Wartime posters are entirely predictable. The seven-foot tall, hugely hulking Jap (who was in real life diminutive compared to Americans), leering down menacingly at a petite American housewife, is the same in every country during wartime, with only the cartoon monster's country of origin being different. We don't have those posters these days, but TV filled the function by making out a relative handful of radical Muslims to be superhumanly clever and in possession of such an exotic wealth of technological gadgetry that the puny US was a helpless pushover, at least until some square-jawed hero started knee-capping people to get them to talk.

We don't need to be "kept safe" to quite the extent that the federal government was making out it was doing. Our womenfolk are secure without a perpetual war on terror.

I am more frightened. The situation in Queens yesterday, the FBI was looking for a member of Al Queda (?) but did not find him. Is this an FBI screwup, or is the FBI magnifying something that is nothing, a scare tactic--for Al Queda or the American people. FBI raids the place--big deal--that makes you feel safer? Looks like the FBI is doing something? How many major criminals are only caught on income tax evasion by the FBI? FBI can't get them for any real crimes?

How do I know that the FBI is not BS'ing me?

Every day the government takes over more and more of our lives, and this frightens me, and the state and federal governments are grabbing more and more money under new laws, e.g., seat belt law, cell phone--just another way to make money. And, cameras while going through traffic lights to make money.

Private corporations run the red lights, with cameras and surveillance, for a percentage. The state just sits back and collects the money from speedsters.

Maybe I missed something, but I haven't heard anything about Obama reinstating all the homeland security funding Bush cut out of the budget.

Homeland security is a "protection rackett" previously used by Al Capone. We wills care you, then you will submit to our demands.Invasion of distant countries, torture of their prisoners, demonizing their leaders all are scare tactics to force American people to submit. Our cruel treatment of human beings does not make us any safer. Relatives of victims will revenge for abusing their loved ones killed or maimed by American military. Bring our military troops home to protect us here.

With the Obama Administration and Democratic Congress at war with the CIA, the negating of surveillance and security, the premature extracting of combat forces from Iraq, surrender talk from the Democrtaic Congress regarding Afghanistan, the planned closing of Guantonamo and the groveling from Obama which has taken place to arch enemies such as Iran and North Korea................WHAT SAETY IS LEFT TO TALK ABOUT!!!!!

Justice Department Investigating ACLU's War on the CIA:

The ACLU-CAIR-Obama Triumvirate

2009 September 17

The John Adams Project is the latest in a series of ACLU-supported endeavors which aids and abets the Islamist jihadists who are trying to destroy our country. As Bill O’Reilly has reported on the Factor, this project involves operatives who surrepticiously took pictures of CIA agents who may have interrogated captured al-Qaeda suspects; the pictures were then used to “out” those agents to the lawyers for the suspects, and to the suspects themselves.

In this case, the Justice Department is investigating the outrageous actions of the ACLU. Generally, however, the Obama administration walks in lock-step with this noxious organization on matters regarding the Islamic terrorist threat.

One of the most disturbing examples involves Islamic charities, which are often used as fronts for the funding of terrorist activities.


In his speech to the Muslim world delivered this past June from Cairo, President Obama apologized that “in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation.” Obama then promised that “I’m committed to work with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat [the Islamic duty of charitable contributions].”

The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the largest Islamic “charity” in the United States eligible for receipt of zakat, was convicted by a federal jury for providing more than $12 million to support the Palestinian militant terrorist organization Hamas.

Obama apparently could not care less. He sees eye-to-eye with the ACLU, which represented Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan, a fundraiser for the group who was living in the United States illegally.

This is how the ACLU, in a lengthy report issued this past June, characterized the security measures put into place to prevent more Holy Land Foundations:

The ACLU’s research shows that U.S. terrorism financing policies and practices are seriously undermining American Muslims’ protected constitutional liberties and violating their fundamental human rights to freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom from discrimination.

The ACLU recommended measures that the Obama administration and Congress should take to redress the violations of terrorism funders’ alleged “rights.” If Obama’s speech this past June to the Muslim world in Cairo is any indication, he is following the ACLU’s direction.

The ACLU’s legal arm is effectively serving as the Obama administration’s surrogate to restore all rights to Islamic charities and their donors, without regard to whether or not they are funneling the contributions to terrorist groups such as Hamas.

For example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is a Muslim-Brotherhood affiliated group, applauded the ACLU’s victory in federal court just last month overturning the Treasury Department’s decision three years ago to freeze the assets of an Ohio-based Islamic charity. The organization in question, with the innocent-sounding name KindHearts, reportedly had channeled some funds to Hamas; moreover, a convicted leader of the Holy Land Foundation, Mohammed El-Mezain, allegedly had provided advice regarding KindHearts’ fundraising. Nevertheless, this Islamic charity is back in business, thanks to the ACLU-CAIR alliance.

More connections among the triumvirate of the ACLU, CAIR and the Obama administration will be revealed in the coming days.

Obama's Appeasement:

The likely harm that results from the administration's surrender on missile defense goes far beyond Europe.

09/17/2009

The Obama administration chose an historic month to appease the Russians by reneging on the U.S. proposal to place ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. September 1st of 2009 was the 70th anniversary of the Nazis' unprovoked attack on Poland. In the middle of the same month the Red Army invaded Poland--70 years ago to the day. At the end of this month is the 71st anniversary of the Munich agreement in which England and France agreed to allow Hitler to annex large portions of western Czechoslovakia. The administration's decision was made public on the same day that the Associated Press reported on an International Atomic Energy Agency secret assessment that Iran has "sufficient information" to build a bomb, and is likely to "overcome problems" in developing the accompanying delivery systems.

Obama's appeasement of the Russians in the same two countries is an eerie recapitulation of Western weakness. It accepts the Russians' unsupportable assertion that ballistic missile batteries in Central Europe were intended to defend the U.S. against Russian missiles: They weren't--Russian missiles aimed at the U.S. would travel over the North Pole, not Poland or Central Europe. War may not be the likely outcome. But a global reconsideration of American resolve and the wisdom of relying on our security guarantees lead neither to a safer United States nor a more secure world. Rather, they invite aggression.

As with Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, appeasing the Russians is not likely to produce any
positive results. There is no reason to think that--as the Obama administration evidently hopes--Russia will cooperate more fully with U.S. efforts to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power because we undercut leaders in Poland and the Czech Republic who expended considerable political capital in defense of military cooperation with the U.S? Once those defenses are cancelled, what incentive does Vladimir Putin have to pressure the Iranians? Is the elimination of a handful of ballistic missile interceptors and radar tracking systems likely to change Russia's strategic evaluation of a nuclear-armed Iran?

The administration's ostensible reason for cancelling the missile defense system is all the more dubious since Obama's own National Intelligence Strategy, published last month, listed Iran's "nuclear and missile programs" first in its catalogue of "nation-states that have the ability to challenge U.S. interests."

The administration's subsequent claim--that Iran's long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as expected recapitulates the National Intelligence Estimate's (NIE) finding in December 2007 that Iran had halted its effort to produce nuclear weapons. Who believed the NIE then, and does anyone still believe this to be true today? Should we soon expect an intelligence estimate that Iran doesn't actually exist? What reason is there to think that if Iran failed to achieve all it hoped for with its long-range missile programs to date, the deficiency will not be addressed in the future? The vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is quoted in the 17 September issue of the Wall Street Journal saying that Iran and North Korea's long-range missile capabilities "are not there yet." Would it make better sense to wait until these capabilities are "there" before defending against them? If North Korea's long-range missile abilities are now in question, will the effort to construct our own defenses against such attack be put on hold until we are satisfied that they represent an imminent threat? Are the Russians likely to agree to the placing of a ballistic missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic at some time in the future once the U.S. decides that Iran possesses effective long-range missiles that can reach our allies in Europe? Of course not. This decision is the clearest and most definitive evidence yet that what the Obama administration means by a "reset" of our relations with Russia is simple appeasement.

The consequences will damage U.S. interests in Europe and around the world. The decision invites the question why this administration is more interested in pleasing those who "seek avenues for reasserting power that complicate U.S. interests," (The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America's partial description of Russia, published in August 2009) than it is in honoring commitments to one of our only European allies, Poland, whose people still believe that military defense remains a legitimate and moral instrument of state power.

In Central Europe the decision is a pointed reminder that U.S. policy has thrown the Central Europeans under the Russian bus once since the end of World War II. Will the Central Europeans now decide that the same bus is coming again and that the wisest policy would be to start reaching accommodation with Russia? The results for Western Europeans are equally far-reaching. The Obama administration decision confirms the increasing opinion in Western Europe that conflict is passé and a relic. It helps shred what's left of the consensus
about collective defense that undergirds NATO.

The likely harm that results from this decision goes far beyond Europe. The U.S. has security commitments to Israel, Japan, and South Korea for example. How are leaders in those and other countries likely to regard the Obama administration's failure to honor American security commitments? Does President Obama understand that the United States' interest in keeping its word transcends his own political interest in continuing to distance himself from his predecessor?

The Obama administration has decided to dishonor a security commitment made to one of the United States' most reliable and dependable democratic allies, and to placate an increasingly authoritarian corrupt state that helped Iran build its nuclear power plant at Bushehr and supplies Iran with significant military equipment such as air-defense missiles. The decision is a sign of weakness, a confirmation that this administration does not see value in defending against ballistic missiles, and a wholesale invitation to aggressive behavior, not just from Russia.

This capitulation is all the more inexcusable because, unlike the situation that Chamberlain faced at Munich in 1938, Russia, unlike Nazi Germany, is still a relatively weak power. The Obama administration has as little to fear from Russia's military as it has to expect that Russian goodwill or self-interest will have a moderating effect on Iran's plans to become a nuclear power.

The future damage, however, to international perceptions of American resolve is incalculable.