...and while the left refuses to see Islamic terrorism for what it is they ridicule those who do as being "fear-mongers" and "right-wingers".

Just heard that Obama wants to release some Gitmo detainees in the US - release.

I hate to be doom and gloom....
It really isnt part of my make up....but this post is absolutely correct.

We dont know the time...place...or date...
But, the policies of the Obama administration, are going to get many Americans killed.

Then Obama's reaction will be to apologize to the misunderstood fellow....remember...no such thing as a terrorist...and remind us that we are to blame and they were just acting out.

They just want a big hug and all will be better.

Deep down, I don't think enough of the Democratic leadership really wants us to win the war.

Bill:

Yup, the Obama follies continue. Holder—AKA "America is a cowardly country"—wants to release some Chinese Muslim terrorists in America because they might be tortured in China.

So they can kill Americans with impunity.

Sounds perfectly reasonable.

Lance:

Obama, in eternal campaign mode, has little understanding nor interest in national defense. He's a lightweight with a gift for image management care of David Axelrod.

The Islamic terrorist world understands this quote well and are gearing up for some major terrorist attacks—coming to a nearby American city in the near future.

And then Obama will take "full responsibility" for George Bush's mistakes that led to the atrocity.

Jake:

I agree, the Dem leadership is a group of self-loathing liberal multi-culturalists who wish to see America become a colony of western Europe.

The only rational explanation is that the current government is trying really hard to destroy America. I cannot think of any other reason, beyond insanity of course.

"man-caused disasters"...by this formulation:

a)a petrochemical plant explosion caused by operator mistakes

and

b)a nuclear strike conducted by a nation-state

and

c)a terrorist attack

...are all the same thing.

People who use more abstract terms when more tangible ones are appropriate are generally either 1)really dumb while believing they are smart, or 2)trying to hide something.

Terrorisim is terrorism. A "man-caused disaster" is when a theatre or a nightlub has inflammable (that's right, folks, inflammable, "capable of becoming inflamed") decorations and inadequate exits and you pack it full of people and someone lights a match.

Lovely, no surprise, part of that Lefty-lingo. My daughter, the lawyer working in Israel's Movement for Quality in Govt, was recently with her fellow staff at Yad Veshem and furious that their agenda is to show universalism and totally ignore antisemitism. My anti-yad veshem pet peeve is their use of the term "perished," rather than murdered.
My latest is promoting the death penalty for terrorists.
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2009/03/death-penalty-for-arab-terrorists.html

Dear Batya: You're right. "Perished," rather than "were murdered" is pussyfooting, and people who want to pussyfoot shouldn't work for Yad VaShem. I remember a Holocaust survivor saying to me once "You don't say 'died in the Holocaust. 'Was murdered.'"

I want a teleprompter too. I can never think of those pithy comebacks when I need them. I see a market.

"man-caused disaster" -- isn't that *THE* definition of Obama's election?

Of course, by the liberals' definition, Hitler and the Nazis were "misguided individuals"!

There's going to be a revolution in this world -- one day, the terrorists are going to hit us again and the silent moral majority is going to rebel against the leftist elitists who think "we deserved it". Hope I'm still alive to see that *change*.

"one day, the terrorists are going to hit us again and the silent moral majority is going to rebel against the leftist elitists who think 'we deserved it'"

Not so sure about that...the inculcation of "progressive" ideas is becoming so deep that the blame for the attacks might well be focused on (a)Israel, (b)American Jews, and (c)"the rich."

David is right. Liberal ideas are now seen as the norm; conservative thought has been gradually eliminated from the educational curriculum, and our children are being taught almost completely from a liberal perspective.

One of the biggest complaints I have about my denomination is that we removed ourselves from the playing field. We didn't encourage our youth to go on to higher education, we didn't run for the school board, we basically retreated from the world and let the liberals run everything.

The liberal perspective has taken over so much that it took Fox News to wake people up to how biased the media were. I have heard many people say they never realized how ideological the MSM was until Fox came along; they never noticed the subtle (and not so subtle) biases in headlines and news stories. Likewise, we don't see the biases in what concepts are taught--or how they are taught--in our schools and colleges.

When conservatives complain about the overwhelming leftist professoriate, we get dismissed with "There's no, or little, ideology getting pushed on students in the classroom." But the example of Fox News has shown us that statement is false. Even if professors aren't jumping up and down on desks telling the white kids they are racist (as happened in my daughter's anthropology class), they are presenting material based on their particular viewpoint. To us, that viewpoint is, at minimum, distorted; at worst, dangerous. We have to hammer that fact home.

Too long we have stood by while our educational system becomes more and more liberal and even radicalized. Now our country and our civilization are at risk. We are in for an epic war to save it, and we are late to the battlefield.

That is a good summary of our educational system Dr Carol. Recently (until some medical issues came up) I signed up at our local community college to take some computer classes.

Obama mania permeated the air as if it was the normal state of mind.

I have nothing but disdain for Christians who consider it more noble to not vote and detach themselves from our problems, preferring to let "God straighten it out" in his time.

They wear this like a badge of honor.

I wonder if it will take some cataclysmic event to change it.

Dr. Carol:

Beautifully articulated.

My friend, David Horowitz, former leftist radical, is doing valuable work in exposing the radical agenda in our universities. He maintains that the leftist indoctrination is not at all subtle, with Marxist and feminist professors giving courses on how to create a revolution in America.

David:

Sadly, I agree with you. No matter what atrocities are committed by the terrorists the overwhelming number of liberals will end up blaming Israel/The Jooz and the West.

The self-loathing prevalent among the chattering classes is a virus as fatal as the Bubonic plague.

Tell David to keep fighting the good fight! Yes, certain departments are proudly and fiercely indoctrinating. My point is that many others are patting themselves on the back for being "non-ideological" but their bias is subtle. Still there, but they have blinkers on and don't see it. How can we expect our youth to see it, if they've not been exposed to anything different?

David's got a comment here on this issue, and so will I if the moderator lets my comment post (they don't always):
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/20/politics

Shavuah Tov (a good week) to all.) G-d forgive me, but I take comfort from the thought that, if Israel is ever destroyed, G-d forbid, Europe is next on the Islamofascist hit list. All the people in Europe who scream "apartheid" and "genocide" when the Israelis try to stay alive, all the people in Europe who want the Jews destroyed just as much as Hitler, y'mach shemo, did, they just want somebody else to do the messy work so they can pretend to be decent people, so they can pretend to be moved by slaughtered Jews, just the way they pretend to be moved by Anne Frank, may the al-mighty avenge her blood, will be finding out how the Arabs behave, any country they take over, any chance they get. Lets see if the French and Spanish and British continue to be as civilized, as willing to make concessions in the probably vain hope of peace, as anxious to avoid killing enemy civilians, as the Israelis continue to be.

There are problems with the word "Terrorism". If you look carefully, it produces more anger than fear. If we wanted to be logical, we might call it "Angrism".

People are confused about what exactly it is. If you look at the web sites of DHS or the State Department or the Israeli government (etc) you get very different, but long and rambling, definitions. If you have one meaning and I have another, are we really communicating? If you and I come up with a really great and accurate definition of "Terrorism", what good would it do? Only we would know it.

If I am right and "Terrorism" always involves Acts of War, then what is "State Terrorism"? Nothing but Acts of War dressed up as something else. "Terrorism" becomes a euphemism. The word enables us to avoid handling the situation.

Of course, "Man caused disasters" is about the same thing as an "Acts of War".

Try these definitions for "Terrorism": 'Acts of War by NGOs'. 'Acts of War by civilians'.

Actually, it makes sense to have a single category for man-made disasters. If you have a chemical plant upwind of a major population centre, you need to assess how risky it is, and it makes sense to have a single risk assessment that includes the possibilities of accident, criminal damage, terrorism, negligence and general-purpose malice all in the same report. A facility that's inherently dangerous from an "accident" point of view is also usually an easier target for terrorists.

What you don't want to do is have multiple agencies all trying to evaluate the same facilities, and maybe missing stuff that falls through the cracks because of jurisdiction issues. You also don't want an agency with no terrorism remit compiling a sensitive report that would be invaluable to terrorists and releasing it publicly because they don't understand the terrorism angle.

If you want a risk-assessment for, say, what happens if someone goes around deliberately setting fires in California, you don't want to do the same assessment three times for three different agencies depending on whether the motivation for setting those fires might be terrorism, criminal extortion or insurance fraud, revenge, or simple pyromania. You do the assessment and response plan once, and you do it properly. This is how risk assessors for the insurance industry already work.

You need a single response plan that's informed by all the possibilities, because if a disaster happens, it might take days or weeks to find whether the cause was "really" terrorism or criminality or a disgruntled employee. Your response has to be immediate, and you can't afford to have different agencies arguing about who has juridiction, based on their different nuanced assesments as to whether a genocidal mass-murderer is technically trying tio "terrorise", or just trying to kill millions of people as an end in itself (which isn't technically terrorism).

So although the name they chose was ugly (and should be changed), this sounds like a competent, efficient government decision. It's not a "flag-waving" feelgood move designed to inspire, it's a sensible and boring practical management move that should make the government more efficient, cut waste and red tape, reduce response times, reduce political wrangling in the middle of a disaster (of the sort that created the Hurricane Katrina fiasco) and potentially save lives, all of which are good things.