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Somethings never change. Rep. Pete King has a history of spewing ridiculous statements when it comes to war and national security. As TPM puts it:

In recent years, the New York Republican has gained a reputation for demagoguing every terror incident by hyping the threat of radical Islam and suggesting that Democrats' policies are putting Americans' lives at risk. And now he's back at it.

Whenever there's a hint of trouble he's Johnny on the dime to give asinine quotes that the media laps up in his effort to smear anyone who's not a Republican.

After Faisal Shahzad,the suspected NYC bomber failed at his task, it was time to fill air space on cable -- and like clockwork King got himself on the tube to pass along his latest demagoguery. With the case of NYC being only hours old and no tangible information available, good old Pete tried to guess what the motive might be for this violent act. Out of the endless possibilities of what might have triggered the terrorist attack, King decided to hypothesize that "South Park" was a possible target.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that a car bomb found Saturday night in Times Square might have been the work of Islamic extremists who were upset over an episode of the Comedy Central series that attempted to depict the prophet Muhammad. It's one possibility out of 100, but this vehicle was close to a Viacom building, which owns MTV and Comedy Central," King said Sunday during an appearance on CNN. "

CNN's John King found that puzzling as well and asked him if he got a little ahead of himself by naming South Park as a target.

John King: Earlier today you raised some eyebrows when you were trying to figure out who might be responsible for this and you were being careful when you said "might," but you did say one possibility and again, this is one possibility, close to the Viacom building you were saying at the outrage the South Park incidents not that long ago. Was that perhaps getting a little ahead of yourself?

Pete King: No, not really because I know that it is being looked at by investigators as one of the possibilities. Iwas going down the list of possibilities and that is one of them to show again how many things the police and the joint terrorism task force have to look at and that is one of them.

Since the Pathfinder was parked near Viacom, which is home to Comedy Central which hosts South Park, that was all the proof Stark needed to pass it along to the mainstream. Why was he speculating?

King has no problem in a time of crisis and a possible terrorist attack to grab a microphone, and to me it sounds like he's publicizing tactics law enforcement use when dealing with these incidents so that he can make himself appear very, very important and in the know. I would expect a pundit to make this kind of assertion, but for a congressman to offer wild speculation hours after an incident is almost criminal. I repeat, why is he there at all at a time of crisis?

King was out front and center when the "Underwear Bomber" struck, even before people had a chance to open up their Christmas presents so that he could denounce President Obama.

I'll never forget when he told an audience at a Jewish center in 2006, and as the Iraq war was raging that shopping in Baghdad was just like hanging out in Manhattan.

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King: Conditions on the ground are different than what you see on television.---As we go through the city of Baghdad, it was like being in Manhattan. I’m talking about bumper to bumper traffic. Talking about shopping centers, talking about restaurants, talking about video stores, talking about guys--on the street corner, talking about major hotels. And so, at that moment, people must be amazingly resilient and you would never know that there was a war going on...

...in Mosul---I remember seeing news reports about roller coasters. Where you had two or three parking lots filled with their cars on a Sunday afternoon. Again, that’s not something you’d see on television, and at any given time a suicide bombers can walk into an amusement center, but the point I’m making is that the situation is more stable than you think....

I wish the media would ignore this fool, but conservatives can never say anything too far out or too far right.

Kidnap subject. Strip off his clothes and dress him in a tracksuit. Blindfold and shackle him. Force headphones over his ears. Fly him to an unknown location to be interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned. Repeat.

This is the practice of "extraordinary rendition," and the experience of 35-year-old U.K. resident Binyam Mohamed on his journey home to London from Pakistan in July 2002. He was kidnapped to Morocco, where he was held for 18 months and tortured repeatedly. "They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel," he wrote in his diary. "I was totally naked…One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make a cut…He did it once, then stood still for maybe a minute, watch my reaction. It was an agony, [I was] crying, trying desperately to suppress my feelings, but I was screaming. There was blood all over."

This was just one of 20 to 30 incidents in which Mohamed was cut on his genitals while detained in Morocco. Interrogators routinely beat him, breaking bones and sometimes knocking him unconscious. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death, drugged repeatedly, and forced to listen to loud music day and night.

In January 2004, he was handcuffed and blindfolded again, placed in a van and driven to an airfield, then stripped, photographed extensively and put on a plane to a "Dark Prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mohamed endured similar torture and daily interrogations in Kabul. In May, he was sent to Bagram. In September, he was sent to Guantánamo Bay. Mohamed was in Guantánamo for more than four years, and was released in February 2009. His military commission charges were dropped in October 2008.

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(Photo via NorthPoleMama.)

The Sunday Talking Head line-up is ready for the reading this morning. Congratulations (condolences?) to ABC’s This Week for winning the most craptastic guest line-up award this week. Blergh. But Sen. Dodd on MtP and Mohamed ElBaradei on Late Edition both promise to be quite interesting, indeed, given the news of the past week and what is likely to be in the news next week. Rule of law and Iran, anyone?

So, what’s catching your eye on the blogs or in the news this morning?

I don't know what to think of this. Something tells me this is not the last time we'll hear about the Islamists in Somalia. I find the statement that this is the "end" of terrorism in the country a bit ironic, to say the least.

GuardianUK: (h/t Gregory)

Not a shot was fired yet the Somali jihad was suddenly over...
Their fortress fell without a shot. After just nine days of clashes in Somalia's hinterland, the Islamists who had vowed to fight to the death abandoned Mogadishu, the city they had governed since June. From having controlled most of southern and central Somalia, they were holed up yesterday in the southern port city of Kismaayo, facing annihilation by Ethiopian troops.

Ali Mohamed Ghedi, Prime Minister in Somalia's transitional government - an irrelevance until last week - rode triumphantly into Mogadishu on Friday, announcing the end of 'terrorism' in the country. Ethiopia, which together with the US has stoked fears about the rise of a terrorist state in the Horn of Africa, was basking in the success of a campaign that was swifter and more successful than anyone had predicted.

'Nobody expected the Islamists to show this little political resilience,' said Matt Bryden, a consultant to the conflict-monitoring body, International Crisis Group. 'They were the first movement to pacify southern Somalia for 16 years, yet they crumbled like a pack of cards.'

Despite US and Ethiopian optimism, it remains unclear whether the military victory represents a new dawn for Somalia or merely a return to anarchy and the beginning of a deadly new insurgency. Read on...

UPDATE: Call me prescient: Somali, Ethiopian troops fight Islamic militants

After this new information came out that the 9/11 commission report "... knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report..."

I remembered this clip from the Paula Zahn Show on Nov. 9th 2004, just days after the election. As you know Bob was part of the 9/11 Commission.

Download | play -WMP

(Update)-OK I'm remaking the video clip and uploading it. The clip will be ready soon. Sorry...

Kevin Drum: "One of the key allegations made by Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer in the Able Danger affair is that even though he specifically told the 9/11 Commission that Able Danger had identified Mohamed Atta, they failed to follow up on it. Today he recanted that allegation. Here's the chronology:...read on

Atrios says: They had some agenda for reviving this, and they figured they could do so by screaming ATTA! ATTA! despite the fact that they'd never bothered to tell anyone they'd identified him before. Now, it looks like they didn't. Oh well. Next story?

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons are disappearing from Iraq (news - web sites) but neither Baghdad nor Washington appears to have noticed, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported on Monday.

Satellite imagery shows that entire buildings in Iraq have been dismantled. They once housed high-precision equipment that could help a government or terror group make nuclear bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to the U.N. Security Council.

Equipment and materials helpful in making bombs also have been removed from open storage areas in Iraq and disappeared without a trace, according to the satellite pictures, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said.