Constant Conservative

Just received this in response to what I had written regarding the New York Times and Brad Thor’s story:

Thank you for writing.  As a matter of policy we don’t comment on possible future stories but the blog posting you are referring to is incorrect.  It is our policy to withhold the names of active undercover agents. An earlier Times story described operations in Afghanistan that have been discontinued, and did not disclose the names of undercover operatives.

Sincerely,

Darby Thomas

Darby Thomas
Office of the Chairman/Publisher & CEO
The New York Times Company
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

I’m grateful for the response–which was more than I expected. It is interesting to note that my email to them did not include reference to any blog posting, or in fact even mention the article at Big Journalism. However, one might safely assume that I was not the only one who contacted them about the story, so this is probably a bit of a canned response.

I am glad to know that their policy is to not reveal the identities of “active undercover agents.” Let us hope that their understanding of that policy and mine are the same.

I wrote the other day of the information which Brad Thor received regarding a plan to “out” those who are providing Force Protection for our military in Afghanistan. Now, it would appear as though there may be some fall-out from the attention which the CIA has received regarding this matter.

Here’s the article from the Washington Times:

The CIA announced on Wednesday that Deputy Director Steve Kappes, a veteran operations officer, will retire next month and be replaced by longtime analyst Michael Morell, the agency’s current director of intelligence.

Mr. Kappes was a favorite CIA official among congressional Democrats after he quit the agency in 2004 to protest the leadership of then-Director Porter Goss, who had replaced George Tenet and charged that agency officials were orchestrating a press campaign to undermine the foreign policy of President George W. Bush.

Mr. Kappes was hired back in 2006 by Michael Hayden, who had replaced Mr. Goss as director.

Ishmael Jones, pseudonym for a former CIA deep-cover officer, criticized Mr. Kappes as a “defender of the status quo” who opposed needed intelligence reform, specifically as it relates to human intelligence gathering.

Here is an update from Mr. Thor:

While I have been adverse to mentioning Kappes by name, when I was informed last night that the CIA had leaked to the New York Times the names of Americans covertly providing Force Protection to our troops in Afghanistan and that the Times was going to run with those names, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

As the Agency has blindly followed what has become known as the “Kappes Doctrine” it has made mistake after mistake after mistake; all underscored by the horrible F.O.B. Chapman attack, one of its most deadly.  Something tells me that there won’t be anyone baking any cakes for Mr. Kappes’ sendoff.

There are lots and lots of problems at the Central Intelligence Agency and Kappes’ fingerprints are all over them.  He had become toxic not only for the CIA, but for the Obama Administration, which explains why, after my piece ran this morning, the bus was warmed up and Kappes was told to lay down in front of it.  Ask anyone in the intelligence world – there are no such things as coincidences.

Perhaps this change in leadership will help to change the nature of the frayed relationship between CIA and Department of Defense.

In the article which I linked two days ago, we were told that Muslims would be highly offended to find that US Military personnel had scripture references on their Trijicon sighting systems. Now, we have the following:

Muslim groups reacted angrily Wednesday after it emerged that the U.S. military is using combat rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.

Army officials have said they will investigate whether a Michigan defense contractor violated federal procurement rules by stamping references to Bible verses on the gun sights used by American forces to kill enemy fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations on Wednesday said the continued use of the sights with the religious references would send a negative message to the Muslim world.

“The use of military equipment with hidden Bible references sends the false message to Muslims worldwide that we are at war with Islam,” said CAIR Legal Counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili. “In addition, these sights are a potential recruiting tool for anti-American forces, endanger our troops and alienate our Muslim allies. They should we withdrawn as soon as logistically possible.”

Of course CAIR is angry. They were told they should be and encouraged by the media to respond in such a way as to make Trijicon, the military and anyone who might either support this or even be ambivalent about it look like the bad guys. This organization has never turned down an opportunity to help Muslims become the victims.

People, we are fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq–against real people with real weapons. The possibility that this manufactured outrage might help to ensure that our warfighters do not have some of the best optical equipment around to help them is a sad lesson in “tolerance” run amok.

Certain groups of people in the US have been concerned about the ICC for years. Of course, that was the Interstate Commerce Commission (whose employees seem to think that the line in the Constitution which speaks to “regulating commerce” needs to be expanded into many thousands of pages of rules).

Now, there is another ICC (International Criminal Court) which believes it has the authority to try US military personnel for war crimes–even though the US never signed the treaty which would have placed it under this court’s jurisdiction:

The ICC’s chief prosecutor, though, has no intention of waiting for Washington to submit to the court’s authority. Luis Moreno Ocampo says he already has jurisdiction—at least with respect to Afghanistan.

Because Kabul in 2003 ratified the Rome Statute—the ICC’s founding treaty—all soldiers on Afghan territory, even those from nontreaty countries, fall under the ICC’s oversight, Mr. Ocampo told me. And the chief prosecutor says he is already conducting a “preliminary examination” into whether NATO troops, including American soldiers, fighting the Taliban may have to be put in the dock.

Any excuse will do, if the United States can be brought under greater control by the United Nations. Make no mistake, this is not about justice, but about power.

“Whatever the gravest war crimes are that have been committed, we have to check.”

“Gravest” is the operative word here. The court was established to “end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community,” as stated on the ICC’s Web site. This would suggest that even if U.S. soldiers have committed war crimes by the prosecutor’s definition, the ICC would have no reason to get involved as those transgressions would surely be insignificant compared to the butchery in places like Sudan or Congo.

Mr. Ocampo’s own words, though, suggested that he disagrees. I asked him if he was going to prosecute the worst crimes in his jurisdiction or the worst crimes in a particular case, such as Afghanistan, irrespective of how they compare to crimes around the world. He paused before answering.

“Normally,” he said (another pause) “we select situations which are grave, for instance when I choose. . . .” Mr. Ocampo didn’t finish the sentence, sighed and began afresh: “Both [scenarios] are right. Normally, we open investigations in the worst situation in the world and in some cases [countries] we investigate the worst situation.”

Or, to put it more simply: “We look into whatever we want to ’cause we’re the United Nations. Got that?” Of course, it is much easier to prosecute people from civilized nations who have some form of a rule of law than it is to go after completely unrestrained mass murderers in Africa.

If the ICC proceeds with this course of action and the United States government permits it to go forward, expect to see an exponential increase in “human rights abuse” charges brought against our military personnel in countries all around the world.

That is what Victor Davis Hanson lays on President Obama and the failed policies of the executive branch.

Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel; the dollar is falling against the Euro to 1.50. The annual deficit is already over $1.6 trillion and may go well over that. The tab for health care will hit right under $1 trillion. Unemployment may be headed over 10%. The people who voted for Obama were mad over Bush’s bailouts, unemployment, deficits, and supposed divisiveness. And?

They got greater bailouts, higher unemployment, larger deficits, and Chicago politics.

But, Professor Hanson is just getting started.  Go feel the burn for yourself.

VDH shows us that instead of providing the leadership our country needs, President Obama has chosen to spend his time trying to stomp out those who dare question his authority.  As Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, likes to sarcastically say, “the county’s in the very best of hands”.

Here’s a bit of a marvelous photo. Click it to see the rest and read the story.

As a father of two little girls, I have some idea of what the man was thinking.

Michael Yon, who has been doing yeoman’s duty reporting from the heart of the conflict in Afghanistan, is a bit frustrated with his treatment by the British Ministry of Defense. While I do not have any other source for the information he provides, he’s been providing a level of detail (and truthfulness) in what I’ve seen to date that I would be unsurprised to find that matters are indeed exactly as he relates.

Here’s the thing, like our soldiers, airmen, and marines, he is doing an incredibly difficult and dangerous job. He needs support and encouragement, not additional friction. Whether the war in Afghanistan is going well or poorly, it is absolutely essential that all of the allies are told the truth. Oh, there are the usual issues with reference to not letting out certain details of ongoing operations and such, but Michael Yon is a former Green Beret and really does understand these matters better than 4 out of 5 reporters covering the sand and poppy beat.

Go, read his latest, and give him a bit of encouragement if you will. We need more like him.

Here in the US, we are struggling to keep such misguided legislation as Cap and Trade, Card Check, and Public Option Health Care from becoming brutal reality. It is important that we do this, for us, for our children, for the future.

Meanwhile, Michael Yon and the soldiers whose lives he chronicles are keeping up the daily life and death struggle in Afghanistan. Following is brief excerpt from his latest dispatch:

Shops on this very street sold fertilizer used to make bombs.  They might as well have sold dynamite.  (The fertilizer also happened to be good for growing opium.)  The bombs regularly blow the limbs off troops around Afghanistan.  Soldiers may lose their legs, or their legs and an arm and their eyesight, or worse.  But what can we do, really?

Go and read the article. Help Michael out with a donation if you are able. Support someone who does his best to let those of us not on the battlefield know the truth of what is happening half a world away.

Michael Yon continues to give war journalism a good name.

As someone of French extraction, I am often saddened by the France of today. So it is with joy I bring these thoughts from a French military man who is currently serving alongside US forces in Afghanistan (HT: Anchoress):

We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while – they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army – one that the movies brought to the public as series showing “ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events”.

[...]

A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is – from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.

The whole article is worth reading (original version in French is also available from that same page).

Go read Michael Yon on just what it means to be connected in a country world at war.

Michael Yon has another article up with some much-appreciated context for the war in Afghanistan.