Iraq: Children being cooked

Just when you thought the bloodshed in Iraq could not be worse. I think, hope and pray we've hit rock-bottom. From the Barnabas Fund's email newsletter:

...Christians like the thousands of frightened Iraqis who face Christmas in the context of escalating anti-Christian violence. In the most shocking report from Iraq we have received, a toddler was kidnapped in Baghdad in October 2006. The mother could not afford to pay the ransom, and so the kidnappers killed the child. They returned the body to the mother. The little child had been beheaded, roasted and was served on a mound of rice. In another incident a 14-year-old Christian boy was held down by his limbs and beheaded, or, as Iraqi Christians have described it, “crucified”. His Muslim attackers called him a “dirty Christian sinner” and chanted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is great).

This is the most barbaric of the events that the email discusses.

Stunned by the viciousness of this attack, earlier this evening, I called Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Fund. He is a world expert on political Islam and his organisation clearly understands the Eurabia and Dhimmitude concepts seeking to assist Christians in the Dar-al-Islam (from Dhimmitude) and Dar-al-Harb (from Suicidialism).

He personally confirmed the veracity and accuracy of this information. There seems to be a complete and total media blackout of these massacres. Patrick is not sure why this is the case. He also seems to be circumspect about the nature of blogs to help him get his message out saying, in his usual self-effacing manner, that they are not nice to him. So brilliant bloggers, unite. Bring this catastrophe to light and make people aware of the suffering of Christians in Iraq. Let's not have another Armenia/Aramean genocide on our hands.

For those with the means, please donate some money to the Barnabas Fund's Christmas Appeal 2006 - Iraq. For those that are not able to contribute financially, please pray, and pray ceaselessly for justice to be served on those driving the violence and pray for the protection of those on the receiving end of the violence.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update: Here is the newsletter and the email in full.

Update II: Healing Iraq has spot reports from around Iraq regarding the upsurge in violence. Mohammed @ Iraq the Model on the same. This is not surprising and should have been expected. The US is flailing around trying to find someone to "help" them reduce the violence. Think Iran, Think Syria. Well, it would be at precisely this time that Iran and Syria would push the US's head under the water, by instructing their Iraqi proxies to increase their attacks, increasing pressure on the US to acquiesce to their demands. (H/T: LittleGreenFootballs). Interestingly, no mention of the suffering the Christians are facing. This probably reflects how marginalised they have become, even in the eyes of supporters of peace and stability in Iraq.

Update III: I have been provided further information by the Barnabas Fund supporting the claims made above. Understandably, due to the security of the eyewitnesses, I have been asked to preserve confidentiality.

AP - Moral Ambiguity

Anything wrong with this?

AP infers by its sentence structure that a violent backlash (presumably by Sunnis and Baathists) against the verdict in Saddam's war crimes trial is equally morally egregious to Saddam's presumed death penalty.

What is wrong with this world? Has justice lost its meaning? Has victory for the victim become a vacant ideal?

Interestingly, this AP piece does not report that the verdict handed down by an Iraqi Court will be subject to an automatic review by another judicial panel.

The AP is seriously not interested in justice. It is interested in ensuring that it sticks up for the right-to-life of a murderous, unseated dictator.

Update: Saddam gets the noose. Automatic judicial review pending.

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail, as the former leader, trembling, shouted "God is great!"

Downer stands firm

I was overwhelmed after catching the tail end of Tony Jones' interview of the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer. Downer presented a realistic picture of the situation in Iraq ("its tough") but defended maintaining troops in Iraq. He was very critical of the cut-and-run strategy proposed by the left leaning Opposition Party and rightly ridiculed Tony Jones' persistent and repetitive questions on whether being in Iraq has worsened terror. He also linked the jihadist threat to the West's health and survival in such terms that I have not yet seen from a public figure.

Mark Steyn must have brain-washed him.

Once the transcript is put up, I will link to it. However, you can watch the entire interview here (broadband) or here (dialup).

UPDATE: Transcript has been put up at Foreign Affairs.

An example of some of the FMs fine, poignant and sometimes sombre comments include:

JONES: Put simply do you now accept this is also the view point of the national intelligence assessment of the United States - that the war on Iraq has made terrorism worse?

DOWNER: Well, you know, that's rather like saying that if you - you know when we went to war with Japan or with Germany they were not going to like it very much and get angry about it. I mean it had to be done. I don't think giving in to the terrorists in the end is going to be in our long-term security interests.

But this response doesn't satisfy Tony Jones. No he has the NIE, the Commander of the British Army AND the former Commander of the Australian Defence Force AND he has a very important point to make (presumably as a reporter):

JONES: But this is the fundamental point - I'm sorry to interrupt you there but it's the fundamental point and I'm wonder if your own intelligence assessments are the same, because the national intelligence assessment of the United States - of all those agencies essentially saying the war on Iraq is making international terrorism worse?

DOWNER: No, look, we're not looking at intelligence assessments of the past, whether I agree with them or whether I don't.

JONES: This is an assessment of the present, isn't it?

DOWNER: No, it's not because the challenge for me as a policy maker is the challenge of what decisions we make now. Now I do not get intelligence assessments from Australia or from America saying that if we withdraw from Iraq, if we surrender in Iraq this is going to lead to the jihadist movement collapsing and everything will return to quiet. Quite the contrary. The assessments of the intelligence - the American intelligence agencies - are quite clear, that if the jihadists and insurgents are victorious in Iraq then that is going to be an enormous boost to their campaign around the world and it will lead to a substantial increase in the terrorist risks. So I've got to deal with the decisions that we face in the future and I am very focussed on - I'm very focussed on the consequences of defeat in Iraq. I think defeat and surrender in Iraq - and look, I don't mind whether it's popular or unpopular, I'm going to say it because I profoundly believe this and believe it to be right - I think that defeat and surrender in Iraq is going to do Western and international security enormous damage quite apart from the awful things that would happen to the people of Iraq in those circumstances.

Iraq: A lucky turn of events?

According to MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), in addition to the sectarian violence tearing Iraq apart, a serious rift has opened between Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda in Iraq:

An Islamic website posted a 17-minute video cassette showing a masked man called "Abu Osama Al-Iraqi" who presented himself as one of the commanders of the jihad in Iraq. In the cassette, he addressed Osama bin Laden with accusations against Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its commanders, and threatened that the Iraqi mujahideen would fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

A strategy of divide and conquer was employed fairly effectively by the British in their occupation of Iraq in the early 1900s. It is time that the US and its allies seize this strategic opportunity afforded so fortuitously and turn the Islamofascists on each other.

Iraq: Syrian-Orthodox Clergyman Decapitated

No-one promised that being a dhimmi will protect your life [H/T: The Jawa Report via AINA]:

The Syriac-Orhtodox [sic] priest Paulos Iskandar was kidnapped this Monday, October 9, and beheaded today Wednesday October 11.

Christians are living a terrified life in Mosul and Baghdad. Several priests have been kidnapped, girls are being raped and murdered and a couple of days ago a fourteen year old boy was crucified in the Christian neighborhood Albasra.

Corroborated by Persection.org. Also being reported by The International Herald Tribune:

Relatives of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped and found beheaded three days later said Thursday that his captors had demanded his church condemn the pope's recent comments about Islam and pay a US$350,000 (€280,000) ransom.

The Persecution.org piece linked above states that the motives for the kidnapping and murder are unknown. However, the AINA piece and IHT story linked above purport that the motive kidnapping and murder of Father Iskandar was in response to Pope Benedict XVI's infamous Regensburg address titled "Faith, Reason and Uncertainty".

In this speech, the Pope assailed the West's redundant approach to debate and discussion and challenged for other "cultures" to engage with the West with "logos" (or knowledge/reason):

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

This was his main point. It had nothing to do with slandering Islam. I will not do his fine speech the injustice of reproducing his quote of a quote of a Christian Byzantine Emperor that was widely quoted in the MSM and drew ironic angry and violent responses from the Ummah. Indeed, far from attacking Islam or inciting hatred of it, he was challenging the Ummah to engage in meaningful (ie. reasonable) dialogue with the West.

Note however, that being a dhimmi, did not spare Father Iskandar's life:

Before Iskender was kidnapped, his relatives said, the church already had put up signs condemning the statement and calling for good relations between Christians and Muslims. The message was posted again, they said, after the priest's kidnappers made their demand.

Since Saddam's regime fell, Christians of all stripes in Iraq, dhimmi and non-dhimmi, Catholic, Syrian-Orthodox or Reformed, have been attacked and harrassed. This has been covered in drips and draps in the MSM and other outlets:

1. The Guardian (6 October 2006)
2. ABC Lateline (2 October 2006)
3. ABC Lateline - again (3 December 2004)
4. Fox News (13 November 2004)
5. Al-Jazeera (2 August 2004)
6. The Christian Science Monitor (21 April 2003)
7. GlobalSecurity.org (Undated)

Clarity & Resolve states that:

This is the vicious, ancient religious behavior that Saddam kept in check with his vicious modern secular behavior.

Correct in that Saddam didn't annihilate Christian Iraqi villages, very incorrect in that he annihilated Kurdish Iraqi ones and was responsible for the murder of thousands Iraqi dissidents. That's why he is in the dock in Baghdad.

The irony of the coverage of the poor plight of Iraqi Christians is that the stories are published by a media that lusts for a withdrawal from Iraq. This will only serve to worsen their situation. This sort of logic was that which the Pope assailed in his Regensburg address. However, it is also this part of the Pope's speech that was stubbornly ignored by the West and the Ummah.

It has been my opinion for some time that Iraq was a major strategic blunder in the WIF.

But if this incident (and many others like it) demonstrates anything, it is this: the West should redouble its efforts in targeting and killing Islamofascists running amok in Iraq, not cut-and-run.

Disclaimer: I am a Christian with close (and friendly) links to the Syrian-Orthodox Church.

Psychology of the West

Two brilliant articles have been published by two piercing journalists. Cal Thomas has penned a piece at RealClearPolitics discussing the naiive state of mind a large proportion of the West have with regards to the WIF. An excerpt:

And now for the definition-impaired, the meaning of the word "naive": "deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment."

He illustrates naivete in the example set by Ed Rendell, General Chair of the DNC. Asked about his strategy for Iraq if he were president, came his reply:

Rendell was asked what he would do about Iraq if he were president. He said he is not running, but if he were and he won, on the day after his inauguration, "I would go to Iraq and ask to be on TV throughout the Middle East and I'd say, 'We came here with the best of intentions and wanted to create freedom and democracy for all and 3,000 Americans have died. It is clear to me we have become the main problem. I'm going to ask the international community to develop a peacekeeping force and reduce our presence. We're going to help you build houses, provide aid and economic opportunity for your people.'"

Thomas quips that:

That isn't a peace plan; it's a plan for surrender. Does he seriously believe such a retreat would not be seen as surrender and weakness, playing into the hands of jihadists, who would be emboldened to keep on fighting until they dominated all of Europe and then come after America?

I point out that jihadists, in the past, HAVE been emboldened by the inadequate (or totally absent) responses of the US to events such as:

1. 1979: Iranian Hostage Crisis planned and carried out by Shiite revolutionaries
2. 1983: Beirut Barracks Bombing planned and carried out by unknown Shiite Islamofascists
3. 1993: World Trade Centre bombing planned and carried out by Ramzi Yousef
4. 1996: Khobar Towers bombing planned and carried out by al Qaeda
5. 2000: Bombing of USS Cole as it was docked in a Yemeni port carried out by al Qaeda

So Thomas also has history on his side.

Meanwhile Thomas Sowell, has also penned a piece at RealClearPolitics discussing suicidialism of certain sections of the ruling elite when it comes to the prosecution of the WIF:

No amount of security precautions [as proposed by the Democrats and some Republicans] can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing -- and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate.

Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.

Compare that will John Kerry's "Immoral" speech.

H/T: Hugh Hewitt for inspiring some of this.

Iraq: Children being cooked

Just when you thought the bloodshed in Iraq could not be worse. I think, hope and pray we've hit rock-bottom. From the Barnabas Fund's email newsletter:

...Christians like the thousands of frightened Iraqis who face Christmas in the context of escalating anti-Christian violence. In the most shocking report from Iraq we have received, a toddler was kidnapped in Baghdad in October 2006. The mother could not afford to pay the ransom, and so the kidnappers killed the child. They returned the body to the mother. The little child had been beheaded, roasted and was served on a mound of rice. In another incident a 14-year-old Christian boy was held down by his limbs and beheaded, or, as Iraqi Christians have described it, “crucified”. His Muslim attackers called him a “dirty Christian sinner” and chanted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is great).

This is the most barbaric of the events that the email discusses.

Stunned by the viciousness of this attack, earlier this evening, I called Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Fund. He is a world expert on political Islam and his organisation clearly understands the Eurabia and Dhimmitude concepts seeking to assist Christians in the Dar-al-Islam (from Dhimmitude) and Dar-al-Harb (from Suicidialism).

He personally confirmed the veracity and accuracy of this information. There seems to be a complete and total media blackout of these massacres. Patrick is not sure why this is the case. He also seems to be circumspect about the nature of blogs to help him get his message out saying, in his usual self-effacing manner, that they are not nice to him. So brilliant bloggers, unite. Bring this catastrophe to light and make people aware of the suffering of Christians in Iraq. Let's not have another Armenia/Aramean genocide on our hands.

For those with the means, please donate some money to the Barnabas Fund's Christmas Appeal 2006 - Iraq. For those that are not able to contribute financially, please pray, and pray ceaselessly for justice to be served on those driving the violence and pray for the protection of those on the receiving end of the violence.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update: Here is the newsletter and the email in full.

Update II: Healing Iraq has spot reports from around Iraq regarding the upsurge in violence. Mohammed @ Iraq the Model on the same. This is not surprising and should have been expected. The US is flailing around trying to find someone to "help" them reduce the violence. Think Iran, Think Syria. Well, it would be at precisely this time that Iran and Syria would push the US's head under the water, by instructing their Iraqi proxies to increase their attacks, increasing pressure on the US to acquiesce to their demands. (H/T: LittleGreenFootballs). Interestingly, no mention of the suffering the Christians are facing. This probably reflects how marginalised they have become, even in the eyes of supporters of peace and stability in Iraq.

Update III: I have been provided further information by the Barnabas Fund supporting the claims made above. Understandably, due to the security of the eyewitnesses, I have been asked to preserve confidentiality.

AP - Moral Ambiguity

Anything wrong with this?

AP infers by its sentence structure that a violent backlash (presumably by Sunnis and Baathists) against the verdict in Saddam's war crimes trial is equally morally egregious to Saddam's presumed death penalty.

What is wrong with this world? Has justice lost its meaning? Has victory for the victim become a vacant ideal?

Interestingly, this AP piece does not report that the verdict handed down by an Iraqi Court will be subject to an automatic review by another judicial panel.

The AP is seriously not interested in justice. It is interested in ensuring that it sticks up for the right-to-life of a murderous, unseated dictator.

Update: Saddam gets the noose. Automatic judicial review pending.

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail, as the former leader, trembling, shouted "God is great!"

Downer stands firm

I was overwhelmed after catching the tail end of Tony Jones' interview of the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer. Downer presented a realistic picture of the situation in Iraq ("its tough") but defended maintaining troops in Iraq. He was very critical of the cut-and-run strategy proposed by the left leaning Opposition Party and rightly ridiculed Tony Jones' persistent and repetitive questions on whether being in Iraq has worsened terror. He also linked the jihadist threat to the West's health and survival in such terms that I have not yet seen from a public figure.

Mark Steyn must have brain-washed him.

Once the transcript is put up, I will link to it. However, you can watch the entire interview here (broadband) or here (dialup).

UPDATE: Transcript has been put up at Foreign Affairs.

An example of some of the FMs fine, poignant and sometimes sombre comments include:

JONES: Put simply do you now accept this is also the view point of the national intelligence assessment of the United States - that the war on Iraq has made terrorism worse?

DOWNER: Well, you know, that's rather like saying that if you - you know when we went to war with Japan or with Germany they were not going to like it very much and get angry about it. I mean it had to be done. I don't think giving in to the terrorists in the end is going to be in our long-term security interests.

But this response doesn't satisfy Tony Jones. No he has the NIE, the Commander of the British Army AND the former Commander of the Australian Defence Force AND he has a very important point to make (presumably as a reporter):

JONES: But this is the fundamental point - I'm sorry to interrupt you there but it's the fundamental point and I'm wonder if your own intelligence assessments are the same, because the national intelligence assessment of the United States - of all those agencies essentially saying the war on Iraq is making international terrorism worse?

DOWNER: No, look, we're not looking at intelligence assessments of the past, whether I agree with them or whether I don't.

JONES: This is an assessment of the present, isn't it?

DOWNER: No, it's not because the challenge for me as a policy maker is the challenge of what decisions we make now. Now I do not get intelligence assessments from Australia or from America saying that if we withdraw from Iraq, if we surrender in Iraq this is going to lead to the jihadist movement collapsing and everything will return to quiet. Quite the contrary. The assessments of the intelligence - the American intelligence agencies - are quite clear, that if the jihadists and insurgents are victorious in Iraq then that is going to be an enormous boost to their campaign around the world and it will lead to a substantial increase in the terrorist risks. So I've got to deal with the decisions that we face in the future and I am very focussed on - I'm very focussed on the consequences of defeat in Iraq. I think defeat and surrender in Iraq - and look, I don't mind whether it's popular or unpopular, I'm going to say it because I profoundly believe this and believe it to be right - I think that defeat and surrender in Iraq is going to do Western and international security enormous damage quite apart from the awful things that would happen to the people of Iraq in those circumstances.

Iraq: A lucky turn of events?

According to MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), in addition to the sectarian violence tearing Iraq apart, a serious rift has opened between Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda in Iraq:

An Islamic website posted a 17-minute video cassette showing a masked man called "Abu Osama Al-Iraqi" who presented himself as one of the commanders of the jihad in Iraq. In the cassette, he addressed Osama bin Laden with accusations against Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its commanders, and threatened that the Iraqi mujahideen would fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

A strategy of divide and conquer was employed fairly effectively by the British in their occupation of Iraq in the early 1900s. It is time that the US and its allies seize this strategic opportunity afforded so fortuitously and turn the Islamofascists on each other.

Iraq: Syrian-Orthodox Clergyman Decapitated

No-one promised that being a dhimmi will protect your life [H/T: The Jawa Report via AINA]:

The Syriac-Orhtodox [sic] priest Paulos Iskandar was kidnapped this Monday, October 9, and beheaded today Wednesday October 11.

Christians are living a terrified life in Mosul and Baghdad. Several priests have been kidnapped, girls are being raped and murdered and a couple of days ago a fourteen year old boy was crucified in the Christian neighborhood Albasra.

Corroborated by Persection.org. Also being reported by The International Herald Tribune:

Relatives of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped and found beheaded three days later said Thursday that his captors had demanded his church condemn the pope's recent comments about Islam and pay a US$350,000 (€280,000) ransom.

The Persecution.org piece linked above states that the motives for the kidnapping and murder are unknown. However, the AINA piece and IHT story linked above purport that the motive kidnapping and murder of Father Iskandar was in response to Pope Benedict XVI's infamous Regensburg address titled "Faith, Reason and Uncertainty".

In this speech, the Pope assailed the West's redundant approach to debate and discussion and challenged for other "cultures" to engage with the West with "logos" (or knowledge/reason):

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

This was his main point. It had nothing to do with slandering Islam. I will not do his fine speech the injustice of reproducing his quote of a quote of a Christian Byzantine Emperor that was widely quoted in the MSM and drew ironic angry and violent responses from the Ummah. Indeed, far from attacking Islam or inciting hatred of it, he was challenging the Ummah to engage in meaningful (ie. reasonable) dialogue with the West.

Note however, that being a dhimmi, did not spare Father Iskandar's life:

Before Iskender was kidnapped, his relatives said, the church already had put up signs condemning the statement and calling for good relations between Christians and Muslims. The message was posted again, they said, after the priest's kidnappers made their demand.

Since Saddam's regime fell, Christians of all stripes in Iraq, dhimmi and non-dhimmi, Catholic, Syrian-Orthodox or Reformed, have been attacked and harrassed. This has been covered in drips and draps in the MSM and other outlets:

1. The Guardian (6 October 2006)
2. ABC Lateline (2 October 2006)
3. ABC Lateline - again (3 December 2004)
4. Fox News (13 November 2004)
5. Al-Jazeera (2 August 2004)
6. The Christian Science Monitor (21 April 2003)
7. GlobalSecurity.org (Undated)

Clarity & Resolve states that:

This is the vicious, ancient religious behavior that Saddam kept in check with his vicious modern secular behavior.

Correct in that Saddam didn't annihilate Christian Iraqi villages, very incorrect in that he annihilated Kurdish Iraqi ones and was responsible for the murder of thousands Iraqi dissidents. That's why he is in the dock in Baghdad.

The irony of the coverage of the poor plight of Iraqi Christians is that the stories are published by a media that lusts for a withdrawal from Iraq. This will only serve to worsen their situation. This sort of logic was that which the Pope assailed in his Regensburg address. However, it is also this part of the Pope's speech that was stubbornly ignored by the West and the Ummah.

It has been my opinion for some time that Iraq was a major strategic blunder in the WIF.

But if this incident (and many others like it) demonstrates anything, it is this: the West should redouble its efforts in targeting and killing Islamofascists running amok in Iraq, not cut-and-run.

Disclaimer: I am a Christian with close (and friendly) links to the Syrian-Orthodox Church.

Psychology of the West

Two brilliant articles have been published by two piercing journalists. Cal Thomas has penned a piece at RealClearPolitics discussing the naiive state of mind a large proportion of the West have with regards to the WIF. An excerpt:

And now for the definition-impaired, the meaning of the word "naive": "deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment."

He illustrates naivete in the example set by Ed Rendell, General Chair of the DNC. Asked about his strategy for Iraq if he were president, came his reply:

Rendell was asked what he would do about Iraq if he were president. He said he is not running, but if he were and he won, on the day after his inauguration, "I would go to Iraq and ask to be on TV throughout the Middle East and I'd say, 'We came here with the best of intentions and wanted to create freedom and democracy for all and 3,000 Americans have died. It is clear to me we have become the main problem. I'm going to ask the international community to develop a peacekeeping force and reduce our presence. We're going to help you build houses, provide aid and economic opportunity for your people.'"

Thomas quips that:

That isn't a peace plan; it's a plan for surrender. Does he seriously believe such a retreat would not be seen as surrender and weakness, playing into the hands of jihadists, who would be emboldened to keep on fighting until they dominated all of Europe and then come after America?

I point out that jihadists, in the past, HAVE been emboldened by the inadequate (or totally absent) responses of the US to events such as:

1. 1979: Iranian Hostage Crisis planned and carried out by Shiite revolutionaries
2. 1983: Beirut Barracks Bombing planned and carried out by unknown Shiite Islamofascists
3. 1993: World Trade Centre bombing planned and carried out by Ramzi Yousef
4. 1996: Khobar Towers bombing planned and carried out by al Qaeda
5. 2000: Bombing of USS Cole as it was docked in a Yemeni port carried out by al Qaeda

So Thomas also has history on his side.

Meanwhile Thomas Sowell, has also penned a piece at RealClearPolitics discussing suicidialism of certain sections of the ruling elite when it comes to the prosecution of the WIF:

No amount of security precautions [as proposed by the Democrats and some Republicans] can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing -- and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate.

Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.

Compare that will John Kerry's "Immoral" speech.

H/T: Hugh Hewitt for inspiring some of this.