Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is no stranger to the damage that can be done when government secrets (among other things) get blown, has declared the Wikileaks release of secret State Department documents to be "an attack on the world."
At the very least, the leaks are shaking up the diplomatic world as she, and we, knew it.
Among the seemingly endless stream of revelations is the fact that Secretary Clinton ordered US diplomats to spy on U.N. leaders (which actually strikes us as a pretty good idea), Saudi Arabia has been funding Al Qaeda (not exactly a surprise), Iran received missiles from North Korea, Russia is actively involved in cyberattacks and crime syndicates, and the world in general is even more screwed up than we thought...which would have seemed unimaginable even a few days ago.
The catastrophic consequences of the Wikileaks cybercrime can hardly be overstated, but US authorities are moving quickly to take control of the situation. Already, Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security have seized a number of music-downloading websites which have nothing to do with Wikileaks, but which are rumored to have involved the use of "computers" and so are considered both suspicious and potentially dangerous.
And Attorney General Eric Holder has issued the no-nonsense warning that individuals will be held responsible "to the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law." Also, to the extent that he can find anybody, he'd like to put them on trial in New York because the whole Khalid Sheikh Mohammed thing has fallen apart and Mr. Holder still wants to go there and write it off as a business expense.
Overall, it seems that the world, which was supposed to be unified by our first "global" president, has only gotten more complicated, more confused, more aggressive, and more dangerous during these first years of "Hope" and "Change."
Which Barack Obama really should say something about but, according to Wikileaks, he's busy playing basketball.-
The scenario was absolutely terrifying. A terrorist parks a van at the site of a crowded, outdoor Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Inside the van are six 55-gallon drums of explosive, wired to a cellphone detonator.
The terrorist walks a safe distance away, enters the detonator's number into his own cellphone and presses "send" - expecting thousands of men, women, and children to be killed or maimed. Instead, FBI agents tackled him as he screamed "Allahu Akbar!"
The bomb was a fake, supplied to the terrorist by undercover FBI agents.
The terrorist, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was a young middle-eastern man (Somali-born) who believes in a radical form of islam, has been in touch with suspected terrorists in Pakistan, and who said that his attempt to attack "families celebrating the holidays" was an act of jihad.
In other words, he would perfectly fit the profile of a radical islamic terrorist if such profiles were allowed to exist.
We are thankful that the FBI acted aggressively to protect Americans from this nightmarish scenario...and hope that the Department of Homeland Security and TSA will finally start to concentrate more on genuinely "likely terrorists" than on squeezing the breasts of nuns or touching children on their "special parts."
When Bush was in office, the Democrats repeatedly called on our intelligence agencies to "connect the dots" before later deciding that it was more politically correct to make believe the dots don't exist. But as Mohamed Osman Mohamud reminds us, there really is an appropriate use of profiling - and it needs to be done before the terrorists connect the detonators.-
The intended victims of islamic radical Mohamed Osman Mohamud
The Germans seemingly have a word for everything. And in this case, the word is "schadenfreude," which means "overwhelming sympathy for a great man."
We're referring of course, to the tragic maiming of Barack Obama's lower lip...the very same lip which promised us "Hope and Change" and "post-partisan politics," the lip which told us that Obamacare would bring down healthcare costs, the lip which so-recently delivered such inspiring words about our country's "recovery summer," and so much more. And now, in a sad instant, everything has changed.
The president, as we all now know, was bravely showing the world that the threat of nuclear escalation in North Korea wouldn't keep him from playing basketball. Because, as the president himself said back when he could still talk, "if we can't play basketball, then the terrorists - who are probably old white women and little children - have won."
Fortunately, our forefathers planned for just such emergencies and, per the requirements of constitutional succession, Joe Biden's lower lip has been transplanted onto the president's face. Should it be rejected before year's end, Nancy Pelosi's lower lip will be next in line.
This is a hard time for all Americans, but we must somehow try to carry on. Relying, if we must, on the concept of schadenfreude. Because truthfully, we're full of it.
Lower lip, we hardly knew you.
