America Plays the Fool in Pakistan’s Double Game

by Ralph Peters | New York Post

The treasure trove of 91,000 classified AfPak documents posted by WikiLeaks suggests that our government’s been deceiving us about Pakistan’s murderous behavior.

But the situation’s even worse than that: Our government’s been lying to itself.

The documents in question aren’t superclassified. They’re largely low-level field reports at the “confidential” level, bottom-rung stuff, with some secret documents mixed in. Their value lies in their unfiltered quality. This is what the guys on the ground with the guns have been seeing, hearing and sensing.

It ain’t good. Reports covering the five years from 2004 to 2009 cite routine Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban — as the terrorists kill our troops. Pakistan’s infamous Inter Services Intelligence, or ISI, also has been working with al Qaeda, according to the reports.

That’s no surprise to Post readers, but our government is “shocked, shocked!” by the revelations. And the excuses for Pakistan’s lethal misconduct have already started flowing.

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A WINNING WEEK FOR TERROR

by Ralph Peters

Last week, we learned the answer to the hoary question “What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?” When it comes to terrorism, the answer’s “a white flag.”

But Scotland’s craven release, “on humanitarian grounds,” of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the mastermind of the bombing that killed 270 passengers aboard a Pan Am flight two decades ago, was merely the noisiest terrorist triumph during a week of shame.

And noisy it was: Libya’s Moammar Khadafy staged a huge homecoming party for the terrorist. (Think that would’ve happened while W was president?) The gleeful Khadafy rubbed the West’s snout in our feckless taste for appeasement.

Appeasement was also the watchword back in the United States, where Yale University Press delighted Islamist extremists by removing all illustrations from a scholarly work about the Danish cartoon debacle — not just the caricatures of Mohammed.

Elsewhere, the casualty count went beyond book illustrations. In Iraq, Islamist terrorists staged massive suicide bombings in Baghdad. Over a hundred Iraqis died, with more than a thousand wounded. The foreign and finance ministries lie in rubble. The government’s reeling.

Our president went to the beach.

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DESPERATE DEAL: OBAMA’S MOSCOW GIVEAWAY

by Ralph Peters

PRESIDENT Obama went to Moscow desperate for the appearance of a foreign-policy success. He got that illusion — at a substantial cost to America’s security.

The series of signing ceremonies in a grand Kremlin hall and the litany of agreements, accords and frameworks implied that the United States benefited from all the fuss. We didn’t.

We got nothing of real importance. But the government of puppet-master Vladimir Putin (nominally just prime minister) got virtually all it wanted. In Moscow, this was Christmas in July.

Ignore the agenda-padding public-health memorandum and the meaningless “framework document on military cooperation” (we’ve had such agreements before; the Russians always just stiff us). The main course in Moscow was arms control.

President Obama’s ideological bias against nuclear weapons dates back to his undergraduate years. Yet those weapons kept the peace between the world’s great powers for 64 years. A few remarks about deterrence notwithstanding, Obama just doesn’t get it.

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THE OBAMA EFFECT: US ENEMIES SEEING WEAKNESS

by Ralph Peters

IT must have been the viewing angle: The despots who run Iran somehow missed the halo gracing President Obama during his recent sermon to the Muslim world.

The ruling mullahs’ contemptuous handling of Iran’s presidential election was their response to “the Cairo effect” announced a tad prematurely by the White House.

Our president’s public flagellation of America only emboldened the junta in Tehran — leaving Iran’s power brokers more defiant, determined and dismissive than they’ve been in years.

And the strongest response Obama can muster to the blood in Tehran’s streets is: “I am deeply troubled by the violence that I’ve been seeing on television.” How bold, how manly, how inspiring . . .

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INSTANT JUSTICE GITMO? NO, KILL THUGS ON SPOT

By Ralph Peters- New York Post

WE made one great mistake regarding Guantanamo: No terrorist should have made it that far. All but a handful of those grotesquely romanticized prisoners should have been killed on the battlefield.

The few kept alive for their intelligence value should have been interrogated secretly, then executed.

Terrorists don’t have legal rights or human rights. By committing or abetting acts of terror against the innocent, they place themselves outside of humanity’s borders. They must be hunted as man-killing animals.

And, as a side benefit, dead terrorists don’t pose legal quandaries.

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BAM’S LATIN LOVERS

PRESIDENT’S HUGS FOR THUGS

by Ralph Peters

MY president went to Trinidad and Tobago, and all I got was this lousy Che Guevara T-shirt.

At a Caribbean resort, Obama grinned through a semi-erotic encounter with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, then failed to answer a “strategic rape” charge lodged against America by ex-Sandinista Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua (who knows plenty about rape).

Ignoring America’s allies in favor of photo ops with anti-American leftists, such as Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Chavez, Obama blamed the United States for Latin America’s problems.

Whoa! Plenty of US policies toward Latin America have been misguided and myopic. But the primary causes of political, economic and social failure from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego have been homemade.

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Bam Channels LBJ

CARELESS USE OF US TROOPS

by Ralph Peters

DIRT doesn’t matter. You don’t defeat a trans-national terrorist organization by occupying medieval villages.

Yesterday, President Obama presented his “comprehensive new strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was neither new, nor a strategy. Behind all the rhetoric, he just said, I’m sending more troops and more money.

Barack Obama? I heard Lyndon Johnson. The only LBJ touch that BHO lacked was the word “escalation.”

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Listen to the GITMO 5

From the NYP:

by Ralph Peters

As White House staffer Jane Austen put it to Sen. Darcy: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single terrorist in possession of a good bomb must be in want of patient understanding.”

Unfortunately for Washington wonks determined to deny that Islamist extremists are motivated by extremist Islam, the pride and prejudice of Allah’s butchers were on public display (again) this week.

Framed in florid quotations from the Koran, the Gitmo Five – hard-core terrorists, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed – proclaimed in a filing released by a brave military judge that “We are terrorists to the bone” who regard the charges resulting from “the blessed 11 September operations” as “badges of honor.”

Desperate to placate its blame-America supporters, the Obama administration has clamped down on news from Guantanamo. Why? After their lurid criticisms of Gitmo, the Dems now have the world’s worst killers on their hands.

And they don’t know what to do. Responsibility sucks.

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The Putin Plan to Sucker America

Let’s see what our new found admirers from Russia have to say about this one.

By the way comrades, you are reading this blog in English, you understand English, how about investing in some Roman alphabet software so we don’t have to Google translate your comments every time you leave one.

by Ralph Peters -  NYP

THE toughest challenge Americans face in dealing with Vladimir Putin’s Russia is that we insist on complicating the obvious. Putin’s schemes are plain as day, but we insist on polishing up his motives.

Recently, Prime Minister Putin bribed the Kyrgyz government to shut down US access to the Manas air base, which is crucial to sustaining NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, Moscow offered us a lengthy caravan route through Russia and its Central Asian client states to make up for the loss of Manas.

The strategy couldn’t be more straightforward: With our main supply route through Pakistan increasingly threatened, Putin wants to addict us to an alternative under his direct control.

Why?

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Blood Sacrifice

ISLAM’S SICK ENEMIES WITHIN

by Ralph Peters

Well-meaning Western commentators make a grave error when they insist that Islamist *[Islamofascist] terrorists want to drag the Muslim world back to the seventh century.

It’s much worse than that.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and related fanatics really want to take their homelands (and the rest of the world) back beyond the era of Mohammed – to the grisly ancient days of human sacrifice.

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DON’T STOP UNTIL HAMAS IS DESTROYED

From the NYP:

by Ralph Peters

ISRAELI ground troops have gone into Gaza. But can they rip out Hamas before international Israel-haters save the terror machine?

To provide its citizens even with temporary safety, Israel had no choice but to face a ground campaign’s risks to its soldiers and the inevitable global criticism.

To provide security that might be measured in years, rather than weeks or months, Israel has to shatter Hamas, slaying enough rank-and-file terrorists to break their grip on Gaza’s population. Above all, it’s essential to kill the terrorist leaders. (Israel’s worst blunder so far was not taking them out in the first wave of strikes, before they could go into hiding.)

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United States (Bush) Brings Democracy to Arabs

From the NYP:

Iraq’s Latest Milestone
Iraqi lawmakers have achieved far more in the last two years than our own feckless Congress.

by Ralph Peters

LAST week, Iraq passed another milestone on the difficult road to political maturity: Its parliament unanimously approved a new election law insuring broader participation than ever before.

In early winter, Iraqis will vote in regional elections in the country’s 14 Arab-majority provinces (the Kurds are ahead of the cycle – as they are in most things). Only the tricky status of Kirkuk must still be resolved.

Despite legions of international nay-sayers, democracy worked.

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Ralph Peters: Russia 1, Freedom 0

IN the wake of Russia’s ruthless invasion of Georgia, the United States sent relief supplies on military aircraft and ships. Our vice president went to Tbilisi. And we promised a billion dollars in reconstruction aid.

The European Union sent a get-well card. With no return address.

Washington asked that Georgia and Ukraine be put on the fast track to NATO membership to deter further Russian aggression. The EU suggested sending unarmed civilian observers, instead.

The Bush administration begged for a unified front against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s barbarism. Rejecting any penalties for Russia, the EU took the bold step of postponing talks on a trade deal.

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Ralph Peters: What It Really Takes To Bomb Iran

My greatest worry on Iran’s nuclear threat to civilization isn’t the military option. It’s trying that option on the cheap. }} more…

(Photo h/t to Pat Dollard.com)

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National Security: Post 9/11 Record of Achievement…

Liars’ Round-Up
On Security, Facts Matter

by Ralph Peters | New York Post

THE facts about your security are being torn to shreds by activist liars. And they think that you’re too stupid to know the difference.

Let’s lay out the worst current examples of media make-believe and election-year truth-trashing:

Whopper No. 1: America is less safe today than it was on Sept. 10, 2001. Oh, really? Where’s the evidence? The Clinton years saw New York City attacked and Americans slaughtered by terrorists around the globe. Nothing was done to protect us.

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Obama’s Empty Promises

From the New York Post:

OBAMA VS. OSAMA

by Ralph Peters

NAME-BRAND journalists have let Barack Obama make any claim he chooses about Iraq, Afghanistan or coping with terrorism without pinning him down for details.

Yet many of his comments and positions seem stunningly naive about national security. Given that this man may become our next president, shouldn’t he explain how he’d do the many impressive things he’s promised?

This week, Obama claimed, again, that he’d promptly capture Osama bin Laden. OK, tell me how: Specifically, which concrete measures would he take that haven’t been taken? How would he force our intelligence agencies to locate bin Laden? And he can’t just respond, “That’s classified.”

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The Media Ignores Iraq War

SUCCESS IN IRAQ: A MEDIA BLACKOUT

by Ralph Peters | New York Post

Muslim Chicken al Sadr hides in Iran as his Iraq minions get the shit kicked out of them

Do we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real “inconvenient truth?” Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

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Iraq: The U.S. Invaded the Wrong Country — It’s the Saudis, Stupid!

Ralph Peters knocks another one out of the ball park:

Saudi Stick-Up: Punishing Us at the Pump

Seducer: Prince Bandar bin Sultan is just one of many Saudi false friends to the United States.

WANT to know a key reason why you’re being robbed at the gas pump? Well, my fellow Americans, you’re being punished — for giving Iraqis a chance at democracy.

The Saudis ordered President Bush not to remove Saddam. The last thing that the despotic bigots in Riyadh wanted was change in the Middle East — especially change that empowered common men and women, Shia Arabs and Kurds.

But our president believed that the Saudis were not only America’s friends, but his personal pals. He defied our Saudi masters. Silly him.

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Ralph Peters Reports on Iraq’s Future

Iraq Inspection
A Look at Where the Nation is Headed

by Ralph Peters

BAGHDAD — THERE is no substitute for being on the ground if you want a sense of where Iraq may be headed. The reality is almost always different when you smell it up close.

Back in the United States, I receive updates from a wide range of military friends and acquaintances – yet, no matter how much progress they report, the constant negativity in the media starts to wear me down, too.

Then I return to Iraq. And each time I board a military aircraft to leave Baghdad, I find my confidence heightened that persistence will yield advantageous results.

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On Patrol in a Changing Anbar

Heat, Dust and Marines

by Ralph Peters

OUTPOST DELTA, KARMAH, IRAQ — MARINE Cpl. William Thomas kicked off his patrol briefing promptly at 5 a.m. The other members of 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, listened as if their lives depended on the corporal’s instructions.

Because their lives would depend on what their squad leader had to say.

The briefing covered everything from specific duties to details of the ground we’d cover. The mission: Extend the security perimeter around the outpost, do a “census check” of Iraqi ID cards in a marketplace and gather intelligence.

“First fire team – security. Second team in support, evacuate any prisoners. Third team – assault element.”

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