Were The Saudis Complicit In 9/11? - What You Won't See Elsewhere

Something rattling the blogsphere thew last two days is an op-ed in the New York Post by investigative reporter, author and columnist Paul Sperry. It concerns an alleged cover up by the Bush Administration on Saudi involvement in 9/11:

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

It was kept secret and remains so today.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

Sperry goes on to detail a number of specific instances, all of them factual, as is his habit. He cites Saudi diplomats like Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy, Saudi intelligence agents Omar al-Bayoumi, Osama Bassnan actually set up safe houses for the 9/11 hijackers and provided them with funds. He relates how these men set up private meetings for the hijackers with American al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who fled America to escape terrorism charges and was later killed by a drone in Yemen.Bassnan later fled America as well after 9/11.

He also says that then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan, much of whom went to the hijackers and to al-Qaeda. The questionable donations are not actually not classified, but a matter of public record...yet nothing happened to Bandar and he was simply recalled.

it is also a matter of record that a number of Saudi government official and nationals were given priority after 9/11 in getting out of the country, including members of the bin-Laden family.

None of this is news, frankly, to anyone who took an honest look at 9/11. Nor is the news on how FBI attempts to investigate 9/11 were stymied by the Bush Administration.

Where Sperry and I part ways is his conjecture that this was an organized attack and an act of war by the Saudi government.

What we had instead, I think, was a number of high level members of the Saudi government and the royal family, plus others in the Gulf Emirates who funded and supported bin-Laden, mostly because, you know, jihad. Some were more involved than others, but probably few of them really believed a second attack on the WTC would succeed, or that it do the damage it did. If you recall, even bin-Laden was pleasantly surprised as how successful the attack went.There was no upside to the Saudis attacking the U.S.

So now we come to the Bush Administration's role in this.

Revealing that high level Saudis had been involved in 9/11 would have meant a declaration of war. Now had I been president, I would have had no problems going there, or at the very least getting a full Saudi mea culpa, financial compensation, the guilty Saudis repatriated back to America to stand trial and an end to their financing mosques and jihad friendly imams here in America.

But President Bush's relationship with these people was, shall we say, somewhat different.



As more than one Bush biography relates, the Bush family was so close to Prince Bander that his nickname within the family circle was 'Bandar Bush'. And a look at Neil Bush of Silverado Trust fame also reveals the family's close connections with the Gulf States.

Nor is it limited to the Bushes. A look at the 'bi-partisan' Carlyle Fund(a huge mega-hedge fund mainly run by former cabinet members, influential congressmen and yes, a few former presidents that included substantial investments by the bin-Laden family), the plethora of six and seven figure speaking and 'consulting fees' enjoyed by a number of political figures on both sides of the aisle including the Clintons, Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and former senators Bob Dole and Tom Daschle just to name a few, the vast amounts spent to fund presidential libraries and foundations, former president Bill Clinton's special 'business relationship' with the Sultan of Dubai that made him a multimillionaire and helped fund Hillary's Clinton's last presidential campaign..lots of members of our ruling class have had their snouts in the trough.

Which by the way, might just tell you why America has never sought to seriously become energy independent even though we have ample oil and are one of the top five petroleum exporters.

In any event. let's just say taking out Saudi Arabia would be bad for business with all that money involved...not to mention that as keeper of the Muslim shrines at Mecca and Medina, a strike at the Saudis might have widened the scope of the war just a bit.

Or would it? Aside from the Saudis and the Gulf Emirates, there was another Muslim country that was very much complicit in 9/11. And unlike The Saudis, we are talking about direct, proven government involvement.

Hezbollah and Iran were directly involved in the 9/11 attacks and it is a matter of record thanks to a federal trial that took place in response to lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims.

Iran facilitated the transit of the 9/11 hijackers into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, just like they allowed entry to al-Qaeda fighters after we invaded their stronghold in Afghanistan.

On page 240 of the 9/11 Commission’s final report, it mentions a “senior Hezbollah operative” who accompanied some of the future 9/11 hijackers on their final airline flights into and out of Afghanistan, Iran, and Lebanon.

It's now known beyond any doubt that the “senior Hezbollah operative” was our old friend Imad Mugniyeh. You'll remember that he was not only a member of al-Qaeda but a founding member of Hezbollah and a former member of Yasser Arafat's Force 17. He was the commander of the operation that killed 247 marines in Beirut, the man who tortured to death Marine Colonel William Buckley,videotaped the proceedings and sent it to the White House, and the facilitator in the Karina A arms shipment, which involved Iranian weapons sent to the PLO.

Mugniyah was the natural liaison man for the 9/11 hijackers as well,because he was one of the few people trusted by by all parties involved...Hezbollah, Iran and al- Qaeda. He was finally sent to hell in 2008, most likely by the Israeli Mossad.

The 9/11 commission report strongly suggested further investigation of the Iranian complicity at the time, but neither the Bush Administration or the Obama Administration ever saw fit to follow up.

As evidence given in the trials show, in addition to directing Mughniyah’s extensive involvement in recruiting, guiding, and training the hijackers, Iran provided vital material support to those hijackers by ordering its border and passport officials not to stamp their passports when they crossed Iranian territory. That meant they could enter the U.S. with clean passports, no questions asked and was of huge help in maintaining their cover.

Not only that, but there's evidence that emerged from the trials that the hijackers may even have received some training in Iran.

According to testimony by a former senior Iranian intelligence officer, Abolghasem Mesbahi, Mugniyeh helped train the hijackers in a camp set up by the MOIS, Iran's intelligence service. Mesabi, who has also been a witness for the German BND in investigating and trying cases involving Iranian assassins of expatriates and dissidents in that country, testified in Federal court that al-Qaeda received instruction in spy craft, explosives, communications, operational guidance and time on a flight simulator purchased by Iran from China for the exact model of domestic airliner the hijackers would use in the 9/11 attacks...which Iran did not have as part of its domestic air fleet in IranAir at the time.

None of this has ever been followed up on.

So, if we were actually talking about going after the perpetrators of 9/11, it seems like Iran Hezbollah, and probably the Saudis and some of the Gulf Emirates might have been on our list. Pretty specific targets, either for a diplomatic or military reckoning. Instead, we went after al-Qaeda, the jihad subcontractors, and we have done so in two consecutive administrations. Worse than that, we continue to appease these regimes who were involved in butchering 3,000 of our fellow Americans.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has talked several times about reconvening the 9/11 Commission to get some answers. As you might imagine, the response from the White House has not been overwhelming and I doubt it will happen.

The complicity of a number of Muslim countries is what they're not telling you about 9/11, and that's why more evidence of Saudi complicity in 9/11 is no big news.

The real story is how we got from there to where we are now over the past 12 years, and why. That's what we have yet to find out.

A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

The election is over, and President Barack Hussein Obama has won re-election.

There are some political, strategic reasons why I and so many others got this so wrong, but rather than go into details and analyze them here, I'd prefer to deal with the big picture issues. They're far more important.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan represented the old, traditional culture of America, that built the country and preserved our Republic these 236 years. They represented an opportunity to retrace our steps and return to the traditions of that democratic republic.

They were, essentially, decent and patriotic men who were rejected by just over half of the electorate in favor of someone with a demonstrated record of failure who concentrated on exacerbating the divisions in the country in order to retain power. The ironic joke is that Barack Obama has managed indeed to retain that power, but in a manner that so alienated half the country that he will be unable to govern effectively by mandate, or indeed in any other way.

What that really means will be a lot clearer, even to those celebrating the president's re-election tonight in about two years or so. The proof of that is that according to all the exit polls, the number one concern of the vast majority of voters was the economy, most of them said it was getting worse, not better and fully seventy-seven percent of voters called the economy not so good or poor.

Yet half of them voted against an experienced business man with a history of success in meeting difficult challenges and turning around failing enterprises in favor of someone whose only offer was more of the same.Essentially, half of America voted for the status quo.

That course is unsustainable, and raising taxes on 'the rich' this president successfully demonized to enough of the country to win tonight will simply grease the skids.

That's fairly similar to what happened to George W. Bush in 2004. People were afraid to change horses in midstream, especially for someone as eminently unlikeable as John Kerry. So they gave the incumbent a chance to follow through on his policies and perform. Remember 'I have political capital and I intend to spend it'?

The only difference is that President Bush had an actual mandate, and control of congress for two years of his second term. President Obama doesn't even have that much,(a few thousand votes in some of the strategic battleground states would have changed things entirely) and he's conducted himself in such a way that his fall from grace will be even more precipitous than President Bush's was.

The economy is not going to get better.

President Obama and the people around him still have the exact same attitude towards oil, coal and gas and skyrocketing energy prices are going to become the new normal.That will add up not only to higher prices at the pump but increased prices for food and goods.

In two years, about the time of the next midterms, we will almost certainly be facing stagflation and the harsh reality of the fiscal debacle this president created will be readily apparent even to many of the True Believers. As ObamaCare kicks in, Americans will be stunned at the taxes they incur and the bureaucracy they're going have to cope with. People used to being able to get care on demand are going to be shocked at how long they need to wait for a procedure, and they'll have to cope with a major shortage of doctors as fewer and fewer physicians will either go elsewhere or simply do something else because they won't be able to accept what ObamaCare offers them for their services without going bankrupt. Seniors will discover to their horror that everything they were told about rationed care is absolutely true.

The disillusionment will be fierce.

And on top of all that, the major scandals that began during the first Obama Administration will almost certainly burst into flame midway into the second. Benghazi, the Green energy scandals and Fast and Furious aren't going to go away, Darrel Issa is still going to be chairman of the oversight committee with subpoena power and the GOP dominated House is not going to be in a conciliatory mood.

The House may even put their collective foot down and refuse to raise the debt ceiling without quid pro quo cuts in spending the president will be unwilling to give them, and will almost certainly fight the president's continued hollowing out of our military tooth and nail. And in spite of tonight's disappointing showing, there are still enough Republicans in the Senate to filibuster., even if they need to be leaned on to do so.So we may even see gridlock similar to what's occurring today.

These things will all come to a head midway through this president's second term and it won't be pretty. Remember you heard it here first.

For now, what's apparent that whether they realize it or not, half of America apparently voted to emulate European socialism when the evidence of how well that's working is right before their eyes. They will experience exactly what they voted for now now to to the point where it sickens them, and they will either pull the reins and change or change will come to them as a natural consequence, because that's how it works. Ask the Greeks or the Spaniards.

It will be a harsher lesson than it needed to be, but perhaps a better one because of it.

For the rest of us, the ones on the other side of the divide, the question we must ask ourselves is different. We need to ask ourselves, what did tonight teach us about our half of the country? About the other half? And how can we use that knowledge to our benefit? Focus. This is a chance for new strategies and a brand new start, and it is eminently doable because no matter what, Obama and the Democrats are going to own what happens in the next four years.

And by the way, opting out is not an option. There are no bolt holes, not really. Flee history and politics and they have a horrible way of catching up with you in spite of your best efforts. Choices you refuse to make get made for you.

Unfortunately, in the meantime this is going to be a hard rain indeed that falls.How hard depends on us and how we embrace what could actually be a gift of fortune, depending on what we make of it.

Societies either embrace real change or they decay and decline. Decay and decline is a possibility, but in our case, rather than simply declining, we are a lot more likely to do what the Romans did in a similar situation. They decided this democracy stuff was too much trouble and dangerous to their physical security and survival. So they abandoned their republic and their traditional liberties altogether to become empire.

We have a chance to embrace real change, freed of a great deal of baggage if that is how we decide to make use of it.

A hard rain doesn't just storm and thunder. It washes away the old detritus. It cleanses.


-Selah-

Mitt And The Brits - An Open Letter To The UK

Dear Cousins,
I hope you don't mind if I take issue with your behavior towards a guest, the visiting Mitt Romney.

Well, to be quite honest, I really don't care whether you mind or not.

Your British press is enjoying itself immensely over a few minor gaffes Governor Romney is supposed to have committed, a number of your politicians have fed the fire and of course the dinosaur media here is absolutely ecstatic, particularly the Soros contingent.

It seems that even your politicians now realize that they went a bit overboard and are trying to walk things back. In reality, they owe Governor Romney a heart felt apology.

Well and good, but it's something perhaps some of you should have thought about more before you piled in so thoroughly.

Let's look at Mitt Romney's 'terrible mistakes' shall we?

The man who successfully ran the Salt Lake City Olympics took a look around at a city a number of people have referred to as Londonistan because of its population of resident jihadis and in answer to a question by NBC's Brian Williams, merely said that it was hard to know how things might turn out, and expressed some concern about the security arrangements, citing stories that the private security firm had said they were shorthanded. At no time did he say London 'wasn't ready', but that particular soundbite was manufactured by your press and your politicians and jammed down Romney's throat. Did he really deserve to be ridiculed in your press, snidely lectured by your Prime Minister or booed by a mob egged on by one of your local politicos? Simply for telling the truth?

Considering London's history of terrorist attacks and the fact that a wanna be jihadi got through the police cordon easily and almost succeeded in wresting the Olympic torch away from the woman holding it while screaming 'Allahu Akbar' , perhaps his concerns were not all that misplaced. The man could just as easily have been carrying a bomb.

Of course, had Governor Romney gone with the easy answer and said that everything looked fine and there was an incident afterwards, he would then have been attacked in the UK and here at home by the media for 'knowing nothing about security' and 'not being ready to lead'! Nice how that works out.

What else was there...oh yes, he referred to someone whom to us is a minor British politician as 'Mr. Leader' instead of Ed Milliband, he mentioned he had a meeting with the head of MI6 and horror of horrors, he referred to our common Anglo Saxon heritage. How dare he!

The sort of overt disrespect shown Governor Romney ( and some of our other leaders) in Britain has never happened to one of your leaders here in America, and believe me, there have been a number of occasions where that would have been far more warranted than anything Governor Romney did or said. But it didn't happen, simply because we Americans are, generally speaking, a notoriously polite people who understand courtesy and how to treat guests. You see, like most Americans, I was raised to understand that when you have a guest in your home who commits a gaffe of etiquette, you do your very best to cover for them rather than ridicule them. I seem to recall you doing that for President Obama quite recently. Apparently, the rules in Britain change according to the political agenda. And of course, who's involved.

The kabuki outrage over Governor Romney invoking our countries' common Anglo-Saxon heritage is particularly revealing.

I fully realize that in today's Britain, multiculturalism - or, let's be honest, attempting to accommodate and placate a restive Muslim population - is all the agenda, to the point where sharia has an equal status with British common law, honor killings occur with distressing regularity, the Royal Navy is essentially a thing of the past, Britain's soldiers are unable to parade in their own country without being mocked and insulted, and a number of Britons seem to no longer have any pride in their country's heritage. Fine by me, but was it really so sensible to make a point of mocking and disillusioning someone who still appears to honor that heritage and seeks to find common ground with you?

Our current president Barack Obama has already let it be known on a number of occasions that he has little regard for the special relationship between America and Britain.Perhaps some of you agree with him.

But here's a point worth considering. In the event Britain needed a strong friend and ally in a dire situation, who would be more likely to lend a helping hand - President Obama or a President Romney?

I think you know the answer, in your heart of hearts.

Apparently the emotional investment you had in 2008 in Barack Obama as rock star and antidote to President Bush didn't quite work out as you planned, but that isn't stopping some of you from doubling down, as we say on this side of the Pond.But it just might be that you've picked the wrong horse in this race. It's a fools bet after all, since even if you manage to win and President Obama's re-elected you end up losing.

And at any rate, since Mitt Romney at this point has at least a 50% chance of becoming our next president, the wisdom of alienating him with boorish behavior to score a few short term political points would seem non-existent no matter how you answer that question.

It may very well be that the special relationship between Britain and America is a thing of the past, especially if you appear to be willing to treat a visiting American leader to your country in this fashion. Fine by me, if that's what it is.After all, you don't pal around with people whom insult you.

But as my mother told me, you need to be careful before you burn your bridges.

Think about it.

And if what I've written here upsets some of you, you're quite welcome.

Regards,
Rob Miller

Let's Not Forget Where Most Of Syria's Chemical Weapons Came From: Iraq

One of the articles of faith of the Angry Left on Iraq was always 'Bush Lied, People Died.'

What they were referring to, of course, was our 'not finding any of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction' in the country after we invaded.

That premise was based on 15 words in President Bush's address to Congress talking about how Saddam Hussein's regime had purchased yellow cake uranium, something the British Butler Report ( their equivalent of our 9/11 commission) also made note of.

Today, because of the turmoil in Syria, there's a great deal of conversation among concerned parties about Syria's WMD's and chemical weapons falling into the hands of Muslim terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah or al-Qaeda.

And it brings to mind something I wrote about on these pages a long time ago.

Our actually finding WMD's in Iraq, a country the size of California, would have been far more surprising than not finding them. There were two main reasons for this.

First of all, thanks to Tony Blair and the Brits, President Bush made the stupid decision to listen to Blair's pleas and go for a second UN resolution on Iraq,because Blair's Labour Party constituency was throwing a collective tantrum about the idea of supporting Britain's American ally in invading Iraq.Needless to say, the American Left followed up with their own antics.

That cost us a delay of 15 months before implementing Operation Iraqi Freedom, time Saddam Hussein used to his advantage.

Aside from arming various factions and setting the scene for what became a vicious sectarian civil war, he also did just what he did during Operation Desert Storm. He turned over strategic materials to his fellow Ba'athist to the north, Basher Assad of Syria.

In 2006,Iraqi general, Georges Sada , second in command of the Iraqi Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein wrote a comprehensive book, "Saddam's Secrets" that went into copious detail on exactly how Saddam Hussein moved his WMD's to Syria during the runup to the U.S. invasion.

As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeing 747's were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with Saddam's WMD arsenal. They ended up making 56 flights.

According to General Sada,the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, widely known as "Chemical Ali."

The regime also used truck convoys across the desert into Syria, convoys that were observed by both Israeli and U.S. intelligence, according to John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense. Israel's Chief of Staff during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, said exactly the same thing in comments to the press that mostly went ignored. So did Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

Shaw also mentioned that the Russians had a large hand in removing WMD's and all traces of Russian involvement from their Iraqi client.

Former chief of Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with a long history with Iraq and with Saddam Hussein , was in Iraq during the 15 month run up and left just before the U.S. invasion in March of 2003. He reportedly was in charge of supervising the removal of Saddam's WMD's and covering Russia's tracks of any involvement, and had the assistance of units of Russian GRU and Spetsnaz troops.

There's no doubt Saddam Hussein had lots of chemical and biological weapons. He used some of them on the Kurds. There's also no doubt that while Saddam may not have had an active nuclear weapon, the knowledge to put one into production certainly existed. You might remember that the French built Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor at Osirak that was actively being used to work on creating a nuclear weapon until the Israelis destroyed it back in 1981, but many of the scientists and technology involved were still accessible to the regime. In 2002 the internationally respected International Institute for Strategic Studies in Britain published a detailed review of Iraqi military capabilities and concluded that Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained.

That fissile material, by the way, was in Saddam's hands. It was yellow cake uranium almost certainly purchased by Saddam from Niger and was later sold after the American invasion by the Iraqi government to Canada. It was simply being held in reserve by Saddam, likely until the sanctions were relaxed enough to proceed.

As mistaken as the decision to invade Iraq was (not to mention the even more mistaken decision to hand it over to the Shi'tes to create what's essentially becoming an Iranian colony), it was typical of the Left to eviscerate President Bush over one of the few things he actually got right.

Many of the politicians, media figures and pundits on the Left were veterans of the anti Vietnam war movement and knew exactly how to sloganize and propagandize this, and they did a fine job of it. We'll perhaps never know entirely how much American blood and treasure their successful efforts are going to cost in the future.

Bush speaks.....and belittles us all

"Don't bullsh*t me.....it belittles us both."
-Jason Robards in `Parenthood'


Well, this was the one we've all been waiting for. I sat and listened to the president speak to the American people about Iraq, hoping that tonight's speech really would signify a change in strategy and a new direction. Recent events in Somalia and our new deployments in the Persian Gulf had me thinking that it actually was possible..that George W. Bush had indeed grown a spine.

As he went on, my emotions quickly went from skepticism to open mouthed disbelief and progressed to feelings that required me to take some time to relax a bit before commenting on what President Bush had to say.

In short, the president is still trying to convince the American people that the myth of `Arab democracy' is still viable, that Iraqi PM Maliki is someone who can be trusted, and that the wondrous Iraqi democracy is just around the corner, if we throw in more men and spend more money. In short, he wants to do some things that might have been effective three years ago, but are a long shot now.

To perform this magical transformation, the president is willing to appease the Sunnis and Shiites by selling out the Kurds and stealing the Kurds oil, to send another 20,000 American troops into Iraq to secure Baghdad and Anbar province and to train even more Iraqi troops and police..you know, the same folks who collect a paycheck from us by day and join the sectarian militias and death squads by night.

The president is still totally involved in this fantasy. He started out by saying that the Iraqi people `cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation' when even astute Iraqis themselves admit that the votes broke down on tribal and sectarian lines. Would an electorate interested in democracy and unity have given 30 seats to the likes of Moqtada al-Sadr, or voted in politicians and parties with major ties to the fascist regime in Iran?

Of course, rushing people into an election they weren't prepared for after a year and a half and allowing Iran friendly parties and politicians to participate was just another one of those regrettable miscalculations the Bush Administration made in Iraq..but not one the president was going to acknowledge tonight, of course.

President Bush went on to talk a bit about how dangerous `failure' in Iraq would be, using these words: "The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people."

You mean this isn't happening already, Mr.President? As for safe havens, the big ones are Pakistan, Iran and Syria - none of which I've seen you doing much about, frankly. The jihadis bring in arms and fighters, attack our troops and run back across the border...or into safe havens in places like Sadr City in Baghdad, where that `democratic government' forbids us to go in after them.

And speaking of Iran - they've been committing acts of war against us and killing our men for almost thirty years now, and we've known about their nuclear weapons program now for over 3 years. If anything is `emboldening Iran', it's the Bush Administration's lack of a forceful response. The president made some bold noises tonight about `addressing Iran and Syria', disrupting `the attacks on our forces, and interrupting `the flow of support from Iran and Syria'. Confronting Iran and Syria is the real key to success in this war, as Ive been saying for the last three years. Hopefully, President Bush is serious about this for a change.

Also, on the positive side, the president finally acknowledged the ridiculous Rules of Engagement our troops have been handcuffed with are `too restrictive' and that he plans to change that. And in General Petraeus, he selected a fine commander to implement this policy. In view of the president's obsession with `winning hearts and minds', `the Arab street' and forcing our army act like policemen instead of soldiers, I'll reserve judgment and hope for the best.

The president went on to detail some of the steps he planned to take, and some of the things he claims Maliki is going to. They involve our training even more Iraqi police and troops and embedding our guys next to them...proof indeed that they mostly can't be trusted on their own not to revert to sectarianism and reinforcing the militias. What's more, he's expecting Maliki to act against his own political base, which is led by none other than Moqtada al Sadr and his Iranian backed Mahdi Army.

A key sign as to whether this is even working will be whether there is an initial outbreak of fighting involving the Mahdi Army or whether things are quiet. If there's fighting, then it might mean that Maliki is serious about curbing the militias. If things are quiet, then Maliki has cut a deal and has simply cautioned al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army to lay low for awhile.

President Bush also, of course, talked about throwing more of our money at the problem for infrastructure' and `economic programs'. Not only that, but the Iraqi government is going to pass legislation to steal the Kurds oil and distribute it to the central Iraqi government (in direct violation to the federal constitution the Kurds signed on to, by the way) thus royally screwing our only true allies in Iraq as well as providing even more graft for Iraqi politicians to supplement what they are stealing from the aid money we're giving them. That's IF the Kurds go along with it, which they may very well not, opting for full independence instead.

I particularly liked the part where the President talked about the Iraqi government committing $10 billion `of their own money' for job programs and infrastructure..as if his fellow Americans don't know where the Iraqi government's `own money' came from!

The president then once again outlined his fantasy: "From Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence, and want a future of peace and opportunity for their children." Maybe so, Dubbya,but there are millions more - the majority - who want domination and revenge, and in the `Palestinian' territories and Lebanon, extermination for the Jews and Israel. Perhaps President Bush missed out on the results of the last few democratic elections in those places that put Hamas in power and gave Hezbollah a parliamentary majority.

That's the reality we should be looking at.

President Bush is correct about these people looking at Iraq - and a lot of them are concluding that the Americans, particularly their president are not to be taken seriously. A forceful attitude towards our enemies would do much to change this attitude.

The president wound up with a few remarks about resolve, how evil the terrorists were ( as if we needed reminding) and about how our nation was being tested.

And then he came out with this gem:

"Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. But victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world -- a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people. A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them -- and it will help bring a future of peace and security for our children and our grandchildren."

It's about at that point that I started yelling at the radio.

This is the leader of our nation at war, essentially saying that achieving a decisive victory over our enemies is out of reach, but that we should suffer a slow, costly war of attrition while waiting for these people to somehow get their act together, play nicely with the rest of us and emerge into the 21st century..in spite of a lifetime of cultural and religious indoctrination in exactly the opposite direction.

I differ with the president here, to put it mildly. Victory in this war will very much resemble the victory in World War II, with a defeated and humiliated enemy surrendering to overwhelming force and abandoning a discredited ideology. That is the only kind of victory that will end the threat of jihad against the West once and for all, and could actually lead to a change in the Islamist mindset, as it did with the Germans and Japanese.

This little paragraph says volumes about why President Bush has never confronted Pakistan, Iran or Syria abroad or the Saudis and the UAE funding jihad here at home in America. To him, they're not our enemies...just some hearts and minds that need to be won over. And in the case of the Saudis and the UAE, nice, friendly folks to do bidness with, especially when they give you lots of cash for things like speaking fees and $500M Presidential libraries once you leave office.

No wonder the American people have no use for him at this point. We don't have much tolerance for losers.

The president's plan is a major long shot that could, of course, work out - if we're really prepared to confront Iran and Syria, if Maliki can be trusted, if the rules of engagement are really going to be changed to allow our troops to fight the war they need to fight. If Bush is able to pull at least most of this off, he will - perhaps - have rescued his presidency.

Let's just say that based on the president's track record and his ideas on what `victory' looks like, I have my doubts. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of the President treating us with contempt and belittling us by not giving the American people credit for some elementary common sense.