Much has transpired in the intervening year. I would like to thank No Quarter regular reader, Boonies, for sending me this update,
Aasiya Zubair Hassan’s Tortured, Manipulated Life: Beheaded woman left statement detailing years of torment, tragedy.

I should warn you that, as the headline would indicate, this is a difficult story. It is about as far from a “feel good” story as one can get. It is painful, it is grotesque, and it is infuriating. Just so you know.

And now, to her story:

When Aasiya Zubair Hassan was finally ready to leave her husband, she prepared herself. She gathered copies of her police reports, photos of her beaten face, images of her ransacked house, scripts her husband made her memorize.

Then she painstakingly chronicled her years of torment in a 21-page court statement that painted her husband as not just a batterer, but a cruel, manipulative monster.

She detailed how he deprived her of sleep to “improve her personality,” made her sign memos authorizing him to punish her if she talked with the police and Child Protective Services, and threatened her with the loss of her children whenever she tried to break free.

Toward the end of her statement appealing for divorce in February 2009, she reflected on how furious her husband would be when he saw the document: “I am afraid of what he might do.”

One week later, she was dead. Her husband, Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan, led police to her stabbed and decapitated body in the Bridges TV studio they founded in Orchard Park.

Anyone who has done any work in the field of domestic violence, as I have, knows that this is when a woman is most at risk – when she is planning her escape. Unfortunately, this case does nothing to change that statistic:

None of this has apparently stopped Hassan from continuing — in letters to reporters and in his defense in court — to try to paint himself as the victim and his wife as the abuser.

“He was the abuser. He was the perpetrator. Now, he’s the manipulator,” said Afshan Qureshi, an advocate of domestic violence victims who knew both Aasiya Zubair Hassan, Hassan’s third wife, and Sadia Hassan, his second wife. “Those who are good at emotional abuse are good manipulators.”

From the Erie County jail, Hassan has sent handwritten letters to The Buffalo News and others portraying himself as an abused and battered spouse. In each case, he signed his mother’s name to the documents.

“If you are a mother like me, would you like to see your son being abused and cannot even turn to the system for help?” stated one letter.

It is clear that he wrote the letters, not his mother. Hassan, 45, has neat and distinctive penmanship. The News found the handwriting in all these letters match that of other documents signed under his own name. The postmarks are from Buffalo; his mother lives in Texas.

If you have any desire to read any of the letters this man has forged, click HERE, and you can get to them through links in the article.

I am not surprised by his actions. Rather, they seem to be pretty typical for someone like him:

Hassan seems to have no reservations about manipulating people by assuming other identities. In numerous cases, he appeared to have secretly authored documents that re-created reality and/or portrayed his wife as a dominating, mentally unstable woman.

Among the examples:

• Zubair Hassan stated that her husband forced her to give him the password to her e-mail account and subsequently logged into her account and sent e-mails to his attorney and his court-appointed psychologist pretending to be her.

One e-mail sent to psychologist Kenneth Condrell opens by stating, “I have been reading the Dale Carnegie book on “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” There is a chapter about admitting mistakes quickly and apologizing profusely and repeatedly. It struck me as a thuderbolt [sic] that I had difficulty admitting a mistake to Mo and struggled to apologize.”

It goes on to state, “I honestly do not believe he belongs in the Domestic Violence class. He has so much insights [sic] into human behavior and self-awareness.”

• While preparing to defend himself in a child neglect case, Hassan scripted the responses he wanted his wife to give when his defense lawyer questioned her in court. He made her stay home for two days to memorize her answers, she said.

In response to a question by defense lawyer David Siegel, “Do you think you are a battered woman?” Zubair Hassan was to respond as stated in the script: “What nonsense. Complete hogwash. I have always been a strong woman and a high achiever and no one violates my boundaries … My husband cannot tell me what I can and cannot do. I am my own person.”

• Hassan apparently drafted a letter for psychologist Condrell to sign describing his wife as a dominating and aggressive woman and further stating that “this personality profile test further indicates that Mrs. Hassan does not have the personality of a typical abused wife.”

The draft letter goes on to state “that there is no safety need that requires keeping Mr. and Mrs. Hassan apart over the next 6 months.”

A copy of the actual letter signed by Condrell and obtained by The News is much shorter. In it, Condrell states the personality test taken by Zubair Hassan as part of her master’s program in business “shows her to be a dominant, strong willed, aggressive woman.”

But he does not suggest that she wasn’t abused and does not state that her husband posed no safety threat. Further, it omits all references from the draft letter describing the husband as being “a persuasive, poised, influential, convincing, demonstrative and trusting person.”

Wow. Again, I wish I could say this was unusual. I cannot tell you the lengths to which some abusers have gone to play the victim, or to try and manipulate others involved in the situation to deny what the abuser has been doing, often for a number of years (and it usually starts out slowly, little by little, chipping away at the person’s self esteem, belittling them, then isolating them, cutting them off from finances, and on it goes):

In Hassan’s handwritten letter to The News, he states that Condrell testified in court that “Aasiya was aggressive, controlling and arrogant, while Mo was humble, kind and polite.”

Condrell declined to comment on the matter, citing his professional ethics, but Hassan’s statements are not supported by Condrell’s letter to the court.

• Hassan wrote two letters to The News under his mother’s name. The second letter included annotated copies of e-mails purportedly between Hassan and his wife.

“Inaccurate image’

The letters describe Hassan as part of an “epidemic” of battered men and cite authors and experts who have addressed the issue. They also describe his wife as an abuser who “needed proper medical help.”

“Many news stories have presented an inaccurate image of my son … The main reason for his difficulties is that he is too much of a people pleaser who avoids conflict. For years he kept appeasing a demanding wife. The more he appeased her, the more demanding she became,” one letter stated.

These actions are attributed to a man described as “manipulative” and “sick” by those who knew him and/or Zubair Hassan.

“She’s gone, and now the only thing he can destroy is her reputation,” said Faizan Haq, who once worked with both husband and wife. “He has nothing else in his control except her name. In a way, he’s still abusing her. He hasn’t stopped.”

In January, defense lawyer Frank M. Bogulski stated in court that Hassan was a “battered spouse” and promised “a revolutionary defense” that would get Hassan acquitted, using both psychiatric elements and legal justification.

Both defense lawyers, Bogulski and Julie Atti Rogers, state they are not committed to a specific defense and have not seen the divorce affidavit by Zubair Hassan.

“An affidavit is only one person’s side,” Bogulski cautioned. “Just because it was put in an affidavit doesn’t mean it was true.”

That’s exactly what I mean. The batterer often presents him(her)self as the batteree (if you will), often knowing the correct language to use to try and make that case, the right buttons to push. I cannot tell you how many times the batterer will get a restraining order against the person whom they are battering. It is far more common than one might think. at least in this case, the DA seemed to have a clue:

District Attorney Frank Sedita laughed when he heard of Hassan’s self-portrayal as a victim last week.

“What do any of these claims have to do with the issue that is before the court and the issue that will be before the jury?” he said. “Is there sufficient evidence to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant murdered his wife? That is the only issue to this point.”

In Zubair Hassan’s divorce appeal to the court, she attached 16 exhibits attesting to her husband’s abusive and controlling nature.

One exhibit, dated March 7, 2008, is a formally written, “confidential” memorandum of understanding that Hassan made his wife sign.

In it, both spouses “agree” that under threat of punishment, Zubair Hassan will not call, cooperate with, or threaten to call law enforcement. She also “agrees” not to threaten to leave him.

Physical abuse

The sworn statement signed by Zubair Hassan a week before she died brings to light many other details of a terrifying reality.

Contrary to Hassan’s assertions to The News that he never used his physical size to overpower his wife, Zubair Hassan’s sworn statement is full of instances where she claims he used his size and strength to imprison or physically hurt her.

Most of those claims are supported by police reports, photographs and witnesses. Among the worst incidents described by Zubair Hassan that were previously unknown to The News:

• When Zubair Hassan unexpectedly became pregnant in early summer of 2006, her husband, who is a stocky 6-foot-2, imprisoned her in the bedroom and sat on her until she admitted she needed psychiatric help.

In two separate incidents later that month, he punched her in the face, and dragged her down the driveway and sat on her after trying to convince her to have an abortion. She subsequently miscarried.

• The family’s four children — two older ones from a previous marriage, and two very young children born to Zubair Hassan — were also victims.

Child Protective Services investigated several complaints lodged by school personnel against Hassan for physical abuse of the children and his wife, ransacking the house and otherwise posing a threat to their safety.

Jennifer Greer, who baby-sat for the Hassan children from 2002 to 2008, said the young daughter would talk about hearing thunder on nights when there was no storm, and the young son spent much of his life living in an imaginary world where everyone was a superhero and they all cared for each other.

“It was heartbreaking to watch him go through that,” she said.

As we know, children also pay a price when there is domestic violence in the home. Sadly, this story is no exception:

• In October 2007, Zubair Hassan tried to fly to New York for a few days, but while Greer was driving her to the airport along Route 219 with the two young children in the back seat, Hassan ran their car off the road.

Greer cried as she recalled the terrified children in the car.

“Raising them, they were like my own kids,” she said. “All of us could have died on that day.”

• Hassan repeatedly punched his wife in the face until blood was pouring out her nose in April 2008. His wife recalled the oldest daughter screaming to her father, “I’m taking her to the hospital. I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to let her die here.”

Hassan did not let her seek medical treatment and refused to let her leave the house for a week because of her bruises, Zubair Hassan stated.

Two previous wives

Zubair Hassan was not the only woman who charged Hassan with abuse. So did his two previous wives.

Qureshi, president of Saathi of Rochester, a domestic violence program for South Asian women, said Hassan once pushed his second wife, Sadia, out of a moving car.

After the Muslim community intervened on her behalf, he told her she could have a divorce and get her green card only if she let him claim he was the abused victim.

“She was very scared,” Qureshi said. “She didn’t know what to do, where to go.”

Zubair Hassan asked for an order of protection as part of her divorce appeal, allowing her husband to be near her only at the Bridges TV studio, where she was later found dead.

“I am fearful for my children’s safety as well as my own,” she stated.

Hassan’s lawyers said their client shouldn’t be convicted by the media before his murder trial begins in September.

“We don’t in any way want to disparage Aasiya or her memory,” Bogulski said. “This is a horrible tragedy. But at the same time, we have to keep in mind that there is a presumption of innocence in regard to my client, and we ask the public to keep an open mind.”How Dostan@buffnews.com

Oh, yes. That is important – presumed innocence and not trying cases in the media. Though Hassan DID tell police his wife was dead, and her body was found at his business. But still, right?

I have written a fair amount about Women’s History this month, and as much as it pains me to say, this is a part of our history, too. Not even so much our history as it is the present for far too many of us (95% of battered persons are women). Chances are good that right now, right this very second, a woman is being battered. Almost half (42%) of women who are murdered are killed by people with whom they are intimate. That is an issue of monumental proportion, if you ask me. I am glad that Secretary Clinton acknowledged in her recent speech to the UN that we have a ways to go for women’s equality here at home, but wow – do we ever.

But whatever we do to address this critical issue, it will be too late for Aasiya Zubair Hassan, and a number of other women in this country. That is just heartbreaking. But we must push on, we must put a stop to violence against women once and for all. And we must do it NOW!

Case in point: Washington Post “media critic” Howard Kurtz’s article today about FOX News Channel’s “reporters’” growing discomfort with the shenanigans of FNC darling Glenn Beck, he of the mighty chalkboard of insanity, his ludicrous fits of crying, his manic desire to be a political player, the fearmongering, paranoia and Stalin-Mao-Hitler-Marxist-Communist-Racist-Obama-hating cavalcade of madness. The meme that Beck is merely an entertainer and that FOX personalities are worried that the new star on the block could damage its relationship with the White House and the channel’s reputation are laughable at best. After all, Beck organized the infamous “9/12″ rallies, a non-news event enthusiastically covered by FOX, complete with inflated crowd estimates. Beck, in displays of false modesty, claims to be a mere rodeo clown. Nonsense. He’s a liar, an ignoramus and a dangerous Father Coughlinesque demagogue who has done enormous damage to political discourse and the profession of journalism. (Beck would probably decry Coughlin’s loyalties but the technique remains the same).

Beck apologized recently for wasting his audience’s time following a hilariously absurd and demented interview with disgraced tickling enthusiast and former Congressman Eric Massa. But not to worry, he’s back to whatever passes for normal now.

FOX’s “news” operation didn’t show restraint or a desire for fact-checking while helping pump damaging, and false stories about the Clintons into the media churn, with the Vince Foster conspiracy theory still holding a strong showing behind the JFK assassination.

And it’s not as if Beck makes money for the network. He’s a loss leader (here’s a partial list of companies that have pulled their ads, despite Beck’s strong ratings). There are rumblings that Rupert Murdoch’s children are fed up with the drama surrounding FOX News’s foolishness, but you can bet that as long as daddy Rupert is in charge and Roger Ailes continues to draw breath nothing will change.

The Kurtz article follows an absurd piece in the Washington Post by former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines. With wide-eyed wonder, he ponders the vexing question of why reputable media organizations don’t call FOX out as a propaganda mill. This from a man who if he had a sense of shame would have the decency to keep quiet about media ethics, considering that reporter Bush/Cheney stenographer Judy Miller’s wildly incorrect WMD/Chalabi articles started being published in the NYT on his watch. The New York Times, which sets the agenda for all other publications in the United States, was thereby complicit in pushing falsehoods that led to an unjust and unnecessary war, costing thousands of American lives and ruining the U.S.’s reputation around the world. Good work, Howell.

But to answer your question, Howell: Cowardice. The American media are sheep. You’re welcome.

American reporters love to express their wonder at the Pakistani media’s love of conspiracy theories and wrinkle their brows over what a terrible impact the dissemination of false and sensationalistic information could have on the U.S.-Pak relationship. Look in the mirror, people.

– Cross Post from: The Pakistan Update

Van Hollen Charges Five With Election Fraud

Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today.

Two of those charged – Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine – worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies) registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen release says.

Both were charged with one felony count.

Attempts to reach ACORN today were unsuccessful.

Hmmm – I wonder if they have tried the Community Organizations International (COI) name? Just a suggestion.

The ACORN employees were not the only ones:

Also charged was a couple – Herbert, 60, and Suzanne Gunka, 54, both of Milwaukee – for allegedly double-voting in November 2008, once absentee and once at the polls.

Michael Henderson, 40, was hit with two felony charges of being a felon who cast a ballot even though he was still on probation. The Milwaukee man was convicted in 2005 in Rock County with two felonies for bail jumping and one disorderly conduct misdemeanor.

He was sentenced to five years’ probation.

Each felony count for voter fraud carries a maximum penalty of 3 1/2 years behind bars and a $10,000 fine. All five individuals are scheduled to appear in court on April 20.

The charges were brought as part of the Milwaukee Election Fraud Task Force.

Van Hollen’s announcement comes the same day that No Quarter disclosed that the Milwaukee County prosecutor for election fraud accused Milwaukee police of sitting on their hands and failing to investigate these cases for the first half of last year.

The prosecutor, Bruce Landgraf, said the Milwaukee Police Department began looking at election fraud cases last year only after Van Hollen’s agency ” stepped up to start the work MPD should have commenced immediately after your referral.”

Landgraf was addressing a city election official.

Doesn’t this just make you wonder how widespread the voter fraud was in 2008? Given ACORN’s multiple state charges, I think it’s safe to say these are not isolated incidents in Wisconsin.

At some point, Obama’s sycophants are going to have to admit and accept that ACORN is corrupt. These are not the first charges by a LONG shot, nor have all charges been dropped, as many supporters would like to claim (for voter registration fraud).

And even if those folks cannot the reality of what ACORN is, and the crimes it commits in an effort to further its partisan politics, American taxpayers should not be funding this organization. While ACORN may do good work in other areas, it simply cannot be trusted with voter registration in any way, shape, or form. That has become abundantly clear. As they say, where there is this much smoke, there is most definitely fire. To say ACORN has had one brush fire after another is an understatement, as is: STOP GIVING THEM OUR MONEY ALREADY!

Ahem. In this election year, better keep an eye out for more smoke from ACORN. Where’s Smokey the Bear these days? I think we could use him, don’t you?

(As many of you know, I have written on ACORN numerous times, far too many to list here. If you wish to see previous posts, here are two recent ones: here, and here.)

It is time for serious soul-searching regarding the role of the CIA and the intelligence community. Last month’s operational and intelligence failures led to the deaths of seven CIA officers in Afghanistan and might have resulted in nearly 300 deaths on a Northwest Airlines plane headed for Detroit.

It is particularly shocking that President Barack Obama’s chief of counterterrorism, John Brennan, conceded that the latter failure was caused by the fact that there was “no one intelligence entity or team or task force assigned responsibility for doing a follow-up investigation” of the considerable intelligence that was collected.

It is unbelievable that the President had to order the creation of a system for tracking threat reports. The failures beg the question of what have we learned since 9/11.

Previous CIA failures regarding the unanticipated decline and fall of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq War demonstrate a $75 billion intelligence enterprise that can provide neither strategic nor tactical warning to policymakers and is reluctant to provide uncomfortable truth to power.

The serious problems that need to be addressed include the important nexus between intelligence and policy — and the need for a CIA that is not beholden to policy or political interests; the militarization of the intelligence community – which must be reversed; the lack of Congressional oversight – which must be corrected, and the decline of operational tradecraft – which must be investigated.

Before addressing reform in Part II, however, we must first confront the mythology that surrounds the intelligence enterprise.

The Greatest Myth: The 9/11 Commission offered insight into the systemic problems of the CIA and the intelligence community. The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 solved the problems that had been exposed by the 9/11 Commission by creating a director of national intelligence, the so-called intelligence tsar.

In fact, the 9/11 Commission failed to use the powers it had been given to explore the reasons for the 9/11 intelligence failure.

It deferred unnecessarily to the White House’s use of “executive privilege,” and failed to stand up to CIA Director George Tenet, who refused to permit commissioners to debrief prisoners held by the CIA. The commission failed to use its subpoena powers and lacked experience in the world of the intelligence community.

The CIA’s Inspector General concluded that the 9/11 failure was about personal failures, accountability and bureaucratic ineptitude. The same could be said for the Christmas Day events. The commission focused on larger issues: budgets and funding, organizational problems and structural fixes.

The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 actually made a bad situation worse. It created a new bureaucracy under a director of national intelligence (DNI) beholden to the White House, as well as a centralized system that stifles creative thinking and risks more politicized intelligence.

The DNI was not given the authority to challenge the Pentagon’s control of key intelligence agencies and their budgets, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was not given a central depository to fill the analytical gaps between domestic and international terrorist threats.

Thus, the major problems exposed by 9/11 – the lack of a centralized repository of data and the need for more, rather than less, competitive analysis on terrorism – was repeated in the Christmas Day failure.

Finally, by making the DNI responsible for the daily briefing of the President, it ensured that the “tsar” would have little time to conceptualize and implement the strategic reforms that were needed.

President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to request a National Intelligence Estimate before making his decision late last year to increase military forces in Afghanistan revealed his lack of respect for the work of the intelligence community.

Myth Number Two: The intelligence community is a genuine community that fosters intelligence cooperation and the sharing of intelligence information. The intelligence community has never functioned as a community.

With the exception of the production of National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), which are indeed a corporate product of the community, there is limited sharing of the most important and sensitive documents collected by the various intelligence agencies, and very little esprit de corps within the community.

There have always been deep rivalries between civilian and military agencies, with the CIA and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence Research often lined up against the Defense Intelligence Agency and the four military intelligence branches.

This division was particularly profound during the debates over Soviet military power and the verification of Soviet and American arms control agreements, with military intelligence consistently exaggerating the strength of the Soviet military and opposing the disarmament agreements of the 1970’s and 1980’s.

The 9/11 and Christmas Day failures revealed continued parochialism and lack of cooperation within the community.

The intelligence community suffers from an inability to learn from its failures and successes. The CIA needs to emulate the U.S. Army, which routinely conducts after-action reports and boasts a Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The center has a small staff, takes advantage of teams of experts to investigate specific issues, and maintains a direct line of communication to senior military leaders to understand what needs to be examined.

Conversely, the CIA has resorted to a culture of cover-up to conceal failures such as the collapse of the Soviet Union; 9/11; the Iraq War; the Christmas Day event; and the suicidal bombing of the CIA’s most important facility in Afghanistan.

Myth Number Three: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence offers a genuine possibility for exercising central control over the intelligence community. The creation of the DNI has worsened the malaise within the CIA without reform for either the agency or the intelligence community.

The fact that the President had to meet with more than 20 intelligence principals to discuss the Christmas Day failure points to the crazy-quilt bureaucratic structure created in the wake of 9/11, as well as the lack of centralized authority and responsibility within the community.

The Pentagon has veto power over the DNI with respect to transferring personnel and budgetary authority from individual agencies into joint centers or other agencies. This fact undermines the possibility of any legitimate reform process.

The first DNI, John Negroponte, became frustrated and left suddenly in December 2006 for a lesser position at the State Department. His two successors have been retired naval admirals, Mike McConnell and Dennis Blair; neither has an understanding of the importance of strategic and long-term intelligence.

The DNI spends far too much time preparing for his daily briefing of the President, which should be in the hands of the CIA, and the issue of cyber-security, which should be in the hands of the NSA.

Instead of pursuing reform, Negroponte, McConnell and Blair have built a huge, lumbering and bloated bureaucracy that includes a principal deputy director, four deputy directors, three associate directors and no fewer than 19 assistant deputy directors.

The DNI has a huge budget (over $1 billion) and has taken its management staff from the CIA and INR, thus weakening the overall intelligence apparatus. There has been no real accountability of the DNI; Congressional intelligence oversight committees have failed to monitor the DNI’s hiring of contractors with extravagant salaries.

Myth Number Four: The CIA is not a policy agency, but is chartered to provide objective and balanced intelligence analysis to decision-makers without any policy axe to grind.

This is possibly the most harmful myth of all, because CIA’s covert action, which has registered a series of strategic disasters over the past 60 years, is part of the policy implementation process.

As a result, much clandestine collection over the years has been designed to collect information that supports policy.

The CIA was unfairly described 30 years ago as a “rogue elephant out of control.” In fact, the CIA is part of the White House policy process. Various presidents have authorized regime change in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, the Congo, the Dominican Republic and South Vietnam, which have had disastrous consequences for U.S. interests.

The White House authorized assassination plots in Cuba, the Congo and South Vietnam, and provided legal sanction for the CIA to create secret prisons, conduct torture and abuse, and pursue renditions, often involving totally innocent people without recourse to judicial proceedings.

Myth Number Five: The 9/11 and Christmas Day failures were due to the lack of sharing intelligence collection. The conventional wisdom is that the 9/11 intelligence failure was caused primarily by the failure to share intelligence, particularly the failure of the CIA to inform the FBI of the presence of two al-Qaeda operatives in the United States.

In actual fact, the problem was far more serious; it was a problem of sloppiness and incompetence in dealing with sensitive intelligence information.

It has been established that 50-60 analysts and operatives from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA had access to information that Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who had links to al-Qaeda, had entered the United States long before 9/11.

These analysts and operatives failed to inform leading officials at their own agencies of the two al-Qaeda operatives, who fell through the cracks of the system. Eight years later, the Nigerian bomber similarly escaped detection despite excellent intelligence collection that was seen by most intelligence agencies.

There is still an inadequate flow of information between intelligence agencies. The United States lacks one central depository for all information on national and international terrorism, and the proliferation of intelligence agencies makes sharing of intelligence products even more cumbersome.

The DNI and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) were created after 9/11 to make sure that intelligence was shared, but this led to a downgrading of the CIA and the lack of a single agency responsible for analyzing intelligence on terrorism.

Tremendous amounts of useful intelligence are collected, but intelligence analysis has not been appreciably improved.

The NSA had information on the Nigerian bomber that wasn’t shared with the CIA and the FBI; the CIA prepared a biographic study of the Nigerian bomber, which it didn’t share with NCTC. The State Department did not pursue whether the Nigerian bomber had a U.S. visa, let alone a multiple-entry visa, in his possession.

The so-called intelligence community lacks an effective computer system to coordinate all intelligence information, although it does have access to the State Department’s consular database-listing visa holders, which it failed to consult.

The DHS’s customs and border units had sufficient intelligence to interrogate the bomber when he landed in Detroit; its Transportation Security Agency lacked intelligence to keep him from boarding a plane to Detroit.

Myth Number Six: The CIA successfully recruits foreign assets. The CIA’s National Clandestine Service (NCS) relies on walk-ins and rarely recruits major espionage assets. The most successfulwalk-ins, moreover, such as Col. Oleg Penkovsky, often have great difficulty in getting CIA operatives to accept them.

The NCS has had little success in recruiting assets in the closed world of terrorism or in closed societies such as China, Iran and North Korea. Many of the agents recruited from Cuba, East Germany and the former Soviet Union were double agents reporting to their host governments. The suicide bomber in Afghanistan last month was a double agent.

The CIA has to rely on foreign intelligence liaison sources for sensitive intelligence collection and even the recruitment of foreign assets. There are few al-Qaeda operatives who have been killed or captured without the assistance of foreign liaison, particularly the Pakistani intelligence service.

But the suicide bomber at the CIA base in Afghanistan last month was recruited with the help of the Jordanian intelligence service, an extremely risky way to recruit assets; he was brought onto the base without proper inspection and met with more than a dozen officers.

The loss of top-ranking CIA operations officers in Afghanistan points to the need for a review of CIA clandestine operations. The current CIA director, a former congressman, has surrendered to the clandestine culture and cadre; he is unlikely to lead a reform movement.

And President Obama’s appointment of former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, a master of the CIA cover-up over the past two decades, points to a continued cover-up.

Instead of a CIA outside the policy community telling truth to power, providing objective and balanced intelligence to policymakers and avoiding policy advocacy, as President Harry S. Truman wanted, we now have the CIA as a paramilitary organization.

Indeed, there has been a trend toward militarization of the entire intelligence community. In the Bush administration, the CIA was significantly weakened, with a director, Michael Hayden, who was a four-star general.

The Obama administration appointed a retired admiral to be the director of national intelligence, a retired general to be national security adviser, and retired generals to be ambassadors to key countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

By placing the position of the DNI in the hands of the military, the Bush and Obama administrations completed the militarization of the CIA and even the intelligence community itself, where active-duty and retired general officers run the Office of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

The Pentagon is responsible for nearly 90 percent of all personnel in the intelligence community and 85 percent of the community’s $75 billion budget.
The absence of an independent civilian counter to the power of military intelligence threatens civilian control of the decision to use military power and makes it more likely that intelligence will be tailored to suit the purposes of the Pentagon. This is exactly what President Truman wanted to prevent.

Finally, the Congressional intelligence oversight process has made no genuine effort to monitor CIA’s flawed intelligence analysis or its clandestine operations, and failed to challenge the illegal activities of the CIA that were part of the policy process.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has sat on her hands while CIA Director Leon Panetta methodically dismantled and marginalized the oversight responsibilities of the Office of the Inspector General.

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. [This story originally appeared at Truthout.org.]

Many of you may know that I spent a few years in the Boston area. And no, this isn’t about baseball, though I can say – it is hard being a Fan of the Pinstripes in Red Sox Nation. Clearly, though, I survived.

No, this is about some of the legal cases that have Martha Coakley’s name on them. Recently, Bronwyn’s Harbor made mention of one case, the Fells Acres Case, with which I am very familiar. Why? Because I knew Cheryl LaFave and her mother, Violet Amirault. They, along with their brother, were falsely accused of child abuse at the daycare center they ran. They are now all out of prison. John Stossel did an investigative report for ABC News on the Fells Acres case, and the imprisonment of the Amirault family (h/t to Brownyn’s Harbor):

Three lives were destroyed by false allegations – three. People, GOOD people, who never deserved the horrible stigma that became attached to them. And Martha Coakley was hellbent on keeping Gerald Amirault in prison, even after the glaring lack of evidence, and the glaring coercion of testimony from the children.

There was another big case with which Coakley was connected (h/t to Nazareth Priest for this article). That was the “Pedophile Priest” case,t he second in a three-part series of “Martha’s Greatest Hits: The Things The Democrats Would Like You To Forget About Martha Coakley.” Click HERE for Part Three.

Back to the case at hand. This one is a doozy:

The “Pedophile Priest” Case, 1995-2002: Coakley cut secret deal in 1995 that allowed Father Geoghan to molest again.

Martha Coakley is running for the U.S. Senate in part on her track record of keeping children safe from predators. The actual facts, however, are somewhat at odds with her campaign biography.

One of the most notorious cases of homosexual child abuse in the “pedophile priests” scandal that rocked the American Catholic Church in general and the Archdiocese of Boston in particular over the past twenty years involved Father John Geoghan, who came to symbolize the cancer in the church.

Here’s a brief introduction to the late, defrocked Father Geoghan by Denise Noe in Crime Magazine. Be sure to read the whole story, then come back.

The unofficial poster boy for priest pedophilia was a Boston priest named Father John Geoghan. He became a symbol for everything the church had done wrong in handling this problem when, on Jan. 6, 2002, The Boston Globe broke the story about how Boston’s archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, had moved the abusive Geoghan from parish to parish over the years. The article also discussed the $10 million dollar settlement the church had already made with families of his victims. After the article ran, an embarrassed Law apologized – and turned over to law enforcement the names of dozens of Boston priests who had been similarly accused.

The Geoghan scandal rocked Boston, and eventually resulted in Cardinal Law’s removal as Archbishop. In part to shield him from possible prosecution, the late Pope John Paul II summoned Law to Rome, where he was ensconced as the Archpriest of the historic Basilica of St. Mary Major, and replaced him in Boston with Archbishop Sean O’Malley.

And what was Ms. Coakley’s role in all this? At first, she was applauded for her role in the successful prosecution of Father Geoghan in 2002. But then it was discovered that she had plea-bargained away molestation charges against him in 1995, letting him off with probation in a deal that was kept secret from the public.

What?

One possible explanation for her actions is that she had lost a high-profile case against a priest in suburban Woburn, Father Paul Manning; Manning’s parishioners reportedly cheered when he was acquitted of molesting an 11-year-old altar boy at his 1994 trial.

Still, as David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, noted at the time: “Charging Geoghan with something and exposing him publicly might well have brought forward victims, witnesses, whistle-blowers, and evidence that could have resulted in a conviction and a tougher sentence.’’

Sigh. I don’t even know what to say about this. But here is what Martha Coakley has to say in defending this decision:

Wow. I am no attorney, but I have worked with and for attorneys. I cannot imagine them not pursuing every lead they could in a case. I cannot imagine them pushing to get the records from the Roman Catholic Diocese, even if they were freakin’ deacons in the church. Holy smokes.

The article continues:

And here’s the Boston Globe story, recounting the whole sordid mess:

When Martha Coakley was the Middlesex district attorney, her office prosecuted the Rev. John J. Geoghan based on an allegation that he squeezed the buttocks of a 10-year-old boy a single time at a public swimming pool. The highly publicized 2002 conviction won Coakley widespread praise for bringing the first successful criminal case against the widely accused pedophile, a priest many had called “Father Jack.’’

But seven years earlier, Coakley, then the head of the Middlesex child abuse unit, had Geoghan in her sights and took a dramatically different approach. Back then, three grade-school brothers told investigators that Geoghan had inappropriately touched them during numerous visits to their Waltham home, and had made lewd telephone calls to them. Rather than prosecute, Coakley agreed to grant Geoghan a year of probation in a closed-door proceeding that received no media attention at all.

Because of the deal, Geoghan faced no formal charges and no criminal record.

In sanctioning the 1995 probation agreement, Coakley, now the front-runner in a special election for the United States Senate, never pressed the Boston Archdiocese for any prior complaints against Geoghan.

That’s one way to make a name for yourself: let a pedophile off the hook privately so that he can molest more children, and then make a big, public conviction to take credit for your amazing work keeping children safe from……the pedophile priest you secretly let go seven years earlier.

And as for Father Geoghan, he was strangled and killed by a fellow inmate in February, 2004.

That is quite a sordid tale indeed. I encourage you to read the other two parts of this series (I’ll give you a hint about Part Three – it has to do with unreported assets). It is eye opening.

Now, I know some people are surprised I am not supporting the woman in this case (though since I live in SC, I don’t exactly have a vote – oh wait, maybe if I worked for ACORN I could…Ahem.). And I did like Coakley when I first heard about her. I was excited at the prospect of a woman taking over Teddy’s seat, an irony considering his way with women. But, as Scott Brown has reminded us, it isn’t Teddy’s Seat:

As I have stated all along, it is the RECORD of the candidates that needs to be considered. The decisions Coakley made as Attorney General are indicative of the decisions she will make as a US Senator, and those DO affect all of us. This is exactly for what I was calling during the 2008 Primary Season – look at the records of the candidates, and vote for the one who stands above.

That means, when the Massachusetts Democrats send out a four page mailer with the claim that Scott Brown wants to turn away ALL rape victims from hospitals, they sure as hell better be able to back that up with his RECORD. This is to what they are referring:

Brown is a state senator, and in 2005 he filed an amendment that would have allowed workers at religious hospitals or with firmly held religious beliefs to avoid giving emergency contraception to rape victims. The amendment failed, and Brown voted in favor of a bill allowing the contraception. He also voted to override a veto issued by his fellow Republican, then-Gov. Mitt Romney.

This is casting aspersions plain and simple. Stick to the facts, stick to the records, let the people decide based on that. Don’t take (yet another)page out of the Obama playbook a la the “Harry and Louise” ads. If the party believes she is the best candidate, they shouldn’t have to resort to flat-out lies about her opponent’s record.

So we need more women in Congress? Hells yeah. But that doesn’t mean we should want any woman, regardless of her record or the (stupid) things she says. In this particular case, Scott Brown appears to be the better candidate. He is pro-choice, a lieutenant colonel (30 years) in the National Guard JAG Corps, and supports civil unions for LGB people, like (too) many Democrats. As far as I can tell, Brown knows Curt Schilling is NOT a Yankees fan, so there’s that…

The people will decide who will fill the people’s seat. Until then, it is sure to be an interesting ride.

What you may NOT have heard was the connection between this same man and Hillary Clinton:

The Politiken newspaper reported Sunday that Danish intelligence knew the 28-year-old Somali man was held in Kenya in September for allegedly plotting an attack against U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said he was later released due to lack of evidence.

But Denmark’s ambassador to Kenya, Bo Jensen, told the news agency Ritzau the man was arrested in Kenya for incomplete travel documents. He said Kenyan authorities never told the embassy he was suspected in any terror plot.

I don’t remember hearing word ONE about an attempted assassination on Secretary Clinton’s life. It wasn’t all that recent, either. It was on August 5th of 2009. If you do a search, the first date you’ll find for any mention of this attempt (or at least the first one I found) was from September 8th, 2009. In a blog, I might add, but even it backed off from the assertion:

A plot by al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants to bomb the hotel where Secretary Clinton was staying during her visit to Nairobi, Kenya, last month (shown above) was foiled at the last minute, The Australian reports. Very scary.

[Update (Sept. 10): This story might not be true -- see stacyx's comment below. FP regrets any error; at the time of posting, the story seemed credible.]

Here is “Stacyx’s” comment:

I covered this story on my blog and was initially concerned that there was no MSM coverage. Then I spoke to someone at ABC news and they said the reason the US and British media were not covering the alleged terror plot story was because all their inside sources said there was no truth to the story.

Except there was some truth to it, apparently, and the newssource that claimed otherwise, was, well, lying. What a big surprise. And what a HUGE surprise that the US and British MSM didn’t bother to cover this story.

We find out a full five months after the fact only because one of the Al Qaeda members who tried to blow our Secretary of State to smithereens in Nairobi, was caught in another country trying to kill someone else.

Holy freakin’ cow. (Clinton in Nairobi, AFP photo)

Not for nothing, but someone else almost died because the authorities did not pass along the information about this terrorist and his attempts.

Not to be a complete and total cynic about this, but I cannot help but wonder why the media decided this was not newsworthy. I have my suspicions, including that Obama’s poll numbers were already tanking then, and Clinton’s were rising. Take a look at Obama’s numbers in August:

Or could it be that if we were told about this attempt on Secretary Clinton’s life by an Al Qaeda operative, Obama would have to admit that there were actually honest-to-goodness terrorists out there, trying to do us harm? That attempted terrorist attacks were not attempted “man-made disasters“?

Uh, yeah. There is that. And then there is the total incompetence of our media, or the attempt to cover up by the media, either one of which is completely unacceptable.

And to think, we found out about this attempt on our beloved Hillary Clinton’s life because of an attempt on a cartoonist. Feel free to craft the next line to THAT set-up…

I’ve been reading a book by the novelist, Vince Flynn, Extreme Measures. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Flynn’s books, they typically deal with the CIA, Washington, DC, and how politics affect the intelligence community, following the exploits of the main protagonist, Mitch Rapp, as he works to ensure the safety of the country. This book is no different.

Here is more about it (and writing in general) in Vince Flynn’s own words:

So why the book report? Well some of you may have heard about the three Navy Seals being charged for assault, who now face court martial, after capturing an incredibly dangerous terrorist, Ahmed Hashim Abed. I swear, it is just like some major scenes in the book mentioned above. It’s uncanny.

Anyway, the claim against the Navy Seals? They gave the terrorist a bloody lip when they captured him. I am not kidding. A bloody lip. Heck, I’ve seen people get bloody lips playing a game of pick-up basketball. Bear in mind, this terrorist is responsible for murdering four Blackwater guards, burning them, and dragging them through the streets of Fallujah in 2004. And, the Seals involved claim he was fine when they nabbed him:

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

Neal Puckett, an attorney representing McCabe, told Fox News the SEALs are being charged for allegedly giving the detainee a “punch in the gut.”

“I don’t know how they’re going to bring this detainee to the United States and give us our constitutional right to confrontation in the courtroom,” Puckett said. “But again, we have terrorists getting their constitutional rights in New York City, but I suspect that they’re going to deny these SEALs their right to confrontation in a military courtroom in Virginia.”

The three SEALs will be arraigned separately on Dec. 7. Another three SEALs — two officers and an enlisted sailor — have been identified by investigators as witnesses but have not been charged.

FoxNews.com obtained the official handwritten statement from one of the three witnesses given on Sept. 3, hours after Abed was captured and still being held at the SEAL base at Camp Baharia. He was later taken to a cell in the U.S.-operated Green Zone in Baghdad.

The SEAL told investigators he had showered after the mission, gone to the kitchen and then decided to look in on the detainee.

“I gave the detainee a glance over and then left,” the SEAL wrote. “I did not notice anything wrong with the detainee and he appeared in good health.”

I might add, you know from my previous writings, I have no love lost for Blackwater. But, these guys were simply protecting a supply chain when they were attacked, no, murdered, and then set on fire.

Here is more on the tactics being used by Abed:

We are a nation of laws, but it seems to me we need to be careful that our laws are not manipulated by the very people who have harmed us. Torture is wrong, but for these Seals to be treated the way they are as a result of, at best minor injuries, and more likely, false claims by this terrorist mastermind, is disturbing. To say the least. In this case, reality is mimicking literature. Read the book, you’ll see.

Oh, boy. So, did I get this right, ACORN has/is working with Larry Flynt, the king of pornography??? Holy crappydoo – I am sure so many people will be happy to know that’s to whom their hard earned dollars are going.

Thursday night, James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart were on Hannity (h/t to Bronywyn’s Harbor for this video), and they have some mighty interesting thins to say about who is being scrutinized, and who is not:

What, they expect AG Holder to go after ACORN? Why, because of the numerous tapes revealing their wrong doing? They want him to listen to the whistle blowers who are willing to come forward to expose what ACORN has done – with our tax dollars, I might add? Hey, he’s BUSY working on bringing the 9/11 Masterminds to NYC for a Civilian trial, for pete’s sake (for recent posts on this topic, go HERE and HERE). I mean, really – he’s got his hands full being schooled by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the whole military tribunal thing and all. Sheesh – what do they expect? For Holder to do his JOB???

I am sure they did not expect for Jerry Brown to go after THEM rather than the ACORN employees. Then again, given the way this Administration has been going with ACORN, maybe they should have. I mean, isn’t that why Obama brought in Bauer, to run interference for ACORN? Oh, no, wait – that was to “erase tracks between Obama and ACORN.” Well shoot, in that case, for what are Jerry Brown and Eric Holder waiting?? Ahem.

Well, I don’t think any of us are going to be holding our breath for THAT. And it is so typical that the people exposing the massive problems with ACORN are the very ones being targeted by the Powers-That-Be, rather than the organization engaging in questionable activities.

Our justice system really has lost its bearings when war criminals are extended rights given to American citizens. And American citizens who expose wrong doing by a group receiving Taxpayers money are targeted by those with connections to the justice system. I guess Obama HAS brought change to America…

Following on the heels of their macabre Afghan war protest at a White House Halloween party that targeted children of military families for psychological abuse, leftist Obama ally Code Pink issued a statement justifying the terrorist attack at Fort Hood as opposition to the war from officers and put out a Veterans Day appeal seeking to raise money off the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

Signed by top Obama funder Jodie Evans, the appeal was published at Code Pink’s website on Veterans Day and sent out the same day to the group’s e-mail list. The terrorist attack at Fort Hood is cited three times in the fundraising letter.

As appalling as cashing in on the mass murder of 14 innocents is, Code Pink tops that by invoking sympathy for the alleged terrorist as a reason to give money to Code Pink–even putting his act of terrorism on the same moral plane as the recent protest resignation of a former officer who left his diplomatic post in Afghanistan over Obama’s war policy:

“This Veteran’s Day, you can support Under the Hood and the soldiers who walk through their doors with a cash or in-kind donation…

“Click here to see how else you can support Under the Hood (in-kind donations accepted too).

“Our soldiers clearly need more care; the last thing they need is to be put into more harm’s way. Even US military officers think so–Matthew Hoh resigned from the Foreign Service in protest of the lack of clear mission and achievable results in Afghanistan, and of course the Ft. Hood shooter was a Major who did not wish to be deployed to Afghanistan.”

Think about that. Code Pink says a mass murder terrorist act against unarmed soldiers is the moral equivalance (sic) of a protest resignation.

I don’t know about you, but this is disgusting. I don’t know how else to categorize it. It is disgusting to equate one man’s respectful resignation to another man’s alleged mass murder. What the hell is WRONG with these people?? If only it stopped there:

Code Pink is even more direct in their justification for the terrorist attack allegedly by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan in a statement posted to their website that they encourage opponents of America in Afghanistan to send to President Obama:

The recent shootings at Ft. Hood and the resignation of top Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh demonstrate how even our military officers are opposed to US strategy in Afghanistan.

Code Pink claims the money will be used to fund a campaign operated out of a coffee shop near Fort Hood called Under the Hood that preys on soldiers and their families. However, the donation link goes to Code Pink’s fundraising page and not to Under the Hood’s website. Note, fundraising links in this story are deliberately not active.

This is some organization with which Obama has aligned himself, isn’t it? I am just thoroughly disgusted. TO read the rest of the story, which includes more about “Under the Hood,” the relationship between Obama and Jodie Evans, and additional articles about Code Pink, please click HERE. Disturbing, just disturbing.

And it makes this Krauthammer piece that much more salient, Explaining Away Mass Murder. Indeed That is exactly what the Code Pink fudnraisers are doing with their despicable fundraising efforts:

– What a surprise — that someone who shouts “Allahu Akbar” (the “God is great” jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre downplaying Nidal Hasan’s religious beliefs.

“I cringe that he’s a Muslim. … I think he’s probably just a nut case,” said Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time’s Joe Klein decried “odious attempts by Jewish extremists … to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs.” While none could match Klein’s peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Uh huh. And why is it that someone can’t be nuts AND a terrorist? Many people would see those words as not being the least bit contradictory when used in conjunction. Oops – silly me – inserting logic into that ridiculous argument:

They suffered. He listened. He snapped.

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

And what about civilian psychiatrists — not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics — who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

It’s been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.

But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, whom National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.

And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won’t find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as “compassion fatigue.” The poor man — pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.

I wonder if Dr. Krauthammer would pay a visit to the entire fundraising staff, Obama’s allies, at Code Pink? Now THAT would be a visit I’d like to see, especially since Dr. Krauthammer, like me, thinks this is, well, in my word, obscene:

Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It’s a danger, clear and present.

Consider the Army’s treatment of Hasan’s previous behavior. NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling interviewed a Hasan colleague at Walter Reed about a hair-raising Grand Rounds that Hasan had apparently given. Grand Rounds are the most serious academic event at a teaching hospital — attending physicians, residents and students gather for a lecture on an instructive case history or therapeutic finding.

I’ve been to dozens of these. In fact, I gave one myself on post-traumatic retrograde amnesia — as you can see, these lectures are fairly technical. Not Hasan’s. His was an hour-long disquisition on what he called the Koranic view of military service, jihad and war. It included an allegedly authoritative elaboration of the punishments visited upon nonbelievers — consignment to hell, decapitation, having hot oil poured down your throat. This “really freaked a lot of doctors out,” reported NPR.

Nor was this the only incident. “The psychiatrist,” reported Zwerdling, “said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he’s a terrorist, or is he just weird?”

Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague’s religion?

One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

So many excuses, so little relevance:

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn’t cry “Allahu Akbar” as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question — condescending, politically correct and deadly — is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: “Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center.”

Ah yes, those Jersey men — so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Indeed. Ahem. That organizations like Code Pink are painting this mass murderer of unarmed soldiers in such a sympathetic light, and with such moral superiority, indicates just how far from our moral base we have strayed. At a time when the fallen from that massacre are being buried, for this organization to depict Hasan as nothing more than a victim of US policy, and on the same level as a distinguished war veteran and US State Department employee who resigned with integrity is simply reprehensible.

In other words, the fundraisers at Code Pink, Obama’s ally, have lost their frikkin’ minds. I would say they should be ashamed of themselves, but they clearly, CLEARLY, have no shame at all. And that is most disturbing of all.

One last thing, to the families and friends of those fallen, it breaks my heart that in addition to such a grievous loss, you now have to deal with such outrageous fundraising attempts by a group excusing the actions of this man, Nidal Malik Hasan. I regret that you have to even deal with such additional lunacy an disrespect at this very difficult time. My heart and prayers go out to you all.

And that brings us to this article, Heroes Took Huge Risks To Save Others. Not only are we learning more about Hasan as time passes by, but we are learning more about the actions of that tragic day on Fort Hood, and others who acted selflessly. No doubt, the big hero is Sgt. Munley, and I will get to her in just a minute Here is another hero:

Pfc. Marquest Smith, on his way to Afghanistan in January, was completing routine paperwork about a bee-sting allergy when the sounds erupted.

A loud popping noise. Moans. The sudden, urgent shout of “Gun!”

Smith poked his head over the cubicle’s partition and saw an extraordinary sight: An Army officer with two guns, firing into the crowded room.

The 21-year-old Fort Worth native quickly grabbed the civilian worker who’d been helping with his paperwork and forced her under the desk. He lay low for several minutes, waiting for the shooter to run out of ammunition and wishing he, too, had a gun.

After the shooter stopped to reload, Smith made a run for it. Pushing two other soldiers in front of him, he made it out of the Soldier Readiness Processing center — only to plunge into the building twice more to help the wounded.

Smith had survived the worst mass shooting on an American military base, a rampage that left 13 dead and 30 wounded, including the alleged shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

It could have been much worse, but for the heroics of Smith and others — including the diminutive civilian police officer who single-handedly took down Hasan.

Of course, that would be Sgt. Munley. More on her below as the picture of what happened on Fort Hood gets filled in. A big piece of that is we are getting some information on where the shooting began:

Decisive Action

At the processing center on the southern edge of the 100,000-acre base, soldiers returning from overseas mingled with colleagues filling out forms and undergoing medical tests in preparation for deployment.

Around 1:30 p.m., witnesses say a man authorities later identified as Hasan jumped up on a desk and shouted the words “Allahu Akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” He was armed with two pistols, one a semiautomatic capable of firing up to 20 rounds without reloading.

Packed into cubicles with 5-foot-high dividers, the 300 unarmed soldiers were sitting ducks (emphasis mine). Those who weren’t hit by direct fire were struck by rounds ricocheting off the desks and tile floor.

Let’s just reflect on that for a minute. Hasan chose an area in which the soldiers were close together. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. That’s pretty much what he did after he jumped up onto the desk and started firing. Just picture the logistics of that – man on desk firing on unarmed soldiers (only the MPs and contracted civilian police officers carry guns), 5 foot dividers, 300 soldiers. The potential for mass casualties was set in motion:

When he decided the shooter wasn’t close to being out of ammo, Smith made a dash for the door. He’d made it outside when he heard cries from within.

“I don’t want to die.”

“This really hurts.”

“Help me get out of here.”

Smith rushed back inside and found two wounded. He grabbed them by their collars and dragged them outside.

Around this time, Fort Hood Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley got the call of “shots fired.” The SRP isn’t on Munley’s beat; she was in the area because her vehicle was in the shop.

Munley, 34, was on the scene within three minutes.

Just over 5 feet tall, Munley is an advanced firearms instructor and civilian member of Fort Hood’s special reaction team. She had trained on “active shooter” scenarios after the April 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech. She didn’t wait for backup.

As she approached the squat, rectangular building, a soldier emerged from a door with a gunman in pursuit. The officer fired, and the uniformed shooter wheeled and charged.

Munley was hit at least three times in the exchange — twice through the left leg and once in her right wrist. Hasan was hit four times.

From the first shots to the last, authorities say the whole incident lasted less than 10 minutes.

Sgt. Munley’s fast response time, not waiting for backup (I wonder if she’ll get lectured about that?), and her willingness to put herself in harm’s way saved who-knows-how-many lives. Clearly, her training kicked in, and she did what she was trained to do. This article, Hero ‘Civilian Cops’ Emerge After Fort Hood Shooting: Sgt. Kimberly Munley Lost So Much Blood Doctors Feared She Wouldn’t Survive, goes into even more detail as to what Sgt. Munley did that day (H/T to American Girl in Italy for this article), as well as another police officer, Sgt, Mark Todd:

After Sgt. Kimberly Munley helped stop the Fort Hood massacre by shooting Major Nidal Malik Hasan several times, she collapsed from her wounds and doctors who treated her were afraid she wouldn’t survive.

“She was fading in and out of consciousness. She wasn’t saying much,” medic Francisco de la Serna, who began treating Munley when the shooting stopped, told ABC News.

Munley, a 34-year-old former soldier who became a civilian cop on the Fort Hood base, was shot twice in both legs during Thursday’s confrontation. Two powerful “cop killer” rounds allegedly fired by Hasan tore through her left thigh, exited and blasted through her right thigh as well. She was also struck in the wrist.

Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, a retired soldier who also works as a civilian police officer at Ford Hood, also engaged in a firefight with Hasan that lasted less than a minute, according to The Associated Press. Todd was not wounded.

Army officials say that an investigation is under way about whose bullets brought down Hasan as there was much confusion following the shooting. Munley’s supervisor initially credited her with the shot that stopped Hasan.

Todd told The Associated Press Saturday that he was unsure if Munley had wounded the suspect, because “once he started firing at me, I lost track of her.”

After firing his Beretta at Hasan, Todd said the suspect flinched, slid down against a telephone pole and fell on his back. Todd recalls hearing people say, “two more, two more.” He first thought they were referring to more shooters, but he realized that the bystanders were urging him to fire two more rounds, Todd said.

Todd said he approached the suspect and saw that he still had a gun in his hand, which he kicked away. Todd told the AP, “He was breathing, his eyes were blinking. You could tell that he was fading out. He didn’t say anything. He was just kind of blinking.”

Munley, the mother of two girls, was sped to Metroplex Hospital several miles away where doctors say she lost so much blood that they feared she would not make it.

I suppose we will have to wait to find out exactly whose bullet brought down Hasan – Munley’s or Todd’s, but there is no dispute that had she not started firing on Hasan, he would have inflicted more damage on the soldiers.

Her wounds were clearly severe, especially after being hit by “cop killer” bullets:

Munley proved to be as tough in the operating room as she was while confronting Hasan in their close-range shootout.

Dr. Kelly Matlock, who treated Munley at the Metroplex Hospital, said her first words in recovery were concern about Hasan’s victims.

“She opened her eyes and said, ‘Did anybody die?’ That’s what she said, ‘Did anybody die?’” Matlock said.

That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the make up and constitution of this woman. Her first thought, her first question, wasn’t about herself, but others. I am in awe.

Sgt. Munley got her question answered:

Munley now knows that the man she shot is alive, and that he is accused of killing 13 unarmed people and wounding 38.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry visited Munley in the hospital today and later described her as “understated.”

“She is a classic public servant who is not interested in anything other than getting on with her life,” Perry said.

Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at Fort Hood, said many more would have died if Munley had not leaped into action.

“If she had not responded the way she had, we would have had an extremely high number of dead and injured,” Medley told ABC News Friday. “The number of lives that this person saved … We will probably never know. But there is a lot of ammunition left, a lot of magazines,” he said referring to what Hasan was allegedly carrying.

Uh, yeah. That, along with Hasan giving away his worldly goods, screams premeditation to me. No doubt about it.

While much of this has been covered already, the way in which this is written really paints a picture:

Sgt. Kimberly Munley’s Shootout With Major Nidal Malik Hasan

Medley described a scenario worthy of a Hollywood script. He said Munley, who is a member of the base’s SWAT team and a weapons expert, ran towards the gunfire and came upon Hasan when she rounded a corner and saw him pursuing a soldier who had already been wounded once.

“She fired on him twice and drew the attention toward her. He immediately spun around and charged her,” Medley said. “She fired a couple more rounds and fell back, continuing to fire.”

Despite getting struck three times by Hasan’s fusillade, Munley stayed upright and kept firing at the charging gunman.

Let’s stop right there. What kind of person is capable of doing this? What kind of person puts herself in the line of fire to save someone else? What kind of intestinal fortitude must this woman have to STAY UPRIGHT after being seriously hit, firing at the gunman?

I have a close friend who was a police officer at one time before he became a minister. I asked him that question – what makes some people run into danger, be it firefighters, police officers, military personnel, when everyone else is running away as fast as they can? What kind of courage and bravery must someone have to do something like Sgt. Munley? It is hard to fathom. Sure, many of us would like to THINK we would, but honestly – WHO would rush into this situation, size it up, and intentionally put herself in the line of fire to protect others? It is simply remarkable. This breed of human being is rare indeed.

At least according to this report, if it even matters at this point, it was Munley who brought Hasan down (as mentioned above, ballistics will have the final say):

“She struck him a couple times in the upper torso and he went down,” Medley said.

“When she rounded that corner she made a split-second decision to put her life at risk,” he said.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said Munley’s aggressive tactics averted even more carnage.

“She had been trained in active response,” Cone said. “They had rehearsed scenarios like this. Oftentimes, the idea is you would encircle the building and wait until you have more backup. What the belief is, if you act aggressively, to take the shooter out, you’ll have less fatalities.”

Munley acted aggressively, not waiting for backup. She went after the gunman and quickly found him. As Cone put it, Munley decided “to seek him out, to confront hm.”

Medley said he visited with Munley early Friday. “She’s doing very well. She was in good spirits. She was smiling and laughing,” he said.

Her boss said he told Munley, “The action you took saved countless peoples’ lives. People are healthy, alive and walking around today because of the action that this officer took. She’s a hero.”

Munley’s grandmother, Monirie Metz, told ABC News that the former South Carolina surfer girl would probably object to being called a hero.

“Kim doesn’t want be called a hero. She’s worried about everyone else right now and is very concerned about her colleagues with whom she is very close,” Metz said.

Of course Sgt. Munley would object to being called a hero. After what we have learned about her, who would be surprised by that? Not me. That speaks even more about her remarkable character. Can anyone not be impressed by this woman? I imagine her family is extraordinarily proud of her, as they should be.

Speaking of family:

Her husband, Matthew Munley, is a soldier at Fort Bragg, N.C., and was flown to Fort Hood. She also has two daughters, ages 15 and 2, from a previous marriage.

Needless to say, Sgt. Munley’s daring feats are already garnering tributes:

Facebook Tributes to Fort Hood Hero

In the hours after the shootings, two Facebook groups sprung up dedicated to Munley and her heroic actions.

“At that tragic moment you were able to use your training and abilities to bring an end to a day that will haunt the lives of many for years to come,” one member posted in the group “God Bless SGT Kimberly Munley.” “Thank you for being a true hero.”

And in the group “Sgt. Kimberly Munley: A Real American Hero!,” one woman stationed in Japan with her military husband said that Munley had inspired her to learn how to shoot once she returned to the U.S.

A true hero indeed – I know she’s mine.

I must warn you, this is a difficult story to read. Honestly, I had to stop a few times to compose myself. My comments will be limited as the horrific nature of this story is overwhelming. I will bold aspects of particular importance. And I know this introduction is a bit dry, but it is only because I am trying not to cry as I work on this.

Okay, here goes: Police: Gang Rape Outside School Dance Lasted Over Two Hours.

That pretty much says it all, but believe it or not, it is even worse once you see all of the facts of the case. If you choose, you can watch this video with the Police giving the basic outline of this case:

Yes, you heard that right. She had to be airlifted out:

A California high school student who police said was gang raped in a two-and-a-half-hour assault outside a homecoming dance remained hospitalized in stable condition Monday, two days after she was flown from the attack scene in critical condition.

As of late Monday, two suspects had been arrested in the case and a third was being questioned.

“There is one individual in custody who has made some spontaneous statements that have led me to believe that he is culpable for what happened,” Richmond police Lt. Johan Simon said.

Nineteen-year-old Manuel Ortega, described as a former student at the school, was arrested soon after he fled the scene and will face charges of rape, robbery and kidnapping, police said.

A 15-year-old was later arrested and charged with one count of felony sexual assault. A third teenager was being interviewed, according to Lt. Mark Gagan of the police department in Richmond, California.

“Based on witness statements and suspect statements, and also physical evidence, we know that she was raped by at least four suspects committing multiple sex acts,” Gagan said.

If you think this couldn’t get much worse, it does:

Investigators said as many as 15 people, all males, stood around watching the assault, but did not call police or help the victim, a 15-year-old student at Richmond High School in suburban San Francisco.

“As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated,” Gagan said.

Authorities had interviewed the victim, and the search for other attackers and bystanders who watched and did not report the rape was in “full-court press,” according to Gagan.

“We have checked Facebook and YouTube to try to find any revealing evidence,” he said. “We’re looking in particular to see if anyone posted any video of the incident.”

Several other individuals were detained at the scene but not arrested, Simon said.

The attack occurred on school grounds as the annual homecoming dance was under way inside the school Saturday night, authorities said.

One moment, please…Alright. Here is the conclusion:

The victim was found unconscious and “brutally assaulted” under a bench shortly before midnight Saturday, after police received a call from someone in the area who had overheard people at the assault scene “reminiscing about the incident,” Gagan said.

“She ended up with those guys under her own will because she knew one of the boys who had gone to the high school before,” Gagan said. “Right now, we’re looking at toxicology reports to determine her blood-alcohol content and to determine if she was drugged.”

According to authorities, the victim was flown to an area hospital in critical condition. She was in stable condition Monday, police said.

“This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it,” Gagan said. “It was like a horror movie after looking at the evidence. I can’t believe not one person felt compelled to help her.” (CNN’s Sara Pratley contributed to this report.)

Neither can I.

Not one person helped this girl. No one, NO ONE, called the police for her.

Observers joined in.

There are no words for what happened to this poor young girl. There are no words to describe the actions of these young men, participants and observers alike. I pray that this girl will recover fully from her assault, though physically is the only area in which I can see full healing to take place. Of course, I hope she will heal emotionally and psychologically, in time. But it will take a lot of time, a lot of work on her part, a tremendous amount of support, and a very good therapist. Even then, it may not be enough…

I do know that this girl will never be the same. Never.

UPDATED: Alert NQ reader, “ImaLindaToo,” provided this Link provides more information about the level of security at the school, the girl who was raped, and the four perpetrators arrested so far (though they think it was up to TEN perpetrators). Additional links here and here from Catherine.

BONUS look back at Rep. Charlie Rangel. Remember when he called VP candidate Sara Palin “Disabled”? Nice, huh?

Back to the article. I am so disgusted, words fail me. “DISCLOSURE PROBLEMS”?? That’s how our Congress refers to powerful members cheating on their taxes?? Now I know how Timmy Geithner, the tax cheat, was confirmed to head up the Treasury Department, and thus the IRS. Check this out:

Many members” of Congress suffer from the same disclosure issues as Rep. Charles Rangel (D.N.Y.), one of his allies said Wednesday.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) downplayed the seriousness of allegations against Rangel that he failed to disclose sources of income and pay taxes on some properties, saying that many lawmakers suffer from innocent lapses in judgment when filing mandatory financial disclosure forms.

“I want to tell you, there are many members who, if you go back over all of their records, over all of the years, you’re going to find that there were disclosures that were not made,” Waters said during an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday morning.

Republicans are seeking to force Rangel from his position as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee by offering a privileged resolution from Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) to mandate Rangel step aside.

If it is truly only Republicans, that does not speak well for Democrats, in my opinion. Why wouldn’t they be concerned that the most powerful member of the House Ways and Means Committee, the very committee that set tax law, did not pay his taxes?? Is it just me? At least as far as Rep. Waters is concerned, it appears so:

Waters defended Rangel, saying the Harlem congressman is making an effort to correct the records and pay his debts.

“What happens is, unfortunately with the requirements for disclosure that we all have, mistakes are made,” she said. “And you do get a chance to correct them. And so it looks as if he is correcting those mistakes.”

Waters said that Rangel should not step down from his chairmanship, but should continue working until ethics investigations into his finances have concluded.

Only after he was CAUGHT. It isn’t like he just failed to adequately report taxes one time. No, it was under-reporting some years, and failure to report at all other years. It is behavior that, if perpetrated by someone NOT in Congress (or the Secretary of the Treasury) would land them with a ton of fines at the LEAST. But when it’s the person actually writing the tax laws, the message is clear: “These laws apply to thee, not to me.” Evidently. And, with the perk of getting backup from the very people who SHOULD be holding them accountable. All I can say is, there oughta be a law. Oh, wait…

And what is this BS about “the rules for disclosure”?? How about having a CPA do your taxes, or use TurboTax or something! It isn’t like Rangel, and most of these Congresspeople can’t afford to have someone do their taxes for them. Sheesh.

Can you imagine using that excuse with the IRS? Yeah, they’d be laughing at you all the way to your jail cell.

Have the Democrats always this corrupt, or have they ratcheted that up recently? Maybe they always were, and they are just being more blatant about it now? I don’t see how anyone could listen to Rep. Waters “everybody’s doing it!” defense as anything else but corrupt when talking about the most powerful person setting tax law repeatedly cheating on his taxes. But that could just be me…

Well, it turns out that figure of $1 million is just a little low. By $4 million dollars, that is. Holy smokes. In this article, ACORN Embezzlement Was $5 Million, LA Attorney General Says, that figure is revised way up, and not by a reporter, or a politician with an ax to grind, as ACORN would not doubt claim, but the State Attorney General:

Louisiana’s attorney general has broadened the scope of an investigation of ACORN to include a possible embezzlement of $5 million a decade ago within the community organization, five times more than previously reported.

ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new reported amount is “completely false.”

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has been conducting an investigation of ACORN since June. He issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to former ACORN International President Wade Rathke and his brother Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas were focused on possible ACORN violations for non-payment of employee withholding taxes, obstructing justice and violating the Employee Retirement Security Act. No charges have been made.

The attorney general had inquired in June into an alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. The brother and a donor repaid the money.

Did you catch that? A “donor” helped pay back the money. Dale was not formally charged, nor did he have to spend any time in prison. None. Now we know it was so much more money than previously thought:

Caldwell said last month that the statute of limitations presented obstacles to prosecutors taking action on the embezzlement, and that his investigation was not focused on that issue. The subpoena issued Monday changed the tone of the investigation and put a new emphasis on the embezzlement issue.

“Current high-ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million, ” the new subpoena says.

The subpoena says, “It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal or private funds.”

The subpoena requests documents from Citizens Consulting Inc., a financial arm of ACORN, and from various accounting and legal consultants in New Orleans. Investigators are trying to verify the issues raised in the subpoena.

“We’re going to follow the evidence where it leads us and try to do the right thing,” said David Caldwell, head of the attorney general’s public corruption and special prosecutions divisions. “We are actively investigating the case, whatever the outcome might be. This is something we are devoting our full attention to.”

Wade Rathke, who was in Bangkok, Thailand, on Monday, referred questions to ACORN officials. Lewis said she would comment further after she and ACORN attorneys had a chance to review the subpoena.

ACORN board member Vanessa Gueringer, chairwoman of the Lower 9th Ward Chapter, said she had not seen the subpoena but that the accusation about the larger embezzlement was untrue.

“I believe it is another lie, another witch hunt, ” Gueringer said.

ACORN, which provides counseling on housing and other assistance to low and moderate income families, has been reeling from national negative publicity in recent weeks. Actions have been taken on the federal level and by many states, including Louisiana, to end public contracts with the group. (Robert Travis Scott can be reached at rscott@timespicayune.com or 225.342.4197.)

Now that’s some Major League Denial going on there, isn’t it?? The Attorney General of the State isn’t just making stuff up. He has actually been INVESTIGATING ACORN, and rightly so.

Let’s just do the math here. ACORN has received $53 Million of our taxpaying dollars. Dale Rathke embezzled $5 million from ACORN. Sure they get donations, but honestly – you don’t think some of that money was OURS???? And why is he NOT IN PRISON?? That’s what I’d like to know. Hopefully, he will be soon, thanks to the LA State Attorney General.

And that begs the question – where has everyone ELSE been on this issue? It’s not like it wasn’t public knowledge, and not like it hasn’t been reported in major newspapers across the country. I’m glad someone is doing his job.

And speaking of the Rathke Brothers, don’t forget that Wade is also the one who co-founded the SEIU, yes, the union that held California hostage. Well, you are not going to believe where their name pops up in connection to the White House. Check out this video, beginning at the 1:45 minute mark:

Holy smokes. The SEIU is working with the Wite House and the NEA to spend YOUR/OUR money on propaganda.

And we thought the Bush Administration was bad about the whole propaganda thing…

Um, yes, yes it WAS “rape-rape” – he admitted it, Whoopi. It wasn’t just “child abuse,” it was rape – pure and simple.

I cannot believe I used to have so much respect for this woman – hell, I read her book! I saw her on Broadway – TWICE, no small feat for a poor graduate student. I thought she was the cat’s meow. But now? I think those rose-colored glasses she often wears have colored her perspective. And now this woman, once a brilliant political commentator, is defending a man who drugged, got drunk, and raped repeatedly, a CHILD.

And now Sherri Shepherd is the voice of reason on “The View?” Wow.

Kate Harding has an excellent article on this very issue in Salon, Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped A Child:

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in “exile” (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never — poor baby — being able to return to the U.S.). Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she’d rather not see him prosecuted because she can’t stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let’s take a moment to recall that according to the victim’s grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, “No,” then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

Can we do that? Can we take a moment to think about all that, and about the fact that Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, before we start talking about what a victim he is? Because that would be great, and not nearly enough people seem to be doing it.

It cannot be any clearer than that. When women like Whoopi defend this man, it makes me ill. She is defending a convicted pedophile and rapist, claiming we don’t have all the facts. Hell, yes, we do, too.

How can these people defend him? How can other countries have such outrage that this man, who has been on the lam for YEARS, has finally been arrested? Beats me:

The French press, for instance (at least according to the British press) is describing Polanski “as the victim of a money-grabbing American mother and a publicity-hungry Californian judge.” Joan Z. Shore at the Huffington Post, who once met Polanski and “was utterly charmed by [his] sobriety and intelligence,” also seems to believe that a child with an unpleasant stage mother could not possibly have been raped: “The 13-year old model ’seduced’ by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies.” Oh, well, then! If her mom put her into that situation, that makes it much better! Shore continues: “The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It’s probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence.”

Wow, OK, let’s break that down. First, as blogger Jeff Fecke says, “Fun fact: the age of consent in 1977 in California was 16. It’s now 18. But of course, the age of consent isn’t like horseshoes or global thermonuclear war; close doesn’t count. Even if the age of consent had been 14, the girl wasn’t 14.” Also, even if the girl had been old enough to consent, she testified that she did not consent. There’s that. Though of course everyone makes a bigger deal of her age than her testimony that she did not consent, because if she’d been 18 and kept saying no while he kissed her, licked her, screwed her and sodomized her, this would almost certainly be a whole different story — most likely one about her past sexual experiences and drug and alcohol use, about her desire to be famous, about what she was wearing, about how easy it would be for Roman Polanski to get consensual sex, so hey, why would he need to rape anyone? It would quite possibly be a story about a wealthy and famous director who pled not guilty to sexual assault, was acquitted on “she wanted it” grounds, and continued to live and work happily in the U.S. Which is to say that 30 years on, it would not be a story at all. So it’s much safer to focus on the victim’s age removing any legal question of consent than to get tied up in that thorny “he said, she said” stuff about her begging Polanski to stop and being terrified of him.

No matter what convoluted tacks one might take to try and blame this child for her repeated rape and being sodomized, the responsibility lies SOLELY with Roman Polanski:

Second, Polanski was “demonized by the press” because he raped a child, and was convicted because he pled guilty. He “feared heavy sentencing” because drugging and raping a child is generally frowned upon by the legal system. Shore really wants us to pity him because of these things? (And, I am not making this up, boycott the entire country of Switzerland for arresting him.)

As ludicrous as Shore’s post is, I have to agree with Fecke that my favorite Polanski apologist is the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum, who finds it “bizarre” that anyone is still pursuing this case. And who also, by the by, failed to disclose the tiny, inconsequential detail that her husband, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, is actively pressuring U.S. authorities to drop the case.

There is evidence of judicial misconduct in the original trial. There is evidence that Polanski did not know her real age. Polanski, who panicked and fled the U.S. during that trial, has been pursued by this case for 30 years, during which time he has never returned to America, has never returned to the United Kingdom., has avoided many other countries, and has never been convicted of anything else. He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers’ fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film.

There is also evidence that Polanski raped a child. There is evidence that the victim did not consent, regardless of her age. There is evidence — albeit purely anecdotal, in this case — that only the most debased crapweasel thinks “I didn’t know she was 13!” is a reasonable excuse for raping a child, much less continuing to rape her after she’s said no repeatedly. There is evidence that the California justice system does not hold that “notoriety, lawyers’ fees and professional stigma” are an appropriate sentence for child rape.

But hey, he wasn’t allowed to pick up his Oscar in person! For the love of all that’s holy, hasn’t the man suffered enough?

That’s snark there by Harding, just to be clear. Again, how in the world can these women DEFEND THIS MAN??? What is wrong with them? I think Harding wonders that, too:

Granted, Roman Polanski has indeed suffered a great deal in his life, which is where Applebaum takes her line of argument next:

He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski’s mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland.

Surviving the Holocaust certainly could lead to an “understandable fear of irrational punishment,” but being sentenced for pleading guilty to child rape is basically the definition of rational punishment. Applebaum then points out that Polanski was a suspect in the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, a crime actually committed by the Manson family — but again, that was the unfortunate consequence of a perfectly rational justice system. Most murdered pregnant women were killed by husbands or boyfriends, so that suspicion was neither personal nor unwarranted. This isn’t Kafkaesque stuff.

But what of the now-45-year-old victim, who received a settlement from Polanski in a civil case, saying she’d like to see the charges dropped? Shouldn’t we be honoring her wishes above all else?

In a word, no. At least, not entirely. I happen to believe we should honor her desire not to be the subject of a media circus, which is why I haven’t named her here, even though she chose to make her identity public long ago. But as for dropping the charges, Fecke said it quite well: “I understand the victim’s feelings on this. And I sympathize, I do. But for good or ill, the justice system doesn’t work on behalf of victims; it works on behalf of justice.”

It works on behalf of the people, in fact — the people whose laws in every state make it clear that both child rape and fleeing prosecution are serious crimes. The point is not to keep 76-year-old Polanski off the streets or help his victim feel safe. The point is that drugging and raping a child, then leaving the country before you can be sentenced for it, is behavior our society should not — and at least in theory, does not — tolerate, no matter how famous, wealthy or well-connected you are, no matter how old you were when you finally got caught, no matter what your victim says about it now, no matter how mature she looked at 13, no matter how pushy her mother was, and no matter how many really swell movies you’ve made.

Roman Polanski raped a child. No one, not even him, disputes that. Regardless of whatever legal misconduct might have gone on during his trial, the man admitted to unlawful sex with a minor. But the Polanski apologism we’re seeing now has been heating up since “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” the 2008 documentary about Polanski’s fight to get the conviction dismissed. Writing in Salon, Bill Wyman criticized the documentary’s whitewashing of Polanksi’s crimes last February, after Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if the director wanted to challenge the conviction, he’d need to turn himself in to U.S. authorities and let the justice system sort it out. “Fugitives don’t get to dictate the terms of their case … Polanski deserves to have any potential legal folderol investigated, of course. But the fact that Espinoza had to state the obvious is testimony to the ways in which the documentary, and much of the media coverage the director has received in recent months, are bizarrely skewed.”

The reporting on Polanski’s arrest has been every bit as “bizarrely skewed,” if not more so. Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted. (Emphasis mine.)

Indeed.