-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! THE FEDERALIST(r) DIGEST The Conservative e-Journal of Record * Veritas Vos Liberabit * 21 September 2001 Federalist Edition #01-38 Friday Digest *To change your e-mail format to text, HTML or Adobe PDF (as an attachment) Link to -- http://www.federalist.com/subscribe/myformat.asp?[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To retrieve today's Digest as HTML printer-friendly text or PDF Link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/current2001.asp *To purchase a book from the Patriot's Library, link to -- http://www.federalist.com/books.asp *To support or sponsor an edition of The Federalist, link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/support.asp CONTENTS: The Foundation Federalist Perspective ______----********O********----______ THE FOUNDATION "Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty." --Samuel Adams ______----********O********----______ FEDERALIST PERSPECTIVE In the news this week, President George Bush addressed the nation Thursday night in what was one of the most important speeches in recent history (the text of which we will publish in full in Monday's Brief). Unleashing "Operation Infinite Justice," the first military phase of a long-term terrorist eradication effort called "Operation Noble Eagle," President Bush emphatically stated that this will not be a nicely packaged 100 hour assault on a well-defined adversary, but a conflict which will include casualties and sacrifices. The key points of the president's address: "Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. ... [Afghanistan will] deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al-Qaida who hide in your land. ... Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate. ... Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated. ... By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. [Not to mention "Communism"!] ... From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. ... As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror; this will be an age of liberty, here and across the world. . ... I will not forget this wound to our country, or those who inflicted it. I will not yield -- I will not rest -- I will not relent in waging this struggle for the freedom and security of the American people. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." Our first observation -- thank God for the votes, ironically, of those active duty military personnel who put George Bush over the top in Florida last year! And second, several members of The Federalist Editorial Board -- and many of our readers -- will play significant roles in Operation Infinite Justice. To them and all of our fellow patriot warriors, we say God Bless You! It is difficult to defend against an enemy who is largely undefined. It is more difficult to take effective offensive action against that enemy. Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, al-Qaida, is really a worldwide network of allied terrorist cells with state support primarily from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This enemy has no borders, and the war, no well-defined fronts. Despite the media's fascination with the "New War on America," there is nothing new about it, except, of course, we are far less prepared -- both defensively and offensively -- than we were a decade ago. Suicide bombers fulfilling Jihad are not new. Nor is a threatening network of terror new; indeed, some elements of this one are merely recycled Red terrorists who found new employment as "reincarnated" Islamic extremists. The assault on our nation September 11th was unannounced, and, more significantly, its formation and execution undetected -- until its implementation. It had one major purpose -- to weaken our resolve to defend our national interests in the Middle East, and especially in support of Israel, the most significant outpost of American interests in the region. This is Day 10 after the assaults on our countrymen, and as of yet, we can only detect the vague silhouette of the enemy who committed this atrocity. We know bin Laden was a significant principal in the assault because it has his signature characteristics. But he had collaborators, and absence of evidence now is not evidence of their absence. Eliminating bin Laden does not win this war. "[Bin Laden is] the target at the moment," said Dick Cheney. "But I don't want to convey the impression that if we had his head on a platter today that that would solve the problem because it won't." "Indeed," noted former CIA analyst Ken Pollack, "one of today's great frustrations is coming to grips with this amorphous adversary. Certainly, as Mr. Bush noted, we must determine who is with us -- and who is not. (Some who say they are with us really won't be.) We must therefore wage a comprehensive covert operations campaign to annihilate Al Qaeda operatives and destroy their facilities -- and facilitators -- around the world. In addition to diplomatic efforts and intelligence operations, we must wage a military campaign against Afghanistan for refusing to turn over bin Laden and for harboring Al Qaeda facilities and personnel. (Regarding the commitment of ground forces, however, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British on three occasions, and the Soviet Union all sent troops to Afghanistan -- and all mounted a retreat.) We must also support the Northern Alliance -- the legitimate government of Afghanistan attempting to oust the Taliban. Sounding like a Berkeley protestor chanting the Leftist plaints of "restraint" and "patience," Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar stated, "We appeal to the U.S. government to exercise complete patience," adding that Afghanistan's enemies consider Islam "a thorn in their eye and they seek different excuses to finish it off." But we echo the words of Sen. John McCain, "God may have mercy on you. We will not! We will not!" Military and security author Tom Clancy weighed in to defend the CIA against unwarranted criticisms of its nonperformance in not staving off last Tuesday's attacks, noting that the 18,000 member agency has only about 800 field intelligence officers tasked to such matters: "The loss of so many lives in New York and Washington is now called an 'intelligence failure,' mostly by those who crippled the CIA in the first place, and by those who celebrated the loss of its invaluable capabilities. ...Those who inflict their aesthetic on the rest of us are never around to clean up the resulting mess. ... The intelligence community was successfully assaulted for actions taken under constitutionally mandated orders, and with nothing left to replace what was smashed, warnings we might have had to prevent this horrid event never came. ...The next time America is in a fight, it is well to remember that tying one's own arms is unlikely to assist in preserving, protecting and defending what is ours." Nonetheless, there was a massive intelligence failure here, and sources indicate that a more attentive (read: less politicized and back-scratching) U.S. intelligence effort would most likely have dealt properly with warnings. Indeed, in August two senior military intelligence experts from the Israeli Mossad alerted the CIA and FBI that a cell of as many of 200 terrorists was seemingly preparing a big operation. One senior Israeli security official remarked, "They had no specific information about what was being planned but linked the plot to Osama bin Laden and told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement." A Washington administration official replied, "If this is true then the refusal to take it seriously will mean heads will roll. It is quite credible that the CIA might not heed a Mossad warning: it has a history of being overcautious about Israeli information." Further intelligence now suggests that closely directing the September 11th mission were two of the world's foremost terrorist masterminds: Imad Mughniyeh, from Lebanon, head of the special overseas operations for Hezbollah, and Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, of Egypt, a senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor to the ailing bin Laden. Other reports describe telltale meetings of approximately 400 participants from the most extreme terror groups in Beirut last February and in Tehran in late April, in service of what was termed "The Jerusalem Project." Participating groups reportedly included bin Laden's Al Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad of Palestine, Hezbollah of Lebanon and Iran, other Middle East militants -- and at least one attendee living in the United States. So what's next? President Bush also announced the creation of a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, a coordinating office of all "federal departments and agencies, as well as state and local governments," to be headed by Sen. Tom Ridge. In that announcement, President Bush made it clear that the risk of assault against Americans on American soil remains high. Here is how analysts associated with The Federalist Editorial Board evaluate the risk of additional assaults on our nation. There is a high probability that bin Laden will respond to President Bush's speech with a second assault in the next 48 hours, and a significant probability that next week, next month or next year -- bin Laden's surrogates and comrades WILL strike again. Given our country's "open borders" and the probability of pre-positioned terrorist cells on U.S. soil now, it will be very difficult for the "war on terrorism" to eliminate the risk of these assaults anytime soon. The next tier of attacks, when -- NOT "IF" -- they occur, will be similar to those of September 11, 2001, in that there will be multiple targets and that the attacks will likely occur in a narrow time frame for maximum effect. However, we expect them to differ in that they will involve NBCWMD -- nuclear, biological and/or chemical weapons of mass destruction levied against urban centers with the objective of substantially disrupting continuity of government and commerce over wide geographic sections of the nation. Specific targets in urban areas are too numerous to list, but suffice it to say, the targets will be selected on the basis of their impact profile (high profile public events and/or targets such as communication and power grids or facilities). The objective of terrorism is to break our will as a people -- as a nation. If we don't kill these people -- wipe ALL of them from the face of the earth, they will be back -- and back again -- and again. And the best offense starts with a good defense. Civil preparedness is the best way to mitigate effects of terrorism on our families and our resolve as a nation -- thus preparedness is essential. For that reason, in Monday's Brief, The Federalist will post links to our Web site's "Recommended Action Plan for Protecting and Mitigating the Effects of Terrorism" for your family and community. The plan includes excerpts from a series of articles we published in 1999, which emphasized that Y2K was a catalyst for renewing civil preparedness in the event of a major manmade or natural disaster. (Of note, in those editions, we made specific reference to only one terrorist -- Osama bin Laden -- and that the highest probability target would be a "major East Coast population center.") We encourage you to take reasonable steps toward preparedness based on these recommendations. Perhaps the best guides for our mission in coming days are those heroes of United Airlines Flight 93, who fought their terrorist attackers, leading to their plane crashing in rural Pennsylvania. Last week, we noted participation in this heroic act by Thomas Burnett. Others we must salute for joining Burnett are Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, and Lou Nacke. And patriots rightly note that these men, by constitutional definition members of the "militia," were the only effective defenders stopping any of these terrorists from carrying out their evil designs. Quote of the week... "The Clinton administration's sly way of handling the 1993 bombing plots gave rise to the fraudulent notion that there was a new kind of terrorism. Yet there was nothing new about the terrorism. What was new was how the U.S. handled it. Clinton dealt surreptitiously with the national-security issue of state involvement and very publicly with the criminal question of the guilt or innocence of individuals -- through trials. Predictably, more terrorism followed and the role of states in those attacks was never addressed. That led directly to last week's tragedy, as well as to our inability to recognize their real author." --Laurie Mylroie On cross-examination... "What did the Clintons do with their two administrations? They left behind a country more damaged, more removed from its old, rough idealism; a country whose children live in a coarser and more dangerous place; a country whose political life has been distorted and lowered." --Peggy Noonan Open Query... "But the acid test of our Constitution's health will be the energy with which Americans are able to defend themselves and to subdue our enemies. In the 21st century as before, the Constitution gives us the tools. Will we be able to finish the job?" --Charles R. Kesler The BIG lie... "Iraq has absolutely no link with what happened or with the groups the United States accuses of being responsible." --Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri. News from the Swamp... In the Executive Branch, President Bush signed into law a $40 billion relief package for New York City, the Pentagon and economic sectors damaged by the September 11th attack, saying, "Our whole nation is unalterably committed to a direct, forceful and comprehensive response to these terrorist attacks and the scourge of terrorism directed against the United States." Of course, the cost in terms of human lives is incalculable. In the House of Commons, late last week, Members voted 420-1 on House Joint Resolution 64 "to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States." Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) cast the lone vote against the resolution. This is the same Barbara Lee who: participated in a "citizens delegation to Cuba" to lobby that the U.S. embargo against Cuba should be lifted; criticized the U.S. bombing of Iraq, saying the U.S. has "a special, urgent need to exhaust all diplomatic approaches"; and opposed President Clinton's impeachment, calling those House votes "a tragic day for Americans and for the world," and the entire House impeachment process "a complete farce." In the House of Lords, late last week Senators in a rush to "do something" to respond to the terror attacks passed by voice vote an amendment permitting the government authority for so-called "trap and trace" of communications, which raises significant questions about consistency with the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections. Here is the real area in which "restraint" and "patience" are appropriate. Regarding the rush to restrict Constitutional liberties on various fronts, friend of The Federalist Sen. Phil Gramm noted: "I'm not interested in changing the way I live. I'm interested in changing the way they live." Judicial Benchmarks... In the halls of injustice on the left, speaking of airlines, a federal appeals court has upheld a San Francisco ordinance demanding airline carriers at San Francisco International Airport offer domestic partner benefits to their unmarried workers. San Francisco's 1997 law, the nation's first, requires contractors doing business with the city to offer the same benefits to unmarried employees' domestic partners as they do to married employees' spouses. On the Left... The Leftmedia were living down to their usual tricks in reporting the terrorist attacks -- albeit not so often as usual. Some of the talking heads seemed enlivened by the thought of repression in the United States as a necessary measure to safeguard against further terrorist attacks. NBC talkinghead Tom Brokaw said, "We will have to revisit our freedoms.... America has been changed by all this." Moreover, the Leftmedia must be even prouder of the airtime and ink they have dedicated to "exclusive interviews" with Osama bin Laden -- prior to September 11. A sample from the platform provided bin Laden -- in his own words: "We are sure of our victory against the Americans and the Jews as promised by the Prophet: Judgment day shall not come until the Muslim fights the Jew, where the Jew will hide behind trees and stones, and the tree and the stone will speak and say, 'Muslim, behind me is a Jew. Come and kill him.' ... So we tell the Americans as people, and we tell the mothers of soldiers and American mothers in general that if they value their lives and the lives of their children, to find a nationalistic government that will look after their interests and not the interests of the Jews. The continuation of tyranny will bring the fight to America." The nation's leading Leftmedia print publication could not help but take a shot at President Bush's request for funds to rebuild lower Manhattan and a portion of our nation's national defense infrastructure. The New York Times, in an editorial, argued: "To secure true bipartisanship, Congress needs to do something far more difficult -- reconsider the gigantic tax cut enacted earlier this year.... Mr. Bush and Congress ought to be willing, in effect, to conscript that portion of the tax cut that takes effect a few years from now and lowers taxes on the wealthiest Americans." Contrary to the Times' position, we think Mr. Bush should move aggressively to restore economic confidence, and propose additional tax reductions -- and social spending reductions. And in case you were wondering why Rev. Al Sharpton, New York City's resident Leftist rabble-rouser, has not been in front of every camera in lower Manhattan, perhaps he is concerned that someone may recall his words in The Federalist three weeks ago when announcing his 2004 presidential bid. Sharpton criticized President Bush's plan to shore up our military because he claimed there was "no real threat to American security. ...We are going forward with situations when they are harmful to the people involved to build up to take care of some enemy that is not there, some threat that does not exist." The Commissars... Proposals for a national identification card -- long sought by closeted and not-so-closeted tyrannizers in our country -- are floating around again. Such misguided responses in fear must be squelched, and with all vigor possible under current circumstances. Regarding your IRS overpayment... The United States has given more than $117 million in assistance to Afghanistan so far in fiscal year 2001, according to United States Agency for International Development figures, including millions for humanitarian relief both in Afghanistan and in support of Afghan refugees in neighboring Pakistan, making the U.S. Afghanistan's largest benefactor. Anybody know the Afghani phrase for self-sufficiency? >From the department of military readiness... Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stripped out of $344 billion military spending legislation a provision supporting missile defense testing. Attempting to temporarily avert the fight against missile defense that Levin still plans, he introduced the missile test measures as a separate bill postponed for later consideration. >From the states... Just to assure our readers that we are watching other developments, while most of the media have been rightfully focussing on East Coast events, Left Coast lawmakers in California passed some very bad legislation, including a bill that will redefine traditional marriage in the state and award new marriage rights to homosexual couples. The California Assembly passed AB 25, on a vote of 42-29, conveying 13 new rights and benefits on homosexual "domestic partners." The bill now goes to Gov. Gray Davis, who has indicated in the past that he would like to sign such a measure. You may recall that California voters decisively rejected just such a measure when it appeared on the March 2000 ballot as Proposition 22. We guess representative government may be a lost cause on the Left Coast. "You'd think they would have had the decency to wait a few days before launching this reckless assault on society's premiere institution," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute. "On one coast, terrorists are committing acts of war against American citizens. On the other coast, California politicians are overturning 5,000 years of Judeo-Christian tradition and openly sponsoring sinful behavior." In economic news... The New York Stock Exchange reopened Monday, after its longest ever closure, immediately dropping hard, with the Dow 684 points down by closing. The U.S. economy had already been heading downward, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman observed, "Whether or not we use the word recession is just a question of semantics." Proposals for government intervention to prop up economic performance in the wake of the terror disruptions have raised other questions. Commenting on pleas for urgent assistance from the days-grounded airline sector, supply side economist Art Laffer noted, "Any bailout is a very significant event, using a tremendous amount of resources. Those resources don't come from the tooth fairy. While you could make a case for a very modest bailout, the existing shareholders who own the stock in the companies should be the first to suffer losses. After all, they make money when the airlines are profitable." In business news... U.S., British, German, Japanese and Italian government agencies are investigating links between alleged terrorist ringleader Osama bin Laden and various unusual stock transaction patterns in the United States and Europe just prior to the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Reported first by Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper, the story was later picked up by United Press International. Suspicious trading patterns included high levels of put options and short-selling related to WTC-headquartered companies, as well as airline and insurance stocks, banking on their future drop in price. The "Dumb and Dumber" Department... Amid all the discussion about arming commercial pilots -- many of whom are military veterans -- a new Federal Aviation Regulation scheduled to take effect on November 14, 2001, will remove an existing rule that, for the last 20 years, has authorized pilots to carry firearms. FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto acknowledged, "Crew members will no longer be allowed to carry arms." And speaking of "pilots," for several months, the FBI had two men associated with an Islamic Jihad terror group on a border watch list, but the pair got into the U.S., probably across the Canadian border. Those men, Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, took flight training from instructor Rick Garza at a suburban San Diego airstrip -- before Garza flunked them: "I told them it's not happening, their English was terrible. I told the FBI they seemed like 'Dumb and Dumber.' You just would not expect this from these people. They just didn't have the intelligence." Nawaf and Khalid appear now to have been on American Airlines Flight 77, used to assault the Pentagon, though there is a possibility these men swapped identities with two other terrorists in their cell -- to sow confusion and cover their tracks. This is a similar tactic to that used by the terrorist convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing under the borrowed identity of Ramzi Yousef. Culture comment... The 7-year-old and 9-year-old daughters of Desert Storm veteran Donnie Meyer, of Pasadena, Texas, were admonished for T-shirts emblazoned with the American flag, which they wore last Friday, honoring the national day of prayer and remembrance. The girls' McMaster Elementary School principal told them their shirts were not appropriate under the school's dress code. Embarrassed school district administrators later claimed the decision was a mistake. Faith Matters... This is a time for simple, serious reflection, rather than rancorous political debate over such theological subtleties as how the permissive will of God may interact with removal of divine protection from a formerly less sinful country. As columnist Armstrong Williams pondered, "...[I]t is a necessary step for the nation to pause amidst such tragedy, and to find some solace. But how do we define faith during times of senseless tragedy?" On the frontiers of science... The National Institutes of Health have decided to fund studies of the efficacy of prayer in health outcomes for AIDS sufferers and patients diagnosed with brain tumors. "This is not about religion and is not about faith. It is about healing intention and about consciousness, and that is very much within the realm of science," argued Dr. Elizabeth Targ, of her studies. Hey, we thought the effectiveness of prayer in healing involved both religious faith and science.... Around the world... Reactions to the terror attack on the U.S. continued to ripple in.... Our Editorial Board Member in Tel Aviv tells us that reports of a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians are greatly exaggerated, with serious firing continuing on Gaza, and one Israeli woman murdered Thursday. And international tyrants, while publicly claiming to "stand with" our country against terror, are moving to hobble our justified response by emplacing UN restrictions. Iranian President Seyed Mohammad Khatami asked that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan convene a global summit "to combat terrorism," arguing that the UN is the only "appropriate framework to organize this struggle." Red Chinese leader Jiang Zemin concurred in a reply to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's inquiry about the Red Chinese position: "It is necessary for the UN Security Council to play its due role." "We are not at war," intoned Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, whose nation had just signed a NATO document to the effect that "an attack on one alliance member was an attack on all." But we agree with conservative Canadian commentator Mark Steyn about the best world reply so far: "The foreign leader who said it best last week was the Queen, though she didn't really say a word. ... The Queen stands on ceremony and she has a lot of ceremony to stand on. But on Thursday, for the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, she ordered the Coldstream Guards to play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' -- the first time a foreign anthem had been played at the ceremony. The following day something even more unprecedented happened: At Britain's memorial service for the war dead of last Tuesday, the first chords of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' rumbled up from the great organ at St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Queen did something she's never done before -- she sang a foreign national anthem, all the words. She doesn't sing her own obviously ('God Save Me'), but she's never sung 'La Marseillaise' or anything else, either; her lips never move. ...But she understands something that few other leaders of the West seem to -- that today the ultimate guarantor of the peace and liberty of her realms is the United States. If America falls, or is diminished, or retreats in on itself, there is no 'free world.' That's the meaning of the Queen's 'Ich bin ein Amerikaaner' moment." And last, we watched and were deeply moved by last week's memorial service at National Cathedral. It was a solemn occasion on all fronts -- except one. Outside the Cathedral, as Bill Clinton was performing something like a wedding greeting line, Chester Lott walked up to Clinton and the two of them had a big laugh -- like they were at a Capitol Hill cocktail party. We want to know what was so funny that Chester and Bill could not find a more appropriate venue for their jovial exchange? -- PUBLIUS -- *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
