Uncle Osama Wants You

War On Terror: The co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission buy the Democratic line that the war in Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror and a recruiting tool for al-Qaida . But it's the bad guys who are less safe.

In a Washington Post op-ed, 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton ponder the question of whether we are safer now than we were on that tragic day.

"No conflict" they opine, "drains more time, attention, blood and treasure and support from our worldwide counterterrorism efforts than the war in Iraq. It has become a powerful recruiting and training tool for al-Qaida."

Considering the rapid demise of al-Qaida leaders, the terror group probably isn't offering a retirement plan, though.

Omaf Farouq, leader of al-Qaida in Southeast Asia, was one of those drawn to the jihadist cause in Iraq. In September 2006, he was killed by British troops in a firefight in Basra. In an audiotape released late that month, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq said 4,000 such recruits had been killed in Iraq since Iraq was liberated, including leaders like Omar Farouq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

What Kean and Hamilton fail to comprehend is that Islamofascists and al-Qaida will always find excuses to wage war on civilization and the West.

JULY 6, 2006 : (FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION LEE HAMILTON JOINS SANDY BERGER’S COMPANY STONEBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL) On July 6, 2006, Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, announced that it had added a new member to its high-profile, five-member advisory board – former Democrat Rep. Lee Hamilton. True to form, the major media ignored the Hamilton appointment. They should not have. Hamilton, who had served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had just joined a firm headed by the man who had criminally undermined that very Commission, Stonebridge chairman and founder Samuel “Sandy” Berger. In the words of a recent House Committee report, Berger had perpetrated “a disturbing breach of trust and protocol that compromised the nation’s national security,” a breach that had come at the expense of the 9/11 Commission’s very mission.
The unseemly nature of this new alliance apparently did not trouble Hamilton, Berger or the Washington media. By the spring of 2006, Berger felt sufficiently comfortable in his relationship with that media to execute a brazen, political drive-by on the one man who most seriously threatened the Clinton legacy and his own reputation, namely Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania. -———————— “How Sandy Berger Paid Back the GOP,” by Jack Cashill, World Net Daily, January 29, 2007

* Lee Hamilton, Iranian “hostage” Haleh Esfandiari-Bakhash, and normalization of relations with the regime in Iran

Iran: The Conspiracy that Wasn’t (Amir Taheri)
New York Post ^ | July 20, 2007 | Amir Taheri

EVER since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic in Iran has been obsessed with conspiracy theories, especially “foreign plots” to topple it. This paranoia was demonstrated again Wednesday with the televised confessions of two U.S. citizens of Iranian origin arrested in Tehran and accused of working for the “Great Satan.”

To most Iranians who watched the sordid show, the two “enemies of Islam” seemed unlikely heroes of an international conspiracy. Haleh Esfandiari-Bakhash, 67, is a petite grandmother who works for a Washington think tank; Kian Tajbakhsh, a 40-something researcher working for a foundation created by billionaire George Soros.

According to Tehran state-controlled media, the two went to Iran as part of a U.S. plot to promote a “velvet revolution.” Yet their TV confessions were so obviously forced that even the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Tehran has distanced itself from them. A spokesman for the office told reporters: “The confessions must be regarded as a television production. . . . What the accused said on TV is not related to actual charges against them.”

What is really going on?

Frequent visitors to Iran, the two had never been molested before. Both belong to groups opposed to regime change in Iran and critical of the Bush policy of challenging the Islamic Republic.

Esfandiari works for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - whose director, ex-Rep. Lee Hamilton, has championed normalization with the Islamic Republic for decades. He was a key member of the Iraq Study Group, which urged the opening of a dialogue with Tehran practically on terms demanded by the mullahs.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.