Posted tagged ‘U.S. Congress’

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue

April 18, 2016

Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, April 18, 2016

abdullah_of_saudi_arabia
president_barack_obama1

The Obama Administration is shrugging off the insult to our legal system by a country that violates every core principle of due process and civil liberties in their own country.

**********************************

While the level of protection afforded Saudi Arabia in Washington is hardly a secret, the level of that support was on display this month when officials pushed the Obama Administration to release long-withheld pages from the 9-11 report, as we previously discussed. Those pages reportedly implicate Saudi Arabia in the 9-11 attacks. Saudi Arabia response with an express threat to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of assets if Congress were to pass a bill allowing the Kingdom to be held liable for the attacks. One would think that the response would be outrage at the threat. After all, the bill would only allow citizens to sue and a bipartisan group of Senators have joined to support the 9-11 families. Saudi Arabia could still defend itself (and according to its government, vindicate itself) in a court of law. Of course, the United States has a real court system as opposed to the government controlled, Sharia “courts” used in the Kingdom to mete out medieval justice.

The Administration not only is staying silent about this insulting threat but is doing precisely what the Saudis are demanding in trying to block the bill. When push comes to shove between the victims or 9-11 and the Saudis, the choice appears clear.

So that there would be no mistake about the threat, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month — threatening a sudden sell-off of $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets to cripple the economy. The rationale is to avoid the assets from being frozen by American courts. Interestingly, this assumes that you are likely to be found guilty of complicity in the worst terrorist attack in United States history. What is interesting is that the use of al-Jubeir seemed calculated to maximize the threat. The same message could have been delivered through leaks that the Saudis were preparing such a selloff for strategic reasons. The open threat was a serious miscalculation by the Saudis in my view. Few Americans would take the threat as anything short of a slap in the face of the victims of 9-11 and the country as a whole.

The Obama Administration is shrugging off the insult to our legal system by a country that violates every core principle of due process and civil liberties in their own country. Instead, it is suggesting that holding Saudi Arabia liable for American deaths could put Americans at legal risk overseas. Whatever the merits of the argument against the access to the courts for these citizens (and I would be very interesting to hear them), the Administration should have delivered a clear message that we do not respond to such threats, particularly when another country is balancing American lives against foreign investments.

What do you think?

Categories: 9/11, Foreign policy, Obama and Islam, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Obama's weakness, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, U.S. courts
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

IRS Corruption Fuels Billions in Fraudulent Payments to Illegal Aliens

April 17, 2016

IRS Corruption Fuels Billions in Fraudulent Payments to Illegal Aliens, Breitbart, Tom Tancredo, April 16, 2016

GettyImages-57134468-640x480Hector Mata/AFP/Getty Images

I am sorry to report that the IRS practice described in this recent FORBES headline is not new. It’s an old story that continues to shock most — but not all — Americans:

            “IRS admits it encourages illegals to steal Social Security numbers”

Imagine my surprise when I found a pile of IRS 1040 tax returns among the tons of trash at a “lay-up site” used by illegal border jumpers near the Mexican border west of Douglas, Arizona. There are dozens of such places where the thousands of border invaders change clothes, discard trash and wait to be taken by their “coyote” to their pick-up location for moving on to Phoenix or El Paso or Houston.

The IRS 1040 forms were filled out and had been used. Hey, who says illegal aliens don’t pay taxes?

I collected the 1040 forms and we noticed all had claimed Earned Income Tax Credits and all also had claimed around nine deductions for children. The average refund was around $4,000. It occurred to me only much later that the American taxpayer may be funding the coyote’s $1,500 fees for smuggling poor Mexicans, Salvadorans — and Iraqis and Vietnamese — across our southwest border.

When I sent the 1040 forms to the Social Security Administration and the IRS, I was told that the practice described in the FORBES article was the one being followed in dealing with these returns. I tried to amend the appropriations bills for the IRS to be the practice, but I got nowhere. My Republican colleagues didn’t want to hear about it and were ticked at me for bringing it up.

Illegal aliens use “the system” to report income and also gain every possible “refund” the tax law — and IRS collusion — allows. Who can blame them when the welcome sign is in bright green neon letters?

This FORBES headline should not shock anyone. The IRS collusion with illegal alien tax fraud is not a secret. Over the past decade, there have been regular news stories exposing tax fraud by illegal aliens– and IRS indifference to the scandal.

The shocking thing is that the FORBES headline is not an exaggeration. The IRS knows illegal aliens are using stolen Social Security numbers and is glad they are doing it. But that is only the tip of the iceberg called illegal alien tax fraud.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen made the revelation in congressional testimony this past week, but no one was really shocked. The IRS wants illegal aliens working illegally to file tax returns and pay taxes on their illegal earnings like everyone else. So, the government figures it is a smart thing to make it easy for them to do so. The government doesn’t care whether the Social Security number used is stolen or not, it’s the tax filing itself that is important to the IRS.

  • When asked why the agency has a policy to ignore notifications from the Social Security Administration that a number does not match the name used on the tax filing, the agency replies, literally, “That’s not our job.”
  • The IRS deliberately and unapologetically avoids telling you when your SSN is being used unlawfully by another person — or ten or twenty other people.
  • Efforts in Congress to fix that problem are criticized as “racist.”

But as I said, that IRS scandal is only the beginning of the story of tax fraud by millions of illegal aliens. Millions of illegal workers are filing tax forms not to pay their taxes but to claim and then receive refundable tax credits– that is, cash refunds– and those cash payments run into the billions annually.

It’s politically correct in Washington, DC, to say that illegal aliens are willing, even anxious, to “pay their fair share of taxes.” It’s part of the mythology of the noble “undocumented worker” seeking the American dream. Even the Republican National Committee believes it.

This week the RNC sent a fundraising letter to a few million prospective donors using the tired gimmick of a “poll” on critical issues. One question asked voters if they support legalization for illegal aliens if they meet a number of tests, one of them being “paying back taxes.” We all know illegal aliens are anxious to do that to prove they have earned the right to stay here and contribute to the economy.

The problem is they already have a way to pay back taxes if they want to do it, but millions are doing just the opposite. Millions of illegal aliens are collecting refundable tax credits– that is, cash — by filing fraudulent claims. And the IRS doesn’t care.

An April 2012 investigative report by an Indiana television station found numerous cases of tax fraud in the Child Tax Credit and Additional Child Tax Credits programs.

  • Four illegal alien tax filers had used the same address and claimed a total of 20 children for refundable tax credits of up to $1,000 for each child. Only one child actually lived at the address, and the other 19 lived in Mexico and had never even visited the United States.
  • That aspect of the fraud is in fact not really illegal: the child you claim on the tax form does not have to live in the United States. the child can be living with Aunt Rosa in Peru or Grandpa Felix in Algeria.
  • The IRS response to the fraudulent payments? They refused to comment or to confirm any investigation and refused to meet with reporters to answer questions.

IRS refusal to act on documented fraud by illegal aliens is legendary. For a decade the agency’s own Inspector General has complained of inaction by agency managers.

  • According to reports of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), millions of illegal aliens are filing tax forms in order to claim refundable tax credits and receive billions in tax dollars — even if they have never paid one dollar in federal income taxes.
  • Illegal aliens are accessing not only the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) but the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Additional Child Tax Credit ACTC) to the tune of billions annually.
  • And according to testimony of the Treasury Department’s Inspector General, the IRS has refused to take steps to curtail illegal aliens cashing in on these programs.

You may be thinking that the government surely would take action if the tax fraud is costing the Treasury millions of dollars. It’s fraud on a small scale, right? Nope. It’s costing billions, not millions.

While I was in Congress back in 2007, I tried to blow the whistle on this IRS partnership with schemes costing taxpayers billions.

  • A brave IRS employee in one of the agency’s Western regional offices called my office and met with my staff clandestinely at a restaurant in the capital of one of our southwestern states. He offered concrete, credible information and internal reports that showed there was a huge problem– and that it was being ignored by agency management.
  • His regional office team had studied a random sample of Child Tax Credit claims by tax filers using “ITIN” numbers– tax ID numbers given lawfully to persons who do not qualify for Social Security numbers but are employed and need to file tax returns.
  • Their sample revealed a high rate of fraud which suggested widespread fraud involving hundreds of millions of dollars. But he and his regional colleagues could get no action from headquarters to investigate it further.

Can you guess who blocked any congressional action to demand the IRS investigate illegal alien abuse of these “refundable tax credit” programs? The Congressional Hispanic Caucus threatened massive protests against “discriminatory practices” if the IRS pursued the issue.

At that time, Democrats were in the majority in the House and the Senate and thus controlled the committees, so no investigation was ever conducted. But did Republicans undertake to clean up the mess when they gained the majority in the 2010 election? No.

There is no evidence the problem of tax fraud by illegal aliens is something the IRS cares about.

  • A December 2014 report by Watchdog.org revealed that an IRS audit documented a 24 percent error rate in claims made under the EITC — a loss of $14.2 billion in unlawful tax refunds in the year 2012.
  • A similar audit of the Additional Child Tax Credit program in 2012 revealed erroneous payments in the range of 25 percent to 31 percent.
  • But did the audits result in corrective actions? No.

Adding all of the fraud rates together from three separate refundable tax credit programs suggests total tax fraud in the realm of several billion dollars. Of course, not all of the fraud is by illegal aliens. But the lack of IRS interest in curtailing illegal alien abuse of these tax credit programs tells us the problem will only get worse in the years ahead.

Let’s add the shameful, willful taxpayer-funded philanthropy toward illegal workers to the many reasons why IRS Commissioner Koskinen should be impeached and a new management team put into the agency to conduct a thorough house cleaning.

What are the odds of that happening under President Hillary Clinton? Or President John Kasich?

Categories: Illegal immigrants, Internal Revenue Service, Mexico, U.S. borders, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Where are we Now?

April 16, 2016

Where are we Now? Power Line, Steven Hayward, April 15, 2016

One lesson of the Trump phenomenon is that it has revealed that conservatives have been way too timid or conciliatory in confronting the Left—that the latitude for effectively confronting political correctness is much greater than we thought.

********************************

That’s the open-ended title of the panel I spoke on last weekend at the West Coast Retreat of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (and special thanks to all of the Power Line readers in the audience who introduced themselves). Where do you go with such a wide-ranging title? I spoke from a few short notes that I scratched out the night before (which I have now lost), but I think it went pretty much something like this:

I’m not going to talk about the election, partly because so much of what I have said up to this point, especially about Trump’s prospects, have turned out to be wrong. Instead I think this panel’s title—Where Are We Now?—begs for taking a step back and looking at some longer term factors that overshadow the election, no matter who wins.

Lately I’ve been thinking of two sayings by foreigners—one probably familiar to most everyone, and one likely not. The first is Bismarck’s famous quip that “God looks after drunks, fools, and the United States of America.” I’m hoping this is still true. To the extent that accident and chance play a huge role in determining political life (the teaching of the classics), I think we’d have to say that America has been pretty lucky though most of its history. Thank God it was Harry Truman, and not Henry Wallace, who was vice president in April 1945 when FDR died; Truman was far from perfect, but he was right on a lot of important questions at that important moment.

The second saying comes from my late Hungarian-born friend Peter Schramm. Peter grew up under Communism, and when the Soviet tanks rolled through the country in 1956, his father said—“That’s it: we’re going to America.” “Why are we going to America, dad?” “Because, son, we were born American, just in the wrong place.” That was back at a time when people around the world understood clearly what America meant. I’m not so sure it is as clear to the world any more just what America means, or what it stands for, let alone whether it can be counted upon to defend the West.

Anyway, Peter told me that a favorite Hungarian saying is, “Things are serious—but not yet bad!” Now, I’m starting to think that things are bad. It is likely possible to recover from eight years of Obama with the right leadership, but if Obama is succeeded by Clinton or Sanders—or by a clueless Republican—the damage might be so long-lasting as to be near-irreversible.

A few observations:

First, events of just the last 10 days should remind us once again that our politics have become all out war—a fact that conservatives, and their weak vessel, the Republican Party, do not like to recognize. Conservatives like order and moderation (in the Aristotelian sense), and recoil from the idea of political warfare, because when things reach that stage, it means things are out of hand. But avoiding the unpleasantness of political life—and avoiding confronting it directly—will not make it go away, but instead guarantee that it will grow worse.

One lesson of the Trump phenomenon is that it has revealed that conservatives have been way too timid or conciliatory in confronting the Left—that the latitude for effectively confronting political correctness is much greater than we thought. It ought to be a matter of supreme embarrassment and shame that the most forceful and cogent response to the irresponsible demagoguery of Black Lives Matter has come from Bill Clinton. Never mind that he walked it back yesterday—that’s his problem. Our problem is no public figure on our side has spoken out as forcefully and as plainly as Clinton did.

In this regard, if we can’t win the Bathroom Wars, we might as well load up the lifeboats right now and become the refugees from our own country that the Left longs for us to be. And the most outrageous part of the recent controversy over bathrooms in North Carolina is the role played by big business, which is the most potent force in coercing states like North Carolina to back down from a common sense understanding of human nature. Why have big corporations become adjuncts to leftist identity politics? I suspect a study of corporate HR departments will find they are a hotbed of graduates with degrees in gender and ethnic studies, etc.

About Congress, I will just say that for those who have been critical of Republican leadership over the last few years, the problem is deeper and worse than you think. This is a long subject, having to do with the way in which the Democratic Party deliberately sought over decades to degrade the constitutional role of Congress in ways that many Republican members of Congress do not understand or perceive clearly enough. And it is going to take more than just a Republican president to fix this problem, though I think Ted Cruz understands this issue more profoundly than most of the rest of the GOP presidential field. But this is a very long subject, worthy of a separate complete panel all by itself.

Likewise, our response to the latest outbreak of radicalism on campuses is weak. The new mob of the campus Left says: racism, homophobia, sexism, oppression, and patriarchy. To which we have responded—free speech and academic freedom! This response is wholly inadequate. It concedes the premise of the Left: are we really for free speech on behalf of racism? Of course not, but we need to take the next step and throw back in their faces that their narratives of oppression are completely wrong, contemptible, and not to be taken seriously. That and a few expulsions (and more firings of many more professors like Melissa Click) might do the trick.

In summary, the central point of my remarks is to vindicate what I’m going to call the Horowitz Heuristic, or “David’s Desideratum.” For as long as I have known David, he has been saying that conservatives, and their defective organizational vehicle—the Republican Party—have not been vigorous enough in recognizing that the Left is conducting political warfare, and that it can only be beaten back by engaging in political warfare in return. Maybe a few more people are starting to figure out what David has understood all along. Is it too late? As Lincoln said about a real shooting war, “Wars are not won by blowing rosewater through cornstalks.”

Categories: Conservatives, Democrats, Freedom of speech, Leftists, Obama's America, Political correctness, Political warfare, U.S. 2016 elections, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Perils of Not Listening to Iran

April 7, 2016

The Perils of Not Listening to Iran, Gatestone Institute, Shoshana Bryen, April 7, 2016

♦ The Iranian firing of a missile within 1500 yards of U.S. aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman in December, and the kidnapping and photographing of a U.S. Navy ship and crew (the photographs were a violation of the Geneva Convention) were test cases. Other than an apparent temper tantrum by Secretary Kerry, there was no American response. Oh, actually, there was. Mr. Kerry absolved his friend Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif of responsibility.

♦ The Iranians were confident that the Americans could be counted on not to collapse the whole discussion over violations along the edges. Their model was American behavior in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” The Palestinians violate agreements and understandings with impunity because they know the Administration is more firmly wedded to the process than the specific issues on the table.

Supporters of President Obama’s Iran deal (JCPOA) are starting to worry — but that is because they believed him when his lips moved. They heard “snapback sanctions” and pretended those were an actual “thing.” They are not, and never were. They heard Treasury Secretary Jack Lew say the U.S. would never allow Iran access to dollar trading because of the corruption of the Iranian banking system and Iranian support for terrorism — and they wanted to believe him. And sanctions? The administration said that sanctions related to non-nuclear Iranian behavior — support for terrorism, ballistic missile development, and more — would be retained.

Supporters believed Secretary Kerry when he said sanctions on Iran would be lifted only by a “tiny portion,” which would be “very limited, temporary and reversible… So believe me, when I say this relief is limited and reversible, I mean it.” They all but heard him stamp his loafer.

The mistake was not just listening to the administration say whatever it was Democrats in Congress wanted to hear, while knowing full well that once the train left the station it would never, ever come back. The bigger mistake was not listening to Iran. The Iranians have been clear and consistent about their understanding of the JCPOA.

Days before Congress failed to block the JCPOA, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, outlined Iran’s red lines.

  • To block “infiltration” of “Iran’s defense and security affairs under the pretext of nuclear supervision and inspection… Iranian military officials are not allowed to let the foreigners go through the country’s security-defense shield and fence.”
  • “Iran’s military officials are not at all allowed to stop the country’s defense development and progress on the pretext of supervision and inspection and the country’s defense development and capabilities should not be harmed in the talks.”
  • “Our support for our brothers in the resistance [Hezbollah, Assad, Yemeni Houthis, Hamas, Shiites in Iraq] in different places should not be undermined.”
  • A final deal should be a “comprehensive one envisaging the right for Iran to rapidly reverse its measures in case the opposite side refrains from holding up its end of the bargain.”
  • “Iran’s national security necessitates guaranteed irreversibility of the sanctions removal and this is no issue for bargaining, trade, or compromise.”
  • “Implementation… should totally depend on the approval of the country’s legal and official authorities and the start time for the implementation of undertakings should first be approved by the relevant bodies.”
  • Iran would not be limited in transferring its nuclear know-how to other countries of its choosing.

The Iranians deliberately and openly conflated what the Administration claimed would be limited sanctions relief related to specific Iranian actions on the nuclear program with the larger issues of sanctions for other Iranian behavior. The Iranians were confident that the Americans could be counted on not to collapse the whole discussion over violations along the edges. Their model was American behavior in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” The Palestinians violate agreements and understandings with impunity because they know the Administration is more firmly wedded to the process than the specific issues on the table.

The Iranian firing of a missile within 1500 yards of U.S. aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman in December, and the kidnapping and photographing of a U.S. Navy ship and crew (the photographs were a violation of the Geneva Convention) were test cases. Other than an apparent temper tantrum by Secretary Kerry, there was no American response. Oh, actually, there was. Mr. Kerry absolved his friend, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, of responsibility, noting, “it was clear” that the footage did not come from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He blamed the Iranian military, as if they do not work together.

Iran’s announcement that it would pay $7,000 to each family of Palestinian terrorists killed by Israel “to enable the Palestinian people to stay in their land and confront the occupier,” elicited the disclosure that Mr. Kerry was “extremely disturbed.”

Iran’s ballistic missile test in November, in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions, prompted U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to say, “The U.S. is conducting a serious review of the reported incident,” and if the reports were confirmed, the Obama administration would bring the issue to the UN and “seek appropriate action.”

By February, however — after yet another ballistic missile test, in which the missiles carried explicit threats to Israel, Mr. Kerry said he was prepared to let the matter drop. “We’ve already let them know how disappointed we are.”

1323 (1)Iran’s firing of a missile within 1500 yards of a U.S. aircraft carrier in December, and its kidnapping and photographing of a U.S. Navy crew were test cases. Other than an apparent temper tantrum by Secretary of State John Kerry, there was no American response, except that Kerry absolved his friend Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif of responsibility. Pictured above: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (left) and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (right).

Responding to Senator Lindsay Graham’s suggestion that Congress might increase sanctions against Iran, Mr. Kerry replied, “I wouldn’t welcome [that] at this time given the fact that we’ve given them a warning and if they decide to do another launch then I think there’s a rationale.”

Kerry may not have to wait long.

Just this week, Iranian Deputy Chief of Staff Brig-Gen Maassoud Jazzayeri was quoted by the FARS News Agency reiterating, “The White House should know that defense capacities and missile power, specially at the present juncture where plots and threats are galore, is among the Iranian nation’s red lines and a backup for the country’s national security and we don’t allow anyone to violate it.”

Now, he is believable.

Congress is beginning to breathe fire, but it is not yet clear what it can or will do in the face of the Obama Administration’s executive actions. Last week, angry congressmen were reduced to threatening to “name and shame” American companies that do business with Iran because they cannot figure out how to stem the tide of the Obama Administration’s indulgence of Iranian provocations. That reaction is not even close to good enough.

Categories: Iran - sanctions relief, Iran and Israel, Iran scam, Iranian military, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Obama and Iran, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Bipartisan Enemy of the Good

April 5, 2016

The Bipartisan Enemy of the Good, Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, April 5, 2016

secretary_kerry_with_president_al-sisi_july_2014

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

On March 25, The New York Times published an editorial effectively calling for US President Barack Obama to abandon the US alliance with Egypt.

The Obama White House’s house paper urged the president to “reassess whether an alliance that has long been considered a cornerstone of American national security policy is doing more harm than good.” The editorial concluded that Obama must “start planning for the possibility of a break in the alliance with Egypt.”

The Times’ call was based on an open letter to Obama authored by a bipartisan group of foreign policy experts that call themselves the “Working Group on Egypt.” Citing human rights violations on the part of the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Working Group urged Obama to tie US financial and military assistance to Egypt to the protection of NGOs operating in Egypt.

The self-proclaimed bipartisan band of experts is co-chaired by Robert Kagan from the Brookings Institution and Michele Dunne from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Among its prominent members are Elliott Abrams, Ellen Bork, Reuel Gerecht, Brian Katulis, Neil Hicks and Sarah Margon.

The Working Group has a history.

In January 2011, it called for Obama to force then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to resign from office. In so doing, it provided bipartisan cover for Obama’s decision to abandon the US’s most critical and dependable ally in the Arab world. Then, as now, the group’s esteemed experts argued that due to the regime’s infringement of human rights, the US could not in good conscience support it. Back in 2011, Israelis found a rare wall-to-wall unanimity of purpose in vocally and forcefully defending Mubarak from his American detractors. From the far Left to the far Right, from the IDF General Staff to the street, Israelis warned anyone who would listen that if Mubarak were forced out of power, the Muslim Brotherhood would take over and transform Egypt into a jihadist state.

Due in large part to the presence of senior Republican foreign policy hands on the Working Group, by and large Israel’s warnings were ignored in Washington. Facing the unusual Israeli consensus backing Mubarak was an American consensus insisting that “democracy” would ensure that a new liberal democratic Egypt would emerge out the ashes of the Mubarak regime.

The Americans chided us for repeating over and over again that the Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitor of al-Qaida, Hamas, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and every other major Sunni jihadist terrorist group around at the time, was a terrorist group.

We were attacked as “anti-democratic,” for insisting that the Facebook posters and twitterers on Twitter were in no position to replace Mubarak.

Who were we, the Americans scoffed, to point out that the “Facebook revolutionaries” were but a flimsy veneer which barely hid the Islamists from willfully blind Western officials and reporters who refused to admit that liberal values are not universal values – to put it mildly.

In the ensuing five years, every single warning that Israel expressed was borne out in spades.

Just as we said, right after Mubarak was forced from power, the Islamists unceremoniously dispatched with the Facebook crowd. The two million Islamists who converged on Tahrir Square to hear Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi call for jihad and the Islamic conquest of Israel weren’t interested in democracy.

The women and Christians of Egypt soon realized, Mubarak’s overthrow, which paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood electoral victories in 2012, did not expand their rights, it endangered their lives. As for the hapless Americans, immediately after Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi was inaugurated to serve as president of Egypt, the government began demanding that the US release from prison Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheikh who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The US embassy in Cairo was the target of jihadist riots on September 11, 2012.

Then, since Morsi was elected democratically, none of this was any sweat off the back of Washington’s Egypt experts. They supported sending F-16s to his air force even after he hosted then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Cairo, let Iranian warships traverse the Suez Canal and became a strategic ally of Hamas. They also supported his government, even though he enabled Libyan arms to flow through Egypt to Syria, transforming the war in Syria from a local dispute into the incubator for Islamic State – the precursor of which Morsi also gave a free hand to operate in the Sinai, in conjunction with Hamas.

The Americans didn’t reconsider their belief that Morsi was the guy for them, even after he allowed his Muslim Brothers to torch Coptic churches and massacre Christians. They didn’t revisit their support for the Muslim Brotherhood government even after Morsi arrogated to himself dictatorial powers that even Mubarak never dreamed of.

Perhaps if Morsi had been a responsible economic leader, and maintained the liberalization policies Mubarak enacted during his last five years in power, then defense minister Abdel Fatah Sisi wouldn’t have felt the need to remove him from power. After all, Morsi appointed Sisi to his position.

But in addition to ending even lip service to human rights, Morsi gutted the economy. By the time the military overthrew Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in the summer of 2013, Egypt had a mere $5 billion in reserves, and according to the World Health Organization, a quarter of Egyptians were starving.

So had the Muslim Brotherhood remained in power, Egypt would not have remained a democracy.

It would have become a jihadist state as dangerous as Iran, with the economic prospects of North Korea.

In other words, five years ago, there was no chance that a post-Mubarak Egypt would become a liberal democracy. There were only two options – a US-allied tyranny that fought jihad and maintained the peace with Israel, or a jihad state, aligned with Iran, that posed an existential threat to Israel, Jordan, the US and the international economy.

Those are still the choices today, but the stakes are even higher. Due to the Muslim Brotherhood’s year in power, the jihadist elements that gathered force in the Sinai over the past 20 years were able to organize as a more or less unified force, under the rule of Islamic State (ISIS), and in strategic alliance with Hamas. Like ISIS in Syria, ISIS in Egypt is an aggressive, dangerous group that stops at nothing to achieve its aims of expanding the ISIS empire.

The war it now fights against the Egyptian state is a total war.

To his credit, Sisi recognizes the nature of the threat and has taken steps to counter jihad that Mubarak never contemplated. The Egyptian leader recognizes that to defeat ISIS nothing less than a reformation of Islam is required. And so, in addition to fighting ISIS with everything he has, he is risking everything by taking on the jihadist belief system.

Sisi has mobilized the clerics at Al-Azhar seminary to develop an Islamic narrative that rejects jihad.

Sisi risks everything because everything is already at risk. If ISIS wins, Egypt is finished.

To win this war, he has publicly embraced Israel as an ally. He has openly sided with Israel against Hamas. Unlike Mubarak, Sisi has been fully willing to acknowledge that just because Hamas’s primary victims are Jews doesn’t mean that it isn’t a terrorist group that has to be destroyed.

Without putting too fine a point on in, for his fearless fight to the death with the forces of jihad – both in the mosque and on the battlefield – Sisi has already entered the pantheon, alongside Winston Churchill, of word historical figures. And yet, rather than embrace him and support him in his fight for Egypt and humanity, the same “experts” who called for Mubarak to be overthrown now urge Obama to abandon Sisi.

It is depressing that there is no magic bullet – like democracy – for the pathologies that afflict the Islamic world. But there is no magic bullet. And there are no easy choices for people who refuse to recognize that the natural state of man is neither liberal nor democratic.

But it is hard to accept the credibility of those who refuse to learn from their mistakes. It is harder still as well to listen to the “moral calls” of those who refuse to accept that because their past advice was heeded, thousands have died, and if their current calls are heeded, millions of lives will be imperiled.

Categories: Egypt, Foreign policy, Human rights, Islam and human rights, Islamic reformation, Islamic terrorism, Israel, Leftists, Morsi, Mubarak, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Egypt, Obama and Islam, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, Republicans, Sisi, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

U.S. Offers Feckless Response to Iranian Belligerence

April 5, 2016

U.S. Offers Feckless Response to Iranian Belligerence, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, April 5, 2016

Iran-Basij-March-IP_4A member of the Iranian Basij voluntary militia (Photo: © Reuters)

Iran has stepped up its belligerency in the Middle East since signing the nuclear agreement, increasing its involvement in conflicts from Syria and Iraq to Yemen and flaunting its forbidden ballistic missile program.

The United States, for its part, has reacted fecklessly, fudging its redlines regarding the Islamic Republic and making empty threats.

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama commented that Iran was obeying the “letter” of the nuclear agreement with the West, but not the “spirit” of it.

The president’s remark came after the second testing of ballistic missiles (designed to carry nuclear warheads) by the Islamic Republic. While Congress was originally told a moratorium on the Iranian ballistic missile program was part of the agreement, the administration decided it really wasn’t – and that the test constituted “merely” a violation of U.N. resolutions.

No matter that in the latest test, conducted while Joe Biden was visiting Tel Aviv, the missiles had Hebrew writing on them saying “Israel should be wiped out.”

The harshest criticism Obama could muster against the test was that such provocations would be bad for international trade as they would make countries “nervous” to do business with Iran.

Similarly, Congress was told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be conducting inspections of all Iranian nuclear facilities and would have full, independent access. We then heard that two key passages of the Iran deal were kept secret – not only from Congress, but from the president himself.

The secret deal involved the Parchin military installation, which was under suspicion for years for conducting research on nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. The second centered on negotiations between the IAEA and Iran to resolve the issue of possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program.

After allowing Iran to take its own samples from Parchin, the IAEA declared the issue of possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program was now over, freeing billions of dollars in sanctions relief for the Islamists.

Again, there was no reaction from the U.S. administration. Now, that inaction is (finally) prompting outrage in Congress. As Jennifer Rubin writes in  The Washington Post, “Congressional leaders from both parties are firing back over what they see is evidence that Congress was blatantly misled about the terms of the deal and the administration’s willingness to confront Iran’s non-nuclear behavior.”

As Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) said, “When multiple officials—including Secretary Kerry, Secretary Lew, and Ambassador Mull—testify in front of Members of Congress, we are inclined to believe them. However, the gap between their promises on the Iran nuclear deal and today’s scary reality continues to widen. We are now trying to determine whether this was intentional deception on the part of the administration or new levels of disturbing acquiescence to the Iranians.”

In the last weeks, it was reported that:

  • Iran warned the United States that it would be crossing a “redline” if it tried to stop Iran’s ballistic missile program. In the words of Iranian Deputy Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Maassoud  Jazzayeri, “The White House should know that defense capacities and missile power, especially at the present juncture where plots and threats are galore, is among the Iranian nation’s red lines and a backup for the country’s national security and we don’t allow anyone to violate it.”
  • Iran is beefing up its military presence in Syria by sending an elite unit of commandos as “advisors” to be stationed near Aleppo.  The elite force joins thousands of Iranian troops from its Revolutionary Guards Corps as well as Iranian-backed fighters from the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah.
  • A U.S. Navy ship seized thousands of rifles and rocket-propelled grenades after stopping an Iranian arms shipment on its way to Yemen. It was the third such seizure in the last few weeks in the Arabian Sea.

Congress must use its power to impose new sanctions on Iran. In addition, lawmakers can extend a number of sanctions that are due to expire this year.

With or without the support of the current administration, Iran represents a threat to the world and must be stopped.

Categories: Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Obama and Iran, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

US to Iran: ‘You Can Have Your Missiles and Buy Them With US Dollars’

April 1, 2016

US to Iran: ‘You Can Have Your Missiles and Buy Them With US Dollars’, The Jewish Press, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, April 1, 2016

US-DollarsU.S. dollars will now be available to the Mullahs

The Obama administration, ever eager to hand out more benefits to the enemies of Israel, the United States, and the rest of Western Civilization, is now planning to help Iran obtain access to U.S. dollars — which will help Iran buy more on the international markets, the Wall Street Journal reports today.

This concession by the U.S. to Iran is apparently being made because Iran has asserted that the unsigned, non-binding deal Iran entered into last year with the United States and other countries does not provide enough benefits to Iran.

At the same time that the Obama administration is trying to figure out how to give Iran access to U.S. dollars, the administration’s own Treasury Department still maintains that the entire Iranian banking system is one big “primary money laundering concern.”

Money laundering is a financial transaction designed to conceal what money is used for or where it came from. President Obama’s Treasury Department, not yet having completely unmoored itself from reality or common sense, sees Iran’s financial system as a money laundering operation because Iran moves money around to support a variety of programs that the rest of the world asserts – usually – are impermissible for Iran to engage in, such as funding terror organizations all around the world like Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as Iranian missile programs that some still believe Iran is barred from operating. To accomplish this, Iran conceals the true sources and uses of the money. That’s the money laundering.

But while the Treasury Department doesn’t want Iran to have access to dollars, the Treasury Department and the State Department want Iran to have access to U.S. dollars. Yes, you read that correctly. After all, says Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, we here in the United States must of course comply with “the letter and the spirit” of the unsigned, non-binding-on-Iran “agreement.”

Surprisingly for the most powerful economy in the world, the big worry here is not only that Iran will be unhappy with the U.S., but also that a continued ban on Iranian access to dollars “will ultimately drive business activity away form the U.S. financial system.” To say that more clearly: While the U.S. might prefer that Iran not engage in all these transactions, it’s going to do so anyway, and if we don’t help, Iran will simply conduct the transactions in another currency. Since we can’t beat ‘em, we might as well join ‘em.

The combination of these two pressures is apparently simply irresistible to the Obama administration, and as a result, in March, Lew told a congressional committee that the administration “will make sure Iran gets relief” from restrictions that limit its access to dollars. The relief will come in the form of changes in Treasury regulations, so no pesky Congressmen, or annoyances like a vote of the U.S. legislature, will be involved.

A few of those irritating Congressmen have complained to the administration about these proposed changes. They’ve written angry letters to President Obama and Secretary Lew. Those letters have had as much impact as your letters to The New York Timesabout its coverage of Israel.

Of course, readers with long memories may recall that back in the summer, when the Iran agreement was not yet an unsigned unbinding – usually – deal, Lew said this about the agreement’s impact on Iran’s access to dollars: after the agreement becomes final (he did not tell us it would be unsigned, of course, or non-binding, at least on Iran) “Iranian banks will not be able to clear U.S. dollars through New York, hold correspondent account relationships with U.S. financial institutions, or enter into financial arrangements with U.S. banks.”

The changes proposed now by the Obama administration and Secretary Lew will render all of those reassuring prohibitions true but irrelevant. That is because Treasury will create administrative work-arounds that enable Iranian banks to achieve the same effects as all of these direct relationships with U.S. financial institutions without Iran actually having any such direct relationships. Isn’t that special?

They’ll just be indirect relationships. No doubt the indirectness of the relationship will be a great comfort to people around the world who are blown up by bombs purchased with U.S. dollars provided by Iran. After all, it’s so much more comforting to be murdered by bombs purchased indirectly.

Categories: Iran - sanctions relief, Iran scam, Obama and Iran, Obama's America, U.S. Congress, US Treasury Dept
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Senator Leahy and 10 House Democrats call to Investigate Israel for Killing Terrorists

March 30, 2016

Senator Leahy and 10 House Democrats call to Investigate Israel for Killing Terrorists, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 30, 2016

Leahy

Senator Leahy (D-Time Warner) heading this up is not a surprise. His pro-terrorist and anti-Israel views are well known. There’s a long and ugly history there. And Leahy is once again trying to defund the Israeli military.

The Leahy letter to Kerry though is blatantly Muslim Brotherhood inspired. It classes together Israel and Egypt, accusing Israel of “extrajudicial” killings of Islamic terrorists and broadcasting the Muslim Brotherhood’s claims of victimhood in Egypt.

The claims about “human rights violations” in Egypt lists Muslim Brotherhood figures who were killed by Egyptian police in a shootout with the Islamic terror group after it was removed from power by political protests, including Osama al-Husseini, Hisham Khifagy and Ibrahim al-Sisi, the Brotherhood’s “defense minister”.

The Leahy letter never mentions the Muslim Brotherhood though making it not only a pro-terrorist letter, but a dishonest one.

Leahy and other Democrats also complain about Israel killing some of these Islamic terrorists…

Fadi Alloun stabbed a 15-year-old in Jerusalem in early October, 2015, moderately wounding him. The attacker fled and was killed by police fire after they noticed the knife in his hand.

Saad Al-Atrash was killed by soldiers in late October, 2015, after he had attacked them with a knife near a pedestrian checkpoint down the street from the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

Hadeel Hashlamoun was shot after attempting to stab an Israeli soldier at an IDF check point in Hebron in September, 2015.

This is what Leahy is defending. Also signing on is Jim McDermott and James McGovern, who are in the same pro-terrorist category as Leahy. Also on board is radical leftist Chellie Pingree backed by the anti-Israel group, J Street, and retiring Rep. Sam Farr.  Also signing on are career progressive caucusers Betsy McCollum and Raúl Grijalva who would just happily sign on to a letter proposing Stalin for a posthumous Model of Freedom award.

Andre Carson, a Muslim convert who has a history of appearing at Islamist pro-terrorist events and anti-Israel activism, is not a surprising signature.

But there are also a number of Congressional Black Caucus members here, Hank “Guam will tip over” Johnson, Eddie Bernice Johnson and Eleanor Holmes Norton.

This is not just an anti-Israel letter. It’s a pro-terrorist letter. It covertly advocates on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood and its contents were no doubt formed and shaped by Brotherhood activists in America.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Democrats, Egypt, IDF, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian terrorists, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Congress Seeks Fight Over Obama Effort to Give Iran Access to US Markets

March 28, 2016

Congress Seeks Fight Over Obama Effort to Give Iran Access to US Markets, Washington Free Beacon, , March 28, 2016

The Capitol in Washington is illuminated during a thunderstorm with the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building reflected on the rain-covered windows, late Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 24, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Capitol in Washington is illuminated during a thunderstorm with the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building reflected on the rain-covered windows, late Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 24, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Leading foreign policy voices in Congress say they are preparing to fight against an Obama administration effort to provide Iran unprecedented access to U.S. financial resources as part of an expanded package meant to address new demands from the Islamic Republic’s for greater economic concessions, according to several conversations between the Washington Free Beacon and top lawmakers.

The Obama administration is currently exploring new options to grant Iran more sanctions relief than promised under the comprehensive nuclear agreement reached last year, just days after Iran’s Supreme Leader gave a speech accusing the United States of interfering with Iranian banking.

Top foreign policy voices in Congress told the Free Beacon in recent days that they are exploring a range of responses if the Obama administration goes through with reported plans to grant Iran further concessions beyond the purview of the nuclear deal, which dismantled key nuclear-related U.S. sanctions against Iran. At least part of this action could violate current U.S. laws, they said.

The planned concessions could include access to the U.S. dollar and financial markets, which the Obama administration promised would never take place under the deal, according to recent disclosures first reported by the Associated Press.

The Iranian government has recently heightened complaints that it is not being granted enough relief from international economic sanctions as a result of the recently implemented nuclear deal.

The Obama administration’s latest move to placate the Iranians comes on the heels of a Free Beacon report last week disclosing that U.S. officials engaged in secret talks with Iran for years before agreeing in January to pay it nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds.

The reports have generated harsh responses from lawmakers, who say that the administration’s plans would endanger American economic influence and put the entire international financial system at risk from Iran’s illicit finance and money laundering activities.

“Any administration effort to get foreign financial institutions or foreign-based clearing houses to enable Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime to conduct transactions in U.S. dollars ignores American laws and the Financial Action Task Force,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) told the Free Beacon.

“Such an effort would benefit Iran’s terror financiers while fundamentally undermining the USA PATRIOT ACT 311 finding that Iran’s entire financial sector is a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern,” Kirk said.

It would also undermine “the Financial Action Task Force’s ongoing calls for international countermeasures to protect financial sectors from Iran’s terrorist financing,” explained Kirk, who is backing a new effort in Congress to increase sanctions on Iran as a result of its recent ballistic missile tests, which violate United Nations resolutions.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, warned that the Obama administration’s latest move could set the stage for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC, to gain a foothold in the U.S. economy.

“As if a windfall of over $100 billion in sanctions relief was too small, and the massive cash influx into Iran from new business deals too paltry, President Obama appears to be looking for ways to make further concessions to Iran,” said Pompeo, who also has backed new legislation to sanction Iran. “This would be comical if it wasn’t so dangerous.”

“American and international businesses can’t ignore the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ vast control of the Iranian economy and the threat Iranian banks pose to the international financial system,” Pompeo continued in a statement to the Free Beacon.

“In contrast with the absurd policies of the Obama administration, I work with my colleagues in Congress to protect America’s national security interests—just as we have in response to Iran’s recent ballistic missile tests.”

Pompeo is independently investigating the Obama administration’s recent $1.7 billion payment to Iran, which he and others viewed as a “ransom payment” for the Islamic Republic’s recent release of several captured Americans.

Other longtime Iran critics in Congress also expressed concern over administration efforts to provide Iran with even more economic freedom.

“Further sanctions relief would mark the death knell for U.S. sanctions and would represent a boon to the Iranian regime and its Revolutionary Guard Corp,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Free Beacon. “The lengths to which the Obama administration is willing to go to empower Iran is breathtaking.”

Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) explained that the “administration has lost all credibility on Iran” as a result of its efforts to accommodate Iranian demands.

“President Obama and Secretary Kerry have played the pied piper so many times now,” Roskam told the Free Beacon. “Western companies have to make the determination themselves whether or not they want to make their employees and shareholders complicit in funding terrorism.”

When asked to comment on concerns in Congress, a State Department official told the Free Beacon that it is aware of lawmaker requests for more information on “additional sanctions relief.”

The official added that as long as Iran continues to adhere to the nuclear agreement, the United States “will continue” to do the same.

Obama administration officials first guaranteed last year that Iran would not be permitted to conduct foreign transactions in dollars. This promise, however, is being reevaluated as the administration seeks to keep Iran from walking away from the nuclear deal.

Categories: Iran - sanctions relief, Iran scam, Obama and Iran, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Dunford: U.S. Military Isn’t Ready Across the Board

March 22, 2016

Dunford: U.S. Military Isn’t Ready Across the Board, Washington Free Beacon, , March 22, 2016

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers Tuesday that the United States military currently is not prepared or capable across all the service branches of addressing the threats facing the country.

Dunford gave his assessment of the military’s readiness while testifying before the House Armed Services Committee alongside Defense Secretary Ash Carter on the fiscal year 2017 proposed defense budget.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Texas), chair of the committee, first listed evidence he has heard from other senior military officers to illustrate how the military does not have sufficient readiness capabilities across the services.

“Let me just offer a handful of other quotes on the record,” Thornberry told Dunford. “[Marine Corps Commandant] Gen. [Robert] Neller said, ‘Our aviation units are currently unable to meet our training and mission requirements, primarily due to Ready Basic Aircraft shortfalls.’ [Army Chief of Staff] Gen. [Mark] Milley and Gen. [John] Allen have testified [that] less than one-third of Army forces are at acceptable forces of readiness. The readiness of the United States Army is not at a level that is appropriate for what the American people would expect to defend them.”

Thornberry then referenced Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James’ testimony from last week in which she said that “less than half our combat forces are ready for a high-end fight… the Air Force is the smallest, oldest, and least ready force across the full spectrum of operations in our history.”

“Do you agree that we have a significant readiness problem across the services, especially for the wide variety of contingencies that we’ve got to face?” Thornberry asked.

“Chairman, I do, and I think those are accurate reflections of the force as a whole,” Dunford said. “From my perspective, there’s really three issues: There are the resources necessary to address the readiness issue, there’s time, and then there’s operational tempo.”

Dunford said that the readiness problem is the result of several years of an “unstable fiscal environment” combined with an “extraordinarily high operational tempo,” or rate of military actions.

The general warned it will take many years to dig out of this situation, but said he is satisfied that the FY 2017 budget meets the fiscal requirements of each service for readiness.

The U.S. cannot buy its way out of the readiness problem this year, Dunford said, because of time and the growing need to deploy resources quickly.

He added that the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps will not be sufficiently ready to counter the challenges they need to until around fiscal year 2020, and the Air Force likely will not reach that point until fiscal year 2028.

Beyond resources, time, and operational tempo, Dunford explained that depot-level maintenance has been back-logged in Marine aviation, and likely in other branches as well, contributing to the delay in reaching full readiness.

“I think it’s important for us and for y’all to continue to not only watch this issue but really understand down deeper what’s happening,” Thornberry said. “Statistics are one thing, but you talk to these folks eyeball to eyeball, and the sense of frustration and concern is very evident.”

The military has been steadily downsized over the course of the Obama administration, with the number of active-duty ships in the Navy reduced to pre-World War I levels and the Marine Corps the smallest it has been since the Korean War in the early 1950s. The size of the Army has been reduced as well.

Categories: Department of Defense, Obama and US military, Obama's America, U.S. Congress, U.S. Military
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »