanaticism in the Fort Hood massacre is, it seems to us, something new--something distinctly post-9/11, or post-post-9/11.

Politically correct sensitivities have, of course, long been with us. But as we noted Monday, journalists and political leaders really seem to be going to extremes to avoid acknowledging the evident religious motivations for Hasan's alleged crimes. We'd suggest that there are three reasons for such denial, all of which grow out of 9/11:

First, the liberal left has embraced the notion that America overreacted after 9/11, was beastly toward Muslims, and now needs to "reach out" and atone. There is very little truth to this. President Bush constantly reminded the world that we were not at war with Islam, which he called a religion of peace. But Bush-was-too-aggressive rhetoric is a much better fit with liberals' natural inclination toward inaction than the Bush-wasn't-aggressive-enough rhetoric that Barack Obama occasionally used while still a candidate.

Second, it is comforting to think that 9/11 was a one-off rather than the most horrific example (so far) of a continuing threat. From this standpoint, it's psychologically preferable to emphasize that the Fort Hood suspect appears to have been a lone nut rather than that he seems to have espoused an ideology similar to that of the 9/11 terrorists.

Third, the impulse to protect a religious minority from prejudice and discrimination is a noble one. Muslims are not collectively guilty for the worst crimes of their coreligionists. We've encountered enough anti-Muslim prejudice to say that fears of it are not unfounded.

But the denialist attitude is counterproductive on all three grounds. Willful ignorance of the enemy's ideology is of no help in fighting the enemy--or preventing future attacks. In any case clarity, not obfuscation, is the enemy of prejudice.

Frank Gaffney Charges Ft. Hood Massacre Exposed Pentagon's Islamist Fifth Column

He names a name, too. Writing in Newsmax.com, Gaffney charges that there are agents of the Muslim Brotherhood working in the Pentagon, who bear responsibility for policies that led to the Ft. Hood massacre:

The run-up to the Ft. Hood massacre and the official response in its aftermath demonstrates the extent to which U.S. government civilian and military agencies have allowed themselves to be influenced, penetrated, and suborned.

The problem goes beyond political correctness and an attendant, inadequate oversight of an obviously problematic individual. Neither can it be excused away as an isolated instance of incompetence in the chain of command, the intelligence community and/or law enforcement.

What is at work here is, in the words of Stephen Coughlin, a comprehensive and collective failure of the “professional duty to know” our enemy, what animates him, and the nature of his intentions and his strategy for actualizing them.

Coughlin, another major in the U.S. Army (Reserves), used to warn against this practice as a contractor supporting the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Until, that is, he was purged from the George W. Bush Pentagon by an influential friend of the Muslim Brotherhood in then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England’s office.

As National Review Online’s Andy McCarthy has pointed out, the message to those in and out of uniform could not have been more clear: You will jeopardize your livelihood if you are not adequately “sensitive” — which is to say acquiescent to — Muslim sensibilities. No one with any ambition, or simply with a well-developed sense of self-preservation, wants to risk ending a career by being called a “bigot,” “racist,” or “Islamophobe.”

CAIR, in particular, was in a position powerfully to imprint this message on FBI agents (including, presumably, some who found unobjectionable Hasan’s many interactions with the terrorist-tied imam, Anwar al-Awlaki) in mandatory “sensitivity training” sessions it regularly ran for the Bureau until last year when the latter broke off the relationship. (Incredibly, the FBI now uses another Brotherhood front, ISNA, to desensitize our front line of defense against domestic terrorism.)

We are witnessing in the collective cognitive dissonance over Shariah’s role in the Fort Hood massacre the cumulative result of the Muslim Brotherhood’s success in intimidating not only government officials but journalists and the public at large since shortly after the 9/11 attack.

My question is still whether Senator Lieberman has the guts to follow this investigation wherever it may lead...

UPDATE: In hindsight, this 2003 article by Frank Gaffney in FrontPage magazine looks prophetic.

And now for something completely different...

It's a link to the website of the National Arts Program, the organization behind a National Press Club art exhibition that includes one of my drawings, Pears. Their mission statement:

The National Arts Program® was established in 1983 to identify, showcase, and reward the visual artistic talent in America. Today we sponsor 86 annual venues within 44 states and the District of Columbia with steady growth.

Their motto: "Never hide your talent."

Michelle Malkin on Veteran's Day

From MichelleMalkin.com:

A few years ago, I had the great honor and thrill of interviewing several of the surviving WWII Doolittle Raiders for Hot Air. Watch the clip here. I asked Lt. Col. Dick Cole, Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot, for his thoughts on America at war today. He answered bluntly:

“We’re at war. We ought to get on a war footing and get the job done.”

From Lt Col. Cole’s lips to the White House’s ears…

President Obama's Ft. Hood Address

An excerpt from WhiteHouse.gov:

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. It's a chance to pause, and to pay tribute -- for students to learn the struggles that preceded them; for families to honor the service of parents and grandparents; for citizens to reflect upon the sacrifices that have been made in pursuit of a more perfect union.

For history is filled with heroes. You may remember the stories of a grandfather who marched across Europe; an uncle who fought in Vietnam; a sister who served in the Gulf. But as we honor the many generations who have served, all of us -- every single American -- must acknowledge that this generation has more than proved itself the equal of those who've come before.

We need not look to the past for greatness, because it is before our very eyes.

This generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen have volunteered in the time of certain danger. They are part of the finest fighting force that the world has ever known. They have served tour after tour of duty in distant, different and difficult places. They have stood watch in blinding deserts and on snowy mountains. They have extended the opportunity of self-government to peoples that have suffered tyranny and war. They are man and woman; white, black, and brown; of all faiths and all stations -- all Americans, serving together to protect our people, while giving others half a world away the chance to lead a better life.

In today’s wars, there's not always a simple ceremony that signals our troops’ success -- no surrender papers to be signed, or capital to be claimed. But the measure of the impact of these young men and women is no less great -- in a world of threats that no know borders, their legacy will be marked in the safety of our cities and towns, and the security and opportunity that's extended abroad. It will serve as testimony to the character of those who served, and the example that all of you in uniform set for America and for the world.

Here, at Fort Hood, we pay tribute to 13 men and women who were not able to escape the horror of war, even in the comfort of home. Later today, at Fort Lewis, one community will gather to remember so many in one Stryker Brigade who have fallen in Afghanistan.

Long after they are laid to rest -- when the fighting has finished, and our nation has endured; when today’s servicemen and women are veterans, and their children have grown -- it will be said that this generation believed under the most trying of tests; believed in perseverance -- not just when it was easy, but when it was hard; that they paid the price and bore the burden to secure this nation, and stood up for the values that live in the hearts of all free peoples.

So we say goodbye to those who now belong to eternity. We press ahead in pursuit of the peace that guided their service. May God bless the memory of those that we have lost. And may God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

Why Isn't Anwar al-Awlaki in Jail?

According to the Toronto Star, the US citizen and radical imam is pretty clearly giving aid and comfort to the enemy from his new home in Yemen, most recently in this praise of Nidal Malik Hasan's killing spree at Ft. Hood. Why hasn't he been extradited, tried, and jailed or executed for treason?

Given this latest disaster, the FBI, CIA, DIA, and State Department had better have a pretty good explanation...I wonder, will Senator Lieberman have the guts to pursue this matter--or is his announced investigation into the Ft. Hood slaughter mere political grandstanding?

UPDATE: This from Reuters: "YEMEN: Yemen signed an agreement with the United States for cooperation on military intelligence and training , its official news agency reported, as the Arabian peninsula state faces a worsening rebellion in the north. The two countries signed the agreement in Sanaa on Tuesday after two days of talks, the second round of such negotiations, Saba reported."

Why not demand extradition of Anwar al-Awlaki in connection with the Ft. Hood massacre as part of any defense agreement? How could the US act to defend a government which is harboring a terrorist who has just incited and celebrated an attack on a US military base--that's nuts, IMHO...

UPDATE 2: More on al-Awlaki, including a look at his Facebook page, from Pamela Geller.

UPDATE 3: The Weekly Standard's Thomas Joscelyn has more on the FBI's relation to al-Awlaki. IMHO, after reading this article, I would guess that the cleric has been protected for reasons as yet unknown by British (he went to London after 9/11) and US (he has not been extradited from Yemen despite years of openly recruiting online for Al Qaeda) intelligence agencies. I wonder if Senator Lieberman will have the guts to pursue this--and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to charges of "McCarthyism" should he take on the FBI and other intelligence agencies over their manifest failures (or worse)?

Hugh Fitzgerald on NPR Coverage of Ft. Hood Massacre

He calls it "A Nest of Ninnies"

Though I watched many different programs, one stuck in my mind. Because I could listen to it first in the morning and then to the rerun the same evening, I managed to take more complete notes (the first time round, I was too stunned by the varieties of idiocy on parade to do so). This was Tom Ashbrook's "On Point" on NPR. His guests, along with his fellow commentator Jack Beatty (who is permitted to phone in his work from Hanover, N.H. and never need make the trek to Boston and WBUR) were Hendrik Hertzberg, who writes for Talk of the Town in The New Yorker, and an editor on the Dallas Morning News, Bill McKenzie.

Ashbrook got the whole thing going on a note of youth-wants-to-know gosh-darn-it puzzlement, asking "what could have driven Major Hasan to this?" What, indeed? What could it have been? During the entire program there was not a single mention of Major Hasan's deep commitment to Islam, not a single attempt to ask what might be in the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira, that might, conceivably, possibly, explain not only the behavior of Major Hasan, but of the thousands of Muslims picked up, before, during, and after planned, or foiled, or unsuccessful, or successful, attempts at waging Jihad violently, and directly, rather than waging Jihad through other means. There was not a syllable about Islam inculcates, not a question about it, for it was simply nervously assumed that of course it couldn't be Islam - how could it be? For if it could, what in god's name would that mean? What would that require us to think, or - horribile dictu - even possibly to do, in policies both foreign and domestic?

The calls came in, fast and furious, no doubt most of them vetted for their contents ahead of time. Anyone who was likely to mention the little matter of Islam was kept out, or kept out until the very end, when one tiny one-sentence mention managed to slip by Ashbrook's call-vetters and handlers, who are given instructions as to what to allow on, and what lines of inquiry or inquirers are to be kept, under one pretext or another ("we'll get to that in another show" or "we don't think this is the time to focus on that" or "we already have a question about that lined up" or "gee, we are running out of time but we'll see if we can get to you" and so on) to keep ruthlessly off (I know this, from informants on the inside).

One person, a former army psychiatrist during the Vietnam war, was chosen to offer a comment about Nidal Hasan's performance as an army psychiatrist -- "he had a subpar performance evaluation" - which of course makes one think that Hasan may have sought vengeance as a "disgruntled employee." In other words, his massacre had nothing to do with his deepest lifelong beliefs, and everything to do with that comforting alternative, "going postal."

Then someone else offered her (or was it his) two bits. "This guy was a graduate of Virginia Tech. A lot of stuff went on there. This guy was a time-bomb." Get it? It's all the fault of that campus killing a few years ago at Virginia Tech. He went there. He was therefore a time-bomb, just waiting to go off. I wonder how many parents, siblings, employers, are expected to now be eyeing uneasily their children, siblings, employees, the ones who made the fatal mistake of going to Virginia Tech and are now walking "time-bombs" like Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

Then someone else called to Blame The Army (And The System, And While We Are At It, Amerikka Too). The army has taken "an enormous toll on clinicians" who are "already on the edge." And Nidal Malik Hasan was "very affected by the physical and mental injuries." Do you think so? Do you think Nidal Malik Hasan was "very affected" by the physical and mental injuries suffered by the Infidel servicemen he was supposed to treat? Or do you think, rather, that he wasn't upset with those injuries at all, but only with what he learned, or what he imagined, about the injuries suffered by Iraqis, or Afghans, or any Muslims at all, non-Iraqi and non-Afghan, who might have been lending a hand in either country to the war against the American infidels? What a preposterous and ludicrous idea! A devout Muslim such as Major Nidal Hasan made no secret of his views. To classmate Val Finnell he was "a Muslim first and an American second." He posted on websites under his real name (Nidal Hasan) that "if one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory" a few months before he tried to kill "100 enemy soldiers" (falling 87 short, but not for want of trying - rather, only because someone armed, a policewoman, appeared on the scene). It is absurd to think he would have been upset - as others were upset - by the spectacle of any Infidel suffering.

But other callers kept up that theme: "The strain these people suffer." Who? Army people? Army psychiatrists? People who served in the war or people who are about to be deployed, even if, like Major Nidal Malik Hasan, in non-combat positions? No doubt the army is understaffed and psychiatrists often find themselves troubled, because they feel sympathy with, identify with, those who have come back deeply scarred in one way or another. But there is no evidence that Major Nidal Malik Hasan felt any sense of identification, any sympathy whatsoever, for those he was assigned to help, and it is silly to believe, or pretend to believe, that he would. And it is doubly offensive given that this belief or pretend-belief is offered in order to deflect attention from what Major Nidal Malik Hasan so obviously and openly believed deeply truly madly in -- Islam.

Punctuating these phone calls were approving comments of both Ashbrook and his two guests, Bill McKenzie, whose voice, and the sentiments that he expressed, made one think of Ned Flanders, the comically goody-goody neighbor of Homer Simpson, while smooth nieuw-amsterdamer Hendrik Hertzberg (Jonathan Schell! Jake Brackman! The Crimson! Mr. Shawn!), though slightly more urbane, was equally comical in his amazing ability to avoid the obvious.

More, more, more calls, all about the psyches of American soldiers. You see, still another of those vetted callers-in "joining the conversation" said, "the kind of war we are fighting is much harder on the psyches of soldiers." And yet again, someone said (it doesn't matter who): "In Afghanistan and Iraq our soldiers are subject to almost a 24/7 anxiety." Oh, I have no doubt it is hard on the psyches of American soldiers, who are deeply demoralized by what their generals and civilian leaders tell them, and what they observe, up close, about the people, the Muslim people, whom they are expected to trust, and in some cases trust with their lives, in order to make life better for these Muslim people who seem so strangely ungrateful, and whining, and treacherous, and dangerous, and yet the generals keep saying we must do this, we must do that, to win their hearts and their minds - and that is a very large part of the psychic distress from which our soldiers and Marines suffer, the disconnect between what they are told is the mission, and what they must believe in order to accomplish that impossible mission, and what they see, what they experience, for themselves.

But the subject of "On Point" was not supposed to be the psychic damage done to many of our soldiers and Marines coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not supposed to be about the post-traumatic stress disorder (mentioned again and again, as a leitmotif of that particular edition of "On Point") of "our soldiers" as in the phrase that was uttered by yet another caller - or was it Ashbrook himself (I forget): "In Afghanistan and Iraq our soldiers are subject to almost a 24/7 anxiety." The subject was supposed to be not "our soldiers" but one particular Muslim soldier who killed "our soldiers," that is the mass-murderer Nidal Malik Hasan, who hasn't spent a single second in Iraq or Afghanistan, who has been consumed not with pity for the squandering of American lives, and the miserable missions they have been asked to fulfill, but rather consumed with hatred for the very Americans, the non-Muslim Americans, who trust him so much that they allow him to live among them, even to treat them, even to be deployed, possibly, as an army psychiatrist, to Afghanistan or Iraq, where the army naively assumed he would not pose a threat any more than they thought he would pose a threat at Fort Hood. But there was every sign that this man took his Islam seriously. Nothing more need be known.

Still, the program continued in its complacent display of idiocy. Ashbrook alluded a little nervously, I thought, to the American military, which was now "a military of such diversity, a diversity which we celebrate" and therefore, apparently, it would be A Very Bad Thing Indeed to raise any issue or matter that might impinge or infringe on that celebrated Diversity Of Which We Can All Be Very Proud.

Then, toward the end of the program, one lone voice somehow got through. Was it because there had been dozens of would-be callers who wished to express the same thing, and Ashbrook decided to let one short call stand for all of them, in the interests of "fairness" in order to head off potential future complaints? Or was it a case where the caller simply lied about what he intended to say, in order to get on, and then said it, quickly? He said something of such obvious truth that it startled the proceedings. And this is what he said. He said that all the attention deflected onto PTSD and other forms of craziness ignored the main point, and the main point was this: "An American Muslim who has decided to be a Jihadist in the military."

An uneasy silence, and then, after that single moment of illumination, they put out the light. Or rather, they dimmed those lights, dimmed them quickly. Tom Ashbrook, and Jack Beatty, and Bill McKenzie, and Hendrik Hertzberg dimmed them, so that listeners would, as it were, see once again as through a glass, darkly, and it was quickly back to the dismal mixture as before. You know, the terrible "stress" felt by soldiers who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan (where Nidal Malik Hasan, remember, had never been), and the terrible "stress" felt by the overworked psychiatrists who had to deal with those soldiers who had felt that stress in Iraq and Afghanistan. But their suffering, as Infidels, would have been a matter certainly at most of indifference to Nidal Hasan. More likely their suffering, mental and physical, was a source of great secret pleasure by Nidal Malik Hasan.

Jack Beatty intervened quickly with "we just don't know enough.... the horrors of war... affected him." And then Beatty outdid himself, by choosing to deflect attention not to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and overwork in the military, but to a theme of Injustice. And what was the Great Injustice? It wasn't the fact that the bigshots, in the government, in the military, and in the media, have done their damnedest to prevent any of us from seeing steadily and whole the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam, which might make both soldiers and civilians much more secure, and not incidentally, save a few trillion dollars along the way by pointing up the folly of military intervention, as a way to combat the worldwide Jihad, in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, what exercised the voice-from-Dorchester Jack Beatty, who never forgets the Plight of the Common Man (of which he is a perfect exemplar), is that many soldiers enlist, he said, because of "lack of economic opportunity" (as well, he hastened to add, also out of "patriotism"). And that, somehow - don't ask me how - the fact that many people enlist out of the economic injustices of our society, that by allowing the current system of enlistment, we in the larger society engage in "ratifying the injustice of our own society."

Tiens! Now there is no doubt that there is plenty of injustice in our society, and there is no doubt that one reason rich people tend not to enlist is that they do not need to do so for economic reasons (so that anyone well-off who joins the army is doing so for quite different reasons), but for god's sake, Jack and Tom and Hendrik and Bill, the program today, On Point, was supposed to discuss what prompted someone who was born and raised in this country, whose entire medical school costs were borne by the American taxpayers, to decide to mass-murder as many of his fellow soldiers as he could. And the "economic injustice" of American society, and the fact that no doubt many of those he murdered were from the identifiable class of economically "disadvantaged," is utterly irrelevant. Or it is irrelevant unless your goal is to quickly make everyone forget the caller who mentioned, in a moment of rare truth on this comically confused and confusing program, that Nidal Malik Hasan was "an American Muslim" who had decided to be a Jihadist, and on an army base. He was just like Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan who try to kill Infidel soldiers on army bases, or like some Muslims a year or two ago were planning to attack an army base in New Jersey, or the attack on the recruitment center just a few months ago, or any of the many attacks by Muslims, in this country, and in Canada, and in Great Britain, and in France, and in Belgium, and in Germany, and in Denmark, and in Italy, and in Spain. All that carefully went unmentioned by Jack, by Tom, by Bill, by Hendrik.

Apparently neither Ashbrook, nor the equally egregious Beatty, nor ned-flandersish McKenzie, nor child-of-refugees-from-Hitler Hertzberg, thought they had any duty to treat their listeners with anything other than contempt, a contempt expressed in their apparent belief that they could get away without addressing, without coming close, to Islam - to at least asking, just once - gosh, shouldn't we look into the texts of Islam to find out what it was this Major Nidal Malik Hasan believed? Shouldn't we demand that they, or those who one hopes will soon take their places, take all of their places, do so? Don't we owe it to the living, and the dead?

Dr. Ali Alyami: Nidal Hassan is a Jihadist Murderer

Dr. Alyami, founder of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, sent us a copy of his letter to the editor of the Arab News:

Editor:

With due respect, Dr. Nadal Hassan has many options not to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. He could have refused and get court martialled, he could have claimed conscientious objector statues and he could have fled the country. He could have claimed insanity and he could have disguised himself and live in California without being found for decades or ever. According to his medical colleagues, he has become a religious extremist who condemned non-Muslims on many occasions.

He has described terrorists as heroes. He went to work the day he massacred his colleagues (people he is supposed to help) in his Muslim outfit, mind you he is a major in the US military; even in Saudi Arabia, military personal must wear military uniform when on duty. Some eyewitnesses are reported to have said, he prayed first and during his murderous rampage was screaming, Allah o Akbar. How could anyone say he is not driven by religious hate? He is a Jihadist murderer. He could have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan and defected to his Muslim brethrens if he did not want to be a US citizen instead of gunning down people that trusted him and looked up to him for help.

Do you really believe if the US withdraws from Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of Arab and Muslim countries, Muslim terrorists and religious Jihadists would cease to exist? Do you think religious incitements against non-Muslims and Muslim minorities would stop in Saudi mosques and schools? Saudi Arabia is the birth place of Islam and home to its holy shrines; and from what we hear and read, religious extremists, (Albeia’h Althallah or deviants) and large amounts of weapons are apprehended and confiscated frequently. Saudi Arabia is protected by the West from external (and internal) threats, so why not be grateful for such service?

Can you print this response on your paper so Saudis and others could debate the issue publicly and address the root causes of religious hate and extremism? You can use factitious name if using Ali Alyami will cause swift reprisal by the authorities, Naif and his long arm religious extremists.

Thank you,

Dr. Ali Alyami

UPDATE: The Washington Post has posted Hasan's Walter Reed PowerPoint Presentation about Islam on its website.

Why Nidal Hasan Did It...

On Counterterrorism Blog, Evan Kohlmann quotes from sermons of the Yemeni-American imam tied to Al Qaeda--whom the FBI suspiciously released to flee to Yemen shortly after 9/11:

One of the key questions for investigators who are now looking into potential links between radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and the accused perpetrator of the massacre at Ft. Hood, Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, is understanding to what degree al-Awlaki's extreme sermons may have influenced Hasan's actions. Toward that end, they should be keeping an especially close eye out for one such al-Awlaki sermon in particular--"Constants on the Path of Jihad"--which itself is based upon an Arabic-language text penned by the founder of Al-Qaida's network in Saudi Arabia, Yousef al-Ayyiri. In order to bring al-Ayyiri's words to an English-speaking audience, al-Awlaki dedicated a lengthy lecture to his work--a lecture that over time has become the "virtual bible" for lone wolf Muslim extremists. In "Constants", al-Awlaki argues:

“Jihad does not end with the disappearance of a person. Jihad must continue regardless because it does not depend on any particular leader or individual… Jihad does not depend on any particular land. It is global. When the Muslim is in his land, he performs jihad… No borders or barriers stop it. The message cannot be conveyed without jihad. If a particular people or nation is classified as… ‘the people of war’ in the Shariah, that classification applies to them all over the earth. Islam cannot be customized to suit the conditions where you are, for instance Europe.”

According to Awlaki, al-Ayyiri also instructed that “victory” cannot be limited to mere “military victories” alone, and should also include “sacrifice. The Mujahid sacrificing ‘his self’ and his wealth is victory. Victory of your idea, your religion. If you die for your religion, your death will spread the da`wa… Allah chooses Shuhada (martyrs) from amongst the believers. This is a victory.”

It is thus perhaps little surprise that Anwar al-Awlaki's name and his sermon on "Constants on the Path of Jihad" seem to surface in every single homegrown terrorism investigation, whether in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, or beyond. For a sense of what role Awlaki and his message play in these cases, take for instance the New Jersey-based conspirators behind the attempted terror plot at Ft. Dix...

Daniel Pipes on the Ft. Hood Massacre

From DanielPipes.org:

When a Muslim in the West for no apparent reason violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about motives.

The establishment – law enforcement, politicians, the media, and the academy – stands on one side of this debate, insisting that some kind of oppression caused Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, to kill 13 and wound 38 at Ft. Hood on Nov. 5. It disagrees on the specifics, however, presenting Hasan as the victim alternatively of "racism," "harassment he had received as a Muslim," a sense of not belonging," "pre-traumatic stress disorder," "mental problems," "emotional problems," "an inordinate amount of stress," or being deployed to Afghanistan as his "worst nightmare." Accordingly, a typical newspaper headline reads "Mindset of Rogue Major a Mystery.".

Instances of Muslim-on-unbeliever violence inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses. Colorful examples (drawing on my article and weblog entry about denying Islamist terrorism) include:

1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney)
1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the Empire State Building)
2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX)
2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers)
2003: An "attitude problem" (Hasan Karim Akbar's attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy outside a McDonald's restaurant)
2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a rampage at a retirement center in Virginia)
2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing with an SUV in northern California)

Sgt. Hasan Karim Akbar, convicted of the 2003 murder of two fellow soldiers.
Additionally, when a Osama bin Laden-admiring Arab-American crashed a plane into a Tampa high-rise, blame fell on the acne drug Accutane.

As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject these explanations as weak, obfuscatory, and apologetic. The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law. We recall a prior episode of sudden jihad syndrome in the U.S. military, as well as the numerous cases of non-lethal Pentagon jihadi plots and the history of Muslim violence on American soil.

Far from being mystified by Hasan, we see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions. He handed out Korans to neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled "Allahu Akbar," the jihadi's cry, as he fired off over 100 rounds from two pistols. His superiors reportedly put him on probation for inappropriately proselytizing about Islam.

We note what former associates say about him: one, Val Finnell, quotes Hasan saying, "I'm a Muslim first and an American second" and recalls Hasan justifying suicide terrorism; another, Col Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans"; the third, a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan, described him as "almost belligerent about being Muslim."

Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad. In 2001, for example, responding to the U.S. attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating that "The Muslim soldier in the American army must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple, Duane Reasoner Jr., not to join the U.S. army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims."

If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it's also far more awkward to articulate. Everyone finds blaming road rage, Accutane, or an arranged marriage easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what Ralph Peters calls the army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to his victimization and will leave jihad unmentioned.

And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.

Was Nidal Hasan Linked to 9/11 Plotters?

From The Telegraph (UK) (ht Michelle Malkin):

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.

Ft. Hood Gunman's Name Was Nomme de Guerre of Famed Palestinian Terrorist

Was the alleged Ft. Hood assassin named after Abu Nidal, "Father of the Struggle?" Sounds like a chip off the old block to this observer, but if not, who is Nidal Hasan named after? More on Abu Nidal on Wikipedia:

Abu Nidal (Arabic: أبو نضال‎) (May 1937 – August 16, 2002), born Sabri Khalil al-Banna (Arabic: صبري خليل البنا), was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council (Arabic: فتح المجلس الثوري), a militant Palestinian group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO).[1] At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, or "father of the struggle", was widely regarded as the most dangerous and ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders.[2] He told Der Spiegel in 1985: "I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing ... nightmares."[3]

Part of the secular, left-wing, Palestinian rejectionist front, so called because they reject proposals for a peaceful settlement with Israel, the ANO was formed after a split in 1974 between Abu Nidal and Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Setting himself up as a freelance contractor, Abu Nidal is believed to have ordered attacks in 20 countries, killing or injuring over 900 people.[4] The group's most notorious attacks were on the El Al ticket counters at Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, when Arab gunmen high on amphetamines opened fire on passengers in simultaneous shootings, killing 18 and wounding 120. Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal's biographer, wrote of the attacks that their "random cruelty marked them as typical Abu Nidal operations".[5]

Abu Nidal died of between one and four gunshot wounds in Baghdad in August 2002. Palestinian sources believe he was killed on the orders of Saddam Hussein, but the Iraqi government insisted he had committed suicide.[6] The Guardian wrote on the news of his death: "He was the patriot turned psychopath. He served only himself, only the warped personal drives that pushed him into hideous crime. He was the ultimate mercenary."[7]

Another Reason for President Obama to Fire General Casey

This statement, as quoted in The Telegraph (UK):

But General George Casey, the Army's Chief of Staff, said it was "speculation" that military authorities failed to pick up on warning signs. "I don't want to say that we missed it," he said.

Memo to the President: Fire General Casey for Ft. Hood Massacre

This statement in Politics Daily gives evidence that as Chief of Staff of the Army, General George Casey's military personnel policies may have been at least in part responsible for the climate which permitted the massacre to take place:

Casey expressed concern that speculation about Hasan and his views and motives "could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."

Bob Schieffer on Ft. Hood Massacre

From CBS News:

(CBS) The President has asked the nation not to jump to conclusions about what happened at Fort Hood, which is usually good advice, but it is also what government officials generally say when the government fouls up.

Good advice or not, I am jumping to an obvious conclusion: This should not have happened. That doctor should not have been at Fort Hood.

I don't care how hard-up the Army is for mental health professionals - a government psychiatrist with bad performance ratings who had been trying to get out of the Army and who had been saying what Dr. Hasan had been saying about the war on terrorism, should not have been shipped off to Fort Hood to give grief counseling.

What do you suppose he was telling the soldiers, that after what they had done they OUGHT to feel bad?

Certainly, no officer with his record would have been allowed to lead soldiers into combat.

Sadly, this shows that the Army still does not take protecting soldiers' mental health as seriously as it does training them to shoot.

And then there is the other part that often happens in government: Don't deal with a problem, shuffle it off to somewhere else. When he had problems at Walter Reed Hospital, the doctor was just packed off to Fort Hood.

Investigators confirm now that someone by his name had been posting messages on the Internet about how suicide bombers are as heroic as American soldiers who fall on grenades to save their comrades.

But the investigators say it is not clear if Dr. Hasan actually wrote those messages.

Based on what we know so far, my question is, do you suppose anyone has even asked him?

David Horowitz on Ft. Hood Massacre

In his interesting blog post, David Horowitz neglects to mention that George W. Bush and the Republicans were in charge when Major Nidal Hasan was commissioned and promoted as an officer in the United States Army, not the editors of The Nation:

A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry. And it’s not as though the army didn’t know that he was a Muslim fanatic and supporter of the Islamic jihad against the West. He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged.

But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? But it was. And so, after calling America the “aggressor” in Afghanistan and Iraq this Muslim jihadist traitor army officer picks up his semi-automatic weapons and heads for the center at Ft. Hood where soldiers are being deployed to fight the jihadists in Afghanistan to conduct his massacre. Yet this morning the Fox News Channel chiron says “Investigators search for a motive in the Ft. Hood killings.” Is everybody out of their mind?

The Ft. Hood killings are the chickens of the left coming home to roost. Already the chief political correspondent of The Nation has decried even mention of the fact that the jihadist killer Hasan is a Palestinian Muslim. According to The Nation this is “Islamophobia.” This fatuous attempt to protect America’s enemies carries on The Nation’s 60-year tradition as the leading fifth column collaborator with America’s enemies — defender of the Rosenbergs, defender of Hiss, defender of their boss Stalin, defender of Mao, defender of Castro and now defender of Islamic terrorists. But The Nation is only the tip of an iceberg. The fifth column formed out of the unholy alliance between radical Islam and the American left is now entrenched in the White House and throughout our government. And in matters like the Muslim jihadist Major Hasan our military is its captive.

The Fort Hood massacre is the first of the preventable atrocities we have been warning about on our websites since 9/11 — the atrocities which are apparently necessary for Americans to wake up to the threat that confronts us. We have a vast internal threat in this country in the form of this unholy alliance between the anti-American Left and radical Islam – whose Muslim Brotherhood network extends through our universities, our government and our military. It is “politically incorrect” to recognize this fact. You can be barred — as I have been — from speaking at universities for even talking about it. The embargo of discussion of the Islamo-fascist threat puts every American (including the infidel collaborators) at risk. Hasan had semi-automatic weapons. But they weren’t nuclear. That possibility is just around the corner unless we undergo a sea change in our attitudes and marshal the intelligence and the courage to recognize the threat.

President Obama's Ft. Hood Proclamation

Honoring the Victims of the Tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas
- - - - - - -
By The President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Our Nation's thoughts and prayers are with the service members, civilians, and families affected by the tragic events at Fort Hood, Texas. The brave victims, who risked their lives to protect their fellow countrymen, serve as a constant source of strength and inspiration to all Americans. We ask God to watch over the fallen, the wounded, and all those who are suffering at this difficult hour.

As a mark of respect honoring the victims of the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, I hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, Tuesday, November 10, 2009. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

NPR: Walter Reed Psychiatrists Missed Hasan Warning Signs

From NPR News:

INSKEEP: I understanding you've spoken with someone who knew him, worked with him at Walter Reed.

ZWERDLING: Earlier today, I spoke to a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan and knows him very well. And he said, you know, from the beginning -and Hasan was there for four years - the medical staff was very worried about this guy. He said the first thing is he's cold, unfriendly. At least that's who he came off. He did not do a good job as a psychiatrist in training, was repeatedly warned, you better shape up, or, you know, you're going to be in trouble. Did badly in his classes, seemed disinterested. But second of all - and this is, perhaps, you know, more relevant. The psychiatrist says that he was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.

They have grand rounds, right? They, you know, dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he - Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this cold be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.

INSKEEP: So we have a picture of a man, then, who, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was disliked by his colleagues. Or maybe disliked is not the word. Disturbed some of his colleagues is perhaps a better way to put it.

ZWERDLING: No, and disliked is also a relevant word.

INSKEEP: OK. And then?

ZWERDLING: Then he - the psychiatrist this morning said people generally considered him a blank bag. You, you know, can guess what they say.

INSKEEP: And then he is sent to Fort Hood, Texas, and he knows at the point that this shooting allegedly begins, that the shooting begins of which he is accused, that he's about to be deployed by Afghanistan...

...ZWERDLING: I want to add something else about Hasan at Walter Reed. The psychiatrist I talked to today said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway, saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird? And now, apparently, Walter Reed is in a lockdown mode where they've been instructed - all the staff has been instructed: Do not talk to anybody about this investigation, except military people. Do not talk to the FBI, because they're afraid, potentially, what if people decide investigating this that people missed potential warning signs about the guy? You know, this is speculation still, but�

INSKEEP: How can they not talk to the FBI?

ZWERDLING: Well, our colleague Dina Temple-Raston has heard that from the FBI, and this military officer is telling me the same thing from Walter Reed.

Robert Spencer: Ft. Hood Massacre Fits Jihadist Terror Attack Pattern

From Frontpagemag.com:

...Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened – and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored....

...Maybe he just snapped, perhaps under the pressure of his imminent deployment to Iraq. But it’s noteworthy that if he did, he snapped in exactly the same way that several other Muslims in the U.S. military have snapped in the past. In April 2005, a Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait. AP reported: “Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve ‘maximum carnage’ on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division.”

And Hasan’s murderous rampage resembles one that five Muslim men in New Jersey tried to carry out at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 2007, when they plotted to enter the U.S. Army base and murder as many soldiers as they could.

That was a jihad plot. One of the plotters, Serdar Tatar, told an FBI informant late in 2006: “I’m gonna do it….It doesn’t matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away, it doesn’t matter. Or I die, doesn’t matter, I’m doing it in the name of Allah.” Another plotter, Mohamad Shnewer, was caught on tape saying, “They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, Allah willing.”

Nidal Hasan’s statements about Muslims rising up against the U.S. military aren’t too far from that, albeit less graphic. The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan.

How Obama Can Recover...

IMHO, last night's losses to Republicans were indeed a referendum on President Obama--who is being punished because he has not kept his campaign promises, as Arianna Huffington argued the other day.

To turn the situation around, the Democrats need to go back to basics, and to the principles upon which the President campaigned, as Arianna noted: "Change We Can Believe In" and "Yes, We Can!"

Some concrete steps:

1. Fire Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

2. Replace him with Paul Volcker.

3. Announce a high-level investigation into allegations of violations of securities laws by Goldman Sachs.

4. File motions in the ongoing CIT bankruptcy case to recover $2.3 billion in taxpayer bailout money before creditors are paid.

5. Put Howard Dean in charge of Health Care Reform.

American Banking News: CIT Judge Grants "Unusual" and "Unprecedented" Concessions

From American Banking News:

In what could only be considered a bizarre decision by the judge, he approved a proposed temporary restraining order from CIT Group which will keep lenders from collecting on losses coming from the CIT Group/Equipment Finance Inc. unit, which isn’t even in bankruptcy.

According to court documents, this would have led to losses of $680 million to the company. But a bankruptcy court really shouldn’t have allowed this in the opinion of lenders like Wells Fargo Bank (NYSE:WFC), which, along with others, stated CIT Group hadn’t proved in any way they should be awarded this type of extraordinary measure for a division which has not entered into bankruptcy in the first place.

This may have been allowed to keep more bailout funds being funneled into the bankrupt financial entity, stirring up more outrage from taxpayers, who are growing increasingly edgy over the money being spent on huge companies by politicians on their behalf.

An agreement between CIT Group and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) was also approved by the judge who couldn’t say no, whereby letter of credit of $750 million would be allowed to be continually accessed by CIT, where the company alleged the funds were needed to continue to effectively operate and keep up good relationships with their customers.

Other unusual requests granted by Gropper was in allowing CIT to fund its operations with inter-company cash transfers. The company received a loan of $4.5 billion near the end of October, adding it to the $3 billion loan it received in July, 2009. Proceeds of the loans were given to subsidiaries of the company, which CIT also used the subsidiaries as collateral for the loans. The subsidiaries received liens on CIT’s assets in return.

Investor Carl Icahn, who holds over five percent of CIT’s debt, borrowed $1 billion to CIT in order to continue operations during the bankruptcy procedures. Gropper allowed CIT work out an exception for Icahn concerning using debt to increase billions in tax breaks.

Icahn is working on a deal with CIT where he could own close to 11 percent of the stock of CIT once it emerged from bankruptcy.

CIT said sub-prime mortgage losses and continuing tough credit markets as the reasons for declaring bankruptcy on November 1.

After terrible negotiations by Treasury Secretary William Geithner, taxpayers are expected to receive none of the $2.3 billion in bailout money CIT Group was given.

Italian Court Finds CIA Guilty of Kidnapping

From the Huffington Post:

MILAN — An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush administration's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted.

The Obama administration ended the CIA's interrogation program and shuttered its secret overseas jails in January but has opted to continue the practice of extraordinary renditions.

The Americans, who were tried in absentia, now cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest as long as the verdicts remains in place.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/04/italy-convicts-23-america_n_345274.html

Arianna Huffington: Obama Afraid to Govern

Arianna's read David Plouffe's book, and come away with some questions for the President:

Indeed, reading the book, I often found myself wondering what Candidate Obama would think of President Obama. Would he look at what the White House is doing and say, "that's what I and my supporters worked so hard for?"

How did the candidate who got into the race because he'd decided that "the core leadership had turned rotten" and that "the people were getting hosed" become the president who has decided that the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow?

How did the candidate who told a stadium of supporters in Denver that "the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result" become the president who has surrounded himself with the same old players trying the same old politics, expecting a different result?

How could a president whose North Star as a candidate was that he "would not forget the middle class" choose as his chief economic advisor a man who recently argued against extending unemployment benefits in the middle of the worst economic times since the Great Depression?

I'm referring, of course, to Larry Summers. According to a White House official I spoke with -- later confirmed by sources in the White House and on the Hill -- Summers was against the extension. And it took a lot of Congressional pushing back behind the scenes for the president to overrule him.

And, according to another senior White House official, when foreclosures or job numbers come up at the regular White House morning meeting, Summers' response is that nothing can be done. Nothing can be done about skyrocketing foreclosures or lost jobs.

Nothing can be done -- pretty much the opposite of "Yes we can," isn't it?


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/obama-one-year-later-the_b_343209.html

CIT Bankruptcy Hearing Today in Judge Alan L. Gropper's NYC Courtroom

Here's the judge's calendar showing CIT's hearing scheduled for today, November 3rd. I sincerely hope Judge Gropper throws out the agreement with creditors, saying the US Government failed in its fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers...of course, I'm not holding my breath...

Any readers in NYC who might stop by the courtroom to see what's happening, let us know and we'll try to link to your blog/twitter posts.

UPDATE: Bloomberg reports Judge Gropper isn't making any waves, approved the deals presented to him by CIT.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper in Manhattan today approved all of CIT’s routine “first-day” motions, allowing it to borrow an interim $125 million from a total $500 million “debtor-in-possession” loan from Bank of America Corp. CIT can also pay employees and vendors who supply critical services.

“We are on a very fast track,” Gropper said, setting a Dec. 8 date to consider both a rough outline of CIT’s so-called prepackaged plan, and a final confirmation order.

Not surprising, but disappointing...

NY Times Admits Paying Taliban

Responding to charges from Michael Yon that the newspaper paid ransom to the Taliban for release of its reporter, the New York Times raised further questions about its relations with the Taliban with this statement on its blog:

Security consultants who worked on our case said cash was paid to Taliban members who said they knew our whereabouts.

I would like to see answers to three obvious questions:

1. How much was paid to the Taliban by the New York Times?

2. What did the Times get in exchange?

3. How come the New York Times has not been prosecuted under the Trading with the Enemy Act?

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Diplomacy But Were Afraid to Ask

...can be found in Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice, reviewed by Jeremy Greenstock in the current TLS:

Can a guide originally written in 1917 for a very different planet be relevant now, even with the radical revision which the new editor, Sir Ivor Roberts, decided was necessary? Is diplomacy itself the same profession it was ninety years ago, or indeed in 1969, when the present Satow editor and I sat at adjacent desks in the West African Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, raw recruits struggling with the complexities of the Nigerian civil war? The smell of sealing wax in the registries, the piles of crisp pink and green telegrams on the desks, and the hiss and rattle of Lamson Tubes dispatching papers to other parts of Whitehall now seem like features of a Dickensian novel.

Reading this new edition is a chance to take a salutary lesson. The past is closer to us than we like to imagine; the advice on how to be a good diplomat from a century or three centuries ago can still be spot-on; the well-tried rules of courteous and honourable exchange can cement the bricks of international order like nothing else. Diplomacy and war remain two sides of the same coin, with a lack of professionalism in the one liable to make the other loom all the larger. We need to know what constitutes good practice.

Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843–1929) was a member of the British Japan Consular Service who rose, through his linguistic and other diplomatic skills, to become Head of Mission in Tokyo and then Peking at the turn of the century. In 1907 he represented Britain at the Second Hague Conference on International Peace. He wrote extensively about Japan and is still warmly remembered there. In his retirement he distilled his experience into a diplomatic guide which remains the most widely used in embassies around the world.

This Sixth Edition of Satow’s Diplomatic Practice runs to 700 pages, a challenge for all but the most studious of international affairs enthusiasts, but well worth dipping into or keeping as a work of reference. It describes how diplomacy is structured and organized, how the international and regional institutions work (with much updating on the European Union), how states transact their collective business and how law works at the global level. Precedents and customs abound; and there are some engaging anecdotes. The guidance on how to write a Note Verbale or draw up a non-paper may seem abstruse in a world of emails, blogs and Twittering, but formal communications remain part of international exchange. To adhere to a standard formula, often during a tense situation, has a reassuringly businesslike quality to it. As with legal language, it sounds strange but it is effective.

To the layman, nevertheless, those are diplomatic niceties. The fundamental purpose of the book is serious: humans are a contentious and destructive species and so the opportunities for peaceful interaction must be maximized. Here is an essential aid to doing so at the highest levels of professional effectiveness. Nor is Satow relevant only for British, or even anglophone, practitioners: diplomats of any nationality can draw huge benefit from it. I particularly commend the section at the end on Advice to Diplomats: listen more than you talk; stay calm in every circumstance; don’t show off that you are privy to secrets. The same mistakes are made today as many generations ago; and no practising diplomat should feel too proud to be reminded of them.

"Color Revolutions" Were Media Hype...

An article by Katya Kalandadze of Syracuse University and Mitchell A. Orenstein of Johns Hopkins University in the journal Comparative Political Studies (ht Democracy Digest) finally admits:

The sight of thousands of people demonstrating for clean elections and an end to corrupt postcommunist regimes led many observers to declare that the so-called color revolutions had finally brought democracy to Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. But how successful have these electoral revolutions actually been? The authors analyze all cases of electoral revolutions worldwide since 1991, distinguishing between failed and successful electoral revolutions, to conclude that even successful electoral revolutions have shown insignificant or no democratic progress in their wake. Electoral revolutions are ineffective at advancing democratization because they place too great an emphasis on elections and do not address other fundamental obstacles to democratization in hybrid and authoritarian regimes. International influences have proven more successful in promoting democratization in countries of postcommunist Europe.

Do You Know Any White House Visitors?

Search this handy-dandy database to find out...(ht Huffington Post)

White House Visitor Records Requests

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CIT Bankruptcy Shakes Asia

From Channel News Asia:

HONG KONG - Asian markets tumbled Monday as a heavy loss on Wall Street at the end of last week was compounded by the bankruptcy of US bank CIT at the weekend, hitting confidence for a global economic recovery.

Tokyo lost 2.31 percent, Sydney 2.21 percent and Seoul 1.37 percent as dealers went into selloff mode. Hong Kong lost 0.61 percent, after having been almost three percent lower at one point.

Wall Street had plummeted 2.51 percent on Friday as confidence whipped up by the gross domestic product data was wiped out by worries that CIT Group, one of the largest small-business lenders in the United States, was in trouble.

Those fears were realised on Sunday when the bank filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with its board approving a "prepackaged" restructuring plan to shed 10 billion US dollars in debt.

This comes after a $2 billion US-taxpayer bailout...I want my money back!

IMHO, the bankruptcy judge ought to make darn sure all the CIT execs refund their bonuses as part of any workout.

UPDATE from TechTicker at Finance.Yahoo.com:

The prepackaged plan allows CIT to restructure its debt while trying to keep badly needed loans flowing to thousands of mid-sized and small businesses. The plan keeps CIT's operations alive and makes it possible for the company to exit bankruptcy by year's end.

But here's the bad news: While senior debt holders will only lose 30% of their investment, we, the U.S. taxpayer, will lose the entire $2.3 billion we lent the company this summer.

William Black, professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law is dumbfounded. "We put ourselves on the hook in a completely inept way where we lose first. We lose entirely as the taxpayers."

Black, a former top federal banking regulator, blames Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for negotiating such a bad deal on behalf of the American public.

His argument goes as follows:

The government was in no way obligated to lend the struggling CIT money and, in fact, initially refused to provide it bailout funds. More importantly, being the lender of last resort, the government should have guaranteed we'd be the first to get paid if CIT eventually filed Chapter 11. By failing to do so, "it's like he [Geithner] burned billions of dollars again in government money, our money, gratuitously," says Black.

Here's a link to William Black's book at Amazon.com:

Did New York Times Pay Ransom to Taliban for Afghan Reporter?

The National Review Corner quotes Michael Yon's tweets to that effect:

I have been told by very close sources that ex-CIA officers helped pay off release for Rohde. I knew this while it was ongoing.about 3 hours ago from web...

...Numerous very well placed sources have told me New York Times/associates paid millions to get Rohde release.about 3 hours ago from web

More at the Huffington Post.

Goldman Sachs "May Have Violated Securities Laws"

According to Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers (ht Huffington Post):

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws...

***

...To piece together Goldman's role in the subprime meltdown, McClatchy reviewed hundreds of documents, SEC filings, copies of secret investment circulars, lawsuits and interviewed numerous people familiar with the firm's activities.

McClatchy's inquiry found that Goldman Sachs:

*Bought and converted into high-yield bonds tens of thousands of mortgages from subprime lenders that became the subjects of FBI investigations into whether they'd misled borrowers or exaggerated applicants' incomes to justify making hefty loans.

*Used offshore tax havens to shuffle its mortgage-backed securities to institutions worldwide, including European and Asian banks, often in secret deals run through the Cayman Islands, a British territory in the Caribbean that companies use to bypass U.S. disclosure requirements.

*Has dispatched lawyers across the country to repossess homes from bankrupt or financially struggling individuals, many of whom lacked sufficient credit or income but got subprime mortgages anyway because Wall Street made it easy for them to qualify.

*Was buoyed last fall by key federal bailout decisions, at least two of which involved then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman chief executive whose staff at Treasury included several other Goldman alumni.

The firm benefited when Paulson elected not to save rival Lehman Brothers from collapse, and when he organized a massive rescue of tottering global insurer American International Group while in constant telephone contact with Goldman chief Blankfein. With the Federal Reserve Board's blessing, AIG later used $12.9 billion in taxpayers' dollars to pay off every penny it owed Goldman.

Happy Halloween!

1976 Swine Flu Vaccine May Still Protect Against Current Pandemic

Someone I know saw a link to this September 2009 Scientific American article in a Reuters item, and wondered why it isn't getting more play--as action based on these findings could make available 43 million doses of needed H1Ni flu vaccine to those who really need it. Money quote:

One of the NEJM studies also showed that many older Americans as well as recipients of the 1976 swine flu vaccine may already be protected against the new virus. In that study, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that tests of serum taken from 1976 swine flu vaccine recipients showed a strong protective immune response against today's pandemic virus. The findings may help to explain why the virus sickens children and young adults more than older people, the authors wrote. The preexisting immunity may also prime 1976 vaccinees to respond vigorously to the new pandemic vaccine.

"It would certainly be something very interesting to look at," says Jackie Katz, senior author of the study. "That's why we did these studies originally, to help inform the public health response."

Adults appear protected

Since the new H1N1 virus emerged earlier this year, health officials have noted how it has disproportionately struck children and young adults and conspicuously spared older people worldwide. The disparity is most dramatic in the U.S.: 79 percent of laboratory-confirmed cases have been in people under 30 years old, whereas only two percent of cases have been in adults over 60. The U.S. median age of pandemic infections so far is 12, but somewhat higher in other countries. The median age of confirmed cases in Australia is 21, for example.

Since May, Katz, who is chief of the CDC National Influenza Division's Immunology and Pathogenesis Branch, has been testing stored serum samples to look for existing immunity to the new virus in the U.S. population. Her group's latest report shows that serum from adults born before 1930, including survivors of the 1918 pandemic, possesses antibodies that recognize and respond powerfully to the novel H1N1 virus.

With an antibody concentration of 40 or more considered protective (immunologists describe antibody responses in terms of serum dilution ratios, such as 1:40), the tests showed that 100 percent of subjects born between 1910 and 1929 mounted antibody levels of 80 or more. Only 34 percent of subjects born before 1950 mounted comparable levels, suggesting that exposure to the 1918 pandemic virus or its immediate descendents in the 1920s and 1930s conferred the strongest protection against the new flu.

The original swine flu

The CDC group also started over the summer to test 83 samples of serum drawn in 1976 from adults who received a single dose of the swine flu vaccine as well as a handful of samples from children who got the 1976 vaccine. The study found that the serum from 52 (63 percent) of the adult subjects produced antibody levels of 160 or more when exposed to the novel H1N1 virus. That number was nearly as many (59) of those whose serum demonstrated a strong response when exposed to the 1976 swine flu itself.

The NEJM report notes that a Japanese study recently reported finding protective antibody responses against the novel H1N1 virus in Japanese adults exposed to the 1918 pandemic virus, but not in subjects born after 1920. Serum from older Europeans tested by the CDC also showed lower response levels than the U.S. samples, possibly indicating a greater level of protection among Americans from the 1976 vaccine, which was given only in the U.S.

I got my shot in 1976, as did someone I know, so we won't be getting it again...freeing up at least two doses for some kids with asthma or those with weakened immune systems.

Given the current shortages of vaccine, I hope the Centers for Disease Control would try to spread the word about health benefits of the 1976 shot more vigorously.