Messing with the Democrats

This morning, I was reading Robert Novak's latest op-ed piece, courtesy of Townhall.com; in the column, Novak essentially discusses former Bush Administration Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new book, in which he specifically discusses the SUPPOSED Valerie Plame scandal.

I think we can make the following assumptions, ones that Democrats do NOT want to believe, but should:

1.) Valerie Plame was not some undercover agent, as the Liberal Mainstream Media purported her to be;
2.) Plame's "status" as CIA agent, in which she was almost nothing more than a desk jockey, was not leaked by Vice President Dick Cheney, but rather Secretary of State "mole" Richard Armitage.

McClellan proffers the same tired talking point as so many liberals have uttered over the past 5-6 years: we were MISLED into war, based on faulty evidence.

Keep in mind that the following:

1.) Saddam WAS working on a clandestine weapons program, in violation of United Nations mandates.
2.) Saddam defied over a dozen UN resolutions to make said weapons program transparent, with military action as a consequence.
3.) The Democratic Clinton Administration examined the same evidence years before George Bush won the presidency, and implored the world to act against Saddam.
4.) If we were "misled," we, along with other global intelligence agencies, were misled as well, not by George Bush, but by SADDAM HUSSEIN.

I was reminded of a "conversation" I had a few weeks ago with two liberal co-workers; as I implored them to listen to reason, they were absolutely convinced that the "leaker" or at least the mastermind behind the leak was one Dick Cheney.

Here's the complete piece:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In Scott McClellan's purported tell-all memoir of his trials as President George W. Bush's press secretary, he virtually ignores Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's role leaking to me Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA employee. That fits the partisan Democratic version of the Plame affair, in keeping with the overall tenor of "What Happened."

Although the media response dwelled on McClellan's criticism of Bush's road to war, the CIA leak case is the heart of this book. On July 14, 2003, one day before McClellan took the press secretary's job for which many colleagues felt he was unqualified, my column was published asserting that Plame at the CIA suggested her Democratic partisan husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, for a sensitive intelligence mission. That story made McClellan's three years at the briefing room podium a misery, leading to his dismissal and now his bitter retort.

In claiming he was misled about the Plame affair, McClellan mentions Armitage only twice. Armitage being the leaker undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan, that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Wilson as a war critic. McClellan's handling of the leak by itself leads former colleagues to suggest he could not have written this book by himself.

On page 173, McClellan first mentions my Plame leak, but he does not identify Armitage as the leaker until page 306 of the 323-page book -- then only in passing. Armitage, anti-war and anti-Cheney, cannot fit the conspiracy theory that McClellan now buys into. When Armitage after two years publicly admitted he was my source, the life went out of Wilson's campaign. In "What Happened," McClellan dwells on Rove's alleged deceptions as if the real leaker were still unknown.

McClellan at the White House podium never knew the facts about the CIA leak, and his memoir reads as though he has tried to maintain his ignorance. He omits Armitage's slipping Mrs. Wilson's identity to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward weeks before he talked to me. He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.

McClellan writes that Rove told him this about his conversation with me after I called him to check Armitage's leak: "He (Novak) said he'd heard that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. I told him I couldn't confirm it because I didn't know." Rove told me last week he never said that to McClellan. Under oath, Rove had testified he told me, "I heard that, too." Under oath, I testified that Rove said, "Oh, you know that, too."

McClellan writes, "I don't know" whether the leaker -- he does not specify Armitage -- committed a felony. He ignores that Fitzgerald's long, expensive investigation found no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, if only because Plame was not covered. Nevertheless, McClellan calls the leak "wrong and harmful to national security" -- ignoring questions of whether Plame really was engaged in undercover operations and whether her cover long ago had been blown.

A partisan Democratic mantra began earlier in the book. McClellan writes George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "acquiesced to certain advisers, including Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater," who opposed Bush's "civility and decency." (McClellan, then 20 years old, played no part in that campaign.) McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity."

McClellan's fellow Bush aides do not remember him ever saying anything like that. At senior staff meetings discussing policy, they recall, he was silent. His robotic performances from the White House podium seemed only to disgorge what he had been told, and "What Happened" has the similar feel of someone else's hand.

The book so mimics the Democratic line that Ari Fleischer, McClellan's predecessor as press secretary, asked him last week whether he had a ghostwriter. "No," Fleischer told me that McClellan replied, "but my editor tweaked it." (McClellan did not return my call.)

The bland book proposal McClellan's agent unsuccessfully hawked to publishers early in 2007 is not the volume now in bookstores. How and why McClellan changed is a story so far untold.

Liberal Reaction to Dunkin' Donuts and Rachel Ray

Yesterday, I posted a brief analysis regarding Dunkin' Donuts pulling an ad featuring Rachel Ray sporting a kaffiyeh, as displayed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. I wanted to follow up regarding a general cavalier attitude regarding the affair to which I've read and heard in the past 24 hours.

While Ray's sporting of said kaffiyeh is more than likely "something to do about nothing," I'm more galled at 1.) user comments in the Star-Tribune and 2.) talk show reaction to the "flap."

The general consensus to me is that either those that were offended are either Islamophobic or something perpetuating the myth that the Islamic threat is greater than what it is. Furthermore, I sense that white Christian America has no right clamoring for any concessions from the poor Muslims.

Once again, we're supposedly spreading hate...while terrorist attacks occur on a daily basis around the world at the hands of Muslim jihadists, Liberals deny the ever-increasing threat. Even today on the Slate website, bloggers debate the notion that Al-Qaeda is slowly fading away.
I simply must ask, "what the hell?" Muslims are just as angry at us as they have ever been. No not angry because of our President or our liberation of Iraq, but purely because we are infidels. It is their belief, propagated in the Q'uran, that a pan-global Islamic caliphate is the ultimate order of business.

But, those of us who correctly have pinpointed the Islamic threat are admonished as Islamophobic; this is typical Liberal banter for attempting to anyone (faith, creed, skin color, lifestyle choice) under their pathetic banner of multiculturalism.

Star Tribune: Dunkin' Donuts pulls Rachael Ray ad after Muslim scarf complaints

Dunkin' Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachel Ray due to complaints about her scarf in the promo. Evidently, the scarf closely resembles a kaffiyeh, which has now come to symbolize Muslim terrorism.

I have no idea what 1.) Ray was thinking by sporting that look; 2.) I doubt Ray is either Muslim or terrorist. With that said, was she tacitly endorsing Muslim "freedom fighters" in their quest for a Palestinian homeland? After all, former PLO terrorist leader Yassir Arafat made the scarf look popular. My take, I HIGHLY doubt it...but as Michelle Malkin stated in a column regarding the ad, "It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists."

If you peruse the Star Tribune article, the user comments naturally gravitate towards our country's perceived Islamophobia. Of course, because this is a religion of peace to which we refer!!! (note: sarcasm)

According to the multicultural, enlighted Liberals, we have no reason to believe that Islam = terrorism.

Here's the complete article:

BOSTON — Dunkin' Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

The coffee and baked goods chain said the ad that began appearing online May 7 was pulled over the past weekend because "the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee."

In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms.

Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf wrapped around her looked like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress. Critics who fueled online complaints about the ad in blogs say such scarves have come to symbolize Muslim extremism and terrorism.

The kaffiyeh, Malkin wrote in a column posted online last Friday, "has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not-so-ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons."

A statement issued by Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin' Brands Inc., however, said the scarf had a paisley design, and was selected by a stylist for the advertising shoot.

"Absolutely no symbolism was intended," the company said.

Dunkin' spokeswoman Michelle King said the ad appeared on the chain's Web site, as well as other commercial sites.

Malkin, in a posting following up on last week's column, said of Dunkin's decision to pull the ad, "It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists."

Ray, host of the Food Network television program "30 Minute Meals" as well as a syndicated daytime talk show, began appearing in ads for Dunkin' Donuts in March 2007. When Dunkin' announced the partnership, it said Ray would be featured in TV, print, radio and online spots in a campaign running through 2010.

Star Tribune: City residents greener than country cousins

We've been exposed to established dogma on global warming; we humans are to blame, led in the forefront by the Great Satan, the United States.

Let's establish right from the onset: there is no PROOF that global warming even exists. In researching "global warming," I came across just as much opinion that global warming either is not perpetuated by humankind or doesn't even exist.

I stumbled upon this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune; essentially, we city folk are more "green" than our country brethren.

My initial reaction: big f*cking deal.

Typical leftist banter from a liberal mouthpiece: "we 'city folk' are more refined and cultured while you country hicks know nothing of climatology and global warming."

We're awash in mainstream propaganda from supposedly politically-neutral mediums, in this case, the shockingly liberal Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the notion of "global warming" has permeated our daily lives to such an extent that we cannot put fuel in our vehicles our buy food without being affected; DESPITE dissenting opinions, global warming has been accepted as face value: we humans are to blame. Those who dare to speak against the established global warming demagoguery are ostracized.

The following links provide a different on the myth of global warming; first from the Canadian Free Press:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm

This second article refutes certain long-held beliefs on global warming, courtesy of the Middlebury College State Weekly:

http://media.www.middleburycampus.com/media/storage/paper446/news/2006/03/02/Opinions/Think.About.It.Global.Warming.Does.Not.Exist-1649115.shtml

Here's the complete piece:

(by the way, if you read some of the comments, you can see how the liberals react when a "conservative nut job" dares to proffer an opposing viewpoint: name calling, primarily).

WASHINGTON - While cities are hot spots for global warming, the people living in them turn out to be greener than those living in the countryside.

Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitans areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average, researchers at the Brookings Institution say in a report being released Thursday.

Those 100 cities still account for 56 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide pollution. But their greater use of mass transit and population density reduce the per person average. "It was a surprise the extent to which emissions per capita are lower," Marilyn Brown, a professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the report, said in an interview.

Metropolitan area emissions of carbon dioxide are highest in the eastern U.S., where people rely heavily on coal for electricity, the researchers found. They are lower in the West, where weather is more favorable and where electricity and motor fuel prices have been higher.

The study examined sources and use of residential electricity, home heating and cooling, and transportation in 2005 in the largest 100 metropolitan areas where two-thirds of the people in the U.S. live. It attributed a wide disparity among the 100 cities to population density, availability of mass transit and weather.

Lexington, Ky., had the biggest per capita carbon footprint: Each resident on average accounted for 3.81 tons of carbon dioxide in their energy usage. At the other end of the scale was Honolulu, at 1.5 tons per person.

Carbon dioxide is released from burning fossil fuels and is the leading "greenhouse gas." It drifts into the atmosphere and forms a blanket that traps the Earth's warmth. About 6.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into air annually in the United States.

From 2000 to 2005, carbon dioxide from transportation, electricity use and residential heating in the largest metropolitan areas increased 7.5 percent. For the entire nation, it rose 9.1 percent. The average per capita footprint in those 100 cities rose at an annual rate of 1.1 percent a year, half the average yearly increase of 2.2 percent nationwide.

Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington's carbon footprint from transportation and residential energy use increased 3.87 percent between 2000 and 2005.

The transportation portion increased 0.2 percent during the period.

In 2005, the average resident emitted 2.440 tons of carbon from highway transportation and residential energy, 45th among the 100 largest cities.

The average resident of the Minnesota cities emitted 1.346 of carbon from highway transportation, ranked 38th, and 1.094 tons of carbon fro residential energy use, ranked 62nd.

In explaining differences among cities, the researchers cited weather, the type of fuel used for heating and cooling, the development of rail transportation, the amount of urban sprawl and the cost of energy.

Cities with the largest carbon footprints are mostly in the eastern half of the country from Indiana to western Pennsylvania — areas that rely heavily on coal for electricity production and natural gas for heating.

The smallest carbon footprint was in cities in the West and New England.

Half of the dozen cities with the stingiest carbon output were in California, where electricity prices and motor fuels are expensive. Also cited was the Seattle-Portland, Ore., region, which relies heavily on hydropower.

Cities in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana dominated the bottom tier of high carbon emitters.

These urban areas are "kind of a poster child of what high carbon intensive growth looks like," said Brown. She noted their reliance on coal for electricity and natural gas for heating, a shortage of mass transit, and often older, energy-inefficient buildings.

Brookings Institution: http://www.brookings.edu

Muslim women: Dress code violates faith

As I mentioned in previous posts, I live in pseudo-Sharia Minnesota. This article, courtesy of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, typifies the coddling this state, and our nation by extension, we've performed on those of the Islamic faith.

When is this country going to STOP adhering to every demand from these people? It's time for those who don't like our laws, our customs, or our culture to either stop complaining and assimilate one's self, or return to his or her country of origin.

Living in this country is a PRIVILEGE, not a right.

Here's the entire piece:

A group of Muslim workers allege they were fired by a New Brighton tortilla factory for refusing to wear uniforms that they say were immodest by Islamic standards.

Six Somali women claim they were ordered by a manager to wear pants and shirts to work instead of their traditional Islamic clothing of loose-fitting skirts and scarves, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties group that is representing the women.

The women have filed a religious discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"For these women, wearing tight-fitting pants is like being naked," said Valerie Shirley, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota chapter of CAIR. "It's simply not an option."

CAIR issued a press release calling on Mission Foods to reinstate the women in their jobs. However, the group declined to disclose the names of the women and would not make them available for interviews Tuesday.

Gruma Corp., the Irving, Texas-based parent company of Mission Foods, released a written statement Tuesday denying that any employees were terminated or disciplined at the New Brighton plant. However, the company made clear the six women have been relieved of their responsibilities for the time being, and may ultimately lose their jobs if they don't wear uniforms.

"Should these employees choose to adhere to the current Mission Foods uniform policy, they may return to their positions with the company," the company statement said. "However, these positions will need to be filled as soon as possible and cannot be held indefinitely."

A company spokeswoman said she could not provide photographs of the uniforms.

Latest dispute

Such disputes have intensified as the American Muslim community grows in numbers and becomes more politically organized, said Thomas Berg, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas. "After 9/11, both the number of conflicts arose but also the sense among Muslims that they needed to stand together -- at least to oppose unjustified actions," he said.

Last year, some Muslim cashiers at Target Corp. were shifted to other positions inside stores after they refused to scan pork products because doing so would violate their religious beliefs. And in 2005, 26 workers were either fired or suspended by an Arden Hills electronics manufacturer for violating the company's prayer rules, which set limits on the times they could break for prayers.

The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 says employers must accommodate workers' religious beliefs, so long as the requests are "reasonable" and do not create "undue hardship" for the company. But the definition of what's reasonable and what constitutes hardship can vary dramatically from one case to the next.

A security firm, for instance, may have a prudent reason for requiring workers to wear uniforms, while a doctor's office might not. "Each of these cases turns on the facts," Berg said.

For many Muslim women, wearing loose-fitting clothing is a religious requirement. Clothing that highlights parts of a women's body or accentuates curves is often considered immodest. A headscarf, or hijab, is seen by many Muslim women as a way to express their faith and avoid unwanted sexual attention.

At the Mission Foods plant, the Muslim workers had already made some accommodations, said Shirley, the CAIR spokeswoman. They had agreed to wear coats over their scarves, but the company took them away before imposing a new dress code that involved trousers and shirts, she said.

The women's traditional clothing was loose-fitting but never posed a safety risk, Shirley said, because the six women put tortillas in packages and did not work near machinery. "Tortillas came down a conveyor belt onto a table and they packaged them with their hands," she said. "There wasn't even the potential of a safety hazard."

Chris Serres • 612-673-4308

An honorable piece from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune concerning the Bush Administration

Kudos to Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune; mired in a wretchedly foul cesspool of journalism, she accurately documents just how the United States is safer since the Bush Administration was elected to the White House.

Some items to note, and to which Kersten alludes, and FINALLY, what Liberals seem to forget: there were an obscene amount of terrorist attacks upon American interests under the Clinton Administration, and Republican administrations prior.

I find it comical when Liberals rebuke Bush for CREATING terrorism, yet they fail to realize that terrorist acts, a vast majority, actually, were committed against Americans 20 years before the man took office: for example, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, circa 1983.

The bottom line is this that Liberals need to understand: get your damn facts straight.

Repeat after me: “Iraq has made us less safe….”
May 28th, 2008 – 8:23 AM

“We are less safe today than before we invaded Iraq.”

This line is repeated so often that we take it as an obvious truth. Even those who call for an honorable and aggressive conclusion to the Iraq War frequently assume that the war has left us with a more dangerous world.

Every now and then, however, a commentator ignores the conventional wisdom and takes a hard look at the unvarnished facts.

John Hinderaker of Power Line has done just that, and the result is stunning in its simplicity and power. Here is the piece, with permission from Power Line:

ARE WE SAFER?

On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, “and it hasn’t made us safer.” It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.

Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.

Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history:

1988

February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, Chief of the U.N. Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.

December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.

1991

November: American University in Beirut bombed.

1993

January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.

February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.

1995

January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden’s plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.

November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.

1996

June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.

June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.

1997

February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.

November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.

1998

January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.

August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.

1999

October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he steered the airplane into the ocean.

2000

October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.

2001

September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill around 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

December: Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.

The September 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al Qaeda, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden’s cause and that more such attacks would follow. In fact, though, what happened was quite different: the pace of successful jihadist attacks against the United States slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq war, and has now dwindled to essentially zero. Here is the record:

2002

October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam’s government.

2003

May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia. October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160.

2004

There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2005

There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2006

There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2007

There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2008

So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

I have omitted from the above accounting a few “lone wolf” Islamic terrorist incidents, like the Washington, D.C. snipers, the Egyptian who attacked the El Al counter in Los Angeles, and an incident or two when a Muslim driver steered his vehicle into a crowd. These are, in a sense, exceptions that prove the rule, since the “lone wolves” were not, as far as we know, in contact with international Islamic terrorist groups and therefore could not have been detected by surveillance of terrorist conversations or interrogations of al Qaeda leaders.

It should also be noted that the decline in attacks on the U.S. was not the result of jihadists abandoning the field. Our government stopped a number of incipient attacks and broke up several terrorist cells, while Islamic terrorists continued to carry out successful attacks around the world, in England, Spain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia and elsewhere.

There are a number of possible reasons why our government’s actions after September 11 may have made us safer. Overthrowing the Taliban and depriving al Qaeda of its training grounds in Afghanistan certainly impaired the effectiveness of that organization. Waterboarding three top al Qaeda leaders for a minute or so apiece may have given us the vital information we needed to head off plots in progress and to kill or apprehend three-quarters of al Qaeda’s leadership. The National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on international terrorist communications may have allowed us to identify and penetrate cells here in the U.S., as well as to identify and kill terrorists overseas. We may have penetrated al Qaeda’s communications network, perhaps through the mysterious Naeem Noor Khan, whose laptop may have been the 21st century equivalent of the Enigma machine. Al Qaeda’s announcement that Iraq is the central front in its war against the West, and its call for jihadis to find their way to Iraq to fight American troops, may have distracted the terrorists from attacks on the United States. The fact that al Qaeda loyalists gathered in Iraq, where they have been decimated by American and Iraqi troops, may have crippled their ability to launch attacks elsewhere. The conduct of al Qaeda in Iraq, which revealed that it is an organization of sociopaths, not freedom fighters, may have destroyed its credibility in the Islamic world. The Bush administration’s skillful diplomacy may have convinced other nations to take stronger actions against their own domestic terrorists. (This certainly happened in Saudi Arabia, for whatever reason.) Our intelligence agencies may have gotten their act together after decades of failure. The Department of Homeland Security, despite its moments of obvious lameness, may not be as useless as many of us had thought.

No doubt there are officials inside the Bush administration who could better allocate credit among these, and probably other, explanations of our success in preventing terrorist attacks. But based on the clear historical record, it is obvious that the Bush administration has done something since 2001 that has dramatically improved our security against such attacks. To fail to recognize this, and to rail against the Bush administration’s security policies as failures or worse, is to sow the seeds of greatly increased susceptibility to terrorist attack in the next administration.

The majesty that is the United Nations

So our country is admonished for not heeding the sage-like wisdom of the United Nations, as well as its member states. Our country is reckless, led by a God-loving Texas redneck. So I read this article courtesy of liberal mouthpiece MSNBC, whereby UN Peacekeepers are sexually abusing children in countries they are supposed to be safeguarding.

How can anyone chastize with a strong case the credibility of this bogus organization? Aside from the gross negligence characterized in this article, the political "wheelings and dealings" are mind-boggling, to say the least. We've read and heard about the General Assembly frequenting condemning Israel, while Muslim freedom fighters butcher innocent people with suicide bombs and rockets. We've watched China and Russia place obstacles in our path to dealing with the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Moreover, the supposed Human Rights Council of the United Nations consists of such patrons of liberty as Libya as Pakistan.

How do we get out of this organization?

LONDON - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "deep concern" Tuesday after a leading children's charity said it uncovered evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of U.N. peacekeepers and international aid workers.

The report by Save the Children UK, based on field research in southern Sudan, Ivory Coast and Haiti, describes a litany of sexual crimes against children as young as 6.

It said some children were denied food aid unless they granted sexual favors; others were forced to have sex or to take part in child pornography; many more were subjected to improper touching or kissing.

"The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because children are afraid to come forward," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, told Associated Press Television News.

"A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to coerced sex. It's despicable."

At the U.N. headquarters, spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban "is deeply concerned" by the report.

"We welcome this report. It's fair, and I think it's essentially accurate," Montas said.

Steps to prevent, investigate abuse
She noted the report states the United Nations has already undertaken steps designed to tackle the problem, from establishing conduct and discipline units in all U.N. missions to strengthening training for all categories of U.N. personnel. She said the United Nations also needs to strengthen its investigative capacity.

The study was based on research, confidential interviews and focus groups conducted last year. The charity emphasized it did not produce comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather enough information to indicate the problem is severe.

The report said that more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of sexual abuse and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.

The Save the Children UK researchers, who met with 129 girls and 121 boys between the ages of 10 and 17, and also with a number of adults, found an "overwhelming" majority of the people interviewed would never report a case of abuse and had never heard of a case being reported.

The threat of retaliation, and the stigma attached to sex abuse, were powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.

Ann Buchanan, an Oxford University expert in statistical attempts to quantify rates of child abuse, said the topic is so taboo it is virtually impossible to come up with reliable numbers. But she said the new report provides a useful starting point.

"This will never be a statistical study," she said. "We'd call it a pilot work exploring the start of an issue. All the research shows kids don't make it up."

Children afraid to report abuse
Buchanan, who directs the Oxford Center for Research into Parenting and Children, said the biggest obstacle to accurate numerical studies of child sexual abuse is the reluctance of children to come forward and tell adults they have been taken advantage of.

"Sexual abuse is a hugely difficult, sensitive area and it's not something that you can usually do surveys about because kids feel terrible shame and are afraid to say what's happened to them," she said. "Given what we know about underreporting of sex abuse, I would say this report is probably true. They've gone about it as sensitively as you can."

Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt said U.N. peacekeepers are involved in many abuse cases because they are present throughout the world in such large numbers. But he praised the United Nations for improving its reporting and investigative procedures regarding sex abuse.

"We're not singling out the U.N. In some ways they do a good job. It's all peacekeepers and all aid workers, including Save the Children," that are involved in sexual abuses, he said.

The report says several Save the Children workers were fired for having sex with 17-year-old girls in violation of agency guidelines.

In its report, Save the Children UK makes three key recommendations: establish a way for people to report abuse locally, create an international watchdog agency this year to deal with the problem, and set up a program to deal with the underlying causes of child abuse.

Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at the London think tank Chatham House, said there is no "magic bullet" that can solve the problem quickly.

"The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states," he said. "So it's difficult for the U.N. to pursue charges and difficult for the U.N. to investigate them."

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.