QOTD: Dianne Feinstein
by digby
“My view of ISIS is, I think people do not see the evil and the vicious side of it“
That’s so true. We only see the good side of ISIS. Their fashion sense is impeccable, for instance. Seriously, what in the world is she talking about?
And then, to drive home the point she added this:
I don’t see — think they see the beheadings of children —
Candy Crowley pointed out that they do see beheadings of journalists. But no, the beheadings of children haven’t been shown on TV as yet. I honestly don’t think we would need to see them, however, to know that ISIS is very terrible indeed.
I wondered where the head of the Intelligence Committee might be getting information about child beheading. Interestingly, Snopes was on this and discussed a recent email chain letter to that effect:
Claims that ISIS beheaded children have circulated separately from the Sean Malone forward, but are often appended with a graphic and inaccurate image. That picture, depicting a young, decapitated female child, was taken in Syria in 2013. [It’s unknown how that happened…]
Several concerned users took to the Facebook page of Crisis Response International to ask about the Sean Malone forward, and the person or persons who manage the CRI page have been fielding queries about whether the original message was possibly misconstrued or sent in haste. On 17 September 2014, CRI said:
That email was an urgent prayer alert sent to close friends over a month ago that somehow got leaked out. The reports of beheadings were what we were hearing from local pastors and other sources. The information was never meant to be blasted out publicly but for prayer as ISIS closed in our teams.
… We know of 5 children that were beheaded and this is from a city official on the ground.
An update later the same evening read:
Again this text was sent to a handful of people and was leaked. These were the reports that we were getting at that time and are now being confirmed. It wasn’t intended for public information but perhaps it was by divine intervention. In our opinion one child beheaded is an all out outrage. We have other reports as well that we are in the process of confirming. We have done our best to post info on this page on our website and in emails about this issue.
The undated message about systemic beheadings of children in Queragosh lends itself to eternal forwarding, but as many have pointed out, much of the information is secondhand. There is little doubt Christians are being displaced and even persecuted in cities including Queragosh, but no reports of any incidents matching the claim of “systematic” beheadings have been confirmed.
They had an earlier piece in August about this and came away with an “undetermined”. And lord knows, as nice as Feinstein thinks we all assume ISIS is, I don’t think anyone would be surprised at any atrocities they might have committed. It’s just a little odd for a Senator to drop that into the conversation and then let it go. It’s not as if what we know about ISIS isn’t bad enough for us all to recognize how evil they are. Why do these politicians insist on making it even more lurid than it is?
Anyway, the conversation deteriorated from there. Get a load of this gobbledygook:
CROWLEY: They’re online beheading journalists and others, right?
FEINSTEIN: I saw this, but essentially, I mean, for anyone that has any kind of value of a just system, ISIS doesn’t make that case.
ISIS is essentially a fighting force of 30,000 to 50,000 people, sophisticated with commanders, with some heavy weapons, and they are on a march now, and they are going to slay everything in their way.
CROWLEY: In the propaganda wars it does seem that ISIS is quite sophisticated.
So let me – I do want to talk to you about that and how to fight that but I first want to ask you about these lone-wolves which basically show many of these attacks have been. And by definition, there’s no known tie to a terrorist — direct tie to a terrorist organization of any sort. They’re kind of one person cells at this point.
What is the defense against that, Senator?
FEINSTEIN: Well, the only defense is intelligence and that is that you have to ferret it out. You have to be able to watch it and you have to be able to disrupt them. Now, this is hard to do because it takes technical means and Americans don’t necessarily like technical means.
CROWLEY: Right or spying is the definition of technical means.
FEINSTEIN: Yes. Well, that’s right. And this in the United States, this falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI, not the CIA, and I’ve been briefed by Director Comey. And I believe the FBI is making every effort to stay on top of this lone-wolf phenomenon. I think the White House is cognizant of it and is working very hard to see that we have the ability to be able to find them and stop them.
CROWLEY: In the Muslim community, the peaceful Muslim community they would tell you in the U.S. that they feel some of the outreach that’s being done by the feds, by the homeland – by the Homeland Security Department and others feels like what the U.S. really wants is for the Muslim community to become their spies within their community in the U.S. and that is off-putting when they do feel targeted obviously because of their religion.
FEINSTEIN: Well, let me —
CROWLEY: How do you bridge that?
FEINSTEIN: Let me say this. The Muslim community is a part of America, and as such, it has all of the protections of any community in America.
And one of America’s goals has been to integrate an immigrant community into our society and see that they have opportunity, that they’re able to be productive, that they’re able to live without any kind of harassment. And there are very few countries in the world that actually do that, United States does it.
CROWLEY: Let me ask you, because I know that you lost two deputy sheriffs in Sacramento…
FEINSTEIN: Yes.
CROWLEY: …over the weekend.
But we’ve also seen, and that does not seem, that seems like to be street crime as opposed to anything that’s related to terrorism, but do you feel, looking at what we’ve seen on the internet, some of the appeals from ISIS, that folks in police uniforms, that folks in soldiers’ uniforms, whether they’re in Canada or the U.S. are now under an even bigger threat than their jobs would lead to you believe?
FEINSTEIN: I believe that to be true. I believe word has gone out into these communities that a strike target would be somebody in uniform, whether it is police or whether it’s military. And I think you’re correct in that assessment.
CROWLEY: And what’s to be done about that?
FEINSTEIN: Well, what’s to be done about it is, I think the police and military have to be on guard. I think this is very difficult. I think halls of government have to be on guard the way the parliament in Canada was penetrated.
In Canada, you had an armed sergeant-at-arms who took action and killed the perpetrator and I think we need to think in some new ways. I don’t particularly want to discuss it on television, but one thing’s for sure, we are going to protect our institutions of government.
Except, except … an armed man just penetrated the White House the other day and he wasn’t a jihadist. Is she saying we need to let the government spy on all of us to stop any kind of threat there might be?
She claims you have to “ferret out” all these lone wolves by letting loose all of our technological abilities (aka spying) because … why? If it isn’t part of a larger plan that threatens us existentially then why is it necessary to give up our constitutional rights for that any more than it’s necessary to give up our rights to stop “lone wolves” from shooting up schools? Or is she saying that we do have to accede to ever more government spying in general?
I suppose she does have a point although it’s clear she had no idea she was making it. Why should the shooting of a soldier in Canada by some mentally ill lone nut who glommed onto jihad as his delusion be considered an act of war requiring us to let the government do “whatever it takes” to stop it, while we insist on keeping the constitution intact when dealing with any other killing by a mentally ill lone nut whose delusions run to something else? A lone nut with a gun is a lone nut with a gun no matter what his motives and just because he aims his weapon at a uniform doesn’t change that.
Are we prepared to let the government spy on all of us so that they can stop killing before it happens? Senator Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, seems to think we should be.
*And no, I don’t know why Crowley thought it made sense to talk about police shootings and the Canadian parliament shooting as the same thing because soldiers and cops both wear uniforms. WTH???
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