Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Trump, ISSIS,and Tribal Hatred. More Regarding Potential EMP Attack. Mueller and The Russian Connection - Is There Any? Whatever Happened?


We hear very little from those who hate Trump regarding his victories over  ISSIS and the fact that once Trump unleashed our military the Sec. of Defense has accomplished what Obama could not, would not.

Now, a new set of problems confronts us among various Iraqi sects Solve one problem creates another. That's life in The Middle East.  Tribal hatreds do not lend themselves to accomplishing democracy. (See 1 below.)
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I constantly warn about the devastation that could be caused should a rogue nation undertaking an EMP attack on our nation. This is simply another reason why N Korea must be cut down to size. War now or war later.  War seems inevitable. (See 2 below.)
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Mueller and Russian-Clinton involvement in collusion claims? Time will tell. (See 3 below.)
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Glick on Trump and his actions regarding The Iran Deal. (See 4 below.)
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What in God's name have we let happen ?

I guess we are the last generation to see, or even remember anything like this!
Whatever happened?

Political correctness (or "re-education") happened,
Lack of personal responsibility happened,
Lack of personal integrity and honesty happened,
Lack of respect and loyalty to our country happened,
Lack of being an American happened.

Did all of these things die along with common sense?
Ask a liberal .
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Dick
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1)

ISIS Defeated In Raqqa As 'Major Military Operations' Declared Over


US-backed forces fighting ISIS in Raqqa say “major military operations” in the city have ended and that the jihadists have lost control of their self-declared capital. The development marks a decisive victory in the fight against ISIS, though US officials said there were still pockets of resistance in the city.
“Major military operations in Raqqa are finished but they are now clearing the city of sleeper cells — if they exist — and mines,” Talal Salo, spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, told CNN. The SDF is a coalition of Arab and Kurdish fighters.
“The situation in Raqqa is under control and soon there will be an official statement declaring the liberation of the city.” The defeat of ISIS in Raqqa is a symbol of the terror group's decline — it now controls a small strip of territory along the Euphrates river in northern Syria.
The city became the de facto capital of the terror group's self-proclaimed “caliphate” following a sweep of territorial gains in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Can ISIS ever be eradicated? – Foreign fighters swelled the ranks of ISIS in Raqqa, which it used as a base to launch terror attacks around the world. A sustained effort to retake the city began in early June, in an operation led by the SDF and backed up by coalition air strikes. The SDF announced the final phase of the operation at the weekend.
In the past few days, the SDF said it had cleared ISIS fighters from the National Raqqa Hospital and Paradise Square, the infamous area in the center where ISIS jihadists carried out public beheadings and crucifixions. The terror group's black flag was hauled down from Raqqa's stadium, its last hideout in the city, on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
“The SDF have taken casualties in the past hours and we expect there will still be pockets of ISIS fighters in the coming days,” coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon told CNN. In a sign that the SDF operation was nearing a conclusion, coalition air strikes had eased off in the past week.
There was only one US airstrike in Syria Monday, but that was far from Raqqa. Dillon said the SDF hadn't asked for any more air support, meaning the coalition was confident that there were no more ISIS fighters left.
Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), the award-winning network of citizen journalists who remained in the city throughout the occupation, tweeted Monday that 30 buses and 10 trucks were used to transfer ISIS fighters from Raqqa.
The group also said that since the US-backed operation to free Raqqa began in early June, there had been 3,829 airstrikes on the city, 90 suicide bombings and 1,873 victims. It said 450,000 people had been displaced.
“We don't consider it a liberation because SDF has committed many human rights violations against civilians,” Abdalaziz Alhamza, co-founder of RBSS told CNN.
“Most of Raqqa people, including us, were looking forward to the day that ISIS would be defeated, but not in this scenario, having a new leadership that committed many human rights violations,” he said.
Alhamza also warned that the ISIS ideology was still spreading. “They might disappear from Syria and Iraq but they will appear somewhere else,” he said, adding that many will probably have returned to their families in the countryside.
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2) Congress warned North Korean EMP attack would kill '90% of all Americans



Congress was warned Thursday that North Korea is capable of attacking the U.S. today with a nuclear EMP bomb that could indefinitely shut down the electric power grid and kill 90 percent of "all Americans" within a year.

At a House hearing, experts said that North Korea could easily employ the "doomsday scenario" to turn parts of the U.S. to ashes.

In calling on the Pentagon and President Trump to move quickly to protect the grid, the experts testified that an explosion of a high-altitude nuclear bomb delivered by a missile or satellite "could be to shut down the U.S. electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans."

Two members of the former congressional EMP commission said the threat to the U.S. has never been higher, in part because of the current high level of saber rattling by both sides and North Korea's surprising display over the past six months of its ability to deliver on its threats.

"With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by new, radical U.S. adversaries, beginning with North Korea, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the United States. It is critical, therefore, that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as a critical and existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP," the experts told a House Homeland Security subcommittee     

                                                                                                                                                                                                 William R. Graham, chairman of the former EMP commission and its former chief of staff, Peter Vincent Pry, said that the U.S. has ignored the warning signs for years and that North Korea's military moves this year must be seen as a wake-up call.
They said:
  • Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea's nuclear arsenal was primitive, some academics claiming it had as few as 6 A-Bombs. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea has 60 nuclear weapons.
  • Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea's ICBMs were fake, or if real could not strike the U.S. mainland. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea's ICBMs can strike Denver and Chicago, and perhaps the entire United States.
  • Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea was many years away from an H-Bomb. Now it appears North Korea has H-Bombs comparable to sophisticated U.S. two-stage thermonuclear weapons.
  • Just six months ago, most experts claimed North Korean ICBMs could not miniaturize an A-Bomb or design a reentry vehicle for missile delivery. Now the intelligence community reportedly assesses North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons, and has developed reentry vehicles for missile delivery, including by ICBMs that can strike the U.S.
  • After massive intelligence failures grossly underestimating North Korea's long-range missile capabilities, number of nuclear weapons, warhead miniaturization, and proximity to an H-Bomb, the biggest North Korean threat to the U.S. remains unacknowledged—nuclear EMP attack.
Their testimony also highlighted the failure of the Pentagon or Congress to extend the life of the EMP Commission and they recommended deeper study into the threat, include from a simple solar flare.

"Our current vulnerability invites attack," they said.


Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com
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3)  What Did Mueller Know? New Documents Show Clinton-Russia Scandal Dwarfs Anything on Trump’s Side

Contrary to the Left's favorite narrative, any Russia scandal has always been worse for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. Recent revelations confirmed this Tuesday, and even implicated the special prosecutor at the center of the Trump-Russia investigation, former FBI director Robert Mueller.


In 2010, the Obama administration approved a controversial deal giving Russian company Rosatom partial control of Canadian mining company Uranium One (and with it 20 percent of U.S. uranium), just as Russians paid former president Bill Clinton for speeches and Hillary Clinton was secretary of State. To make matters worse, the FBI had already gathered evidence of Russian corruption in the U.S. but kept it secret just when it would have mattered most, The Hill reported Tuesday.

A confidential U.S. witness working in the Russian nuclear industry helped federal agents gather financial records, make secret recordings, and intercept email starting in 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised U.S. trucking company Transport Logistics International, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Officials also acquired documents and an eyewitness account corroborating earlier reports that Russian officials had routed million of dollars into the U.S. to benefit the Clinton Foundation just as Hillary Clinton served on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which endorsed the Uranium One deal.

This racketeering scheme was allegedly conducted "with the consent of higher level officials" in Russia who "shared the proceeds," The Hill reported.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) did not bring immediate charges upon learning of the corruption in 2010, but kept investigating the matter for nearly four more years, leaving the American public and Congress in the dark.

Knowledge of Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil would have been vital to preventing the disastrous 2010 Uranium One deal, but it also might have prevented a lesser known approval in 2011. That year, the Obama administration approved a request from Rosatom's subsidiary Tenex, allowing it to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants (in addition to reprocessed uranium from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons sold under the Megatons to Megawatts program).

"The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns," a person who worked on the case told The Hill. "And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions."

Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation, was at the helm of the FBI from 2001 until 2013, so it seems likely he was culpable in keeping this investigation secret — at the very time when it would have been most pivotal for U.S. national security.
A man who may be responsible for allowing tremendous Russian corruption on U.S. soil to continue — and even intensify — during the Obama administration is now leading the investigation into potential Russian connections involving the man who ran for president against Obama's legacy. Conflict of interest, much?

In 2015, conservative author Peter Schweitzer published a blistering story in The New York Times uncovering Clinton's connections to and benefits from the 2010 Uranium One purchase. The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their authorization of that purchase by insisting that there was no evidence any Russians or donors to the Clinton Foundation engaged in wrongdoing. They also argued that there was no national security reason to oppose the Uranium One deal.

According to documents from the FBI, Energy Department, and court proceedings, however, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence before the committee's decision that Vadim Mikerin — the Russian overseer of Putin's U.S. nuclear expansion — was engaged in wrongdoing since 2009.

Mikerin directed Rosatom's Tenex in Moscow since the early 2000s, and he oversaw Rosatom's nuclear collaboration with the U.S. under the Megatons to Megawatts program. In 2010, he acquired a U.S. work visa to open Rosatom's new American arm, Tenam.
According to a November 2014 indictment, Mikerin "did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire, confederate and agree with other persons ... to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion" between 2009 and 2012.

His conduct was discovered with the help of a confidential witness who began making kickback payments at Mikerin's direction, with the permission of the FBI. The first recorded kickback payment was dated November 27, 2009
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Energy Department Agent David Gadren testified that, "as part of the scheme, Mikerin, with the consent of higher level officials at TENEX and Rosatom (both Russian state-owned entities) would offer no-bid contracts to US businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money payments made to some offshore banks accounts."

The investigation was supervised by then-U.S. attorney (and currently President Trump's deputy attorney general) Rod Rosenstein, then-assistant FBI director (and now deputy FBI director) Andrew McCabe, and then-FBI director Robert Mueller. All three of these men play key roles in the Trump-Russia investigation.

The FBI investigation, kept secret from the American public just when the Obama administration made key international business decisions, also exposed a serious national security breach: Mikerin signed a contract giving American trucking firm Transport Logistics International the rights to transport Russia's uranium around the U.S. — in return for more than $2 million in kickbacks from executives.

Uncovering and blocking such a massive Russian nuclear bribery scheme would seem like a pivotal success for the DOJ and FBI, but they took little credit for the investigation when Mikerin, the Russian financier, and the trucking firm executives were arrested in 2014.

A full year later, the DOJ put out a press release unveiling the defendants' plea deals. At that time, the case against Mikerin consisted of a single charge of money laundering for a scheme from 2004 to 2014. Although agents had evidence of criminal wrongdoing since 2009, federal prosecutors only cited a handful of transactions in 2011 and 2012 in the plea agreement. These came well after the Uranium One deal.

The final court case also made no mention of the Russian attempts to peddle influence with the Clintons, which the FBI undercover informant witnessed, despite the documents showing millions of dollars sent from Russian nuclear businesses to an American entity connected to the Clinton Foundation
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Only in December 2015 did the Justice Department announce Mikerin's sentence of 48 months in prison and the forfeiture of more than $2.1 million. The release referred to him as "a former Russian official residing in Maryland."

Ronald Hosko, then-assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases, told The Hill he did not recall being briefed about Mikerin's case, despite the criminal charges. "I had no idea this case was being conducted," he said.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also told The Hill he had not been briefed about the Russian nuclear corruption case.
"Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators ... has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them," Rogers said.

In light of such a scandal, it seems particularly damning that members of the intelligence community have been shamelessly leaking allegations against Donald Trump involving potential Russian connections. Every story in this direction turns out to be a dead end.
Most recently, the Russian-backed Facebook ads turned out not only to support Hillary Clinton and Black Lives Matter, but to have a tiny impact on the election as a whole. In fact, Democrat senators like Richard Blumenthal made fools of themselves in a fruitless attempt to pin these ads on the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that the Obama administration wiretapped key leaders in the Trump campaign, most notably Paul Manafort, and may have spied on Trump himself in doing so.

The real Russia scandal has been a Clinton scandal, from 2010 onward — and now, in a darkly ironic twist of fate, it involves the very former FBI director responsible for investigating that elusive "collusion" between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It seems the Left's attempts to hide their own corruption by pinning it on Trump may be coming to an end.
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4)

The opportunities and risks of Trump's Iran initiative


Caroline B. Glick

By Caroline B. Glick




What's driving the president's supposed 'crackpot' strategy? A lot, actually

On Friday, US President Donald Trump initiated an important change in US policy toward Iran.

No, in his speech decertifying Iran’s compliance with the nuclear accord it struck with his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump didn’t announce a new strategy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, or stemming its hegemonic rise in the Middle East, or limiting its ability to sponsor terrorism.

Trump’s move was not operational. It was directional.

In his address Friday, Trump changed the policy dynamics that dictate US policy on Iran. For the first time since 2009, when Obama backed the murderous regime in Tehran, spurning the millions of Iranians who rose up in the Green Revolution, Trump opened up the possibility that the US may begin to base its policies toward Iran on reality.

Trump began his remarks by setting out Iran’s long rap sheet of aggression against America.

Starting with the US embassy seizure and hostage crisis, Trump described Iran’s crimes and acts of war against America in greater detail than any of his predecessors ever did.

Trump’s dossier was interlaced with condemnations of the regime’s repression of its own people.

By merging Iran’s external aggression with its internal repression, Trump signaled a readiness to drive a wedge – or expand the wedge – between the authoritarian theocrats that rule Iran and the largely secular, multiethnic and pro-Western people of Iran.

Trump then turned his attention to Iran’s illicit ballistic missile program, its sponsorship of terrorism, including its links to al-Qaida, its aggression against its neighbors, its aggressive acts against maritime traffic in the Straits of Hormuz, and its bids to destabilize and control large swaths of the Middle East through its proxies.

It is notable that these remarks preceded Trump’s discussion of the nuclear deal – which was the ostensible subject of his speech. Before Trump discussed Iran’s breaches of the nuclear deal, he first demonstrated that contrary to the expressed views of his top advisers, it is impossible to limit a realistic discussion of the threat Iran constitutes to US national security and interests to whether or not and it what manner it is breaching the nuclear accord.

This was a critical point because for the past two years, US discourse on Iran has focused solely on whether or not Iran was complying with Obama’s nuclear pact. By placing the nuclear deal in the context of Iran’s consistent, overarching hostility and aggression, Trump made it self-evident that no US interest is served in continuing to give Iran a free pass from congressional sanctions.

After accomplishing that goal, Trump turned his attention to how Iran is actually breaching the letter and spirit of the nuclear pact. Only then, almost as an afterthought, did he announce that he was decertifying Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal, setting the conditions for the renewal of congressional sanctions on Iran and opening the floodgates of congressional sanctions on Iran in retaliation for the full spectrum of its aggressive and illicit acts against the US, its interests and allies.

By empowering Congress to prohibit economic cooperation with Iran, Trump put the Europeans, Chinese and Russians on notice that they may soon face a choice between conducting business with the US and conducting business with Iran.

After putting them on notice, Trump discussed the possibility of improving Obama’s nuclear accord. Among other things, he suggested expanding the inspection regime against Iran’s nuclear installations and canceling the so-called “sunset” clause that places an end date on the restrictions governing certain components of Iran’s nuclear advancement.

Trump’s address has the potential to serve as the foundation of a major, positive shift in US policy toward Iran. Such a shift could potentially facilitate the achievement of Trump’s goals of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, containing its regional aggression and empowerment and defeating its terrorist proxies.

Unfortunately, it is also likely, indeed, it is more likely, that his words will not be translated into policies to achieve these critical aims.

Trump’s decision to transfer immediate responsibility to Congress for holding Iran accountable for its hostile actions on the military and other fronts is a risky move. He has a lot of enemies, and the nuclear deal has a lot of supporters on Capitol Hill.

Obama would have never been able to implement his nuclear deal if Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, hadn’t agreed to cast the Constitution aside and ignore Obama’s constitutional duty to present the nuclear deal to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.

Over the past week, Trump and Corker have been involved in an ugly public fight precipitated by Corker’s announcement that he will not be seeking reelection next year.

Today Corker has nothing to restrain him from scuttling Trump’s agenda. If he wishes, out of spite, Corker can block effective sanctions from being passed. And he may do so even though the implications for his Senate colleagues would be dire and even though doing so would render him an unofficial protector of Iran’s nuclear program.

What is true for Corker is doubly true for the Democrats.

Leading Democratic senators like Robert Menendez, Ben Cardin and Chuck Schumer, who opposed Obama’s Iran deal may now feel that as opponents of the Trump administration, they are required to oppose any change to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act.

Indeed, given the rise of radical forces in their party it is likely that they would rather give Iran a free pass for its anti-American aggression and nuclear proliferation than work with Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

Then again, by framing the issue of Iran’s threat to America as he did, and by transferring responsibility for reinstating sanctions and passing further sanctions on Iran to Congress, Trump opened up the possibility that Congress will conduct substantive – rather than personal – debates on Iran.

And the more substantive those debates become, the further away the US discourse will move from the mendacious assumptions of Obama’s Iran policy – that the Iranian regime is a responsible actor and potential US ally, and that there is nothing inherently aggressive or problematic about Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program.

The second major risk inherent in Trump’s approach is that he will get his way; that the Europeans, Russians and Chinese and the Iranians will agree to improve the nuclear deal. The problem here is not obvious. Clearly, it is better if the deal is amended to delete the sunset clauses and expand the inspections regime.

Yet even an amended, improved deal will still serve as a shield to Iran’s nuclear program. An improved deal won’t destroy Iran’s centrifuges.

It won’t take away Iran’s enriched uranium. It won’t destroy Iran’s nuclear installations. And it won’t bring down the regime which by its nature ensures all of these things will remain a menace to the US, its allies and international security as a whole.

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