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CONSIDERED A CAREER AS AN FBI LANGUAGE SPECIALIST?

Washington Post: FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills

Five years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.

Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words — including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test — just 1 percent of the FBI’s 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show.

The numbers reflect the FBI’s continued struggle to attract employees who speak Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and other languages of the Middle East and South Asia, even as the bureau leads a fight against terrorist groups primarily centered in those parts of the world. The same challenge is facing the CIA and other agencies as the government competes with the private sector for a limited number of applicants with foreign-language proficiency, according to U.S. officials and experts.

Well, the FBI and CIA need to identify young, middle age and older candidates, recruit college age/middle age students and offer them financial incentives including scholarships and loan forgiveness.

The United States has its national security at stake and intelligence/law enforcement services are of vital national interest.

The federal checkbook should be opened to train, and deploy qualified people to protect us.

Hugh Hewitt has it RIGHT.

And an ROTC type program based at colleges/universities would stimulate an immediate recruitment of language skills specialists.

President Bush walks with FEMA’s Mike Brown (R) and U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) (L) after Florida was hit by Hurricane Charlie in this August 15, 2004 file photo. Lawmakers charged with enforcing ethics in the U.S. House of Representatives met on October 5, 2006 to begin an investigation of a sex scandal that has ensnared top Republicans and could harm their chances of keeping control of Congress in the November 7 elections. Foley resigned his office and checked into an alcohol rehab center last week after copies of his overly friendly messages to teen-age male congressional pages set off a scandal that could threaten his party’s majority in Congress.

William Rusher: The coming Republican debacle

Regular readers of these columns will not have been taken by surprise by the recent turn of events against the Republicans in the forthcoming Congressional elections. I have warned for several months that the GOP faces “a handsome drubbing.”

In part this is simply a reaffirmation of the old truism that the party in the White House traditionally suffers losses in Congress in the Congressional elections of its second term. In further part, however, it is a byproduct of the fact that this particular administration and its allies in Congress have succumbed to the familiar temptations of power.

Read it all……

Flap agrees.

The Mark Foley Sex Scandal was the nail in the coffin for the national Congressional GOP.

Speaker of the House Hastert should have RESIGNED to contain the damage. But, he, instead insulated himself with the rather weak “Buck Stops Here – But I didn’t know about it.”

But, the Foley Sex Scandal and Hastert’s intransigent is only the latest of GOP’s foibles and Rusher names a few in his piece, including the budgetary largess of “EARMARKS”.

American voters are tired of the GOP.

They will throw the RASCALS out in November.

William Rusher

North Korean military officers (L) and a South Korean soldier (front) at the border village of Panmunjom. A defiant North Korea has warned that it would regard harsh sanctions over its nuclear test as a declaration of war and threatened further trials if the United States kept up its pressure.

North Korea warned on Wednesday that increased U.S. pressure over the regime’s reported nuclear test could be considered an act of war, and South Korea suggested it would build up its conventional arsenal to deal with its belligerent neighbor.

North Korea’s No. 2 leader threatened to conduct more nuclear tests if the United States continued what he called its “hostile attitude.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would not attack North Korea, rejecting a suggestion that Pyongyang may feel it needs nuclear weapons to stave off an
Iraq-style U.S. invasion.

North Korea is rogue regime that will not listen to any rational reassurance. If they wish WAR Kim Jong-Il will make an excuse. Kim has quite a nuclear extortion racket:

“Pay me off and guarantee the survival of my impoverished, criminal regime, or I’ll nuke my economic and human hostages and cost all of you more in lives and money than the bribes and media kowtow I demand.”

And what about China? What will be their role in reining in Kim?

In its first formal statement since the test, North Korea said it could respond to U.S. pressure with “physical” measures.

“If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. The statement didn’t specify what those measures could be.

The United Nations Security Council MUST impose harsh sanctions including a tight land and maritime EMBARGO or QUARANTINE.

If North Korea wishes WAR, then better NOW before they proliferate their nuclear materials to other rogue or terrorist organizations/regimes.

But, will Kim Jong-Il provoke Japan or the United States?

Will China allow a land embargo?

Stay tuned…..

South Korean conservative activists hold placards during an anti-North Korea rally in Seoul.

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Michael Ramirez on Nuclear North Korea

North Korea Nuclear Watch: McCain vs. Clinton

North Korea Nuclear Watch: Kick North Korea Out of the United Nations?

North Korea Nuclear Watch: United States Proposes United Nations Sanctions Against North Korea

Day By Day by Chris Muir