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More Beheadings, More Denial

November 18, 2014

More Beheadings, More Denial, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, November 18, 2014

(Please see also this article, and others, on today’s Islamic slaughter at a Jerusalem synagogue. “Knives, axes and guns” were used.” Hamas responded with praise for the terrorists who did it. Will Obama, our Islamic “scholar” in chief, declare that such Palestinian “actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith?” He won’t. Nor, of course, will he admit that the Palestinian’s Islamic actions, like those of the Islamic State, do represent Islam.– DM)

Obama with microphones

All you have to do is change the name of the victim, and this could be a story from August, or September, or October: the Islamic State has beheaded yet another hostage, this time Peter Kassig, aka Abdul-Rahman Kassig, and Barack Obama has declared yet again that the beheading has nothing to do with Islam. Obama might as well have a form ready for the next jihad beheading or mass murder attack: all he will have to do is fill in the blank and then take to the airwaves to say that the latest bloodshed has nothing to do with Islam. If the victims are British, he can lend his form to David Cameron.

But all this repeating of the political elites’ “Islam is peace” meme will never make it so. And the constant repetition of this falsehood is doing nothing less than endangering Americans. It keeps people ignorant who might otherwise get a clear idea of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. It fosters complacency. It makes all too many Americans assume that this kind of behavior is restricted to the “extremists” of the Islamic State, and could never happen here.

It could happen here. It could happen anywhere that people read the phrase “when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (Qur’an 47:4) as if it were a command of the Creator of the Universe. But to point out that simple and obvious fact nowadays only brings down upon one’s head charges of “hatred” and of “demonizing all Muslims,” when in a sane society it would bring honest explanations from Muslims of good will of what they were doing to ensure that no Muslim ever acted on that verse’s literal meaning.

In reality, they’re doing nothing. No Muslim organization, mosque or school in the United States has any program to teach young Muslims and converts to Islam why they should avoid and reject on Islamic grounds the vision of Islam – and of unbelievers – that the Islamic State and other jihad groups offer them. This is extremely strange, given the fact that all the Muslim organizations, mosques and schools in the United States ostensibly reject this understanding of Islam. And even stranger is that no American authorities seem to have noticed the absence of such initiatives, much less dared to call out Muslim groups about this.

On the contrary, instead of calling on Muslim groups to take some action to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, Obama’s latest denial was even more strenuous in its dissociation of the beheading from Islam: “ISIL’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own.”

“Least of all”! As if it were possible that the Islamic State’s actions represented Buddhism, or Methodism, or Christian Science, or the Hardshell Baptists, or the Mandaeans, to greater or lesser degrees, but the most far-fetched association one could make, out of all the myriad faiths people hold throughout the world, would be to associate the Islamic State’s actions with…Islam. The Islamic State’s actions represent no faith, least of all Islam – as if it were more likely that the Islamic State were made up of Presbyterians or Lubavitcher Hasidim or Jains or Smartas than that it were made up of Muslims.

Why do not just some, but all of the political leaders in Western countries cling to this outlandish fiction? Because reality indicts them. Not only do they insist that Islam is a religion of peace despite an ever-growing mountain of evidence to the contrary; they have made that falsehood a cornerstone of numerous policies. They have encouraged mass immigration and refugee resettlement from Muslim countries, without even making an attempt to determine whether or not any of the people they were importing had any connections to or sympathies with jihad groups. Their governments have for years partnered with and collaborated with groups with proven ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. They have favored and aided the Brotherhood and groups like it to attain power in the Middle East and North Africa, deeming them “moderate” because they claimed to eschew violence, and blithely ignoring that their goals were the same as those of groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

If Barack Obama or David Cameron admitted that Islam was not a religion of peace, all these disastrous policies and others would be called into question. Cameron’s government might, quite deservedly, fall, and Obama’s would be crippled.

However, the primary reason why Obama and his cohorts continue to stand athwart the pile of beheaded bodies shouting that Islam is a religion of peace is because if they didn’t, the mainstream media – following its own policies as delineated by the Society of Professional Journalists – would immediately denounce them as “racists,” “bigots,” and “Islamophobes,” and their career not just as politicians but as respectable people would be over. It’s not that bad, you say? Just look at how the sharks are circling Bill Maher and tell me that.

Nonetheless, the Big Lie, however ascendant it may be today, is foredoomed. The fact that it is repeated, and must be repeated, so often is evidence of that. No one has to run around insisting that Christianity is a religion of peace, because Christian leaders are reacting to the escalating Muslim persecution of their brethren by opening up their churches to Muslim prayer and muting their criticism of that persecution out of deference to their Muslim “dialogue” partners. If anything says “religion of peace,” it’s Christians forcibly ejecting a Christian woman from a Christian cathedral for proclaiming Christ, so that Muslims could deny him there.

“Religion of abject surrender” might be more apt, but in any case, no one thinks contemporary Christianity is a religion of war. All too many Muslims worldwide, however, energetically go about illustrating every day that Islam is not a religion of peace, and so they keep Obama’s printer busy turning out denial forms, ready for him to fill in the blanks with the name of the next victim: “The murder of _________ has nothing whatsoever to do with the great religion of Islam…”

But this is a counsel of despair. The truth will get out; indeed, it is already abundantly out. We can only hope that not too many more will have to feel the blade at their necks before Obama and the rest can no longer avoid taking realistic and effective action.

Categories: Fairy tales, Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Obama
Tags: Islam, Islamic State

Comments: 1 Comment

The new Congress will not kill a bad nuke deal with Iran

November 16, 2014

The new Congress will not kill a bad nuke deal with Iran, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 16, 2014

(I wrote this article in response to an article posted today at Warsclerotic titled GOP poised to dash Obama’s Iran hopes | TheHill. — DM)

A bad nuke deal with Iran seems likely to be approved by the P5+1 negotiators under Obama’s guidance. It will be disastrous. However, if it is signed and Obama tries to implement it, there will be little if anything the Congress can do about it, even if it wants to, until January of 2017 — which will likely be too late. Even if it is not too late in 2017 it may or may not happen, depending on who is our President and who controls Congress.

I have written extensively about the Iran Scam and Obama’s untruths and obfuscations concerning it. I did so most recently in a semi-satirical article titled To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel. Please read at least the Iran Scam article; to repeat here the points made there would make this post far too long.

According to an article titled GOP poised to dash Obama’s Iran hopes,

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took to the Senate floor on Thursday to ask for unanimous consent to schedule a vote on a bill that would give Congress final approval over any deal, or else reinstate tough sanctions on Iran.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) quickly rejected the request, arguing that scheduling a vote on the deal would be “premature at this point.” He said it would “send a fairly chilling message” that U.S. officials at the table with Iran did not have full authority to negotiate an agreement.

But when Republicans take control of the Senate, they could move to pass that bill, or push legislation from Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) which would reinstate sanctions if Iran violates any deal.

Their bill also pledges military support for Israel if it decides to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, which it has threatened to do.

. . . .

The president has already threatened to veto the legislation, but doing so would be politically risky. The bill already enjoys the support of 60 senators, including 16 Democrats, and there is sweeping support for a similar bill in the House.

A deal that’s not supported by Congress or seen as weak could also hurt the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, especially if it fails to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capabilities.

Obama has displayed utter disdain for the Congress and constitutional processes. He will most likely continue to do so, in spades, when the new Republican dominated Congress is seated in January. The perceptions of the author of the linked article are excessively optimistic, as suggested below.

As a lame duck President, Obama has little if anything to lose. Any impact on the 2016 elections of a bad nuke deal with Iran may well not be of substantial importance to Obama and, to the extent that it is, He will probably use His ample opportunities to “Gruber” – to obfuscate and lie effectively — about the facts and their consequences substantially to diminish any adverse impact of His actions on those elections.

There’s more here about Obama, Gruber and Grubering, which Obama continues to do with at least modest success.

As the Obama administration did from the beginning and continues to do with the ObamaCare debacle, it will “Gruber” the facts and consequences of a nuke deal in presenting it to the Congress and the public. Should the next Congress nevertheless pass a bill which He does not like, He will veto it as He has promised to do. To override a veto requires the affirmative vote of two thirds of both houses under Article 1, Section 7, of the Constitution. Even in the unlikely event that an Obama veto is overridden, there is no reason to assume that He will apply the new law as Congress intends.

Congressional attempts to defund administration efforts to implement an agreement with Iran seem unlikely to work: multiple other governmental functions, facially unconnected with the matter, would still have to be funded. The parameters of their funding would have to be extraordinarily tight to avoid fund shifting. Even then, the Obama administration has shown itself to be extraordinarily adept at fund shifting regardless of congressional intent as reflected in seemingly clear statutory language.

Even were U.S. Sanctions – the only sanctions on which the Congress has any significant impact – to be reinstated, their enforcement would be up to the Obama administration, not the Congress. The administration would likely refuse to enforce them, as it has multiple times with other Federal laws of which Obama does not approve. Were the Congress or other interested parties to succeed in getting judicial review, the process would be long and the results uncertain until the Supreme Court granted and exercised review. That process could easily take years. In addition, it remains questionable whether the Congress, its representatives or anyone else would even have standing to initiate judicial action.

At the Federal level, legal actions cannot be brought simply on the ground that an individual or group is displeased with a government action or law. Federal courts only have constitutional authority to resolve actual disputes (see Case or Controversy). Only those with enough direct stake in an action or law have “standing” to challenge it. A decision that a party does not have sufficient stake to sue will commonly be put in terms of the party’s lacking “standing”. For Supreme Court decisions focusing on the “standing” issue, see, e.g., County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44 (1991),Northeastern Fla. Chapter of the Associated Gen. Contractors v. City of Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656 (1993) and Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992). [Emphasis added.]

In any event Germany, Iran’s most substantial commercial partner and others who now deal with Iran, as well as Iran itself, have enjoyed substantial sanctions relief for long enough that the process is broken to the point that U.S. efforts to revive useful sanctions would likely be ineffective. According to an article at FARS News Agency, an Iranian source, posted on November 16th,

Chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said imposing sanctions against Tehran is an already failed policy.

“The sanctions imposed on Iran are a failed policy; the sanctions tool has never been able to make the Iranian nation withdraw from its righteous positions,” Boroujerdi said in a meeting with new Italian Ambassador to Tehran Mauro Conciatori on Sunday. [Emphasis added.]

“Sanctions have only resulted in ample financial loss for the European industrial and trade companies,” he added. [Emphasis added.]

The article claiming that a Republican controlled Congress can dash Obama’s hopes for a nuke deal with Iran also suggests that it can pledge “military support for Israel if it decides to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.” It can certainly do that. However, just as the Obama administration has refused to enforce or simply ignored aspects of other legislation, it can refuse to enforce or simply ignore that pledge as well.

With the exception of a possible — but far from certain — prompt and effective Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuke facilities, the mess has gone too far for effective action. Israel, which rarely brags about what she can or intends to do, has quite properly been rather coy about the resources she can use against Iran. So have possible allies in the Middle East concerning such help as they may be willing and able to provide. However, Israel probably has substantial electromagnetic pulse (EMP) capabilities which could be used to damage Iran’s command and control facilities substantially.

The attack could be carried out using a nuclear warhead detonated after launch by one of Israel’s Jericho III missiles at high-altitude over north central Iran.

EMP affects computers and other electronics and would disrupt critical infrastructure that relies on electronics and electricity, such as communications, transportation, and other networks.

The burst would create “no blast or radiation effects on the ground,” the article stated.

“Coupled with cyber-attacks, Iranians would not know it happened except for a massive shutdown of the electric power grid, oil refineries, and a transportation gridlock,” the article said.

“Food supply would be exhausted and communication would be largely impossible, leading to economic collapse. Similarly, the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Fordo, Natanz, and widely scattered elsewhere, would freeze for decades.”

Iran more than likely also has substantial EMP capabilities, so unless Israel uses her own first, and sooner than Iran anticipates, it will be too late.

Summary and Conclusions

Sanctions may well have prompted Iran to agree to discuss a nuke deal with P5+1. However, the negotiations have done little beyond diminishing those sanctions to the point of ineffectiveness, while giving Iran ample time, incentive and opportunity to continue research on, and implementation of, its nuke plans. If preventing Iran from continuing its development of nukes had been the objective, or even a substantial objective, Iran’s military facilities and advances on nuke development would have been central to any “interim agreement.” Far from being central, they were not even peripheral.

From the beginning, as contended here, here, here and elsewhere, the “Grubered” interim agreement and White House Summary of it have given Iran every possible advantage and shielded its military facilities from effective scrutiny.

Some elections have consequences. Obama’s 2012 election had very unfortunate consequences. However, the 2014 elections will probably have few if any beneficial consequences with respect to the Iran Scam and come January 2017 it will probably be too late should effective action then be attempted.

If, as seems likely, a nuke deal with Iran, good for Iran and bad for the most of the rest of world is signed, it now appears that the only possible effective solution with a decent chance of success will be prompt military action by Israel, in conjunction with her temporary and therefore uncertain allies in the Middle East which are opposed to Iranian nukes.

I am well aware of the possible adverse consequences of such a strike, including extreme actions that Russia and her allies might take in response. However, the possibility of mutually assured destruction worked in the past and should work again. Russia, et al, unlike Iran, are not compelled by a barbaric religion to bring to the world Armageddon and the arrival of the Twelfth Imam. They want power, not death. If they and their enemies are obliterated, their current power and hopes of increasing it would be destroyed along with them.

Categories: Iranian nukes, Islam, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, U.S. Congress
Tags: Congress, Iran, Iran Scam, Israel, Nukes, sanctions on Iran

Comments: 10 Comments

US on Demolishing Homes: No in Israel, Yes in Egypt

November 16, 2014

US on Demolishing Homes: No in Israel, Yes in Egypt, The Jewish Press, Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, November 15, 2014

egypt-destroys-homes-in-Rafah-screenshot-press-tv

US has no problem with Egypt’s bombing hundreds of homes of Gaza civilians but can’t stand to see Israel destroy a terrorist’s home. Photo Credit: Screenshot

(Please see also Abbas aide: Execute Palestinians who sell land to Israelis. Oh, well. — DM)

Psaki is explicitly saying that Egypt has the right to tear down not one home, and not dozens of homes but hundreds of homes of civilians – not terrorists – in Sinai because it is an act of self-defense. In Israel it is “counterproductive.”

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The same U.S. State Dept. that is condemning Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian Authority terrorists’ homes sanctions the same destruction by Egypt of hundreds of civilians’ homes in the Sinai.

State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Thursday said it was “counterproductive” for Israel to demolish the homes of terrorists.

When asked Friday about Egypt’s al-Sisi regime’s demolitions of Sinai homes, whose owners’ only crime was living in an area that Egypt wants as a buffer zone with Gaza, she condoned Egypt’s action.

“There have been some serious security challenges in the Sinai,” Psaki said. “We respect Egypt’s concern about their security in the area and support its right to self-defense. We also expect that they will ensure the rights of those being displaced are respected and that they are adequately compensated. That continues to be what we have conveyed to the Egyptians.”

And how about Israel’s right to self-defense?

“So you don’t regard that as being counterproductive to the cause of peace or fighting extremism, these home demolitions?” in the Sinai, asked Associated Press reporter Matt Lee. “You would not argue that – I mean, you say that there are serious security problems in the Sinai for the Egyptians. Are there not also serious security concerns and security problems for the Israelis?…”It’s not okay for the Israelis to demolish homes, but it’s okay for the Egyptians to demolish homes?”

Psaki dug up the expired “borders’ argument, to wit:

“Well, it’s an entirely different scenario, Matt. Egypt is not predetermining what borders would be by taking these steps. It’s a different scenario….We believe it’s counterproductive to their stated goals. In Egypt, we understand their concerns about their security. We’ve seen recent threats to that in the Sinai, as you all have reported on. I think I’m going to leave it at that. They’re different scenarios.”

No, no, Madame Psaki, you may not leave it at that.

She is explicitly saying that since the Obama administration backs the Palestinian Authority claim that half of Jerusalem belongs to a country that does not exist, Israel does not have the right to try to deter terror by tearing down the homes of a terrorist who killed an American-Israeli baby in a vehicle terror attack at a Jerusalem light rail station last month.

She is saying Israel may not send a warning to future terrorists by destroying the home of the attempted murderer who last month shot at point-blank range Rabbi Yehuda Glick for wanting the right for Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.

Psaki is explicitly saying that Egypt has the right to tear down not one home, and not dozens of homes but hundreds of homes of civilians – not terrorists – in Sinai because it is an act of self-defense. In Israel it is “counterproductive.”

Thousands of people on the Egyptian side of Rafah were displaced three weeks ago when the Egyptian army dynamited their homes to create the buffer zone that Egypt hopes will help put a stop to the surge of weapons and terrorists into the Sinai from Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The difference between Israel and Egypt, according to the Obama administration, is that Israel has no right to deter terror if terrorists are killing Jews because of the assumed motive of securing borders for the Palestinian Authority and which Washington has pre-determined and which preclude negotiations that the same Obama administration tries to make believe exist.

Categories: Demolitions, Egypt, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Obama
Tags: Demolitions, Egypt, Israel, Siani

Comments: 1 Comment

[Satire] Iran’s Letter to Obama: Thanks for the Nukes!

November 15, 2014

Iran’s Letter to Obama: Thanks for the Nukes! Israel Today, Noah Beck, November 14, 2014

131015_iran

Dear President Obama,

You’ve been a great friend for the last six years and, to express our appreciation, we’d like to acknowledge some of your many helpful actions:

1) In 2009, our presidential election results were so dubious that millions of brave, pro-democracy protesters risked their lives to demonstrate throughout our country. When our Basij paramilitary force brutalized them, you kept your response irrelevantly mild for the sake of “engaging” us. That surely helped Iranians understand the risks of protesting our “free” election of 2012 (involving our eight handpicked candidates). It was indeed a very orderly rubberstamp.

2) After eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we KNEW you’d fall for the smiles of his successor, President Hassan Rouhani! Human rights abuses have actually worsened under his rule and his polished charm only makes him better at duping the world into acquiescing to our nukes, so we LOVE how you’ve overlooked these facts.

3) You’ve been unilaterally weakening the sanctions against us by simply not enforcing them (which reassures us that you’re desperate to avoid any real confrontation).

4) You’ve threatened to thwart any Congressional attempt to limit your nuclear generosity by simply lifting sanctions without Congressional approval. Good stuff!

5) You isolated Israel on the issue of how close we are to a nuclear capability – we love how your estimates are so much laxer than theirs are!

6) The diplomatic snubs and betrayals of Israel by your administration have been EPIC. We couldn’t have asked for more – from your humiliation of Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2010, to Secretary of State John Kerry’s betrayal of Israel during Operation Protective Edge, to calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit” a few weeks ago, without even apologizing later. We found it hilariously ironic that your administration’s accusation of Israeli cowardice was made anonymously! And, FYI, Netanyahu is actually the only leader in the world with the guts to defy us, respond to Syrian border violations, enforce his own declared lines, etc., so we thought that this was particularly priceless.

7) Speaking of enforcing red lines, we LOVE how you backed off yours, after our Syrian buddy, Basher Assad, used chemical weapons on his own people. That was a very helpful signal to everyone that we need not take your threats too seriously (contrary to those scary words you issued in 2012 about how stopping our nukes militarily was still an option, unlike containment, and how you don’t bluff). But we understood back then that you were trying to get re-elected, so we didn’t take it personally.

8) It was adorably naive of you (in 2011) to request so politely that we give back your drone that went down on Iranian soil. In fact, your request was so quaint that we couldn’t resist recently showcasing our knock-off based on that drone.

9) Fortunately, you don’t take our Supreme Leader Khamenei seriously when he tweets out his plan for destroying Israel (why let our true motives get in the way of a fantastic nuclear deal, right)?

10) We LOVE how you obsess over Israel building apartments in Jerusalem because it’s the perfect distraction from our deal.

11) You’ve been pressuring Israel to retreat from more disputed territory, effectively rewarding Palestinians for launching the third missile war against Israel from Gaza in five years last summer and, more recently, the third Intifidah inside Israel in 17 years. You’re almost as awesome as the European appeasers who think Palestinian bellicosity merits statehood!

12) It’s so cute of you to write us these letters asking for help against ISIS and showing us how desperately you want a nuclear deal. All we had to do was hint at an ISIS-for-nukes exchange and you got so excited!

13) You’re smart to go behind everyone’s backs when dealing with us. That’s a bummer that your top aide, Ben Rhodes, was caught saying how a nuclear accord with us is as important to you as “healthcare.” But we’ve got the perfect slogan to sell our deal to Americans: “If you like your nukes, you can keep them.”

14) What’s really awesome about the deal that we’re “negotiating” is that it allows us to continue nuclear enrichment but makes it even harder for Israel to take any military action against our nuclear program. And our agreement will give the press even more ammunition against such an attack. We already know about the world media’s anti-Israel bias – they can’t even get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct. Even we were surprised at how The Guardian writes accurate headlines when Canada suffers an Islamist car attack but not when Israel does). So if you accept our nukes and Israel then attacks them, the media will be even harsher on Israel (even though the world will be silently relieved, if Israeli courage succeeds at neutralizing what scared everyone else).

But we kind of feel sorry for you, because nobody takes you seriously and you’re a lame duck now. Putin is unabashedly conquering neighboring countries while going all Cold War on you with 40 provocative security incidents involving Western nations and Russian flights into the Gulf of Mexico (despite your promise of greater flexibility after your 2012 reelection). The North Koreans are closer than ever to building nuclear missiles. China is dangerously testing disputed borders with India, growing increasingly assertive in the contested Spratly archipelago, and stealing your sensitive defense and corporate data. Oh, and ISIS has grown into a veritable jihadi lovefest thanks to your excellent strategy against them.

Indeed, your foreign policy seems like a massive FAIL, but we’re super ready to help! Your trusted Russian friends have suggested continuing our nuclear talks past the November 24th deadline, and we’re totally down with more enrichment time (that’s another reason we’ve stonewalled the IAEA’s investigations into our nukes), so count us in on this extension like the one from last July (and any future ones). Hey, it’s good for you too: an extension (or agreement) looks so much better than calling out our manipulations and issuing more empty threats to stop us, right?

And after everyone sees the killer deal that you’re giving us, the world’s bad actors will line up to talk to you, with demands of their own that you can try to satisfy in the hope that they’ll stop opposing your national interests so much.

Overall, we appreciate you even more than we did President Carter, because getting nukes is WAY COOLER than holding 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days.

With our deepest gratitude,

Your Friends in the Iranian Regime

p.s. We’re glad you didn’t take any personal offense when one of our officials used the N-word to describe you back in 2010. He actually has nothing but respect for you, as do we.

Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.

Categories: Humor, Iran, Islamic State, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Palestinians, Rouhani, Supreme Leader
Tags: Iran, Islamic State, Israel, Netanyahu, Nukes, Palestinians, Supreme leader

Comments: 4 Comments

A deadly deadline?

November 14, 2014

A deadly deadline? Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, November 14, 2014

For one thing, the drawn-out process has provided Iran with the opportunity to spread out and better fortify its nuclear plants. For another, U.S. President Barack Obama has exhibited a negative attitude toward the endangered Jewish state, a declared ally which he treats like an enemy. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that he has told Israel, in no uncertain terms, not to launch a strike.

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Following a second day of talks between top American, European and Iranian diplomats in Oman on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry admitted that “real gaps” remain between the sides, but stressed that the negotiation partners were “working hard” toward an agreement by the end of the month.

He was referring to the self-imposed Nov. 24 deadline for signing a deal that would curb Iran’s nuclear program to a mutually satisfactory extent.

Statements emerging on the sidelines of the talks, which continued beyond Tuesday among lower-tier negotiators, indicated a degree of optimism on the possibility of progress in time to make the deadline. But the real test will take place next week in Vienna, when a final round of meetings is held to iron out differences that have prevented reaching an accord until now — unless another extension is decided upon, in the event of a stalemate.

Whatever happens, however, the outcome cannot be good.

The signing of a deal would mean that the P5+1 (the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K., France and Germany) will have succumbed to Iran’s demand that it be able to complete its “peaceful” nuclear program, unencumbered by restrictive international sanctions.

The absence of a deal would basically amount to the same thing, since Russia and the Obama administration will not cease pushing for an easing of sanctions, no matter what Iran does.

This no-win situation for the West is precisely what has been buying Iran time to build nuclear bombs.

It is also what enabled Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to receive Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s tacit consent to engage in negotiations with the world’s “infidels” whom Iran intends to subjugate.

Khamenei has had good reason to trust Rouhani’s methods. Diplomacy has not kept centrifuges from spinning or uranium from being enriched. And all the stalling has helped reduce the odds of an Israeli military strike.

For one thing, the drawn-out process has provided Iran with the opportunity to spread out and better fortify its nuclear plants. For another, U.S. President Barack Obama has exhibited a negative attitude toward the endangered Jewish state, a declared ally which he treats like an enemy. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that he has told Israel, in no uncertain terms, not to launch a strike.

If this, by itself, were not enough to embolden the Islamic republic, Obama’s latest act of groveling at the feet of the chief mullah did the trick. As was revealed last week in the Wall Street Journal, Obama sent a letter to Khamenei, in which he urged the Supreme Leader to agree to a deal by the Nov. 24 deadline, and offered to cooperate with him to defeat Islamic State.

Now, Iran has no interest in joining forces with the “Great Satan” to secure a victory over the Islamic State terrorists who are competing with it for control of a global caliphate. But it certainly enjoys bringing Obama to his knees, which is just how such an appeal on his part is interpreted.

Obama’s supplication, coupled with his repeated censure of Israel, is music to Khamenei’s ears and fodder for his sermons, speeches and social media posts.

On Sunday, he tweeted a link to a chart detailing nine ways to ensure Israel’s elimination. Among these was the urgency of arming the West Bank — “like Gaza” — to confront Israel militarily.

With weakness oozing from the White House and strong support being issued from Iran, the Palestinian Authority is feeling especially empowered, as is indicated by the intifada it is currently waging against innocent Israelis.

The one aspect of the bigger picture that threatens to alter the status quo is the Republican sweep of the Senate on Nov. 4. It will now be almost impossible for Obama, already a lame duck, to get on with his job of wreaking havoc on America.

But, stripped of his domestic abilities, Obama is certain to shift his focus to foreign affairs. Desperate to go down in history as a leader with a legacy, he wants to sign a deal with Iran (and force Israel to establish a Palestinian state) before the end of his term in 2016.

With the changing of the guard at the Senate taking place in January, he is in an even bigger hurry to do so. Unfortunately — and for the first time since entering into phony negotiations with the West — Iran, too, may be anxious to reach a deal.

Fearing a tougher stance from a Republican-dominated Congress, the regime in Tehran is now calculating the wisdom of continuing to postpone an agreement. Since it has no intention of honoring any commitment involving a reduction of its nuclear capabilities, or of having its facilities monitored, it just might decide that it is preferable to sign a worthless piece of paper than risk the wrath of the Republicans.

With all this in mind, the events of the coming week in Vienna should be observed with great trepidation.

Categories: Iranian nukes, Israel, Obama, P5+1, Rouhani
Tags: Iran, Israel, nuclear bombs, Nukes

Comments: 1 Comment

Obama desperate for a deal with Iran

November 14, 2014

Obama desperate for a deal with Iran, Israel Hayom, Isi Leibler, November 14, 2014

(Is Obama getting advice from Mr. Gruber on how to lie effectively to the “stupid” American public? Please see also To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel.– DM)

[T]he administration continues to grovel in an effort to appease the Iranians. It is widely believed that the unprecedented hostility recently directed against Israel, especially the statement that Israel had lost the opportunity of exploiting the military option to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power, was primarily for the benefit of Khamenei.

Under pressure, following the public release of his letter to Khamenei, Obama has stepped back, stating that there is still a big gap and that “we may not be able to get there.” He added, “Our number one priority with respect to Iran is making sure they don’t get a nuclear weapon.” Even Obama’s closest associates would question their president’s credibility when he voices such statements.

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Despite statements to the contrary, the Obama administration appears determined to achieve an “agreement” with Iran and seems willing to breach its repeated undertakings that it would never countenance Iran becoming a nuclear power. With the mullahs’ increased intransigence as they sense the desperation of the Americans to avoid a confrontation, the Nov. 24 deadline will probably be extended, enabling the centrifuges to continue spinning while the P5+1 countries engage in fruitless negotiations with the duplicitous Iranians.

The Iranians have mocked Secretary of State John Kerry’s overtures, including his secret appeals to them to coordinate with the U.S. in opposing the Islamic State group. Speaking from a podium bedecked with banners blazing “America cannot do a damn thing,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei boasted that the “Great Satan’s” efforts to bring Iran to its knees had failed, and that U.S. President Barack Obama lacked the courage for a military confrontation. Ali Younesi, senior adviser to “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani, referred to Obama as “the weakest of U.S. presidents,” whose six years in office were “humiliating.”

Nevertheless, the administration continues to grovel in an effort to appease the Iranians. It is widely believed that the unprecedented hostility recently directed against Israel, especially the statement that Israel had lost the opportunity of exploiting the military option to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power, was primarily for the benefit of Khamenei.

The London Times claimed that American and Iranian officials have even been discussing the opening of a U.S. trade office in Tehran.

The frenzied, initially covert, efforts to engage the support of Iran in the struggle against Islamic State — despite Iran being designated by the U.S. as a terrorist state — has further undermined the little credibility the U.S. retains with the moderate Sunni states, considered until recently as staunch allies.

Obama’s deception of his allies was further exemplified when it was disclosed that he had written a secret letter to Khamenei pleading with him to reach an accommodation. This, the fourth letter he had written to the ayatollah — all of which were ignored — was an explicit breach of undertaking to his allies that any independent initiatives would be preceded by consultations.

Even one of Obama’s favorite in-house journalists, Jeffrey Goldberg, felt impelled to remark that the “most recent letter was delivered at an unfortunate moment in the run-up to the putatively climactic negotiations between Iran and the world powers” when the Obama administration had already conceded many of Iran’s demands. Goldberg concluded his column by stating: “The Iranians originally came to the negotiating table because U.S.-led sanctions were hurting them badly. I understand the need for give and take negotiations, but I’m getting worried that the U.S. is focused too much on the first half of that equation.”

The U.S. administration has already given approval to Iran to enrich uranium, effectively making it a nuclear threshold state. While the global powers agreed to enable the Iranians to have 1,000 centrifuges to process material required to create nuclear fuel, the Iranians have outrightly refused to dismantle any of the 19,000 centrifuges they have already accumulated. It is understood that Iran is already in the position to accrue sufficient enriched fissile material to become a nuclear power within a few months, if it so desires. The U.S. has indicated that it would be willing to sign off on a deal that would extend this breakout phase to one year, hardly reassuring to the region.

The Iranians also displayed utter contempt toward the U.S. by violating the interim accord and failing to disclose an enrichment facility in Qom and even denying access to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to military sites and nuclear scientists engaged in research. Clearly, the duplicitous Islamist regime would continue to circumvent any agreement that is not rigorously monitored and enforced — a procedure that the Iranians have already made clear they will never accept.

While the outcome of this issue will have immense global implications, especially in the Middle East, Israel is the country most affected. The Iranian regime’s hatred of Israel is messianic. It openly proclaims its commitment to destroy the Jewish state. Coinciding with Obama’s groveling letter to him, Khamenei tweeted a message stating that the only way to stop the “Israeli crimes” was to “annihilate” the “barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel.”

Israel cannot accept the prospect of such a fanatical terrorist regime becoming a nuclear threshold state.

Under pressure, following the public release of his letter to Khamenei, Obama has stepped back, stating that there is still a big gap and that “we may not be able to get there.” He added, “Our number one priority with respect to Iran is making sure they don’t get a nuclear weapon.” Even Obama’s closest associates would question their president’s credibility when he voices such statements.

The question is whether at this advanced stage, the P5+1 nations, desperate to appease and reach an accord with the terrorist state at any price, can still be deterred from capitulating.

The key rests with the United States. The extraordinary landslide victory by the Republicans at the midterm elections — clearly a vote of no confidence in Obama — provides some hope.

Yet it should be noted that within the American political system, the president has primary control of foreign relations.

The Republican-controlled Congress and Senate can certainly pass resolutions, but that will not necessarily limit the White House in this arena of foreign policy. In addition, realizing that on the domestic scene his hands will be restricted by Congress, Obama might even decide to intensify his foreign policy activities. The principal areas are likely to include the embrace of the Iranians and possibly trying to impose a settlement on the Israelis with the Palestinians.

However, in relation to Iran, the president must persuade Congress to rescind the sanctions it originally legislated. Obama may constitutionally override the congressional sanctions and unilaterally suspend enforcement, but that could lead to a major confrontation with Congress.

Needless to say, if a reasonable agreement is achieved, it will be endorsed by Congress. But all indications suggest that Obama is promoting an Alice-in-Wonderland deal with the Iranians, which Congress should reject.

The incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already stated unequivocally that the Senate will review any deal with Iran and ensure that “any comprehensive agreement concerning the Iranian nuclear program, both protects the national security of the United States and recognizes Israel’s own defense as a security partner of our country.”

At this critical time, American Jews and friends of Israel should exert all their influence to convince the administration and a bipartisan Congress that appeasing the Iranian mullahs will have horrific long-term consequences and must be avoided. They should mount a powerful public campaign to demonstrate the extent of the catastrophe the government would cause should it appease this evil terrorist regime, which in the absence of becoming a nuclear state, is likely in time to implode because of the growing opposition from its own young people and the middle class.

If the current U.S. desperation to avoid a confrontation enables the Iranian terrorist state to achieve a nuclear threshold level, it is likely to have far worse long-term global repercussions than Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis at Munich which led to World War ll.

Categories: Iran, Iranian nukes, Israel, Obama, P5+1
Tags: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran, Israel, Nukes

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To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel

November 13, 2014

To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel, Dan Miller’s Blog, Dan Miller, November 13, 2014

This is a guest post by Imam Mohamed allah-Dork, chairman of the Washington Islamist Coalition for Peace and Prosperity (WICPAP). Although it might appear to be satire it is not, because he articulates, far more candidly than most, the objectives of the “progressive” Obama Administration. I found him with the assistance of (another) imaginary “friend,” the Highly Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the Great State of ~~Confusion~~ Utopia, where happy unicorns frolic endlessly in the service of Obama.

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Hatred of Israel is among our Dear Leader Obama’s most effective weapons against those who oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He has made heroic efforts to encourage and use it, with help from the progressive media and His other friends.

Because of the wise efforts of Our Dear Leader and His brilliant Secretary of State, hatred of Israel has increased in recent years. This has been due, in large part, to Israel’s continuing and patently unreasonable refusals to commit national suicide by agreeing to all of the righteous demands of Palestinian Authority President Abbas, as Obama and Kerry have also demanded. Peaceful Palestinians have responded to Israel’s malicious refusals through non-violent protests resulting in the death or injury of Jewish terrorists, accidentally run over, stabbed or shot.

Israeli Terrorists

Jewish Terrorists

The beautiful song embedded above was recently augmented by a new Palestinian musical offering including wholesome family-oriented lyrics.

I am so proud of the composers, singers and musicians that I cry whenever I watch the video!

According to a specious article at a right-wing propaganda site called PJ Media,

What has evoked this enthusiasm is a spate of murderous Palestinian attacks on Israelis over the past few weeks. The fatalities have been a three-month-old Israeli girl and a 22-year-old Ecuadorian woman, both killed in a car-ramming attack in Jerusalem; a 38-year-old Israeli Druze border patrol captain killed in another car-ramming attack in Jerusalem; a 20-year-old off-duty Israeli soldier stabbed to death in Tel Aviv on Monday; and a 26-year-old Israeli woman stabbed to death beside a Judea community that same day.

That is absurd. They were no more “murdered,” than are filthy dogs which are righteously slaughtered because they are dangers to society at large.

Unless Israel’s refusal to commit national suicide is condemned world-wide, undue attention will focus on the peace loving Islamic Republic of Iran and its legitimate goal of having nuclear weapons to bring Islamic peace to all who desire it. Israel opposes Iran’s quest for Islamic peace through nukes and therefore selfishly rejects it.

Hatred is irrational and bad, except that directed at genocidal, apartheid Israel and others who fail to embrace Islam. Hatred of them is rational and good. Just as hatred of Israel must be encouraged to the extent possible, so must the ~~stupidity~~ great credulity of the American people be fed and used for Progressive purposes, as it was fed and used to give them the blessings of superior health care.

Lies, obfuscation and secrecy for good purposes as praised by our Dear Leader’s consultant Jonathan Gruber, such as the passage of ObamaCare, are good because they are necessary. Leading the way, our Dear Leader promised to have the most transparent administration in history.

It was all diversionary symbolism, of course, because truth, clarity, transparency and accountability in pursuit of bad objectives — such as defeat of our Dear Leader’s policies — are intolerable because it is racist to oppose Him. Also, they might succeed.

That brings us to our Dear Leader’s dominant role in the P5+1 negotiations with The Islamic Republic of Peace Everlasting, Iran.

Some warmongering, racist Neanderthals blither that On Iran, No One Can Afford to Be Wilfully Blind.

It is more than simply unfortunate that Western policymakers look at Iran and appear to see only what they want to see. They heap praise on progress in the nuclear negotiations without looking at the actual content. They tune into televised smiles and reasonable-sounding public statements from the Rouhani administration and tune out the bombastic threats, insults and anti-Western rhetoric that invariably accompanies them. They push for large-scale rapprochement with Iran on the apparent assumption that its crimes will disappear if we somehow pretend they don’t exist. [Emphasis added.]

But these wishful thinkers are in the corridors of power in Washington and Westminster. Although ISIS has grown stronger thanks to the sectarian conflict that Iran has helped create, these unrealistic optimists would imply that somehow Iran is our best hope for defeating this menace. So they give in to Iranian intransigence in the nuclear talks by senselessly giving away more and more leverage. [Emphasis added.]

Make no mistake, Tehran’s theocratic rulers are very well aware of this “pie-in-the-sky” illogicality. Indeed, they are counting on it. The regime’s officials are so confident in our diplomatic vulnerability that they have been trying to use the crisis in Iraq not only to obtain unearned concessions in the nuclear domain, but also to pressure the U.S., the U.K. and their allies to modify their stance against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad in Syria. [Emphasis added.]

Nonsense! Iran needs nuclear weapons to pursue its peaceful, humanitarian goals and, with our Dear Leader’s help, will get (or keep) them! Life will then be better for everyone who matters.

No deal with Iran will be finalized unless all of Iran’s righteous demands are met. Unless ample lies and obfuscations are spoon-fed to the American public to minimize the consequences of Iran’s victory, the deal may well be opposed. Lies and obfuscation were needed to pass ObamaCare, even with solid Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. A deal with Iran is even more important. Our Dear Leader’s wise consultant, Jonathan Gruber, knows this very well and so does our Dear Leader.

Fortunately, a Washington think tank is taking the lead to counter the silly stuff spouted by racists.

A leading liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., has begun enlisting its associates in an “all-hands-on-deck effort to support” the Obama administration as it seeks to ink a nuclear deal with Iran by the end of the month, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Truman National Security Project, a nonprofit think tank with ties to the administration, is assembling a “crack team of writers” to flood national and local media outlets with articles supporting the White House’s efforts before the details of a final nuclear deal have even emerged, according to internal emails sent by the organization to its listserv. [Emphasis added.]

“Our community absolutely must step up and not cede the public narrative to neocon hawks that would send our country to war just to screw the president,” Graham F. West, Truman’s writing and communications associate, wrote in a recent email to the organization’s listserv. [Emphasis added.]

Pay no attention to insane mumblings by the editor of this subversive blog. He has long opposed what he refers to as the Iran Scam and recently wrote this racist diatribe against our own Dear Leader and His quest for peace everlasting. If this sick cartoon isn’t racist, then I don’t know what is.

Our Dear Leader has already accomplished countless wonderful things to establish His magnificent legacy. Here are just a few:

He is the first African American President of the United States.

The award of His Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009, a mere nine months after He became the President of the United States. No other President has accomplished that.

He compelled passage of the Affordable Care Act during His first term in office.

He has already issued more crucial executive decrees than any former President.

He has consistently condemned the apartheid, illegitimate state known as Israel.

Miller even contends, speciously, that Iran’s alleged human rights abuses and alleged support for world-wide terrorism should be considered by the esteemed P5+1 negotiators under our Dear Leader’s helpful guidance. That, like all of his other suggestions, would elevate facts, transparency and accountability for a bad purpose over lies, obfuscation and non-accountability for a good purpose. What great sage once wrote “the truth shall make you flee?” He was right. Truth would make many Americans flee from a deal with Iran, and we need their unthinking support to show that, despite recent election results, they reject racism and therefore still love, respect and have unbounded confidence in our Dear Leader.

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Editor’s comments

In an effort to help Imam Mohamed allah-Dork present his ideas most candidly and therefore effectively, I was pleased to provide the You Tube videos.

I agree with allah-Dork’s thesis that lies and obfuscation are as necessary to secure public approval of a nuke deal with Iran as they were to secure passage of ObamaCare. A nuke deal with Iran would be even worse than ObamaCare.

It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to repeal ObamaCare outright if for no reason other than that Obama would veto any bill repealing it. However, it is possible that the Supreme Court may deal ObamaCare a fatal blow if it finds that subsidies for customers of ObamaCare exchanges were clearly intended, and stated by the Congress, to be available only for customers of State, not Federal, exchanges.

Once Iran gets (or keeps) nukes, there will be no way for Congress to repeal the agreement, no way for the Supreme Court to overrule it and no way to force Iran to get rid of its nukes. That Iran may get rid of some of them voluntarily — by using them — offers no comfort at all.

Israel, the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East, has served as a useful distraction from the violation of even the most basic of human rights throughout the rest of the region. She continues to respect and implement those rights despite the Obama Administration’s increasing rejection of them and its refusal to take them into account when dealing with other nations. Iran is perhaps the worst human rights violator in the region as well as the most prolific sponsor of Islamic terrorism. As the Obama Administration ignores blatant human rights violations by other nations, it fantasizes that Israel is a gross violator and amplifies its fantasies at every opportunity.

Obama and His cohorts have learned the lessons taught by Mr. Gruber very well and have used them with success. Here is an excerpt from an article by Jonathan Turley, a liberal in the old fashioned sense of the word. He has often supported the ends which Obama has sought to achieve while opposing the methods He has used and continues to use.

In fairness to Gruber, he is again being honest about what happened in the passage of ACA and speaking as an academic. However, such machinations are rarely confirmed by high-level consultants or officials. The ACA was pushed through by a muscle vote on a handful of votes while the Administration made claims that he later had to admit were misleading at best, such as the President’s repeated assurance that citizens could keep your current insurance policy if you liked it. There was a great deal of cynicism and misleading representations made during the ACA debates — reflecting a deep-seated contempt for the intelligence of the American voter. Gruber however seems to celebrate the success in using what he viewed as the stupidity of citizens, to quote his earlier comments, to secure passage of the ACA. It is the triumph of the ends over the means — the mantra of Beltway denizens who view more principled actors as naive chumps. What is shocking for many outside of the Beltway is of course the moral relativism and cynicism reflected in such comments, but Gruber is the norm in Washington. He is the face of the consequentiality morality that has long governed this city. [Emphasis added.]

What is different is that he admits it.

Obama, et al, have consistently applied Gruber principles to the Iran Scam and will continue to do so in seeking public support for any nuke deal with Iran. They will also continue to obfuscate and lie about the Israeli situation to distract attention from what they are doing, relying on their perceptions of the “stupidity” of the American public.

Categories: Antisemitism, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Palestinians, Rouhani
Tags: Iran, Islam, Israel, Nukes

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Palestinian song glorifies terror trend of driving into crowds

November 11, 2014

Palestinian song glorifies terror trend of driving into crowds, Fox News, Paul Alster, November 11, 2014

(Why won’t “apartheid” Israel be reasonable, as Obama demands, and commit suicide? — DM)

palpic2

Images in Palestinian media glorify terrorists who drive their cars into crowds of innocent Israelis. (PalWatch.org)

The disturbing Palestinian trend of driving into crowds – dubbed “vehicular terrorism” by the Israeli government – has been celebrated in a twisted new hit song called “Run Over the Settler.”

The car attacks, coupled with random stabbings that have occurred with frightening frequency in recent weeks, have sparked fears of a new “intifada,” or uprising, in Israel. But in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, the attacks are being glorified in song, and in the words of leaders.

“Run them over, burn the next in line,” goes the song, sung by Anas Garadat and Muhammad Abu Al-Kayed and translated by Palestinian Media Watch. “Don’t leave a single settler. Wait for them at the intersection. Let the settler drown in red blood.”

The car attacks began on Oct. 22, when a Palestinian named Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi slammed his car into a crowded train station in Jerusalem in an apparently intentional act that killed a 3-month-old Israeli-American baby and an Ecuadorian woman. Last Thursday, Palestinian and known Hamas operative Ibrahim Al-Akari rammed a van into a group of pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing a police officer, and on Monday morning, two terrorist attacks occurred hours apart, leaving one woman dead and several others injured. The attacker in the second incident, who stabbed three people at a bus station, had originally intended to use his vehicle as a weapon, according to reports.

In the song, the apparently accidental death of a 2-month-old Palestinian girl is used as justification for the intentional attacks. In that case, the Israeli driver reportedly even called for an ambulance for the stricken child and her brother.

Israeli Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the attacks have prompted extra measures to safeguard the public.

“Extra police units have been mobilized in different areas with the emphasis on Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, following yesterday’s attack there,” Rosenfeld told FoxNews.com. “We have also stepped up Border Police operations around Palestinian areas such as Nablus, Bethlehem, and Hebron, and there is increased security being implemented on a ground level, including regular patrols and road blocks.”

But stopping Palestinian terrorists from suddenly veering onto sidewalks and striking with easily concealed knives is a daunting task, Rosenfeld acknowledged.

“We’re working both on an intelligence level and an operational level,” Rosenfeld said. “The intelligence level consists of finding potential suspects before they manage to reach the streets, and on an operational level we have larger numbers of undercover officers in public places ahead of time, that can immediately respond and react when necessary.”

He also confirmed that despite the violence of the last few weeks, regular co-operation is continuing between Israeli and Palestinian police.

Not so with Palestinian media and cultural institutions, however. Local newspapers and television programs have used cartoon images to laud the killings, adding fuel to an already combustible situation.

On Monday, the Hamas-supported Al Quds University in Jerusalem proudly unveiled an exhibit glorifying Mutaz Hijazi, who attempted to assassinate the controversial Rabbi Yehuda Glick at the Begin Center in Jerusalem on Oct. 29.

Glick, who was shot four times at close range, had been in the forefront of calls for Jews to be allowed to pray freely on the Temple Mount, site of the Golden Dome and Al Aqsa Mosque, and previously of the Second Jewish Temple. Their demands, supported by only a handful of extreme right-wing politicians who have come in for heavy criticism in the Israeli mainstream for inflaming religious tensions, seek to change the status quo at the religious site that has existed since Israel gained control of Jerusalem in 1967.

Glick is recovering from his injuries, but Hijazi, a long-standing member of Islamic Jihad, was tracked down by Israeli security services and killed. He is being hailed as a heroic martyr by Palestinian media and by some Palestinian politicians who, in contrast to their Israeli counterparts, appear to be doing little publicly to ease the spiraling situation.

But while Israeli leaders have called for Glick to stifle demands to pray at the sacred site, Palestinian leaders continue to praise violent terrorists. A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently referred to terrorist killers as “heroic martyrs… saturating the land of the homeland with their pure blood and igniting the flames of rage.”

Categories: Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Islam, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jews, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Two state solution, West Bank
Tags: Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Jerusalem, Netanyahu, Palestinian media, Palestinians, West Bank, Yehuda Glick

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The Beltway’s Syria Fairy Tales

November 11, 2014

The Beltway’s Syria Fairy Tales, National Review Online, Andrew C. McCarthy, November 11, 2014

(Please see also Inside the CIA’s Syrian Rebels Vetting Machine. — DM)

pic_giant_111114_SM_Syria-Civil-War

[T]he sensible thing at this point would be to concede that there are no viable moderate forces in Syria, and that it would be folly for us to continue pretending those forces either exist or will materialize anytime soon. But no, that would be honest . . . which is not the Obama way — nor, frankly, is it the Washington way — to end our willful blindness to the lack of moderation among Middle Eastern Muslims.

So if honesty is not an option, what to do? Simple: Let’s just pretend that al-Nusra — part of the al-Qaeda network we have been at war with for 13 years — is, yes, moderate!

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The Khorasan group, moderate rebels, and other mythical creatures

Since the outbreak of the latest Middle East war a few years back, we have been chronicling the Washington political class’s Syria Fairy Tales. In particular, there is the story line that Syria is really teeming with secular democrats and authentic moderate Muslims who would have combined forces to both overthrow Assad and fight off the jihadists if only President Obama had helped them. But his failure to act created a “vacuum” that was tragically filled by Islamist militants and gave rise to ISIS. At this point in the story, you are supposed to stay politely mum and not ask whether it makes any sense that real democrats and actual moderates would agree to be led by head-chopping, mass-murdering, freedom-stifling sharia terrorists.

In point of fact, there simply have never been enough pro-Western elements in Syria to win, no matter how much help came their way. There was never going to be a moderate, democratic Syrian state without a U.S. invasion and occupation for a decade or more, an enterprise that would be politically untenable — and, as the Iraq enterprise shows, unlikely to succeed. The “moderate rebels” had no chance against Assad unless they colluded with the Islamist militants, who are vastly superior and more numerous fighters. And they would have even less chance of both knocking off Assad and staving off the jihadists.

The Obama administration and the Beltway commentariat have done their best to obscure these brute facts. Their main tactic is to exploit the American public’s unfamiliarity with the makeup of Syria. Obama Democrats and much of the Beltway GOP continue to invoke the “moderate Syrian rebels” while steadfastly refusing to identify just who those purported “moderates” are. They hope you won’t realize that, because of the dearth of actual moderate Muslims and freedom fighters, they must count among their “moderate rebels” both the Muslim Brotherhood (which should be designated as a terrorist organization) and various other Islamist factions, including . . . wait for it . . . parts of al-Nusra — i.e., al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise.

We’ve also noted that a new wrinkle has recently been added to the Beltway’s Syria Fairy Tales: Obama’s Khorasan Fraud. In a desperate attempt to conceal the falsity of Obama’s boasts about destroying what is actually a resurgent al-Qaeda, the administration claimed that the threat to America that impelled Obama to start bombing Syria was not ISIS (supposedly just a “regional” threat), not al-Qaeda (already defeated, right?), but a hitherto unknown terrorist organization called the “Khorasan group.”

To the contrary, the Khorasan group, to the extent it exists at all, has never been a stand-alone terrorist organization. It is an internal component of al-Qaeda — specifically, an advisory board (or, in Islamic terms, a shura council) of al-Qaeda veterans who advise and carry out directives from Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s emir. During the fighting in Syria, some of these operatives were sent there by Zawahiri to conduct operations under the auspices of al-Nusra. These operations have included jihadist activity against both the United States and Assad allies, plus negotiations for a rapprochement with the Islamic State (or ISIS). The limited success of those negotiations has led to fighting among the jihadists themselves.

The ball to keep your eye on here is al-Qaeda. The al-Nusra terrorist group is just al-Qaeda in Syria. Even ISIS is just a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda. And the Khorasan group is just a top-tier group of al-Qaeda veterans doing al-Qaeda’s work in conjunction with al Nusra — i.e., al-Qaeda.

The Obama administration disingenuously emphasizes these various foreign names to confuse Americans into thinking that there are various factions with diverse agendas in Syria — that al-Qaeda is no longer a problem because Obama has already dealt with it, and what remains are sundry groups of “moderate rebels” that the administration can work with in the effort to vanquish ISIS. Meanwhile, you are supposed to refrain from noticing that Obama’s original Syrian project — remember, he wanted Assad toppled — has given way to fighting ISIS . . . the very Sunni jihadists who were empowered by Obama’s lunatic policies of (a) switching sides in Libya in order to support the jihadists against Qaddafi and (b) abetting and encouraging Sunni Muslim governments in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey to arm Sunni militias in the fight against Assad — those militias having all along included al-Qaeda elements, some of which split off to become ISIS and now threaten to bite off the very hands that once fed them.

If you thought the Khorasan fraud was just a passing fad to get Obama through the initial stages of trying to rationalize his incoherent Syria air campaign, think again.

You see, Obama continues to have a problem. Everyone knows that ISIS, the main target of U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, cannot be defeated — or even stalled much — by a mere air campaign, which has been half-hearted at best anyway. Ground forces will be needed. So the administration and Washington’s foreign-policy clerisy keep telling Americans: Never fear, there is no need for U.S. ground troops, because we can rely on “moderate rebels” to fight ISIS. But the so-called “moderates” Obama backs have been colluding with al-Qaeda (i.e., al-Nusra) for years — at least when not being routed by al-Qaeda/al-Nusra.

Now, the sensible thing at this point would be to concede that there are no viable moderate forces in Syria, and that it would be folly for us to continue pretending those forces either exist or will materialize anytime soon. But no, that would be honest . . . which is not the Obama way — nor, frankly, is it the Washington way — to end our willful blindness to the lack of moderation among Middle Eastern Muslims.

So if honesty is not an option, what to do? Simple: Let’s just pretend that al-Nusra — part of the al-Qaeda network we have been at war with for 13 years — is, yes, moderate!

But wait a second? How can we possibly pull that off when we know al-Nusra/al-Qaeda is also plotting to attack the United States and the West?

Easy: That’s why we have the “Khorasan group”!

I kid you not. Even as al-Nusra/al-Qaeda mow down any “moderate rebels” who don’t join up with them, the Obama administration is telling Americans, “No, no, no: The al-Nusra guys are really good, moderate, upstanding jihadists. The real problem is that awful Khorasan group!”

Tom Joscelyn and Bill Roggio have the story at The Long War Journal:

CENTCOM draws misleading line between Al Nusrah Front and Khorasan Group

US Central Command [CENTCOM] attempted to distinguish between the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, and the so-called Khorasan Group in yesterday’s press release that detailed airstrikes in Syria.

CENTCOM, which directs the US and coalition air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, denied that the five airstrikes targeted “the Nusrah Front as a whole” due to its infighting with the Syrian Revolutionaries’ Front, but instead claimed the attacks were directed at the Khorasan Group.

“These strikes were not in response to the Nusrah Front’s clashes with the Syrian moderate opposition, and they did not target the Nusrah Front as a whole,” CENTCOM noted in its press release.

The CENTCOM statement goes a step further by implying that the Al Nusrah Front is fighting against the Syrian government while the Khorasan Group is hijacking the Syrian revolution to conduct attacks against the West.

“They [the US airstrikes] were directed at the Khorasan Group whose focus is not on overthrowing the Assad regime or helping the Syrian people,” CENTCOM continues. “These al Qaeda operatives are taking advantage of the Syrian conflict to advance attacks against Western interests.”

[Emphasis added.]

Read Tom and Bill’s entire report, which sheds light on the web of jihadist connections.

Understand, the Khorasan group is al-Nusra, which is al-Qaeda. The “moderate Syrian rebels” are neither moderate nor myopically focused on Assad and Syria. (Indeed, Syria does not even exist as the same country anymore, now that ISIS has eviscerated its border with Iraq while capturing much of its territory.) The overarching Islamic-supremacist strategy of al-Qaeda has never cared about Western-drawn borders. The ambition of al-Qaeda, like that of its breakaway ISIS faction, is to conquer both the “near” enemies — i.e., the Middle East territories not currently governed by its construction of sharia — and the West. Al-Qaeda (a.k.a. al-Nusra, a.k.a. the Khorasan group) wants to overthrow Assad, but it still regards the United States as its chief nemesis.

The Khorasan group exists only as an advisory group around Zawahiri. The Obama administration’s invocation of it to divert attention from al-Qaeda and launder al-Nusra into “moderate Syrian rebels” is sheer subterfuge.

Categories: Fairy tales, Islamic State, Khorasan group, Moderate rebels, Obama, Syria, Terrorism
Tags: Fairy tales, Islamic State, Moderate rebels, Syria

Comments: 1 Comment

Inside the CIA’s Syrian Rebels Vetting Machine

November 11, 2014

Inside the CIA’s Syrian Rebels Vetting Machine, Newsweek, Jeff Stein, November 10, 2014

(The Obama administration’s vetting of “moderate” terrorists is consistent with its vetting of Iranian nuke intentions and progress. Both would be funny were the consequences not so dangerous. — DM)

syrian-rebels-fsa

A Free Syrian Army fighter in Aleppo. Hosam Katan/Reuters

Nothing has come in for more mockery during the Obama administration’s halting steps into the Syrian civil war than its employment of “moderate” to describe the kind of rebels it is willing to back. In one of the more widely cited japes, The New Yorker’s resident humorist, Andy Borowitz, presented a “Moderate Syrian Application Form,” in which applicants were asked to describe themselves as either “A) Moderate, B) Very moderate, C) Crazy moderate or D) Other.”

After Senator John McCain unwittingly posed with Syrians “on our side” who turned out to be kidnappers, Jon Stewart cracked, “Not everyone is going to be wearing their ‘HELLO I’M A TERRORIST’ name badge.”

Behind the jokes, however, is the deadly serious responsibility of the CIA and Defense Department to vet Syrians before they receive covert American training, aid and arms. But according to U.S. counterterrorism veterans, a system that worked pretty well during four decades of the Cold War has been no match for the linguistic, cultural, tribal and political complexities of the Middle East, especially now in Syria. “We’re completely out of our league,” one former CIA vetting expert declared on condition of anonymity, reflecting the consensus of intelligence professionals with firsthand knowledge of the Syrian situation. “To be really honest, very few people know how to vet well. It’s a very specialized skill. It’s extremely difficult to do well” in the best of circumstances, the former operative said. And in Syria it has proved impossible.

Daunted by the task of fielding a 5,000-strong force virtually overnight, the Defense Department and CIA field operatives, known as case officers, have largely fallen back on the system used in Afghanistan, first during the covert campaign to rout the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s and then again after the 2001 U.S. invasion to expel Al-Qaeda: Pick a tribal leader who in turn recruits a fighting force. But these warlords have had their own agendas, including drug-running, and shifting alliances, sometimes collaborating with terrorist enemies of the United States, sometimes not.

“Vetting is a word we throw a lot around a lot, but actually very few people know what it really means,” said the former CIA operative, who had several postings in the Middle East for a decade after the 9/11 attacks. “It’s not like you’ve got a booth set up at a camp somewhere. What normally happens is that a case officer will identify a source who is a leader in one of the Free Syrian Army groups. And he’ll say, ‘Hey…can you come up with 200 [guys] you can trust?’ And of course they say yes—they always say yes. So Ahmed brings you a list and the details you need to do the traces,” the CIA’s word for background checks. “So you’re taking that guy’s word on the people he’s recruited. So we rely on a source whom we’ve done traces on to do the recruiting. Does that make sense?”

No, says former CIA operative Patrick Skinner, who still travels the region for the Soufan Group, a private intelligence organization headed by FBI, CIA and MI6 veterans. “Syria is a vetting nightmare,” he told Newsweek, “with no way to discern the loyalties of not only those being vetted but also of those bringing the people to our attention.”

A particularly vivid example was provided recently by Peter Theo Curtis, an American held hostage in Syria for two years. A U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) unit that briefly held him hostage casually revealed how it collaborated with Al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front, even after being “vetted” and trained by the CIA in Jordan, he wrote in The New York Times Magazine.

“About this business of fighting Jabhat al-Nusra?” Curtis said he asked his FSA captors.

“Oh, that,” one said. “We lied to the Americans about that.”

Concerns about the CIA’s vetting system arose long before the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, several CIA veterans told Newsweek. In Baghdad, one said, agency operatives had such thin faith in the system that they often had sweaty palms as they awaited a meeting with a newly recruited Iraqi spy—even though he had been cleared by CIA vetters—because they knew he might show up with a suicide vest under his jacket. That happened in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, when a Jordanian physician recruited by the CIA on his claim to have access to Osama bin Laden turned out to be working for Al-Qaeda. He blew himself up at a CIA base, taking out seven agency operatives as well.

That double agent had been served up by Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate, a longtime partner of the CIA in clandestine operations. Relying on close liaisons to vet spies might’ve worked well enough during the Cold War, when the CIA’s name files were meticulously updated by its small corps of Ivy-educated spies, but in the swirling chaos of the post-9/11 Middle East or South Asia, where Arabic (or Urdu, Farsi or Pashtun) names can be transliterated to English and back in endless varieties and where political allegiances are as blurry as the centuries-old colonial boundaries drawn up by bureaucrats in London and Paris, the CIA’s vetters are just not up to the task, say spy agency veterans with long experience in the region.

“For two years I managed a lot of those folks,” said one person not authorized to discuss the inner workings of the system. “A lot of them are contractors just coming out of college and don’t have a lot of experience under their belts—not in the Middle East, or the region or in Arabic.”

(The CIA declined comment on the vetting process. Navy commander Elissa Smith, speaking for the Defense Department, said in a statement that “the U.S. military has decades of experience screening foreign military forces for training. We also know the Syrian opposition better now than we did two years ago. While we cannot disclose the details of our sources and methods, we will screen thoroughly and conduct continuous monitoring.”)

American embassies around the world are open to just about anybody who wants to sign up for the FSA. “They fill out a form. You get their four-part name, their date of birth, and then their tribe and where they’re from and all that,” the former operative explained. “Their work history, if there is any. Then you take that and run your traces through all your databases—your HUMINT and SIGINT [agency acronyms for information from human spies and National Security Agency intercepts, called signals intelligence]. And then you take certain aspects of that information, and you sanitize it, and you send it by cable to your station in whatever country, and you ask for their traces on this individual, to see if anything comes up.

“The problem with that process,” the former operative continued, “is when you have a person sitting at a computer who doesn’t know how to standardize Arabic names.… They may translate it correctly, but the person typing it in may or may not know how to look for it with all the name variances that might already be in the system.”

When it came time to start vetting Syrian rebels, the CIA faced even more hurdles. When the Obama administration shuttered the American Embassy in Damascus in 2011, just as the civil war was exploding, the covert CIA station inside the building there was rolled up, too. The agency had to “make do,” as one former operative put it.

“The main problem with plans that arm and train the ‘moderates’—who ominously are moderate only in their fighting abilities,” said Skinner, “is that it assumes perfect knowledge, or ‘good enough’ knowledge, about the people being armed. When in fact there is nothing close to that.… The background info on these fighters is next to nothing and misleading, especially in Syria, where we don’t have a liaison relationship, and so the vast majority of even check-the-box vetting is by third parties [who are] out-of-the-country players with a stake in the game.

“As in Afghanistan, we can get scammed and misled at every stage with tragic results,” Skinner added. “One can’t simply build a loyal effective army thirdhand. It’s like running a want-ad that says, ‘Only Moderates Show Up for Free Weapons and Paid Training,’ and believing that is effective screening.”

“It’s one thing if you’re talking about a few dozen, or even a few hundred, individuals to run name checks or traces on,” agrees Martin Reardon, a former high-ranking FBI counterterrorism official. “But the first group of [Syrian] rebels to be trained [by the U.S.] is supposed to number upwards of 5,000. Assuming the administration can identify that many ‘moderate’ rebels to begin with, it would be virtually impossible to accomplish even minimal background checks with any degree of reliability.”

Another troubling lesson from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria is that today’s moderate can become tomorrow’s extremist. “Just because that guy may be moderate today—who may really and truly be a moderate and despise Al-Qaeda or whatever—what if that guy is seen walking into the Green Zone by his friend so-and-so at the checkpoint?” the former CIA vetting expert said. “And everybody knows those guys coming into the Green Zone are there to see the CIA, or at least that’s the assumption. So they grab his father, his son or his brother, and they take him captive. What’s to stop them from forcing him to strap a bomb to his body and walking back into the next meeting with an [improvised explosive device] on his chest?”

Or this: “What if you’re in Afghanistan and maybe you’re friends [with a contact], but tomorrow you drop a bomb on his cousin? You think he’s going to be your friend tomorrow? These things can change overnight. So this vetting idea—‘once vetted, things are all right, we’re good to go’—is crazy.”

Given such accounts, the odds of keeping loyal troops seems like panning for gold—or worse, an exercise in self-delusion. But the former CIA operative, who served in a variety of Middle Eastern posts as well as headquarters, said Obama administration officials aren’t fibbing about their faith in the system. They just may not realize it’s shot through with holes. “Most of them think they’re doing it pretty good, but they’re also not our best and brightest in terms of knowing how to vet,” this person said. “So I don’t think it’s a charade, I think it’s misguided. They don’t know how poor it actually is.”

So what? responds former senior CIA operations officer Charles Faddis, who led a covert team into Kurdistan in advance of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He says it’s time to act, no matter how shaky the foundations of the CIA’s Syrian army. “You can’t run covert action without getting your hands dirty. We can’t sit on the sidelines and have discreet, antiseptic contacts with these guys and accomplish anything,” Faddis said. “If we’re going to do this, we need to wade in.”

Caution be damned. Hold our noses and pass the ammunition.

“We need to have people on the ground. We need to give them serious money and weaponry,” Faddis said. “Unless we do that, we are never really going to have any control over what’s going on, or any real idea who we should be in bed with.”

Categories: Combat troops, Free Syrian Army, Intelligence, Islamic State, Moderate rebels, Obama, Syria, Terrorism
Tags: Intelligence, Islamic State, Moderate rebels, Syria

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