Here is the full text (from the Telegraph):

Dear Mr. Secretary:

Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.

Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law, having been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991. And I do so because I am outraged at your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of “compassion.”

Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to the crime, the terrorist will be freed by one man’s exercise of “compassion.” Your action rewards a terrorist even though he never admitted to his role in this act of mass murder and even though neither he nor the government of Libya ever disclosed the names and roles of others who were responsible.

Your action makes a mockery of the emotions, passions and pathos of all those affected by the Lockerbie tragedy: the medical personnel who first faced the horror of 270 bodies strewn in the fields around Lockerbie, and in the town of Lockerbie itself; the hundreds of volunteers who walked the fields of Lockerbie to retrieve any piece of debris related to the breakup of the plane; the hundreds of FBI agents and Scottish police who undertook an unprecedented global investigation to identify those responsible; the prosecutors who worked for years–in some cases a full career–to see justice done.

But most importantly, your action makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988. You could not have spent much time with the families, certainly not as much time as others involved in the investigation and prosecution. You could not have visited the small wooden warehouse where the personal items of those who perished were gathered for identification–the single sneaker belonging to a teenager; the Syracuse sweatshirt never again to be worn by a college student returning home for the holidays; the toys in a suitcase of a businessman looking forward to spending Christmas with his wife and children.

You apparently made this decision without regard to the views of your partners in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Lockerbie tragedy. Although the FBI and Scottish police, and prosecutors in both countries, worked exceptionally closely to hold those responsible accountable, you never once sought our opinion, preferring to keep your own counsel and hiding behind opaque references to “the need for compassion.”

You have given the family members of those who died continued grief and frustration. You have given those who sought to assure that the persons responsible would be held accountable the back of your hand. You have given Megrahi a “jubilant welcome” in Tripoli, according to the reporting. Where, I ask, is the justice?

Sincerely yours,

Robert S. Mueller, III

Director

The protests coming out of the British Foreign Office, the British government, and the government of Scotland that they had nothing to do with the release of al-Megrahi (see posts below) ring hollow. Especially the denials of the Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson –  a buddy of Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam – are unlikely to convince any but the most gullible. Mandelson is a Liar of Record. He is the strongest candidate in Britain for the title of Public Liar Number One, and it’s a strong field. He has twice been kicked out of government – or reluctantly dropped by his pal Tony Blair – for offenses that, when he was first accused of them, he tried to wriggle out of by lying. His denials are almost a guarantee that the opposite is the truth.

Another way to look at the case is this: is it remotely plausible that the Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose responsibility it was to release the mass murderer or not, would take it upon himself, all alone, to let him go, in the teeth of public opinion at home and abroad, against the wishes of the government of which he is part, and the Westminster government?

Wakes up one morning, this remarkable Kenny guy, and with everything else he has to think about suddenly banished from his mind, is overwhelmed with a sense of pity for that Libyan mass murderer – whatsisname? – in prison because the poor chap has a terminal illness. Can’t bear to think of it. ‘I’ll let him go, to die at home, in the bosom of his family,’ this deeply compassionate politician decides. ‘I’ll brave the howls of anger and pain that will come from the families of his victims. I’ll defy my government and the government of the United Kingdom. I’ll ignore the understanding we had with the Americans that the bomber will stay in prison for life. I’ll risk derision and reproach, and do this great good deed even if it means my removal from office! That’s how heroic I am going to be.’

Has any politician in history ever been so selfless before, or is likely to be again?

You have to admire him!

Strange though, we might think, that a man so supremely compassionate couldn’t spare a little of that feeling for the families of the victims.

But there it is. He acted alone. Moved by nothing but a moral consideration. And luckily for him not a word of reproach, or disagreement, or even surprise, was flung his way by the governments who had nothing to do with his out-of-the-blue decision.

Or is it possible that we, the general public, are being played for fools?

Noah Pollak writes on the Commentary ‘contentions’ site:

The world’s nuclear weapons watchdog is hiding data on Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear arms … The officials and diplomats said that the International Atomic Energy Agency under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program.

ElBaradei … has said that the agency does not have any evidence that suggests Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

But … new evidence was submitted to the IAEA in a classified annex written by its inspectors in the Islamic Republic. The report was said to have been signed by the head of the IAEA team in Iran. The classified report, according to the sources, was not incorporated into the agency’s published reports. The details, they said, were censored by senior officials of the IAEA in the organization’s Vienna headquarters.

Our view expressed in A Pointless War (see below) is endorsed by a writer who knows Afghanistan intimately.

Mona Charen writes about the man, his book, and his argument:

He was certainly brave, but was he crazy? That’s what I wondered when I picked up Rory Stewart’s “The Places in Between,” an account of the Scotsman’s 2002 solo walk across Afghanistan. That’s right, he walked. Many Afghans doubted he would survive the journey. Just weeks after the fall of the Taliban, in the dead of winter, in some of the most remote and difficult terrain in the inhabited world, he went from village to village on foot. Relying on the tradition of hospitality, Stewart found welcome, sustenance, and shelter (mostly, but not always) graciously offered by people who had very little to share.

Stewart, a British Foreign Service officer … and a Harvard professor, relied upon his knowledge of Farsi and Urdu, his understanding of Afghan history and culture, and his own hardy constitution to get him through. The portrayal of Afghanistan that resulted was illuminating and honest. He was unsparing about the deception and cruelty he witnessed, as well as the warmth and fellowship. I recall in particular the vignette about local children throwing stones at a dog for fun. For several years, Stewart lived in Kabul, where he established a charitable foundation seeking to promote local crafts.

So when Stewart raises a yellow flag about our escalating commitment to Afghanistan, we should take notice.

The rationale that President Obama has offered for our ramped-up engagement in Afghanistan, Stewart argues in a piece for the London Review of Books, runs as follows: We cannot permit the Taliban to return to power or they will revive the alliance with al-Qaida and will plot more catastrophic attacks on the United States. In order to defeat the Taliban, we must create a functioning state in the country, and in order to create a functioning state, we must defeat the Taliban. Obama seems keen to increase our role in Afghanistan to highlight the contrast with his predecessor. Bush, Obama ceaselessly repeats, fought “a war of choice” whereas Obama will fight only “a war of necessity.”

Obama argues that Afghanistan represents such a war. But does it? In order to achieve the goal of a “stable” Afghanistan, President Obama has deployed (for starters) 17,000 more U.S. troops at a preliminary cost of $5.5 billion. His stated goals for this poor, decentralized, and shell-shocked nation match in ambition and grandiosity the claims that George W. Bush made for a revived Iraq — but with arguably less foundation. “There are no mass political parties in Afghanistan and the Kabul government lacks the base, strength or legitimacy of the Baghdad government,” Stewart writes. There is almost no economic activity in the nation aside from international aid and the drug trade. Stewart notes that while Afghanistan is not a hopeless case, it is not at all clear that it is “the most dangerous place on Earth” as advocates of a massively increased U.S. and British role argue. In fact, neighboring Pakistan, sheltering al-Qaida (including, in all likelihood, bin Laden) and possessing nuclear weapons, represents a far graver threat to our national security. Stewart believes that bin Laden operates out of Pakistan precisely because Pakistan, a more robust state than Afghanistan, restricts U.S. operations. Nor is it clear that Afghanistan poses more of a threat than, say, Somalia or Yemen. Obama promises a “comprehensive approach” that will promote “a more capable and accountable Afghan government … advance security, opportunity and justice … (and) develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.”

This is more than we have the knowledge or ability to accomplish, Stewart argues. As for the necessity, he is unconvinced that the Taliban should loom so large as a threat to the West. He thinks it unlikely that the Taliban will regain control of the entire country (though they do control some provincial capitals). Unlike the situation in 1996, the Afghans now have experience of Taliban rule. “Millions of Afghans disliked their brutality, incompetence and primitive attitudes. The Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek populations are wealthier, more established and more powerful than they were in 1996 and would strongly resist any attempt by the Taliban to occupy their areas.” In any case, a more circumscribed foreign role should be sufficient to prevent the revival of terrorist training camps — as it has since 2001.

One might have thought, listening to the opponents of the Iraq War, that a certain modesty about nation building would be axiomatic among liberals. Instead, we are witnessing something else entirely — the approach is now brainlessly partisan. Your nation building is a war crime. My nation building is a national security necessity. …

From The Washington Post:

A majority of Americans now see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting.

We atheist conservatives were all for the war in Iraq. We especially liked Rumsfeld’s ‘shock and awe’ idea, but in the event were not satisfied that it was shocking and awful enough. We shouted with glee when the sadistic despot Saddam Hussein was captured, and celebrated when he was hanged. (He was one of those aggressive, absolute rulers of Arab states who, like Colonel Qaddafi of Libya and the ‘Kings’ of Saudi Arabia, constitute a real threat to the West, with or without weapons of mass destruction.) However, we never did, and do not, expect Iraq to remain even as much of a ‘democracy’ as it is now.

We were against NATO’s intervention in the internecine wars in erstwhile Yugoslavia.

We were and remain unswervingly for the pursuit and destruction of terrorists.

We urge the prosecution of a sustained war of words (and cartoons) on Islam. We think it is a cruel, oppressive, and murderous ideology that must be argued against.

But we see no point whatsoever in carrying on the war in Afghanistan. It would be good if Osama bin Laden could be captured and killed. There’s no need to give up pursuing him. But expending blood and treasure on trying to turn Afghanistan into a democracy is a deplorable waste. The effort is doomed to failure.

This is one of the issues on which we find ourselves in agreement with ‘a majority of Americans’.

Daniel Pipes writes:

US President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, John O. Brennan, conveniently outlined the administration’s present and future policy mistakes in a speech on August 6, “A New Approach for Safeguarding Americans.”…

Disturbingly, Brennan ascribes virtually every thought or policy in his speech to the wisdom of the One. This cringe-inducing lecture reminds one of a North Korean functionary paying homage to the Dear Leader.

Specifics are no better. Most fundamentally, Brennan calls for appeasing terrorists: “Even as we condemn and oppose the illegitimate tactics used by terrorists, we need to acknowledge and address the legitimate needs and grievances of ordinary people those terrorists claim to represent.” Which legitimate needs and grievances, one wonders, does he think al-Qaida represents?

Brennan carefully delineates a two-fold threat, one being “al-Qaida and its allies” and the other “violent extremism.” But the former, self-evidently, is a subset of the latter. This elementary mistake undermines his entire analysis.

He also rejects any connection between “violent extremism” and Islam: “Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself.”…

[This is] a deeply deceptive interpretation [of the meaning of ‘jihad’] intended to confuse non-Muslims and win time for Islamists. The George W. Bush administration, for all its mistakes, did not succumb to this ruse. But Brennan informs us that his boss now bases US policy on it.

The speech contains disquieting signs of ineptitude. We learn that Obama considers nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists to be “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” Fine. But how does he respond? With three feeble and nearly irrelevant steps: “leading the effort for a stronger global nonproliferation regime, launching an international effort to secure the world’s vulnerable nuclear material… and hosting a global nuclear summit.”

Nor can Brennan think straight. One example, requiring a lengthy quote. “Poverty does not cause violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause terrorism. But just as there is no excuse for the wanton slaughter of innocents, there is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death.”

Summary: Poverty and a lack of education do not cause terrorism, but a lack of education and a job make people more susceptible to the ideas leading to terrorism. What is the distinction? Woe on us when the White House accepts illogic as analysis.

Further, let’s focus on the statement “when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death,” for it contains two stunning errors. First, it assumes the socialist fiction that governments provide basic needs. No. Other than in a few commodity-rich states, governments protect and offer legal structures, while the market provides.

Second, every study on the subject finds no connection between personal stress (poverty, lack of education, unemployment) and attraction to radical Islam. If anything, massive transfers of wealth to the Middle East since 1970 contributed to the rise of radical Islam. The administration is basing its policy on a falsehood.

Where, as they say, is the adult supervision? Implementation of the inept policies outlined by Brennan spells danger for Americans, American interests and American allies. The bitter consequences of these mistakes soon enough will become apparent.

For years now North Korea has been hoping for direct talks with the US. By granting ex-president Clinton the release of two illegally held American journalists that he had to come and beg for, Kim Jong Il now gets just what he wanted. The one-on-one negotiations will legitimize the North Korean regime. (They ought to delegitimize the Obama presidency.)

Hillary Clinton lies about what happened. Is anyone taken in? Is anyone surprised?

From the New York Post

One week after North Korea released two imprisoned American journalists, the Obama administration announced its willingness yesterday to hold direct talks with the rogue nation over its nuclear weapons. “The ball is in their court,” said America’s UN ambassador, Susan Rice, on CNN’s “State of the Union” yesterday.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with the rest of the administration, insisted that former President Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea to secure the release of the two journalists was not a negotiation with the country, led by dictator Kim Jong Il, but she said she hoped it would improve relations with them. “What we’re hoping is that maybe, without it being part of the mission in any way, the fact that this was done will perhaps lead the North Koreans to recognize that they can have a positive relationship with us,” Secretary Clinton said on CNN’s “GPS.”

Jennifer  Rubin quotes John Bolton on why honoring Mary Robinson is rewarding an enemy:

‘Durban is not the only reason Ms. Robinson should not receive the Medal of Freedom. Over the years she has actively opposed “the security or national interests of the United States,” one of the categories of eligibility for the Medal. Those in the administration who recommended her either ignored her anti-Israel history, or missed it entirely, as they either ignored or overlooked her hostility toward America’s role in promoting international peace and security. Or perhaps they share Ms. Robinson’s views…

Ms. Robinson’s award shows Mr. Obama’s detachment from longstanding, mainstream, American public opinion on foreign policy. The administration’s tin ear to the furor over Ms. Robinson underlines how deep that detachment really is.’

And she comments:

And that really is the bottom line. It is not that Obama and his team “missed” her involvement at Durban or overlooked her record more generally at the UN. It is that they did not find it all that troubling, or perhaps they even considered it admirable. They did give her a prize for it after all. It is not that her views are anathema to them—just to mainstream opinion in the U.S. The Robinson award is important because it tells us whom we are dealing with—in the White House. We already know about Robinson and the UN. The lesson to be learned is that Robinson is the role model, the ideal international citizen, whom the Obama team admires. It is chilling. But that is the reality of what the America public, the West, and Israel must confront for the foreseeable future.

… I thirst for accusation. (W.B.Yeats)

The Abominable Obama, Cruella DeVille (aka Hillary Clinton), and the rest of the ‘America-should-be-ashamed-of-itself’ mob, now long for their country to be tried, judged and punished by envious enemies.

From Investor’s Business Daily: 

Right smack in the middle of the Declaration of Independence is a passionate case against judicial internationalism. Among the charges against King George is the complaint that he “has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws.” The effects of that foreign jurisdiction included “transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.”

Though it’s now 233 years after the American people thought we had solved that injustice, this country’s highest-ranking Cabinet secretary, and its newest Supreme Court justice, have different ideas.

Secretary Clinton, speaking in Nairobi on Thursday, called it “a great regret” that the U.S. was not a member of the International Criminal Court, a body that adjudicates on genocide, war crimes and “crimes against humanity” (defined as including attacks “on human dignity”).

There are very good reasons the U.S. refused to join the so-called “war crimes court” when it was founded in Rome in 2002. Too often when America exercises its powers to defend itself and the rest of the free world against terrorism, the thanks we get from much of the rest of the free world comes in the form of ridicule and abuse — extending even to charges of war crimes.

John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, may have announced Thursday that we are no longer fighting a global “war on terrorism” against jihadists. But the fact is that virtually every U.S. military action in post-World War II leads to condemnation from some European political or intellectual quarter…

Read the whole article here.

From Investor’s Business Daily:

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the journalists … were nabbed by Kim Jong Il’s security forces while on a reporting mission on the China border five months ago, and a government tribunal sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor. In North Korea, hard labor means hard labor. Had the sentences been carried out, one or both might have died in custody…

Make no mistake: They weren’t prisoners; they were hostages… By picking Clinton for this “private, humanitarian mission,” [of going to North Korea to rescue them]… the U.S. seemed to be sending a not-so-subtle signal to Kim that the U.S. is ready to appease him.

For in addition to being a former commander in chief, Clinton is the husband of the current secretary of state. And his own secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was the first to visit North Korea.

Far from private, this has White House fingerprints all over it. As the AP noted: “State media said Clinton apologized on behalf of the women and relayed President Barack Obama’s gratitude.”

Groveling, anyone? Kim now knows the current U.S. leader can be blackmailed — if he didn’t know it before. That’s what made President Clinton so appropriate for this mission. It was from Clinton that Kim first learned this lesson.

In 1994, recall, Clinton sent former President Carter — see a pattern? — to North Korea to negotiate that country’s denuclearization. Carter returned with a deal similar in its sycophancy and cynicism to the one Neville Chamberlain brought back from Munich.

In exchange for billions of dollars in food aid and even help for its “peaceful” nuclear power effort, North Korea vowed to behave and decommission its nuclear weapons program.

No sooner had the ink dried than North Korea began cheating. During the Clinton years, the U.S. and the U.N. signed three agreements with North Korea. North Korea broke its word each time.

Commander in chief? Clinton acted like appeaser in chief. We never learned. The deal making continued into the 2000s — culminating in the Six-Party Talks, which concluded in 2007.

Again, Pyongyang broke its word and bought more time with its outrageous behavior. Today it has a burgeoning missile program and nuclear weapons, plus has sold that technology to other rogue states, including Iran. Rather than being conciliatory, the U.S. should have been righteously angry. Instead, U.S. weakness with North Korea is tempting others.

In Iran, just this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s security forces arrested three young American journalists for an alleged border violation. Coincidence? Probably not. It follows the arrest earlier this year of U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi, who was released in May — just before Iran’s elections.

Clearly, Iran has learned the same valuable lesson as Kim — threaten captured Americans with harsh punishment, use them as pawns, then watch us grovel for the favor of their release.