The Atheist Communist Caliphate Made Flesh, Spread the Clusterfuck Around Thread

[PenFoe]

GM kills the Indian

Good bye, Old Friend.

[Tank]

Great googily moogily...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA33u0PQOvw

You know that DHS report (written under the fucking Bush administration, no less) that says domestic law enforcement agencies should remain vigilant in regards to white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups, with a special concern towards their recruitment of veterans (whose honest to goodness military training and experience these groups could use to transform their loud bark to a Timothy McVeigh-, Eric Rudolph- or even Richard Poplawski-like bite)?

Michele Bachmann (R-MN)...

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8955155

The problem is the Homeland Security Secretary has now redefined real terrorists as foreign victims with Miranda rights and access to American courts with lawyers paid for by the American taxpayer, while at the same time the Homeland Security S has redefined pro-life gun-owning veterans who like smaller government and who believe America should secure our borders against invasion from illegal aliens as domestic right-wing extremists, as you have in the report upon the stand.

Homeland Security, I think we should also note, has the Transportation Security Administration. Any of our constituents that go to the airport, they see people that have TSA on their shirts.

You can't get on a plane in the United States, a commercial aircraft, without going through security. What's going to happen now? Will the Federal Government start IDing returning veterans, start IDing gun owners, start IDing pro-lifers and then pull us out of line for special searches at the airports before we are allowed to get on a plane because we could be considered a domestic right-wing terrorist while we would see Osama bin Laden and his friends skate by because they are not, because maybe they would be involved in a manmade disaster. But those who are pro-life gun owners, returning veterans on the other side, they are the real threat?

This is an upside down Alice in Wonderland world. I can see why the American people are so upset right now. They are so upset. They look at what's happening. They shake their head. They say, is this America? Is this what we are used to? We are normal God-fearing people who love this country, and now we are the threat while Osama bin Laden and the people who seek to really bring us harm are let off scot free. And we are going to call them manmade disaster, we have got to be nuanced and so careful so we don't hurt their feelings?

Has this Homeland Security Secretary gone absolutely stark raving mad? She needs to come before Congress. She needs to answer a few questions.

Apparently 'due process' and 'the rule of law' = 'letting Osama off scot free.'

And 'white supremacists' and 'violent antigovernment groups' and 'radical domestic terrorists' = 'conservatives, gun owners, pro-lifers and other normal God-fearing people who love this country.'

Bookmarked for the next time anyone asks me to give Stark Raving Bachmann's point of view a fair hearing.

[Tonker]

GM kills the Indian

Good bye, Old Friend.

Sweet Jesus, that's an ugly motor.  Is that for real?

[Tank]

GM kills the Indian

Good bye, Old Friend.

Sweet Jesus, that's an ugly motor.  Is that for real?

That's the Aztek.

You should see it from behind.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000321.html

I recall that the Aztek was a consolation prize on one of the first seasons of Survivor.

It had a built-in tent.

[Tinker to Evers to Chance]

Great googily moogily...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA33u0PQOvw

You know that DHS report (written under the fucking Bush administration, no less) that says domestic law enforcement agencies should remain vigilant in regards to white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups, with a special concern towards their recruitment of veterans (whose honest to goodness military training and experience these groups could use to transform their loud bark to a Timothy McVeigh-, Eric Rudolph- or even Richard Poplawski-like bite)?

The United States Army is not in the habit of teaching Infantry Sergeants how to make bombs out of fertilizer.  Being a Bradley Gunner or a squad leader does not prepare you to blow up federal buildings.  The bombing of a military building was not the result of "honest to goodness military training." It was the result of McVeigh being a fucking psychopath. Should DHS watch out for former math professors who buy Al Gore's book as potential threats send bombs around the country?  You have the same sample size (one) to justify that as you do to justify keeping tabs on returning vets.

What new evidence does the DHS have to justify this report?  Zero.

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.

Here's another right-wing nutjob that says the report was bullshit.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized directly today to Commander Dave Rehbein, head of the American Legion, after a recently leaked DHS intelligence report suggested that right-wing extremist groups might recruit military veterans returning from overseas deployments. The 45-minute meeting occurred at DHS headquarters in Washington this afternoon.

A detailed account of the meeting from the American Legion states that "Hunched forward with head bowed, the Secretary of Homeland Security looked the National Commander of The American Legion straight in the eye and said, very quietly, 'I'm sorry, Dave.'"

"The report was not worthy of this department, or of veterans," Napolitano said to Rehbein, according Legion spokesman Craig Roberts, who attended the meeting. "It was very badly written and should never have been released," she said.

More here...

Napolitano blamed one of her agency's analysts for prematurely sending out the intelligence assessment to law enforcement, according to Craig Roberts, an American Legion member who attended the meeting.

Vindication, Napolitanobamafagots.

[Jon]

GM kills the Indian

Good bye, Old Friend.

Sweet Jesus, that's an ugly motor.  Is that for real?

That's the Aztek.

You should see it from behind.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000321.html

I recall that the Aztek was a consolation prize on one of the first seasons of Survivor.

It had a built-in tent.

The Aztek apologists on that page sicken me.

[Tank]

The United States Army is not in the habit of teaching Infantry Sergeants how to make bombs out of fertilizer.  Being a Bradley Gunner or a squad leader does not prepare you to blow up federal buildings.  The bombing of a military building was not the result of "honest to goodness military training." It was the result of McVeigh being a fucking psychopath. Should DHS watch out for former math professors who buy Al Gore's book as potential threats send bombs around the country?  You have the same sample size (one) to justify that as you do to justify keeping tabs on returning vets.

What new evidence does the DHS have to justify this report?  Zero.

So, what you're saying is: violent domestic extremists are nothing to worry about?

Nor should domestic law enforcement be concerned that recruitment of members with rigorous military training and real-world combat experience (above and beyond backwoods paintball wargames) would have the potential to increase their operational capability?

Because that's all the report talks about in regard to returning veterans.

Nowhere does it suggest that returning vets in general constitute a domestic terror threat, only that vets that actually join up with Neo-Nazi groups or extremist anti-government militias and the like could increase the threats these groups pose.

(U//FOUO) Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

— (U) After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.

— (U) A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that "large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces."

— (U//LES) The FBI noted in a 2008 report on the white supremacist movement that some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.

[Tank]

Here's the 2008 FBI report the DHS analysis bases this judgment on...

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/FBI:_White_Supremacist_Recruitment_of_Military_Personnel_2008

(U) Key Judgments

Except where noted, the confidence levels for the following judgments are considered moderate.

• (U//FOUO) High confidence: Military experience is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement as the result of recruitment campaigns by extremist groups and self-recruitment by veterans sympathetic to white supremacist causes. Extremist leaders seek to recruit members with military experience in order to exploit their discipline, knowledge of firearms, explosives, and tactical skills and access to weapons and intelligence.

• (U//FOUO) Although individuals with military backgrounds constitute a small percentage of white supremacist extremists, they frequently occupy leadership roles within extremist groups and their involvement has the potential to reinvigorate an extremist movement suffering from loss of leadership and in-fighting during the post-9/11 period.

• (U//FOUO) White supremacist extremists hope to revitalize the white supremacist movement by exploiting antigovernment sentiment among opponents of the overseas conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although some veterans of these conflicts have joined the extremist movement, they have not done so in numbers sufficient to stem declines among major national extremist organizations, nor has their participation resulted in a more violent extremist movement.

• (U//FOUO) Looking ahead, current and former military personnel belonging to white supremacist extremist organizations who experience frustration at the inability of these organizations to achieve their goals may choose to found new, more operationally minded and operationally capable groups. The military training veterans bring to the movement and their potential to pass this training on to others can increase the ability of lone offenders to carry out violence from the movement's fringes.

According to the FBI...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992665198727459.html

Michael Ward, FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, said in an interview Thursday that the portion of the operation focusing on the military related only to veterans who draw the attention of Defense Department officials for joining white-supremacist or other extremist groups.

"We're not doing an investigation into the military, we're not looking at former military members," he said. "It would have to be something they were concerned about, or someone they're concerned is involved" with extremist groups.

[Tank]

TPD.

The 2006 SPLC report referred to by the DHS...

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=66

According to a 1998 study commissioned by the Department of Defense, "Young civilian extremists are encouraged by adult leaders to enlist in the military to gain access to weapons, training, and other military personnel."

The reasons are obvious: Soldiers are trained to be proficient with weapons, combat tactics, and explosives, to train others in their use, and to operate in a highly disciplined culture that is focused on the organized violence of war. This is why military extremists present an elevated threat to public safety, and why extremists groups both recruit active duty personnel -- especially those with access to classified information or sophisticated weaponry -- and influence their members to join the armed forces.

"The threats posed by extremism to the military are simultaneously blatant and subtle," the Defense Department study said. "On the one hand, high-profile terrorist acts and hate crimes committed by active and former military personnel can have seriously detrimental effects on the civil-military relationship as well as on the morale and security of military personnel. On the other hand, even the non-violent activities of military personnel with extremist tendencies (e.g., possessing literature and/or artifacts from the extremist 'movement'; dabbling in extremism through computerized telecommunications activities; proselytizing extremist ideologies, etc.) can have deleterious consequences for the good order, discipline, readiness, and cohesion of military units."

Special Forces soldiers who double as extremist operatives present a special danger, since they have commando skills gained at huge taxpayer expense -- often including urban warfare, long-range reconnaissance, and combat demolitions.

"Hate groups send their guys into the U.S. military because the U.S. military has the best weapons and training," said T.J. Leyden, a former racist skinhead and Marine who recruited inside the Marine Corps for the Hammerskins, a nationwide skinhead gang. He later renounced the neo-Nazi movement and now conducts anti-extremism training seminars on military bases.

"Right now, any white supremacist in Iraq is getting live fire, guerilla warfare experience," Leyden said. "But any white supremacist in Iraq who's a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL or Marine Recon, he's doing covert stuff that's far above and beyond convoy protection and roadblocks. And if he comes back and decides at some point down the road that it's race war time, all that training and combat experience he's received could easily turn around and bite this country in the ass."

Department of Defense investigator Barfield confirmed that threat assessment. "Today's white supremacists in the military become tomorrow's domestic terrorists once they're out," he said. "There needs to be a tighter focus on intercepting the next Timothy McVeigh before he becomes the next Timothy McVeigh."

The 1995 DoD-commissioned study: Gangs, Extremists Groups, and the Military: Screening for Service.

[Tank]

http://washingtonindependent.com/40593/concerned-women-asking-about-swine-flu-panic

"Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through," said Wright. She pointed to news stories that ask whether the slow-walking of the Sebelius choice will hurt the response to the flu. "If there's even a hint that [Department of Homeland Security] is manipulating the health situation to push a political appointee through, well, it almost defies imagination that they'd be willing to that."

Wright said that she'd heard the speculation "on talk radio," and wanted to be skeptical, but "there's too much of a basis in that argument to easily dismiss it."

It almost defies imagination.

Apart, of course, from the part where she imagines it could be totally true.

[butthead]

http://washingtonindependent.com/40593/concerned-women-asking-about-swine-flu-panic

"Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through," said Wright. She pointed to news stories that ask whether the slow-walking of the Sebelius choice will hurt the response to the flu. "If there's even a hint that [Department of Homeland Security] is manipulating the health situation to push a political appointee through, well, it almost defies imagination that they'd be willing to that."

Wright said that she'd heard the speculation "on talk radio," and wanted to be skeptical, but "there's too much of a basis in that argument to easily dismiss it."

It almost defies imagination.

Apart, of course, from the part where she imagines it could be totally true.

Hold on...are you saying we aren't supposed to believe everything we hear on talk radio?

[Quality Start Machine]

http://washingtonindependent.com/40593/concerned-women-asking-about-swine-flu-panic

"Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through," said Wright. She pointed to news stories that ask whether the slow-walking of the Sebelius choice will hurt the response to the flu. "If there's even a hint that [Department of Homeland Security] is manipulating the health situation to push a political appointee through, well, it almost defies imagination that they'd be willing to that."

Wright said that she'd heard the speculation "on talk radio," and wanted to be skeptical, but "there's too much of a basis in that argument to easily dismiss it."

It almost defies imagination.

Apart, of course, from the part where she imagines it could be totally true.

It is unconscionable to think anyone would use DHS for political purposes.

Except, of course, when Tom Ridge held his "unspecified threats" press conferences a) the day after John Kerry announced John Edwards was his running mate, and b) the day after Kerry's acceptance speech, both times praising "the leadership of President Bush"

That was cool.

[Brownie]

http://washingtonindependent.com/40593/concerned-women-asking-about-swine-flu-panic

"Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through," said Wright. She pointed to news stories that ask whether the slow-walking of the Sebelius choice will hurt the response to the flu. "If there's even a hint that [Department of Homeland Security] is manipulating the health situation to push a political appointee through, well, it almost defies imagination that they'd be willing to that."

Wright said that she'd heard the speculation "on talk radio," and wanted to be skeptical, but "there's too much of a basis in that argument to easily dismiss it."

It almost defies imagination.

Apart, of course, from the part where she imagines it could be totally true.

It is unconscionable to think anyone would use DHS for political purposes.

Except, of course, when Tom Ridge held his "unspecified threats" press conferences a) the day after John Kerry announced John Edwards was his running mate, and b) the day after Kerry's acceptance speech, both times praising "the leadership of President Bush"

That was cool.

Or that anyone would use military jets for ill-advised photo shoots. I'm not sure the previous White House scheduled a covert photo shoot that might remind the locals of the worst thing they ever witnessed.  I guess when you put the guy who was on the Board of Indy Mac in charge of the WH Military Office...

[morpheus]

For what it's worth, those are just two announcements in a sea of many.  http://www.thehollywoodliberal.com/105.htm (bonus points to that site for the ghey Bush/Gannon photoshop)

I think I'm on board with Gil Gunderson on DHS: why does it exist, and what function does it perform that other departments do not perform (or what is gained from having it)?

And I hope we can agree that whoever is in the White House will use the timing of announcements by any of the Federal Government's executive departments to their political advantage.  People respond to INCENTIVES.

[CT III]

And I hope we can agree that whoever is in the White House will use the timing of announcements by any of the Federal Government's executive departments to their political advantage.  People respond to INCENTIVES.

In this context, your catchphrase makes little sense.