Friday, November 04, 2005

Able Danger Update

I read an interesting blog at Tapscott Copydesk entitled:
ABLE DANGER UPDATE: DIA Undeterred in Moving Against Col. Shaffer; Warning to Whistle Blowers to Just Shut Up

Mark Tapscott pointed out in his blog that:

Col. Anthony Shaffer bravely came forward earlier this year to tell the American people about the Able Danger intelligence data-sorting program that identified several of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Shaffer's reward appeared to be a classic anti-whistle blower campaign by the Defense Intelligence Agency and other Pentagon elements......Shaffer recently lost an appeal and DIA is now moving forward to withdrawn the security clearance that he must have in order to continue doing his current work....Ed Morrissey talked with Shaffer's attorney, Mark Zaid, and has some ideas about what the Senate Judiciary Committee might do between now and its January......"Since the Judiciary Committee has decided to schedule the Alito hearings in January, that gives them some free time between now and the end of their work sessions to haul the DIA in front of them and demand some answers."Given the old and picayune nature of the infractions that the DIA has used to challenge Shaffer's security clearance, their haste in closing this case strongly suggests that Zaid has it pegged; this termination surely comes as a vindictive ploy to warn other potential Able Danger witnesses not to cooperate with Congress.".....Tapsott himself covered the General Services Administration in the late 1970s and early 1980s when corruption was routinely being exposed on the front page. That corruption could not be exposed without honest employees within GSA talking to journalists.....whistle blowers suffered patterns of retaliation...now apparently being done against Shaffer. Link to Morrissey's full post

When government entities that are not held accountable for their mistakes, we see breakdowns in their performance and set the stage for the deterioration. No one in the federal government is above scrutiny, performance audits, and oversight.

The Senate has the ability to do it. But, unfortunately their "sports bar" political mentality has crippled them from doing what is right (to fully protect our country.) However in this climate of the Blue team against the Red team in the second term world series, our legislative body is to busy objecting to each other and not paying attention to the important tasks that we elected them for.

The liberals are to busy challenging President Bush and trying to show that although they are in the minority they can call the shots. Our conservatives are busy trying to keep control by being nice. There is a strong element of liberal tolerance / politically correct agenda of the kumby ya crowd that gets thrown into the mix. Of course the liberals embrace the wackos and this what we end up with. Government enities running wild and becoming complacent.

How many times did we have Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, et. a.l in our sights when lawyers in the defense department scrubbed efforts to use Hellfire-armed Predators against them? See the article, An Air War Like No Other, for insight into what happens when liberal lawyers in the defense department get their say on when to use Hellfire-armed Predators in war. I suspect, but do not have any proof, that some of the same type of lawyers and kumby ya crowd helped to scrub Able Danger. However without full investigation and cooperation we may never know.

Our legislators need to set aside their partisan politics, tell the "kumby ya crowd" to get out of the pool, and get to work in defense of our great country. If we do not change, we will eventually see the same problems here in the United States that we see in France. Those problems are caused by the French socialists, kumby ya ism, appeasers, and apologists.

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Cross-posted: The Bos'un Locker

posted by Bos'un at 11/04/2005 08:44:00 PM