TBogg has posted an explanation
for how Kevin Jaques’ assessment of the Flight 93 Memorial went missing from one of his comment threads. Sometime following “the Infamous Alec Rawls Comment Thread,” says TBogg:

… after I was done picking up the beer cans, cigarette butts, and the assorted discarded underwear, I switched from Blogspot comments to Haloscan. In the process, all of the previous comment threads were lost…Fortunately through the miracle of intertubes nerdiness the Lost Commentinent has been rediscovered and you can go read them here.

TBogginsinuates that the Holoscan snafu is the reason that the restored comment thread is missing the Jaques comment, but he does not actually say it, and for good reason. The Jaques deletion had nothing to do with any comment system switchover.

A commentator at Alec’s Error Theory blog looked up TBogg’s site on the Wayback Machine. Turns out that Wayback was taking snapshots of Tbogg’s comment threads every week. Only Blogspot comments show up on Wayback, but that is all that is needed to tell the tale.

Throughout the period in question (spring and summer of 2006) all of TBogg’s Blogspot comment threads are stable except for the “infamous” one, which actually exhibits quite a bit of activity. Not only did TBogg hand delete Jaques comment, but he was apparently torn about it, changing his mind a number of times over a period of weeks.

Background, for those who don’t know what Kevin Jaques did

It is not known exactly when Kevin Jaques was asked by the Memorial Project to write an assessment of Alec Rawls’s warnings about Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the Crescent of Embrace design. Most likely he wrote it in late March of 2006, just before he posted it at the end of TBogg’s January 6, 2006 comment thread.

(If anyone wants to look, go open up the March 31st snapshot of TBogg’s site, then find the January 06 archive page. The Lunacy Abounds post is about a third of the way up from the bottom. Click on the permalink and the comment thread will appear, with the Jaques comment at the bottom. In the previous snapshot, March 28th, the Jaques comment has not yet shown up. Ditto for earlier dates.)

The Jaques comment is important because it shows the blatant dishonesty of the Park Service’s internal investigation. Jaques acknowledged that the giant Mecca-oriented crescent at the center of the design is similar to the Mecca direction indicator (called a mihrab) around which every mosque is built, then he told the Park Service not to worry because no one has ever seen seen a mihrab anywhere near this big before:

Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site
design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.

The Park Service has released excerpts from Jaques’ comment, proving that the TBogg comment comes from Jaques, but it has never released the revealing parts, like where Jaques says not to worry because one has ever seen a mihrab this big before.

How to get rid of the body? TBogg has second, third and fourth thoughts

TBogg is THE source for the full text of Jaques’ analysis, with its blatant excuse-making for the giant mihrab. Having this analysis publicly available was a problem, both for Jaques and for the Park Service. Since TBogg had no way of knowing that on his own, it seems that somebody must have contacted him, because in the July 21, 2006 snapshot of Tbogg’s Lunacy Abounds comment thread, the Jaques comment is missing from the end.

Blogger allows blog administrators to hide and show comment threads, and it allows them to delete individual comments. Blogger also allows people who comment non-anonymously to delete their own comments. Jaques left his comment anonymously, so only a blog administrator could have deleted his comment. Unless TBogg got hacked, that would have been TBogg.

The August 21st snapshot of the Lunacy Abounds post shows shows TBogg having another thought. Here the entire Lunacy Abounds comment thread is hidden, while all the other comment threads on the archive page remain visible. (About half the posts in Wayback’s August 21st snapshot of TBogg’s January 2006 archive page do not have working permalinks, but of the pages that do come up individually, only Lunacy Abounds has the comment thread hidden.)

If “all of the previous comment threads were lost,” that was a separate incident. The archival record shows that a blog administrator went in and turned off the Lunacy Abounds comment thread by hand. Again, unless TBogg got hacked (or the Wayback Machine is wacked), that was TBogg.

Of course TBogg did not say anything about getting hacked. He insinuated that Haloscan is the culprit. Nope. Haloscan is innocent. Does TBogg want to try pointing the finger anywhere else?

On August 28, 2006, the “infamous comment thread” reappears, again without the Jaques comment. Wayback doesn’t have TBogg snapshots for 2007, but for most of this year the comment thread was again turned off (the Haloscan snafu?), until sometime recently TBogg himself retrieved the comment thread (without the Jaques comment) from the wayback machine and linked it to his original Lunacy Abounds post.

Not quite Hamlet. TBogg consistently wants the Jaques comment “not to be.” He just can’t decide how he wants it not to be.

TBogg’s Monica Lewinsky choice

To complete his Clintonian deception, TBogg makes an over the top admission,
pretending it is all a joke:

So, yes. I have been busted. I’ve been getting more payoffs than Bill Bennett with a roll of nickels at Circus Circus. Between George Soros and Osama bin Laden I’ve received so many Miatas, that some of them are still sitting around in the blister
packs.

At least he makes it amusing, but the joke is on the Bogglings. TBogg actually meant the “I have been busted” part.

Will TBogg’s legions of vitriolic followers take this Clintonian lie kneeling down? What’s it going to be TBoggers: spit or swallow?

TBogg will have to suffer some embarrassment for duping his readers, but so what? The man embarrasses himself every day. The important thing is that he is in a position to actually be of help in exposing the cover up of Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the Flight 93 memorial.

Who contacted him? What did they say? Did he knuckle to a plea from Jaques alone, or was he actually contacted by the government?

TBogg could well have been duped himself. Maybe someone at the Park Service told him that this was an internal government document that was not supposed to be available to the public and asked if he could please remove it. Now that he knows a) that the Park Service is accused of perpetrating a cover up, and b) how the document that he himself covered up contains clearexamples of dishonest excuse making, TBogg is in the same position as his army of Bogglings. He knows that he has been used.

Is he going to swallow it, or spit it out? Spit TBogg. You’ll feel much better in the morning.

Can’t we all just be against planting a terrorist memorial mosque on the Flight 93 crash site?

There is no reason for a left-right divide over the Flight 93 Memorial. It isn’t the critics of the crescent design that politicized the issue, but the defenders of the crescent, starting with newspapers like the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that knew about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent back in 2005 and decided not to publish it. They were too busy using their editorial page to slam critics of the crescent as right wing bigots. Inconvenient facts could not be allowed to interfere with their chosen story line.

Then there are people like TBogg who politicize everything. Instead of checking the facts, he starts with his presumptions about which side he should be on, then looks for smarmy ways to characterize the opposition. That is not a rational thought process, but he can more than redeem himself if he will just stop deceiving everybody and start helping to expose the facts.

He could also give his moron brigades a chance to redeem themselves by asking them to actually check a couple factual claims about the crescent design:

Is the giant crescent is really oriented almost exactly on Mecca?

Is the 9/11 date really inscribed on a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag?

Is it true that every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign?

This is what theblogosphere OUGHT to be good for. If TBogg is too busy to check the facts, why not put his minions to work?

For more on who TBogg has been covering up for, see last week’s post on Dr. Jaques 2001 article, where he argued that we should formulate our response to the 9/11 attacks in accordance with sharia law. How did this advocate for Islamic supremacism become the Memorial Project’s sole consultant on the warnings of Islamic symbolism in the crescent design during a crucial period when the Project’s dismissive posture was set in stone?

If TBogg would tell us what he knows, it might help answer that question, or pose others equally important. No more deception. Just tell the damned truth.

From the Telegraph in the UK:

Chief scientist in sports cars warning to women:

Professor Sir David King said governments could only do so much to control greenhouse gas emissions and it was time for a cultural change among the British public.
advertisement

And he singled out women who find supercar drivers “sexy”, adding that they should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.

His comments were greeted with anger by sports car drivers who insisted that their vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions were tiny compared with those from four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Sir David, who is due to retire as the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser at the end of the year, said individuals needed to change their behaviour.
[…]

I’m guessing the pilots, ESPECIALLY the real go fast guys, who can step it up that one more notch to “buster” speed, will be the next to fall form grace at the green alter of “Climate Change.” Gotta be lots of “bad emissions” from the raw JP-5 dumping into the afterburner section…

Will pilots have the “fortitude” to stand tall and defend their right to turn a liquid into bone rattling sonic booms?

Ya know, if the women are more concerned about staying cool than dating “cool,” they might want to heed the messenger!

Good thing Lex already has made his mark on the future of society…and needs no more fawning babes at his feet, begging for a “Tiger Cruise” of their very own.

On the other hand…think about a world where the Guv’ment tells you who to date…You think they blew it with Katrina? Yeah, standby to standby for that disaster…Yep, we need to tell women how to think, according to Sir King. Will the feminists come out to protest this round of patently obvious misogyny of this line of reasoning?

I think it’s just jealousy hidden behind the current “blame all” crisis of the moment…I bet Sir King never even owned a super car….

Kevin Jaques: U.S. response to 9/11 should conform to sharia lawDr. Kevin Jaques is one of the Three Mosqueteers. Of the three academics who are helping architect Paul Murdoch to plant a terrorist memorial mosque on the Flight 93 crash site, Jaques was most central to the Park Service’s fraudulent internal investigation.

He has also left a revealing paper trail. Shortly after 9/11, Indiana University School of Law sponsored a forum on the likely legal fallout from the attacks: consequences for immigration law, civil rights, etcetera. As the university’s resident expert on Islamic (sharia) law, Jaques was invited to say something about our looming engagement with the Islamic world and their systems of law.

He chose to write a prescriptive article, urging the United States to frame its response in conformity with traditional sharia requirements:

In formulating an American response to the acts of terror, it is necessary to define them according to the provisions of Islamic law.

Whitewashing sharia

Jaques makes the basic arguments for submission that any anti-war multiculturalist might make. He offers an appeasement pitch:

If the United States wishes to approach the fight against terrorism to limit future revivalist terror groups from forming and attacking American citizens and interests, it will be necessary to craft a response that conforms to the realities of Islamic law.

And he offers a when-in-Rome pitch:

Muslim religious leaders think of the world in legal terms and will react to U.S. policies according to how these policies conflict or adhere to Islamic legal principles.

Of course we should avoid gratuitous offense, when in Rome (just as we should practice it as a pastime at home). But should we really submit to sharia law?

Nowhere does Jaques even acknowledge that world-wide submission to sharia law is the ultimate goal of the 9/11 terrorists. That is a pretty glaring omission for someone who is advocating adherence to sharia law, but Jaques does more than just elide the point. He actively misleads, going to great lengths to pretend that the terrorists reject the whole idea of sharia law:

[R]evivalist movements around the Islamic world are articulating new and exciting systems of legal interpretation that, in real terms, are similar to traditional legal norms. Only the violent fringe—approximately 1 percent to 2 percent of Muslims worldwide—would disparage any discussion of Islamic law as being reflective of the kinds of non-Islamic ideas that they claim have contaminated Islam since the very first centuries of Islamic history.

Talk about a whitewash! To paint sharia as benign, Jaques pretends that the “violent fringe” is opposed to it, and this is no offhand comment. The whole first third of Jaques’ discussion is spent setting up this punch line.

Qutb did you say?

Jaques begins by describing how Islamic jurisprudence has historically proceeded by working out consensus views of the meaning of “texts of revelation”: the Koran and the sunnah (Muhammad’s biography). He then discusses the trend toward “revivalism,” starting in the 14th century, which sought to purify Islamic jurisprudence by purging all influences other than Koran and biography.

The modern phase of this revivalism is the work of Wahhab and Qtub, the sources of today’s bin Ladenist doctrines of maximally aggressive conquest. Wahhab dismissed the requirement for consensus, insisting that anyone can read the Koran for themselves, and Qtub carried this innovation in a particularly violent direction:

Qutb advocated a radicalized form of Wahhabi extremism as the only means of driving foreign (meaning U.S. and Israeli) influences out of the Islamic world. His writings have become the basic texts of contemporary violent fringe movements around the Islamic world.

Jaques identifies the “violent fringe” with Qutb while claiming that the violent fringe “disparage[s] any discussion of Islamic law.” But Qutb did not shun sharia law. Just the opposite. He declared that any Muslim ruler who failed to impose sharia should be killed as an apostate.

This is detailed in Lawrence Wright’s book The Looming Tower. Flopping Aces posted an excerpt last year:

Sayyid Qutb had pointed the way by declaring that a leader who does not impose Sharia on the country must be an apostate. There is a well known saying of the Prophet that the blood of Muslims cannot be shed except in three instances: as punishment for murder, or for marital infidelity, or for turning away from Islam. The pious Anwar Sadat was the first modern victim of the reverse logic of takfir.

Jaques takes the 20th century’s foremost advocate for imposing sharia by violent means across the entire globe and suggests that he and his followers “would disparage any discussion of Islamic law.”

Whitewashing Wahhabism

Pretending that the violent fringe spurns sharia allows Jaques to whitewash, not just sharia, but also the mainstream revivalist movements that, as Jaques acknowledges, fully embrace sharia:

… revivalist movements around the Islamic world are articulating new and exciting systems of legal interpretation that, in real terms, are similar to traditional legal norms.

The mainstream of revivalism is Saudi Wahhabism, the state sponsored doctrine of violent aggressive conquest whose “fringe” elements attacked us on 9/11. As Jaques notes, these revivalists are thoroughly traditional in their interpretations of sharia law. All of them look backwards to the purity of 7th century Islam. Not much “new” there, however “exciting” to a person of Jaques’ evident sympathies.

Doctrinally, there is no gap between the “violent fringe” of bin Ladenists and the larger Wahhabi sect that spawned them. At most there are questions about whether bin Laden has been a good general, whose strategies effectively serve the Wahhabi goal of world domination. Mainstream Wahhabism completely embraces all of bin Laden’s objectives.

Honest about one thing: how sharia limits infidel responses

When he turns to the question of how we could frame a military response that is consistent with sharia law, Jaques takes the subject seriously, and is commendably forthright, acknowledging sharia as the law of Islamic conquest:

The laws of war that developed in the earliest periods divide the world into two halves, dar al-Islam, or the “land of submission” and dar al-harb, the “land of war.” Dar al-Islam refers to any territory that is under the control of Muslims and thus forms an Islamic commonwealth. Legal texts imply that the term is meant to denote a political designation of submission to Muslim political authority. … All areas outside of Muslim political authority are considered to be in a potential state of war with the Muslim state. All relations between the areas of submission and the areas of war are regulated by the concept of jihad … an obligatory “struggle” against non-believers who are not already under Muslim rule.

Any cessation in hostilities is purely strategic, until Muslims can get back to a position of strength from which to continue to fight:

The law outlines, in most cases, rules for the cessation of struggle (hudnah) when it is deemed by the Imam or his surrogates that it is to the advantage of the Muslims to do so, or out of a need due to Muslim weakness. In cases where Muslims simply seek some advantage in the cessation of hostilities, hudnah is limited to a period of four months. If the cessation of hostilities is due to Muslim weakness, hudnah can last for a period of up to 10 years.

Jaques also acknowledges that under Islamic law, infidels have no legal rights to fight back against Muslims at all:

…reaction by the United States becomes problematic since the rebels are still defined as Muslim and the law expressly forbids non-Muslims from attacking Muslims in a Muslim land.

Yes, well, that is the problem with conforming to the law of Islamic supremacism. It’s called “surrender.”

Takfir squared, or Qutbed

So we must submit to Islamic law, says Jaques, yet according to Islamic law, we are not allowed to fight back. What to do? What to do?

Jaques, expert in the nuances of Islamic law, offers us a way out. We can embrace Qutb’s innovation and declare the bin Ladenists apostates! (The strategy of takfir.) Then we would be allowed to kill them. But of course we have to get Muslim jurists to okay this first:

American responses to the attacks will be greatly assisted if Muslim jurists are willing to define the attacks as riddah (apostasy) and not as bughat (rebellion), or simple homicide (qatl). In the latter two categories, the perpetrators remain Muslim and any effort by non-Muslims to punish them will expressly violate provisions in Islamic law that prevents non-Muslims from killing Muslims. Only apostates may be killed by non-Muslims, and in some interpretations, Muslims may ask non-Muslims for assistance in bringing apostates to justice.

The only way Jaques is able to make this Qutbian strategy seem like a real possibility is through his earlier deception, pretending that the “violent fringe” is hostile to sharia law. Since there is not actually any doctrinal divide between the bin Ladenists and the traditional Islam, there is no way for traditional jurists to declare them apostates.

Jaques himself makes clear that the complaint about bin Laden from the point of view of traditional Islam is that he acted without consensus, and that he seems to be a bad general, engaging in acts that weaken rather than strengthen the Muslim position:

Defining the acts as contraventions of ijma would not hinge just on the enormity of the acts (simple murder contravenes ijma but is not defined as apostasy), but also on the idea that they endanger the Muslim community because of what they suggest about structures of legal authority. Encouraging others to commit suicide, claiming the right to declare jihad, to kill thousands (including many Muslims) and destroy billions of dollars of property without proper consent, and to risk the lives of Muslims due to Western military and economic retaliations challenges the authority of the community of jurists and of every principle of law that, by consensus, seeks to promote the welfare of the Muslim community.

But if bin Laden is just a bad general, acting without proper authority, how exactly is he supposed to be declared an apostate? Under sharia, the terror attacks might at most be viewed as rebellion (for which infidels have no recourse), but as Jaques notes, the demise of the caliphate makes it impossible even to establish bin Laden as a rebel. Who is he rebelling against?

Defining the acts as bughat [rebellion] is complicated by the fact that there is no universally recognized Muslim leader in any area of the Muslim world and has not been for more than 700 years. Many jurists argue that since this is the case, rules for bughat are not applicable today.

The bin Ladenists are trying to rectify this lack of a recognized Muslim leader by establishing a new caliphate. That hardly makes them apostates.

First Jaques pretends that the terrorists are hostile to sharia law. Then he pretends that sharia law is hostile to the terrorists. All the while neglecting to mention that the terrorists’ explicit goal is world submission to sharia law. That is quite a concatenation of strategic deception (taqiyya).

Jaques was just as deceptive in his advice to the Memorial Project

That giant Mecca-oriented crescent that forms the centerpiece of the Flight 93 Memorial? Jaques admits that it is similar to the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built, but so what:

…just because something is ’similar to’ something else does not make it the ’same’.

The half-mile wide crescent is much too big, says Jaques, to be recognized as the central feature of a mosque. After all, that would make it the world’s biggest mosque by a factor of a hundred! What could be sillier? But Taqiyya very much for asking.

Jaques does not name his own religious beliefs, but it seems pretty clear that he must be a Muslim, and probably of the revivalist stripe (which he finds so “new and exciting”). Will he deny it, as Islam allows (Koran, verse 16:106)? Feel free to ask. Please note any response in the comments.

——————————————————–

If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email Cao at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, for simultaneous publication on this issue on Wednesdays.

Crescent of betrayal/surrender Blogburst Blogroll

1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech
A Defending Crusader
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever
And Rightly So
Big Dog’s Weblog
Big Sibling
Cao2’s Weblog
Cao’s Blog
Chaotic Synaptic Activity
Error Theory
Faultline USA
Flanders Fields
Flopping Aces
Four Pointer
Freedom’s Enemies
Ft. Hard Knox
GM’s Corner
Hoosier Army Mom
Ironic Surrealism II
Jack Lewis
Kender’s Musings
My Own Thoughts
Nice Deb
Ogre’s Politics and Views
Part-Time Pundit
Right on the Right
Right Truth
Stix Blog
Stop the ACLU
The Renaissance Biologist
The View From the Turret
The Wide Awakes
Thunder Run

A picture here Blue Steel rip , with an attached essay tell the story of a Nation United.

Another picture here, which has become the image of a Nation Now Divided.

One event stood us together, then next one, tears us apart.

One let us proclaim the evil of the enemy, the other, warns us from “judging” others, lest we be taken into court for “hating.”

Once a Nation that saw the President as it’s leader, even if flawed, now see the President as the proximate cause of all the ills of the plant, our people and the people even outside our borders.

Once a place where many rolled up their sleeves and pitched in to make for the betterment of their neighbors and the country, now one that sits back and awaits the arrival of Government agencies, then has the guts to deride them as ineffective in making them feel the way they want to.

Once a nation that cared what the majority wanted and needed and tempered it with a large dose of common sense. Now any one person can cause their discomfort in a situation become a life change for the rest of the citizenry with little opposition.

But…a Nation who’s young men stood in line for hours on this day 66 years ago, and has young men and women still raising their right hands and saying “I will support and defend The Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me God” and mean it with the very fiber of their soul.

There is hope. It is portrayed in the images we see of 17, 18, 19 and 20 something year olds, purposely trading personal freedom for the Nation’s well being. They are the future leaders, and they are learning what it means to defend something valuable.

Far more eloquently than I would, SteelJaw Scribe has a tribute to that day in his Flight Deck Friday series.

Words and powerful pictures take you back to a different time in the history of our Nation, and that of the world.

TBogg has edited a comment thread to remove an important piece of evidence about the Memorial Project’s cover up of Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the planned Flight 93 memorial. A historically important comment left by a consultant to the Memorial Project has been deleted.

In January 2006, Alec Rawls baited theTBogg leftists for insisting that it is perfectly okay to plant a giant Mecca oriented crescent on the Flight 93 crash site. TBogg’s comment thread swelled to epic proportions and eventually yielded something more than theusual litany of moonbat excuses for not thinking straight. At the end of the thread, posted sometime in March or April of 2006, there appeared an extended comment, about 600 words long, posted anonymously, and written as a semi-formal evaluation of Rawls’ January 2006 report to the MemorialProject.

Mr. Rawls would later find out that this anonymous comment was the sole piece of written feedback on which the Memorial Project was basing its denial of Islamic features in the winning design. (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, pp. 149-50.)

The Project only communicated snippets of the TBogg comment, so the fact that the whole thing had been posted online caught them by surprise, undermining their ability to control the story. In particular, the TBogg comment did not deny the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. On the contrary, it acknowledged that the crescent at the center of the memorial isgeometrically similar to a traditional mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built), and offered a variety of excuses for why people should not be concerned about this similarity. (e.g. “[J]ust because something is ‘similar to’ something else, does not make it the ‘same’.”)

Dr. Kevin Jaques

Only in the last couple of weeks has the identity of the anonymous scholar who wrote the TBogg comment been learned. Last week’s blogburst about the Park Service’s fraudulent internal investigation discusses a Memorial Project “White Paper” that identifies the TBogg commentator as Dr.Kevin Jaques, an Islamicist (a scholar of Islam), at the University of Indiana.

One of Dr. Jaques excuses for not being concerned about the half-mile wide Mecca-oriented crescent is that it is so much bigger than any other mihrab:

Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.

You might recognize it as a giant crescent from an airplane like Flight 93 flying over
head, but from the ground? Pshaw.

It’s too big to recognize!

TBogg deleted the Kevin Jaques comment from his comment thread

For most of 2007, the original TBogg comment thread has not been available, but TBogg now has it reposted, with one glaring omission: Dr. Jaques comment has been removed.

If you want to see what TBogg is posting now, the url for his 2006 “Lunacy abounds” post is http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2006/01/lunacy-abounds-nuts.html.For posterity, here are copies of the original comment thread, as of 5/29/2006, with Dr. Jaques’ comment intact at the end, and the comment thread repost, as of 12/3/2007, with Dr. Jaques’ comment deleted.

A full discussion of what TBogg properly calls “the infamous comment thread” can be found in Chapter Eight of Alec’s Crescent of Betrayal book (download 3, pp 131-).

The question now for Mr. TBogg is why he deleted Kevin Jaques’ comment. Did he do it on his own, or did he do it at someone’s request? Did Dr. Jaques ask him to delete the comment? Did architect Paul Murdoch ask? Did someone in the Park Service ask?

Whether TBogg acted on his own or was prompted, it is obvious that he understood that he was deleting an important piece of evidence. Just the fact that he singled it out for deletion shows a conscious act of cover-up. Maybe he did not realize the full import of having the comment remain publicly available via an original source, but he certainly knew he was covering up something important. What kind of blogger deletes a piece of evidence that he knows to be central to a high profile controversy?

(Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R-CO) sent the Park Service a letter last month asking that crescent design be scrapped entirely.) This is very bad behavior.

Was TBogg’s comment thread originally removed in order to hide Jaques comment?

It was odd enough when the “infamous comment thread” first disappeared from TBogg’s blog. What blogger removes anything famous from their blog? But at that time, there was no publicly available information that could have alerted TBogg to the significance of that last anonymous comment. The most likely explanation for the disappearance of the comment thread seemed to be that TBogg simply had a coding glitch, or maybe he is cheap enough to have been worried about bandwidth.

Now that the comment thread has been restored without the Jaques comment, it seems likely that the reason the comment thread came down in the first place was to hide the Jaques comment. The interesting thing about this scenario is that at the time the comment thread was removed (sometime between June 2006 and June 2007) the only way TBogg could have learned the importance of that last anonymous comment would have been through the internal investigation conducted by the Park Service in the spring and summer of 2006. No one else knew that the comment came from an advisor to the Memorial Project until July 2007 when Alec Rawls released the downloadable “Director’s Cut” version of his Crescent of Betrayal book. (Given the urgent public need to know, World Ahead Publishing graciously allowed Alec to make his then final draft available for free download until the print edition—still being updated—comes out in the first quarter of 2008.)

The TBogg comment thread was removed before the Director’s Cut release. (Noted in Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, at p. 131.) Chief Ranger Jill Hawk, who was conducting the investigation, would not tell Alec who wrote the anonymous TBogg comment, but Alec warned her to be suspicious. Given the overtly dishonest nature of its excuse making, he urged her to double check its provenance. She answered back that she had been able to get email confirmation of authorship.

This email communication with Jaques might well have alerted him to the faux pas he committed by posting his comment on the TBogg thread. Did he then contact TBogg and ask for the comment to be removed?

That would seem to be the most likely scenario. Others who were privy to the internal investigation could have also contacted TBogg, but there is no evidence for any other such route of transmission.

It is disturbing to think that TBogg would have acceded to any request to remove evidence about a possible enemy plot. He is fully aware of what Rawls is claiming: that an al Qaeda sympathizing architect entered our open design competition with a plan to build a terrorist memorial mosque and won. Kevin Jaques’ TBogg comment is crucial for understanding how such aplot could succeed, revealing the utter fraudulence of the internal investigation that should have detected any such plot. As the lone consultant to the Memorial Project on the crescent design, Jaques engaged in overtly dishonest excuse-making. And TBogg is willing to help him cover it up?

If TBogg has some other explanation for his deletions, the rest of us would sure like to hear it.

The fraudulent internal investigation

For more of Kevin Jaques’ dishonest excuse-making, see last week’s blogburst on the fraudulent internal investigation. Before the Park Service was done, it managed to round up two more academic frauds in addition to Kevin Jaques. There is Dr. Daniel Griffith, who claims there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca, and a third Mosqueteer still to be discussed. (Saving the worst for last.)

But Jaques is the central fraud, being the Project’s sole source of feedback during a crucial period when its dismissive posture was set in stone. In addition to being an expert on sharia law, Jaques has also proved to be an expert at taqiyya.

Welcome, any Lizards who stop by to critique my work!

I had a brief moment of clarity (at least I’ll call it that) yesterday, while listening to the talk shows once more going over the General Kerr issue at the Republican debate this week.

Here it is: The Clintons (past administration, and the one to maybe come) realize something about the military experience, and are intent on using it for that very purpose. I submit this is wrong. Yes, it’s a social experiment they are after. Why? Because that has been the very power of the organization in history.

I have blogged a lot about the society changing work of Eleanor Roosevelt, not directly, but through the stories I have put here about Ben Garrison, and other African-American units that served our nation well in WWII, and then allowed the true integration of the Armed Services, ahead of the general population.

The Tuskegee Airmen are well known. Add to that the USS MASON (DE-529), Subchaser PC-1264, the 761st (“Black Panther”) Armored Battalion and the 555th (“Triple Nickel”) Parachute Battalion. These units, set up by President Roosevelt, showed these men could fight for the country just as well as another other able bodied man in the US.

One thing about race: Throughout history, there has never been any doubt about whether you are born that way, or it is something you chose. This is the big disconnect we are facing. The jury is still out on which it is for homosexuality. Political pressures and the MSM would have you believe there is no choice about it. The “scientific evidence” is sketchy and from small sample sizes, so, at best inconclusive. There are those who, having lived the “life style” will adamantly tell you it’s a “nurture” thing, and you don’t have to be that way, others will say those people, like Andy Cominsky, have been “brainwashed.” I’ll say, that the discussion on the reasons for being homosexual being debated now, have only become a topic of public debate and concern in the last few decades. That, in my book, smacks of someone trying to make something factual that is not.

Here’s one of my observations of the scientific community in recent times: On one hand, they will regale you with tales of the long suffering individual, driven by a revelation, suffering public and peer disdain for years, and then, the “discovery” comes that completely vindicates them, and they are elevated from the ranks of the dregs of the community, and placed on high pedestals! They become revered and followed. Later, some small voice comes forward and says “I don’t think that’s it.” The scientists attack that impetuous one, who would challenge…but, the cycle repeats. At some point, the theory of the youngster is found to be more correct (those two words chosen specifically), the elder is de-throned, at the worst, or provided a place of honor for having provided some insight, at best, and the history of science continues.

On the other hand….the “scientists,” almost without taking a breath, will launch into a discussion of how. let’s say Darwin, is 100% correct and there is no need to revisit the “theory” of evolution any more, IT IS SETTLED!

I see the current discussion on the condition of being gay as the second case, even while there is much to be looked at with true scientific discipline, untainted by any groups desire to elevate themselves to a special status, above the “all men are created equal” measurement.

Toss the entire “Global Warming Climate Change” issue in with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution model of “it’s that way because a POLITICIAN told me” category. Side note: Yeah, I waited all those months just so I could evacuate before the many Cat 5 hurricanes headed to the “plywood state” and they never came….

Now, back to the topic: Bill Clinton went for it first with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as a political payback for a voting block that went his way in 1992. It was a realistic compromise to get elected, with nothing to do with National Defense. Since end of the draft in 1971, the military had been an all volunteer force. There were adequate numbers of people enlisting. The DADT had nothing to do with abandoning a previous organizational ban, so we could put more manpower into the fight. We weren’t in a fight, and the Clinton Administration was drawing down the military as fast as it could.

Using the totalitarian management structure of the military, Bill Clinton, as the Commander-in-Chief, had pretty much Carte Blanche to make it happen, including the power to place his leadership at the top of the military to make sure they went along. That is the prerogative of any president, and I’m not faulting him for using the system in place, but I would argue about his motivation to repay a political debt, not to strengthen the military.

Thus began the change, were, as an analog to the service of the minority units in WWII, and the later full integration into service life by President Truman, it became a lever to show the general populace a better way to handle our social interactions. In that case, once more, I’ll point out it was over a matter of a fact of true, scientifically understood heredity.

Now, along comes Hillary. If she is to attain the office of President, she will most likely declare openly gay people will be allowed to enter the service. Why? Once more, to illegitimately use the power of the Commander-in-Chief’s authority to return a political favor for getting the gay vote.

What does that say about her (and Bill’s) view of the Armed Services? Those organizations, setup in The Constitution, to “provide for the common defense” are nothing more that dating services. Join the service and get to shower with people, without having to ask their permission. In any other part of society, doing so would have one arrested for a sex crime. It’s all about consent.

The only reason it is important is to get to power by promising access to the homosexual community.

What about the years of training the military has gone through, trying to prevent “fraternization.” That became an issue with the massive infusion of women in the service, and the incredibly deep rooted human desire for sexual contact. Why didn’t the military want this, even among heterosexuals? It makes for difficult, and many times impossible, decision making moments, where the leadership needs to be scrupulously fair. Sometimes that “fairness” needs to be played out in terms of making sure who you send to a dangerous situation is being done for the right reasons, and not because you are in a relationship with someone in your unit.

Adding openly homosexual people to the already PCed military environment is just one more obstacle to good order and discipline, which is detracted from by raging hormones left unchecked.

Once more, the “here’s your orders, now get on with it” methodology has the near term possibility to just making it more palatable for the military to take on more of the social interaction phenomena, rather than being focused on combat readiness. Maybe they see it as an offshoot for the “busy gay ‘professional,’ who doesn’t have time to set up a full time relationship.” Yeah, that’s the ticket – Join the military and let everyone around you in the barracks know you’re “like that” and let the shy ones come to you.

One thing this plan doesn’t include, is respect for the people, who joined the military to serve the nation, and not as a dating service, who do not want those who are sexually attracted to them staring at them in the head facilities.

At least DADT offers the gay person the opportunity to serve and all they have to do is take their “relationships” off base. The same is actually expected off all the other service members already. The reason a DADT policy for heterosexuality isn’t necessary is because the vast majority of all humans aren’t homosexual and therefore it would be pretty ridiculous to tell them not to say what their sexual preferences are. They don’t do it now. It wasn’t part of their enlistment contract and it serves no organizational purpose.

The only purpose of the Armed services are to serve the people by defending them. If that’s what someone wants to do, then keep it zipped. It’s expected of everyone. The UCMJ has all the “rules” and it applies to all in uniform.

And, don’t forget that the Democrats all want to scream and yell about the “waste, fraud and abuse” of the DoD. How about we begin to add up all the costs for the course development, the manpower and facilities, the contractor fees, and the hows spent byt real troops sitting in classrooms getting lectured on being sensitive and not using certain words. Can someone explain how that helps the US military defend the nation better? I’d like to hold that “metric” up for the “you’re wasting our money crowd and see what they have to say.

Here it is: The Clintons (past administration, and the one to maybe come) realize something about the military experience, and are intent on using it for that very purpose. I submit this is wrong. Yes, it’s a social experiment they are after. Why? Because that has been the very power of the organization in history.

I have blogged a lot about the society changing work of Elanor Roosevelt, not directly, but through the stories I have put here about Ben Garrison, and other African-American units that served our nation well in WWII, and then allowed the true integration of the Armed Services, ahead of the general population.

The Tuskegee Airmen are well known. Add to that the USS MASON (DE-529), Subchaser PC-1264, the 761st (“Black Panther”) Armored Battalion and the 555th (“Triple Nickel”) Parachute Battalion. These units, set up by President Roosevelt, showed these men could fight for the country just as well as another other able bodied man in the US.

One thing about race: Throughout history, there has never been any doubt about whether you are born that way, or it is something you chose. This is the big disconnect we are facing. The jury is still out on which it is for homosexuality. Political pressures and the MSM would have you believe there is no choice about it. The “scientific evidence” is sketchy and from small sample sizes, so, at best inconclusive. There are those who, having lived the “life style” will adamantly tell you it’s a “nurture” thing, and you don’t have to be that way, others will say those people, like Andy Cominsky, have been “brainwashed.” I’ll say, that the discussion on the reasons for being homosexual being debated now, have only become a topic of public debate and concern in the last few decades. That, in my book, smacks of someone trying to make something factual that is not.

Here’s one of my observations of the scientific community in recent times: On one hand, they will regale you with tales of the long suffering individual, driven by a revelation, suffering public and peer disdain for years, and then, the “discovery” comes that completely vindicates them, and they are elevated from the ranks of the dregs of the community, and placed on high pedestals! They become revered and followed. Later, some small voice comes forward and says “I don’t think that’s it.” The scientists attack that impetuous one, who would challenged…but, the cycle repeats. At some point, the theory of the youngster is found to be more correct (those two words chosen superficially), the elder is de-throned, at the worst, or provided a place of honor for having provided some insight, at best, and the history of science continues.

On the other hand….the “scientists,” almost without taking a breath, will launch into a discussion of how. let’s say Darwin, is 100% correct and there is no need to revisit the “theory” of evolution any more, IT IS SETTLED!

I see the current discussion on the condition of being gay as the second case, even while there is much to be looked at with true scientific discipline, untainted by any groups desire to elevate themselves to a special status, above the “all men are created equal” measurement.

Toss the entire “Global Warming Climate Change” issue in with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution model of “it’s that way because a POLITICIAN told me” category. Side note: Yeah, I waited all those months just so I could evacuate before the many Cat 5 hurricanes headed to the “plywood state” and they never came….

Now, back to the topic: Bill Clinton went for it first with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as a political payback for a voting block that went his way in 1992. It was a realistic compromise to get elected, with nothing to do with National Defense. Since end of the draft in 1971, the military had been an all volunteer force. There were adequate numbers of people enlisting. The DADT had nothing to do with abandoning a previous organizational ban, so we could put more manpower into the fight. We weren’t in a fight, and the Clinton Administration was drawing down the military as fast as it could.

Using the totalitarian management structure of the military, Bill Clinton, as the Commander-in-Chief, had pretty much Carte Blanche to make it happen, including the power to place his leadership at the top of the military to make sure they went along. That is the prerogative of any president, and I’m not faulting him for using the system in place, but I would argue about his motivation to repay a political debt, not to strengthen the military.

Thus began the change, were, as an analog to the service of the minority units in WWII, and the later full integration into service life by President Truman, it became a lever to show the general populace a better way to handle our social interactions. In that case, once more, I’ll point out it was over a matter of a fact of true, scientifically understood heredity.

Now, along comes Hillary. If she is to attain the office of President, she will most likely declare openly gay people will be allowed to enter the service. Why? Once more, to illegitimately use the power of the Commander-in-Chief’s authority to return a political favor for getting the gay vote.

What does that say about her (and Bill’s) view of the Armed Services? Those organizations, setup in The Constitution, to “provide for the common defense” are nothing more that dating services. Join the service and get to shower with people, without having to ask their permission. In any other part of society, doing so would have one arrested for a sex crime. It’s all about consent.

The only reason it is important is to get to power by promising access to the homosexual community.

What about the years of training the military has gone through, trying to prevent “fraternization.” That became an issue with the massive infusion of women in the service, and the incredibly deep rooted human desire for sexual contact. Why didn’t the military want this, even among heterosexuals? It makes for difficult, and many times impossible, decision making moments, where the leadership needs to be scrupulously fair. Sometimes that “fairness” needs to be played out in terms of making sure who you send to a dangerous situation is being done for the right reasons, and not because you are in a relationship with someone in your unit.

Adding openly homosexual people to the already PCed military environment is just one more obstacle to good order and discipline, which is detracted from by raging hormones left unchecked.

Once more, the “here’s your orders, now get on with it” methodology has the near term possibility to just making it more palatable for the military to take on more of the social interaction phenomena, rather than being focused on combat readiness. Maybe they see it as an offshoot for the “busy gay ‘professional,’ who doesn’t have time to set up a full time relationship.” Yeah, that’s the ticket – Join the military and let everyone around you in the barracks know you’re “like that” and let the shy ones come to you.

One thing this plan doesn’t include, is respect for the people, who joined the military to serve the nation, and not as a dating service, who do not want those who are sexually attracted to them staring at them in the head facilities.

At least DADT offers the gay person the opportunity to serve and all they have to do is take their “relationships” off base. The same is actually expected off all the other service members already. The reason a DADT policy for heterosexuality isn’t necessary is because the vast majority of all humans aren’t homosexual and therefore it would be pretty ridiculous to tell them not to say what their sexual preferences are. They don’t do it now. It wasn’t part of their enlistment contract and it serves no organizational purpose.

The only purpose of the Armed services are to serve the people by defending them. If that’s what someone wants to do, then keep it zipped. It’s expected of everyone. The UCMJ has all the “rules” and it applies to all in uniform.

And, don’t forget that the Democrats all want to scream and yell about the “waste, fraud and abuse” of the DoD. How about we begin to add up all the costs for the course development, the manpower and facilities, the contractor fees, and the hows spent byt real troops sitting in classrooms getting lectured on being sensitive and not using certain words. Can someone explain how that helps the US military defend the nation better? I’d like to hold that “metric” up for the “you’re wasting our money crowd and see what they have to say.

Anyhow, a vote for Hillary is a vote to actually turn the US Armed Forces into a sexual experimentation labs of epic proportions and combat efficiency be damned. Not because a law says so, but because her character will allow her to do it, and the vote gives her the power. What sexual preference/proclivity/perversion will next gain the favor of Hillary and therefore be made “legal” in the military to gain some more votes?

I’d prefer the method they used when they started to vilify smokers in the late 80s: If any one person in a space objects to smoking, then no one can. How about we apply the same principle here for people who think they joined the military to fight for the country, and not to be ogled by gay people?

Memorial superintendent admits giant crescent still present in memorial design

No comment from the Park Service yet on Congressman Tancredo’s request for a new Flight 93 Memorial. We did a little better with last week’s blogburst letters. Some emailers got a response from Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley, answering Mr. Tancredo’s contention that the original giant crescent is still present in the redesign. Interestingly, her description of the redesign actually admits that the giant crescent IS still present, both geometrically and thematically.

In 2005, architect Paul Murdoch explained his original Crescent of Embrace design in terms of the flight path: as the hijacked airliner came over the ridgeline above the crash site, its flight path symbolically broke the circle, turning it into a giant crescent. In the original design, the broken off part of the circle was removed entirely:

Flight 93 came down from the Northwest (the upper left). The flight path breaks the circle at the upper crescent tip, says Paul Murdoch, then continues down to the crash site, which is located between the crescent tips (roughly in the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag).

In describing the barely altered redesign, Superintendent Hanley uses the exact same “breaking the circle” language that Paul Murdoch used to describe the original design, only now the broken off part of the circle is not completely removed. A broken chunk of it remains, so that the design now includes “two breaks” instead of one:

The most prominent refinement was in the treatment of the naturally occurring bowl-shaped landscape feature. The design now surrounds that area with a circle of trees which is broken in two places – the location which marks the flight path as it breaks the circular continuity of the bowl edge, and the Sacred Ground where the crash occurred. The locations of the two breaks in the circle are based on the flight path and crash site of Flight 93.

The site plan graphic for the redesign was dramatically re-colored, making the crescent LOOK more like a circle. You have to examine closely to see that the original break in the crescent is still there, along with the new “second break.” But as Superintendent Hanley admits, the original break IS still there, and it is still intended to be seen as being there. Hanley is directly admitting what Congressman Tancredo is complaining about, that the original crescent has only been disguised.

A side-by-side comparison of the Crescent of Embrace site-plan and the redesign site-plan confirms that the only change was to include a chunk of the symbolically broken off part of the imaginary full circle:

Ignoring the re-coloring of the image, the only change is the additional arc of trees to the left side of the crescent. (Click pic for larger view.)

Including a chunk of the broken off part of the circle does nothing to remove the original crescent, but on the contrary is perfectly consistent with it, both geometrically and thematically. The terrorists are still depicted as breaking our humanitarian circle and turning it into a giant Islamic shaped crescent.

Just to make sure people get it, Paul Murdoch has placed a huge glass block at the spot where this circle-breaking, crescent-creating feat takes place. It is the 44th translucent block emplaced along the flight path (matching the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists) and is inscribed: “a field of honor forever.”

Earlier admissions that the redesign retains the crescent and star configuration of an Islamic flag

An August 18th article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette quoted Superintendent Hanley denying the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent:

“The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site,” she said.Mr. Murdoch reinforced that idea.

“It’s oriented toward the Sacred Ground,” he said. “It just couldn’t be clearer.”

The symbolism of the memorial, he continued, is representative of the geography of the crash site, an idea that predates Islam or any other major religion.

They are not calling it a crescent and star configuration, but that is what they are describing, and what they are talking about here is the redesign. They are admitting that the design still has the arms of the crescent reaching out towards the crash site, which sits between the crescent tips, in the position of the star on an Islamic flag. “It just couldn’t be clearer.”

Connect a line from the lower crescent tip to the thematic upper crescent tip (the 44th glass block, commemorating the spot where the flight path breaks the circle) and a perpendicular to this line (the direction of a person facing directly into the giant crescent) points exactly to Mecca. Thus does Paul Murdoch tie the Islamic features and the terrorist memorializing features of his design into a perfect bin Ladenist embrace. The 44th block defines the exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent.

Very simply, we hosted an open design competition in time of war. Of course the enemy would enter. The only thing that is hard to understand is why the Memorial Project is willfully blind to this ploy.

Blogroll for Wednesday “stop the crescent memorial” blogbursts

1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech
A Defending Crusader
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever
And Rightly So
Big Dog’s Weblog

Big Sibling
Cao’s Blog
Chaotic Synaptic Activity
Error Theory
Faultline USA
Flanders Fields
Four Pointer
Ft. Hard Knox

GM’s Corner
Ironic Surrealism II
Jack Lewis
Kender’s Musings
My Own Thoughts
Nice Deb
Ogre’s Politics and Views

Part-Time Pundit
Right on the Right
Right Truth
Stix Blog
Stop the ACLU
The View From the Turret
The Wide Awakes
Thunder Run

Secretary Gates talks back to Congress.

The current flap of Congress being asked for about $190B to continue to fund the war and Nancy Pelosi coughing up $50B with demands to extract ourselves from conducting National Defense proves to me Congress shows more and more ignorance of their own jobs.

Just because DoD gets handed about a trillion dollars or more, doesn’t mean it’s in one huge bank account, to be spend as the DoD officials decide.

I’m no real money expert, but was, for 2.5 years, responsible for managing about $34M worth of funds. Federal budget money is tagged in all sorts of ways, so it will be spent in the manner in which it was justified to Congress thought the development of each annual budget.

Quickly, as a not to detailed level, there is money that is specifically authorized for expenditure in a specific fiscal year and then there is “multi-year money.” The multi year money is labeled with how much of it will be spent in each fiscal year in the range of the funding. Within those two gross categories, there is account designation as well. For instance, there will be funds for manpower (pay checks), MILCON (military construction projects), software development, and a raft of other designations. The Federal Budget is like a real budget, in some ways, that is based on justified needs.

The game rules for money managers? It’s a federal crime to shift funds from one account to another, without getting permission. Here, I’m not clear on exactly how that process works, but I know it exists, and suspect it has something to do with going back up the chain of command to Congressional offices that control appropriations. So, for Secretary Gates just to shrug his shoulders and start walking around the Pentagon halls, with his steno pad, asking for funds from various people to make up the shortfall of his request, he’s in violation of Federal Law. I’m sure Nancy and Harry are aware of not only this, but, if he does do it in the correct way, the extended period of time it will take to accomplish moving $140B from existing accounts to the one funding the front line warfighters needs. That way, they can slow roll the effort at a second level.

Congress really gets this when they “ear mark” funds for their special projects, yet somehow have amnesia when it comes to DoD spending, unless, of course, there is tax money designated to be laundered though the DoD funds to get to a family member, friend of political supporter, then they are all over making sure it’s not diverted.

One more reason to rid ourselves of the “professional” politician class we have become hamstrung with.

The Park Service has a history of keeping the Secretary of the Interior in the dark about the decisions it makes in his name. It is likely that Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has never been told about the many warnings of Islamic symbolism in the planned Flight 93 Memorial. Please help bring Dirk into the loop by pasting the following letter (or one of your own) into an email for him.

Dear Secretary Kempthorne:

Please heed Congressman Tom Tancredo’s call to completely scrap the present design for the Flight 93 Memorial. The original Crescent of Embrace design would have planted a bare naked crescent and star flag on the crash site:

The memorial plaza that sits roughly in the position of the star on an Islamic flag marks the crash site. (Click pics for larger images.)

All the redesign did was add some trees to the west of the original crescent:

Aside from the re-coloring of the site-plan image, the only actual change in the design is the additional arc of trees to the rear of a person facing into the original crescent.

The Park Service promised Congressman Tancredo in 2005 that Islamic iconography would be removed from the memorial. Instead, this iconography has only been very slightly disguised. Every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the redesign.

The giant crescent points to Mecca

In September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing directly into the original Crescent of Embrace would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. That makes the crescent a mihrab, the central feature around which every mosque is built.

Face into the crescent to face Mecca:

Left: mihrab from the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain. Right: Crescent of Embrace also faces Mecca. The green circle is from the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com. When it is placed over the original Crescent of Embrace site plan, the Mecca-direction line (the “qibla”) almost exactly bisects the crescent.

You can plant as many trees around a mosque as you want and it will still be a mosque. But this isn’t just the world’s largest mosque. The planned memorial is also full of terrorist memorializing features.

Please hear my voice along with those of Congressman Tancredo and Tom Burnett Sr., who is refusing to allow Tom Jr.’s name to be used in the crescent design. The memorial to Flight 93 should not be a terrorist memorial mosque.

Sincerely,

Secretary Kempthorne’s phone number is 202-208-7351
Snail-mail: Hon. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of Interior
Office of the Secretary
Rm. 6156, ms7229-MIB
1849 C St, NW
Washington, DC 20240-0001