RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Saturday, Omar Khadr, al Qaeda member and killer of a U.S. serviceman, headed north to a civilian prison.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578028600592805828.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Two years ago this month, a Guantanamo Bay military jury sentenced a Canadian-born al Qaeda terrorist to 40 years in prison. Omar Khadr was convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan, including the killing, during an ambush, of a 28-year-old U.S. Special Forces medic named Christopher Speer, the father of two young children.

But what the jury didn’t know was that, even as they were deliberating the charges of “murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying,” Pentagon prosecutors had already struck a plea-bargain deal with Khadr, at the direction of Obama administration officials.

No public explanation for the deal has ever been given. But regardless of what the jury decided, Khadr would receive a sentence of just eight years. And he would have to serve only a single year of that sentence in U.S. custody before applying, with Washington’s blessing, to transfer to Canada. The application process took time, but eventually was complete.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030423958154556.html?mod=opinion_newsreel An anti-jihad message is ‘hate speech’ by today’s topsy-turvy standards. In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” So reads an advertisement that went up a week ago in New York City subway stations. Sponsored by Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, the ads […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030202508251578.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

“It was five in the afternoon when Mr. Obama took his 3 a.m. call. He still flubbed it.”

Why won’t the Libya story go away? Why can’t the memory of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff be consigned to the same sad-and-sealed file of Americans killed abroad in dangerous line of duty? How has an episode that seemed at first to have been mishandled by the Romney camp become an emblem of a feckless and deluded foreign policy?

The story-switching and stonewalling haven’t helped. But let’s start a little earlier.

The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.

What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal’s account of the meeting:

“There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya’s permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene.”

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/01/90-households-face-huge-tax-hike-in-january On November 7th, while cleaning crews are still tidying up from election night parties, America’s political class will be hurling themselves into another essential battle over government spending, taxes and debt. On January 2nd, 2013, absent some kind of budget deal, America will fall off the “fiscal cliff” and face a massive tax increase […]

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/10/01/Islamists-Offer-200k-Reward-For-Severed-Head-Of-Filmmaker

A second Pakistani politician has offered a reward for anyone who kills the maker of the anti-Islam film that has angered Muslims around the world.
Ikramullah Shahid put up the $200,000 bounty at a rally in Peshawar, before a crowd of about 15,000 people.

The gathering was led by the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, an umbrella group of radical Islamic and militant groups. Shahid is a member of the group.
This is the second such offer made by someone in Pakistan. A federal cabinet minister earlier offered $100,000 for the man behind the US-made film that portrays the Prophet Mohammed as a fraud, womaniser and child molester.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fools-paradise-of-swedish.html

Australia has been dubbed “The Sweden of the South,” and from Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry comes a robust statement deploring the attack on the Jewish community centre in Malmö, Sweden last Friday:

“It is bad enough that the Jewish Community Centre in Malmö was attacked with an explosive device and bricks through its reinforced entrance just after Yom Kippur. What is worse is that in Sweden, a country that prides itself on its progressive human rights record, the authorities lack the courage to confront the pervasive Jew-hatred that produced this attack in the first place and to bring the perpetrators of past attacks to justice. Worse still is the apparent public and media indifference.

Seventy years after Europe was devastated by the Nazis, antisemitism is once more commonplace and tacitly accepted on that continent. European civilisation has failed to cast off its long and disgraceful history of anti-Jewish prejudice and persecution. The mark of Cain remains etched indelibly on its forehead, and for this it will one day again pay a terrible price.”

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/10/01/the-narrative-in-london/?print=1 At a dinner party in London Saturday, I was asked to say a few words about the upcoming presidential election in the United States. All of the guests were what my friend Otto Penzler calls “politically mature,” i.e., they regarded Barack Obama with varying degrees of fear, loathing, and distaste. But they had also, […]

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/10/01/media-coup-detat/ Coup d’états come in a variety of forms. Some are violent with arrogant colonels pointing forty-fives at the temples of their predecessors and blowing their brains out; others are stealthy with the citizens awakening on an ordinary morning to find their whole world has changed yet not a drop of blood has been shed. […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/muslim-brotherhood-to-ryan-mauro-we-support-violence-against-aggressors-and-invaders On August 10, I posed a question to the Muslim Brotherhood on its official English-language Twitter page about whether it supports attacks on Israelis and U.S. soldiers in Muslim lands. The supposedly “non-violent” Islamist group’s reply was, “if they were aggressors and invaders of our lands no matter what nationality.” The answer was evasive, […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-obamagas-rip-off The Wall Street Journal notes that when President Obama took office in 2009, gas was $1.84 per gallon. The Lundberg Survey last Sunday shows gas in Chicago at $4.25. But that’s small potatoes. Wait until you learn what the U.S. Navy pays for Obamagas. Even loyal Democrats in the Teamsters Union would raise hell […]