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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Robert Tracinski to discuss the uprising in Libya, and Obama’s Free Range Chicken foreign policy. Then, Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about Don Rumsfeld’s new book.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Tracinski: The Intellectual Activist
Our Schizoid Foreign Policy
Time for Barack Obama to say something about Arab democracy
Ben: Myths and the Muslim Brotherhood
Pej: My Podcast Interview With Donald Rumsfeld
Tracinski: Public Unions & the Socialist Utopia
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If you are upset about the Orwellian TSA screening procedures in effect in our nation’s airports, too bad.

Our country has gone back to sleep, reverting to a 9/10 military posture vis-à-vis the Jihad being waged against us infidels. How can you tell? Once again, Progressive Americans are treating terrorists as though they are simply criminals who should face justice in a civilian-criminal court of law. When Yemen sends crotch and printer bombs, we send in the FBI. This was the 9/10 (or) Progressive response to the Jihad, which made possible the events of 9/11.

Another example of our return to a 9/10 mindset can be found in our reactions to Islamists declaring Jihad against us. When Osama did it in 1996 (FROM YEMEN), the West yawned. Who was this sandman to declare war on us, we thought. Only we declare war – nobody else has that power or capacity, right? Once again, Jihad has been declared against us, now by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. The West is yawning once more.

When we briefly adopted a 9/12 posture against our Islamist enemies, they were too busy running and hiding and dying, to be planning and launching multiple attempts to blow us out of the sky. Our enemies seem to have all the time and breathing room in the world now though, inspiring the question: What ever could have changed over the past couple of years, leading to this new “normal” of repeated Yemeni-Jihad bomb plots? Oh well, we could wonder for hours and probably never put our finger on it.

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What a shock. A majority of the arrested “peace activists” who brutally attacked the Israeli soldiers with pipes, metal rods. chairs and knives are linked to terror groups including Al-Qaeda. Several are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The activists include Turks, Yemenites and Indonesians. And, many of the arrested “peace” fanatics have no identification papers.

The terror-linked “peace activists” even brought their own “Hezbollah slingshots” with them on their “peace” mission. (IDF)

YNET News reported:

The ongoing interrogation of passengers who were aboard the Marmara – the Gaza aid flotilla’s flagship – revealed that the majority of those who attacked the Israeli Naval Commandos boarding the ship have direct and indirect Global Jihad ties.

Israel’s investigation has revealed some 100 people infiltrated the peace and humanitarian aid activists making their way to Gaza, with the explicit design to attack Israeli soldiers using cold arms.

Some among that group are believed to have ties with World Jihad groups, mainly al-Qaeda.

The majority of suspects are Turks, but some are Yemenites and Indonesian. One Yemenite Islamist was photographed with a dagger in his belt prior to the raid.

The suspects are not cooperating with investigators. Most of them have no identification papers, and Israeli authorities are still trying to ascertain their identity.

So, will the Western media omit this from their reports, too?

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US Attorney General Eric Holder knew about Faisal Shahzad’s extremist background and resume. Holder knew about Faisal’s links to the Pakistani Taliban but refused to admit that Islamic radicals were behind the Times Square bomb plot yesterday during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.

This is irresponsible and puts American lives at risk. Eric Holder is incapable of understanding the threats facing this nation. Eric Holder must step down.

Times Square car terrorist Faisal Shahzad worked with an accomplice in Pakistan who provided an “independent stream” of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the botched plot. This information was provided after the accomplice’s arrest in Pakistan last week.

US Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the Times Square bomber was linked to the Taliban. Despite this information, the US Attorney General refused to use the term “radical Islam” when discussing the motives behind the Times Square bomber yesterday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The US Attorney General has information that the Taliban was behind the Times Square attack. Terrorist Faisal Shahzad had substantial connections to the Taliban, reached out to the Taliban, was influenced by Yemeni terror leader Anwar al Awlaki, made at least a dozen return trips to Pakistan since arriving in the United States in 1999, and he bought a one way ticketwith cash to Pakistan. Terrorist Faisal Shahzad was blogging on terror websites about jihad since 2006.

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On Saturday, February 13,  the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia – about 20 minutes from the White House -  held a fundraiser dinner to raise money for Sabri Benkhala’s various legal appeals.  (They’re holding an even bigger fundraiser in April, which may be attended by some well-known elected officials – more on that later….)  Benkhala is serving a 10-year term in a federal prison for perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.

According to a February 5, 2007 statement from the Department of Justice, “Benkahla was convicted of making materially false statements both in his grand jury appearances in 2004, as well as to the FBI in 2004. These false statements included his denial of his involvement with an overseas jihad training camp in 1999, as well as his asserted lack of knowledge about individuals with whom he was in contact.”

If you want to fundraise for a jailed jihadist, Dar Al-Hijrah is definitely the $40-donation-for-a-halal-chicken-dinner venue of choice.  Dar Al-Hijrah’s  jihadist credentials are impeccable:

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For those who were expecting the election of Barack Obama to yield a peace dividend in the war on terror, the resurgence of Al-Qaeda has come as a surprise. Obama’s obsequious diplomacy was supposed to be a tonic to the aggressions of the Bush years, but his appeasement seems to have only encouraged more war. Rather than calm the Islamic world, Obama’s passivity has invited attack.

As in the Cold War, the current battle of ideology takes place in proxy wars. Unlike in the Cold War, the war on terror is largely fought through symbolic actions. Islamists do not make tactical attacks. They do not bomb Boeing factories or destroy highways and rail lines. Instead they destroy iconic buildings, trains, and airplanes. They use the spectacle of destruction, carried out in a diabolical way by suicide agents, as their means of waging war. That is the definition of a terror campaign.

The proper response to terror is not appeasement but counterattack. Islamists wage their terror campaigns in order to cow American influence abroad, especially in the Gulf. The answer to such attacks, if we hope to avoid them in the future, is to increase American involvement in Muslim countries both through soft influence and force of arms. Such a strategy was one of the best but least articulated justifications for the Second Gulf War.

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By Barack Obama

It certainly was a holiday to remember.  Since I’m President of the United States, I was able to choose anywhere in the world to spend a long, lazy couple of weeks.  So, we got the 747 gassed up to head to Hawaii for the Holidays.  When I learned Health Care Reform might be held up in the Senate on Christmas Eve, many felt nervous that the holiday kickoff would hit a snafu.  Sure, it’s one of the most complicated and controversial bills in American history, but we had turkeys to baste and chestnuts to roast.

Great news, we cooked up a plan to slap a 10 percent tax on people who go to tanning beds — that ought to fix paying for all this!   Plus, Senator Harry Reid ensured the democrats who were going to bail on the bill were handsomely paid off, so we quickly squeaked out a win on that sucker before anyone had a chance to read it!  The partisan divide may now be bigger than ever, but I made it out of D.C. on time to head for some quality climate change —  to the land where palm trees sway for some holiday island fun — Mele Kalikimaka!

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On the foreign policy front, the Democrats for years have blamed America for the actions of rogue nations and dictators.  Indeed, as Mona Charen pointed out at length, in her book Useful Idiots, the Democrats have been all too willing to Blame America First for the actions of others.  So the storyline goes, when Russia armed itself, it was a justified response to the American arms buildup – as if Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were otherwise peace loving souls.

No mere academic cheer for Democrats, they have campaigned on their Blame America First theme for years.  In the minds of those Democrats, rather than display arrogance, America must be more humble, except blame for World troubles and not seek to impose its view on the world.  The latest iteration of that, of course, was Obama’s campaign.

According to Obama, following 9/11:

Millions around the world were ready to stand with us. They were willing to rally to our cause because it was their cause too – because they knew that if America led the world toward a new era of global cooperation, it would advance the security of people in our nation and all nations.” According to Obama, however, the Bush Administration “squandered that opportunity . . . [and]  . . . World opinion has turned against us.

What is the cure for such “mistakes,” according to Obama? As we have seen, it is to apologize on his world tours for American actions, to promise to talk directly to dictators, to abandon missile systems, to speak softly in the face of phony Iranian elections and crack downs on dissent, to bow in front of dictators, wear a thin mustache in front Middle Eastern leaders in Egypt, preach global responsibility, promise to close Guantanamo, give rights to Interpol over US territory, and on and on.

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According to Reuters, Dutch authorities have announced that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the terrorist who penetrated the Dutch security system on Christmas Day on Flight 253 to Detroit, acted alone with no accomplices at the Amsterdam airport.

This directly contradicts the first-hand, eye-witness account from Kurt Haskell, a lawyer from Taylor, Michigan who was on board Flight 253.  We have reported Mr. Haskell’s account here at Big Government as well as his interview with Andrew Breitbart on The Dennis Miller Show, the nationally syndicated radio program on Westwood One.

Mr. Haskell tells us he is sticking to his story.  “I’m not surprised, we expected this.  They are trying to discredit me without actually PROVING me wrong.  But, I’m not going to shut-up about this.“

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Jaw-dropping story in today’s Washington Post:

President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser on Sunday defended the administration’s decision to try in federal court the man charged with attempting to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day and indicated that he would be offered a plea agreement to persuade him to reveal what he knows about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with the failed attempt on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight, was initially “talking to people who detained him” but now has a public defender and “doesn’t have to,” John O. Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have different ways of obtaining information from individuals” in the criminal-justice process, Brennan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A lot of people . . . understand what they’re facing, and their lawyers recognize that there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements, [and] we’re going to pursue that.” Brennan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that other terrorism suspects have “given us very valuable information as they’ve gone through the plea-agreement process.”

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Americans fancy the idea that while we might have been asleep prior to 9/11/2001, now our eyes are wide open and we are on alert. This is a pipe dream.

If people’s eyes were truly open, they would be closely examining the path Gitmo detainee Said Ali al-Shihri took to Yemen, where we are now learning he helped plan the Christmas Jihad.

Said reportedly left Gitmo, went through “rehabilitation” in Saudi Arabia, then moved to Iran before ending up as a leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen.

For example, Said Ali al-Shihri left Gitmo in 2007 and became a patient in Saudi Arabia’s terrorist rehabilitation program. Upon graduation, he went to Iran, and then became the deputy leader of Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Abdullah al-Qarawi following a similar path, also traveling to Iran after finishing the program, where he know oversees over 100 Saudi Al-Qaeda operatives. Mohammed al-Oufi, a former Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula commander, also was released from Gitmo. Luckily, he defected later and informed the Saudis about Iran’s secret involvement with Al-Qaeda in Yemen and a plot to bomb the Saudi oil infrastructure. [READ MORE...]

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In a recent puff piece, The New York Times reports that our President is tired. This is not the first such report. Back in May, when he treated England’s Gordon Brown so shabbily, the excuse given — according to The Daily Telegraph – was that wrestling with the economic crisis had left Barack Obama too exhausted to be able to focus on foreign affairs.

We should perhaps discount what was said in May. For, as I have attempted to document in detail here, here, here, here, here, and here, President Obama is a gentleman, and, as such, he is never unintentionally rude. He is, in fact, a master of the insulting gesture, which he seems to reserve for political opponents, such as Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and for political leaders in countries, such as England, France, Germany, Israel, and Poland, which were closely associated with the United States prior to the Age of Obama.

This time, however, Barack Obama may be genuinely tired, and he may be depressed as well. He certainly has warrant. In public, he may claim that he deserves a B+ for his first year in office, but the polling data suggests that he has earned a failing mark, and he has to know better.

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This fascinating news segment produced by al-Jazeera (aka Jihad TV) highlights how the US drone war in Yemen has inspired a renewed front in the Jihad against America.

This report is interesting because even as it parrots the Jihad narrative, it provides more in depth background information and perspective on American, Saudi, and Iranian involvement in Yemen than anything we have seen from just about any US “news” outlet.

What a sad comment on the state of US/Western media, that “Jihad TV” is a better source of information pertinent to this aspect of the world war we are engaged in.

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Michigan Live is reporting a shocking claim by a passenger aboard Flight 253:

Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
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President Bill Clinton should be cut a lot of slack when it comes to 9/11. Sure the attack was planned under his watch, and sure President Clinton cowardly avoided taking custody of Osama bin Laden when Sudan offered him on a platter.

The truth of the matter is that prior to the 9/11 Jihad attack, there was no way in the world the American people would have stood for the large scale war that was necessary in order to fight this new kind of Jihad army.

Think about it this way, even after the Jihadis have murdered thousands upon thousands of people all around the world, including here in America on 9/11, the American Left still think it’s all America’s fault and that we deserved it, and therefore we have no legitimate right to fight back. Just image how much resistance there would have been toward going into Afghanistan prior to 9/11.

Add to the whack-o Left the fact that the Right would have accused Clinton of simply trying to distract attention away from his perjury case, and it should be obvious that Clinton didn’t have much political capital in reserve to convince the country that a preemptive war was necessary to avoid a large scale attack against an American city.

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From UK’s Telegraph:

Tough questions need to be asked of not just the US security agencies – such as the CIA and the FBI – but also of Britain’s MI6, MI5 and the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorist unit.

How can a Muslim student, whose name appears on a US law enforcement database, be granted a visa to travel to America, allegedly acquire an explosive device from Yemen, a country awash with al-Qaeda terrorists, and avoid detection from the world’s most sophisticated spy agencies?

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President Obama has pleaded for the country not to go “jumping to conclusions” about Major Nidal Hasan’s motives for his murder spree at Fort Hood, Texas. Even Army Chief of Staff General Casey has said that it’s “too soon to be drawing any conclusions about what happened or what his motivations were.”

But it doesn’t seem to early for the Imam that headed the Mosque in Virginia that Hasan and several of the 9/11 terrorists once attended. Anwar al-Awlaki, once the Imam of Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, has released a statement saying that Nidal Hasan “did the right thing” with his criminal rampage at Fort Hood. Anwar al-Awlaki is thought to be in Yemen having left the U.S. shortly after 9/11.

It is, of course, infuriating that our government refuses to see the obvious. In fact, this incident itself proves that even the Army is so afraid of being charged with political incorrectness that it allowed this jihadist Major to roil in his radical jihadism for some time without being opposed by his superiors.

This attitude of refusing to see the forest for the trees is best exemplified by Andrew Bast of Newsweek who thinks he’s got the real reason behind Major Nidal Hasan’s murderously criminal rampage at Fort Hood last Thursday. Could it be that Hasan was steadily radicalized and steeped in hateful Islamofascism? Could it be a jihad mindset that sent Hasan into that military clinic yelling Allahu Akbar as he shot at anyone that got in his way?

Nope. Ridiculously, it was a “military on the brink,” it was the “stress” an uncaring U.S. military is forcing upon its members that was at fault as far as Bast is concerned. This is his obtuse conclusion in Newsweek’s piece headlined, “Is Fort Hood a Harbinger? Nidal Malik Hasan May Be a Symptom of a Military on the Brink.”

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