Night Walk with 4-4 Cav

At Michael Yon's:

It’s amazing how many lights can be seen on a dark night. Especially if you are with the US military. Different-colored lights are useful for differing purposes. The color you use can depend on your job. For medics, blue light is good for blood. It’s also good for tracking blood trails. Bright white is best but then the enemy can shoot you. Red light can make blood disappear, but then again blue light makes petroleum look like blood, and so if you are treating patients at night from after an IED strike on a vehicle, there can be confusion. American military maps are made to be “red light readable” because red light preserves night vision and is harder to see from a distance. The question of lights and how to use them can soak up thousands of words and so let’s keep it simple and move on.

Amazing photo-essay. Check the whole thing at the link.

'We Are Under Attack': Jamie Glazov on the Michael Coren Show

Via FrontPage Magazine:

17 Die as Suicide Blast Hits U.S. Bus in Afghanistan

At New York Times, "17 Are Killed as Suicide Bomb Hits a U.S. Bus in Afghanistan."

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least five American soldiers, eight American contract workers and four Afghans were killed when a Taliban suicide car bomber attacked an armored shuttle bus in Kabul on Saturday, a military official said.

It was the single deadliest attack for Americans in the capital since the war began, military officials said, and follows brazen Taliban assaults on the American Embassy and NATO headquarters in the city last month.

A NATO official said all of the contract workers were Americans, but the coalition did not officially confirm that.

Such high-profile attacks have been seen as a shift in Taliban strategy as they struggle against a surge in American troops that has loosened the militants’ grip on the Taliban heartland in the South and compromised their ability to stage more conventional attacks on NATO forces. American officials see the latest assaults as the Taliban’s attempt to shake confidence in the Afghan government, which is taking over security from NATO in Kabul and other areas of the country.

Muammar Gaddafi Allegedly Sodomized After Capture

It's pretty awful, but seriously? Folks are going to get worked up about this? The dude promised to go "house to house" to cleanse the "greasy rats" from Libya.

There's commentary at CBS News, "GlobalPost: Qaddafi apparently sodomized after capture." (Via Memeorandum.)

Or go straight to the source, "Gaddafi sodomized: Video shows abuse frame by frame (GRAPHIC)."

Butcher of Ramallah to Be Released in Israel-Hamas Deal on Gilad Shalit

I've posted the picture before, of Abed el-Aziz Salha, hands covered with blood, screaming out the window after disemboweling two IDF soldiers who took a wrong turn. Dan Friedman has the story, "Two Israelis Will Not be Released From Arab Hands..."

More here: "The Savages of Ramallah."

UPDATE: Legal Insurrection links, "Butcher of Ramallah soon to be free."

Gilad Shalit and the Price Freedom in Israel

More on the Shalit release, from Caroline Glick, at Jerusalem Post, "A pact signed in Jewish blood":

"The deal that Netanyahu has agreed to is signed with the blood of the past victims and future victims of the terrorists he is letting go. No amount of rationalization by Netanyahu, his cheerleaders in the demented mass media, and by the defeatist, apparently incompetent heads of the Shin Bet, Mossad and IDF can dent the facts."

RELATED: At Legal Insurrection, "“What happens after the next soldier is kidnapped?”"

Accusations Against Iran Fleshed Out

At WSJ (via Google):

Top U.S. officials Wednesday provided fresh details about an alleged plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's U.S. ambassador, seeking to bolster their contention that the Iranian government was behind the scheme.

The officials said they were skeptical at first about Iranian involvement, but grew persuaded when a $100,000 payment to the alleged plotters was traced to an elite Iranian military branch, the Qods Force. They described the logic for believing that the Qods Force chief knew of the plan, and alleged that an assassination was seen as a trial run for a broader string of attacks for which Iran was ready to spend $5 million.

The case they presented, however, relied heavily on inference and contained gaps, including a lack of direct evidence that the most senior Iranian officials knew about the alleged operation.

Check that Google link for the whole thing.

Prosecute War Criminals David Barron and Martin Lederman!

Well, that's all one can conclude from this report at New York Times, "Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen":

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.

The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama — to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.

The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.

The Obama administration has refused to acknowledge or discuss its role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki last month and that technically remains a covert operation. The government has also resisted growing calls that it provide a detailed public explanation of why officials deemed it lawful to kill an American citizen, setting a precedent that scholars, rights activists and others say has raised concerns about the rule of law and civil liberties.

But the document that laid out the administration’s justification — a roughly 50-page memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, completed around June 2010 — was described on the condition of anonymity by people who have read it.

The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.

The memorandum, which was written more than a year before Mr. Awlaki was killed, does not independently analyze the quality of the evidence against him.

The administration did not respond to requests for comment on this article.

You see? The Office of Legal Counsel. That's where John Yoo and Jay Bybee were working when they wrote the dreaded "torture memos." And ever since then they've been excoriated and hounded as war criminals.

So, how about the authors of the Awlaki memo, David Barron and Martin Lederman? War Criminals!!

Actually, nobody's calling for prosecutions at Memeorandum, at least not yet. But see Volokh, "Secret DOJ Memo re Awlaki Targeting, and NYT Public Editor on Policy-By-Leaks."

U.S. Marines Honor Pamela Geller

Go over there and read the whole thing, "Overwhelming." The Marines gave her the flag flying above Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan on September 11th, 2011:

I cannot describe to you my shock, my awe. I hardly know what to say -- these items are sacred. Our freedom is written in the blood of these heroes, but they honor me with these treasures. I do not deserve such precious gifts. But I heard that Harry Reid had requested this 911 flag, and the heroes at Camp Leatherneck said "No, we are giving it to Pamela Geller." Let me tell you, that was delicious.

I have had U.S. military personnel, both active and retired, thank me for my blogging, and it's the most satisfying honor. Congratulations to Pamela! I would be floating on a rocket ship to outer space! This award just shows once more how great an American she is. Don't stop what you're doing, ever!! And thanks again!

Awlaki More Important Than Bin Laden?

Could be.

See Ed Morrissey: "Video: Was Awlaki mission more operationally important than bin Laden?"

AQAP had become the most virulent arm of al-Qaeda in the past few years, and it was Awlaki who provided the inspiration for the most difficult of terrorists to find and stop — the home-grown jihadis, like the Times Square bomber and Nidal Hasan, among others. Getting both Awlaki and Samir Khan interrupts a network that not only recruited terrorists but repeatedly demonstrated its ability to launch operations against the US, including inside the US, something that bin Laden’s group failed to accomplish after 9/11. AQAP isn’t destroyed by this strike, but their best assets against the US have been and are not likely to be replaced. Getting bin Laden was a much bigger psychological coup, but Awlaki’s removal does more to make the US safer.

Awlaki's Operational Role in al Qaeda

Well, folks got Gleen Greenwald's side, so how about the pro-targeted killing argument?

Check Kenneth Anderson, at Volokh, "Anwar al-Aulaqi Apparently Killed by Drone in Yemen":

My view of this targeted killing is straightforwardly, congratulations, Mr. President. What has been visible publicly leaves little or no doubt in my mind that Al-Aulaqi was deeply involved in AQAP in operations, and indeed at the highest levels.

And at the update:

Who? As an international law matter, is Al-Aulaqi a lawful target? The US government sees him as taking part in hostilities, part of the operational leadership of an associated force with Al Qaeda, the AQAP. So, yes, he can be targeted with lethal force — and targeted without warning, without an attempt to arrest or apprehend as a law enforcement matter.

Where? Does it matter that he was in Yemen, and not an “active battlefield” in a conventional hostilities sense? The US government does not accept the idea that the armed conflict with Al Qaeda — or armed conflict generally — is confined as a legal matter to some notion of “theatres of conflict” or “active battlefields” or related terms that have been used in recent years by academics and activist groups. As I understand the US government position, it sticks by the traditional concept of “hostilities,” and that where the hostiles go, the possibility of armed conflict goes too (I try to explain this evolution of these views in this short essay). So the fact that he was present in Yemen does not make him beyond targeting, because he is not present in some “active” battlezone such as Afghanistan.

This claim — the conflict follows the participants — frequently leads to a complaint that this means the US might target him in Paris or London. The US position is that the standard for addressing non-state actor terrorists taking safe haven somewhere depends on whether the sovereign where the terrorist is hiding is “unwilling or unable” to address the threat. No, there won’t be Predators Over Paris; Yemen or Somalia is another matter, as President Obama has repeatedly and without cavil said in speeches over the last few years.

Still more at the link.

Anti-American Glenn Greenwald Responds to Awlaki Strike on Democracy Now!

I linked Greenwald early this morning, freakin' ASFL.

And here's this, perfectly said, at Jawa Report, "If It Were 1945, Glenn Greenwald and the Left Would Be Lamenting the Death of Hitler":

But this a$$magot has nothing to write about the victims of al Awlaki and other terrorists. His only concern is that the terrorists didn't get 'due process'...

Sometimes there's a downside to the 1st Amendment, and it's having to listen to drivel like this. And yes, I will continue to cheer the death of terrorists, whether they were once a fellow American citizen or not.

Be sure to watch the interview, if you can, where Greenwald speaks so proudly of al Awlaki's radicalism and seemingly justifies terrorism in response to U.S. aggression in Iraq.

Greenwald hates America. He routinely attacks American policy as equivalent to the Nazis. What's amazing is how well his hate goes over. But that's the left for you.

RELATED: At National Journal, "No Due Process in Awlaki's Killing, Civil Libertarians Worry," and at New York Times, "Awlaki Killing Incites Criticism on Left and Libertarian Right."

Ron Paul Decries Awlaki Killing

It's just too predictable. Is there any use of force this clown won't decry?

At LAT, "Ron Paul criticizes Obama for U.S. role in killing of Awlaki."

U.S. Jihadi Samir Khan Killed in Awlaki Drone Strike in Yemen

This really is an significant bonus to the story.

Background at WaPo, "A ‘proud traitor’: Samir Khan reported dead alongside Aulaqi":

A Saudi-born American of Pakistani heritage who was raised in Queens, N.Y., was reportedly among those killed in a U.S. drone strike targeting radical cleric and fellow U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi.

A self-proclaimed traitor to America, Samir Khan contributed to the efforts of al-Qaeda’s Yemen offshoot to promote itself among English-speakers. He was apparently a major force behind the widely-read English-language magazine Inspire, a mixture of ideology, first-person accounts of operations and do-it-yourself jihad advice. Copies of the magazine’s bomb-making and other sections have been found in the possession of several would-be attackers in the U.S. and Britain.

“I am proud to be a traitor to America,” wrote Khan, 25, in an article in the second issue of the online magazine, published in fall last year. He described his life as working in the “jihadi media sector” in North Carolina, before his beliefs turned him into a “rebel of Washington’s imperialism.” He believed FBI agents were watching him in America, including a man who feigned a conversion to Islam, and one who antagonized him, sparking a fist-fight about his online work.

And more background at this 2007 piece from New York Times, "An Internet Jihad Aims at U.S. Viewers."

And don't miss Michelle Malkin's post, "Second U.S. jihadi reportedly killed in drone attack; Plus: Refresher course on American bloggers vs. Samir Khan." She honors the work of Jawa Report, the blog that's been on the trail of Samir Khan for years, and whose publisher Rusty Shackleford was targeted by with death threats. See the post there: "American Traitor Anwar al-Awlaki Killed in Yemen! Upd: SAMIR KHAN, Threatened Rusty's Family, Dead! Obama Confirms, Awlaki DEAD -- Now with More Cowbell, M.C. Hammer Online Jihadis Confirm: Samir Khan Dead! Fingerprints Confirm!"

Anwar al-Awlaki Killed in Yemen

The Other McCain reports, "BREAKING: AL-QAEDA LEADER ANWAR AL-AWLAKI KILLED IN YEMEN -- ‘FACEBOOK FRIEND FROM HELL’."

Also at Jawa Report, "Anwar al-Awlaki Killed in Yemen." (Via Memeorandum.) And New York Times, "U.S.-Born Qaeda Leader Killed in Yemen":

SANA, Yemen — In a significant and dramatic strike in the campaign against Al Qaeda, the Defense Ministry here said American-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, a leading figure in the group’s outpost in Yemen, was killed on Friday morning.

In Washington a senior Obama administration official confirmed that Mr. Awlaki was dead. But the circumstances surrounding the killing remained unclear.

It was not immediately known whether Yemeni forces carried out the attack or if American intelligence forces, which have been pursuing Mr. Awlaki for months, were involved in the operation.

A Defense Ministry statement said that a number of Mr. Awlaki’s bodyguards also were killed.

A high-ranking Yemeni security official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Mr. Awlaki was killed while traveling between Marib and al-Jawf provinces in northern Yemen — areas known for having an Al Qaeda presence, where there is very little central government control. The official did not say how he was killed.

Mr. Awlaki’s name has been associated with many plots in the United States and elsewhere after individuals planning violence were drawn to his engaging lectures broadcast over the Internet.

Those individuals included Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, Texas in which 13 people were killed; the young men who planned to attack Fort Dix, N.J.; and a 21-year-old British student who told the police she stabbed a member of Parliament after watching 100 hours of Awlaki videos.

Updates forthcoming...

I was expecting this, but not this quick. From knee-jerk progressive anti-American Glenn Greenwald, "The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality." And from international relations expert Stephanie Carvin, "Anwar al-Awlaki and Targeted Killing: A quick, first, and uneasy reaction":

I must admit that I am somewhat troubled by this turn of events. Earlier this year I suggested that the targeted killing of bin Laden was acceptable under international law. He’s been linked to the financing and organising of terrorist attacks around the world and this was well established before his death.

But I have yet to see any reports that suggest that Awlaki has been tied to any material support for terrorist attacks. I think this changes the legal game substantially. It essentially is suggesting that *we* (whoever that is) are now targeting people for their ideas rather than they are actually doing. Pushed to its logical extreme, a person might unintentionally inspire others to commit violent acts. Should they be eliminated?

I’m no fan of Awlaki and I will certainly not mourn his passing, (really – he seems like a total jerk) but this raises serious questions about the targeted killing program, who is being targeted and why. Presumably, in the case of targeted killing, its important there is evidence BEFORE the killing, rather than a scrabble now to piece together a case, after the fact.

I hope there is evidence that he actually materially supported terrorism.

Well, the poor guy!

More, from Jake Tapper, at ABC News, "Officials Thought They Might Kill Awlaki on 9/11 Anniversary."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu United Nations Address, September 23, 2011

At National Post, "Netanyahu chides UN, seeks renewed talks with Abbas":

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, returned to the United Nations’ General Assembly Friday with all the confidence of a former ambassador, who has frequently used the assembly podium as a pulpit.

With a familiarity that almost bordered on contempt, Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in 1984-88, upbraided the General Assembly for even entertaining a Palestinian request for statehood.

“The truth is that Israel wants peace; the truth is that I want peace,” he said, adding, “We cannot achieve peace through UN resolutions.”

Mr. Netanyahu criticized the UN, calling it a “theatre of the absurd.” He noted the Security Council is now headed by Lebanon, whose government is controlled by Hezbollah, an internationally recognized terrorist group.

“It was here in 1975 that the age-old yearning of my people to restore our national life in our ancient biblical homeland was branded shamefully as racism,” he said.

“And it was here in 1980, right here, that the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, wasn’t praised, it was denounced. And it is here, year after year, that Israel is unjustly singled out for condemnation … more often than all the other nations of the world combined.”

The Israeli leader’s message was as simple as it was blunt: “The Palestinians should first make peace with Israel and then get their state.”

If that were to happen, “Israel will not be the last state to welcome a Palestinian state into the United Nations,” he said. “We will be the first.”

Also at Legal Insurrection, "Netanyahu at the U.N. – Theater of the Absurd."

United States Walks Out on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Speech at United Nations

At LAT, "At U.N., Iran president again denounces U.S.":

With his now-familiar mix of bombast, politics and theater, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday denounced the United States and its European allies as colonialist "slave masters" intent on wrecking the world economy, prompting dozens of Western diplomats to walk out.

As in previous years, Ahmadinejad used his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly to condemn the United States and its allies, accusing them of causing centuries of misery. He charged that they were responsible for the suffering caused by slavery, world wars, nuclear attacks and the current global economic turmoil.

As before, his presence also sparked protests outside the U.N. But this time around, his influence seems to be ebbing in Tehran, and his speech was overshadowed by the week's dominant topic, the Palestinian Authority's bid for U.N. recognition.

Ahmadinejad had no comment on the Palestinian issue, keeping instead to his usual themes and invective. He accused Israel of causing "60 years of war," and railed that European nations used the Holocaust "as the excuse to pay ransom or fines to Zionists."

What We Got Right in the War on Terror

I was hoping to do some big analysis of Abe Greenwald's masterful essay, at Commentary, but never got around to it. This is simply the best piece I've read on the war on terror:

Over the course of the 10 years, American authorities foiled more than two dozen al-Qaeda plots. Those averted tragedies were not foremost on the minds of revelers who gathered to celebrate Bin Laden’s demise on May 1 at Ground Zero, Times Square, and in front of the White House. But if a mere few of the plots had materialized, those spaces might not even have been open to public assembly.

Not only have U.S. authorities managed to keep America safe from al-Qaeda for a decade; by the time he was killed, Osama bin Laden was barely a leader. Among the items recovered at his compound in Abbottabad were some recent writings, in which the former icon lamented al-Qaeda’s dramatically sinking stock and pondered organizational rebranding as a possible antidote.

His growing insignificance as a global player was not the product of chance. The marginalization of the world’s principal jihadist was the result of audacious American policy—indeed, the most controversial and hotly debated policy undertaken in the wake of 9/11. In the words of Reuel Marc Gerecht writing in the Wall Street Journal, “the war in Iraq was Bin Laden’s great moral undoing.” In his desperate attempt to drive American fighting forces out of Mesopotamia, Bin Laden sanctioned a bloody civil war in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. The carnage failed to repel the United States, but in the end, the countrywide slaughter of Muslims proved too much to bear for al-Qaeda’s own one-time and would-be supporters. The “Sunni awakening” that helped transform Iraq was an awakening out of al-Qaeda jihadism, and the blow it delivered to Bin Laden’s ambitions was stunning.

After the turnaround in Iraq, the landscape of the Muslim world suffered even greater changes—with ordinary Muslims rising to revolt against Persian and Arab tyranny, not against American hegemony. As Fouad Ajami has written: “The Arab Spring has simply overwhelmed the world of the jihadists. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, younger people—hurled into politics by the economic and political failures all around them—are attempting to create a new political framework, to see if a way could be found out of the wreckage that the authoritarian states have bequeathed them.”

It was the Freedom Agenda of the George W. Bush administration—delineated and formulated as a conscious alternative to jihadism—that showed the way. Indeed, the costly American nation-building in Iraq has now led to the creation of the world’s first and only functioning democratic Arab state. One popular indictment of Bush maintains that he settled on the Freedom Agenda as justification for war after U.S. forces and inspectors found no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The record shows otherwise. “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East,” he said before the invasion, in February 2003. “Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both.”

And something of the kind has come to pass. “One despot fell in 2003,” Ajami has said. “We decapitated him. Two despots, in Tunisia and Egypt, fell, and there is absolutely a direct connection between what happened in Iraq in 2003 and what’s happening today throughout the rest of the Arab world.”

Thus, there are three intertwined achievements that have proved to be the dispositive features of American success in the war on terror: formulating the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East, reversing the course of the war in Iraq, and establishing a national-security apparatus to foil multiple terrorist attacks. It is no coincidence that they are also the most controversial foreign policies America has implemented since the Vietnam War.

September 11 was a hinge moment in American history. The attacks plunged the nation into a full-scale war against non-state entities. Any adequate American response had to break with previous approaches in previous conflicts. War could not be waged on parties inside states in the same way it had been waged on states themselves. Prisoners captured on a battlefield in a country not their own and with no interest in following the rules of conventional war could not be handled as they had been. Getting the edge on Islamist terror would mean fundamentally rethinking our approach to both the blunting of deadly threats and the shuttering of the political hothouses of the Middle East in which such threats thrive.

The adoption of these unprecedented and uncompromising means of war inspired animated debate in the United States. In fighting the war on terror, we have been told, America has become—depending on the accuser—either too dismissive or too enamored of democracy. Some on the left think our national-security apparatus undermines our defining ideals. On the right, outraged voices condemn our naive enthusiasm for helping to secure liberty for Muslims abroad, calling it a form of multicultural self-sabotage. After civil war seized post-invasion Iraq, critics from across the ideological spectrum denounced our misguided effort. The fits and starts and frustrations of the war decade have this one thing in common: we have done battle in an age when spectacular setbacks appear to provide irrefutable evidence of our own baseness and incompetence—a few years before drab good news arrives to refute both expert opinion and common knowledge.

The arguments that we have prosecuted the war on terror immorally and ineffectually are important, and deserve the respectful hearing they have received, even if many of those arguing these points have resorted to launching the most abject slanders and accusations toward those who believe the war on terror is just and has been fought honorably. To be sure, not everything the United States has done in the war on terror has been correct. Far from it. As Winston Churchill said, “War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.” In the fight against Islamist terrorism, American blunders have come in all shapes and sizes, and in truth there are few small wartime miscalculations. This is especially so in an age of instant global headlines.

We continue to suffer for our biggest mistakes. Concerning the failure to catch Bin Laden and make serious efforts to nation-build early in the Afghanistan war, inaccurate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons, and the Pentagon’s ill-preparedness for the Iraqi insurgency, there can be no absolution. These errors have cost the country tragic sums in money, credibility, and life. They also set our efforts back precious years.

But these blunders, great as they are, have not undone America’s outstanding accomplishments. Ten years ago, the most delusional optimist among us would not have predicted the irrelevancy of Osama bin Laden or a decade without another al-Qaeda attack, let alone a democratic Iraq and a transformative explosion of antiauthoritarianism in the Middle East.

Nor do American achievements in this war mean we are in a position to quit the fight. The notion that America achieved closure with Bin Laden’s killing suggests to some, perhaps even the occupant of the White House, that the war on terror has had its decade and the United States can now move on. “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home,” said Barack Obama this summer as he announced a sizable drawdown of troops in Afghanistan for the fall of 2012. The suggestion that our work is done has traction only because resolute American action at home and abroad have provided a sense of security so pervasive it now goes unquestioned.

The United States has fallen prey to false comfort in the past. So before we submit to the siren song of closure, we would do well to recall that that is exactly where this war began—and our retaining some genuine measure of security has been the result of thinking and acting more boldly than we have in generations.

Now go read the whole thing.

The Palestinian Obsession

From Caroline Glick, at Jerusalem Post:

If nothing else, the Palestinians’ UN statehood gambit goes a long way towards revealing the deep-seated European and US pathologies that enable and prolong the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

In a nutshell, the Palestinian Authority – or Fatah – or PLO initiative of asking the UN Security Council and the General Assembly to upgrade its status to that of a sovereign UN member state or a sovereign non-UN member state is an act of diplomatic aggression.

Eighteen years ago this week, on September 13, 1993, the PLO signed the Declaration of Principles with Israel on the White House lawn.

There, the terror group committed itself to a peace process in which all disputes between Israel and the PLO – including the issue of Palestinian statehood – would be settled in the framework of bilateral negotiations.

The PA was established on the basis of this accord. The territory, money, arms and international legitimacy it has been given was due entirely to the PLO pledge to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel through bilateral negotiations.

By abandoning negotiations with Israel two years ago, and opting instead to achieve its nationalist aims outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel, the Palestinians are destroying the diplomatic edifice on which the entire concept of a peace process is based. They are announcing that they have no intention of living at peace with Israel. Rather they intend to move ahead at Israel’s expense...

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Rips Michael Moore on Osama Bin Laden's 'Execution'

Michael Moore's repeating the same talking points I heard him spewing almost a year ago. Only 100 al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan? Sheesh. Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer faced more than half that when he saved 36 lives in 2009. And this week's attack on the NATO compound was an astonishingly effective siege of the central command of the international protection force. Unreal. And here's Moore again saying we shouldn't have killed Bin Laden. He was just another crazy guy in the world, or something. Watch. Elisabeth Hasselbeck let's him have it: