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General Cartwright is paying the price for Hillary Clinton’s sins

October 19, 2016

General Cartwright is paying the price for Hillary Clinton’s sins, Washington Post Opinion, Josh Rogin. October 19, 2016

(Et tu, WaPo? Please see also, State Department: Sailor Who Mishandled Classified Information Would Be ‘Held to Account’ — DM)

The Obama administration Justice Department has investigated three senior officials for mishandling classified information over the past two years but only one faces a felony conviction, possible jail time and a humiliation that will ruin his career: former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman General James E. Cartwright. The FBI’s handling of the case stands in stark contrast to its treatment of Hillary Clinton and retired General David Petraeus — and it reeks of political considerations.

Monday marked a stunning fall from grace for Cartwright, the man once known as “Obama’s favorite general,” who pleaded guilty to the felony charge of lying to the FBI during its investigation into the leaking of classified information about covert operations against Iran to two journalists. His lawyer Greg Craig said in a statement that Cartwright spoke with David Sanger of the New York Times and Dan Klaidman of Newsweek as a confirming source for stories they had already reported, in an effort to prevent the publication of harmful national security secrets.

Under his plea deal, Cartwright could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Last year, Petraeus cut a deal with the Justice Department after admitting he had lied to the FBI and passed hundreds of highly classified documents to his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell. He pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor of mishandling classified information and was sentenced to two years probation and a $100,000 fine.

Clinton was not charged at all for what FBI Director James B. Comey called “extremely careless” handling of “very sensitive, highly classified information.” Comey said that although there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” the FBI’s judgment was that no reasonable prosecutor would have filed charges against Clinton or her associates.

“There is a lack of proportion just based on the facts that one figure, Cartwright, is getting severely punished and others so far have escaped the process,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “He is being singled out for prosecution and public humiliation. It’s an implicit rebuttal to those who argued that other senior officials such as Clinton or Petraeus got off scott free or got too light of a sentence.”

In its statement announcing the conclusion of its three-year investigation of Cartwright, the FBI emphasized that his prosecution showed that the Justice Department is willing to go after senior officials.

“The FBI will continue to take all necessary and appropriate steps to thoroughly investigate individuals, no matter their position (emphasis added), who undermine the integrity of our justice system by lying to federal investigators,” said Assistant Director in Charge Paul Abbate.

That statement reveals that the FBI is trying address public criticism that it gives senior officials like Petraeus and Clinton special and favorable consideration, Aftergood said.

“They seem to be trying to make a policy point,” he said. “The Justice Department would say they are not influenced at all by policy or political considerations. In the real world, of course they are influenced.”

The announcement of the charges and Cartwright’s guilty plea came on the same day the FBI released documents that allege the State Department, through Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, offered the FBI a “quid pro quo” for altering the classification of documents found on Clinton’s private email server. The State Department maintains Kennedy made no such offer. The FBI said no deal was struck but it would investigate the issue.

Still, the FBI’s unprecedented release of documents related to its Clinton investigation shows the Bureau is keenly aware of the public criticism of Comey’s decision not to recommend any charges. And the mere fact that Clinton had the State Department, along with an army of lawyers, negotiating with the FBI over the investigation shows that the playing field is not even for the targets of such investigations. Petraeus, for his part, had several top U.S. senators publicly calling on the FBI to exonerate him before he cut his deal.

Cartwright, by contrast, was short on high-profile Washington friends. He had long ago run afoul of his two Pentagon bosses, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who never forgave him for going around the chain of command to join with Vice President Joe Biden to present Obama with an alternate plan for the Afghanistan troop surge in 2009.

Cartwright’s greatest mistake was not talking to reporters or lying about it; he failed to play the Washington game skillfully enough to avoid becoming a scapegoat for a system in which senior officials skirt the rules and then fall back on their political power to save them.

I interviewed Cartwright on his way out of the Pentagon in 2011, after he was passed over for the job of Joint Chiefs chairman. A high-stakes whispering campaign about an alleged affair made the appointment politically difficult for Obama. Cartwright confirmed to me (on the record) that the president had promised him the job but later reneged due to the smear campaign. From that point on, Cartwright was a pariah to many of the Very Important People in Washington’s national security elite.

One notable difference between Cartwright’s case and that of Clinton and Petraeus was the fact that Cartwright was the subject of a leak investigation. There’s no evidence Clinton or Petraeus’s actions led to the public disclosure of classified information. The Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many leakers as all previous administrations combined. The mostly low-level prosecutions have often resulted in harsh prison sentences. For example, Army Private Chelsea Manning is serving 35 years at Fort Leavenworth.

Cartwright’s prosecution allows the Justice Department to say even senior-level leakers face consequences.

“General Cartwright violated the trust that was placed in him by willfully providing information that could endanger national security to individuals not authorized to receive it and then lying to the FBI about his actions,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord said in a statement. “With this plea, he will be held accountable.”

But McCord’s statement begs the question: Will the other Stuxnet leakers be held accountable? No one has suggested that Cartwright was the primary source of the Stuxnet disclosures. According to emails obtained by the conservative action group Freedom Watch, Sanger had meetings on Iran with several other high-profile administration officials, including National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and even Clinton herself. There’s no evidence of any other Stuxnet leak investigations of high-level officials.

Today, Petraeus maintains his status as a revered figure and sought-after thought leader. He works for a consulting firm, sits on several boards, teaches at a university, continues to advise the White House on national security and appears frequently on television. Clinton may go on to be the president of the United States.

In his best-case scenario, Cartwright could avoid prison time but will be saddled with a felony conviction that will bar him from most money-making opportunities. In the worst-case scenario, he could be getting released from prison around the same time Clinton finishes her first term.

In his statement taking responsibility for lying to the FBI, Cartwright asserted his motivations were patriotic. “My only goal in talking to the reporters was to protect American interests and lives; I love my country and continue to this day to do everything I can to defend it.”

Can Clinton or Petraeus plausibly make the same claim regarding their indiscretions?

Categories: Clinton cover ups, Clinton e-mails, double standards, Washington Post
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Europe’s Terror Challenges: The Returnee Threat

October 19, 2016

Europe’s Terror Challenges: The Returnee Threat, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, October 19, 2016

(Please see also, Sweden: Returning Islamic State jihadis to get free housing, driver’s license, tax benefits. — DM)

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Another week, another barrage of headlines illustrating the depth of Europe’s terror threat. The following examples came during a 24 hour window earlier this month: “Schiphol Airport Was Possibly A Target Of Terror Cell That Attacked Paris;” “Police In Brussels Stabbed In Possible Terror Attack;” and “MI5 Missed Chance To Foil Paris And Brussels Attacks.”

It is news to no one that Islamic terrorism is everywhere now, and principally in Northern and Central Europe. But the three news stories, and the Schiphol and MI5 revelations in particular, demonstrate the enormity of the challenges now facing European counterterrorism officials.

Intelligence and law enforcement continue to fumble in handling the threat, often through no real fault of their own. The perpetrators are slippery and elusive. Sometimes they travel under false names. Some slip in as refugees, using false passports and false histories. Others are returnees from Syria whose activities and encrypted Telegram communications slide beneath the radar, even as they are being watched. And overtaxed law enforcement agencies have made any number of mistakes, overlooking suspicious behavior or releasing suspects without adequate investigation – in part a consequence of political pressures and the fear of being accused of “Islamophobia” by politicians and the press.

As it turned out, the suspect in the Brussels knife attack was a former Belgian military officer already known to the police for his connections to fighters in Syria. To date, officials have not determined whether he has been to Syria or ISIS territory in Iraq.

But the contact with ISIS and other terror groups in the self-declared caliphate is a common link, not only among the known perpetrators of last November’s Paris attacks and the March attacks in Brussels, but among their alleged colleagues planning to attack Schiphol airport. Those two men, identified as the Tunisian Sofien Ayari and Syrian-Swedish Ossama Krayem, traveled by bus from Brussels to Amsterdam on Nov. 13, the day of the Paris massacre. Both used false IDs. They returned, still undetected, the following day.

Four months later, police raided a safe house used by the terror cell in Schaarbeek, a Brussels neighborhood, and retrieved a laptop computer containing files labeled “13 November.” Included in those files were documents referring not only to “Stade de France” and “Bataclan” – both targets in the Paris killings – but also to a “Schiphol group.”

It is not clear why Ayari and Krayem returned to Brussels without executing an attack on the Dutch airport, and the Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) office will not comment on the case, leaving information sketchy.

But there may be clues: Ossama Krayem was also spotted on CCTV at the Brussels Metro station that was bombed on March 22; his lawyers maintain that he decided against detonating his backpack. Did he panic and back out of the Schiphol attack, as well?

Following a worldwide manhunt, Belgian police arrested Salah Abdeslam, one of the few surviving organizers of the Paris attacks, on March 18 in the Brussels district of Molenbeek. Little notice was given at the time to the other man arrested with him: Sofien Ayari. Three weeks later, after the March 22 attack on Zaventem airport and Brussels’ Maalbeek metro station, police also captured Mohamed Abrini, frequently referred to as “the man in the hat” and a key player in the Zaventem bombing. Also arrested, though also little noted at the time, was Ossama Krayem. All four remain in detention.

While it has likely been known for some time by French prosecutors, the connection to the Schiphol airport plot was only released publicly earlier this month.

Indeed, the latest disclosures show that the Paris-Brussels cell reached as far as Amsterdam and the UK, as members traveled back and forth among all four countries. No one even noticed. Worse, UK officials put a stop to an undercover investigation of a British group with connections to Abrini months before the attacks, citing insufficient evidence. Had that probe continued, it may have led them to Abrini – who frequently visited the British group under orders from Syria-based leaders, experts believe.

Why would that have mattered? Because Abrini was allegedly receiving orders from Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris attacks and of “at least four” foiled terror plots across the country, according to French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. And Abaaoud, said to be one of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s right-hand men, was regularly going back and forth between Syria and France. According to CNN, Abaaoud allegedly bragged in ISIS’s online magazine, Dabiq, “I was able to leave and come to Sham (Syria) despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies. My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary.”

Experts agree that returnees like Abaaoud form the greatest terror threat right now. It isn’t simply a matter of their ability to bring the lessons of the battlefield – bomb-building, sharp-shooting, and an emotional resistance against killing – to Europe’s villages and cities. It is their ability to recruit new “soldiers for ISIS,” some of whom will follow the returnees back to Syria, and others who will be ordered to remain and carry out attacks at home. And while most European countries have severe penalties for those found guilty of aiding terrorist groups, many returnees, like Abaaoud, simply don’t get caught.

Moreover, because there is rarely hard evidence available of violence or terrorist acts in Syria, convicting returning ISIS fighters for their actions there is more difficult than it might seem. Smart-phone data from some returnees, however, has occasionally offered up photographs, videos, and other material that can be used as evidence. Consequently, their sentences can be comparatively light, less than 10 years in Germany and the UK, and usually lower for those who cooperate with authorities.

Others may not face prison at all. A report by the Dutch intelligence service AIVD points out that many returnees come home disappointed by the realities they encountered. Those who were not seen as fit to fight were reduced to menial jobs like housekeeping, and cannot be said to have engaged in terrorist activity, and so, cannot be convicted.

At the same time, often “even those who did not fight continue to be involved in jihadist circles” when they come home, the AIVD reports. Others, according to a separate report published by the NCTV, join criminal groups, possibly as a way to raise money to send back to Syria and Iraq. And while many appear to retreat, having little social interaction, the NCTV says, this does not mean that they have given up their jihadist visions. Quite likely they are encouraging others through social media, in mosques, and in small groups.

And so the cycle continues.

There is some good news. Through new initiatives, European intelligence bureaus aresharing more information, making it less likely that someone like Abaaoud would be able to cross borders undetected. Such alerts would also bring attention to those returnees and other suspected jihadists might meet with, even in a foreign country (as Abrini met with British jihadists before the Paris strike).

More important are de-radicalization programs, which aim to change either the behavior (known as “disengagement”) or the mindsets of jihadists, essentially challenging and discrediting their radical Islamist ideas. How well these programs work is still uncertain, though experts increasingly agree that altering violent behavior alone is not enough.

Because jihadists work by spreading an ideology, it is that ideology that needs to be attacked. And because prisons are often precisely where radical Islamic ideologies are preached and spread, counterterrorist experts are starting to say that sending jihadists to prison is not sufficient.

“We’ve seen in many other countries that when you arrest one, you create three other extremists,” German deradicalization expert David Kohler told Frontline. “It helps to spread the idea, and proves to the movement that they are right, that they are under attack.”

Granted, this is hardly a short-term strategy. But as the number of people returning from Syria to the West grows, and as their reach into the hearts and minds of Western Muslims deepens, it may be the one chance that we have to bring the cycle of Islamist terror to an end.

Categories: European intelligence, European security, European terror threat, Islamic State in Europe, Islamic terror groups
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Democratic heads roll after video shows agitators planted at Trump rallies

October 19, 2016

Democratic heads roll after video shows agitators planted at Trump rallies, Washington Times, Valerie Richardson, October 18, 2016

hiredprotestersPeople were hired by Democratic strategists to stir up trouble at rallies for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Officials with Democracy Advocates and Americans United for Change stepped down after a video by Project Veritas Action confirmed their political chicanery.

Brad Woodhouse, Americans United for Change president, said in a late-Monday statement that Mr. Foval “is no longer associated with Americans United for Change.”

He insisted that the Democratic political consulting firm has “always operated according to the highest ethical and legal standards.”

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Two top Democratic strategists have exited the presidential campaign after explosive undercover videos showed them discussing voter fraud and their roles in planting paid agitators at campaign events for Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Robert Creamer, founder of Democracy Advocates and the husband of Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat, stepped down from the campaign Tuesday, a day after Scott Foval was fired from his post as national field director of Americans United for Change.

Mr. Trump, who has long complained of a “rigged” election system, said at a Tuesday rally in Colorado that the video released by the conservative group Project Veritas Action confirmed his suspicions of Democrat-sponsored political chicanery.

“The protesters are paid a lot of money by the [Democratic National Committee], and they kept saying, ‘I wonder why those people are here, because they never seem to have much on their mind other than stand up and protest,’” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Colorado Springs. “And yesterday it came out, but it was barely covered by the media. But it’s all over the internet. They were busted.”

Brad Woodhouse, Americans United for Change president, said in a late-Monday statement that Mr. Foval “is no longer associated with Americans United for Change.”

He insisted that the Democratic political consulting firm has “always operated according to the highest ethical and legal standards.”

Mr. Creamer, a four-decade Democratic strategist who pleaded guilty in 2005 to charges of bank fraud and tax violations, said in a statement that he was “unwilling to become a distraction to the important task of electing Hillary Clinton.”

“We regret the unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations that were captured on hidden cameras of a temporary regional contractor for our firm, and he is no longer with us,” said Mr. Creamer, who is also featured in the videos.

The two 16-minute videos were released Monday and Tuesday after a yearlong undercover investigation headed by Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe, known for his hidden-camera probes into Planned Parenthood, ACORN and voter fraud.

Mr. O’Keefe said the investigation reveals “compelling evidence of a dark-money conspiracy” and that he would continue to release videos as part of a series titled “Rigging the Election” until voters go to the polls on Nov. 8.

The first video shows Democratic strategists discussing how they hire agitators — including union members, homeless people and the mentally ill — to incite violence by provoking Trump supporters on camera at campaign stops.

Project Veritas released a second video Tuesday showing Mr. Foval brainstorming over ways to commit voter fraud, such as by busing people from one state to another, while appearing to indicate that it had already been done in Iowa.

“It’s a pretty easy thing for Republicans to say, ‘Well, they’re busing people in,’” Mr. Foval said. “Well, you know what? We’ve been busing people in to deal with you f–ing assholes for 50 years, and we’re not going to stop now. We’re just going to find a different way to do it. So, I mean I grew up with that idea. They used to bus people out to Iowa. If they needed people, there we’d bus people out to Iowa.”

The same video shows Mr. Creamer discussing a proposal by a Project Veritas investigator to register people to vote illegally by setting up a shell corporation.

“I’m going to write down these options,” Mr. Creamer said. “Let me see if I can chat with the people who are most involved in Hispanic voter registration.”

Mr. Foval, who has worked for the George Soros-funded People for the American Way, said his paid agitators fueled a Chicago protest in March that forced the Trump campaign to cancel its event.

“They’re starting confrontations in the line, right?” said Mr. Foval. “They’re not starting confrontations in the rally. Because once they’re inside the rally, they’re under Secret Service’s control. When they’re outside the rally, the media will cover it no matter where it happens. The key is initiating the conflict by having leading conversations with people who are naturally psychotic.”

Inciting Trump supporters was easy, he said.

“I mean, honestly, it’s not hard to get some of these assholes to pop off,” Mr. Foval said. “It’s a matter of showing up, to want to get into the rally, in a Planned Parenthood T-shirt. Or, ‘Trump is a Nazi,’ you know. You can message to draw them out and draw them to punch you.”

Another operative, Aaron Black, who identified himself as “deputy rapid response director for the DNC for all things Trump on the ground,” said he was with Mr. Creamer’s group Democracy Partners but that his work was supposed to be a secret.

“Nobody’s really supposed to know about me,” Mr. Black said. “So the Chicago protest, when they shut all that, that was us. It was more [Mr. Creamer] than me, but none of this is supposed to come back to us because we want it coming from people. We don’t want it to come from the party.”

He said the idea is for the protests to appear spontaneous, not orchestrated by the DNC.

“So if we do a protest and if it’s branded a DNC protest, right away the press is going to say, ‘partisan,’” said Mr. Black, also known as “Aaron Minter,” according to the video.

“But if I’m in there coordinating with all the groups on the ground and sort of playing field general but they are the ones talking to the cameras, then it’s actually people, but if we send out press advisories with DNC on them and Clinton campaign, it just doesn’t have the same effect,” he said.

The same day the video was released, Mr. Black posted a photo on Twitter showing protesters outside Trump Tower holding signs with messages such as, “Trump Demeans Women.”

Keeping the protesters’ connection to the DNC hidden from the press was a priority, Mr. Foval said.

“We have to be really careful because what we don’t need is for it to show up on CNN that the DNC paid for X people to — that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Mr. O’Keefe said the first video raises questions about whether the Clinton campaign is coordinating with super PACs and independent expenditure committees in violation of campaign finance rules.

The Clinton campaign, DNC, Americans United for Change and Democracy Partners did not return requests for comment Tuesday.

The only public criticism of the videos has come from foes of Mr. O’Keefe’s past work such as Salon’s Brendan Gauthier, who said Project Veritas has been criticized for “strategically editing footage to make false accusations.”

In the video, Mr. Foval made clear his connections to the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

“We are contracted directly with the DNC and the campaign both. I am contracted to [Mr. Creamer]. But I answer to the head of special events for the DNC and the head of special events and political for the campaign,” said Mr. Foval.

He goes on to say, “The campaign pays DNC, DNC pays Democracy Partners, Democracy Partners pays the Foval Group, the Foval Group goes and executes the sh— on the ground.”

Mr. Creamer indicated that he was in close contact with the Clinton campaign, saying, “We have a call with the campaign every day to go over the focuses that need to be undertaken.”

“Wherever Trump and Pence are going to be, we have events,” Mr. Creamer said. “And we have a whole team across the country that does that. Both consultants and people from the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party apparatus and people from the campaign, the Clinton campaign. And my role in the campaign is to manage all that.”

Another activist, Zulema Rodriguez, told the Project Veritas investigators, “I just had a call today with the campaign and the DNC. Every day at 1 o’clock.”

She also took credit for being involved with two anti-Trump events in March: the Chicago rally and another in Arizona in which anti-Trump protesters blocked a highway.

Federal Election Commission records unearthed by Project Veritas show that Ms. Rodriguez was paid nearly $2,000 on Feb. 29 by the Hillary for America campaign.

In conversations with Project Veritas reporters, Mr. Foval described his operation as “bird dogging,” meaning that he places hired protesters in key positions at Republican campaign events, often in front of rallies or lines.

He said he has training centers in New York, Washington, Las Vegas, Colorado and Minneapolis, and that trainees include the mentally ill and homeless people.

“I’m saying we have mentally ill people that we pay to do sh—, make no mistake,” Mr. Foval said. “Over the last 20 years. I’ve paid off a few homeless guys to do some crazy stuff, and I’ve also taken them for dinner and I’ve also made sure they had a hotel and a shower and I’ve put them in a program. I’ve done that.”

He also has contacts with unions such as the AFL-CIO. “But the reality is, a lot of people, especially our union guys, a lot of union guys, they’ll do whatever you want,” Mr. Foval said. “They’re rock ‘n’ roll.”

Mr. Foval also made it clear that he viewed Mr. Creamer as a mentor.

“I work for Bob Creamer one to one,” Mr. Foval said in the video. “I’m the white hat. Democracy Partners is kind of dark hat. Bob Creamer is diabolical, and I love him for it.”

 

Categories: 2016 elections, Democrat National Committee, Project Veritas, Trump rallies, Vote fraud
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Alert: Iran’s “A2/AD” Saudi Plan is Scott’s “Anaconda Plan”

October 19, 2016

Alert: Iran’s “A2/AD” Saudi Plan is Scott’s “Anaconda Plan”, Israel National News, Mark Langfan, October 19, 2016

Whoever gains the White House will face a waxing Iranian tidal-wave funded with $150 billion US dollars that will soon wipe the Sunnis off the face of the earth.  And only too late, the world will realize the Obama Administration’s only “legacy” will be the creation of an Iranian Islamic Terrorist Nuclear-armed superpower empire with 60% of the world’s oil supply.

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At the outset of the American Civil War in 1861, the aging, wise, soon-to-be-retired-too-soon Union General-in-Chief Winfred Scott came in direct strategic conflict with George B. McClellan, the Union general who would recklessly and catastrophically lose the Union’s first phase of the US Civil War.

General McClellan believed in a direct attack into the south, and he failed. Scott believed in  a slow general blockade comprising a western smothering blockade slithering down the Mississippi, paired with an eastern naval blockade of the South’s ports.  Given the image of a slow-crushing of the South, Scott’s plan was, at first, ridiculed and derided, and came to be named after a slow, but deadly snake: the “Anaconda Plan.”  In time, Scott’s Anaconda Plan came to be the core blue-print for the North’s eventual Civil War victory over the South.

The plan’s use, however, is not limited to the good guys.

Today, for many of the same tactical reasons Scott advocated for his indirect, Anaconda blockading plan, Iran is successfully embarking on a modern-day Anaconda Plan for annihilating Saudi Arabia and capturing the Mesopotamian Black Gold Triangle that holds 54% of the world’s known oil reserves.  However, in today’s military parlance, Iran’s strategy has a fancier name, “A2/AD” which stands for “Anti-Access, Area-Denial.”

In fact, one can understand all of Iran’s seemingly disparate Arabian Peninsula/Levant Theater actions as really one-seamless Anaconda A2/AD attack plan with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf kingdoms as its one and only target. Iran plans to encircle and smother Saudi Arabia to death by insuring the United States will be incapable of defending the Sunni kingdoms when Iran strikes for their heart.

The strategic analogs between Scott’s Anaconda Plan and Iran A2/AD plan are striking.

In the West, General Scott envisioned going south down the Mississippi River to “cut the Confederacy in two.”  Today, in the north-east, Iran is going north upstream on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers with the goal of reaching the Mediterranean through Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and cutting the Sunni Turkey/Levant battle-space in two.

We were warned by Mitt Romney in the last election campaign. Everyone laughed and claimed that the candidate’s 2012 Obama/Romney-debate truism that “Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.” was a gaffe.  The “genius” Washington Post andGuardian “fact-checkers” were too myopic to understand that Romney meant the “Mediterranean Sea” not the Arabian Sea.

What this Iranian Shiite land-bridge Crescent from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea really does is not just create an Iranian “route to the Sea,” it creates a strategic topological disconnection between the NATO bases of Turkey and the scenes of Iran’s ultimate point of attack: the Persian Gulf Sunni Kingdoms.  The Iranian Crescent cuts the NATO/Mesopotamian battle-space in two.  With this critical swatch of land spanning west and east in Iran’s operational control, in the event of an Iranian attack on the Saudis, Iran can erect an east-west anti-air missile cordon that will present any mustering Turkey-based NATO force with a perilous path to save the Sunni Kingdoms from a blitzkrieg Iranian attack.

Unlike Saddam Hussein at Kuwait, or Hitler at Dunkirk, the Iranians won’t stop and wait at Kuwait for the Sunni’s allies to re-group.  Instead, the Iranians will run the Western Persian Gulf coast all the way to Oman sealing the Sunnis fate in one sweep.  With an Iranian air-defense curtain across the Shiite Crescent to the Med, any Turkey-based NATO saving-force will arrive too late, and suffer catastrophic losses in order to stop the Iranian juggernaut from running the Persian Gulf table.

Back to Scott: Along the Confederacies’ eastern coast General Scott planned a naval blockade of the South’s ports.  This naval blockade starved the Rebels of urgently needed ammunition and trade from Europe because the south didn’t possess real industrial might.  Today, to the south-west of the Arabian Peninsula, Iran is sinking its teeth into Yemen, and through the thinly veiled proxy of the Houthis, it is creating an ultimate strategic naval choke point at the Straits of Bab El-Mandab.

In the event of an Iranian attack, the range of Iran’s anti-ship missiles is so long that Iran can be deeply embed hundreds of hardened Iranian anti-ship missile batteries far from the Yemeni coastline.  An American saving force may be able to ultimately break-through.  But, by the time such an American force broke through, it would still have to fight its way through the Straits of Hormuz.  Thus, the Iranian game would be over in the Persian Gulf before the Americans would ever get through the Straits of Bab El-Mandab, let alone the Straits of Hormuz.

In sum, the Iranian military is successfully effecting a modern day Anaconda-style A2/AD strategy which mixes the topological aspects of the Japanese game of Go, along with the balance of chess aimed at total victory over Saudi Arabia and the West.

In the meantime, the current American Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson is pompously declaring that the A2/AD strategy is “dead.”  Instead of planning how to defeat Iran, under the idiotic “leadership” of Obama, the American military is busying itself with “protocols” for the Pentagon to pay for sex change operations for American service-persons. (And, I kid you not, about this.)

Whoever gains the White House will face a waxing Iranian tidal-wave funded with $150 billion US dollars that will soon wipe the Sunnis off the face of the earth.  And only too late, the world will realize the Obama Administration’s only “legacy” will be the creation of an Iranian Islamic Terrorist Nuclear-armed superpower empire with 60% of the world’s oil supply.

Categories: Iran - Saudi Arabia, Iran - Sunnis
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The big Mosul offensive is stuck, halted by ISIS

October 19, 2016

The big Mosul offensive is stuck, halted by ISIS, DebkaFile, October 19, 2016

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Less than a day after its launch, the big Mosul offensive prepared for more than a year by the US, the Iraqi army, Kurdish forces and others, ground to a halt Tuesday Oct. 17, DEBKAfile’s military sources report – although none of the parties admitted as much.  Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi said his troops were busy opening up corridors for some million civilians to escape, while US sources suggested that the Islamic State would use primitive chemical weapons against the advancing Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

Both had the ring of cover stories to account for the spearhead forces, the Iraq army’s 9th Armored Division and the Federal Police special anti-terror units, being thrown back Tuesday on their way to Mosul from the east and the south, while still 10-15km short of the city. They sustained heavy losses in lives and hardware.

The 9th Division and its newly-supplied heavy US Abrahams tanks were stopped at al-Hamdaniyah outside Mosul and retreated, recalling a previous defeat at ISIS hands in June 2014, when troops of the same division fled under Islamist attack, leaving their tanks behind.

The Iraqi anti-terror force withdrew from the village of al-Houd outside Mosul, a move which left the Kurdish Peshmerga no option but to stop its sweep of the villages around the city or expose their flanks to ISIS suicide and car bomb assaults.

Tuesday night, both Iraqi and Kurdish commanders announced a pause in their advance and said they would meet Wednesday to decide how to proceed.

The Kurdish Peshmerga’s role in the battle of Mosul has run into a further major impediment, which likewise has not been publicly aired. It turned out Tuesday that at least 3,000 of the 12,000 Kurdish fighters taking part in the offensive came from the banned Turkish underground PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) which is fighting the Turkish government. They came down from their northern Iraqi strongholds in the Sinjar and Qandil mountains. Ankara thereupon warned Washington and Baghdad in a strong ultimatum that unless those fighters were pulled off the field, Turkish troops would step in to attack them.

A second front within a front would effectively torpedo the entire Mosul liberation campaign against ISIS before it gets underway.

The first bricks of the military Tower of Babel predicted by DEBKAfile in the background report below were set in place sooner than expected.

Sunday night, Oct. 16, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, supported by a bevy of generals, announced that the military operation to recapture Mosul from its two-year occupation by the Islamic State had begun.

Three formally approved participants are taking part in the operation, DEBKAfile’s military sources report:

1. American special operations, artillery and engineering units – equipped with floating bridges for crossing the Tigris River – plus the US air force for massive bombardment to crush enemy resistance.

2. Iraqi army armored divisions, special ops forces, regular troops and anti-terror police units.

3. The Iraqi Kurds’ Peshmerga.

The Iraqi prime minister pledged formally that only Iraqi fighters would enter Mosul, i.e. no Americans, Kurds or other non-Iraqi forces.

It was a pledge that neither the Iraqi Sunni and Shiite combatants nor the Kurdish and Turkmen fighters trusted him to uphold, after similar promises went by the wayside in the US-led coalition battles fought in the past two years to retake the Iraqi towns of Ramadi, Tikirit, Baiji and Fallujah from ISIS.

The first forces to enter those cities were by and large pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias, especially the Bader Brigades and the Popular Mobilization Units, under Iran’s supreme Middle East commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Nonetheless, despite the ravages they wrought in those Sunni cities, US air support was forthcoming for their advance, while in Washington US officials pretended they were helping Iraqi government army units.

With regard to the Mosul campaign, Obama administration officials and military officers, like the Iraqi prime minister, insist there will be no repetition of the Iranian-backed Shiite invasion and conquest of yet another Sunni city, where a million inhabitants still remain.

mosul_offensive_17-10-16-1

They don’t explain how this will be prevented when those same pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite forces are already massing northeast of Mosul, near the Iraqi-Syria border, and standing by for the order to advance into the city.

Tehran quite obviously has no intention of being left out of the epic capture of Mosul.

Neither is another uninvited party, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. He too has positioned a Turkish military concentration in Iraq, in defiance of strong objections from Washington and Baghdad. Turkish troops stand ready to move forward to do Erdogan’s will and achieve three strategic goals:

a) To actively frustrate Kurdish Peshmerga entry to Mosul, although its 15,000 fighters out of the 25,000 invasion force are a vital element of the spearhead thrust into the city. Ankara has warned that if Kurds set foot in Mosul, Turkish troops will follow.

b)  To block the path of Syrian Kurdish YPG militiamen from entering Iraq and linking up with their Iraqi brothers-in-arms.

c) To provide backing, including Turkish air support, for the Iraqi Turkmen militias still present in the Turkmen quarter of Mosul.

DEBKAfile’s military sources count six assorted military groupings taking part in the liberation of Mosul. They have nothing in common aside from their determination to drive the Islamic State out.

They are utterly divided on the two main aspects of the offensive: How to achieve their common goal and what happens to Mosul after the Islamist invaders are gone.

The underlying US rationale for embarking on this high-wire operation is President Barack Obama’s aspiration to achieve Mosul’s liberation before his departure from the White House in January, in the hope that this landmark success will provide a major distraction from his administration’s failed policies in Syria.

The Islamic State might have been expected to take advantage of the prior warning of the offensive for a stand in defense of the Iraqi capital of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s caliphate and so exploit the conflicting interests of the invading force.

But ISIS leaders decided against waiting for the combined offensive. Indeed, according to DEBKAfile’s sources, thousands of jihadis made tracks out of the city two or three months ago, relocating the bulk of their combat strength and institutions in two new locations: in the western Iraqi desert province of Anbar at a site between the Jordanian and Saudi borders and eastern Syria. Several hundred fighters were left behind in Mosul to harass the US-Iraq-Kurdish armies as they advance into the city and exploit the invaders’ discord to retain a foothold in Mosul.

Categories: Iran in Iraq, Iran military, Iraq war, Islamic State, Islamic terror groups, Kurdish fighters, Obama and Iraq, Turkey in Iraq, U.S. Military
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Palestinians: Fatah Prepares for War with Israel

October 19, 2016

Palestinians: Fatah Prepares for War with Israel

by Khaled Abu Toameh

October 19, 2016 at 5:00 am

Source: Palestinians: Fatah Prepares for War with Israel

  • “We have pledged to prepare an army of fighters by devoting our full abilities and energies to consolidate the option of armed struggle as the only means to liberate Palestine.” — The armed wing of Fatah, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division.
  • The international community continues to perceive Fatah as the “moderate” Palestinian party with whom Israel should make peace. Yet Fatah is far from a single united bloc; many groups within the faction continue to seek the “liberation of Palestine” through armed struggle. Moreover, neither Abbas nor any of his senior Fatah loyalists have repudiated the war-set Fatah militias. Crucially, many of these Fatah militiamen continue to receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.
  • These Fatah gunmen who are preparing for war with Israel are indirectly receiving their salaries from Western donors, including the US and many EU countries, who fund the Palestinian Authority.
  • These groups believe that they represent the real Fatah, the one that never recognized Israel’s right to exist and holds on to armed struggle as the only way to “liberate Palestine.” They are not breakaway groups. That is why they continue to operate under the name of Fatah.
  • Fatah is a two-faced hydra; one face tells the English-speaking international community what it wants to hear, namely, that it supports a two-state solution and seeks a peaceful settlement to the conflict with Israel, while the other tells the truth: it is committed to an armed struggle and the “liberation of Palestine,” and is even preparing for war with Israel.

Some 300 members of the Palestinian Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, have begun receiving “military training” in the Gaza Strip in preparation for war with Israel.

The armed wing of Fatah, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – The Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division, announced that its members have been enrolled in a new military academy for training “fighters” in the Gaza Strip. The academy, inaugurated recently in the Gaza Strip, would train the “fighters” on various fighting methods “in the context of a program for preparing for any future battle” with the “Zionist enemy.”

The Nidal Academy was named for Nidal Al-Amoudi, a top Fatah militant killed by the Israel Defense Forces on January 13, 2008, after he carried out a series of armed attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers during the Second Intifada. “The academy has been named after the commander Nidal Al-Amoudi (Abu Hussein) to fulfill his dream of qualifying the fighters militarily, morally, religiously and revolutionarily,” explained a statement released by the Fatah armed group. Noting that some 300 “fighters” have already joined the academy, the group said that they have begun undergoing training in various methods of warfare.

“We have pledged to prepare an army of fighters by devoting our full abilities and energies to consolidate the option of armed struggle as the only means to liberate Palestine,” the group declared.

The Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division is one of several Fatah-affiliated militias that continue to operate in the Gaza Strip despite Hamas’s violent takeover of the area in the summer of 2007. These groups pose no threat to the Hamas regime, which is why they are allowed to operate freely in different parts of the Gaza Strip. The groups’ explicit policy is to prepare for war with Israel and launch terror attacks against Israelis. Hamas, however, which expelled their leaders from the Gaza Strip and continues to persecute dozens of Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip, is not on their hit list.

The Fatah-affiliated militia inauguration of its own “military” academy in the Gaza Strip is a novel move. In recent years, Fatah armed groups have posted videos of their men undergoing military training orchards and fields, far from the watchful eyes of their rivals in Hamas. Now it seems that Hamas has nothing to fear from the Fatah militants, as Israel is the sole target.

Thus instead of training their men to retake the Gaza Strip and liberate it from the oppressive regime of Hamas, the Fatah “fighters” are busy preparing for war with Israel or fighting among themselves. Indeed, it appears that the Fatah armed groups are actually competing with Hamas for the title of “Most Prepared to Destroy Israel.” Like Hamas, they wish to win the hearts and minds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by showing that they too support the “armed struggle” against Israel and seek to “liberate Palestine.”

Fortunately for Hamas, the Fatah militias are rather preoccupied with internecine struggles. This leaves precious little time to think about ways of improving their people’s lives.

Today, at least five other Fatah armed groups function in the Gaza Strip: The Abu Rish Brigades, the Jihad Jibril Brigades, the Abdel Qader Husseini Brigades, the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Fatah Sukkur (Hawks). Some of these groups have in the past claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel. And there is not much harmony or love between these Fatah groups, whose members regard each other as rivals and political foes rather than comrades and colleagues.

Sources in the Gaza Strip point out that many of the members of these groups are former Palestinian Authority policemen who lost their jobs after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. As such, many of them remain on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that they are more than willing to lambast Mahmoud Abbas and his policies. In other words, these Fatah gunmen who are preparing for war with Israel are indirectly receiving their salaries from Western donors, including the US and many EU countries, who fund the Palestinian Authority.

The Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division recently launched a scathing attack on Abbas for attending the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. Masked members of the group posted a video on social media in which they strongly condemned Abbas for attending the funeral, saying they are opposed to any form of “normalization” with Israel. They demanded that Abbas apologize to the Palestinians and Fatah, adding that the “armed struggle was the only way to “liberate Palestine.”

Members of Fatah’s Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division read a statement condemning Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for attending the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres.

More recently, the same group “welcomed” the shooting attack that was carried out in Jerusalem by Musbah Abu Sbeih and in which two Israelis were killed — a 60-year-old grandmother and a 29-year-old police officer. “This heroic operation is a clear message that the armed struggle is a deeply-rooted doctrine among Palestinians,” the group stated. “The operation is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation.”

Make no mistake. These groups believe that they represent the real Fatah, the one that never recognized Israel’s right to exist and holds on to armed struggle as the only way to “liberate Palestine.” They are not breakaway groups. That is why they continue to operate under the name of Fatah. In their view, they are following the principles of their former leader, Yasser Arafat, who launched Fatah as a “national liberation movement” and never truly abandoned the option of an armed struggle against Israel. It is Abbas and his colleagues in Fatah, they say, who have deviated from Fatah’s doctrine and true goals.

The power play among Fatah militias in the Gaza Strip reflects the wider division among Fatah’s political leaders. According to Palestinian sources, Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip have truly become disassociated from the faction’s leadership in the West Bank. Abbas’s aides blame exiled Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan for the schism, claiming that he provides dissenting Fatah officials with money, in an attempt to undermine the Palestinian president, who is also head of Fatah. Abbas recently summoned Fatah leaders from the Gaza Strip to an emergency meeting in Ramallah to discuss Dahlan’s growing influence in the Gaza Strip and the rifts in Fatah. The move came after thousands of Fatah members who are loyal to Dahlan staged a large demonstration in the Gaza Strip against Abbas. During the protest, they burned and trampled on pictures of Abbas.

Such developments in Fatah are notable for a specific reason: by and large, the international community continues to perceive Fatah as the “moderate” Palestinian party with whom Israel should make peace. Yet Fatah is far from a single united bloc; many groups within the faction, in their own words, continue to seek the “liberation of Palestine” through armed struggle. Moreover, neither Abbas nor any of his senior Fatah loyalists in the West Bank have repudiated the war-set Fatah militias. Crucially, many of these Fatah militiamen continue to receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.

Fatah is, in fact, a two-faced hydra; one face tells the English-speaking international community what it wants to hear, namely, that it supports a two-state solution and seeks a peaceful settlement to the conflict with Israel, while the other tells the truth: it is committed to an armed struggle and the “liberation of Palestine” and is even preparing for war with Israel. Worth noting as well is that some of these Fatah militias also continue to operate in some parts of those territories controlled by Abbas’s security forces in the West Bank. And like their cohorts in the Gaza Strip, they too receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas has lost the Gaza Strip not only to Hamas, but also to his own erstwhile Fatah supporters, who are marching in a totally different direction from the Fatah leadership in the West Bank. The dispute between Fatah and Hamas, which has effectively split the Palestinians into two entities, one in the West Bank and the other in the Gaza Strip, is one reason Palestinians are farther than ever from achieving an independent Palestinian state. The infighting in Fatah and the gulf separating its leaders is another. Abbas’s claim to sole Fatah leadership is hardly credible to even the most credulous of Abbas backers: thousands of his “fighters” are preparing for war with Israel.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

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Jihadi rehab: Swedish city plans free driver’s license, housing & tax perks for returning fighters

October 19, 2016

Jihadi rehab: Swedish city plans free driver’s license, housing & tax perks for returning fighters

Published time: 19 Oct, 2016 08:02 Edited time: 19 Oct, 2016 08:24

Source: Jihadi rehab: Swedish city plans free driver’s license, housing & tax perks for returning fighters — RT News

© Reuters

A Swedish city is considering giving jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq free housing, a driver’s license, and tax benefits to ease their reintegration, but social media users have slammed the proposal, saying it ignores the terrorists’ victims.

The support for extremists was proposed by Anna Sjöstrand, a municipal coordinator against violent extremism in the city of Lund in southern Sweden.

“There may be criticism, but [I think] that you should get the same help as others who seek help from us. We can’t say that because you made a wrong choice, you have no rights to come back and live in our society,” Sjöstrand said on Swedish Sveriges Radio.

Sjöstrand’s proposal was based on a report written by author and criminologist Christoffer Carlsson, who says that it is difficult for people to abandon extremism and reintegrate into society without support.

“It’s a straight social, economic and material question. You need to be able to reintegrate into the job market, you may need to have a driving license, debt settlement and shelter,” he said.

According to Carlsson, “the risk is great that they [Islamist extremists] are unable to leave the extremist environment” without support, so “they might make an attempt and fail because they have nothing to keep them out, and there is always something to return to, namely the organization they left.”

The proposal has been eviscerated on social media, however, with users saying that Sweden is forgetting about the terrorists’ victims.

“Lund wants to help terrorists with housing, driver’s license and job, but forgets the victims,” one user wrote on Twitter, while another added: “Rapists, child murderers, terrorists. Everyone should be treated equally.”

Some users were calling for Sjöstrand’s resignation.

“Anna Sjöstrand, of course you should say ‘You have made a choice and are never welcome back,’” added @I_was_Sweden.

Read more

Sweden's flag waves near the Stockholm Cathedral in Gamla Stan or the Old Town district of Stockholm, Sweden © Bob Strong I

SIS fighters in Sweden to attack ‘civilian targets’ in Stockholm – reports

According to Sveriges Radio, a similar ‘welcoming’ approach is also being considered in the Swedish cities of Malmö, Borlänge, and Örebro.

Örebro was severely criticized in January after two IS terrorists – Liban Qadar, 23, and Mahamed Farah Osman, 24 – were offered internships in the municipality, but chose to return to Syria, where they were later killed in battle.

The incident has been classified as a clear failure for Thomas Gustafsson, Orebro’s head of partnership.

READ MORE: Swedish court allows the flying of ISIS flag

Research from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) shows that at least 300 Swedish citizens had traveled to Iraq and Syria to join IS extremists as of April of this year.

Meanwhile, some 140 terrorists had already returned to Sweden as of October of this year, local media reported.

Also an April, a report appearing in the Swedish media claimed that Islamists have successfully infiltrated Sweden’s Green Party. Lars Nicander from the Swedish National Defense University said there is “a very similar effect today, in which people close to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist party, are apparently gaining large footholds in the Green Party.”

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Europe Braces for Post-Mosul Jihadi Onslaught

October 19, 2016

Europe Braces for Post-Mosul Jihadi Onslaught, Investigative Project on Terrorism, John Rossomando, October 18, 2016

(But please see, A ‘lasting defeat’ of the Islamic State will be elusive. — DM)

European leaders fear onslaught of jihadists fleeing from Mosul after Iraq’s government and its allies kick ISIS out of the city.

Last year’s Paris attacks and the Brussels attacks in March brought heightened awareness that ISIS established an underground network to move jihadis in and out of Europe at will. Thousands of European nationals traveled to Syria and Iraq to wage jihad for ISIS. An estimated 2,500 Europeans still belong to ISIS’s fighting force.

“The retaking of (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s) northern Iraq stronghold, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent (ISIS) fighters,” European Union Security Commissioner Julian King told The (London) Telegraph. “This is a very serious threat and we must be prepared to face it.”

Iraqi forces, together with Iranian-backed Shiite militia and Kurdish pershmerga, aim to deal a deathblow to ISIS’s caliphate in Mosul.

It is a day ISIS anticipated. In an online publication last December called Black Flags From the Islamic State, ISIS vowed to continue its fight.

“If they win this battle, they will capture a lot (sic) of weapons, and their soldiers morale will be boosted. Now they will have control over land and will be able to train more people to fight the enemy. If they continue the fight, they will keep winning, but if they start to lose and give up, their leadership will hide in the deserts and mountains again, only to start the: Lone wolf -> Clandestine Cells -> Insurgency -> Army technique, all over again,” Black Flags From the Islamic State promised.

Jihadis without a home base pose a direct threat to Europe and menace security officials around the world, warned Raffaello Pantucci, director of the International Security studies at the Royal United Services Institute.

This especially concerns France, which suffered the Paris attacks last November that claimed 130 lives at the hands of ISIS jihadis who fought in Syria. An estimated 400 French nationals are still fighting jihad in warzones.

The number of returnees on watch lists has overstretched European security services, just as ISIS hoped. More than 10 officers try to monitor each returnee around the clock.

“We’ve had hundreds returned to our country [UK.] Some estimates say it’s a thousand. We can’t monitor the people that are here. So, it is really important that they sit round the table, because there are potentially 9,000 ISIS jihadists sitting in Mosul at the moment, who are also looking to move across,” European Parliament member Janice Atkinson told Russia Today.

The conflict against ISIS is moving into a new, unpredictable phase that has Europe on edge worrying about what comes next.

Categories: Europe, Iraq war, Islamic State - what's next, Islamic terror groups, Mosul
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