Joel Mowbray points out a glaring omission. From the New York Post:
IF al Qaeda wants to strike on U.S. soil before the elections, it still has available to it a gaping loophole it exploited pre-9/11: Saudis' easy access to U.S. visas.Despite supposed reforms implemented by the State Department, current statistics obtained by this columnist reveal that nearly 90 percent of all Saudi visa applicants get approved. To put this in perspective, applicants in most other Arab nations — the ones that didn't send us 15 of 19 9/11 hijackers — are refused visas three to five times more often than Saudis.
Sept. 11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed reportedly told U.S. interrogators that the reason 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis was because they had by far the easiest time getting visas. According to the 9/11 Commission, Mohammed personally discovered how true this was when he obtained a visa (using an alias) in July 2001 through a program known as Visa Express, which allowed all Saudis to apply for visas at travel agencies.
As troubling as Visa Express was, though, it was used by just three of the terrorists, since the program was only open for three months before the attack. Far more disturbing is the fact that Visa Express didn't lower the standards for Saudis to get visas; they couldn't have gotten any lower.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found in an October 2002 report that "consular officers in Saudi Arabia issued visas to most Saudi applicants without interviewing them, requiring them to complete their applications or providing supporting documentation." Even before Visa Express started, 99 percent of all Saudi nationals were approved.
Following a public outcry, State shuttered Visa Express in July 2002, and also canned consular chief Mary Ryan in the same week. Congress even came close to stripping the visa power from State — an amendment failed by a single vote in committee — but the diplomats' department staved off those efforts by pledging reform. Lots of it.
State has made some progress, such as doubling the number of names on the watchlist and breathing more life into pre-9/11 programs to identify non-watchlisted individuals who should be barred from the U.S.
What State has neglected to do, however, is enforce the law in Saudi Arabia.
Because of a provision in the law known as 214(b), all applicants are presumed ineligible for a visa until they establish their eligibility. This is supposed to be a high bar to clear, and in most countries, it is. Just not for Saudis. That's why nearly 90 percent who apply still get approved.
Until offending members of the INS and State Department are brought before Congress, berated, hectored, publicly disgraced, and fired, and the something similar (minus the firing) is done to those who for decades have, directly and indirectly, been hirelings of the Arabs and especially the Saudis (when certain names are as known as that of Robert Hanson one will know that people have begun to come to their senses) the same idiocy will continue. Stupidity and cupidity are powerful agents of non-change. Radix malorum etc.
Please, Frontline, 24 Hours, 60 Minutes, whatever you call yourself, can't you investigate these sorts of things, and leave the essentially trivial stories, including every single story about a Hollywood star, to the check-out counter magazines? All stories about Michael Jackson, or for that matter a dribbling basketball star, can be relegated to the pages next to Oprah's heroic struggle with her weight problem, Demi Moore's plastic surgery, and other Important Stories. Tell us a little bit about the Americans, for example, who were in placde in Saudi Arabia in 1973 -- Ambassador James Akins, and C.I.A. station chief Raymond Close. Tell us what kinds of information they fed the U.S. government. Tell us how they have been supplementing their pensions ever since. And if they have been helpfully enlightening audiences with their views on the Middle East and on the Saudis, just what are those views, and how closely to they seem to accord with reality?
In the middle of World War II, John Roy Carlson published Under Cover. He was an Armenian immigrant named Garabedian; fiercly loyal to America, and naturally grateful to it for rescuing his family from Muslim (Turkish, Kurdish, Arab) pogroms, he became an undercover investigator of those who were supporting, and promoting, the Nazis. Find the book, and read it, and tell others to read it. And ask if you see any similarities to today's world, and whether you think we are now at 1943, or 1941, or 1939, or just where, on our own timeline, we now stand.
Visa Express - more like Jihadist Express.
HUGH says it all beautifully. And hey,ROTWEILLER like that JIHADIST EXPRESS.
Unfortunately, Oprah's weight problem and Mr. Jackson's penchant for young boys, sells better than the more substantive matters such as the kind of treachery within say, the DoD or Los Almos where many members of al Qaeda are actually employed!
Sadly, most Americans are more interested in flying little plastic American-looking flags produced in China, and singing a drunken rendition of the national anthem at half-time, than to inquire about such matters as Saudi visas.
Give 'em plenty of fire-works; beer; brats; and sports channels on the fourth of July; and most Americans generally won't ask their political leaders embarassing questions!
Those awakening from their stupor momentarily, who deep down probably do care about their country, then listen to globalists like Rush (who they have been inculcated into believing is a "traditional conservative" American) momentarily, and then doze off back into lah-lah land, thinking that all is well with the world.
"Stocks are up; the economy is booming; what the -- hey, what could go wrong? Huh?"
Sadly, the WW2 generation is leaving us and taking their sense of honor and duty with them.
Most American kids today never heard of say -- Norman Rockwell -- and the America that he recorded and portrayed in his works, are as foreign to contemporary American as the battlefieds upon which they are called to serve.
So where are we on our timeline? Don't know, but it sure looks like 476 A.D. to me, and I am not happy.
Why? Because 622 A.D. is just around the corner -- history should not have to repeat itself but it will if we let it!!!
I have thought about this analogy (now and the 1930s...Islam and National Socialism) and timeline, and would like to throw up some ideas, that may amount to nothing.
I do feel that we are living in something like the 1930s, a prelude to disaster, but the timeline has different character and dynamics. Germany was galvanized behind a Fuhrer that gave centrality, almost overpowering direction, to National Socialism and all its ambitions. Hence the progression to disaster, war, the Holocaust, domination of Europe by the Nazis, came rather quickly...industrialization, German culture and others ideas 'Western', contributed to the 'quick step' of history.
The slow moving 'Islamic collective' has a different rythym. We may be at 1938...but the progression of the collective is measured in larger units of time. There is an upside and downside to this, I think: there may still be time to stop Islam, but the destruction of individual political/military organizations (e.g. Hezbollah, al Qaeda) will not stop the growth of the collective. The only way to stop it, I think, is massive resistance from all sides of the political spectrum in nonMuslim societies and segregation: Islam must be 'set aside' to live by itself.
Even then, there will be suffering and conflict, but the quasi-domination of Europe, for instance, by Islam, either through immigration and high birth rates, or petro-blackmail, will not be as severe. Imagine France and its nuclear arsenal squarely in the pocket of the Jihadists...it is not such a historical long shot a la larga...
And so, thank God for folks like Robert and Hugh and Jihad Watch. In time, folks will come to understand, I think, just how much is owed to you for speaking out, warning; and hopefully, we will avoid the worst of what surely awaits us.
The Visa fiasco can only be described as a piece of treacherous negligence on the part of the State Department, but these guys always manage to avoid taking the blame. For example, to the extent that we face military reverses in Iraq, the military and the Defense Dept. are severely criticized. However, while the war has been called a "diplomatic disaster", no one is blaming the diplomats at the State Department.
In fact, the worse the diplomatic malaise grows, the more the diplomats are made to look like geniuses -- because, after all, everybody knows they were against the war.
All right, I'll come right out and say it. The U.S. State Department is purposely sabotaging our diplomatic standing for its own purposes!