The Architects of Western Decline: A Study on the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism
Archive for June 22, 2017
Brain gym , be careful do not overdue it
June 22, 2017On Mueller investigation, Trump should fight fire with fire
June 22, 2017On Mueller investigation, Trump should fight fire with fire, American Thinker, Karin McQuillan, June 22, 2017
President Trump has the responsibility to re-establish the rule of law in our country, and he will have the enthusiastic backing of his base if he does so. It is time to end Democrats’ politically motivated abuse of the law. Stop the Mueller investigation, and go after Obama Inc.’s multiple crimes.
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John Eastman, law professor at Chapman University, writes in American Greatness this week that the powers invested in Special Counsel Mueller to investigate “Russian hacking/collusion/obstruction poses grave dangers to our body politic and our liberty.” His advice to President Trump: Fight fire with fire. Turn the law and the courts back on your opponents. Trump is being investigated without any probable cause of a crime. The Obama administration, in contrast, is a target-rich arena of criminal activity.
It is unconstitutional to issue a search warrant when there has been no crime and there is no probable cause. But that is exactly what President Trump’s DOJ has inflicted on the president and his team with Mueller’s special investigation. It was not just cowardice, but folly for the DOJ to buckle to the left-wing media’s hysterical insistence to investigate our president’s alleged collusion with the FSB.
According to Professor Eastman:
The special counsel will not to track down the details of a crime known to have been committed and determine “who dunnit,” but will scour the personal and business affairs of a select group of people – the President of the United States, members of his family, his business associates, and members of his presidential campaign and transition teams – to see if any crime can be found (or worse, manufactured by luring someone into making a conflicting statement at some point). This is not a proper use of prosecutorial power, but a “witch hunt,” as President Trump himself correctly observed. Or, to put it more in terms of legalese, this special prosecutor has effectively been given a “writ of assistance” and the power to exercise a “general warrant” against this select group of people, including the President of the United States, recently elected by a fairly wide margin of the electoral vote.
That is the very kind of thing our Fourth Amendment was adopted to prevent. Indeed, the issuance of general warrants and writs of assistance is quite arguably the spark that ignited America’s war for independence.
Professor Eastman suggests fighting fire with fire, prosecution with prosecution.
Unfortunately, the only antidote may be to fight fire with fire. President Trump: Perhaps it is time to make good on that old pledge to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the Clinton “matters” after all. And while you’re add it, add in referrals to the grand jury for the contempt of Congress committed by the IRS’s Lois Lerner and former Attorney General Eric Holder, an FBI investigation of the destruction of government documents and servers in the midst of the IRS scandal, an investigation into alleged perjury committed by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in testimony about those matters given under oath to Congress, an “obstruction of justice” investigation against former Attorney General Eric Holder and others (and related perjury charges against Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez) for allegedly ordering that an egregious voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party be dropped shortly before a default judgment was about to be entered in the government’s favor, etc., etc., etc.
President Obama and his leftist minions spat on our constitution and flouted the rule of law for eight long years. Google “Obama flouts constitution,” or see here and here and here and here and here. Their abuse of power was ignored by the media and our partisan courts, but it has not been forgotten by conservatives.
President Trump’s voters would like to see equality before the law upheld once again in America. It is bad for our country that rich and powerful Democrat politicians and bureaucrats harm our national security and ruin other people’s lives, in flagrant violation of the law, and are never held to account for their crimes.
Professor Eastman’s advice to fight fire with fire stops short. Based on his own analysis, it is unconstitutional to do warrantless searches with no probable cause. Ending the baseless “Russian collusion” witch hunt is fundamental to upholding our constitution.
Those who counseled President Trump to not prosecute Hillary Clinton said a Clinton investigation would distract the White House from furthering Trump’s positive agenda. That was a strong argument – then. But as Professor Eastman points out, it backfired. Perhaps Trump’s civility was taken as a sign of weakness. Hillary launched the lie that the Russians made her lose the election. Democrats instigated this phony Russian collusion investigation of Trump, precisely in an effort to distract the White House and halt the Trump agenda. The best defense is to return to offense.
President Trump has the responsibility to re-establish the rule of law in our country, and he will have the enthusiastic backing of his base if he does so. It is time to end Democrats’ politically motivated abuse of the law. Stop the Mueller investigation, and go after Obama Inc.’s multiple crimes.
H/T: Powerlineblog.com
Trump and his generals
June 22, 2017Trump and his generals, Washington Times, Victor Davis Hanson, June 21, 2017
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
[T]he three generals are beholden to Mr. Trump for a historic opportunity to shape America’s security posture in ways impossible during the last half-century.
On the other hand, Mr. Trump must recognize that such generals lend credibility to his role as commander in chief and signal that he is wise enough to value merit over politics.
At least for now, it is a win-win-win solution for Mr. Trump, the generals — and the country.
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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Donald Trump earned respect from the Washington establishment for appointing three of the nation’s most accomplished generals to direct his national security policy: James Mattis (secretary of defense), H.R. McMaster (national security adviser) and John Kelly (secretary of homeland security).
In the first five months of the Trump administration, the three generals — along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO — have already recalibrated America’s defenses.
At home, illegal immigration is down by some 70 percent. Abroad, a new policy of principled realism seeks to re-establish deterrence through credible threats of retaliation. The generals are repairing old friendships with allies and neutrals while warning traditional enemies not to press their luck.
President Trump has turned over most of the details of military operations to his generals. According to his critics, Mr. Trump is improperly outsourcing to his generals both strategic decision-making and its tactical implementation.
But is Mr. Trump really doing that?
In his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to avoid new ground wars while not losing those he inherited. He pledged to wipe out ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism without invading Middle Eastern countries to turn them into democracies.
Those are wide but nonetheless unmistakable parameters.
Within them, the U.S. military can drop a huge bomb on the Taliban, strike the chemical weapons depots of Syria’s Bashar Assad, or choose the sort of ships it will use to deter North Korean aggression — without Mr. Trump poring over a map, or hectoring Gen. Mattis or Gen. McMaster about what particular move is politically appropriate or might poll well.
Other presidents have done the same.
A wartime President Lincoln — up for re-election in 1864 — wanted the tottering Confederacy invaded and humiliated. But he had no idea that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman would interpret that vague wish as nearly destroying Atlanta, and then cutting his supply lines to march across Georgia to the sea at Savannah.
When Sherman pulled off the March to the Sea, Lincoln confessed that he had been wrongly skeptical of, totally surprised and utterly delighted with Sherman’s victories. He then left it to Sherman and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to plan the final campaign of the war.
Had Sherman lost his army in the wilds of Georgia, no doubt Lincoln would have relieved him, as he did so many of his other failed generals.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt demanded a cross-channel invasion of France by mid-1944. He did not worry much about how it was to be implemented.
The generals and admirals of his Joint Chiefs handled Roosevelt’s wish by delegating the job to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Anglo-American staff.
Had Eisenhower failed on the Normandy beaches, Roosevelt likely would have fired him and others.
Other critics complain that decorated heroes such as Gens. Mattis, McMaster and Kelly should not stoop to work for a firebrand like Mr. Trump.
The very opposite is true.
Anti-New Dealers such as Republicans Henry Stimson and Frank Knox served in the Roosevelt administration to ensure national unity and expertise during World War II — in much the same manner that old George W. Bush hand Robert Gates stayed on as secretary of defense to advise foreign policy novice Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump entered office with no formal political or military experience. That does not mean his business skills and innate cunning are not critical in setting national security policy — only that he benefits from the wise counsel of veterans.
The patriotic duty for men the caliber of these three generals was to step forward and serve their commander in chief — and thereby ensure that the country would have proven professionals carrying out the president’s recalibrations.
Of course, there must be tensions between the Trump administration, its Democratic opponents and the largely apolitical Gens. Mattis, McMaster and Kelly, who have enjoyed high commands under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Liberals want the generals to leak to the press and hint that Mr. Trump is a dunce whose blunders force wise men like themselves to clean up the mess.
Republicans prefer the three to get on board the Trump team and appoint only conservatives who will resonate administration values.
In truth, Mr. Trump and his generals share a quid pro quo relationship that so far has worked.
Gens. Mattis, McMaster and Kelly must know that few other presidents would have taken the heat to entrust three military men to guide national security policy. And even if another president did, he might not empower them with anything like their president latitude.
In that regard, the three generals are beholden to Mr. Trump for a historic opportunity to shape America’s security posture in ways impossible during the last half-century.
On the other hand, Mr. Trump must recognize that such generals lend credibility to his role as commander in chief and signal that he is wise enough to value merit over politics.
At least for now, it is a win-win-win solution for Mr. Trump, the generals — and the country.
Saudi Advisers to King Condemn Muslim Brotherhood
June 22, 2017Saudi Advisers to King Condemn Muslim Brotherhood, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, June 22, 2017
(Claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood merely “doesn’t care” about the beliefs of the sunnah may be a clever way to reject the erroneous thesis that Muslim Brotherhood terrorism is “not Islamic.” — DM)
King Salman of Saudi Arabia (center) (Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
The Council of Senior Scholars, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, attacked the Muslim Brotherhood, saying the organization doesn’t care about the beliefs of the sunnah (the crucial oral tradition of the teachings, deeds and sayings of the Islamic prophet Mohammad).
In addition, the council said the Brotherhood’s way is to foment rebellion against their host countries. In a series of tweets, the council — which is tasked with advising the king on religious matters — said the Brotherhood’s primary goal is to use their host country’s political system to assume political power.
Following the pronouncement, the Assembly of Islamic Researchers, a branch of Al Azhar (the highest religious body in the Sunni Arab world located in Egypt), said they would be reviewing the Saudi announcement with the intention of the possible publication of a similar declaration.
The manager of the department of dawah (outreach) of the assembly, Abed el-Aziz Anajar, stated, “These words [of the Saudi council] are coming very late. This group [the Brotherhood], since their beginning, have used violence, assassinations and explosions against everyone that stands in their way.
“Everyone who follows the history of this group can see that there were times that they made deals with politicians in order to achieve all kinds of things from officials. Then, when these achievements were taken from them, they turned into human wolves, and they took revenge against all of society that didn’t stand with them.”
Anajar noted when the Brotherhood assumed power in Egypt during the presidency of Mohammed Morsi, they failed to make the changes they had promised during their campaign.
“They condemned the previous government for not implementing the sharia of Allah, [yet when they were in power], it didn’t happen, they were just driving the country into the ground,” he said.
Anajar praised the “awakening” of the Egyptian people and the “wisdom of the youth” for deposing the Brotherhood-led government.
In a similar vein, the former president of Yemen, Ali Abdallah Salah, condemned the Brotherhood saying the organization is responsible for the current civil war in his country.
Salah was talking during a meeting of the political branch of Al-Mo’tamar Ash-Sha’abiy Al-‘Aam, the General People’s Congress, the political party in Yemen which he heads.
“The terrorists that belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, who are connected to the organization abroad, caused the nakba [catastrophe] in Yemen by refusing to change the regime in a peaceful way. If they were really Muslims, they would have avoided hurting the people and country. They are extremist, terrorists,” Salah said.
The Mauritanian minister of transportation Mohammed Abdallah Wallad Awdah also recently accused the Brotherhood of deceiving his country and cast aspersions on their morality.
His declaration caused members of Tewassoul, the Islamist political party in Mauitania to walk out of the parliament. Tewassoul demanded an apology for his remarks, but Awdah refused.
The FBI’s Briefing On The GOP Baseball Shooting Couldn’t Have Been More Bizarre
June 22, 2017The FBI’s Briefing On The GOP Baseball Shooting Couldn’t Have Been More Bizarre, The Federalist, Mollie Hemingway, June 22, 2017
(Since the attack had nothing to do with Islam Democrat incitement to the murder of Republicans, perhaps Hodgkinson’s mother’s failure to breastfeed him caused him to feel neglected and he had to do something to become famous. Yeah. That must be it.– DM)
The FBI’s briefing appears so contrary to the facts as to be insulting. When a man with a history of hating Republicans cases a location, takes pictures, verifies the targets are Republicans before opening fire, has a list of Republican politicians in his pocket, and shoots and nearly kills Republicans, it’s hard to swallow the FBI’s contention that the shooting was “spontaneous” with “no target.” The agency should reconsider whether it wants to troll Americans about something this serious.
With trust in institutions at historic lows, and the bureaucracy beset by fears of politicization, the FBI made a poor decision to gaslight Americans by claiming that the assassination attempt wasn’t premeditated terrorism but a spontaneous “anger management” problem.
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The FBI gave an utterly bizarre update on its investigation into an attempt to assassinate Republican members of Congress. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) remains in the hospital from the attempt on his life in which two police officers and a congressional staffer were also shot. The hospital upgraded his condition to “fair” and said he faces a long recovery.
Americans may know, thanks to public social media profiles, that attempted murderer James Hodgkinson was an active Democratic activist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who hated Republican members of Congress. He held membership in multiple social media groups strongly opposed to Republicans, such as “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans,” “Join the Resistance Worldwide,” “Donald Trump is not my President,” “Terminate the Republican Party,” “Boycott the Republican Party,” and “Expose Republican Fraud,” among dozens of other groups. He was a voracious consumer of liberal media and believed the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to secure the White House.
The FBI admits that Hodgkinson:
- vociferously raged against Republicans in online forums,
- had a piece of paper bearing the names of six members of Congress,
- was reported for doing target practice outside his home in recent months before moving to Alexandria,
- had mapped out a trip to the DC area,
- took multiple photos of the baseball field he would later shoot up, three days after the New York Times mentioned that Republicans practiced baseball at an Alexandria baseball field with little security,
- lived out of his van at the YMCA directly next door to the baseball field he shot up,
- legally purchased a rifle in March 2003 and 9 mm handgun “in November 2016,”
- modified the rifle at some point to accept a detachable magazine and replaced the original stock with a folding stock,
- rented a storage facility to hide hundreds of rounds of ammunition and additional rifle components,
- asked “Is this the Republican or Democrat baseball team?” before firing on the Republicans,
- ran a Google search for information on the “2017 Republican Convention” hours before the shooting,
- and took photos at high-profile Washington locations, including the east front plaza of the U.S. Capitol and the Dirksen Senate Office.
We know from other reporting that the list was of six Republican Freedom Caucus members, including Rep. Mo Brooks, who was present at the practice.
So what does the FBI decide this information means? Well, the takeaway of the briefing was characterized well by the Associated Press headline about it: “FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind.” The Associated Press reported the FBI:
- believes the gunman “had no concrete plan to inflict violence” against Republicans,
- “had not yet clarified who, if anyone, he planned to target, or why,”
- believes he may have just “happened upon” the baseball game the morning of June 14, and that the attack appeared “spontaneous,”
- are unclear on the “context” of Hodgkinson’s note with six names of members of Congress,
- does not believe that photographs of the baseball field or other sites “represented surveillance of intended targets,” and
- “painted a picture of a down-on-his-luck man with few future prospects.”
In fact, USA Today went with “FBI offers portrait of troubled Alexandria shooter with ‘anger management problem’” for their headline, since that’s what the FBI emphasized in the briefing.
The FBI also said there was no “nexus to terrorism” in the attempted mass assassination of Republican leadership by a Democratic activist. The claim that tourists take pictures of a a completely unremarkable baseball field in a tiny neighborhood also seems odd, particularly when the pictures were taken a few days after The New York Times reported that Republican members of Congress practice baseball there with little security. Yoenis Cespedes wrote, “As a guy who could arguably be called a reconnaissance manager when he was in the Army, this is reconnaissance.”
Oh, and here’s a little tidbit that didn’t interest many people in the media beyond a brief mention in the last paragraphs:
Hodgkinson also visited the office of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign he had worked on as a volunteer, and was in email contact with the two Democratic senators from his home state.
As one Twitter wag put it, “You’d think “Congressional Shooter Visited Actual Capitol Hill Offices” would be kinda a big deal and you’d be wrong.”
I wrote last week that the media’s big problem right now is that everyone in the country knows how they’d be covering the shooting if the parties were reversed. Can you imagine if a shooter had visited the office of Sen. Ted Cruz and corresponded with two Republican senators? Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) gave emails to investigators last week but it was treated mostly as local news.
With trust in institutions at historic lows, and the bureaucracy beset by fears of politicization, the FBI made a poor decision to gaslight Americans by claiming that the assassination attempt wasn’t premeditated terrorism but a spontaneous “anger management” problem. Or, as Jason Beale put it:
Their conclusion? Just a down-on-his-luck guy. No planned target. Pix not surveillance. Names lacked context. Jobless. Nothing to see here. pic.twitter.com/8KGLvVoVyF
Finally, this is what we get when the FBI allows politics to intervene in basic investigative analysis. A defensive, PC smoke screen. END/ pic.twitter.com/aQBKUGpud2
The FBI’s briefing appears so contrary to the facts as to be insulting. When a man with a history of hating Republicans cases a location, takes pictures, verifies the targets are Republicans before opening fire, has a list of Republican politicians in his pocket, and shoots and nearly kills Republicans, it’s hard to swallow the FBI’s contention that the shooting was “spontaneous” with “no target.” The agency should reconsider whether it wants to troll Americans about something this serious.
Nearly 30% of illegal immigrant children at border have ties to MS-13 or other gangs
June 22, 2017Nearly 30% of illegal immigrant children at border have ties to MS-13 or other gangs, Washington Times, Stephen Dinan, June 21, 2017
(Please see also, FBI: MS-13 Is Most Violent, Organized Gang in America.– DM)
The Health and Human Services department detains unaccompanied children caught crossing the border illegally and tries to place them with sponsors, but youths often end up with gangs. (Associated Press/File)
[T]he population of children has dropped dramatically under the Trump administration, as stiffer interior enforcement and tough talk from the president have discouraged children — and indeed all migrants — from attempting to cross the border.
That still leaves a large presence in the U.S., and MS-13 — with roots in El Salvador — is a growing threat. . . .
“We know who they are, we know they’re gang members, we know they’re criminals. But if the city, the county, doesn’t allow us to get into that jail then they’re released back into the community,” he said.
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Nearly 30 percent of the illegal immigrant children the U.S. is holding in its dormitories have ties to criminal gangs, the government revealed Wednesday, suggesting that the Obama-era surge of Central Americans has fed the country’s growing problem with MS-13 and other gangs.
Federal officials refused even to guess at the true scope of the problem, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that they can give only small snapshots of what they see. But they said the devastation on communities across the country is clear: killings and chaos, particularly among other immigrants — both legal and illegal.
The Border Patrol identified 160 teens who were known or suspected gang members when they first showed up at the border, but whom the Obama administration said it had to admit under U.S. law.
Meanwhile, a spot check this month of 138 teens being held by the federal Health and Human Services Department identified 39 with gang ties. Four of them were forced into cooperating with the gangs and 35 joined voluntarily, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“It is well-known that MS-13 actively targets and recruits children as young as 8 years old,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee who called Wednesday’s hearing.
“While their illegal status and Central American heritage are a key factor in MS-13’s targeting, without a doubt the failures of the current system for handling these children is also to blame,” he said. “The current system is fraught with abuse, systematic errors and a lack of effective cooperation.”
He was stunned that no agency could say how many “UAC,” as the government dubs unaccompanied alien children, have been recruited.
The agencies point to one another and to federal laws, saying their hands are tied.
UACs are usually arrested by the Border Patrol, which is required to turn them over to the social workers at HHS within 72 hours, ending the Border Patrol’s involvement. HHS says that under the law it must try to place the children with sponsors. Other than limited circumstances, the department says, its involvement ends soon after it sends the children off.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t get involved until a UAC is ordered deported.
That usually leaves the children with no federal supervisions once they are released to sponsors — where they are often prime recruiting targets.
Scott Lloyd, director of the HHS office that handles UAC, said his team is looking to increase monitoring of the minors and is reviewing Obama administration interpretations of policy.
He also said the population of children has dropped dramatically under the Trump administration, as stiffer interior enforcement and tough talk from the president have discouraged children — and indeed all migrants — from attempting to cross the border.
That still leaves a large presence in the U.S., and MS-13 — with roots in El Salvador — is a growing threat, authorities said.
Officials said MS-13 is involved in some drug dealing and does engage in human trafficking, but its real money-making operation is extortion. The gang threatens families — including American citizens — with violence against relatives back in Central America unless those in the U.S. pay them off.
Gang members in the U.S. take directions directly from gang commanders in El Salvador, authorities say.
Kenneth A. Blanco, acting assistant attorney general in the criminal division at the Justice Department, also said immigrants who fail to report crimes to local police are often not afraid of being deported by federal authorities, but rather fear retaliation from the gang members and other criminals who live in their neighborhoods.
He said witnesses’ names become public, making them targets for retribution.
“That really, in my 28 years, has been the fear they have of calling the police. Not so much the other way around,” he said. “They’re really scared of these people.”
That runs counter to the argument made by Democrats and some local police chiefs that illegal immigrants refuse to report crimes because they fear entanglement with federal deportation agents.
Democrats pointed to calculations by some police agencies that crime reporting among Hispanics has dropped dramatically in the months since President Trump took office.
The Democrats say that is one justification for sanctuary city policies — though Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, offered another one Wednesday. He said Chicago, which in 2011 pioneered blanket sanctuary policies, doesn’t want to protect illegal immigrants but is too poor to assist federal agents.
“Come on, Uncle Sam, where’s the money?” Mr. Durbin said.
He said Chicago and Cook County are eager to keep serious criminals and other gang members out of their communities but added that it’s up to the federal government to fund the training he said local authorities need.
“Please help us. Send us some resources,” he said.
Federal officials, though, said they are not looking for locals to do the job, but rather to allow federal officers into their facilities and to share information about releases.
“We’re asking for their cooperation,” said Matthew Albence, executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Albence singled out the Chicago area as one of the most prominent sanctuaries. “Chicago is a large one. We haven’t been able to get into the Cook County Jail for a long time,” he said.
He also named New York City and San Francisco as top sanctuary cities.
The conversation sprang from questioning by Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, who asked about MS-13 and other gang members who are nabbed by local authorities in sanctuary cities.
“These are evil people. It’s pretty hard to miss them. There are tattoos all over their body,” Mr. Kennedy said. “If they’re arrested and they’re in a local jail, there are some cities in the United States that would prevent you from coming in and talking to them?”
“Correct,” Mr. Albence replied.
“We know who they are, we know they’re gang members, we know they’re criminals. But if the city, the county, doesn’t allow us to get into that jail then they’re released back into the community,” he said.
UAE has secret torture prisons in Yemen, US involved in interrogations
June 22, 2017Published time: 22 Jun, 2017 11:28
Edited time: 22 Jun, 2017 12:35
Source: UAE has secret torture prisons in Yemen, US involved in interrogations – AP — RT News
FILE PHOTO © Reuters
The UAE operates a network of ‘black sites’ in war-torn Yemen, where terrorist suspects are abused and tortured, an AP investigation has found. US personnel have been involved in at least some interrogations, agency sources said.
There are at least 18 clandestine prisons across southern Yemen operated by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or by Yemeni forces created and trained by the Arab nations, AP reported on Thursday. A number of the estimated 2,000 detainees there are subjected to abuse and torture and have no legal protection, sources from the agency said.
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The US military provides lists of questions for the detainees and receives transcripts of the interrogations done at the black sites, potentially making America complicit in torture. American citizens have been directly involved in some of the interrogations, although none of the sources confirmed participation in the alleged abuses, the report said, citing several unnamed US defense officials.
AP interviewed dozens of people for the report, including former inmates, family members of people held in detention, lawyers, Yemeni and US officials. Most of the sources spoke to the agency on condition of anonymity, either fearing reprisals or because they were not authorized to discuss the issue.
The UAE is part of a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of nations which, in March 2015, started an air campaign against Houthi rebels who earlier ousted Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The US is providing assistance to the coalition by refueling its warplanes and giving intelligence information.
Amid the civil war, the local branch of Al-Qaeda, the AQIP, was emboldened. The UAE-operated secret prisons uncovered by AP in Yemen are intended for suspected members of the terrorist organization. The black sites are based at military bases, including across the sea in Eritrea, ports, an airport, private villas and even a nightclub.
Former inmates told the agency how they were put into shipping containers and even smeared with feces. Inmates were flogged with wires, locked inside a container with a fire burning to fill it with smoke, tied to a spit and spun in a circle of fire, as well as being subjected to other forms of torture.
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“We could hear the screams,” said a former detainee, who spent half a year in a prison located at Riyan airport near the city of Mukalla, eastern Yemen.
He claimed that “almost everyone is sick” while the remaining are “near death.” According to the man, in case of even the slightest complaint a prisoner “heads directly to the torture chamber.”
While the US officials quoted by AP maintained that there was no knowledge of American personnel involved in the direct abuses, a member of the Yemeni special unit (Hadramawt Elite), which was created by the UAE, claimed US forces were sometimes just yards away.
The UAE-trained special operations unit overtook Mukalla from the Al-Qaeda branch in 2016. After that, some 400 people were rounded up in the area over alleged ties with AQIP.
The coalition-backed Yemeni government has little say in what happens in the coastal city, AP reported. Even in the city of Aden, where the Yemeni supporters of the Hadi government have a powerbase, UAE-backed troops have a strong presence and operate what the agency calls a “state-within-a-state.” They control half of a prison in the district of Mansoura and a military base called Bier Ahmed.
Several Yemeni officials said Americans were conducting interrogations of terrorist suspects on ships off the Yemeni coast. One said he had witnessed detainees being brought in for questioning to a ship where he was serving at the time, adding that he was told that the interrogation was conducted by American experts.
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Several US defense officials told AP the Pentagon investigated allegations of torture in Yemen.
“We would not turn a blind eye, because we are obligated to report any violations of human rights,” chief Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White said when presented with AP’s findings. The official added that the US always follows “the highest standards of personal and professional conduct.”
With reference to the alleged abuse by US personnel on the ships, unnamed American officials insisted it was not the case.
The UAE government for its part denied the existence of black sites in Yemen and said no torture of inmates was carried out during interrogations. Yemeni Brig. Gen. Farag Salem al-Bahsani, commander of the Mukalla-based 2nd Military District, said the reports of torture were “exaggerated.”
The US has a historic record of abuse of terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks, either directly at CIA black sites in Europe or by proxy, for instance in Libya during Muammar Gaddafi’s reign.
Detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison were subjected to so-called “enhanced interrogation,” which human rights groups see as torture. Former President Barack Obama acknowledged the description in 2014, saying that the US “tortured some folks” at the facility.
A US-supported elite Emergency Response Division (ERD) in Iraq is currently under investigation over footage and photos of torture of suspected terrorists. The US says it had no knowledge of the abuses.
Men Like These
June 22, 2017Men Like These, Bill Whittle Channel via YouTube, June 21, 2017
The short blurb beneath the video summarizes:
A former Special Forces soldier in Mosul runs, unarmed, through an ISIS free-fire zone to rescue an Iraqi child. The video illustrates a story that’s not told often enough, but Scott Ott, Bill Whittle and Stephen Green work to remedy that.
U.S.: Strategic Objectives in the Middle East
June 22, 2017U.S.: Strategic Objectives in the Middle East, Gatestone Institute, Peter Huessy, June 22, 2017
On relations with the Palestinian Authority, the administration has moved to improve matters but has not moved to advocate a two-state solution — for which there is no contemplated security framework sufficient to protect Israel.
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The new “test” of our alliance will be whether the assembled nations will join in removing the hateful parts of such a doctrine from their communities.
What still has to be considered is the U.S. approach to stopping Iran from filling the vacuum created by ridding the region of the Islamic State (ISIS), as well as Iran’s push for extending its path straight through to the Mediterranean.
The tectonic plates in the Middle East have shifted markedly with President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and his announced new regional policy.
The trip represented the beginning of a major but necessary shift in US security policy.
For much of the last nearly half-century, American Middle East policy has been centered on the “peace process” and how to bring Israel and the Palestinians to agreement on a “two-state” solution for two peoples — a phrase that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to say.
First was shuttle diplomacy during 1973-74 in the Nixon administration; then second, in 1978, the Camp David agreement and the recognition of Israel by Egypt, made palatable by $7 billion in new annual US assistance to the two nations; third, the anti-Hizballah doctrine, recently accurately described by National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster, as Iran, since 1983, started spreading its terror to Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. This last effort was often excused by many American and European analysts as a result somehow, of supposed American bad faith. Fourth, came the birth, in 1992, of the “Oslo Accords” where some Israelis and Palestinians imagined that a two-state solution was just another round of negotiations away.
Ironically, during the decade after Oslo, little peace was achieved; instead, terror expanded dramatically. The Palestinians launched three wars, “Intifadas,” against Israel; Al Qaeda launched its terror attacks on U.S. Embassies in Africa; and Iran, Hizballah, and Al Qaeda together carried out the forerunner attacks against America of 9/11/2001.
Since 9/11, despite wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism has not only failed to recede; on the contrary, it has expanded. Iran has become the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, and the Islamic State (ISIS) has tried to establish a transnational “Islamic caliphate.” Literally tens of thousands of terror attacks have been carried out since 9/11 by those claiming an Islamic duty to do so. These assaults on Western civilization have taken place on bridges, cafes, night clubs, offices, military recruitment centers, theaters, markets, and sporting events — not only across the West but also in countries where Muslims have often been the primary victims.
Particularly condemnable have been the improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, perpetrated to a great extent by Iran, according to U.S. military testimony before Congress.
All the while, we in the West keep trying to convince ourselves that, as a former American president thought, if there were a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, most of the terrorist attacks we see in Europe and the United States “would disappear.”
No matter how hard we may rhetorically push the “peace process”, there is no arc of history that bends naturally in that direction. Rather, nations such as the United States together with its allies must create those alliances best able to meet the challenges to peace and especially defeat the totalitarian elements at the core of Islamist ideology.
If anything, the so-called Middle East “peace process” has undercut chances of achieving a sound U.S. security policy. While the search for a solution to the Israel-Palestinian “problem” dominated American thinking about Middle East peace for so many decades, other far more serious threats materialized but were often ignored, not the least of which was the rise of Iran as the world’s most aggressive terrorist.
The United States has now moved in a markedly more promising and thoughtful direction.
The new American administration has put together an emerging coalition of nations led by the United States that seeks five objectives:
(1) the defeat of Islamic State;
(2) the formation of a coalition of the major Arab nations, especially Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to clean up in their own back yards financing terrorism and providing terrorists with sanctuary. As Elliott Abrams, an adviser to former U.S. President George W. Bush, cautions us, however, this will not be an easy effort: “Partnerships with repressive regimes may in some cases exacerbate rather than solve the problem for us” but, Abrams says, “gradual reform is exactly the right approach…”;
3) “driving out” sharia-inspired violence and human rights abuses from the region’s mosques and madrassas;
(4) a joint partnership with Israel as part of an emerging anti-Iran coalition — without letting relations with the Palestinian authority derail United States and Israeli security interests; and
(5) the adoption of a strategy directly to challenge Iran’s quest for regional and Islamic hegemony, while ending its role in terrorism.
Defeating Islamic State
Defeating ISIS began with an accelerated military campaign and a new American-led strategy to destroy the organization rather than to seek its containment. According to the new U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, “Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia. We’re going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.”
Secretary of Defense James Mattis. (Dept. of Defense/Brigitte N. Brantley)
So far, the United States coalition has driven ISIS from 55,000 square kilometers of territory in Iraq and Syria.
A New Coalition
Apart from a strategy to counter ISIS, the Trump administration also called on our allies in the Middle East to put together a new joint multi-state effort to stop financing terrorism. Leading the multi-state effort will be the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States, which together will supposedly open a new center dedicated to the elimination of terrorist financing. Positive results are not guaranteed, but it is a step in the right direction.
According to Abdul Hadi Habtoor, the center will exchange information about financing networks, adopt means to cut off funding from terrorist groups, and hopefully blacklist Iran’s jihadist army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These measures in turn will help eliminate the sanctuaries from which terrorists plot and plan.
This move also places emphasis on the responsibility of states to eliminate terrorism. As President Trump said, each country — where it is sovereign — has to “carry the weight of their own self-defense“, be “pro-active” and responsible for “eradicating terrorism”, and “to deny all territory to the foot soldiers of evil”.
This determination was underscored by many Arab countries breaking diplomatic relations with Qatar for its support of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Most of Qatar’s Arab neighbors, including the Saudis, Egypt, and the UAE did so, while the US, although denouncing Qatar’s support of terrorism, continues to maintain access to, and use of, its critical military base there.
In short, the U.S. is playing good-cop, bad-cop in the region, while U.S. allies are putting together what Josh Rogin of the Washington Post described as “a regional security architecture encompassing countries on the periphery of Iran.”
Such an approach is not without risk: Turkey, allied with Iran and Qatar, has already has pledged to help Qatar defy the Gulf States’ trade cut-off. If Turkey, for example, seeks to move its promised aid shipments to Qatar through the Suez Canal, the ships could possibly be blocked by Egypt or attacked on the high seas. Does the U.S. then come to the assistance of a NATO member — Turkey — against an ally in the strategic coalition?
Drive Hateful Ideology Out
A companion challenge by the new American President underscored this new security effort. President Trump said to the assembled nations of the Islamic conference that they have to expel the ugly Islamist ideology from the mosques and madrassas that recruit terrorists and justify their actions.
Trump said: “Drive them out of your places of worship”. Such words had never been spoken so clearly by an American president, especially to the collection of nearly all the Islamic-majority countries (minus the Shi’ite bloc) gathered together.
The president’s audience doubtless understood that he was speaking of the doctrine of sharia (Islamic law). The new “test” of our alliance will be whether the assembled nations will join in removing the hateful parts of the doctrine from their communities. It was a sharp but critical departure from the previous American administration’s message in Cairo in 2009, and placed the Islamic doctrine that seeks to establish the sharia throughout the world in a contained context.
New Israeli Partnership
With Israel, the administration has cemented the next part of its strategy. Here the Trump administration successfully improved our political and military relations with Israel. Markedly so. One part of that effort was enhanced missile-defense cooperation called for in the FY18 United States defense budget, specifically to deal with Iranian and Iranian-allied missile threats.
On relations with the Palestinian Authority, the administration has moved to improve matters but has not moved to advocate a two-state solution — for which there is no contemplated security framework sufficient to protect Israel.
Challenge and Roll Back Iran
The final part of the administration’s strategy starts with a thorough review of our Iran strategy and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or “nuclear deal”, with Iran. As Max Singer recently wrote, even if we discount what secretive nuclear capability Iran may now have, the Iranian regime will at the very least be much closer to producing nuclear weapons down the road than when the JCPOA was agreed to.
As Ambassador John Bolton has warned the nuclear deal with Iran did nothing to restrain Iranian harmful behavior: “Defiant missile launches… support for the genocidal Assad regime… backing of then Houthi insurgency in Yemen… worldwide support for terrorism… and commitment to the annihilation of Israel” continue.
In addition, uranium enrichment, heavy water production, the concealed military dimensions of warhead development and joint missile and nuclear work with North Korea all lend a critical urgency to countering Iran’s lethal efforts. The United States did not make these counter-efforts any easier by providing to Tehran $100 billion in escrowed Iranian funds, equivalent to nearly one quarter of the Islamic Republic’s annual GDP.
The United States’ and Europe’s easing of sanctions on Iran has helped reintegrate Iran into global markets via mechanisms such as the electronic payment system run by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT). That, in turn, has helped Iran expand dramatically its military modernization budget by 33%, including deals worth tens of billions of dollars in military hardware with China and Russia.
Added to that is Iranian financial- and weapons-support for foreign fighters in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Iran’s significant support to the Houthi rebels in Yemen includes weaponry, financing and logistical support, including advanced offensive missiles. The Houthis regularly attempt to carry out missile attacks against Saudi oil facilities.
Such Iran activity is described by the Commander of U.S. Central Command, General Joseph Votel, as “the most significant threat to the Central Region and to our national interests and the interest of our partners and allies”.
As such, it can only be challenged through exactly the kind of military, political, and economic coalition the Trump administration is seeking to band together, which would include the Gulf Arab nations, especially Saudi Arabia, as well as Egypt, Jordan, and Israel.
The administration’s five-step strategy has a chance to work. It creates a policy to destroy ISIS; oppose Islamic terrorism and specifically the imposition of sharia; adopt measures to go after the financing of such terrorism; implement improvements in Gulf allies’ military capabilities — including missile defenses — parallel with pushing NATO members to meet their military spending obligations; put back into place a sound and cooperative relationship with Israel; and specifically contain and roll back Iranian hegemonic ambitions and its terror-master ways.
What still has to be considered, however, is the U.S. approach to stopping Iran from filling the vacuum created by ridding the region of ISIS, as well as Iran’s push for extending its path straight through to the Mediterranean.
If successful, some modicum of peace may be brought to the Middle East. And the arc of history will have finally been shaped toward America’s interests and those of its allies, rather than — however inadvertently — toward its mortal enemies.
Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, and was the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation for more than 20 years.
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