How stupid does a person have to be to serve in the US (or for that matter any) intelligence services?

Or the State Department?

In a 2010 State Department report on arms-control compliance, requested by Senate Republicans as part of the START ratification debate (see our post below, Raising big red flags), it is revealed (surprise, surprise!) that Russia violated its 1991 START agreements on arms reductions and limitations “to the end”.

If the Washington Times report of the State Department’s report is to be relied on, it also contains this gem:

On Iran’s nuclear program, the report to be released Wednesday reveals that U.S. intelligence agencies still think that Iran halted work on its nuclear-weapons program in 2003, but provides new details showing that Tehran has failed to comply with International Atomic Energy Agency controls on its extensive nuclear program.

Specifically, the report said Iran has not explained evidence showing that it is working on a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-3 missile, and tested detonators and explosives for nuclear arms.

The report said the evidence showed Iran worked on casting uranium metal into hemispheres, like those used in the pit of a nuclear bomb; evidence of work on detonating a high explosive in “hemispherical geometry,” also for a nuclear bomb; and the modification of a warhead for the Shahab 3. Iran also did underground explosives testing that appeared to be nuclear arms, the report said.

But as Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, there’s nothing to worry about. No need to take action to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power.

No evidence, however ample, however strong, can change the resolute minds in the State Department once they’re made up.

That’s something to rely on.

So some 92,000 US military documents were leaked by an unknown agent to Wikileaks and handed on to three big news outlets for co-ordinated news releases today.

The question is, what do they reveal according to the New York Times, the Guardian (Britain), and Der Spiegel (Germany)?

Not much is the answer.

The NYT finds proof that Pakistan’s intelligence service has been actively helping the Taliban. But news reports of that have been appearing for some time now.

The Guardian, perhaps a jot more interestingly, finds no convincing evidence of it in the documents. What it does find is evidence that a secret  unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders – which is already known or at least assumed  – and that the US has covered up the fact that the Taliban got hold of, and is deploying, heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles. The Taliban’s possession of them must be a cause for concern, but is not a startling revelation. If the high command, or the Pentagon, or the administration, or all of them have been trying to conceal the fact, the wonder is why, and how they hoped to succeed.

Der Spiegel finds evidence that German troops are coming under increasing threat. But the German government has plainly said as much.

Any scandalous revelations? There are mentions, yet to be filled out, of civilian deaths that may have been suppressed. Bad, but not unusual in a war.

It’s possible that something surprising, illuminating, significant in some way will yet be caught in that blizzard of paper. Possible, but not very likely.

Wikileaks is an international organization “based” (whatever that means) in Sweden, that “publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations, while preserving the anonymity of their sources” (according to Wikipedia).  One of its founders is Julian Assange, an Australian who seems also to be its only or chief spokesman.

The Wikileaks list of past revelations is not very impressive.

They were one of several channels through which the Climategate documents were released. Good.

They saw fit to release Sarah Palin’s private emails when she was a vice-presidential candidate, given to them in September 2008 by the hacker himself. Not so good.

Far more useful would be documents revealing  the suppressed facts of Obama’s life, schooling, and career. And even better would be a list of the politicians who made the decision to admit millions of Muslim immigrants into Europe and the United States, and documents that would tell us why they made it. If Wikileaks could supply those, it would truly deserve the gratitude of this generation and future historians.

Don’t disturb the workers’ sleep by letting an alarm warn them when they’re in danger of being incinerated and their shelter is about to be blown to bits.

That was what BP’s leaders ordered on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

So the alarm was disabled, and had been for a year before the explosion came that burnt up eleven men, wrecked the rig, and polluted the Gulf of Mexico and its shores with an oil spill that deprived thousands of people of their livelihoods.

Highly considerate idiots, those BP guys.

The Washington Post reports:

Long before an eruption of gas turned the Deepwater Horizon oil rig into a fireball, an alarm system designed to alert the crew and prevent combustible gases from reaching potential sources of ignition had been deliberately disabled, the former chief electronics technician on the rig testified Friday.

Michael Williams, an ex-Marine who survived the April 20 conflagration by jumping from the burning rig, told a federal panel probing the disaster that … the rig had been operating with the gas alarm system in “inhibited” mode for a year to prevent false alarms from disturbing the crew.

He said the explanation he got was that the leadership of the rig did not want crew members needlessly awakened in the middle of the night. …

Read it all, and weep.

News – yet same old same old – about Islamic slaughter and deception and Western indulgence of it.

You wouldn’t hear it from the mainstream media, but this is what is happening.

Syria is killing hundreds of Kurds using Israeli-made spy drones.

The drones were sold by Israel to Turkey, now ruled by a fiercely anti-Israel government under the leadership of Prime Minister Erdogan, and it has equipped Syria with the drones to use against the Kurds.

Turkey, we must recall, is still a member of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

According to DebkaFile:

Syrian troops and Kurdish tribesman are locked in fierce battle since the Syrian army blasted four northeastern Kurdish towns and neighborhoods at the end of June … Hundreds of Kurds are reported dead.

The Syrian campaign is backed by Heron (Eitan) spy drones Israel sold Turkey, made accessible on the personal say-so of Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Turkey therefore becomes the first NATO member to make advanced Western military technology available for the use of a strong ally of radical Iran and an active sponsor of terrorists. Following intense exchanges between Jerusalem and Washington, the NATO command was urged to put Ankara on the carpet – with no response as yet.

Intense exchanges between Jerusalem and Washington? Israel actually demanding something of Obama, and Obama giving in to it? Amazing if true.

Less amazing is NATO’s non-response. It was odd of it to let Turkey in, since it is nowhere near the North Atlantic; but at least at the time of its admittance it was a pro-Western secular state. Now Turkey is in the enemy camp, and NATO, the defense alliance that the West could safely depend on in the Cold War, has lost the plot. For years, ever since it went to war to assist Muslim terrorists in Kosovo, NATO’s willingness to serve the purposes it was created for has been perceptibly weakening.

The drones are being used to track Kurds in flight across Syria’s borders, mainly into Lebanon, where Hizballah is helping Syria hunt the refugees down. The accessibility to Damascus of the unmanned aerial vehicles is in direct breach of the Israel-Turkish sales contracts which barred their use – and the use of other Israeli high-tech items sold to Turkey during years of close military collaboration – in the service of hostile states or entities.

Extending their sphere to Syrian and Lebanese skies gives the Syrian army and Hizballah (Iran’s external arm) a unique opportunity to study the Heron (Eitan)’s sophisticated attributes in real combat conditions at close hand and adjust their own tactics accordingly to outwit them.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources have no doubt that Iranian intelligence officers stationed in Damascus and Beirut jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the Israeli wonder-drones.

Regarding the crackdown on the Kurds, our military sources report that three large-scale Syrian military operations against the Kurdish people are in progress under the guidance of Turkish generals based at Syrian staff headquarters in Damascus …

Syrian elite forces are battling suspected Kurdish members of the Turkish PKK in at least four northeastern Syrian towns near the Syrian-Turkish-Iraqi border triangle: the big Kurdish town of Qamishli, the mixed Kurdish-Assyrian town of Al Asakah and two others, Qaratshuk and Diwar. All four and their outlying villages are under massive Syrian army siege after complete residential blocks were blasted – acting as the trigger for the current fighting.

The PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) is a terrorist organization, and Muslims and Arabs do not like terrorism when it is used against themselves.

[But] not all the victims are PKK fighters by any means. Most were civilians. Turkish intelligence sources tried to justify the Syrian massacre and their government’s complicity by claiming that 2,000 of the 6,000 PKK fighters conducting terrorist attacks in Turkey from North Iraqi havens are Syrian Kurds or providers of alternative bases for their Turkish comrades to strike Turkish military positions from a second direction.

While until Saturday, July 17, Damascus was tight-lipped about its grim campaign against its Kurdish community, Turkish military sources were more vocal. They placed the number of Kurdish dead in battle at 185 and another 400 taken captive, many of whom will be turned over to Ankara. Our sources estimate the number of dead as much higher – more than 300, with at least 1,000 injured. …

When Turkish reporters finally tackled Syrian president Bashar Assad on his anti-Kurd campaign Saturday morning, July 17, their questions were smoothly turned aside. “I’m not following the details concerning this operation,” said the Syrian ruler. “The issue is not about capturing 10 or 100 terrorists. What matters is the principle.”

He added: “Our cooperation with Turkey in the security field is not new … We have coordinated for many years. Intervening when there are preparations for a terrorist attack or for infiltration is a dimension of this cooperation.”

Not so. Assad, true to form, was lying. Although Erdogan’s party came to power in Turkey in 2002, its co-operation with Syria only dates from October 2009, when the two states signed a military pact.

Despite the pact, Israel is still selling its spy-drones to Turkey. (And Turkey is planning to produce its own drones on the Israeli model.)

A Turkish news source reports:

Turkey has purchased 10 massive Heron drones from Israel and their delivery was expected to be completed in August [2010].

Turkey had also bought or leased other drones from Israel, he said. The United States separately provides intelligence from Predator drones on the Kurdish rebels.

Israel has also upgraded some of Turkey’s combat jets and tanks with modern radar equipment …

Turkey sent terrorists of its own with a flotilla of ships last May to break Israel’s legal and necessary blockade of Gaza.

How long will it take Israel and the West in general to recognize that Turkey is no longer an ally but an actively aggressive enemy, and treat it accordingly?

RedState reports this, and ludicrous as it is, it seems to be true:

Alvin Greene, the current Democrat candidate for Senator in South Carolina … recently announced in an interview with The Guardian his plan to bring jobs to …  South Carolina. His candidacy itself is schadenfreude-licious, but he somehow managed to make it even more so, with his grand job creation idea, as follows:

Said Greene: “Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That’s something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It’s not something a typical person would bring up. That’s something that could happen, that makes sense. It’s not a joke.”

Apparently Alvin Greene is facing felony charges, so perhaps by “thinking out of the box” he means thinking outside of prison.

We’ve always known that narcissism is the main unclean energy source of Democrats, but it’s nice to come across so candid an admission of it.

Alvin Greene, Democratic candidate for the Senate

One religious belief versus another religious belief. Nonsense versus nonsense. But the devotees of Muslim nonsense are crueler now than most others.

Persecution.org tells this story (which we retell in our own words as the publishers are, inexplicably, limiting the spread of their story with tight copyright protection):

A convert to Christianity and a Muslim were fellow-travelers (by bus?) in Somalia. They got talking. The Muslim asked the Christian, whose name was (still)  Muhammad Guul Hashim Idris, if he thought that the prophet Muhammad was God’s messenger. The Christian (pointing out the obvious) replied: “If I thought so, I would have believed in him rather than the Messiah.”

When the bus reached its destination in the district of Hudur, the Muslim reported the Christian to the terrorist organization Al-Shebaab which, its seems, constitutes or commands the legal authority there, since it had Idris arrested on the charge of “insulting the prophet Muhammad”, a crime punishable under sharia law by death.

Idris, a recently married man with a pregnant wife, was duly condemned to public execution. The sentence was carried out (we are not told how but probably by decapitation) in a football stadium. Among the hundreds of watchers were schoolchildren, brought to observe the edifying spectacle.

Such killings in the name of Allah the Merciful are not rare but all too common in Muslim countries.

Is it possible to doubt that Obama is passionately devoted to Islam when he has made it glaringly obvious in his speeches and his deep obeisance to the “King” of Saudi Arabia; has deliberately alienated the US government from Israel; and has given an instruction to NASA administrator Charles Bolden to find – as a priority, rather than space exploration which has been all but totally abandoned – “a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution [in fact, non-historic and almost entirely mythical – JB] to science and math and engineering”?

Here’s further confirmation of his profound concern for, and involvement with, Islam in news from Creeping Sharia:

The U.S. ambassador to Kenya has publicly urged Kenyans to vote in favor of the proposed constitution, including the kadhis [sharia] courts, arguing that passage is key to keeping Kenya stable. …

The Obama admin may have spent up to $10 million tax payer dollars supporting the proposed Kenyan constitution that includes provisions for sharia courts.

Kenya is also where Obama’s cousin Raul [Raila] Odinga promised sharia law during his Kenyan campaign, and then waged violent attacks leading to hundreds of deaths to steal a position after a failed election.

For background to the issue of sharia courts in Obama’s ancestral home Kenya, and more on Obama’s support  for his terrorist cousin Odinga, see this January 6, 2008 article at Atlas Shrugs:

Obama’s ties to Kenya run deep. He knows the political landscape. Why would he back such a violent, dangerous man who made a pact with the Muslims to institute sharia? Obama’s bias for his fellow Luo [Raila Oginga Odinga] was so blatant that a Kenya government spokesman denounced Obama during his visit as Raila’s “stooge.” …

Raila Oginga Odinga has … a scheme to carry out a second coup attempt in Kenya (his first attempt in 1982 failed) …

Those who have an interest in Kenya witnessed the post-party-nomination violence a couple of weeks ago in Oginga’s strongholds. People who chose to vote against anyone his party chose were killed.

For a few days both Nairobi and Kisumu were literally ablaze. Candidates who escaped the violence and who chose to run on parties other than the party Oginga was running on had to publicly step down when Oginga attended their rallies and publicly asked them to step down and support his party. …

[In 2003] Muslim leaders in Kenya [were] threatening armed conflict if the new Kenyan constitution [did] not enshrine Islamic courts (known in Kenya as Kadhi courts).

The US Ambassador to Kenya is Michael E. Ranneberger. In a recent speech in honor of International Women’s Day, he said:

I want to emphasize that the United States is strongly committed to promoting the rights of Kenyan women and their increased participation in all aspects of social, political, and economic life. This is a highly important dimension of the strong and growing partnership between the U.S. and Kenya.

Under unalterable sharia law, a woman’s testimony is half as valuable as a man’s; a woman may inherit only half as much as male heirs; a woman can be divorced at the whim of her husband and she does not have a right to keep her children; if a woman is raped she can be convicted of immorality and the punishment may be stoning to death. These are just some of the ways in which sharia law subjugates and victimizes women.

Apparently Mr Ranneberger sees no need to square his “commitment to promoting the rights of Kenyan women” with his urging Kenyans to adopt a constitution that would establish sharia law.

Such is US diplomacy in the era of Obama.

The Washington Post reports today that the Transportation Security Administration’s ban on websites where “controversial opinion” is expressed has been lifted. (See our post Parental guidance needed for security officers? July 6, 2010.)

Turns out we were right that They were out to protect their security officers from the mental corruption that comes, They think, from viewing violence and hearing opinions They consider wrong, like good parents protecting their little children.

TSA spokeswoman Lauren Gaches said the agency’s revised “acceptable use” policy for Internet access on the agency’s network was designed to block sites “that promote destructive behavior to one’s self or others.”

“After further review, TSA determined the ‘controversial opinion’ category may contain some sites that do not violate TSA’s policy and therefore has concluded that the category is no longer being considered for implementation,” she said in an e-mail to The Washington Times.

Before abandoning the guideline, agency officials said the policy changes were intended to address “evolving cyberthreats,” but did not explain exactly what was meant by “controversial opinions” and whether Internet sites with conservative or other politically oriented viewpoints would be targeted under the new guidelines.

Good news: Big Business is no longer eager to give big donations to the anti-business Democratic Party, the Washington Post reports (regretfully, we suppose).

Big Businessmen are notoriously slow to understand where their political interests are best served, but it seems the big penny is dropping at last.

A revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats’ two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world’s financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.

The drop in support comes from many of the same bankers, hedge fund executives and financial services chief executives who are most upset about the financial regulatory reform bill that House Democrats passed last week with almost no Republican support. The Senate expects to take up the measure this month.

This fundraising free fall from the New York area has left Democrats with diminished resources to defend their House and Senate majorities in November’s midterm elections. ..

The overwhelming factor is the rising anger among financial executives who think they have not been treated well based on their support of Democrats over the past four years, according to lawmakers, party strategists and fundraisers. …

More than 600 regular donors from the New York area  — whose four- and five-figure checks added up to $10 million … have so far abandoned their effort to retain the Democratic majorities.

Imagine:

The police want to receive no reports about crime.

The hospitals want to hear nothing about sickness and injury.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants to learn nothing about controversial opinion, see and hear nothing about extreme violence and its gruesome results, or ponder criminal activity.

Ha-ha! None of these similarly ridiculous statements could be true, could it?

Well, one is. The TSA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for screening passengers boarding planes, “detecting, deterring, and defeating terrorist or other criminal hostile acts targeting U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, crew, and when necessary, other transportation modes within the US’s general transportation systems” and conducting “comprehensive inspections, assessments and investigations” of passengers “to determine their security posture” wants to hear no “controversial opinion” on, say, argument for and against suicide bombing and jihad. So it has banned “certain websites from the federal agency’s computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain ‘controversial opinion’, according to an internal email obtained by CBS News.”

The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon. It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed “inappropriate for government access.”

These are:

• Chat/Messaging

• Controversial opinion

• Criminal activity

• Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content

• Gaming

The email does not specify how the TSA will determine if a website expresses a “controversial opinion.”

There is also no explanation as to why controversial opinions are being blocked, although the email stated that some of the restricted websites violate the Employee Responsibilities and Conduct policy.

The blowing up of aircraft in flight is criminal, extremely violent, and gruesome. Are TSA employees to keep their minds off these facts? If so, is it because they will be harmed by knowing them?

And on whose parental instructions? Janet Napolitano’s – the stunningly smart Secretary of Homeland Security?

We may never know.