WarSclerotic

Hero Serviceman Spencer Stone Stabbed Repeatedly in Chest, Hospitalized Stone helped thwart terrorist plot on French train

BY: Morgan Chalfant
October 8, 2015 11:32 am

Source: Hero Serviceman Spencer Stone Stabbed Repeatedly in Chest, Hospitalized – Washington Free Beacon

The Air Force serviceman who helped foil a terrorist plot on a French train this summer was repeatedly stabbed early Thursday morning.

According to the Air Force Times, Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone is being treated at a hospital in the Sacramento area after being stabbed four times in the chest.

“A1C Spencer Stone has been transported to a local hospital, and is currently being treated for injury,” Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Karns said. “The incident is currently under investigation by local law enforcement. He is currently in stable condition.”

CBS News reported on Twitter that Stone was in critical condition.

According to a local television station, a stabbing occurred at approximately 12:45A.M. on a street corner in Sacramento. The TV outlet did not name Stone as the victim in its report but said police did not think the victim would survive the attack. Authorities are investigating the incident as a homicide and maintain that the victim has not been identified.

Stone was one of the three Americans who subdued an armed terrorist aboard a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris in August. The 26-year-old Air Force member was wounded with a knife while foiling the terror plot and sent to the hospital to receive treatment for his injuries.

Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and Sacramento State University student Anthony Sadler all received France’s Legion of Honour award for their heroic actions.

The Real Reasons Saudi Arabia Hates Iran

Posted on October 7, 2015

by WashingtonsBlog

Source: The Real Reasons Saudi Arabia Hates Iran Washington’s Blog

The Saudis Hate Iran Because It’s Not a Monarchy

Everyone knows that the Saudi Arabia – the center of Sunni Islam – hates Iran because it is the center for the rival Shia Muslim sect.

The Saudis – close U.S. allies – also hate Iran because it is allied with Russia.

But there is a third, little-known reason why the Saudi government hates Iran.

As the Gulf Cooperation Council – the official council for the Arab Gulf States, comprised of the monarchies of Saudi Arabi, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman – writes:

More than any other single factor, the Iranian Revolution helped to coalesce the security concerns of Saudi Arabia and the other monarchies in the Gulf region. As the largest Arab monarchy, Saudi Arabia was in a position to lead the others toward cooperative efforts. The impact of the Iranian Revolution on Saudi Arabia was manifold. The revolution destroyed the most powerful monarchy in the Gulf area. It was the second revolution to send shock waves throughout the Gulf region, the first being the revolution in Iraq that destroyed the monarchy in 1958. The Iraqi revolution had been followed by deteriorating relations between Riyadh and Baghdad, when the Baathist regime tried to subvert the Gulf monarchies. The Iranian example, however, appeared more menacing. The balance of forces seemed to have changed further against the monarchical regimes in the region because Iran, like Iraq, replaced the monarchy with a republic. Whatever course the new Iranian republic took, its very existence would threaten Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies.

In other words, the Saudi government hates Iran because it is a republic, while Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are monarchies.

Indeed, Vijay Prashad – Professor of South Asian History at Trinity College, Connecticut – said today (starting at 33:22) that the Saudis want to crush Iran so that it cannot set an example showing that Muslims can live in a republic without a monarchy.

Prashad points out that the “Saudis made claim that a Muslim country has to be a monarchy”, and Iran’s very existence undermines that claim.

Why does the U.S. support Saudi Arabia and not Iran?

As Lawrence Davidson – author of Islamic Fundamentalism, and professor of history at West Chester University – explains:

Saudi Arabia is a monarchy without representative institutions. Iran, though ideologically authoritarian and possessing the dictatorial office of jurisprudent, is a republic with a parliament and an electoral process. Saudi Arabia strictly forbids female participation in the public realm, whereas Iran leaves some space for women in this regard.

Given these comparisons, it would seem that, in terms of institutions and their potential for “democratic evolution,” the Islamic Republic in Iran has much more to recommend it to the West than does Saudi Arabia.  Why then, one might ask, is the United States so much more hostile to Iran than to Saudi Arabia?

***

For decades, the United States supported the shah’s monarchy in Iran and continued to do so even after it was clear that it was unpopular, corrupt, and oppressive. When the shah was overthrown, the fundamentalists who took power identified the United States with the deposed government. The new Iranian government’s predictable hostility made difficult any reconciliation between the two powers and fueled continued American animosity.

Indeed, the U.S. supports virtually all of the dictatorial monarchies in the Arab Gulf.

And, of course, there is oil and pipelines play a big part.

Postscript:   By way of background, the CIA admits that the U.S. overthrew the moderate, suit-and-tie-wearing, Democratically-elected prime minister of Iran in 1953. He was overthrown because he had nationalized Iran’s oil, which had previously been controlled by BP and other Western oil companies. As part of that action, the CIA admits that it hired Iranians to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its prime minister.

If the U.S. hadn’t overthrown the moderate Iranian government, the fundamentalist Mullahs would have never taken over. (Moreover, the U.S. has had a large hand in strengthening radical Islam in the Middle East by supporting radicals to fight the Soviets and others).

Doctors Without Borders Bombing: U.S. Changes Story Four Times in Four Days

Claire Bernish

The Anti-Media October 7th, 2015

Source: Doctors Without Borders Bombing: U.S. Changes Story Four Times in Four Days | The Daily Sheeple

After relentlessly bombing a civilian hospital staffed by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF — Doctors Without Borders) in Kunduz, Northern Afghanistan, the U.S. military did the only thing truly befitting American government — it tried to get away with it.

Saturday’s initial summary involved U.S. troops taking on fire in Kunduz, but — according to officials that day — they had no idea if they’d hit the hospital or not.

After a day to fully concoct recall those events, Sunday’s military brief said the strike occurred in the “vicinity” of the hospital so, sure, maybe it was hit by accident.

Deciding that didn’t quite seem plausible exact enough, General John Campbell, commander of the U.S. and NATO [quasi]-war in Afghanistan, claimed the U.S. had never faced a threat on Saturday but were called to assist Afghan troops in the area.

And then Tuesday, the latest available only because it isn’t yet time for the Wednesday version, Campbell expounded on Monday’s version of events, adding that U.S. forces had both called in and carried out the airstrike at the behest of Afghan forces.

“Today’s statement from General Campbell is just the latest in a long list of confusing accounts from the U.S. military about what happened in Kunduz on Saturday,” said Jason Cone, U.S. Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders. “They are now back to talking about a ‘mistake.’ A mistake that lasted for more than an hour, despite the fact that the location of the hospital was well known to them and that they were informed during the airstrike that it was a hospital being hit. All this confusion just underlies once again the crucial need for an independent investigation into how a major hospital, full of patients and MSF staff, could be repeatedly bombed.”

From the beginning, MSF insisted no gunfire originated in the hospital — a claim the U.S. implied and Afghan officials expressly stated. Crucial in deducing whether the catastrophe — one that left 12 MSF staff and ten patients mortally injured — amounted to a war crime is an examination of events under the microscope of international laws of war.

As becomes quickly apparent, there are a bevy of reasons the U.S. military continues to tidy its explanation of the bombing.

According to the laws of war, direct attacks on such civilian facilities as domiciles, hospitals, places of worship, schools, etc. is prohibited, except in truly definitive cases whose general circumstances involve the military employment of said facility by opposing forces. Here, of course, MSF personnel on scene at the time refute official claims — no matter what those claims involve at any given moment.

Even in those instances, the attacking party is required to give the targeted facility fair warning it will be subject to bombardment. But advanced warning wasn’t given to the hospital in Kunduz, which by some accounts suffered bombardment for a full ninety minutes — including up to 45 minutes after the military was alerted to the ostensible targeting error.

“Any serious violation of the law of armed conflict, such as attacking a hospital that is immune from intentional attack, is a war crime. Hospitals are immune from attack during an armed conflict unless being used by one party to harm the other and then only after a warning that it will be attacked,” explained Mary Ellen O’Connell, professor of international law at Notre Dame.

MSF International President Joanne Liu concurred, saying the decision to “raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital . . . amounts to an admission of a war crime.”

Like ducks in rain, U.S. officials in recent decades have repeatedly repelled charges of war crimes — notwithstanding actual culpability. But the Kunduz hospital bombing — whatever excuse U.S. government chooses to wrap it with — could feasibly be the world’s last straw.

Source: Iran Deal Inside Story: How Obama Got to ‘Yes’ – POLITICO Magazine

What Netanyahu really thought of Obama, how Susan Rice stymied Israel and other bombshell revelations from Obama’s disillusioned peace negotiator.

Source: Russia pursues a new Baghdad Pact | Ehud Yaari | The Blogs | The Times of Israel

Ehud Yaari

President Putin has sent his crack military troops to Syria with a much broader set of objectives in mind than preventing the downfall of President Assad.

The Russians have no illusions that they can put an end to the horrific bloodletting in Syria. They know the country well, especially what remains of its army. They have no intentions of taking the risk of sinking into the civil war quagmire, as President Obama predicted they would, because they are not planning on introducing ground troops to the battlefields there.

In fact, Putin has embarked upon a very ambitious endeavor to turn the page on the painful (for him) expulsion of the Soviet Union from Egypt orchestrated by Dr. Henry Kissinger and executed by President Sadat in the early seventies. Since that point, the Kremlin has been relegated to a secondary role – if any – in the region, restricted to maintaining some degree of influence in countries such as Syria, Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. However, Putin feels that the void created by the current US administration in the turbulent Middle East clearly invites him to play his hand. Although he probably can invest only limited resources in his new project, bearing in mind Russia’s severe economic difficulties and the steady decline of its military capabilities, Putin is bent on trying to establish a Russian sponsored new version of the old Baghdad Pact as the core anchor of the emerging Middle East.

In 1955, Great Britain – still aspiring to exercise dominant influence in its former empire – enlisted Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Jordan into what was planned to become a solid alliance that would cement the links between the Middle East and the West. The Baghdad Pact encountered stiff Soviet opposition over the years and was finally dissolved in 1979. Now Putin is seeking to forge a similar alliance, although he is not necessarily interested in a formal treaty, consisting of Iran, Iraq and Syria complemented by increasing separate cooperation between Moscow and General Sisi’s Egypt, which publicly supports the Russian intervention in Syria, and the Kurds, who the Russians are urging to attack ISIL’s de facto capital in Raqqa. The Russian planners have even allocated a role for Israel in their effort to redesign the political landscape: They are offering to buy a substantial chunk of Israel’s newly discovered gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean, largely owned by Noble Energy of Texas, and provide military guarantees against attacks on the offshore installations by Hezbollah, which is already equipped with Russian-made 300 km-range Yakhont surface-to-sea missiles. “Gazpromistan,” as energy experts often refer to Russia, is also proposing to take care of exporting the gas to Europe.

The first move Putin undertook after deploying his front line aircraft to the Bassel Al-Assad air base near Latakia was to offer to expand his air campaign to neighboring Iraq. Whereas in Syria the Russians do not focus on targeting ISIL, they have promised to do so in Iraq and Prime Minister Abadi, disappointed with the American performance so far, is proving receptive. It won’t be long before Putin probes whether the Iraqis would be willing to grant him an airbase in their territory. Tallil Air Base, operated by the Americans until 2011, would be, perhaps, the most likely choice.

Iran is already concluding huge commercial deals with Russia, including for transfer of space technology, and is promised to benefit later on –once sanctions relief takes effect — from expensive arms deals with Russia to modernize its outdated air force and tank fleet. Those in Washington who predicted an era of growing tacit cooperation between the US and Iran following the nuclear deal, mainly in combating ISIL, have to wake up to a reality in which Teheran has chosen closer collaboration with Putin.

Yet the Iranians are also harboring increasing suspicions of Putin’s intentions. They recognize that Moscow is not committed in any way to the longterm preservation of the Assad regime and their priorities in Iraq do not automatically match those of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Assad’s entourage is already expressing concern over Russian references to a possible compromise in Syria and the inauguration of a transitional government. And for their part the Iranians are worried that Putin would prefer at the end of the day to seek an accommodation with whoever arrives next at the White House towards a sort of joint management of the chaotic region. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, in particular, view the Russians not only as partners (in Syria) but also as competitors for eventual control over the land corridor they dream of establishing between Iran and the Mediterranean coast stretching from the Shiite provinces of Iraq through the Sunni al-Anbar desert province they hope to subdue and on to the Euphrates Valley in Syria and further west.

It goes without saying that Putin is also motivated by the fear of instability amongst the large Muslim communities of the Upper Volga and the Caucasus. He is also concerned about the significant penetration of ISIL into the central Asian Muslim republics. He knows what Obama tends to ignore: the Middle East needs to be handled with care but not to be neglected. Putin is positioning himself to play an influential role in the Middle East, not in order to expand his frontline of tensions with the West but rather in the hope of making a deal by proving that he has acquired a lot of cards in the region. He has in mind some type of parity partnership in overlooking the dangers of an explosive neighborhood. It is to his credit that he is offering a comprehensive strategy for how to confront ISIL and restrain Iran and its proxies. However this strategy is based on allowing Iran to continue its pursuit of hegemonic role, under Russian “adult supervision,” while weakening the US influence throughout the entire area all the way to the Persian Gulf.