The Sanchez Report

Here Come The Chinese

Looks like China has launched their first aircraft carrier. This will only intensify the growing Chinese military threat to the United States. The Chinese government claims that this will be used as a "research vessel." Umm, yeah right!

From Fox News:

DigitalGlobe Inc., a commercial satellite company, said Wednesday that it took a photograph of China’s first aircraft carrier during a sea trial in the Yellow Sea, off the Chinese coast.

The Pentagon did not confirm the image, but Stephen Wood, the satellite company’s director, said he’s confident about the Dec. 8 photograph due to the carrier’s location.

Although China insists the carrier is intended for research and training, its use has raised concern about the country’s military strength and its increasingly assertive claims over disputed territory.

While the development of carriers is driven largely by bragging rights and national prestige, China's naval ambitions have been brought into focus with its claims to disputed territory surrounding Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy claimed by China as its own, has responded to the growing Chinese threat by developing missiles capable of striking carriers at sea. An illustration at a display Wednesday of military technology in the capital Taipei showed a Hsiung Feng III missile hitting a carrier that was a dead ringer for the former Varyag.

The Libya Quagmire

So here we go again! The US has initiated another Middle East war in the name of democracy and national self interest. The stench of hypocrisy stinks to high heaven! It's been a week since we launched attacks against Libya and I'm still waiting for the mainstream media and liberals to rise up against this Administration. I know, excuse my english, but it ain't going to happen! This Administration and its media allies have ben selling this as a military conflict needed to support freedom fighters and that unlike the Iraq War, this war has broad international support with the backing of the UN and Arab League. What a crock! Let's begin with President Obama's justification for taking action.

President Obama on Libya:

Now, here’s why this matters to us. Left unchecked, we have every reason to believe that Qadhafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisis would ensue.
The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners.
The calls of the Libyan people for help would go unanswered. The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun.
Moreover, the words of the international community would be rendered hollow.

President Bush on Iraq:

Earlier today, I ordered Americas armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraqs nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.
Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.
Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade long war. Not only against soldiers, but against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq.
The international community had little doubt then, and I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.

Sound familiar? The fact is we have no national interest in Libya other than oil. Muammar Qaddafi poses no threat to the United States. Unlike Saddam Hussein, he actually welcomed the UN and the US into his country to oversee the dismantling of his WMD program several years ago. This led President Bush to restore official diplomatic relations with the Libyan government.

So now that we've started this war we need to ask ourselves some important questions.

Why did we wait almost 30 days to offer military support to the rebels? Was this done to gain the support of the UN, Arab League and Europeans? Great, we go their support after one month of trying, but in the meantime, the rebels have lost their momentum and will not succeed without our help in providing ground troops.

Why does the President feel that he didn't need the support of Congress? He waited on the UN and Arab League, but yet he has refused to go to Congress to get their approval. It wasn't long ago that VP Biden, while a Senator, suggested that President Bush could be impeached if he launched an attack against Iran without Congressional approval.

Why is it okay to bomb Libya, but not Iran? We have a much more compelling vested interest to help the opposition forces in Iran.

What is the mission? Are we looking to remove Qaddafi? Are we trying to help protect the civilians or help the rebel ground forces? Who are the rebels? Are they pro-US? Are there any Al-Qaeda influences within their ranks? Are we prepared to impose a no fly zone for the next 12 years like Iraq? What's the end game?

Who is in charge?The UN, NATO, French or British? Where are the coalition forces that have been promised? We 122 of the 124 Cruise Missiles during the opening night of the war. The British fired 2. We have supplied almost all of the aircraft thus far. For all of the criticism of President Bush's coalition during the Iraq War, this effort looks much more unilateral than anything we saw during the Iraq War.

 

The Media's Silence In Pittsburgh Is Deafening

From Accuracy In Media:

For months, the liberal media have been warning America that "right-wing extremists" and "tea partiers" are whipping the country into an anti-government frenzy that inevitably will result in violence, but their at best irrational and at worst manufactured fears have not been warranted.

Hundreds of thousands of government critics marched on Washington on Sept. 12 and caused not one bit of trouble. Rest assured that any incidents would have been plastered all over the media if they had occurred.

Contrast that with what happened Thursday at the G20 meeting of economic leaders in Pittsburgh. Police had to fire pepper spray and smoke at left-wing anarchists who haven't a clue how to conduct a peaceful protest, but the trouble has barely made the news. The Huffington Post celebrated the protests with a vote-on-your-favorite photo contest that included shots of the street thugs.

Read entire post here

Perhaps The Dems Are Having Second Thoughts About Zelaya

Suppose President Obama was in his second term and decided that he wanted to stay in office indefinitely. Let's further suppose that he was insisting on pushing forward with a referendum to amend the constitution so that he could become a dictator. Let's say that the Supreme Court ruled that such a vote was illegal and that the Congress was opposed as well. Imagine that the opposition not only consisted of other political parties, but also his own Vice-President and leaders of his party. Imagine if he called on Hugo Chavez to illegally ship ballots to our country to force this vote. To make matters worse, imagine President Obama organizing a mob to storm the facility that was holding the illegal ballots. Stay with me, the story gets better. Now, let's say that under our constitution, the Supreme Court was allowed to order an arrest and in fact they ordered that the President be arrested in order to preserve democracy and the rule of law. This is exactly what happened to President Zelaya in Honduras and yet our President decided to line up in support of this wannabe dictator along side the likes of the Castro Brothers, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and every other Marxist in Latin America.

Apparently, the Democrats in Congress are starting to realize the fallacy of their ways and are back-peddling on their support of Zelaya. Too bad the mainstream media is not following their lead. they continue to report the situation in Honduras as a military coup.

From HotAir:

The Obama administration jumped quickly into the fray over the removal and expulsion of president Manuel Zelaya from Honduras, calling the action a “coup” and demanding his reinstatement.  Fellow Democrats in Congress followed suit, but The Hill reports that they may be changing their minds.  Suddenly, they have begun acknowledging the crimes Zelaya committed and stopped calling for his return to office.

Maybe the national media can finally follow suit and report the entire story on the Honduran crisis.  While the Hondurans made a big mistake in forcibly exiling Zelaya, they had ample reason to arrest him and try him for several violations of their constitution.  It’s entirely possible to criticize the manner of Zelaya’s removal while still recognizing the necessity of protecting the nation from a dictatorship in its nascent stages.

Read entire post here

The Terrorists Will Soon Be Hiring Lawyers

From the Powerline Blog:

Our friend Steve Hayes blows the whistle on a real scandal (as opposed to a faux "scandal" like waterboarding): on orders of the Obama administration, terrorists captured in Afghanistan are now being given Miranda warnings:

[T]he Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here's the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today -- foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them and they're reading them their rights -- Mirandizing these foreign fighters," says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy.

Think back to the days after September 11, 2001, and imagine how pretty much anyone would have reacted to the suggestion that terrorists captured overseas should be "arrested" and read their "rights." Those days, obviously, are long gone.

You may wonder what on earth the point is. Evidently, the idea is that we may want to prosecute these terrorists someday in American courts. If you have wondered, like me, why we are talking about criminal prosecutions in the U.S. when a terrorist tries to blow up American soldiers in Afghanistan, it turns out that Congress has passed anti-terrorism statutes that purport to reach overseas, so that someone who commits a terrorist act against an American soldier can, indeed, be brought back to the U.S. and prosecuted.

Of course, if the terrorists are under the jurisdiction of American courts with criminal prosecution as the aim, their rights do not stop with Miranda warnings. On the contrary: among other things, they are entitled to the assistance of counsel. So I suppose we should start shipping planeloads of criminal defense lawyers to Afghanistan to make sure that the terrorists' "rights" are fully protected.

But why would we even consider criminal prosecution for captured terrorists? In what war have we ever brought enemy combatants--legitimate ones, let alone terrorists--back to America to be criminally prosecuted? None, obviously.

All of this is emblematic of the Obama administration's return to a law enforcement model for fighting terrorism--the same model that failed so spectacularly in the years leading up to September 11. The best we can all do, for now, is hope that history does not repeat itself.

Surprise, Surprise! Obama Set To Revive Military Commissions At Gitmo

Surprise, Surprise! The Obama Administration is set to reinstate Military Commissions as a way to prosecute terrorism suspects.  According to the Washington Post, the administration will propose changes that will grant the terrorists greater legal protections. This system was heavily criticized by the Democrats and members of the mainstream media for most of the presidential campaign. "By any measure, our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure," then-candidate Barack Obama said in June 2008. This hypocrisy stinks to high heaven and I can't wait to see how the media spins this story.

From the Washington Post:

In one of its first acts, the Obama administration obtained a 120-day suspension of the military commissions; that will expire May 20. Human rights groups had interpreted the suspension as the death knell for military commissions and expected the transfer of cases to military courts martial or federal courts.

Officials said yesterday that the Obama administration will seek a 90-day extension of the suspension as early as next week. It would subsequently restart the commissions on American soil, probably at military bases, according to a lawyer briefed on the plan. 

The Obama administration's plan to reinstate the commissions with modifications reflects the fear that some cases would fail in federal courts or in standard military legal settings.

"It looks a lot more difficult now than it did on Jan. 20," said one government official.

Civil liberties advocates, who insist that federal courts can handle terrorism cases, vowed to challenge any new process.

Pelosi Briefed On Interrogation Tactics In September 2002

The evidence is starting to pile up and it looks like Speaker Pelosi has some explaining to do.  According to a report released by the Director of National Intelligence, Nancy Pelosi was given a detailed brief about the enhanced interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah in September 2002. The meeting was described as a “Briefing on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.” This contradicts her claims that she wasn't told that EIT's were actually being used on enemy combatants.
From ABC NEWS The Point:

The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics. Instead, she has said, she was told only that the Bush administration had legal opinions that would have supported the use of such techniques.

The report details a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting between intelligence officials and Pelosi, then-House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, and two aides. At the time, Pelosi was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

The meeting is described as a “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.”

EITs stand for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a classification of special interrogation tactics that includes waterboarding.

Former CIA Director Porter Goss Calls Out The Democrats

The former Director of the CIA, Porter Goss , seems to be getting ready for a fight. He has provided a compelling case as to why the Democrats in Congress should win the Hypocrisy Award for shameless politics. I'd bet my house the radical left and the White House failed to use a little game theory in trying to predict how this interrogation drama would unfold. In a sick twisted way, perhaps a show trial on Capitol Hill would be a good thing if only to demonstrate to the American people the hand that Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues had in approving strong interrogation techniques after 9/11.

From the Washington Post

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

– The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

– We understood what the CIA was doing.

– We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

– We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

– On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues.

Here We Go Again... ACLU Forces Defense Dept To Release More Photos

For some reason the ACLU wasn't happy with the damage inflicted upon the US military resulting from the Abu Ghraib photos a few years ago. So now we'll have to be subjected to another attempt by the far left to hurt our military in the name of civil liberties. On May 28th the Defense Department will release photos in order to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the ACLU in 2003. As if we didn't hear enough about Abu Ghraib, the world will view these photos and express outrage once again. There's no doubt that the Obama administration will use this as a tool to make President Bush look bad and as a result hold themselves up as the anti-Bush administration. Meanwhile, the firestorm that these photos will ignite will only place our servicemen and women in jeopardy and cost lives. My advice to the far left Bush haters is to get over it. He's gone and it's time to move on!

The Defense Department will release a "substantial number" of photos depicting abuse of prisoners by U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American Civil Liberties Union said late Thursday.

The photos will be made available by May 28, the ACLU said, citing a letter dated Thursday from the Justice Department to a federal judge in New York. The photos' release is in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU in 2004 and will include images from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan at locations other than Abu Ghraib, the ACLU said.

"These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib," Amrit Singh staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement. "Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse."

Read article here

Israel Stands Ready To Bomb Iran's Nuclear Sites

This could be the foreign policy test that Joe Biden promised would occur during the first six months of their administration. From The Times:

The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,” one senior defence official told The Times.