Linky Love!

From Townhall.com.

Clifford D. May remarks on the changes occuring in the CIA and (hopefully soon) the State Department.

Such transformations are never easy. The Los Angeles Times reported this week that two senior CIA officials quit because of confrontations with Goss's new chief of staff, Patrick Murray, “who many accuse of having a brusque manner.”

What kind of spy quits because his boss is “brusque”? And what does this suggest about the CIA's descent from the world's toughest espionage agency to another sclerotic Washington bureaucracy?

Terence Jeffery flat out states that we need to close the borders, something that I've been saying for a while. In fact, it's one of my chief complaints about the Bush Administration.

The Department of Homeland Security has drive-through radiation detectors at commercial truck ports of entry. Border Patrolmen now carry pager-sized radiation meters. But it will not be so easy to remotely detect an Al Qaeda footman carrying a backpack full of bio-weapons across the desert.

House Republicans have included significant immigration-enforcement measures in the House version of the intelligence bill responding to the report of the 9-11 Commission. These include doubling the Border Patrol from 10,000 to 20,000 agents, and tripling from 2,000 to 6,000 the number of investigations officers who enforce immigration laws in the interior. House and Senate conferees are now negotiating the final language of this bill. Liberals would like to strip the immigration provisions from it.

President Bush should insist the provisions stay and demand the bill on his desk as fast as you can say, "Bin Laden."

Gary Aldrich takes on the Has-Been Media.

I’ll tell you why you can see some video clips, but not others. Whether or not you wish to believe it and whether they actually know what they’re doing – many in the Old Media are rooting for the other side. As a nation, it is time we come to grips with this embarrassing and disturbing reality. Some are worse than others, but only an entity with an intense loathing for this nation’s interest would try to make our fighting men and women look bad by using word games. And, ladies and gentlemen, they are painting our soldiers as monsters every opportunity that they get – and they are doing it with great relish and great vigor.

Yep, sounds about right to me!

Rich Lowery says that Blacks are in danger of being labeled the new bigots.

For understandable historical reasons, blacks have long kept their social conservatism separate from politics, voting for liberal Democrats. If a significant number of blacks now join their fellow moral traditionalists in Red America in voting for the GOP, they will experience the sort of elite scorn heaped on all other opponents of social liberalism. Blacks will be the new "bigots." Their consolation will be having a seat at the table of the nation's new majority party.

And I saved the best for last. Thomas Sowell. This is a guy that I'd love to just have a cup of coffee with. Then again, I'd be scared witless to have a cup of coffee with the guy. He's two or three levels above me on an intellectual scale. What the hell would we talk about?

Well, he was in the Army, so at least we'd have some connection. Anyways, Sowell lays down a dissertation of the Marine in Fallujah incident, and does it better and with more class than almost anyone.

The rules of war, the Geneva Convention, do not protect soldiers who are not wearing their own country's uniforms. To get the protection of rules, you have to play by the rules.

Terrorists are not enemy soldiers covered by the rules of war. Nor should they be. They observe no rules.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations can all talk about "the Geneva Convention." But that agreement on the rules of war has never applied to combatants not wearing the uniform of any country that is a party to the Geneva Convention.

Terrorists wear no uniform and show no mercy, as they have repeatedly demonstrated by beheading innocent civilians, including women.

Why any such terrorists should be captured alive in the first place is a real question. Maybe they have information that could be useful. But every terrorist our troops try to capture alive increases the risk of death for American combat troops.

Their information better be damned important for that.

That concludes the Linky Love for today. Enjoy!