Victims of terrorism and their families must not be sacrificed in the interest of securing contracts with current and former state sponsors of terrorism.

One by one, top executives of American oil companies met privately over the last year with LibyaÂ’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, often in his signature Bedouin tent, as they lined up contracts allowing them to tap into the countryÂ’s oil reserves.

But now, the new allies are working Capitol Hill, trying to weaken a law that threatens those deals. The Libyan government, once a pariah, and the American oil industry have hired high-profile lobbyists, buttonholed lawmakers and enlisted help from the Bush administration, all in an effort to win an exemption from a law that Congress passed in January that is intended to ensure that victims of terrorist attacks are compensated.

The law allows victims of state-sponsored terrorism to collect court judgments by seizing foreign assets in the United States or money from those governments held by American companies doing business with them. If Libya loses a half-dozen court cases still pending, $3 billion to $6 billion could be at stake, according to lawyersÂ’ estimates.

The US has shamefully sacrificed the rights of such victims of state terrorism before. Whether it was Carter's renunciation of the right of hostages to sue Iran or the Bush administrations opposition to awards of damages to families of victims, blocking such awards blocks justice. Given Libya's history of state-sponsored terrorism, allowing Qaddafi to walk away from his misdeeds witha pocket full of cash while his victims get noting is a moral obscenity -- and another bad precedent.

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Former President Neville Carter has announced that he has brokered an agreement for peace in our times with the terrorists of Hamas prepared to promise to stop attacking Israel (but only for 10 years) but refusing to recognize the right of Israel to exist.

Oh, by the way -- all Israel has to do is give Hamas EVERYTHING the Palestinians have been demanding.

The leader of Hamas said Monday that his Palestinian militant group would offer Israel a 10-year "hudna," or truce, as implicit proof of recognition of Israel if it withdrew from all lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East War.

Khaled Mashaal told The Associated Press that he made the offer to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in talks on Saturday. "We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as a proof of recognition," Mashaal said.

In his comments Monday, Mashaal used the Arabic word "hudna," meaning truce, which is more concrete than "tahdiya" — a period of calm — which Hamas often uses to describe a simple cease-fire.

Two points.

1) If Israel is only going to get temporary peace in return for the permanent renunciation of all territory won in wars against Arab aggression, what will it have left to negotiate with in a decade?

2) Given that Hamas has never bothered to abide by a cease fire agreement in the past, why should anyone expect them to d so now?

Well, Neville Carter may be willing to be the butt-boy for Palestinian terrorists, given his past anti-Semitic rantings against Israel, but let us hope that Israel is willing to put its trust in its own strong defenses and the promises of God to the Land of Israel.

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John McCain forthrightly refers to Islamic terrorism. Some Muslim groups are offended and want him to stop.

A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.

"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."

McCain spokespeople have made it clear that he is not going to drop the word -- mainly because it is an accurate description of the enemy we fight.

Steve Schmidt, a former Bush White House aide who is now a McCain media strategist, told The Times that the use of the word is appropriate and that the candidate will continue to define the enemy that way.

"Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practice their great faith peacefully," Mr. Schmidt said. "But the reality is, the hateful ideology which underpins bin Ladenism is properly described as radical Islamic extremism. Senator McCain refers to it that way because that is what it is."

McCain understands who our enemy is, and is willing to give credence to their own description of themselves and their motives. And given that their actions are in keeping with the long history of violence by Islam, dating back to the days of Muhammad himself, there is no reason to drop the word Islamic from the description of terrorism -- especially given the high level of support for such terrorism within Muslim communities around the world, including in civilized nations like the UK and US.

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Given the discussion about pirates below, I feel like this piece deserves to see the light of day again.

HereÂ’s a neat idea for dealing with Osama and every other terrorist on the planet. They are hostis humani generis -- the enemies of all mankind.

TO UNDERSTAND THE POTENTIAL OF DEFINING TERRORISM as a species of piracy, consider the words of the 16th-century jurist Alberico Gentili's De jure belli: "Pirates are common enemies, and they are attacked with impunity by all, because they are without the pale of the law. They are scorners of the law of nations; hence they find no protection in that law." Gentili, and many people who came after him, recognized piracy as a threat, not merely to the state but to the idea of statehood itself. All states were equally obligated to stamp out this menace, whether or not they had been a victim of piracy. This was codified explicitly in the 1856 Declaration of Paris, and it has been reiterated as a guiding principle of piracy law ever since. Ironically, it is the very effectiveness of this criminalization that has marginalized piracy and made it seem an arcane and almost romantic offense. Pirates no longer terrorize the seas because a concerted effort among the European states in the 19th century almost eradicated them. It is just such a concerted effort that all states must now undertake against terrorists, until the crime of terrorism becomes as remote and obsolete as piracy.

What would be the impact of classifying terrorism along with piracy?

If the war on terror becomes akin to war against the pirates, however, the situation would change. First, the crime of terrorism would be defined and proscribed internationally, and terrorists would be properly understood as enemies of all states. This legal status carries significant advantages, chief among them the possibility of universal jurisdiction. Terrorists, as hostis humani generis, could be captured wherever they were found, by anyone who found them. Pirates are currently the only form of criminals subject to this special jurisdiction.

Second, this definition would deter states from harboring terrorists on the grounds that they are "freedom fighters" by providing an objective distinction in law between legitimate insurgency and outright terrorism. This same objective definition could, conversely, also deter states from cracking down on political dissidents as "terrorists," as both Russia and China have done against their dissidents.

Recall the U.N. definition of piracy as acts of "depredation [committed] for private ends." Just as international piracy is viewed as transcending domestic criminal law, so too must the crime of international terrorism be defined as distinct from domestic homicide or, alternately, revolutionary activities. If a group directs its attacks on military or civilian targets within its own state, it may still fall within domestic criminal law. Yet once it directs those attacks on property or civilians belonging to another state, it exceeds both domestic law and the traditional right of self-determination, and becomes akin to a pirate band.

Third, and perhaps most important, nations that now balk at assisting the United States in the war on terror might have fewer reservations if terrorism were defined as an international crime that could be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court.

I encourage you to read the article by Douglas R. Burgess Jr., “The Dread Pirate Bin Laden”. It may come out of the Legal Affairs, but it is incredibly approachable.

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The assessment by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Jack Murtha was really grim at yesterday's press conference.

They argued that the President's delay in troop withdrawals was "covering a policy of failure. Indeed, Hillary had this to say.

"If the American forces leave, they will lose everything. And if they stay, they will bleed to death."

Obama gave this assessment.

"Iraq nowadays is the most important battlefield on which our mujahedeen are waging a war against the forces of the Zionist-Christian Crusade," al-Zawahri said. "Therefore, supporting the mujahideen in Iraq and especially the Islamic State of Iraq is a most important duty."

Yeah, yeah, yeah -- I know, Barack Obama isn't a Muslim or a terrorist. He's just supported by them.

And no, this isn't Democrat leaders speaking -- it is Ayman al-Zawahri, number two to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

But it is telling, isn't it, that the position he takes on Iraq is the same as is taken by the "loyal opposition" here in the United States.

The al-Zawahri tape does make it clear, though, that Americans have a stark choice this fall.

Republican or Democrat.

Victory or defeat.

You decide.

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Yeah, these are the people that Jimmy Carter is visiting and the Bush Administration is funding with our tax dollars as a part of the "peace process". Now they are giving awards to those who actively participated in what is unambiguously terrorist activity.

If reports that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to present two female terrorists with a medal of honor are found to be true, it will be a grave development, the consequences of which Israel will need to consider, senior government officials told Israel Radio on Wednesday.

However, the unnamed officials said the accuracy of the reports had not yet been confirmed.

The radio station reported earlier in the day that the Al Kuds Mark of Honor, the PLO's highest medal, would be given to two female terrorists who helped kill Israelis.

The two were Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas affiliate serving a life sentence for driving the suicide bomber who exploded himself in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, killing at least half a dozen people, and Amra Muna, who seduced Ophir Rahum over the Internet and then lured him to Ramallah where he was murdered.

So let's make it clear who the Terrorstinian Anarchy authorities are giving their highest honor -- a pair of accomplices to murder. After all, people peacefully eating pizza in a restaurant and guys surfing the web for love and romance are such threats to the so-called "legitimate aspirations" of the Terrorstinians for a state.

If these awards are given, that should definitively end any and all US aid to the Terrorstinian Anarchy -- and Israel should end any and all cooperation with those who insist upon any form of "peace process" that contemplates the establishment of a state of Palestine.

My buddy Freedom Fighter at Joshuapundit puts it quite well.

You can tell a lot about a given group of people by looking at what they honor. It takes a very special category of human being - and I use the term loosely - to honor people like this. And this is by no means a unique instance of this sort of thing.

Just say NO to coddling the terrorist scum who infest Gaza and the West Bank.

UPDATE: Honors revoked -- but only because the terrorist Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) who leads the Terrorstinian Anarchy got caught.

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The forces of ignorance are always most threatened by those who carry the torch of knowledge. It should be clear which side is which in this story.

Daud Hassan Ali had an unusual dream for his native Somalia. He was a nomadÂ’s son who lived in Britain for years, but he recently returned to his troubled homeland to teach English. Early Monday, he paid for it with his life.

Witnesses said that Mr. Daud and three foreign teachers, a Briton and two Kenyans, were killed by Islamist insurgents during a midnight raid on one of the few English-language schools in south-central Somalia.

A spokesman for the Shabab militant Islamist group said the teachers were killed by accident after they were caught in cross-fire. But several residents of Beledweyne, the town where the attack happened, said Mr. Daud and the other teachers might have been singled out because they were suspected of preaching Christianity.

When I go to school this morning, I'm likely to face nothing more than a couple of smart-mouthed wannabe thugs trying to disrupt my class. I'm unlikely to find myself in danger of being injured, much less killed, for trying to teach my class.

Not so for teachers in areas of the world where Islamism hold sway. Interesting, isn't it, that those who bring new ideas and new knowledge just happened to be the "accidental" victims, when teachers are killed every week by Islamists who accuse them of contradicting some aspect of Islam. And given the comments about their preaching Christianity, that is simply more evidence of the desire of the dark forces of the most backwards form of Islam attempting to put out the True Light -- a goal which they can never achieve.

انه لا إله إلا الله ، ويسوع هو الابن انجب له

There is no God but God, and Jesus is his only begotten son.

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Bravo to Shin Bet for refusing to provide anti-Semitic terrorist apologist Jimmy Carter with any security assistance during his trip to provide succor to Hamas.

Israel's secret service has declined to assist U.S. agents guarding former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit in which Israeli leaders have shunned him, U.S. sources close to the matter said on Monday.

* * *

American sources close to the matter said the Shin Bet security service, which helps protect visiting dignitaries and is overseen by Olmert's office, declined to meet the head of Carter's Secret Service security detail or provide his team with assistance as is customary during such visits.
"They're not getting support from local security," an American source said.

Indeed, I’d like to know why the United States is providing this useless idiot with Secret Service protection as he walks into the lair of terrorists. There will be good men and women with him providing security – it would be just awful if one of them were to suffer harm protecting his worthless @SS from the very sort of terrorists he is traveling to meet.

Indeed, this raises the tangentially related question of whether or not Carter really needs Secret Service protection nearly three decades after the voters ejected the buffoon from office for incompetence. Is there not a reasonable point at which such protection should be cut off – reviewable on a case-by-case basis – following the end of a president’s term. After all, we cut the Secret Service protection of vice presidents immediately.

H/T Hot Air

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Now they whine about returning prisoners to their home country for trial.

When will the apologists for terror admit that they just want the terrorists given a cookie, a green card and an AK-47 so they can go out and kill more Americans?

Afghan detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being transferred home to face closed-door trials in which they are often denied access to defense attorneys and the U.S. evidence being used against them, according to Afghan officials, lawyers and international rights groups.

Since October 2006, the United States has transferred approximately 50 detainees out of Guantanamo to the custody of the Afghan government, part of a policy aimed at reducing the prison population and ultimately closing the facility. Once home, many of the Afghans have been left in a legal limbo not unlike the one they confronted while in U.S. custody.

"These people have been thrown into a deeply flawed process that convicts people on inadequate evidence and breaks numerous procedural rules of Afghan law and human rights standards," said Jonathan Horowitz, an investigator at One World Research, a public interest investigation firm that works with attorneys and advocacy groups on human rights cases and has monitored some of the detainees' trials.

We could, of course, have kept these murderous bastards at Gitmo, where they got fat on American cooking and received medical care unavailable in Afghanistan. However, that was not good enough -- even though the US could have held them until the end of the War on Terror under the terms of the geneva convention simply by declaring them to be POWs, which would have meant they were entitle to no trial at all. And since the War on Terror is going to take a generation to fight, that would have constituted a life sentence.

Instead we heard demands for repatriation from the "blame America first" crowd -- but now that the prisoners have been repatriated, the complaint is that Afghanistan's legal system doesn't afford them the same rights that America's legal system would have -- even though the Geneva Conventions would not have allowed them (and would have probably banned) any access to the US legal system at all!

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Bilal Hussein actively coordinated his work for AP with the terrorists whose attacks on Americans he photographed. he was duly and properly arrested for his misdeeds. But a new Iraqi law granting amnesty to those charged with terrorism related offenses applies to him as well as to other terrorists, and so charges were dropped by an Iraqi court yesterday.

An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him released nearly two years after he was detained by the U.S. military.

Hussein, 36, remained in custody Wednesday at Camp Cropper, a U.S. detention facility near Baghdad's airport.

A decision by a four-judge panel said Hussein's case falls under a new amnesty law. It ordered Iraqi courts to "cease legal proceedings" and ruled that Hussein should be "immediately" released unless other accusations are pending.

The ruling is dated Monday but AP's lawyers were not able to thoroughly review it until Wednesday. It was unclear, however, whether Hussein would still face further obstacles to release.

U.S. military authorities have said a U.N. Security Council mandate allows them to retain custody of a detainee they believe is a security risk even if an Iraqi judicial body has ordered that prisoner freed. The U.N. mandate is due to expire at the end of this year.

Also, the amnesty committee's ruling on Hussein may not cover a separate allegation that has been raised in connection with the case.

Now notice -- this does not clear Hussein of the charges against him. Instead, it simply notes that the law places the offenses out of reach of the courts as a part of the healing and reconciliation process. And that law was one of the "benchmarks" to show "progress" by the iraqi government -- so the Left ought to be crowing about that progress.

But that isn't what the lying supporters of Bilal Hussein are claiming.

AP Photographer Bilal Hussein has been in American detention since April 2006. As the second anniversary of his captivity approaches, Bilal has achieved a major breakthrough. Yesterday in Baghdad, an Iraqi Judicial Commission reviewing his case took ten days to reach a conclusion: No basis existed for the terrorism-related charges which had been brought against him. The conclusion was a sweeping repudiation of accusations U.S. military figures have brought against him, backed by no evidence, but by a handful of strangely motivated American wingnut bloggers.

Oddly enough, this claim by terrorist apologist Scott Horton is not only at odds with reality, but also with AP's own news story above. You would think that if the commission had ACTUALLY determined that there was no basis for the charges, Hussein's employers might have mentioned it in their own story. The fact that it is missing proves the mendacious nature of Scott Horton, and anyone who makes a similar claim.

H/T Malkin, Hot Air

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Using the tactics of the Islamists, no less.

Citing threats of violence by animal rights activists, the San Francisco Art Institute said Saturday that it is canceling a controversial exhibition that included video clips of animals being bludgeoned to death, as well as a public forum it had scheduled to address the controversy.

"We've gotten dozens of threatening phone calls that targeted specific staff people with death threats, threats of violence and threats of sexual assaults," said Art Institute President Chris Bratton. "We remain committed to freedom of speech as fundamental to this institution, but we have to take people's safety very seriously."

The exhibit that sparked the controversy was a one-person show by Paris artist Adel Abdessemed called "Don't Trust Me," which opened March 19.

And the threats were pretty specific.

Abdessemed's show, one of about a dozen public exhibitions that the 650-student school hosts each year, had opened fairly quietly. But as word spread among animal rights groups, more than 8,000 people sent e-mails to the institute slamming the show. Institute officials temporarily closed the show Wednesday and scheduled a public forum for Monday.

But then the tone of some of the e-mails turned violent, Bratton said, with threats against individual staff members, such as, "We're going to gather up your children and bludgeon their heads." Officials decided to shutter the exhibition permanently, the first time in the institute's 137-year history that a show was closed for safety reasons. They also canceled the forum.

"Some of the people who said the most threatening things said they would be present at the forum," Bratton said.

Well, friends, there we have it. The violent animal rights folks – putting animal lives above human lives – have been permitted to put their values and ideology above those of every other American. The artistic establishment has made it clear that they will give in – and no doubt other groups will follow their lead.

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