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Bob Schieffer somehow topped Chris Matthews during CBS News's special coverage of President Obama's gun control press conference on Wednesday, as he became the worst caricature of a foaming-at-the-mouth cheerleader for the chief executive. Schieffer lauded "one of the best speeches I've ever heard him [Obama] deliver", and compared Obama's new gun control agenda to Lyndon Johnson's push for civil rights legislation in the 1960s. The CBS veteran even went so far to liken the President's cause to the ten-year hunt for 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and the difficult endeavor of winning World War II [audio available here; video...

June 07, 2010 I SUPPOSE IF I SUGGESTED SUMMARY EXECUTION I WOULD BE CALLED "HARSH"? SNIPPET: "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe Note that he didn't just lift a video and send it to Wikileaks. He also stole and released 260,000 classified US State Department diplomatic cables."

It is an odd experience to enter a darkened room and, for more than two and a half hours, watch someone tell a story that you experienced intimately in your own life. But that is what happened recently as I sat in a movie theater near Times Square and watched “Zero Dark Thirty,” the new Hollywood blockbuster about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. When I was head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 2002 to 2004 and then director of the National Clandestine Service until late 2007, the campaign against al-Qaeda was my life and obsession. I must say,...

How accurate and realistic is the portrayal of CIA interrogation in the film? The movie, after all, opens with a statement saying “based on firsthand accounts of actual events"; then goes on to show the fictionalized brutal abuse and torture of a fictional high value terrorist, including waterboarding. Well, one "firsthand account" not utilized as an expert consultant to the movie is Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, author of Hard Measures, and unapologetic defender of the CIA's "torture" program.... When I reviewed Zero Dark Thirty, the focus of my review was on whether or not political...

Sources tell ABC News that the Inspector General for the Department of Defense has been preparing a report in which Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers is criticized for giving sensitive information to the filmmakers behind “Zero Dark Thirty.” Specifically, Vickers is said to have disclosed to the filmmakers the identity of a member of SEAL Team Six — though not a member of the team that conducted the raid on Osama bin Laden‘s compound. Names of members of that team are not to be disclosed because of the potential for violent retaliation. Some in the Pentagon think...

After the successful May 2011 raid that took down Osama bin Laden, President Obama said that “his [bin Laden’s] demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.” Pakistan’s treatment of CIA informant Dr. Shakil Afridi tells a different story, however. The country’s spy agency (Inter-Services Intelligence) promptly arrested the doctor for helping Americans identify OBL’s compound. In addition to a fine and his entire bank account being looted, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison for high treason and is now reportedly being tortured: ... According to Afridi, ISI “regards America as its “worst...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

Kathryn Bigelow’s kill–bin Laden epic Zero Dark Thirty is the most neutral-seeming “America, F**k Yeah!” picture ever made. In its narrative arc, it is barely distinct from a boneheaded right-wing revenge picture, but the vibe is cool, brisk, grown-up, packed with impressively real-sounding intel jargon. And the hero is no gun-toting macho man. She’s a CIA agent named Maya (Jessica Chastain), a woman in a world in which men call the shots, metaphorically and literally. Presented with the movie’s liberal-pleasing feminist overlay, you root for her to compel the men to do what men would do naturally if they weren’t...

On December 27th, 1979, the Soviet Union launched a full scale invasion of Afghanistan. Within days, thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles, accompanied by tens of thousands of troops, secured Kabul with intentions of expanding the Soviet sphere of influence. This small, unconquerable Muslim country was victim to one of history’s most monstrous empires. Mass death on a scale of millions unfolded and Afghanistan slowly became the bombed out caveman husk of a nation that we know today. But it wasn’t defeated. The resistance against the invasion was dedicated and determined. One of the key operatives, of course, was Osama...

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in an operation that marked the second major attack by violent jihadists against the World Trade Center. There wasn’t much mystery about who had carried out these atrocities — unless you were Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Marayati warned Americans not to conclude that the suicide hijacking attacks were the work of Muslim terrorists. “If we are going to look at suspects,” he told a Los Angeles radio station, “we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I...

Of course it took billions of dollars over 10 years and a multitude of people - many who gave their lives - to make this mission a success. Bigelow and "Hurt Locker" screenwriter-producer Mark Boal have accomplished the difficult feat of taking all that time, travel, investigation and frustration and depicting it thoroughly but also efficiently. The attention to detail, to getting it right each step of the way, is evident in everything from the dialogue to the production design to the lighting. This is pure, unadorned storytelling, an effort to recreate what happened with absolute authenticity and zero excess....

If anyone worried that Kathryn Bigelow’s movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden would be a political statement promoting Barack Obama they can relax. Bigelow and Mark Boal have made a very focused and harrowing thriller that centers on the real life female CIA agent who was obsessed with catching and killing bin Laden.

Internal Military Emails Reveal Details On bin Laden's Burial November 21, 2012 WASHINGTON – Internal emails among senior U.S. military officers indicate that no sailors watched Usama bin Laden's burial at sea from the USS Carl Vinson and traditional Islamic procedures were followed during the ceremony. The emails, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, are heavily blacked out, but are the first public disclosure of government information about the Al Qaeda leader's death. The emails were released Wednesday by the Defense Department. Bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011, by a Navy SEAL team...

Terrorism: Our U.N. ambassador, champion of the altered Benghazi talking points, helped block attempts by Sudan to turn over the world's most wanted terrorist outright or share intelligence leading to his capture. Our U.N. ambassador, champion of the altered Benghazi talking points, played a key role in blocking attempts by Sudan to turn over the world's most wanted terrorist outright or share intelligence leading to his capture. It does not surprise us that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice either willfully or blindly parroted altered Benghazi talking points, going on five Sunday news shows on Sept. 16 to push the false narrative...

The Washington Post reports that “the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view” of September 11, 2012, “suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.”  What the Post doesn’t say is that the Cairo protest was itself an al Qaeda-infused, if not outright orchestrated, event.The “hybrid” explanation is a compromise, of sorts, between two competing narratives. The first suggested that a protest against an anti-Islam film in Benghazi led to a “spontaneous” assault on the US consulate there. We know that version...

Translation Synopsis: (Summary from Japanese): "Criticism is coming out over the airing by the US cable TV National Geographic, only two days before the US Presidential election where Obama seeks reelection, a docu-drama about the killing of terrorist Osama bin Laden which puts Mr. Obama in a politically positive light. The criticisms say that essentially the documentary is a propaganda adjunct of the Obama Re-election effort itself. The 90-minute program was funded and directed by big supporters of Mr. Obama's re-election. In the depiction, actual news footage of President Obama is used, leading to complaints by news media that...

Michael Scheuer was the razor sharp, burly Buffalo native who the Central Intelligence Agency chose toBusinessrun the bin Laden squad in 1995. According to a recently released book, "The Finish," written by "Black Hawk Down" author Mark Bowden, Scheuer oversaw what he believed to be the first ever inter-CIA unit completely dedicated to locating a single individual. The unit, called "ALEC Station" after Scheuer's son, employed 27 people, most of them women. I've personally heard of the unit called, "Scheuer's Harem," and in Bowden's book, some agents around Langley (home of the CIA) started calling it "The Manson Family," because...

Using a Pakistani Internet Protocol and proxy server, a disposable credit card and a fake address, “Osama bin Laden” has successfully donated twice to Barack Obama’s presidential re-election campaign. The “Bin Laden” donations, actually made by WND staff, included a listed occupation of “deceased terror chief” and a stated employer of “al-Qaida.” “Bin Laden” is currently set up on the official campaign website to contribute more to Obama’s campaign. The name is also registered as a volunteer. Since the “foreign” contribution was sent, “Bin Laden’s” email address has received several solicitations from Obama’s campaign asking for more donations. [snip] The...

Among its top successes the Obama administration counts the death of Osama Bin Laden, saving GM and Chrysler, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and passing ObamaCare and the stimulus. There were a handful of other minor accomplishments, but these four constitute the history-defining ones, and are the accomplishments touted by the Obama campaign. The problem with these accomplishments is; they were all moderate to abject failures, and three of them were initiated by Bush and ruined by Obama. Starting with Osama Bin Laden and the larger War on Terror: to everyone's relief, Obama has continued to prosecute it. It...