Note to the President: Buy al Jazeera

Our "allies" in Qatar who financed, built and own the pro-terrorist al Jazeera television channel appear to be bending. The New York Times reports that, faced with continued US pressure, the Qataris are going to put al Jazeera up for sale.

We should buy it.

The Arabic-language satellite TV channel has a huge global audience and a strong brand. It has credibility and physical access in the Arabic-speaking world where the US has little to none.

We can't let it fall into the wrong hands.

Think of the clever things the US could do if it owned or controlled al Jazeera.

We should buy the station - and invite the Qataris to sell it to us for one dollar, and to pay future operating costs. It's the least they can do to show they're serious about undoing the damage they've done to the United States.

The biggest roadblock we would face are the State Department weenies who fear that by trying to influence al Jazeera, the US would be trampling Arab freedom of speech. . . .

Ladies break terrorists at Gitmo with red ink, tight shirts and thongs

Here's the latest tale of "torture" from our terrorist detention center in Guantanamo: American women torment terror suspects by wearing tight tee-shirts, thongs and miniskirts. Even worse, they gross out the enemy detainees with dabs of red ink from pens and magic markers.

It's a skilled but harmless way of breaking the toughest detainees who refuse to talk - yet the politically correct military has disciplined the female interrogators and stopped the practice, even though it reduced one particularly tough detainee to "cry like a baby."

A former Army sergeant who served as a translator at Guantanamo has exposed the activity in a tell-all book due to be published this year.

Hurting terrorists' feelings is now considered torture.

Some politically correct (don't ask don't tell?) types at SOUTHCOM, according to AP, have questioned the practice of having an all-female team subdue troublesome terror suspects.

One SOUTHCOM report, commenting on a video of a terrorist suspect being subdued, states: "The detainee appears to be genuinely traumatized by a female escort securing the detainee's leg irons."

Looks like these women are on to something. The terrorists aren't Big Men after all.

As it so often does with creative people who think out of the box, the military has reprimanded personnel and contractors for these activities. That's a shame. Girls can break terrorists in ways, tasteless as they may be, that guys cannot. The interrogators should be given medals - and the oh-so-sensitive superiors who shut down the program should be disciplined or sacked.

Why the ridiculous Inauguration security? Poor intelligence and counterintelligence.

We should not be pleased by the super-intense security surrounding President Bush's second inauguration. We should be outraged.

The security people - the last line of defense of the president and the public - are doing a fantastic job. The overkill that's ruining some of the inaugural events isn't their fault. The security people are doing their jobs right.

But others aren't.

The security overkill has to be this way because of the poor state of our intelligence and counterintelligence services, the fact that we don't secure our own borders, and the überlegalistic way in which we ignore troublemakers in order to protect their "rights." Our first lines of defense have fallen, placing the burden on the last line.

We do not have a logical layered defense against terrorists. The president is trying to kill as many on the ground as he can, long before they reach us. But we still cannot stop terrorists abroad - or terrorist groups here at home - because we simply have not deployed the human, technological, legal and other resources to do so.

That's why the entire population has to be treated as potential terrorist threats - and like sheep most of the nation is going along with it.

There is some resistance. "Civil liberties" activists on the Left and libertarians on the Right have been fighting against laws and procedures that narrow the threat spectrum to the likeliest of targets, preferring instead to whine about being repressed, and either drag the entire nation through the increasingly costly and intrusive security nets, or to hold the nation hostage to the terrorists by extreme reaction to the new world we're in.

That type of resistance and criticism is misplaced.

Those same critics are the ones to blame for the deliberate uprooting in the 1970s of our domestic security capabilities that monitored just the troublemakers and their supporters. They also are guilty of spearheading the destruction of our foreign intelligence and our counterintelligence capabilities at that same period - and of creating a climate of fear within the services ever since.

Now all of us are subject to senseless surveillance and security procedures. It is time for a serious revolution in intelligence affairs, similar to the revolution in military affairs underway at the Pentagon. Our first line of defense shouldn't be our last.

Rice's only Senate opponents aided Marxist guerrillas

The only two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who voted not to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State happen to have been among the few who helped Soviet-backed revolutionaries in the 1980s.

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) assailed Rice for allegedly having poor judgment or worse, and both voted against her confirmation today.

A check of the record shows that both lawmakers provided crucial political support to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist gurrilla group that tried to overthrow the government of El Salvador, and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) regime of Nicaragua.

For details, see my book The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the North American Front of El Salvador's Guerrilla War (University Press of America, 1991).

Senator from Chappaquiddick rips Gonzales on threats to drown terrorists

In the confirmation hearings for Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales, Senator Edward M. Kennedy lashed out Gonzales for reportedly having failed to object to the idea of threatening to drown terrorists.

"I'd never do that to anybody," Kennedy said, prompting observers to recall the senator's Chappaquiddick incident that left a young woman dead in the back seat of his submerged Lincoln.

The following is excerpted from the January 6, 2005 New York Times, with emphasis added:

KENNEDY: ...Now, the [Washington] Post article states you chaired several meetings at which various interrogation techniques were discussed. These techniques included the threat of live burial and waterboarding, whereby the detainee is strapped to a board, forcibly pushed under water, wrapped in a wet towel and made to believe he might drown....

KENNEDY: Could you just -- I want to point out, if it's true, as the Post reported, that you held several meetings at which the legality of interrogation techniques, such as threat of live burial and water boarding were discussed. Do you remember that?...

KENNEDY: Well, just as an attorney, as a human being, I would have thought that if there were recommendations that were so blatantly and flagrantly over the line in terms of torture, that you might have recognized them. I mean, it certainly appears to me that water boarding, with all its descriptions about drowning someone to that kind of a point, would come awfully close to getting over the border, and that you'd be able to at least say today, There were some that were recommended or suggested on that, but I certainly wouldn't have had a part of that, as a human being. But as I understand you are saying now that no matter what they recommended or what they discussed, there was not going to be anything in there that was going to be too bad or too outrageous for you to at least to raise some objection.

The FBI blows another Chinese spy case

The FBI has done it again: blown another Chinese espionage case.

When two of its agents sold out the United States to their Chinese lover, code-named Parlor Maid, they wrecked what some say was a major operation against Beijing's espionage offensive.

Now, as with the case of Wen Ho Lee who allegedly passed classified American nuclear weapons designs and testing data to the People's Republic, only to worm his way out of the prosecution, the FBI has blown it.

Here's what the presiding judge had to say: "The government decided to make sure that Leung and her lawyers would not have access to [her former FBI lover] Smith. . . . When confronted with what they had done, they engaged in a pattern of stonewalling entirely unbecoming to a prosecuting agency."

Heads should roll. The FBI is still rotten at the top and needs a thorough house-cleaning. We know who some of those rotten officials are. Maybe we'll write about them soon.

Alberto Gonzales is no Torquemada

Ever stop to think about the absurdity of the attacks on Alberto Gonzales?

President Bush's Attorney General-designate is under fire - not for being too weak in the war on terrorism, but for being too tough.

Imagine! Liberal Democrats and mushy Republicans in the "world's highest deliberative body" are upset that Gonzales wrote guidelines to "torture" captured terrorists at our Navy base in Cuba, saying this disqualifies him from becoming the nation's highest law-enforcement officer.

Look at the litany of tortures Gonzales approved: playing loud rap music, keeping the light on so the terrorists won't know what time it is, making them sit in uncomfortable positions, scaring them with barking dogs, and feeding them nutritious but boring food. Sounds like a college dorm.

I heard that we're even blasting "Barney the Dinosaur" music at them.

That's just about it. No beatings. No electrocutions. No fingernails being pulled out. No thumb-screws or racks or iron maidens or gibbets. Just rap, lights, bland food and scary dogs on short leashes.

It's as if the anti-Gonzales senators and other critics care more about the welfare of al Qaeda terrorists than they do for the war effort. These people have their priorities so confused that they oppose President Bush more virulently than they oppose Osama bin Laden.

All the more reason to support Gonzales for attorney general. He's no Torquemada, but he has the cojones that Washington needs.

Whipping up terrorist propaganda for partisan political gain

Looks like US political leaders are about to shoot their country in the head again.

If initial reports are true, Senate opponents of the president plan to fan the flames of anti-American propaganda in order to score political points against his new administration.

Leading Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee reportedly are considering a full, public airing of yet-unreleased videos purporting to show US military abuse of captured terrorist suspects in Iraq. The goal, according to scoop reporter Matt Drudge, is to discredit Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales during his Senate confirmation hearing.

The hearing takes place this Thursday.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) warns that the tactic will stir up anti-US terrorism in Iraq, endangering the lives of American personnel there. Senate Democrats Carl Levin (Mich.) and Edward Kennedy (Mass.) appear to say that disclosure is more important.