A B2 Bomber has crashed….in Guam.

A B-2 stealth bomber plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from an air base in Guam on Saturday, the first time one crashed, but both pilots ejected safely, Air Force officials said.The aircraft was taking off with three others on their last flight out of Guam after a four-month deployment, part of a continuous U.S. bomber presence in the western Pacific. After the crash, the other three bombers were being kept on Guam, said Maj. Eric Hilliard at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii.

A board of officers will investigate what caused the aircraft to crash at 10:30 a.m., shortly after taking off from a runway. It was the first crash of a B-2 bomber, said Capt. Sheila Johnston, a spokeswoman for Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.All 21 stealth bombers are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, but the Air Force has been rotating several of them through Guam since 2004, along with B-1 and B-52 bombers.

I’ve sat in that cockpit….and stared at all those digital instruments. Call it…… a hunch.

This piece by Marc Shepherd will go in the Required Reading section of LJiC. My hope is I can look back on this article years from now and laugh at our paranoia over the “perceived” threat of terrorism. That’s my hope, but reality has a way of dashing unfounded hopes, doesn’t it?

There was a great deal of talk about “connecting the dots” a few years ago. Well, take a look at these “dots.”

While Democrats prepare witless campaign slogans blaming Republicans for millions of children not protected by health insurance, al Qaeda’s blatant threat to exterminate 2 million American kids remains unheeded. And it will likely continue to be, notwithstanding mounting evidence that there exists no peril on Earth our young need greater protection from today than merciless jihadist monsters.

Not lack of a national insurance plan. Not global warming. Not racial or cultural disparities. Not even the Patriot Act, any of its overplayed incursions into individual liberties, or any of the other countless silly and diaphanous liberal causes célèbres, but rather that which would abruptly and savagely end their innocent short lives.

Nearly 6 months have passed since I first challenged the inexcusable refusal by DHS and FBI authorities to publicly connect the obviously connectable dots representing an unnerving number of alarming events — particularly in the wake of the Beslan school massacre. These include:

* Videotapes confiscated in Afghanistan showing al-Qaeda terrorists training to takeover a school [newly available Video]
* Spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith‘s declaration of al-Qaeda’s “right” to kill 2 million American children
* An Iraqi national with known terrorist connections caught with a computer disk containing information detailing Department of Education crisis planning for U.S school districts.
* Two Saudi men - one wearing a black trench coat despite the Florida heat — terrifying a busload of Tampa schoolchildren by boarding a school bus and remaining for the entire ride to school, all the while laughing and speaking Arabic.
* A March FBI/DHS bulletin noting “recent suspicious activity” by foreigners who drive school buses, are licensed to drive them, or have actually managed to purchase them right here at home. Including “members of the unnamed extremist groups” who have obtained commercial drivers licenses with school bus endorsements.
* Osama bin Laden’s promise that the 2004 terrorist attack at Beslan will happen many times over in the United States.

In that time, little or nothing has been done to relieve parents’ understandable anxieties, despite the fresh dots which continued to accrue on this disturbing non-puzzle.

Dots like the seventeen full-sized yellow school buses reported stolen from charter schools, business schools and private bus companies in Houston, Texas, over the past few months. Connect to that and previous disturbing stories the fact that thousands of school bus radios have also been stolen (2000 in California in 2005 alone), and the images shaped should be triggering earsplitting alarms throughout all branches of media and law enforcement.

But instead — the silence looms apparent while the question remains: Why?

This is an important piece.

The Glen Beck video from CNN mentioned above is another warning cry. I strongly urge the readers of LJiC to watch this series, and spread the word. One of the guests in the video asks “What part of ‘We are at war, and our children are threatened do we not understand?” Are we living in a September 10th world in regards to this threat? I pray we are not.

Amen. How in the world can we ignore this threat, this thing the Islamists call “The Perfect Day?”

This video of Beslan continues to haunt. And yes, it can happen here. Beslan was a dress rehearsal for Al-Qaeda’s attack on America.

We fight World War IV on many fronts. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, The Philippines, are but a few of the locations. Military, Economic, Technological are but a few of the ways. The Islamo-Fascists continue to find new ways to attack us, in ways the Nazis never dreamed of. While the evil of Iran speaks to the United Nations, his allies plan attacks on our children and our schools.

The cycle has come full circle and I find myself again, sitting here, tuesday morning, recalling that day.

It was a Tuesday morning after a guard drill, so for me it was the first day of my workweek. Because we lived relatively close to work, I was riding my mountain bike into work, as a way to keep fit and try to loose weight. It was chilly, about 50 degrees, a normal fall morning in this part of the country. I sped past the guard at the gate, he was a friend of mine, I knew he recognized me and I really didn’t feel like stopping that day (it is so hard to get going again from a dead stop). Only later would I realize that he was trying to stop me, to tell me what had happened, but he was still in too much shock really to react.
I peddled to my building and locked up my bike. It was early still, only Charlie was at work already, but he was always there early, he liked to make the coffee and get in a little news before anyone else got there. (Boy do I miss him, Charlie Died last year). As I walked in, helmet in hand, Charlie said in his mumbled Texan accent “Ya know someone just crashed a plane into one of those World Trade Center buildin’s.” “You mean like the plane that hit the Empire State building?” I said. “Yep,” he said. “HMM,” I thought. Interesting but not really alarming, so I changed into my uniform, sat down at my computer, and turned on my radio. The usual banter was not there, The Rob Arnie and Dawn show was normally jovial and jocular, but that day it was replaced with a very somber and almost panicked tone. “Two airliners have been crashed by unknown individuals or groups of individuals into the World Trade Center towers,” came the somber and controlled voice. A normally calm and collected individual, the morning DJ was choking back his emotions, and trying with every fiber of his being to remain calm.This sent alarms off in my head. OH MY GOD, it wasn’t just a small plane that happened to go wayward, it was a big plane, and not one but TWO, we were under attack. I went into OH CRAP mode.

Read the rest of this entry »

What George Tenet really says about Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.
by Thomas Joscelyn of the Weekly Standard

This is once again one of those times where I have to remind you that I did not actually write anything, I am just pointing out an interesting article.

There was more than enough evidence to give us real concern about Iraq and al-Qa’ida; there was plenty of smoke, maybe even some fire: Ansar al-Islam [note: Tenet refers to Ansar al-Islam by its initials "AI" in several places]; Zarqawi; Kurmal; the arrests in Europe; the murder of American USAID officer Lawrence Foley, in Amman, at the hands of Zarqawi’s associates; and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad operatives in Baghdad.
On Ansar al-Islam, Zarqawi, and Kurmal, Tenet elaborates further:

The intelligence told us that senior al-Qa’ida leaders and the Iraqis had discussed safe haven in Iraq. Most of the public discussion thus far has focused on Zarqawi’s arrival in Baghdad under an assumed name in May of 2002, allegedly to receive medical treatment. Zarqawi, whom we termed a “senior associate and collaborator” of al-Qa’ida at the time, supervised camps in northern Iraq run by Ansar al-Islam (AI).
We believed that up to two hundred al-Qa’ida fighters began to relocate there in camps after the Afghan campaign began in the fall of 2001. The camps enhanced Zarqawi’s reach beyond the Middle East. One of the camps run by AI, known as Kurmal, engaged in production and training in the use of low-level poisons such as cyanide. We had intelligence telling us that Zarqawi’s men had tested these poisons on animals and, in at least one case, on one of their own associates. They laughed about how well it worked. Our efforts to track activities emanating from Kurmal resulted in the arrest of nearly one hundred Zarqawi operatives in Western Europe planning to use poisons in operations. …

But remember there were NO WMD’s in Iraq and Iraq had NO TIES to Al Qaeda. None, Nope, Never… Right!

That door the MSM opened, and the Democrats blithely walked through, has once again led right off a cliff. The declassified parts of the NIE show the massive scandal which we used to know as “objective journalism.” Here’s the opening sentences:

United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of
al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations;

Oopsie.
So, let’s see what the much vaunted Iraq paragraph really said:

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and
operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the
struggle elsewhere.
• The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep
resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for
the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves,
and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry
on the fight.

Percieved success. Percieved failure.

Question: Who drives perceptions today? Would it not be the very MSM and Defeatocrats who now have egg on their face…again?

Or The Dike is about to explode.

Or How Best Win an Election and Loose the War on Terror.

Our Intel is leaking like a sieve. It seems our government, from the highest Democrat on down, doesn’t seem to understand what the word “classified” means. I tire of the constant “leaks” that don’t get prosecuted. The “leaks” that occur purely for political gain, and this is just another in a long line.

Bush to Declassify Part of Intel Report

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Tuesday said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, as a key portion of a national intelligence assessment by his own administration suggests. He said he was declassifying part of the report.
…
Democrats have used the report - written by analysts from a range of U.S. intelligence branches - to bolster their criticism of Bush’s Iraq policy.

The administration does not dispute the findings, but claims only part of the report was leaked - and does not tell the full story.

As usual, the moonbattiest of the moonbatties don’t want us to know the whole story. “Can’t control the populace if they have the whole story, nope gotta leak the best parts.” The parts that will do the most damage both to America, and the Republican Party. Remember, National Security is secondary to our regaining power.

There is never an excuse for leaking classified information. Only a few people in the U.S. have the power to declassify, and I almost guarantee the “leaker” in this case does not. If a simple schmuck like me did anything like this, I would be doing the rest of my life in a hard labor camp, if I was lucky. “Leaking” classified information is punishable by DEATH, unless apparently you are a high ranking former political official. Sandy Berger anyone?

For your consideration, I present Mr. Russell D. Tice, former defense systems specialist in the NSA, now “doing housing construction work.” Mr. Tice leaked his subpoena compelling testimony to this reliable source:

…the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, which posted it on its Web site at www.nswbc.org. The group was formed last year by Sibel Edmonds, a former F.B.I. translator who lost a court fight challenging her 2002 dismissal after the government invoked the state-secrets privilege, a legal doctrine it is also using to try to block lawsuits involving the security agency’s domestic surveillance program.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong. When you are given security clearance, you promise not to reveal classified infromation, period. It doesn’t matter if, in your opinion, it shouldn’t be classified. You promise, under penalty of law, not to leak it. Not to your wife, not to the dog, not to The New York Times, even anonymously. Sigh.

…by the latest Media inspired story? Here’s how the latest firestorm began:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“Using the data to analyze calling patterns.”

Another way of saying that is…oh I hate this over used phrase so much…

Connecting the dots.
There.
I said it.

Isn’t that what the NSA is SUPPOSED to do?

Now, one more thing.

Does anyone, find it coincidental that the current chief of the NSA was nominated to head the CIA yesterday, and this story comes out today?

If you haven’t seen President Bush’s boffo performance at The White House Correspondence Dinner last night, you can catch excerpts here. My favorite line, “We Americans must come together, Republicans, Democrats…and John McCain.” I’d skip Colbert, though. He bombed big time. A real waste of time.

After viewing Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Bush’s act, click around on Hot Air. It is rapidly becoming a major video blogging site. Check out Vent, by Michelle Malkin. Great stuff.