Dangerous Word Games

Terrorism expert Steve Emerson, who we’ve had on The Conservative Beacon a couple of times, has written about the change in the verbiage used to described the War on Terror that we posted about earlier today.

Here’s the link to Emerson’s Dangerous Word Games.

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U.S. Ship Fires at Iranian Boats

Well it’s about time we take some aggressive action that sends a message to Iran. Unfortunately it took a civilian ship contracted by the U.S. Navy to send the message.

Here’s an excerpt from Fox News:

A vessel contracted by the Navy in the Persian Gulf fired warning shots Thursday on two fast boats believed to be of Iranian origin.

 

n a story first reported by FOX News, Navy officials said the Westward Venture fired upon two boats about 50 miles off the coast of Iran.

 

U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet spokeswoman Cmdr. Lydia Robertson said the boats were of unknown origin, but other Navy officials told FOX News that the markings of the boats and their behavior led them to believe they were Iranian and typical of those used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

As you may recall this isn’t the first time this has happened. A couple of months ago a similar situation occurred where a U.S. Naval Ship was harassed by two Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) boats, but no shots–warning or otherwise–were fired.

What’s interesting in this story to me, other than the fact this shows a pattern of harassment by Iran, is that it took a Navy contracted civilian ship to actually fire warning shots.

Why didn’t the Naval vessel fire shots in the incident a couple of months ago? I don’t blame the men and women aboard the Naval ships. Why? Because they are simply following the policies developed to prevent offending anyone by the top brass.

They men and women aboard our ships are so afraid to fire on a potential enemy because they fear being charged with some sort of offense by our own government!

I applaud the civilian ship for sending a message to the Iranians: if you keep dogging and harassing U.S. Naval or civilian ships, we will fire and eventually destroy the IRG boats.

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Orwellian Approach to Terrorism

It looks like we have an updated version of the terrorism section of our Newspeak, er, political correctness lexicon.

Check these two separate stories out:

From Yahoo!:

Some do’s and don’t’s from the National Counterterrorism Center:

• Don’t use the term “jihadist,” which has broader religious meanings beyond war, or “mujahedeen,” which refers to holy warriors.
• Do say “violent extremist” or “terrorist.”
• Don’t use the term “al-Qaidamovement,” because this makes al-Qaida seem like a legitimate political movement.
• Don’t use “Islamo-fascism” and other terms that could cause religious offense.
• Do use the term “totalitarian.”
• Don’t label groups simply as “Muslim.”
• Do use descriptive terms to define how a group fits into society. For example: South Asian youth and Arab opinion leaders.
• Don’t use “caliphate” when explaining al-Qaida’s goals, as this has positive implications.
• Don’t use “salafi,” “Wahhabist,” “sufi,” “ummah” and other words from Islamic theology unless you are able to discuss their varied meanings. Particularly avoid using “ummah” to mean the Muslim world, as it is a theological term.

So now we’re being told what we can and can’t call the enemy. Did you happen to notice where this directive originated?

The National Counterterrorism Center.

This is why we aren’t winning the War on Terror. We’re afraid to unequivocally define who the enemy is.

It’s Islamofascism. Oh wait, according to the NCC Islamofascism is offensive.

Guess what? I don’t care if I offend the enemy!

That’s the whole problem: the government wants us to be concerned and aware of the sensitivity of our enemy.

This story is bad enough, seeing as how this is coming from the NCC, but it’s not the only story about trying to censor certain language used to describe the enemy.

Michael Savage posted something he received from a journalist friend regarding Orwellian Journalism about a month ago and it really goes with the story above.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

On Oct. 6 at its National Convention in Seattle, the Society of Professional Journalists passed a resolution urging members and fellow journalists to take steps against racial profiling in their coverage of the war on terrorism and to reaffirm their commitment to:

• Use language that is informative and not inflammatory
• Portray Muslims, Arabs and Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans in the richness of their diverse experiences
• Seek truth through a variety of voices and perspectives that help audiences understand the complexities of the events in Pennsylvania, New York City and Washington, D.C.

What are the “complexities” of the 9/11 attacks? It’s really quite simple: 19 Islamofascists hijacked planes, flew them into targets, and killed thousands of innocent people.

I guess they want us to understand the Islamofascists’ desire to attack innocent people, both Muslims and non-Muslims.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it, but nobody cares. Nobody cares that they’re are people in the American so-called media trying to veil and sweet-sell the enemy’s message.

Nobody cares that our very own National Counterterrorism Center is seemingly afraid to offend our enemies.

How would this have gone over during World War II? Would FDR and Churchill got together and said, “You know what? We better not call Hitler’s Germany fascist. Fascist just sounds too harsh and unpleasant. It might offend the Nazis. Even though it’s an accurate description, we don’t want to offend anyone.”

If that had been the case, we’d be speaking German right now. Actually, we might not even exist.
But hey, that’s history, and after all, the lessons of history don’t apply to the present or future. Just ask our public education system.

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Oil for War: Iraq Using Oil Revenue to Buy U.S. Treasury Securities

This is all we need. We have another Arab country investing significant amounts of its oil wealth into our treasury debt.

The Washington Times recently reported that the Iraqi government is investing billions of dollars earned from oil sales in U.S. Treasury securities instead of spending the revenue on vital reconstruction projects.

I know many of you will say that this shouldn’t be a concern because we’re attempting to install an Iraqi government that’s friendly to America and the West; therefore, it’s highly doubtful that Iraq would hold the American debt it possess over our heads. Right. These are the same folks telling us that we have nothing to worry about when it comes to China holding so much of our debt.

But that’s not the only point in this story.

Oil for War. That’s what conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage has proposed as a way for Iraq to help repay the estimated $500,000 billion we’ve spent to liberate that country.

His plan, which I fully support and should be given serious consideration, of course it won’t because it’s logical and not corrupt, would require Iraq to essentially pay us in barrels of oil which would increase the supply of oil here in America. This, in turn, would lead to somewhat lower gas prices and lower transportation costs associated with shipping goods all across the country.

This idea is perfectly logical, but more importantly, it’s entirely plausible. We know Iraq has plenty of oil reserves and could afford such a requirement. It’s not like this would severely deplete Iraq’s natural resources or severely strain Iraq’s economy.

So if this plan is so logical and feasible, why hasn’t it been instituted? There are two reasons and one of them can be found in the following excerpt:

Oil-rich Gulf Arab states resisted pressure from the United States and Iraq yesterday to forgive Iraq tens of billions of dollars in prewar debt, amid concerns about how the Baghdad government spends its growing oil revenues.

The Gulf Arab states are greedy. They are ferociously protective of their precious oil reserves and revenues–even though they’re quite abundant in that area. Just look, not only will Iraq not pay us back for liberation costs already incurred, it’s still not using oil revenue to pay for its own reconstruction.

By the way, this is precisely why we should have used our air superiority to level the troublesome areas in Iraq, and not just at the onset of the war. But remember how we were repeatedly told that we had to be very careful when firing on a target because we didn’t want to destroy surrounding infrastructure that would need to be replaced at our cost should it be destroyed? Well folks I’d say we we’re having to do that anyway.

We probably could have saved 500-1,000 of our men and women’s lives by bombing the hell out of certain areas instead of going house to house trying not to accidentally destroy some damn piece of infrastructure that we’ve had to replace anyway!

Second, as Savage has pointed out on his show, the oil companies won’t allow it due to the downward pressure the direct increase in free supply to America would cause to the price of oil.

From their perspective we have to continue to allow the OPEC nations and countries like Iraq to manipulate the oil supply in a way that supports upward pressure on prices.

Why? Because higher prices, holding costs and other variables constant (which in this case is possible), means higher profit for the oil companies and oil-producing countries. It’s a win-win, except of course if you care about America and its security and sovereignty.

It’s absolutely absurd that Iraqis are taking their oil revenues (when some of that oil should be coming directly to us, not at market-determined prices by the way–i.e. it should be free) and instead of paying us back, they’re earning interest off of some of the very debt attributed to their liberation.

How is this allowed go on?

But this all goes back to one fundamental point: it’s not about what’s good for America; it’s about what’s good for the bottom line and the wallet.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/FOREIGN/781063464/1003

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Steve Emerson on CAIR

Steve Emerson and his staff at the Investigative Project on Terrorism have compiled a 10 part series exposing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The following is our interview with Mr. Emerson about the series:

Steve Emerson on CAIR

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