A Brief History…

There are two outrageous stories here. One is about bribery and extortion and the other is about cowardice.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

That’s one. The other is:

He was accused in yesterday’s high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

At least there is one Englishman with balls in the government.

Matthew Cowie, was described by the judge as “a complete hero” for standing up to pressure from BAE’s lawyers, who went behind his back and tried to secretly lobby the attorney general to step in at an early stage and halt the investigations.

Maybe he should be the next PM.

The bumper stickers of true believers often have slogans about how Bush lied us into war. They don’t always differentiate which war they mean. Is it the war that began with the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 ? Or the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beruit in 1983 ? Or the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1998 ? Or the embassy bombings in Africa ? Or the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 ? Or the 9/11 attacks in 2001 ? We responded weakly or not at all to each of these incidents prior to 9/11/2001. What did that produce ? More attacks.

Now, what does the left suggest ? That it is just hysteria whipped up by the president.

Americans are worried and even angry about many things. Whether Osama bin Laden is throwing a party because AT&T and Verizon might have to defend themselves in court isn’t one of them. Outside of National Review, K Street, and the fear-paralyzed imagination of our shrinking faux-warrior class, there is no constituency in America demanding warrantless eavesdropping or amnesty for lawbreaking telecoms.

So the only people who want to listen to terrorist cellphone conversations are responding to “the fear-paralyzed imagination of our shrinking faux-warrior class.” When the NY Times broke the story in 2005, treason in my estimation, that we were following these cell phone conversation, what happened?

Muslim men bought thousands of pre-paid cellphones that cannot be tracked. Of course, CBS insists that the cellphone don’t necessarily mean terrorism, Maybe they were opening a cellphone store. Except, wouldn’t you buy them through a wholesaler if you were opening a store ? Well, Glen Greenwald, of sock-puppet fame, is sure this is all a false alarm. What, then is the issue ?

The issue is not “intelligence gaps.” Rather, as McConnell candidly admits, the “real issue” is “liability protection for the private sector.” To take them at their word, George Bush and Mike McConnell are putting the nation at risk in order to ensure that AT&T and Verizon do not have to be held accountable in a court of law for having broken the law. Think about how twisted and corrupt that calculus is.

Yep. It’s all about the right to sue companies that act in the national interest. How perverted.