FULL MEASURE Episode 40: July 3, 2016 (P2), Rescue Interrupted – White House version via YouTube, July 5, 2016
Posted tagged ‘Obama Administration’
Dr. Jasser joins Intelligence Report discussing the importance of identifying radical Islam
July 2, 2016House Benghazi Committee Completes its Work
June 30, 2016House Benghazi Committee Completes its Work, Full Measure, Sharyl Attkisson, June 28, 2016
There’s at least one point of agreement: Despite the early claims to the contrary by the Obama administration, both Democrats and Republicans conclude security measures in Benghazi prior to the attacks “were woefully inadequate” as a result of State Department decisions.
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Republicans say White House Impeded Probe
The U.S. military response in Benghazi, Libya was perplexingly inadequate the night Americans were attacked by Islamic extremist terrorists, Sept. 11, 2012. That’s one overarching conclusion reached by two leading Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee after a year and a half long investigation.
“Until now the administration has led us to believe the military did not have assets-men or machines-close enough or ready enough to arrive in Benghazi in time to save lives,” said Republicans Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Pompeo of Kansas. “An asset that could have made a difference would have been armed drones. And as the Committee learned, it would have been relatively fast and easy to arm a drone.”
Jordan and Pompeo released a 48-page supplement to the Committee’s much lengthier official report, also out today, numbering more than 500 pages. Jordan said he and Pompeo “felt the need to draw conclusions from facts,” and address motivations behind the Obama administration’s Benghazi-related actions; something he said the Committee’s main report stopped short of doing.
Four Americans were killed in the Benghazi attacks. U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith died in the initial assault on the unsecure diplomatic compound. CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed hours later, when no U.S. military help from outside Libya came to the rescue and terrorists assaulted the nearby CIA annex. The events, as told by survivors in the annex, were portrayed in this year’s film “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”
The fallout from Benghazi is among the most enduring controversies of the Obama administration.
Read and Watch Sharyl Attkisson’s Benghazi reports:
https://sharylattkisson.com/benghazi-links/
The tragic events happened eight weeks before the 2012 Presidential election. President Obama’s re-election campaign centered, in part, on the notion that his administration had eliminated major terrorist threats. Almost immediately, when word of the attacks reached Washington D.C., all concerned understood they were acts of terrorism, according to documents and witnesses inside the Obama administration. Emails and testimony later revealed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials confirmed the attack’s terrorist origins privately with foreign officials and family members right away, but told the public and victims’ family members a different story.
Even as the assault was underway, Clinton began advancing a false narrative pointing to an anti-Islamic YouTube video rather than Islamic terrorists. Emails also revealed Obama officials censored words and phrases such as “Islamic” and “terrorism” from talking points. This was the first time there was public focus on the Obama administration’s avoidance of those terms; something it has continued to do on many occasions since.
Democrats’ Defense
Still, Democrats remain steadfast in their insistence that “administration officials did not make intentionally misleading statements about the attacks, but instead relied on information they were provided at the time under fast-moving circumstances.”
Read the Democrats’ report:
http://democrats-benghazi.house.gov/news/press-releases/democrats-issue-benghazi-report-and-release-interview-transcripts
They released their own separate report yesterday. The Democrats’ version concentrated largely on “abuses Republicans engaged in during this investigation.” Their account of the Committee’s work is, in many instances, diametrically opposed to the Republican version. Democrats largely claim the Committee simply confirmed what was already known.
“Republicans excluded Democrats from interviews, concealed exculpatory evidence, withheld interview transcripts, leaked inaccurate information, issued unilateral subpoenas, sent armed Marshals to the home of a cooperative witness, and even conducted political fundraising by exploiting the deaths of four Americans,” say Democrats.
They accuse Republican Chairman of the Committee Trey Gowdy of South Carolina of “conducting this investigation like an overzealous prosecutor desperately trying to land a front-page conviction rather than a neutral judge of facts seeking to improve the security of our diplomatic corps.”
Democrats call the House Benghazi Committee’s work “one of the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history.”
White House “Impeded the Investigation”
In the end, Republicans say the White House “impeded the investigation” making it impossible to answer all outstanding questions. “The Committee ended its work without having spoken to anyone in the White House Situation Room that night,” wrote Jordan and Pompeo. “Nor did we receive all email communication between White House staffers concerning the attack all off limits to Congress according to White House lawyers.”
President Obama’s whereabouts during the attacks and his precise actions remain unknown and publicly unaccounted for. White House press secretary Josh Earnest blocked release of White House photos taken that night that could provide insight. And the President did not respond to the Committee’s questions.
At times, the Obama administration provided false information, says the Jordan-Pompeo report. When they sought to identify and interview the military operator who guided an unmanned military drone flying over the compound while the attacks were underway, a Defense Department official claimed, “The [Defense] Department has expended significant resources to locate anyone who might match the description of this person, to no avail.” However, that claim was proven “completely false,” said Republicans. Eventually, the Department of Defense produced the witness.
As to what military assets might have been available, but were not called upon, Republicans say the Defense Department refused to fill in those blanks.
“The military has failed to provide a clear, specific inventory of every armed aircraft whether manned or unmanned that could have flown to Benghazi during the 7-plus hours from the beginning of the attack to the mortar rounds hitting the CIA Annex. Instead, the military has insisted that the Committee simply accept the word of senior military officers, some without firsthand knowledge of the events, as an adequate substitute for actual eye witnesses.”
Democrats claim, “The Defense Department could not have done anything differently on the night of the attacks that would have saved the lives of the four brave Americans killed in Benghazi, and although the military’s global posture prevented it from responding more quickly that night, improvements were made years ago.”
Obama Administration’s Public vs. Private Statements
Using government documents, Jordan and Pompeo spent many pages in their report contrasting the private and public statements of Obama officials at the time. For example, Clinton emailed her daughter at 11:23 p.m. the night of the attacks, “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda- like [sic] group[.]” But Clinton didn’t mention terrorism or al-Qaeda in her public remarks the following morning when she implied a YouTube video sparked protesters who had gotten out of control and attacked.
Meantime, Clinton’s Acting Assistant Secretary Beth Jones privately told Libya’s Ambassador to the U.S. that “the group that conducted the attacksAnsar Al Shariais affiliated with Islamic extremists.” And Clinton told Egypt’s Prime Minister in private that, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attacknot a protestwe believe the group that claimed responsibility for this was affiliated with al Qaeda.”
After then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice appeared on Sunday talk shows furthering the false narrative blaming a spontaneous protest for the violence, documents show some State Department officials reacted with shock and disbelief.
One State Department official emailed another:
“The horse has left the barn on this, don’t you think? Rice was on FIVE Sunday Morning shows yesterday saying this. Tough to walk back.”
Other State Department officials chimed in:
“[State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland] planned on walking it back just a bit, though.”
“I think Rice was off the reservation on this one.”
“Yup. Luckily there’s enough in her language to fudge exactly what she said/meant.”
“Off the reservation on five networks!”
“[White House] very worried about the politics. This was all their doing.”
But instead of correcting Rice’s statements, Republicans say the State Department may have changed its public statements to match Rice’s claims. “No one asked about it could explain the change. The change from the truth to a known false statement is troubling,” say Republicans.
Rice was later considered to succeed Clinton as Secretary of State. As controversy over her statements lingered, she withdrew her name. President Obama later appointed her to become his National Security Advisor.
No Death Penalty Sought
Republicans also criticized the fact that dozens of terrorists stormed the U.S. compounds that night and many of their images were captured on video cameras. Yet, almost four years later, only one suspect has been indicted and brought to the U.S. to face charges: Ahmed Abu Khatallah.
“The United States does know the identity of many of the attackers,” say Jordan and Pompeo. “Yet, the resources devoted to bring them to justice have proven inadequate.” Furthermore, they note, “the administration has chosen for reasons it refused to provide Congress not to seek the death penalty in this case.”
According to Democrats on the committee, “Decades in the future, historians will look back on this investigation as a case study in how not to conduct a credible investigation. They will showcase the proliferation of Republican abuses as a chief example of what happens when politicians are allowed to use unlimited taxpayer dollars and the formidable power of Congress to attack their political foes.”
There’s at least one point of agreement: Despite the early claims to the contrary by the Obama administration, both Democrats and Republicans conclude security measures in Benghazi prior to the attacks “were woefully inadequate” as a result of State Department decisions.
DHS top dog Jeh Johnson refuses to answer Senate on scrubbing terror docs of all mention of jihad and Islam
June 30, 2016Throughout this questioning by Ted Cruz, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson maintains that how the enemy is identified is unimportant, and that he and other intelligence and law enforcement top dogs know full well who the enemy is, and are busy foiling his plots. Cruz, in response, shreds Johnson, pointing to numerous ways in which the Obama administration’s politically correct willful ignorance led to danger signs being disregarded numerous times — danger signs that, if they had been heeded, might have prevented the Fort Hood, Boston, and Orlando jihad massacres.
Johnson’s irritable arrogance here, and refusal to address the facts Cruz adduces, is revealing of the mindset of the administration in its refusal to name the enemy accurately. The facts to which Cruz points show how this policy is costing lives.
How US gave Fallujah’s Sunnis into Iranian hands
June 20, 2016How the US gave Fallujah’s Sunnis into Iranian hands, DEBKAfile, June 20, 2016
Sunni refugees
In the last few days, the Western press has been full of harrowing reports on the death and destruction wrought by the Islamic State in Fallujah, western Iraq. But no media outlet is covering the still ongoing human disaster in which tens of thousands of the city’s Sunni residents are fleeing for their lives, including many elderly people, women and children. Some are escaping the intense fighting or because their homes were destroyed. But many Sunnis are fleeing in dread of their ‘liberators,” the pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias that captured the eastern and central parts of Fallujah.
These militias, the Popular Mobilization Forces and the Badar Forces, take their orders from Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Al Qods Brigades, and Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps ground forces.
There is not much difference between the barbarous acts perpetrated by ISIS and the savagery of Shiite militiamen against the Sunni dwellers of the Iraqi city. In many cases it is even worse. The pro-Iranian fighters are burning down and blowing up houses, murdering and raping women, and executing children and the elderly with bayonets or gunfire.
The Iraqi Special Republican Guard, also called the Golden Division, which participated in the capture of the city center, withdrew from the parts of Fallujah that the pro-Iranian fighters entered. They did so even though Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi had promised the US via Douglas Ollivant, White House aide in charge of Iraq, that the SRG would protect the city’s Sunni population from the Shiite militias. What happened in fact was that the Iraqi soldiers opened the door for the atrocities.
American sources in Washington and Baghdad reported on Monday, June 20, that President Barack Obama and his top aides are furious with Al-Abadi for not keeping his promise. But DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources point out that none of this would not have happened were it not for US military involvement in the war on the side of the Iranians.
The pro-Iranian militias were enabled to reach central Fallujah and overwhelm ISIS by the massive bombing raids carried out by US AV-8B Harrier II jets, which flew in from bases in the Persian Gulf, and F/A-18 Hornets from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean.
Even the urgent American calls on Prime Minister Al-Abadi over the last few days to halt the murders and other outrages against the Sunnis population were pointless. Washington knows that he has no authority over the Iranian generals or commanders of the Shiite militias for halting the slaughter.
DEBKAfile’s military and counterterrorism sources point to an especially grave repercussion coming as a direct result of the war crimes allowed to occur in Fallujah. Washington will be hard put to enlist any local Sunni allies for the capture of the two main ISIS strongholds, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
Some of the American field commanders may believe they can dispense with Sunni support and rely on other local forces, such as the Kurds, to step forward. But they must take into account that many young Sunnis, after witnessing pro-Iranian atrocities in Fallujah may well opt to side with ISIS as the lesser evil.
Andrew McCarthy: Obama Administration ‘Becoming Sharia-Adherent’ in Scrubbing ‘Islam’ and ‘ISIS’ from Orlando Jihadi’s 911 Call
June 20, 2016I think the Republican Congress has been derelict in that duty – but at the same time, I think it’s self-perpetuating in a way because I guess their ostensible reason for being derelict in their duty is that the President is popular. But perhaps the President is popular because they’re derelict in their duty.”
What they’re trying to do is purge any alternative explanation. So the administration has the position that “violent extremism,” which is what they call it, is disconnected from any credible interpretation of Islam – that Islam is singularly a “religion of peace,” and there is to be no other interpretation of it. And, therefore, anything that shows the direct nexus between Islamic doctrine and jihadist terror is to be suppressed.
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Former prosecutor and National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy appeared on Monday’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss his latest column, “Obama: Anti-Anti-Terrorist” with SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon.
When Bannon welcomed McCarthy by noting that “you basically imply there are Islamic supremacists inside the national security apparatus of the United States government,” McCarthy replied, “I hope I did more than imply it.”
McCarthy said:
I stated it outright, and think that’s pretty clear, just from some reporting that’s recently come out about Laila Alawa, a 25-year-old Syrian immigrant who’s somehow on the Homeland Security advisory council, that gives the President advice on counter-terrorism policy – a woman who said that basically 9/11 was a good thing and changed the world for good, which is just about as stunning as anything I’ve ever seen from someone who has a quasi-official government position.
“I think it should be underscored that she’s hardly singular,” McCarthy continued. “The President has been turning for advice – policy advice that has been implemented from the beginning of his administration – to leaders of Islamist organizations that are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
McCarthy said his book The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America chronicles how the Muslim Brotherhood has “very explicitly stated – and this has been proved in federal court, this is not just Andy’s speculation here – that their mission in the United States, and basically the West, but particularly the United States, is the elimination and destruction of Western civilization from within by sabotage.”
McCarthy said there was little congressional oversight of the Obama administration’s alternately clumsy and outrageous handling of the Islamist threat because “people in Congress, particularly Republicans in Congress, believe that the country has changed.”
He argued:
We always like to assume, on our side, that it’s a center-right country. In fact, it’s hard to square that with the fact that there are public opinion polls that tell us with all the abusive things that have happened, all the lawlessness that has happened – and it’s not really disputable, or credibly contestable, that there’s been lawlessness – nevertheless, President Obama has an approval rating of something in the area of 52 or 53 percent.”
He said that “political cases against abuse of power don’t just spontaneously appear,” so it is “incumbent on the people in Congress to make those cases because unlike the rest of us who don’t have political authority, it’s a responsibility of the legislative branch to rein in executive abuse.”
If Congress won’t exercise that authority, McCarthy charged, they’re “as derelict as the Executive Branch officials who are causing the lawlessness, and who are conducting themselves in a rogue way.”
“When I was a prosecutor, can you imagine how successful would I have been in prosecuting a case if I just sat at the government’s table and did nothing, while the defense lawyer did all the work?” he asked. “It’s one thing to say crimes have been committed. It’s another thing to say you have the duty to get up and prove it to the jury.”
He suggested:
I think the Republican Congress has been derelict in that duty – but at the same time, I think it’s self-perpetuating in a way because I guess their ostensible reason for being derelict in their duty is that the President is popular. But perhaps the President is popular because they’re derelict in their duty.”
McCarthy said the announcement by Attorney General Loretta Lynch that references to Islam and ISIS will be scrubbed from transcripts of jihadi Omar Mateen’s call to 911 during the Orlando attack was clear evidence that “the government is becoming sharia-adherent, and the Left is using the same tactic with respect to law enforcement against radical Islamic extremism that it uses in the area of what they call ‘climate change.’”
“That is, they have an official version of events, which may be part of a counter-universe, but it’s their story and they’re sticking to it,” he elaborated, adding:
What they’re trying to do is purge any alternative explanation. So the administration has the position that “violent extremism,” which is what they call it, is disconnected from any credible interpretation of Islam – that Islam is singularly a “religion of peace,” and there is to be no other interpretation of it. And, therefore, anything that shows the direct nexus between Islamic doctrine and jihadist terror is to be suppressed.
McCarthy noted the absurdity of the situation by looking back to his time as a prosecutor in the 1990s, when he proved “exactly that connection” in court: “that is, that there are these commands to violence in the Koran, they’re mediated by these influential jihadist sharia jurists, and then acts of terrorism get carried out.”
“For doing that, the Justice Department gave me the highest award that the Justice Department gives out,” he recalled, adding:
Now, what I proved in court is deemed to be something that’s so improper that it can’t go in the Justice Department’s official account of what happened, in what was obviously a jihadist attack. So we’ve gone from rewarding people who demonstrate what the truth is to suppressing the truth and making the people who would expose it persona non grata.
U.S. Attorney General Scrubs Orlando 911 Transcripts
June 20, 2016U.S. Attorney General Scrubs Orlando 911 Transcripts, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, June 20, 2016
In an interview with NBC, we learned from the U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch that only a partial transcript of the 911 calls made by the Orlando shooter will be released by the FBI to the public.
Reminiscent of other administration scrubbings, what will be omitted from the transcripts will be references to the motive of the shooter – namely, his pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State as well as his Islamist grievances about American foreign policy vis-à-vis Muslim countries.
“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda,” Lynch said. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State].”
Yet earlier when announcing the release of the transcripts, Lynch told CNN, “It’s been our goal to get as much information into the public domain as possible, so people can understand, as we do, possibly what motivated this killer, what led him to this place, and also provide us with information.”
When pressed by CNN what those transcripts will tell us about his motivation, Lynch calmly answers, “He talked about his pledges of allegiance to a terrorist group. He talked about his motivations for why he was claiming at that time he was committing this horrific act. He talked about American policy…”
Yet, those passages will be the very ones that will be redacted, as Lynch explained in an Orwellian fashion on CNN, “The reason why we’re going to limit these transcripts is to avoid re-victimizing those who went through this horror.”
To the contrary.
The immediate victims of this attack as well as the larger American public deserve to know and be able to discuss the motivations of this attack.
It is hard to imagine how speaking openly about the motive – so that steps can be made to prevent such an attack from happening again – can “re-victimize” the victims. Loved ones have been lost. Nothing will bring them back. Others have been injured – most likely maimed for life both physically and psychologically.
Nothing will make that horror go away.
What will help both the victims and the public at large is trying knowing that proper steps have been taken to prevent such a horror from happening again, and that justice will ultimately prevail.
As pointed out by Daniel Greenfield in an article titled, “Islamophobia Kills,” a culture has been created by the Obama administration along with organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) that has made Americans afraid to call out potential killers for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim racists — Islamophobes.
In the case of the Orlando shooter, when Mateen was reported by a fellow employee for his homophobic and racist comments while working for at G4S Security, the company refused to take action because Mateen was Muslim and did not want to be accused of being Islamophobic. The employee, Daniel Gilroy, a former police officer who described Mateen as “unhinged and untable,” ended up quitting his own job to avoid Mateen after Mateen began stalking him.
Gilroy said the attack by Maten did not come as a surprise to him.
Later, when he was being investigated by the FBI, Mateen claimed he was reacting to Islamophobic comments by his co-workers. The FBI later concluded that Mateen’s professed Al Qaeda ties and terrorist threats were reactions to “being marginalized because of his Muslim faith.”
We saw a similar refusal to report suspicious activity with the San Bernadino killers. Neighbors noticed suspicious activity but didn’t report it for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim racists — Islamophobes.
The Fort Hood killer, Nidal Hasan, was also on the FBI’s radar. As Greenfield notes, “Nidal Hasan handed out business cards announcing that he was a Jihadist. He delivered a presentation justifying suicide bombings, but no action was taken. Like Omar [Mateen], the FBI was aware of Hasan. It knew that he was talking to Al Qaeda bigwig Anwar Al-Awlaki, yet nothing was done. Instead of worrying about his future victims, the FBI was concerned that investigating him and interviewing him would ‘harm Hasan’s career’.”
Greenfield adds, “One of his classmates later said that the military authorities ‘don’t want to say anything because it would be considered questioning somebody’s religious belief, or they’re afraid of an equal opportunity lawsuit.’”
An interesting poll taken in the wake of the Orlando attack shows just how far this “see something, say nothing” mentality has taken hold in America. When asked if the Orlando incident was more a function of Islamic terrorism or gun violence, 60 percent of Democratic voters answered gun violence, while only 20 percent said Islamic terrorism. (Of Republican voters, 79 percent answered Islamic terrorism.)
While it is true that a man with Mateen’s history should never have been able to have bought a gun (and this in itself is a travesty of the intent of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution), the gun he used was the physical facilitator of his Islamist ideology.
“Re-victimization,” in the words of U.S. Attorney General Lynch, will apply to all of us if the Islamist ideology and motivations of these killers are not openly addressed, taken seriously and made as the basis of a plan of action to counteract them.
In addition to creating an open season for Islamist attacks, ultimately the strategy of the administration will backfire. As noted by former Islamist radical Maajid Nawaz, “If we refuse to isolate, name and shame Islamist extremism, from fear of increasing anti-Muslim bigotry, we only increase anti-Muslim bigotry.“
The Untold Story Behind The “Mutiny At The State Department” Where Dozens Demand War With Syria
June 19, 2016The Untold Story Behind The “Mutiny At The State Department” Where Dozens Demand War With Syria
by Tyler Durden – Jun 17, 2016 6:37 PM
Confirming once again that the entire US Middle-East campaign over the past 4 years has been one ongoing plan to destabilize and eliminate Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad from power – certainly including the involvement of ISIS which as we reported a year ago was “created” and facilitated by the Pentagon as a tool to overthrow Assad, an analysis which yesterday gained renewed prominence – overnight the WSJ reported that dozens of State Department officials this week protested against U.S. policy in Syria, signing an internal document that calls for “targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat Islamic State.”
In other words, over 50 top “diplomats” are urging to eliminate Assad in order to “defeat ISIS”, the same ISIS which top US “diplomats” had unleashed previously in order to… eliminate Assad.
While one can understand the US state department’s relentless eagneress to create yet another failed state led by a US puppet ruler, one wonders if at least the boilerplate justification could not have used some more fine tuning.
Amusingly, the whole thing is wrapped in a narrative that the State Department is ready and willing to “mutiny” against Obama’s pacifism, because you see it was Obama who has been so successful in extricating and removing US troops from harm’s way in both the middle east and Afghanistan. Oh wait…
Here are the full details from he WSJ:
The “dissent channel cable” was signed by 51 State Department officers involved with advising on Syria policy in various capacities, according to an official familiar with the document. The Wall Street Journal reviewed a copy of the cable, which repeatedly calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year.
The views expressed by the U.S. officials in the cable amount to a scalding internal critique of a longstanding U.S. policy against taking sides in the Syrian war, a policy that has survived even though the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been repeatedly accused of violating ceasefire agreements and Russian-backed forces have attacked U.S.-trained rebels.
More spin: why has Obama been so “against” unleash a full blown invasion on Syria? “Obama administration officials have expressed concern that attacking the Assad regime could lead to a direct conflict with Russia and Iran.”
Oh so that’s why the nuclear arms race is now officially back, just a few weeks after the US launched a ballistic missile shield over Europe, in the process shifting the entire post-cold war nuclear proliferation balance of power. Got it.
Meanwhile, the attempt to paint Obama as a liberal, peace loving dove continue:
“It’s embarrassing for the administration to have so many rank-and-file members break on Syria,” said a former State Department official who worked on Middle East policy. These officials said dissent on Syria policy has been almost a constant since civil war broke out there in 2011. But much of the debate was contained to the top levels of the Obama administration. The recent letter marked a move by the heart of the bureaucracy, which is largely apolitical, to break from the White House.
Oh, if only Obama would be more willing to install even more pro-US puppet regimes… like in Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Ukraine and so on, and so on… Clearly all of these have turned out so well, that certainly things would be so much better in the middle east. Well, maybe not, but at least that damn Qatari pipeline would finally start flowing.
So why leak this now:
The internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook of the next administration, the official familiar with the document said. President Barack Obama has balked at taking military action against Mr. Assad, while Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised a more hawkish stance toward the Syrian leader. Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he would hit Islamic State hard but has also said he would be prepared to work with Russia in Syria.
The cable warns that the U.S. is losing prospective allies among Syria’s majority Sunni population in its fight against the Sunni extremist group Islamic State while the regime “continues to bomb and starve” them. Mr. Assad and his inner circle are Alawite, a small Shiite-linked Muslim sect and a minority in Syria. In Syria’s multisided war, the regime, Islamic State and an array of opposition rebel groups are all battling each other.
It gets better: “Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the cable reads, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
But wait, as the Pentagon itself admitted, the “Daesh” was carefully bred by the US government precisely for this reason: to overthrow Assad. Don’t believe us? Read the following line from the leaked document:
“… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
Does not compute.
There is more: “The cable asserts Mr. Assad and Russia haven’t taken past cease-fires and “consequential negotiations” seriously and suggests adopting a more muscular military posture to secure a transitional government in Damascus.”
The Russian-led force is also pushing toward Raqqa from the south, making the march on the Islamic State stronghold a strategic and symbolic competition between the rival coalitions. Islamic State is also being rolled back in Iraq, where U.S.-allied government forces have retaken major cities and are advancing in Fallujah, the first city the extremists fully occupied back in 2014
Well, sure: with Russia’s backing of a sovereign nation, why should Assad fold to relentless US pressure. Actually that may well be the point: the US is humiliated that a small, feeble middle-eastern nation dares to defy it for years, just because it has the backing of the Kremlin. We don’t need to explain the ugly optics of this.
Perhaps the real reason why the cable has “emerged” now is because due to Russian intervention, ISIS will soon be history:
Although Islamic State is losing ground to multiple, U.S.-backed offensives in Syria, Iraq and Libya, Western diplomats say they worry the group has embedded itself so deeply in the population that it will be a major influence for years to come, eventually going underground as its quasi-army is defeated.
And finally, one last reason emerges: the US is merely pandering to Saudi demands, something it has clearly done very well ever since the Sep 11 attacks which covered up Saudi involvement:
The cable also echoes the growing impatience among U.S. Gulf allies with the lack of military intervention targeted at the Damascus government to force Mr. Assad to resign and make way for a transitional government. Peace talks between Syria’s government and opposition collapsed in April over Mr. Assad’s fate, with the regime insisting he should stay in power, while the negotiated cease-fire continued to disintegrate. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pressed the U.S. to provide more sophisticated weapons to rebels. But Washington has resisted.
In other words, if the US does fold and proceeds with military strikes, i.e. full blown invasion and war, on Assad, it will once again be Saudi Arabia that is running US foreign policy, and pushing the US nation into what may be a state of open war with Russia.
We can only hope the American people wake up and stop this travesty before Saudi Arabia’s favorite presidential candidate is elected president.
How Many Bodies will it Take?
June 15, 2016How Many Bodies will it Take?, Front Page Magazine, Phyllis Chesler, June 14, 2016
After being written off as a racist Islamophobe for fifteen years because I raised precisely the same points that both Carl Bernstein (!) and Barney Frank (!) raised earlier today; after viewing the sweet, doomed faces of the 49 murdered gay and perhaps non-gay people, mainly Latinos and Latinas, often people of color, on my TV screen—what do I have to say?
The question I and others have raised since 9/11 (for me, since the Intifada against the Jews that began in 2000), was: “How many bodies will it take for Americans, especially the intelligentsia, including the feminists, including gay people, including our elected officials, before they understand that we: (the West, America, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents) have a very real enemy?” It is radical Islam or Islamism, Islamic Jihad or, if you prefer, Islamist Jihad; and it is not going away anytime soon.
This is precisely what Israel alone has been up against since its founding in 1948. Actually, long before that, Jews suffered the most profound Islamic anti-Semitism. Buddhists in Afghanistan were murdered or forcibly converted. Hindus in India were slaughtered by Muslims by the millions—simply because they were Hindus. Christians have long been persecuted by Muslims for the same reason; that persecution continues today.
Clearly, more than 3,000 bodies on 9/11 were not enough. Clearly, the many millions of Muslims murdered by Muslim Jihadists have not been enough. Will the murder of 49 gay Americans finally be “enough?”
Somehow I doubt it but I certainly hope so. Of course, sure, yes, let’s ban assault rifles completely. That will not stop someone like Omar Mateen. But the handguns and the rifles are not as important as banning and abolishing the routine hate of women, the “wrong” kind of Muslim, ex-Muslim apostates, homosexuals—hatreds that are intimately part of historic Islam.
How many deaths before we become effective in identifying potential Jihadists? Within our borders? Arriving as refugees and immigrants? How many deaths before we are willing to use the word “Muslim terrorist” without fearing we will be demonized for doing so?
The gay websites are more focused on general “hate” against gays and gun control than they are focused on the nature and the danger of radical Islam. The gay communities have been willing to march against Israel—but never against Jihad?
Long ago, Natan Sharansky asked me if I thought I could “turn the feminists, the leftists, the gays around.” I told him that I doubted it, but that I would try.
Will these 49 dead and 53 wounded start that “turning?”
We shall see.
Homeland Security Instructed To Combat Violent Extremism With Political Correctness
June 14, 2016Homeland Security Instructed To Combat Violent Extremism With Political Correctness, Daily Caller, Peter Hasson, June 13, 2016
Less than a week before Omar Mateen walked into an Orlando gay club and killed or wounded more than 100 people, the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) submitted its Countering Violent Extremism report to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson. The report instructs the DHS not to use any language that might be “disrespectful” to Muslims, including (but not limited to) the words “jihad,” “sharia” and “takfir.”
The report was crafted by an HSAC subcommittee that Secretary Johnson created in November 2015. The head of that subcommittee, Farah Pandith, was appointed by Johnson in May 2015. The subcommittee published the report on June 9.
In addition to combatting violent extremism by reaching out to “gender diverse” Americans and teaching youth “appropriate online etiquette,” the report recommends that the DHS “avoid stigmatizing specific communities.”
The report urges DHS officials to “Reject religiously-charged terminology and problematic positioning by using plain meaning American English.”
For example, the report says the DHS should be “using American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like ‘jihad,’ ‘sharia,’ ‘takfir’ or ‘umma.
The report acknowledges that, “There is a disagreement among scholars, government officials, and activists about the right lexicon to use around the issues of violent extremism.”
Nevertheless, the report states, “Under no circumstance should we be using language that will alienate or be disrespectful of fellow Americans.”
“We must speak with honor and respect about all communities within the United States. We should give dignity to the many histories and diversities within our nation and advocate for a consistent whole of government approach that utilizes agreed terms and words. Tone and word choice matter,” the report states.
The report includes other recommendations for countering violent extremism, such as: “Focus on gender diversity of youth through careful attention to the range of push and pull factors that attract individuals of differing gender.”
The report also recommends countering extremism by teaching youth “appropriate online etiquette.”
The report instructs the DHS to “Develop a curriculum in partnership with the Department of Education and education experts and non-profits to disseminate to schools, teaching children appropriate online etiquette to mitigate online hate.”
The DHS website states that HSAC, “Provides organizationally independent advice and recommendations to the Secretary, including the creation and implementation of critical and actionable policies for the security of the homeland.”
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