Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Criminal Probe Opened over CIA Tapes

And so, the witch hunt continues:

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the
destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes and Attorney General Michael B.
Mukasey appointed an outside prosecutor to oversee the case…

“The Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have
concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this
matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation,” Mukasey said in a
statement released Wednesday.

Mukasey named John Durham, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to oversee
the case. Durham has a reputation as one of the nation’s most relentless
prosecutors. He served as an outside prosecutor overseeing an investigation into
the FBI’s use of mob informants in Boston and helped send several Connecticut
public officials to prison

The CIA has already agreed to open its files to congressional investigators,
who have begun reviewing documents at the agency’s Virginia headquarters. The
House Intelligence Committee has ordered Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official
who directed the tapes be destroyed, to appear at a hearing Jan. 16.

This is just what we needed. Another gutless attorney general. Another out of control special prosecutor. And another media circus.

Never mind there is no crime here, or even the possibility of a crime.

He served as an outside prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the FBI’s use of mob informants in Boston and helped send several Connecticut public
officials to prison.

And it sure sounds like Mr. Durham has his priorities straight, doesn’t it?

What a waste of the taxpayers’ money, just to placate the howling banshees on the left and in the media. (Though I repeat myself.)

Thanks to Sweetness and Light

From a Michigan State University Professor

The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were 'hate speech.' Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Moslem Association,

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt , the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called 'whores' in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland , and the rioting and looting in Paris France. This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile 'protests.' If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave.
I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option.
Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,
I. S. Wichman
Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty and mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen. Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations , apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion. (unlike the broad latitude given to the Islamists to spew their hate-filled raves) For its part, the university is standing its ground in support of Professor Wichman, saying the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks.