Crocodile's Lament

Flying by the seat of my pants

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Benghazigate – CBA (Cross Border Authority)

 

I received the first opinion below, attributed to the retired Navy Captain, several days ago. It sounded logical, plausible, and in line with what my military and government background had taught me, but I wanted to verify my thoughts on it before posting it here. So, I sent it to a friend (retired Army, multiple stars) for his take on it. He put it out to some of his credible former military sources for their opinions.

Here are the best of the lot which summarize the chain of command and it’s sometimes seemingly convoluted, but sensible, twists and turns.

In short, it says to me that the President is squarely under the bus. Either a driver will jump on board and drive it off, squashing him, or some of his cronies (from the press, administration, or elsewhere) will throw him a lifeline and pull him out from under it.

I may be totally wrong, but I guess time will tell.

lowflyer

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From a retired Navy Captain who lives in Hawaii: CBA (Cross Border Authority):

The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor – the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.”  This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.

Once the alarm is sent – in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi – dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EURCOM, both located in Germany.  Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis.  However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.

That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.   No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory.  Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission.  For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.

On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the President of the United States “(POTUS)” has to do is not grant cross-border authority.  If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.   Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya – such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones.  These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli.  They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.

How might this process have played out in the White House?   If, at the 5:00 p.m.  Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Panetta and Vice President Biden, President Obama said about Benghazi: “I think we should not go the military action route,” meaning that no CBA will be granted, then that is it.  Case closed.

Another possibility is that the president might have said: “We should do what we can to help them .  but no military intervention from outside of Libya.” Those words then constitute “standing orders” all the way down the chain of command, via Panetta and General Dempsey to General Ham and the subordinate commanders who are already gearing up to rescue the besieged outpost.   When that meeting took place, it may have seemed as if the consulate attack was over, so President Obama might have thought the situation would stabilize on its own from that point forward.  If he then goes upstairs to the family quarters, or otherwise makes himself “unavailable,” then his last standing orders will continue to stand until he changes them, even if he goes to sleep until the morning of September 12.

Nobody in the chain of command below President Obama can countermand his “standing orders” not to send outside military forces into Libyan air space.

Nobody.  Not Leon Panetta, not Hillary Clinton, not General Dempsey, and not General Ham in Stuttgart, Germany, who is in charge of the forces staging in Sigonella.

Perhaps the president left “no outside military intervention, no cross-border authority” standing orders, and then made himself scarce to those below him seeking further guidance, clarification, or modified orders. Or perhaps he was in the Situation Room watching the Predator videos in live time for all seven hours.  We don’t yet know where the president was hour by hour.

But this is 100 percent sure: Panetta and Dempsey would have executed a rescue mission order if the president had given those orders.

And like the former SEALs in Benghazi, General Ham and all of the troops under him would have been straining forward in their harnesses, ready to go into battle to save American lives.

The execute orders would be given verbally to General Ham at AFRICOM in Stuttgart, but they would immediately be backed up in official message traffic for the official record.  That is why cross-border authority is the King Arthur’s Sword for understanding Benghazi.  The POTUS and only the POTUS can pull out that sword.

We can be 100% certain that cross-border authority was never given.  How do I know this?  Because if CBA was granted and the rescue mission execute orders were handed down, irrefutable records exist today in at least a dozen involved component commands, and probably many more.  No general or admiral will risk being hung out to dry for undertaking a mission-gone-wrong that the POTUS later disavows ordering, and instead blames on “loose cannons” or “rogue officers”exceeding their authority.  No general or admiral will order U.S.  armed forces to cross an international border on a hostile mission unless and until he is certain that the National Command Authority, in the person of the POTUS and his chain of command, has clearly and explicitly given that order: verbally at the outset, but thereafter in written orders and official messages.

If they exist, they could be produced today.

When it comes to granting cross-border authority, there are no presidential mumblings or musings to paraphrase or decipher.  If you hear confusion over parsed statements given as an excuse for Benghazi, then you are hearing lies. I am sure that hundreds of active-duty military officers know all about the Benghazi execute orders (or the lack thereof), and I am impatiently waiting for one of them to come forward to risk his career and pension as a whistleblower

Leon Panetta is falling on his sword for President Obama with his absurd-on-its-face, “the U.S.  military doesn’t do risky things”-defense of his shameful no-rescue policy.

Panetta is utterly destroying his reputation.

General Dempsey joins Panetta on the same sword with his tacit agreement by silence.  But why?  How far does loyalty extend when it comes to covering up gross dereliction of duty by the president?

General Petraeus, however, has indirectly blown the whistle.  He was probably “used” in some way early in the cover-up with the purported CIA intel link to the Mohammed video, and now he feels burned.  So he conclusively said via his public affairs officer that the stand-down order did not come from the CIA.  Well – what outranks the CIA?  Only the national security team at the White House.  That means President Obama, and nobody else.  Petraeus is naming Obama without naming him.  If that is not quite as courageous as blowing a whistle, it is far better than the disgraceful behavior of Panetta and Dempsey.

We do not know the facts for certain, but we do know that the rescue mission stand-down issue revolves around the granting or withholding of cross-border authority, which belongs only to President Obama.  More than one hundred gung-ho Force Recon Marines were waiting on the tarmac in Sigonella, just two hours away for the launch order that never came.

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Benghazi – CBA (Cross Border Authority)

Comment on the Above Opinion:

Your friend is correct, but to be more precise, the SecDef and the President are the NCA-National Command Authority. The regional Combatant Commander’s answer directly to the NCA. The CJCS and the Joint Staff are the conduit to which the NCA issues orders and direction to the Combatant Commander’s and the Joint Staff assimilates information, intelligence, and communications to keep the NCA informed. The CJCS is part of that conduit, but he does not have command authority. The CBA would come from the President to SecDef who in turn would have CJCS issue the SECDEF DEPLOYMENT ORDER.  

 My view? In brief, it was a Mid-East gun-running operation to transfer arms to Al-Queda in Syria from Libya. There was a “planned” dog and pony show (rescue) to put a cherry on top of the Bin Laden raid. It got out of hand when the actors got out of control and Zero cut his losses and went to bed. By the way, they (WH & Hillary) never expected anyone to defy orders and run to the guns as did Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. That itself, is what really has their ass hanging out. Amb. Stephens was bait long before. Single, no pictures of a grieving widow or children above the fold in the WP; perfect mark.  Mark my words on this one, my friend. One of these days, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’ll know some part of the truth. 

Semper Fidelis!

Bxxx

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Benghazi – CBA (Cross Border Authority)

Further Comment:

I agree wholly with the main point – an armed force does not cross a national boarder without presidential order.  It is unclear to me that there were any American forces who happened to be, in effect, on strip alert, and instantly deployable so that they could have crossed the Libyan border in time to help.  Especially since the attack came in two waves.  Once the first wave ended it was probably easy for the higher ups to assume the attack was over.  But nonetheless it is easy for me to assume that Obama would have wimped out on giving cross boarder authority, even if he thought it might help.  It didn’t fit the narrative and the narrative was vital to his campaign.  After all, getting re-elected was his number one concern, overriding everything else – including a few deaths in Benghazi.  

 Another issue is the armed forces that were already in country, at Tripoli.  Deploying them would not have required presidential authority, yet they were ordered to stand down.  That might turn out to be the military’s fault, at some high level, altho it is easy to assume that it came from Obama, during his meeting with Sec Def Panetta.

 There is one error in this otherwise strong article.  And I am surprised that this Navy Captain repeats several times.  Dempsey (Chairman of the JCS) is not in the chain of command.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff do not have operational command authority.  The chain of command goes from the President to Sec Def to the Commanders of the Combatant Commands.  An example of Combatant Commanders would be Schwarzkof in Desert Storm or Gen Ham in Libya which is part of Africom. The JCS serves in an advisory capacity only.

Bixx

 

 

Posted in Benghazigate, Media, Middle East, Military Issues, Radical Islam, Terrorism
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Benghazigate: General: Delta Force Could Have Gone In…

 

Another part of the Benghazi story has also come under fire: the claim that no military rescuers were sent in because there wasn’t time to get them there . . .

On my Fox News show Saturday, I interviewed retired Lt. General William Boykin, the former commander of Delta Forces. He knows more than just about anyone about the deployment and capabilities of our elite rescue troops. The Pentagon timeline shows that over 7-1/2 hours passed between the first attack and the deaths of the former Navy SEALS who were holding off the attackers. Gen. Boykin estimated that we could’ve had a jet there to at least scare the attackers within 2 to 3 hours, and boots on the ground within 5 to 6 hours. As for the argument that the rescue mission might’ve been too dangerous, well…that’s what Navy SEALS do. Gen. Boykin says it’s the philosophy of the US military that you never abandon your people, even if all you can do is go in and recover their bodies. As for the excuses for why that order never came, he called them “incredible.”

SOURCE: http://mikehuckabee.com/today-s-commentary

Posted in America's slide, Benghazigate, Middle East, Military Issues, Radical Islam, Terrorism
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The Truth is Seeping To The Surface

 

Congresswoman: Obama Gave Benghazi Stand Down Order

US Special forces blocked from protecting consulate

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 10, 2013

In comments that went largely unnoticed, Missouri Congresswoman Ann Wagner (R) directly blamed President Obama for ordering the stand down which facilitated the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi.

 

Wagner was asked by talk show host Dana Loesch, “Because you have been an ambassador, you have been overseas with similar responsibilities and similar missions – who gives such an order to stand down? Where does that come from?”

“The President of the United States,” responded Wagner.

The White House has been scrambling to avoid the question of who gave the stand down order ever since whistleblower Greg Hicks, who was number two to Ambassador Chris Stevens, testified that US special forces were ready to board a plane in Tripoli but were prevented from coming to the aid of those under assault inside the consulate.

Hicks revealed that after Stevens had been killed but while the attack was still ongoing, “The Libyan military agreed to fly their C-130 to Benghazi and carry additional personnel to Benghazi as reinforcements,” including US Special Forces, but that a call came through from Special Operations Command Africa saying, “you can’t go now; you don’t have authority to go now.”

“They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.” Hicks said.

In the hours after the stand down order was given, three more American diplomats were killed by terrorists who laid siege to the consulate.

The Obama administration denies that any kind of stand down order was given, a claim that rings hollow given the White House’s attempt to cover up the nature of what happened in the days after the attack, claiming instead that it was a “protest” sparked by a YouTube video.

It was also recently revealed that the State Department hired Al-Qaeda-linked militants to “defend” the diplomatic mission in Benghazi that was later attacked. State Department officials who blocked efforts to help Americans under assault later tried to hide Al-Qaeda’s involvement in the attack.

As we have exhaustively documented, the Obama administration’s support for Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Libya, which led to the toppling of Colonel Gaddafi, directly contributed to the attack on the consulate and the death of Ambassador Stevens. The very hospital that Stevens was taken to in the last moments of his life was run by the same terrorists who attacked the consulate and who had been empowered as a result of the White House’s military intervention in Libya.

Despite some predicting that the Benghazi cover-up could lead to the impeachment of Barack Obama, an almost identical situation is now unfolding in Syria as a result of the White House’s support for Al-Qaeda terrorists in the pursuit of regime change.

Despite the fact that militants in Syria have openly espoused their hatred for the United States - burning American flags in public while praising Osama Bin Laden and glorifying the 9/11 attacks - the Obama administration is preparing to send them heavy weaponry.

A growing body of evidence also suggests that the entire purpose of the consulate in Benghazi and Ambassador Stevens’ role there was to oversee clandestine arms shipments to Syrian rebels.

Posted in Middle East, Military Issues, Politics, Terrorism
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The Muslims the Media Doesn’t See

The American press is only free in the sense that it voluntarily puts on its own muzzle.

The media coverage of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has one theme and one tack. Like 30 of the 31 men on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, they were terrorists who just happened to be Muslim.

May 8, 2013

by: Daniel Greenfield

While the New York Times dispatched its best and brightest lackeys to Boston to write sensitive pieces on how hard it was for the two Tsarnaevs to fit in leaving them no choice but to bomb the Boston Marathon and then send LOL texts to their friends, it fell to a UK tabloid like The Sun to conduct an interview with the ex-girlfriend of the lead terrorist and learn that he wanted her to hate America and beat her because she wouldn’t wear a Hijab.

There are all sorts of jobs that Americans won’t do. Like pick lettuce, bomb the Boston Marathon and report honestly on the motives of the bombers. The only news network that operates outside the media consensus is owned by an Australian mogul who also owns The Sun.

Americans like to think of their press as freer, but it’s only free in the sense that it voluntarily puts on its own muzzle. European tabloids get into bloody brawls with regulators. American newspapers have nothing to brawl about. They will gleefully report anything that undermines national security at the drop of a hat, knowing that they won’t be touched, but there is a long list of subjects that they won’t touch with a million mile pole.

In Europe, editors risked their lives to publish the Mohammed cartoons. In America, on the rare occasion that they were depicted, they were usually censored. CNN, which could show Kathy Griffin trying to molest Anderson Cooper, without the benefit of pixelation or a suicide button, blurred out Mohammed’s face; assuming that Muslims would appreciate the sensitivity of treating their prophet’s face like an obscene object.

The American media does not need to be censored. It censors itself.

Did the New York Times really fail to come across Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ex-girlfriend and domestic abuse victim while they were busily interviewing every single person in Boston who ever ran into the future terrorists? Doubtful. The New York Times may be incompetent, but it isn’t that incompetent. If it could track down Tamerlan’s old coach, it could track down his old girlfriend. It chose not to.

So did every other paper.

Either The Sun is staffed with crack journalists who could do what no American newspaper, news channel and network news program could, or The Sun got the scoop on Nadine Ascencao because no newspaper on this side of the ocean wanted to touch it. And it’s easy to see why.

Nadine talks about being beaten in the name of Islam, forced to memorize Koran verses and being taught to hate America. Most journalists on this side of the ocean want quotes on what nice boys the two Tsarnaevs were and how, in true liberal fashion, no one could have expected them to do something like this.

Every background story on them is filled with the same pabulum, because the endless march of “We couldn’t have known” quotes provides the government-media complex with the plausible deniability it needs to continue doing the same thing all over again. If the people couldn’t have known, then it stands to reason that their government or their media couldn’t have known either.

No Islam please, we’re American was the mainstream media’s unspoken message. We don’t do Islamic terrorism. We only report on terrorists who happen to be Muslim.

The only newspaper besides The Sun to do an interview with Nadine Ascencao was the Wall Street Journal; which just happens to be owned by the same tabloid mogul. But there is an interesting difference between The Sun and the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ piece doesn’t mention Hijabs, Koran verses or hating America. It doesn’t mention Islam at all.

Co-written by a Pakistani journalist, it emphasizes only that Tamerlan was a bully of no particular religion. That reporter’s twitter feed features a retweet from another Muslim WSJ reporter who broadcasts that the plans of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to head to Times Square amounted to nothing. Nothing to see here. Move along.

 

Nothing to see here is the theme of the media’s coverage. Like a movie, it begins with inspirational tales of courage, and then just when the villains were about to come on the scene, the credits began to roll. It’s only been twenty minutes, but the audience gets hustled out of the theater and told to leave their sodas and popcorn behind.

The “folks who did this”, in Obama’s patently false folksy parlance, were caught. Or at least one of them was. The sacred liberal ceremony of the Miranda warning was recited by a judge at his bedside and the trial will now move through the traditional phases of expensive lawyers paid for by the taxpayer pleading that their client was traumatized by our foreign policy and the entire story being shoved to the back of the media’s coat rack behind the next sports star who comes out of the closet.

This is the surreal world of the American media, which wields its weapons of mass distraction with clinical precision, so that the news hour and the local paper are virtually indistinguishable in content from an old episode of The Jerry Springer Show. But it can’t possibly spare the time for a coherent discussion of the real world motives of two men who carried out a major terrorist attack in Boston.

Soviet citizens listened to the Voice of America to find out what their own government wouldn’t tell them. American citizens have to read The Sun and the Daily Mail, publications whose standards are slightly above that of The Huffington Post and yet, like the National Inquirer, have become one of the few outlets that will chase after the stories that the media has embargoed as effectively as Pravda.

Instead of wasting time on a dead end like Islam, the media has spent its time chasing down every other possible angle.

Did Tamerlan turn terrorist because he took too many blows to the head while boxing? Could the Boston Marathon bombing have been prevented if only we had let him win?

The New York Times assembled a touching story of an aspiring immigrant boxer radicalized by the petty restrictions of a government that wouldn’t let him apply for citizenship because of his history of domestic violence and appearance on a terrorist watch list. But how does that jibe with the Tamerlan from five earlier who beat up a boy that his sister was dating because he wasn’t Muslim?

When the media must deal with Tamerlan’s theology, it keeps him in the category of the troubled man who turned to some wacky extremist version of Islam propounded by a YouTube convert. The man who beat his sister’s boyfriend because he wasn’t a Muslim and beat his ex-girlfriend because she wouldn’t wear a Hijab wasn’t some brainwashed drone who had his mind stolen by YouTube videos. He was a Muslim.

The Tamerlan of 2007 might not have watched as many Jihadist videos, but it would be a mistake to assume that he would have disagreed with their content. That Tamerlan might not have been looking at bombing targets, but neither would he have been upset and angry if some other Muslim had done what he would go on to do. Like Dzhokhar’s two Muslim friends, his first reaction would have been to cover it up.

When it comes to serial killers and mass shooters, the media is conditioned to look for a break that follows some life crisis. But with Muslim terrorists there is no discontinuity, only continuity. A few setbacks might have made terrorism more appealing to Tamerlan, but that would not have happened if it had not already been on his menu of life choices. Or that of his brother.

That angle is the most terrifying one that the media can think of. It’s the one that they can’t touch. It’s the one that they won’t let anyone else touch either. If they have to mention the “I” word, they will sandwich it between “extremist” and “radicalization”. But it’s not Tamerlan who was the radical extremist. Among Muslims, his views were mainstream. The Wahhabis are in ascendance in most parts of the world, including the United States. Islamist parties roundly won the Arab Spring.

What was the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and any of the Syrian Jihadists held up by the media as the epitome of courage and bravery? What is the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Hamas and Fatah terrorists that the media peevishly contends Israel must make peace with? What is the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and any of the tens of thousands of Muslim terrorists fighting in conflicts around the world?

While the European media, for all its faults, occasionally grapples with the incompatibility of liberal values and Muslim values; on this side of the ocean the topic is all but untouchable. There is no national censorship body that does this. Instead stories are held down by the weight of a consensus that insists the media exists to promote liberal values. All else follows from there.

The stories that promote liberal values are reported. The stories about a future Muslim terrorist beating his girlfriend because she wouldn’t wear a Hijab are not because those stories create a sneaking suspicion that Muslim multiculturalism is incompatible with liberal values. And the incompatible Muslims, like Mohammed’s face, have been pixelated out of existence in reports on the terrorist attacks by disgruntled boxers, doctors and perfume salesmen who just happen to be Muslim.

These are the Muslims that the media doesn’t see. And it is doing everything possible to make sure that we don’t see them either.

SOURCE (see excellent comments): http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-muslims-media-doesnt-see.html

Posted in America's slide, Media Nonfeasance, Middle East, Radical Islam, Terrorism
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INTEL From Mossad and (German) BND re: Terror Hits On The US And Europe.

Here’s a bit of intelligence that arrived just this morning and is something that everyone should read and consider. The source is highly credible. I have known and trusted him (with my life, in Vietnam) since the mid-1960′s. That’s all I feel free to say, so, take it as you wish. I, though, take it as gospel. lowflyer

A HEADS UP!!!

In the realm of “for what it’s worth”, I received an INTEL report yesterday from a very close friend who is German and owns/operates a major global firm. Being from Germany, he has a “pal” who is a BND career guy who has focused his work in the Middle East for few decades; therefore, in that the BND is the CIA of Germany he works closely with MOSSAD the INTEL agency/operator group from Israel. The point to the note from the German man, his connection with the BND stated they and MOSSAD are predicting terrorist’s hits to the U.S. and Europe this year. The “hits” are predicted based upon HUMINT and found OPLANS from al-Qaeda and related groups which are believed to be very “real” and valid. The hit sites are varied targets in both Europe and the U.S. but the “predicted” sites are in cities and rural areas as well. Again, the hits will be this year!! The OPLANS have listed the targets!! The targets are many and in several states!!

** In more specific terms, airports – ports – resorts – hotels – shopping centers, etc., are the target sites. The predictions are apparently well known to law enforcement agencies-departments in both the U.S. and Europe now!! {{These predictions are known to the White House, DHS, FBI and other agencies as they are to the leadership of EuroZone nations. }} **

There are known/valid INTEL reports from al-Qaeda that with the serious economic negatives in the EuroZone and U.S., major “hits” will create added economic negatives for months and longer, which is the a major “incentive” for the hits.

** I do know that there have many “hit” stops (terrorist attacks were thwarted – editor) in the last several years due to the work of agencies/departments at the Federal and local levels. **

Certainly, over the years there have been “hit” predictions but NOW the INTEL from the BND/MOSSAD is “super high” and valid … as per the report.

Posted in America's slide, Middle East, Military Issues, Radical Islam, Terrorism, The Economy
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Shock claim: Obama picks Muslim for CIA chief

 “Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on the behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia,”

by: Drew Zahn
130109johnbrennan

One of the FBI’s former top experts on Islam has announced that President Obama’s pick to head the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, converted to Islam years ago in Saudi Arabia.

As WND has reported, former FBI Islam expert John Guandolo has long warned that the federal government is being infiltrated by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. But Guandolo now warns that by appointing Brennan to CIA director, Obama has not only chosen a man “naïve” to these infiltrations, but also picked a candidate who is himself a Muslim.

 “Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on the behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia,” Guandolo told interviewer and radio host Tom Trento.

“That fact alone is not what is most disturbing,” Guandolo continued. “His conversion to Islam was the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him. The fact that foreign intelligence service operatives recruited Mr. Brennan when he was in a very sensitive and senior U.S. government position in a foreign country means that he either a traitor … [or] he has the inability to discern and understand how to walk in those kinds of environments, which makes him completely unfit to the be the director of Central Intelligence.”

Brennan did indeed serve as CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s and today holds the official title of Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. On Jan. 7, Obama nominated Brennan as the next director of the CIA, though he has yet to be confirmed.

“Are you kidding me?” Trento balked at Guandolo’s allegations. “The head of the CIA is a Muslim? For real? … Are you sure?”

“Yes I am,” Guandolo asserted. “The facts of the matter are confirmed by U.S. government officials who were also in Saudi Arabia at the time that John Brennan was serving there and have direct knowledge. These are men who work in very trusted positions, they were direct witnesses to his growing relationship with the individuals who worked for the Saudi government and others and they witnessed his conversion to Islam.”

A former Marine and combat veteran, Guandolo worked for eight years in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division as a “subject matter expert” in the Muslim Brotherhood and the global spread of Islamism. Guandolo boasts he created the Bureau’s first counterterrorism training/education program and twice received United States Attorney’s Awards for investigative intelligence.

Guandolo is also one of the authors of the Center for Security Policy’s Team B II report, “Shariah: The Threat to America.”

“My contention is that [Brennan] is wholly unfit for government service in any national security capacity, and that would specifically make him unfit to be the director of Central Intelligence,” Guandolo told Trento.

Guandolo then broke down a three-part argument against Brennan’s confirmation.

“The first is he has interwoven his life professionally and personally with individuals that we know are terrorists,” Guandolo asserted. “He has overseen and approved and encouraged others to bring known leaders of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood into the government in positions to advise the U.S. government on counterterrorism strategy as well as the overall ‘war on terror.’”

Second, Guandolo asserted, Brennan has “proven through his own comments publicly that he is clueless and grossly ignorant of Al-Qaida’s strategy.

“Third and finally, which some would say is most disturbing, is Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam,” Guandolo said, but stressed, “I think the [larger] news is that that conversion is the culmination of the work of people in Saudi Arabia who worked for the Saudi Government – and that makes John Brennan just naïve, foolish, dangerously ignorant and totally unfit for this position.

“That in and of itself, again, shouldn’t be shocking to people,” Guandolo continued. “Mr. Brennan, they have the clip where he specifically says during a public address … he said during that speech that he has learned and gets his understanding and his ‘worldview’ in large part from Islam. It shouldn’t be a large leap to imagine he’s converted to Islam.”

SOURCE: http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/shock-claim-obama-picks-muslim-for-cia-chief/

Posted in America's slide, Media, Middle East, Politics, Radical Islam
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Did a Surreptitious Military Attack Against Iran’s Nuc Center Take Place in January?

 

In September 2012, Iran’s Fars News Agency (FNS) reported, Iranian nuclear experts had thwarted “enemies’ plots to infiltrate and blow up the … newly constructed Fordow uranium enrichment facility” near Qom. Abbas Ali Mansouri, an Iranian member of parliament, stated that “arrogant powers” could not “bear” Iran’s “rapid progress and flourishing,” and, to no avail, “spare no inhuman acts to prevent the country’s progress.”

How ironic, therefore, the Jan. 24, 2013 report from former Iranian CIA operative Reza Kahlili of news, via former Iranian secret intelligence security chief, Hamid Reza Zakeri, of devastating sabotage three days earlier at the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility. An explosion 300 feet deep had destroyed much of the site containing 2,700 uranium enrichment centrifuges (first discovered by Westerners in 2009), and trapped over 200 workers. Previously, experts had reported, improving the plant’s 20 percent level uranium to weapons grade would take but weeks.

That weekend (Jan. 27), Die Welt‘s Clemens Wergen reported that its Sunday edition had independently confirmed the explosion via experts plugged into the Iranian intelligence service. “Die Welt reported it, and they are very good on Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” Clare Lopez, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, told Leeb Group Managing Editor Alyssa A. Lappen. Their confirmation “through independent sources says [to me] that they verified the details with sources inside BND,” Germany’s counterpart to the CIA. Die Welt also noted that the plant’s elevator shafts and emergency exits had blown out.

Also on Jan. 27, UPI ran the story, citing Kahlili’s original report, likewise noting the explosion’s force, felt in a 3-mile radius, the imposition of a 15-mile no-traffic zone, and hours-long closure of the Tehran-Qom highway. U.S. officials were informed, but neither the U.S. nor Iran had verified or denied.

News spread on Jan. 28, when the Times of London confirmed the report, citing Israeli officials not previously quoted. “We are still in the preliminary stages of understanding what happened,” an unnamed Israeli official said, according to the report. “He did not know if the explosion was ‘sabotage or accident,’ and refused to comment on reports” of simultaneous sightings of Israeli aircraft near the facility. Alternative news source Missing Peace reported confirmation, also, from London’s Centre for Arab & Iranian Studies director Ali Reza Nourizadeh, a commentator for Deutsche Welle and Voice of America.

Reports followed in several Israeli papers, including Arutz Sheva, quoting an Israel Defense Forces Radio interview of Zakeri himself. “It was a big blast and because the facility is built under a stone mountain, it is very difficult to get to the workers who are trapped there,” Zakeri reportedly told IDF Radio, citing destruction of elevators and emergency staircases.

The Times of Israel quoted Israeli Acting Defense Minister and former Shin Bet security chief Avi Dichter. “Any explosion in Iran that doesn’t hurt people but hurts its assets is welcome,” Dichter stated. Other Israeli newspapers joined the parade: Israel Matzav, Jerusalem Post, and Ynet. So did the U.K.’s Mail Online, citing Israeli officials—and correctly noting that Iran had ignored several U.N. Security Council resolutions ordering Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment.

Even Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News, plus its official news agency, reported the news on Jan. 29, although the former Persian Gulf outlet also noted Reuters’ inability to confirm it, and quoted the denial of any Fordow explosion from Iranian military commander Massoud Jazayeri, carried on Iran’s ISNA news agency.

Iranian denials then mounted, and English wire services (including Reuters, AP, and follow-up UPI coverage) lead stories with those—alongside purported confirmation of Iran’s denials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). That week, most headlines on Fordow claimed the explosion never happened, and many quoted White House spokesman Jay Carney, too: “We have no information to confirm the allegations in that report, and we do not believe the report is credible.”

“The White House is hedging its bets,” CSP senior fellow Lopez told Leeb last week. “It still wants  dialogue with the Iranian regime. Despite all the setbacks, and getting nowhere after multiple rounds of talks—four or five rounds in 2012, and one in January 2013—… they keep thinking and hoping [talks will] get somewhere. I don’t know why they think that. After so many times Lucy grabs the football, Charlie Brown, you know you’ll never kick it.” That could explain the administration’s disavowal, but IAEA denials are completely disingenuous. “IAEA has had no inspectors [in Iran] since last August,” and never had cameras at Fordow, as it does at Iran’s larger Natanz facility” she said.

Most liberal media, and even Fox News, were in the deniers’ corner.

But alternative, left-tilting Policy Mic news site found the initial lack of mainstream news “bizarre.” Circumstantial evidence surprisingly led Policy Mic writer Bryant Harris to conclude, “a strong possibility emerges that this was another incident in the U.S.-Israel shadow war on Iran’s nuclear program.”

Iran had repeatedly responded with denials to attacks “on its military or nuclear operations.” In 2010, Iran denied that the infamous Stuxnet virus had rendered its centrifuges inoperable, despite taking thousands of centrifuges offline, a fact even the IAEA confirmed, which the U.S. confirmed in 2012. Operation Olympic Games was initiated with Israeli support during the Bush administration. Other such examples abound.

Meanwhile, in a Jan. 25 interview in Davos, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak outlined possible use of a “surgical option” and U.S. Israeli cooperation to avoid full scale war over Iran’s nuclear program. Given Iran’s “robust anti-earthquake technology,” only the Massive Ordnance Penetrator could penetrate Fordow, Harris observed. Boeing only recently announced that its high-tech bomb could penetrate 200-foot-thick concrete before exploding. The explosion occurred, Harris wrote, and followed a logical “series of covert actions” to impede Iran’s nuclear ambitions—making it “very likely” the result of an external strike, not malfunction.

Probably it’s no coincidence, either, that immediately after the reported explosion, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an emergency summit, or that Iran the next week announced sending a monkey into outer space (to boast its rocket power)—and then news-flashed plans to speed and upgrade its nuclear program. Most likely, Iran’s Feb. 3 announcement of another round of talks in Kazakhstan amounts to more bluster—another Peanuts episode, as it were.

But the explosive news, albeit largely uncovered by mainstream Western media, is mostly good.

And it ties to U.S. and global markets. “There is a financial aspect to this,” Lopez remarked. “When the Middle East blows up next time—when, not if—it will affect economic news, oil and gas prices, investors,” everything.

As investors, we must keep a close eye on Middle East developments, especially given bizarre mainstream news blackouts—and official and media denials. This time, we sigh in relief.

leebsmarketforecast.com

Posted in Middle East, Military Issues, Publius Economy
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New Details On Iranian Nuke Site Explosion

White House denies explosion happened. Trying to cover possible covert action as cause?

by: Reza Kahlili
ahmadinejad32

Sixteen North Koreans, including 14 technicians and two top military officers, are among those trapped after a Jan. 21 explosion destroyed much of Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, a source reveals.

The source who provided the initial information on the explosion at one of Iran’s most important nuclear sites has now provided details about the degree of the destruction.

The report, published exclusively by WND Jan. 24, is being covered internationally by major media, with independent intelligence sources confirming the explosion for the Times of London and the German Die Welt.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday: “We have no information to confirm the allegations in the report and we do not believe the report is credible.”

The short White House response, the source said, is an indication that the U.S. wants to steer away from the subject as any covert operation against the regime’s nuclear installations will have consequences, including retaliation.

Get the inside story in Reza Kahlili’s “A Time To Betray” and learn how the Islamic regime “bought the bomb” in “Atomic Iran.”

The Islamic regime’s media, in a coordinated effort, reflected a similarly short response Sunday night in its denial and remained silent Monday.

A senior researcher and director of the Centre for Arab & Iranian Studies in London, Ali Reza Nourizadeh, who has many contacts in Iran, confirmed that the explosion had trapped many inside.

According WND’s source, a member of the security forces protecting Fordow, 36 North Korean technicians and military officers arrived in Tehran Jan. 15 and 17 and subsequently visited two Iranian nuclear sites under heavy security. One site, still unknown to the West with its vast installation of centrifuges, will be revealed soon by WND. At the other, the Fordow site, the North Koreans were to witness the start-up of six cascades of 174 new-generation, speedier centrifuges.

Hamidreza Zakeri, a former member of the regime’s Intelligence Ministry, said 17 technicians and two military supervisors are stationed at the secret site, and 14 technicians and two military officers were at Fordow.

The source said a log on closed-circuit cameras installed by the regime to monitor the site’s three centrifuge chambers and two highly enriched uranium reserves gave this account:

  • On Jan 21, 14 members of the North Korean team and two military officers now stationed at Fordow along with Iranian scientists started the process of feeding uranium gas into the newly set-up cascades at 9:15 a.m. Tehran time
  • At 10:43 a.m., due to a drop in power pressure, system warning signs went off, but everything went back to normal after two minutes.
  • At 11:36 a.m., five explosions occurred concurrently in the centrifuge chambers, two explosions in the uranium reserve enclosures and a subsequent explosion in the main hallway close to the exit.
  • At the time of the explosions, a very bright red and purple light distorted the image and an extremely loud noise could be heard. Before the explosions knocked out the cameras, interior walls could be seen coming down within the centrifuge chambers. All the explosions seemed to have been initiated from the ceilings.
  • All cameras on the lowest floor (about 300 feet deep under a mountain) and the floor above it (about 250 feet deep) were knocked out, and only two cameras above the installation where security personnel are stationed were working.
  • Security forces immediately informed their superiors, who ordered them to remain in the monitoring room and avoid further communication with the outside world until counterintelligence forces arrived. Twenty-one personnel were gathered in a conference room to await further instruction.
  • Security forces were then told to close down all surrounding roads.
  • Approximately two hours after the explosions, counterintelligence agents arrived and, after interviewing personnel and reviewing tapes, initially concluded that explosives may have been placed in ceiling lamps with some kind of trigger mechanism controlled by a power voltage frequency.
  • The last images show eight personnel in anti-radiation clothing trying desperately to secure one of the rooms.

The regime believes the technology used with the explosives is unknown to their forces, the source said.

Iranian authorities fear that opening the site from the outside in a rescue mission could possibly release radiation and uranium gas or cause further explosions, which could contaminate thousands of people living nearby, the source said.

As of Monday, the regime had not come up with any concrete rescue plan, though more than 200 people remain trapped, including the North Koreans, he said. He added that an agreement reached last September between North Korea and Iran called for further collaboration on Iran’s nuclear bomb project and the arming of missiles with nuclear warheads.

Another source in the Intelligence Ministry said that in a meeting Monday among top officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was decided that the international community would be kept in the dark about the disaster because any validation would undermine current negotiating with the 5+1 world powers.

An admission would also undermine the regime from within should Iranians react to its illicit nuclear activity and the international sanctions it caused, which are being felt deeply.

The source added that the regime is contemplating showing old images of the interior of the site to buy time until it can accurately estimate the extent of damage and possible loss of lives. Ahmadinejad will hold a parliamentary meeting behind closed doors on the issue  Thursday.

Despite severe international pressure and sanctions, Iran had refused to halt the 20-percent uranium enrichment process at Fordow. It takes only weeks to further enrich the stock at the 20-percent level to weaponization grade for a nuclear bomb.

Posted in Media, Middle East, Military Issues, Politics, Radical Islam
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Netanyahu Approved By Chuck Norris — Likely To Win Re-Election Tomorrow

By: John Gizzi

Tuesday, two days after Barack Obama is officially inaugurated for his second term, another world leader will not only return to power, but with a much stronger mandate as well.

Fourteen years after he lost Israel’s top job and quit politics, and four years after he recaptured his old post as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu is not only poised to win re-election but to do so in a big way. His Likud (conservative) Party and its coalition of smaller orthodox Jewish and other right-of-center parties should emerge in national elections with a majority in the 120-member Knesset (parliament).

The latest boost to the 63-year-old prime minister known universally as “Bibi” came days ago from across the ocean: Chuck Norris. Much as he did in the 2008 presidential bid for his close friend Mike Huckabee, action film superstar Norris recalls in a hard-hitting TV spot now showing in Israel how he has played a “tough guy,” but now wants to support “a real tough guy in the Middle East—Bibi Netanyahu.” Against a montage of clips showing Netanyahu with soldiers and fighter pilots, Norris hails the prime minister’s leadership of Israel when it is under siege and particularly praises his hard-line against Hamas—the virulently anti-Israel group now in control of the Gaza Strip portion of the Palestinian Authority.

Norris’s spot only underscores the reason that Netanyahu is seen as his country’s best hope when the Arab Spring has increasingly removed reliable allies from power in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. A re-elected Netanyahu is likely to maintain the hard-line that is his signature policy, including a fortified fence with Egypt and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Such hard-line policies have resulted in a frosty relationship between Netanyahu and Obama. Although White House press secretary Jay Carney insists all is well between the two and that Obama has had more telephone conversations and personal meetings with Netanyahu than any other world leader, it is no secret that the American president would prefer to deal with a less hard-line leader in Israel. During the G-27 meeting in November of 2011, an open mike picked up then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy telling Obama: “I cannot bear Netanyahu—he’s a liar.”

“You’re fed up with him,” replied Obama, “but I have to deal with him more often than you.”

The distance between Obama and a re-elected Netanyahu could grow, many say, because of the exit of the Israeli leader’s defense minister, Ehud Barak. Once Israel’s most decorated soldier and formerly an arch-enemy of Netanyahu (he led the Labor Party to a big win over Likud in 1999 and became prime minister), Barak now leads a smaller party and is a major player in the Israeli Cabinet. In Israeli political circles, the two former foes are dubbed “Batman and Robin.”

Barak’s recent announcement that he was resigning as defense chief is not likely to help U.S.-Israel ties. It is no secret that the Democratic administration in Washington would prefer to work with Barak rather than Netanyahu. During the Democratic National Convention, a film was shown to a caucus of Jewish delegates in which Obama was hailed as the best friend of Israel by Barak and Israeli President Shimon Peres but there was no testimony from Netanyahu.

Certainly nervousness at the new governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and the growing bellicosity from Iran are the major reasons for the likely big win by Israel’s “tough guy” prime minister. But also helping Netanyahu is the fact that his leading opponents in the center and left are all bitterly divided among themselves. Tzipi Livni, a vigorous proponent of a two state solution, was once considered a strong favorite to become Israel’s second woman prime minister. A onetime Mossad undercover agent, she has been likened to “Mrs. Emma Peel,” the dashing secret agent in the hit 1960’s British TV series “The Avengers.”

But Livni was deposed as head of the Kadima (center) Party after its defeat in 2009. Kadima is now headed by former Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz and Livni, after a few years in the political wilderness, has re-emerged to head the new Hatnuah (Movement) Party. The Labor Party, home of such political giants as Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin, has gone through a string of leaders. It is now headed by feminist Shelly Yachimovich, a radio and TV news commentator who has never held a cabinet ministry.

All this serves to make very probable on Tuesday what is now only a slogan on Likud campaign posters: “A strong Netanyahu, a strong government.”

SOURCE: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/01/20/netanyahu-aided-by-chuck-norris-endoresement/

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UPDATE: Thirty hostages reported killed in Algeria assault

By Lamine Chikhi

ALGIERS |         Thu Jan 17, 2013 6:42pm EST

ALGIERS (Reuters) – Thirty hostages and at least 11 Islamist militants were killed on Thursday when Algerian forces stormed a desert gas plant in a bid to free many dozens of Western and local captives, an Algerian security source said.

Details remained scant – including for Western governments, some of which did little to disguise irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the raid and its bloody outcome.

Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters. Eight of the dead hostages were Algerian. The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more who escaped, were unclear.

Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also been mentioned by their governments as having been captured.

Underlining the view of African and Western leaders that they face a multinational, al Qaeda-linked insurgency across the Sahara – a conflict that prompted France to send troops to neighboring Mali last week – the official source said only two of the 11 dead militants were Algerian, including their leader.

After an operation that appeared to go on for some eight hours, after Algeria refused the kidnappers’ demand to leave the country with their hostages, the bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman were found.

So too was that of Taher Ben Cheneb, an Algerian whom the security official described as a prominent jihadist commander in the Sahara.

The gunmen who seized the important gas facility deep in the desert before dawn on Wednesday had been demanding France halt its week-old offensive against Islamist rebels in Mali.

French President Francois Hollande said the hostage drama, which has raised fears of further militant attacks, showed that he was right to send more than 1,000 French troops to Mali to back up a West African force in support of Mali’s government.

A Algerian government spokesman, who confirmed only that an unspecified number of hostages had died, said the tough response to a “diehard” attitude by the militants showed that, as during its bloody civil war against Islamists in the 1990s, Algiers would not negotiate or stand for “blackmail” from “terrorists”.

SECURITY IN QUESTION

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions, however, over the reliability of what was thought to be strong security.

Foreign companies said they were pulling non-essential staff out of the country, which has only in recent years begun to seem stable after a decade of blood-letting.

“The embarrassment for the government is great,” said Azzedine Layachi, an Algerian political scientist at New York’s St John’s University. “The heart of Algeria’s economy is in the south. where the oil and gas fields are. For this group to have attacked there, in spite of tremendous security, is remarkable.”

Algiers, whose leaders have long had frosty relations with the former colonial power France and other Western countries, may also have some explaining to do over its tactics in putting an end to a hostage crisis whose scale was comparable to few in recent decades bar those involving Chechen militants in Russia.

Communication Minister Mohamed Said sounded unapologetic, however. “When the terrorist group insisted on leaving the facility, taking the foreign hostages with them to neighboring states, the order was issued to special units to attack the position where the terrorists were entrenched,” he told state news agency APS, which said some 600 local workers were freed.

A local source told Reuters six foreign hostages had been killed along with eight of their captors when troops fired on a vehicle being used by the gunmen at the Tigantourine plant.

The standoff began when gunmen calling themselves the Battalion of Blood stormed the facility early on Wednesday morning. They said they were holding 41 foreigners.

In a rare eyewitness account of Wednesday’s raid, a local man who had escaped from the facility told Reuters the militants appeared to have inside knowledge of the layout of the complex and used the language of radical Islam.

“The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels,” Abdelkader, 53, said by telephone from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. “‘We will kill them,’ they said.”

Mauritanian agency ANI and Qatar-based Al Jazeera said earlier that 34 captives and 15 militants had been killed when government forces fired at a vehicle from helicopters.

BAD NEWS EXPECTED

British Prime Minister David Cameron said people should prepare for bad news about the hostages. He earlier called his Algerian counterpart to express his concern at what he called a “very grave and serious” situation, his spokesman said.

“The Algerians are aware that we would have preferred to have been consulted in advance,” the spokesman added.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said he had been told by his Algerian counterpart that the action had started at around noon. He said they had tried to find a solution through the night, but that it had not worked.

“The Algerian prime minister said they felt they had no choice but to go in now,” he said.

The incident dramatically raises the stakes in the French military campaign in neighboring Mali, where hundreds of French paratroopers and marines are launching a ground offensive against Islamist rebels after air strikes began last week.

“What is happening in Algeria justifies all the more the decision I made in the name of France to intervene in Mali in line with the U.N. charter,” Hollande said, adding that things seemed to have taken a “dramatic” turn.

He said earlier that an unspecified number of French nationals were among the hostages. A French national was also among the hostage takers, a local source told Reuters. A large number of people from the former French colony live in France.

Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said the kidnappers were loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Islamist guerrilla who fought in Afghanistan and set up his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local al Qaeda leaders.

A holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed “The Uncatchable” by French intelligence and “Mister Marlboro” by some locals for his illicit cigarette-running business, Belmokhtar’s links to those who seized towns across northern Mali last year are unclear.

Britain said one of its citizens was killed in the initial storming on Wednesday and “a number” of others were held.

The militants had said seven Americans were among their hostages. The White House said it believed Americans were among those held but U.S. officials could not confirm the number.

“This is an ongoing situation and we are seeking clarity,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

FOREIGN FIRMS

Norway’s Statoil, which runs the plant with BP of Britain and Algeria’s state energy company, said it had no word on nine of its Norwegian staff who had been held, but that three Algerian employees were now free.

BP said some of its staff were being held but would not say how many or their nationalities.

Japanese media said five workers from Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp. were held, a number the company did not confirm. The Irish government said one Irish hostage was freed.

Hollande has received public backing from Western and African allies who fear that al Qaeda, flush with men and arms from the defeated forces of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, is building a desert haven in Mali, a poor country helpless to combat fighters who seized its northern oasis towns last year.

However, there is also some concern in Washington and other capitals that the French action in Mali could provoke a backlash worse than the initial threat by militants in the remote Sahara.

The militants, communicating through established contacts with media in neighboring Mauritania, said on Wednesday they had dozens of men armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles in the compound and had rigged it with explosives.

They condemned Algeria’s secularist government for letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali and shutting its border to Malian refugees.

The attack in Algeria did not stop France from pressing on with its campaign in Mali. It said on Thursday it now had 1,400 troops on the ground there, and combat was under way against the rebels that it first began targeting from the air last week.

The French action last week came as a surprise but received widespread public international support. Neighboring African countries planning to provide ground troops for a U.N. force by September have said they will move faster to deploy them.

Nigeria, the strongest regional power, sent 162 soldiers on Thursday, the first of an anticipated 906.

A day after launching the campaign in Mali, Hollande also ordered a commando raid in Somalia on Saturday, which failed to free a French hostage held by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants since 2009. Al Shabaab said on Thursday it had executed the hostage, Denis Allex. France said it believed he had died in the raid.

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London and Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Writing by Peter Graff, Giles Elgood, Philippa Fletcher and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

SOURCE: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/17/us-sahara-crisis-idUSBRE90F1JJ20130117

Posted in Middle East, Politics, Radical Islam
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Political Islam: Mercy To The Guilty Is Cruelty To The Innocent

“Over 270 million non-Muslims were murdered by jihad over the last 1400 years. And you speak of peace.”

Someone wrote in reply to the “Un-Merry Christmas to the Christians from Islam” newsletter (posted here December 24, 2012):

Oh My God. How wrong can you be? Please have more knowledge before you say anything.

Most of what you wrote about Islam is wrong. Islam has several verses which contribute to peace on earth and tolerance to all. Some people do not adhere to this and happen to be Muslim so you regard that as consensus. It’s interesting to justify your sense of Islam you bring in Boko Haram and the kidnapping of the Christian girl for blasphemy. (Your average Muslims??). I hold a degree in Islamic studies and am now studying a post grad; so I know what I am talking about. As a Christian myself I know we too have our faults in society but on no account does that represent the mass.

So you hold yourself to be an expert? Well, there are only two experts–Allah and Mohammed. Islam is found in the Koran, Sira and Hadith. Everything else is comment, including your post grad courses.

The “several verses which contribute to peace on earth and tolerance for all” in the Koran are all abrogated by later jihadic verses. The man who does not understand the use of abrogation should not comment about the Koran.

Seek critical study of source texts, not university propaganda. After you have read the Koran in the correct time order (to see the abrogation) and read the Sira by Ishaq or al Tabari and Bukhari, come back and comment. (21% of Bukhari’s hadiths are about murderous jihad.) Master the Sunna of Mohammed and then talk to us.

Look at Mohammed’s life. He preached the religion of Islam in Mecca for 13 years and got 150 Meccans to become Muslims. He moved to Medina and attacked every single neighbor he had, without exception. In his rise to absolute power he was responsible for an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks for the last 9 years of his life. Peace on earth, what a joke!

Boko Haram jihadists follow pure Medinan Islam. You confuse Muslim-ology with the study of Islam. Start with Islam to understand Muslims. Do not start with Muslims to understand Islamic doctrine.

Another thing about those peaceful believers who make up the mass of Muslims, do you notice that they don’t condemn the murder of Christians? They are silent. Do they teach you in your post grad Islam classes that “silence is consent”?

Have you ever condemned the jihadic murder of Christians? Buddhists? Hindus? Jews? Over 270 million non-Muslims were murdered by jihad over the last 1400 years. And you speak of peace.

Christians who are silent in the face of Islamic jihad against Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindu and atheists are giving consent to this brutality. There have been over 20,000 jihad attacks since 9/11. What noise are you making about that? Silence is consent. (emphasis mine)

Your apologist education has made you a deluded dhimmi. What is truly tragic is that you represent the pious pacifism of today’s Christians. You are so nice, but you are ruled by fear. It is odd how many Christians live in fear, yet Jesus told his followers, again and again, not to fear. Put down the gospel of nice and take up the Gospel of Christ and take on spiritual warfare.

Oh, and you Jews, take up the mantle of Aaron, Gideon, Deborah and David. Let the Hindus remember the Bhagavad Gita. Let the Buddhists take a lesson from Rinzai Zen.

We either stand together in this civilizational war or we will all be annihilated. See Turkey, Egypt, North Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and the other graveyards of Kafir civilization.

SOURCE:  www.politicalislam.com

Posted in Middle East, Politics, Radical Islam
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Economic War Continues To Expand; Iran Has Been Hacking Our Banks And Financial System

by Kevin D. Freeman on January 11, 2013

While most Americans remain unaware, the global economic war is expanding at a frightening pace. Last week, it was revealed that the Iranians were behind the computer hacking of our banks and financial system Here are excerpts from a story in The New York Times:

Bank Hacking Was the Work of Iranians, Officials Say

By and   Published: January 8, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later.But there was something disturbingly different about the wave of online attacks on American banks in recent weeks. Security researchers say that instead of exploiting individual computers, the attackers engineered networks of computers in data centers, transforming the online equivalent of a few yapping Chihuahuas into a pack of fire-breathing Godzillas.

The skill required to carry out attacks on this scale has convinced United States government officials and security researchers that they are the work of Iran, most likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States.

“There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks,” said James A. Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Mr. Lewis said the amount of traffic flooding American banking sites was “multiple times” the amount that Russia directed at Estonia in a monthlong online assault in 2007 that nearly crippled the Baltic nation. [Continue reading at The New York Times....]

To be sure the Iranians have denied involvement. But, U.S. officials remain steadfast in their belief that Iran is behind the attacks. We have already reported that an economic war was underway with Iran. Here are links to those prior posts:

Iran’s Secret Weapon Threat

Our Paper or Their Oil?

We also have covered the fact that the attacks were focused on banks and our financial system:

Radical Islam is Attacking our Financial System, Banks, and Stock Exchange

Was Osama bin Laden an Economic Terrorist?

Osama bin Laden Documents Prove Financial Terrorism?

Unfortunately, the government appears to be treating these continuing and growing acts of war as isolated incidents. They are not. These are deliberate battles in a full-scale, escalating war that will determine our economic future. It is not just the Iranians. There are regular attacks emanating from China, Russia, Venezuela, and other parts of the Middle East. Computer hacking is just one of many weapons being deployed. Our side has been fighting as well, albeit on an ad-hoc basis. The problem is that most Americans are unaware, ignorant of the very real risks to their economic future.

SOURCE: http://globaleconomicwarfare.com/2013/01/economic-war-continues-to-expand-iran-has-been-hacking-our-banks-and-financial-system/

Posted in Middle East, Politics, Radical Islam
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Obama’s Second Term

By Robert D. Kaplan
Chief Geopolitical Analyst

Presidents define themselves by whom they appoint: At the very top of the Washington food chain, personalities matter much more than bureaucratic systems. This is particularly true in a second term, when the need to follow opinion polls is far less intense, allowing the president and his new appointees a freer hand.

The foreign policy story of U.S. President Barack Obama’s first term could be told through three personalities: former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. Gates was a Republican realist who dominated the first half of Obama’s first term. Because of Gates, Obama did not go “soft” as Democrats are supposedly liable to do. Guantanamo Bay prison remained open, there was no initial rush to the exits in Iraq, a robust campaign of assassinations against al Qaeda proceeded apace, and so forth. In other words, rhetoric aside, Obama’s first two years were not much different from George W. Bush’s last two. Clinton, through her own appointees at State, like Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell (again, it is individuals who especially matter at the top), oriented American foreign policy back toward the Pacific following eight years of Bush-era concentration on Middle Eastern wars. Holbrooke, though, may be the most significant member of the Obama story thus far because of his negative value: He was a larger-than-life personality who was crucially ignored. It was this undermining of Holbrooke by the White House that actually defined the first term. Holbrooke constantly lobbied for an aggressive, solution-oriented, diplomatic approach to Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By thwarting Holbrooke, White House advisers like Tom Donnelly signaled that while practical and hard-edged, Obama was not a risk taker with a grand strategy like Richard Nixon or George H.W. Bush.

Judging by his new appointees, Obama’s second term will be like his first, only more so. Pragmatism will reign supreme, even as there will be little appetite to take authentically risky initiatives, whether diplomatic, military or otherwise. Some in the media have celebrated Secretary of State-designate John Kerry as bold. Nonsense. Boldness is not necessarily about diplomacy for diplomacy’s sake, which is all Kerry seems to be about thus far. Rather, boldness is often about backing up diplomacy with the threat or use of some kind of force in creative combinations toward a larger strategy. The new defense secretary-nominee, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, comes from the same non-ideological, middle-of-the-road school as Gates and current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Hagel is essentially a moderate Republican who is now closer to Democrats (he is distinguished by the fact that — unusual for Washington — he actually speaks his mind). Michele Flournoy, whom Obama might conceivably nominate if the Hagel appointment were to falter in the Senate, is a moderate Democrat with an affinity for mid-20th century Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. So the emphasis at the Pentagon will be on smart cost-cutting; withdrawing from a high-maintenance, low-payoff conflict in Afghanistan; and avoiding — unless absolutely necessary — a military strike against Iran. The military itself will help in this regard. For the generals will tell both the new defense secretary and Obama that they cannot guarantee success because the enemy, as the cliche goes, gets a vote. To wit, what exactly the Iranians would do in the event of an American strike cannot ultimately be known.

In other words, Stratfor’s broad net assessment of a more-or-less intractable Middle East, in which what Washington does or doesn’t do matters less than Washington thinks, even as the diversification of energy sources makes the Middle East gradually less vital to Washington, is being borne out through Obama’s latest appointees — people extremely hesitant to embark on any adventures. It seems that Obama intuits this reality and has picked personalities accordingly. Individuals are crucial but are, nevertheless, also products of larger forces. Holbrooke always pushed back energetically against larger forces like ethnic, geographic and historical divisions and was thus a figure beloved of East Coast intellectuals and journalists. Yet, Obama usually ignored his pleas.

Indeed, the East Coast knowledge elite essentially believes that foreign policy is a branch of Holocaust studies, in which a president is judged by his willingness to intervene on behalf of innocent civilians in times of conflict. While it is true that the memory of the Holocaust — less than a lifetime removed — must play a role in foreign policy, at the same time it cannot define it. Foreign policy is primarily about the battle of space and power, in which order takes precedence over freedom, and interests take precedence over values. Such a realist mindset is rejected by the media and academia, even as it is quietly practiced throughout government and, especially, by successful foreign policy administrations. Obama’s new appointees will practice realism, even as idealism will infuse their remarks at press conferences.

Yes, Obama intervened largely for humanitarian considerations in Libya. But it was a hesitant, unenthusiastic intervention in which no boots were on the ground beyond some Special Operations Forces, ensuring that the United States did not own the security situation of post-Gadhafi Libya. And that situation is, to say the least, messy, with no real government beyond the capital of Tripoli. Syria, which is far more bloody, intractable and regionally fraught than Libya, is unlikely to see a truly robust Western military interventiondespite months of pleas on media opinion pages. The path to less bloodshed in Syria, if that is even possible, must lie through diplomacy with Iran, Russia and Turkey. Kerry and Hagel thankfully know that.

In fact, the legacy of the Iraq War still dominates U.S. foreign policy, and will do so throughout the duration of Obama’s second term. Even if the new secretaries of state and defense are less cautious than they appear, they will steer away from anything that smells of a large-scale, boots-on-the-ground operation, unless it is within an international coalition enjoying near-global consensus.

Instead, Obama will want to beat his chest in the Pacific, not in the Middle East. One of the unstated reasons why Obama is intent on continuing his emphasis on the Pacific into his second term is because it allows for a demonstration of American military power without the significant risk of war erupting. Moving warships around the South and East China seas incurs little hazard because everyone in the region wants to flex their muscles while avoiding conflict. With the exception of North Korea, there are no rogue or irresponsible states in the Pacific, only modestly, territorially ambitious ones.

Thus, Obama’s presidency constitutes not so much leadership as a stewardship of foreign policy. That is to say, foreign policy during his administration is in safe hands, no great initiatives or schemes have been — or will be — attempted, and any threats or challenges that arise will be addressed efficiently through procedural responses. It is a foreign policy that operates much like a money market fund: offering little risk, little reward and advisable during times of extreme financial upheaval, yet it loses ground to inflation and other forces over the course of the years.

Meanwhile, the journalistic and intellectual class will continue to agitate for action. And the president and his new team will continue to disappoint them most of the time, just as his old team did. Obama’s new team understands just to what degree risks outweigh rewards and how limited the options usually are — especially when taking into account the public’s severely reduced, post-Iraq desire for sacrifice. The media may turn out to be severely disappointed with Kerry and Hagel, and that might actually — much of the time, at least — turn out for the good.

SOURCE: http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=74786417f9554984d314d06bd&id=8d94dc082d&e=ba4e221d71

Posted in Middle East, Politics
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Syrian MiG-21 Upgraded to Carry Chemical Weapons without Pilot

On June 21, Syrian pilot Hassan Hamada, who holds a rank equivalent to colonel, took off in his MiG-21 from al-Dumair military airport northeast of Damascus and flew to King Hussein Airbase just across Syria’s southern border with Jordan. Upon landing in Jordan, Hamada removed his rank and requested political asylum.

Syria immediately admitted the pilot had defected and called him a traitor. Suspicion arose when Syria put increasing pressure on Jordan to return the plane. After being examined by Western intelligence agencies, the aircraft was discovered to have the ability to employ chemical weapons and fly without a pilot.

Information about the plane’s additional capability was reportedly passed on to U.S. intelligence agencies, which were said to have studied the information and interviewed Hamada. After concluding their examinations, U.S. experts said they believe Russian engineers helped convert the MiG-21 to an aircraft with unmanned aerial capability that could be armed with chemical weapons. Officials at the Pentagon believe additional Syrian aircraft underwent the same conversion, although the exact number is unknown.

Photo: Ammon News

Source: http://www.uasvision.com/2012/12/31/syrian-mig-21-upgraded-to-carry-chemical-weapons-without-pilot/

Posted in Middle East, Politics, Radical Islam
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