You may question how much the CBS television show The Unit blurs the line between reality and fantasy, but there is great value in its exploration of the kind of difficult situations the jihadis already have or will soon confront us with.

The show follows the members of an elite US counter-terrorist unit and their families, with each episode weaving several family/military, home/overseas subplots together. Last night’s episode titled “Change of Station” (2nd season premiere) involved a most relevant subplot.

Situation:

Pakistan/Afghan border, Taliban country. Martyrs self-infected with smallpox have boarded a bus, on their way to an airport, from which they will depart for a dozen major cities.

This is not mentioned in the Yahoo summary. The ramifications of such an attack — a smallpox pandemic wreaking worldwide death and chaos — are not explored even in the episode, but anyone reading the news should realize it is not a far-fetched scenario. Either the writer or the broadcaster probably thought it best not to drive home the point.

Well those of us who do read the news and do think about it can’t ignore such threats. We have some homework to do. Imagine yourself in charge as such a scenario unfolds. You have been told such the plan is in play. You know what the attackers will do and when they will do it.

Decisions required:

Do you take them out or let them move unhindered until they commit a crime?

If you take them out, where? When they land in the US? Before they leave Pakistan? Before they get off the bus?

How many innocent people do you suppose Howard Zinn would allow to be “indiscriminantly” killed in order to prevent an “indiscriminantly” concocted smallpox outbreak that would cost millions of other innocent lives?

Suppose we could literally bomb a single bus and know we’d kill only attackers, all with explicit suicidal/homicidal intent. Would killing them be ok? Would it be justified to question the motives of those who wouldn’t take the obvious path toward saving lives and minimizing suffering?

How many pacifists might be roused from their Copperheaded foot-dragging and conspiracy theories by the realization that they are making the suffering worse by emboldening our enemy and lengthening the conflict? How many actually intend to undermine our side, for whatever twisted reason?

Civilization has hard choices to make. We need sensible, reasonable, fair-minded people to make those decisions. We don’t need partisans who can’t stop tantruming because they or their party aren’t in power.

39 letters, unless you subtract 2 for the transliterated umlauts. It means the augmentation of a law that regulates the fight against terrorism. Can you imagine the German legislature, which is larger and more unwieldy than Congress, enunciating such a word about a hundred times a day while debating it in the Bundestag?

In any event, on the positive side they are starting to deal with the problem of terrorism, hopefully, heralding the day when the free world will stand united against Islamofascism.

— Heimchen

Fallaci understood the Left and Islam, and what they have in common.

From The Force of Reason, p215:

The Left is a Church. And not a Church similar to the Church which came out of Christianity, thus open to free-will. A Church similar to Islam. Like Islam it considers itself sanctified by a God who is the custodian of the Truth. Like Islam it never acknowledges its faults and its errors, it considers itself infallible and never apologizes. Like Islam it demands a world at its own image, a society built on the verses of its Prophet. Like Islam it enslaves its own followers. It intimidates them, it makes them feel stupid even when they are intelligent. Like Islam it does not accept different opinions and if you think differently it despises you. It denigrates you, it punishes you. Like Islam, in short, it is illiberal. Autocratic, totalitarian, even when it plays the game of democracy. For Christsake, isn’t it revealing that ninety-five percent of the Western people converted to Islam come from the Left or the red-black Extreme Left?

…

Like Islam, finally, the Left is anti-West. And the cause why it is anti-West can be summarized with a passage of The Road to Serfdom: one of the important essays left to us by Friedrich Hayek, the Autrian economist who in the Thirties flew from Vienna and took refuge in England.

«It is not only the principles of Adam Smith and Hume and Locke and Milton which are being abandoned. It is also the bedrock of the civilization developed by the Greeks and the Romans and Christianity. Meaning, the western civilization. What is being relinquished is not only the liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries, that is the liberalism which completed the civilization» it says. «It is the individualism which, thanks to Erasmus of Rotterdam and Montaigne and Cicero and Tacitus and Pericles and Thucydides, the western cvilization has inherited. In other words, the concept itself of individualism which through the teachings imparted to us by the philosophers of classical antiquity then of Christianity then of Renaissance then of the Enlightenment have made us what we are. Socialism is based on collectivism. Collectivism denies individualism. And anyone who denies individualism denies western civilization».

A consensus on the fall of the twin towers has emerged from the ivory tower.

Fury as academics claim 9/11 was ‘inside job’
by JAYA NARAIN
Last updated at 15:47pm on 6th September 2006

The 9/11 terrorist attack on America which left almost 3,000 people dead was an “inside job”, according to a group of leading academics.

Around 75 top professors and leading scientists believe the attacks were puppeteered by war mongers in the White House to justify the invasion and the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries.

. . .

Professor Steven Jones, who lectures in physics at the Brigham Young University in Utah, says the official version of events is the biggest and most evil cover up in history.

He has joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth whose membership includes up to 75 leading scientists and experts from universities across the US.

Prof Jones said: “We don’t believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone.

For a bunch of bright professor types their website makes it awful hard to discover what they think really happened.

They criticize many facts in the various reports and opinions of others, especially the official government explanation. The logic is reminiscent of Johnny Cochran’s OJ defense. Here’s what James H. Fetzer says in a page titled Why Doubt 9/11?:

As the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, I would observe that our members, building on prior research by earlier students of 9/11, have established more than a dozen disproofs of the official government account, the truth of any one of which is enough to show that the government’s account–in one or another of its guises–cannot possibly be correct.

Basically the Scholars do not believe the WTC towers should have come down after suffering the damage they did on 9/11. Since they actually did come down there must have been help in the way of prepositioned explosives, which just so happened to be in the vicinity of the impacts. Someone must have planted those explosives, and for some reason braved raging inferno for tens of minutes after impact before detonating them.

The official NIST version, that the structure was well engineered but ultimately could not withstand the combined effects of the impact and sustained fire, is somehow harder for them to believe.

For Steven Jones it turns out PNAC is the key. In his mind neocon Jooooos and their stooge goyim run everything, or are trying to. They knew 9/11 was going to happen, just like that Joooo FDR knew about Pearl Harbor.

They let it happen to galvanize the country.

So they can seize power.

And conquer the world.

What PNAC actually says sounds reasonable to me.

UPDATE: Jones on paid leave. Free time to promote his conspiracy theories. Oddly enough this article doesn’t mention PNAC.

Rummy speaks for me too.

US Senate Debates Iraq War, Democrat Call for Rumsfeld Resignation
By Dan Robinson, 07 September 2006

Lawmakers in the Senate have been holding a lengthy debate on the war in Iraq, with majority Republicans supporting President Bush, and Democrats calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. VOA’s Dan Robinson reports from Capitol Hill where members of Congress also reacted to President Bush’s latest remarks on terrorism and the issue of the treatment of terrorist suspects.

Opposition Democrats had no illusions that they would get a vote on their resolution calling for the resignation of the man President Bush has relied upon at the Pentagon to manage the war in Iraq.

Their non-binding measure stated that the president’s policy of staying the course in Iraq has made the United States less secure, reduced the readiness of the U.S. military, and burdened Americans with more than 300-billion dollars in additional debt.

Since it was not directly relevant to a defense spending bill the Senate is considering, the resolution was certain to be struck down, never even advancing to a vote.

Congress fiddles as the country burns. They can’t unite behind our interests and troops overseas. They won’t secure the goddamn border. And the leftists impeach people like Rumsfeld who lead us, and lead us especially well considering the revolutionary changes on unprecedented scales we’re experienced especially since the internet lifted the lid.

Responses by other Republicans to Democrat calls for Secretary Rumsfeld’s departure were summed up by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. “They [Democrats] are very united in defeatism, in their negatives attacks on the president, and in the process encouraging terrorists all around the world. Sending the signal that America is frustrated and ready to quit. America is not ready to quit,” he said.

Emphasis mine.

Imagine that quote coming out of Cronkite/Rather/Couric’s mouth. The internet is a big part of the revolution. Information can no longer be so easily bottled up. On the upside the liberal, left-friendly worldview of elite city dwellers no longer has a monopoly on news or opinion. Anybody clever and creative enough can become rich and famous. On the downside the jihadi get free PR and free secure communication. Anybody depraved enough can look up TATP and go Al Qaeda on their infidel neighbors.