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Embattled Democrats have been told by Obama he understands why they do not want him to come and support them because they need to disavow their voting record. All of a sudden these politicians have developed bad cases of political amnesia. Though most voted over 90% of the time for Obama's programs, are more than willing to take money he raises to ensure their victory, they cannot remember whether they voted for him for president or voted for Obamacare or any of the other radical programs Obama shoved their and our way. That is politics folks. It is often a very dirty business engaged in by those who do not mind getting dirty because they know best and love power.
Now we have Democrat ads scaring black voters telling them, should Republicans capture the Senate, Obama will be impeached. These obnoxious ads are being stuffed in mailers in Atlanta and elsewhere. When Ms. Nunn , along with many of her fellow Democrats, are asked about their connection with Obama, they are told to quit pestering . Ms. Nunn knows how to play 'slippery" yet, she wants voters to trust her and buy her 'cumbuyah' campaign all the while denying she is a Democrat and will not say whether she will vote for Harry Reid blah. blah blah.
Ms Nunn wants voters to trust her because she is sincere, is female, is a community organizer who headed George Bush's Points of Light Organization for which she was paid a fat salary but refuses to answer questions about who she really is and her true views. Like Pelsoi said about Obamacare, you have to elect Ms. Nunn to find out who she is!
Scaring uninformed black voters is an old trick that has been played time and again because it is effective and in the dirty world of Democrat politics it rises to the accepted level of being PC! Scaring whites is an old Republican trick and when it is played it is just as disgusting.
I continue to maintain Jack Kingston would have run a far more effective campaign than David Purdue but I voted for David because I refuse to embrace two more years of Harry Reid who has turned the Senate into his private play pen. (Dick Morris appears on Newsmax TV to discuss the Georgia Senate race and whether David Perdue can defeat Michelle Nunn.
Tune in at 12:15 PM EST today on Newsmax TV — DIRECTV 349, DISH 223
Show repeats at 7 PM, 10 PM EDT tonight.)
Meanwhile, Obama cannot bring himself to link the word terrorists with Islam. He continues to label radical Islamists, who commit acts of terrorism, as engaging in work place disturbances.
He has demanded government agencies, who are supposedly going to protect us from this scourge, to look benignly on these incidents so as not to infuriate 'peaceful' Muslims who are afraid to speak out for fear of being killed as well.
Know your enemy and stay awake if you have any chance of defeating them and live in denial and be constantly surprised if you want to defeat yourself. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
Meanwhile, my friend, Toameh, sees no linkage as Sec, Kerry claims! (See 2c below.)
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Will Congress stop Obama vis a vis Iran? (See 3 below.)
More comment regarding Obama and Iran. (See 3a below.)
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You do not have to go to a dentist for implants! No wonder the news is rigged and no telling how many Muslims sympathizers and/or Muslims, Obama has burried in key government positions (See 4 below.)
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Abbas, the so-called Palestinian leader, Obama's State Department insists Israel must trust, continues to associate and encourage murderers. (See 5 below.)
Obama can kill civilians and not a peep. Israel does its very best to avoid doing so and the State Department, The U.N, Europeans and the entire world press and media goes ape. (See 5a below.)
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Dick
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1) Evaluating Ebola as a Biological Weapon
By Scott Stewart
Over the past few weeks, I've had people at speaking engagements ask me if I thought the Islamic State or some other militant group is using Ebola as a biological weapon, or if such a group could do so in the future. Such questions and concerns are not surprising given the intense media hype that surrounds the disease, even though only one person has died from Ebola out of the three confirmed cases in the United States. The media hype about the threat posed by the Islamic State to the United States and the West is almost as bad. Both subjects of all this hype were combined into a tidy package on Oct. 20, when the Washington Post published an editorial by columnist Mark Thiessen in which he claimed it would be easy for a group such as the Islamic State to use Ebola in a terrorist attack. Despite Thiessen's claims, using Ebola as a biological warfare agent is much more difficult than it might appear at first blush.
The 2014 Outbreak
In the past, there have been several outbreaks of Ebola in Africa. Countries included Sudan, Uganda, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and several comparatively small outbreaks occurred in Gabon as well. In most cases, people who handled or ate animals infected with the disease started the outbreaks. "Bushmeat," or portions of roasted meat from a variety of wild animals, is considered by many to be a delicacy in Africa, and in a continent where hunger is widespread, it is also a necessity for many hungry people. After several months of medical investigations, epidemiologists believe the current outbreak most likely began when a two-year-old child in Guinea touched or perhaps ate part of an infected animal such as a bat or monkey.
The source of the disease means it is highly unlikely that some malevolent actor intentionally caused the latest outbreak. Besides the fact that the current outbreak's cause has been identified as a natural one, even if a transnational militant group such as the Islamic State was able to somehow develop an Ebola weapon, it would have chosen to deploy the weapon against a far more desirable target than a small village in Guinea. We would have seen the militants use their weapon in a location such as New York, Paris or London, or against their local enemies in Syria and Iraq.
As far as intent goes, there is very little doubt that such a group would employ a biological weapon. As we noted last month when there was increased talk about the Islamic State possibly weaponizing plague for a biological attack, terrorist attacks are intended to have a psychological impact that outweighs the physical damage they cause. The Islamic State itself has a long history of conducting brutal actions to foster panic.
In 2006 and 2007, the Islamic State's predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, included large quantities of chlorine in vehicle bombs deployed against U.S. and Iraqi troops in an attempt to produce mass casualties. The explosives in the vehicle bombs killed more people than the chlorine did, and after several unsuccessful attempts, al Qaeda in Iraq gave up on its chlorine bombings because the results were not worth the effort. Al Qaeda in Iraq also included chemical artillery rounds in improvised explosive devices used in attacks against American troops in Iraq on several occasions. Again, these attacks failed to produce mass casualties. Finally, according to human rights organizations, the Islamic State appears to have recently used some artillery rounds containing mustard gas against its enemies in Syria; the group presumably recovered the rounds from a former Saddam-era chemical weapons facility in Iraq or from Syrian stockpiles.
The problem, then, lies not with the Islamic State's intent but instead with its capability to obtain and weaponize the Ebola virus. Creating a biological weapon is far more difficult than using a chemical such as chlorine or manufactured chemical munitions. Contrary to how the media frequently portrays them, biological weapons are not easy to obtain, they are not easy to deploy effectively and they do not always cause mass casualties.
The Difficulty of Weaponization
Ebola and terrorism are not new. Nor is the possibility of terrorist groups using the Ebola virus in an attack. As we have previously noted, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo attempted to obtain the Ebola virus as part of its biological warfare program. The group sent a medical team to Africa under the pretext of being aid workers with the intent of obtaining samples of the virus. It failed in that mission, but even if it had succeeded, the group would have faced the challenge of getting the sample back to its biological warfare laboratory in Japan. The Ebola virus is relatively fragile. Its lifetime on dry surfaces outside of a host is only a couple of hours, and while some studies have shown that the virus can survive on surfaces for days when still in bodily fluids, this requires ideal conditions that would be difficult to replicate during transport.
If the group had been able to get the virus back to its laboratory, it would have then faced the challenge of reproducing the Ebola virus with enough volume to be used in a large-scale biological warfare attack, similar to its failed attacks on Tokyo and other Japanese cities in which the group sprayed thousands of gallons of botulinum toxin and Anthrax spores. Reproducing the Ebola virus would present additional challenges because it is an extremely dangerous virus to work with. It has infected researchers, even when they were working in laboratories with advanced biosafety measures in place. Although Aum Shinrikyo had a large staff of trained scientists and a state-of-the-art biological weapons laboratory, it was still unable to effectively weaponize the virus.
The challenges Aum Shinrikyo's biological weapons program faced would be multiplied for the Islamic State. Aum Shinrikyo operatives were given a great deal of operational freedom until their plans were discovered after the 1995 sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway. (The group's previous biological weapons attacks were so unsuccessful that nobody knew they had been carried out until after its members were arrested and its chemical and biological weapons factories were raided.) Unlike the Japanese cult, the Islamic State's every move is under heavy scrutiny by most of the world's intelligence and security agencies. This means jihadist operatives would have far more difficulty assembling the personnel and equipment needed to construct a biological weapons laboratory. Since randomly encountering an infected Ebola patient would be unreliable, the group would have to travel to a country impacted by the outbreak. This would be a difficult task for the group to complete without drawing attention to itself. Furthermore, once group members reached the infected countries, they would have to enter quarantined areas of medical facilities, retrieve the samples and then escape the country unnoticed, since they could not count on randomly encountering an infected Ebola patient.
Even if Islamic State operatives were somehow able to accomplish all of this -- without killing themselves in the process -- Ebola is not an ideal biological warfare vector. The virus is hard to pass from person to person. In fact, on average, its basic reproductive rate (the average amount of people that are infected by an Ebola patient) is only between one and two people. There are far more infectious diseases such as measles, which has a basic reproductive rate of 12-18, or smallpox, which has a basic reproductive rate of five to seven. Even HIV, which is only passed via sexual contact or intravenous blood transmission, has a basic reproductive rate of two to five.
Ebola's Weakness as a Weapon
The Ebola disease is also somewhat slow to take effect, and infected individuals do not become symptomatic and contagious for an average of 8-10 days. The disease's full incubation period can last anywhere from two to 21 days. As a comparison, influenza, which can be transmitted as quickly as three days after being contracted, can be spread before symptoms begin showing. This means that an Ebola attack would take longer to spread and would be easier to contain because infected people would be easier to identify.
Besides the fact that Ebola can only be passed through the bodily fluids of a person showing symptoms at the time, the virus in those bodily fluids must also somehow bypass the protection of a person's skin. The infectious fluid must enter the body through a cut or abrasion, or come into contact with the mucus membranes in the eyes, nose or mouth. This is different from more contagious viruses like measles and smallpox, which are airborne viruses and do not require any direct contact or transfer of bodily fluids. Additionally, the Ebola virus is quite fragile and sensitive to light, heat and low-humidity environments, and bleach and other common disinfectants can kill it. This means it is difficult to spread the virus by contaminating surfaces with it. The only way to infect a large amount of people with Ebola would be to spray them with a fluid containing the virus, something that would be difficult to do and easily detectable.
Thiessen's piece suggested that the Islamic State might implement an attack strategy of infecting suicide operatives with Ebola and then having them blow themselves up in a crowded place, spraying people with infected bodily fluids. One problem with this scenario is that it would be extremely difficult to get an infected operative from the group's laboratory to the United States without being detected. As we have discussed elsewhere, jihadist groups have struggled to get operatives to the West to conduct conventional terrorist attacks using guns and bombs, a constraint that would also affect their ability to deploy a biological weapon.
Even if a hostile group did mange to get an operative in place, it would still face several important obstacles. By the time Ebola patients are highly contagious, they are normally very ill and bedridden with high fever, fatigue, vomiting and diarrhea, meaning they are not strong enough to walk into a crowded area. The heat and shock of the suicide device's explosion would likely kill most of the virus. Anyone close enough to be exposed to the virus would also likely be injured by the blast and taken to a hospital, where they would then be quarantined and treated for the virus.
Biological weapons look great in the movies, but they are difficult and expensive to develop in real life. That is why we have rarely seen them used in terrorist attacks. As we have noted for a decade now, jihadists can kill far more people with far less expense and effort by utilizing traditional terrorist tactics, which makes the threat of a successful attack using the Ebola virus extremely unlikely.
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2)--Canada Parliament Suspect Identified as a Convert to Islam
A gunman attacked Canada's parliament on Wednesday, with gunfire erupting near a room where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was speaking, and a soldier was fatally shot at a nearby war memorial, jolting the Canadian capital.
The gunman in the parliament building was shot dead, and Harper was safely removed.
Witnesses said a flurry of shots were fired after a gunman entered the parliament building, pursued by police.
The assault took place very near the room where Harper was meeting with members of his Conservative party, a government minister said.
"PM (Harper) was addressing caucus, then a huge boom, followed by rat-a-tat shots. We all scattered. It was clearly right outside our caucus door," Treasury Board Minister Tony Clement told Reuters.
The incident, shocking in Canada's normally tranquil capital, began shortly before 10 a.m. ET.
Canadian police were investigating a man named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau as a possible suspect in the shootings, a source familiar with the matter said. Two U.S. officials said U.S. agencies had been advised the suspect was a Canadian convert to Islam.
“Canada will never be intimidated,” and will redouble efforts to combat terrorism, Harper said in a televised address tonight. “We will learn more about the terrorist and any accomplices he may have had” in the days ahead, Harper said
Security in Ottawa came under criticism after the gunman was able to run through the unlocked front door of the main parliament building. Police said an operation was under way to make parliament safe.
"It caught us by surprise. ... If we had known that this was coming, we would have been able to disrupt it," Gilles Michaud, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, (RCMP) told a news conference.
It was unclear whether there was any connection between Wednesday's shootings and an attack on Monday when a convert to Islam ran down two Canadian soldiers with his car, killing one, near Montreal, before being shot dead by police in the first fatal attack on Canadian soil tied to Islamic militants.
Canada's prime minister called the Ottawa shooting the country's second terrorist attack in three days.
No group, Islamic or otherwise, claimed responsibility for either the attack in Ottawa or the one near Montreal. Monday's attacker, 25-year-old Martin Rouleau, who converted to Islam last year, was among 90 people being tracked by the RCMP on suspicion of taking part in militant activities abroad or planning to do so.
Canada announced this month it was joining the battle against Islamic State fighters who have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria.
From witness accounts it appeared the suspect dashed into parliament, ran past the room where Harper was speaking and was gunned down outside the entrance to the library, only about 60 feet away.
Dramatic video footage posted by the Globe and Mail newspaper showed police with guns drawn inside the main parliament building. At least a dozen loud bangs can be heard on the clip, echoing through the hallway.
Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino, a former policeman, told the Toronto Sun that parliament's head of security, Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers, shot dead a suspected gunman.
Canadian cabinet minister Jason Kenney said a guard in the parliament buildings was also wounded in the incident.
Harper stressed that government and parliament should continue its work, a spokesman said.
"While the prime minister stated that facts are still being gathered, he condemned this despicable attack," the spokesman said.
Canada said on Tuesday it had raised the national terrorism threat level to medium from low because of a rise in "general chatter" from radical groups such as Islamic State and al Qaida but said there had not been a specific threat.
The RCMP's Michaud said the threat level on Parliament Hill had been on medium for some time.
The soldier who died in the shooting at the War Memorial was identified as Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, according to his aunt.
Cirillo was a member of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a regiment of Reserve Forces based in Hamilton, and was training to join the Canada Border Services Agency, a federal agency responsible for border and immigration enforcement, his aunt told The Globe and Mail.
It was not clear if Cirillo was armed or not when he was shot.
As the drama in Ottawa unfolded, police in dark bulletproof vests and carrying automatic rifles flooded the streets near parliament, clearing several blocks of downtown Ottawa. Some took cover behind vehicles and shouted to people to clear the area, saying: "We do not have the suspect in custody. You are in danger here."
When the shooting started, most members of parliament were in the two caucus rooms past which the gunman ran. Members were told to lock or barricade themselves in their rooms or offices, and stay away from the windows.
A tweeted picture sent from the room where the opposition New Democrats were holding a weekly caucus showed a pile of chairs jammed up against the main door to prevent anyone from entering.
In Washington, a White House official said U.S. President Barack Obama had been briefed on the situation. He said the United States had offered assistance to Canada.
Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States, and the regulations at one point included a national registry of rifles and shotguns. Legislation was passed in 2012 to abandon the registry.
Ottawa also has a low murder rate. There were nine homicides in 2013 and seven in 2012, in a city of 885,000 people. Compared with Capitol Hill in Washington, security on Parliament Hill is also fairly low key. Anybody could walk right up to the front door of parliament's Centre Block with arms and explosives without being challenged before entering the front door, where a few guards check accreditation.
Centre Block is the main building on Parliament Hill, a sprawling complex of buildings and open space in downtown Ottawa. It contains the House of Commons and Senate chambers as well as the offices of some members of parliament, senators, and senior administration for both legislative houses. A construction worker who was on the scene in Ottawa when the shooting began told Reuters he heard a gunshot, and then saw a man with a scarf over his face running towards parliament.
"He was wearing blue pants and a black jacket and he had a double barrelled shotgun and he ran up the side of this building here and hijacked a car at gunpoint," construction worker Scott Walsh told Reuters.
The driver got out safely, then the man drove the car to the Centre Block, where construction work is under way, Walsh said.
The Canadian military closed its bases across the country to the public following the events in Ottawa, CBC TV said.
The attacks in Ottawa and Quebec took place as the Canadian government prepared to boost the powers of its spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said last Thursday the new legislation would let the agency track and investigate potential terrorists when they travel abroad and ultimately prosecute them.
2a)
2b) Obama the virtuoso manager
By CAROLINE GLICK
Since he assumed office nearly six years ago, US President Barack Obama has been dogged by allegations of managerial incompetence. Obama, his critics allege, had no managerial experience before he was elected. His lack of such experience, they claim, is reflected in what they see as his incompetent handling of the challenges of the presidency.
Among other things it did to locate Shaul and ascertain whether or not he was still alive, the IDF formally requested that the FBI intervene with Facebook to get the IP address of the persons who posted on Oron’s page. If such information was acquired quickly, the IDF might be able to locate Oron, or at least find people with knowledge of his whereabouts.
Then there was the unofficial arms embargo.
In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House and State Department had stopped the Pentagon at the last minute from responding favorably to an Israeli request for resupply of Hellfire precision air-to-surface missiles. The precision guided missiles were a key component of Israel’s air operations against missile launchers in Gaza. The missiles’ guidance systems allowed the air force to destroy the launchers while minimizing collateral damage.
In keeping with the standard decades-long practice, Israel requested the resupply through European Command, its military-to-military channel with the US military.
And in keeping with standard practice, the request was granted.
The difference between Obama’s actions during Operation Protective Edge and Ronald Reagan’s partial arms embargo against Israel 32 years ago is that Reagan made his action publicly. He argued his case before the public, and Congress.
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But such a vote would require hearings and a full debate on the matter. During the course of that debate, it almost certainly would become clear that what the administration is prepared to allow Iran would fall far short of the president’s campaign pledges to end Tehran’s nuclear program or to prevent it from ever getting a bomb. The administration has already publicly floated some of the terms it is offering the Iranians. While last year’s weak interim deal tacitly endorsed Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium that could be used for a weapon, the U.S. has retreated further from its initial tough position and is now prepared to allow the Iranians to have at least 1,000 centrifuges that could process the material to build nuclear fuel. Since the Iranians are insisting with their usual persistence that they be allowed to keep all of their centrifuges, most observers now assume that the U.S. will agree to a deal that will allow them to have thousands.
In order to save face, American negotiators have reportedly suggested that the pipes connecting the centrifuges be disconnected, a pathetic stance that further undermines American credibility since it is understood that they can easily be reconnected anytime the ayatollahs deem it in their interest. The same can be said of Iran’s agreement to deactivate its existing stockpile of enriched uranium since that too can be reversed with ease.
Seen in that light any agreement—assuming the Iranians are willing to agree to another weak deal rather than simply waiting until the international coalition Obama is leading unravels—will be difficult to sell to a skeptical Congress that pushed an unwilling administration into agreeing to the sanctions in the first place.
First, he will have to declare that any agreement will be merely an informal add-on to existing international deals rather than a treaty and so avoid a constitutionally required two-thirds ratification vote in the Senate he’d be unlikely to win. That will be a blatant lie but since the move would have to be taken to court, it’s a gamble he’d likely win.
More to the point, the president’s prepared end run also signals the resumption of a political battle over renewed sanctions that the administration thought it had conclusively won last winter. At the time, majorities in the House and the Senate were prepared to enact even tougher restrictions on commerce with Iran that would have tightened the noose on Tehran’s oil business. But, with the able assistance of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the president was able to stop the Senate from voting on the measure proposed by Senator Robert Menendez, the Foreign Relations Committee chair and Senator Mark Kirk. Supporters of more sanctions (which would not have gone into effect until the next phase of negotiations with Iran was pronounced a failure) were branded “warmongers” who didn’t want to give diplomacy a chance and thus effectively silenced.
But this time that strategy won’t work.
After a year of talks that have been dragged beyond the original six-month deadline and may yet be further extended as Iran continues its decade-old strategy of running out the clock on the West, it is no longer possible to argue that Obama needs to be given an opportunity to test the good will of the Iranians. Nor can the president pretend that the current terms are anything but a transparent surrender to Iranian demands and not a fulfillment of his pledges.
That’s why Menendez is prepared to try again this fall when Congress returns to Washington after the midterm elections. As the Times reports:
This is a crucial moment in the negotiations with Iran when the outcome is not yet determined. Unfortunately, the president’s efforts to loosen sanctions have already undermined international support for isolating Iran. With the possibility of a new deal, they are on the verge of complete collapse. But renewed and even tougher sanctions on Iran will signal to Europe that their expectations of a return to business as usual with Iran were a bit premature.
While the president thinks he can evade his constitutional requirements to let Congress vote on a treaty or rescind another law he doesn’t like, members of both parties appear ready to respond appropriately to this lawless plan. Unlike environmental regulations or even immigration laws, appeasement of Iran isn’t something that can be imposed on the country by presidential whim.
Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political blogger at www.commentarymagazine.com. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@commentarymagazine.com.
The Surprised President
From domestic politics to foreign policy, Obama and his aides frequently appear overtaken or overwhelmed by events.
October 20, 2014 President Obama is shocked, we are told. He's "visibly angry" over the government's response to the domestic Ebola threat.
A report in The New York Times over the weekend portrayed the president as a frustrated chief executive, directing federal officials to be more "hands on" and to be more on top of events rather than reacting to them.
If this feels familiar, it's because that has been the go-to White House play for some time when bad news arrives—always unexpectedly—as Obama's presidency seems overwhelmed by the sense that things aren't quite under control either within the administration or beyond it, in places overseas such as Iraq and Ukraine.
The president and his staff have seemed flat-footed, reactive, surprised, and at the mercy of outside events rather than in command of them. That has contributed to an abject feeling of powerlessness emanating from the West Wing—one augmented by the administration's own insistence at times that its reach is limited, that there was little it could to do to ease this summer's border crisis, or push Vladimir Putin back into Russia, or protect towns under threat from Islamic State forces.
So Obama was "madder than hell" when he learned about the patient backlogs at the Veterans Administration, aides said. He was angry when he was told about the problems with the federal health care website. He was mad when he found out that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting nonprofit political-advocacy groups.
As with the Ebola crisis, where the president is now fine-tuning and Scotch-guarding his approach, reports of Obama's dissatisfaction then were twinned with efforts toward recalibration. VA Secretary Erik Shinseki was let go. IRS commissioner Lois Lerner left before she could be fired. Just as Ron Klain was recruited last week to help tighten up the administration's Ebola plan, Jeff Zients was brought in to fix the health care site. Sometimes the shift has been a bit dizzying. It was a matter of weeks ago when Obama was confident that the right "infrastructure" was in place to combat Ebola and a so-called "czar" wasn't necessary.
One could argue that Obama, like many presidents before him (think George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina), has been let down by the sprawling and largely unmanageable federal bureaucracy. After all, we don't expect our presidents to be omniscient or omnipresent. But sometimes Obama's surprises have been of his own making—dating back to the first days of his presidency.
Obama's first surprise came in January 2009, when media reports had the White House stunned that its emergency economic stimulus plan failed to capture any GOP votes in the House—despite its intense lobbying efforts. But perhaps aides shouldn't have been blindsided. Even then, Republicans were complaining that they had been cut out of the legislative process. The wrangling over the stimulus was the first of many instances—health care reform being another—in which Obama and his aides expected Hill Republicans to come to the table and negotiate in good faith. To the consternation of liberal activists, it took years for the White House to realize they never would.
In October 2012, for example, in his final debate with Mitt Romney, Obama told the nationwide audience that the sequester cuts scheduled for the end of the year "will not happen." The White House believed that Republicans would work to avoid deep cuts to the military budget. Aides also thought dark threats about the domestic effects of the sequester would build public pressure against them. Surprise: The cuts went through the following spring. Republicans never caved, and the public barely noticed them.
The spring of 2013 was also when the IRS scandal broke—and surprised the president. "I learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this," Obama said in May.
That summer, after Obama talked tough about the need to launch a strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the White House expected quick congressional approval for its action. Surprise: There was tepid support on both sides of the aisle. Then later that year, rebels backed by Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, seized Crimea from Ukraine, seemingly catching the U.S. off guard. "I think it's very clear that this whole operation took this administration and the intelligence community by surprise," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told The Daily Beast then.
In the fall, the White House was jolted by the underperforming federal health care exchange, just weeks after Obama said it would work smoothly and efficiency. After that was clearly not the case and then some, the president told CBS News' Major Garrett: "On the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working as—the way it was supposed to. Had I been informed, I wouldn't be going out saying, 'Boy this is going to be great.'"
Spring of this year was dominated by the VA scandal. In May, the White House first said that Obama had learned of it from news reports, but later amended that to say that the president had been aware of troubles at the VA while as a candidate. In June, the White House was knocked on its heels by the political outrage over its decision to swap five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. "The White House has been surprised by how much attention has remained on questions about Bergdahl," Politico reported.
Another shock to the system came this spring, as the forces of what was then called ISIL began claiming territory in the borderlands in Syria and Iraq with almost no opposition. "Everybody was surprised to see the rapid advance that ISIL was able to make from Syria across to the Iraqi border, and how they were able to take over such large swaths of territory in Iraq did come as a surprise," Josh Earnest, Obama's press secretary, told reporters last month.
Obama's critics have charged for years that the White House has known more than it has let on about a host of issues ranging from the health care exchange's woes to the monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone to the advance of Islamic State, and that the president has claimed ignorance as a means to evade accountability. But even if you take the administration at its word, it raises questions as to whether Obama should have done more from a management perspective in both those situations and others, such as the current Ebola scare, to ward off trouble.
No doubt the president found out at the same time as most of the public last week to hear that a nurse who had treated an Ebola patient in Texas was allowed to board a commercial flight while showing early onset of symptoms of the virus. And no doubt it was a surprise. For the sake of his presidency, he should hope that there won't be many more.
2b) Obama the virtuoso manager
By CAROLINE GLICK
Since he assumed office nearly six years ago, US President Barack Obama has been dogged by allegations of managerial incompetence. Obama, his critics allege, had no managerial experience before he was elected. His lack of such experience, they claim, is reflected in what they see as his incompetent handling of the challenges of the presidency.
In everything from dealing with the Congress, to reining in radical ideologues at the IRS, to handling the chaos at the Mexican border, to putting together coordinated strategies for dealing with everything from Ebola to Islamic State (IS), Obama’s critics claim that he is out of his league. That he is incompetent.
But if Israel’s experience with him is any guide, then his critics are the ones who are out to sea. Because at least in his handling of US relations with the Jewish state, Obama has exhibited a mastery of the tools of the executive branch unmatched by most of his predecessors.
Consider two stories reported in last Friday’s papers.
First, in an article published in The Jerusalem Post, terrorism analyst and investigative reporter Steven Emerson revealed how the highest echelons of the administration blocked the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office from assisting Israel in finding the remains of IDF soldier Oron Shaul.
Shaul was one of seven soldiers from the Golani Infantry Brigade killed July 20 when Hamas terrorists fired a rocket at their armored personnel carrier in Gaza’s Shejeia neighborhood.
As Emerson related, after stealing his remains, Hamas terrorists hacked into Shaul’s Facebook page and posted announcements that he was being held by Hamas.
Among other things it did to locate Shaul and ascertain whether or not he was still alive, the IDF formally requested that the FBI intervene with Facebook to get the IP address of the persons who posted on Oron’s page. If such information was acquired quickly, the IDF might be able to locate Oron, or at least find people with knowledge of his whereabouts.
Acting in accordance with standing practice, recognizing that time was of the essence, the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office began working on Israel’s request immediately. But just before the US Attorney secured a court order to Facebook requiring it to hand over the records, the FBI was told to end its efforts.
In an order that senior law enforcement officials told Emerson came from Attorney General Eric Holder’s office, the FBI was told that it needed to first sign an “MLAT,” a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Israel, a procedure that would take weeks to complete, and is generally used in cases involving criminal prosecutions and other non-life threatening issues.
In other words, facing a bureaucracy acting independently, Holder – reportedly Obama’s most trusted cabinet secretary – acted quickly, decisively and effectively. And thanks to his intervention at the key moment, although Israel was able – after an exhaustive forensic investigation – to determine Oron’s death, today it is poised to begin negotiations with Hamas for the return of his body parts.
Then there was the unofficial arms embargo.
In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House and State Department had stopped the Pentagon at the last minute from responding favorably to an Israeli request for resupply of Hellfire precision air-to-surface missiles. The precision guided missiles were a key component of Israel’s air operations against missile launchers in Gaza. The missiles’ guidance systems allowed the air force to destroy the launchers while minimizing collateral damage.
In keeping with the standard decades-long practice, Israel requested the resupply through European Command, its military-to-military channel with the US military.
And in keeping with standard practice, the request was granted.
But then the White House and State Department heard about the approved shipment and spun into action. As in the case of Oron’s Facebook page, they didn’t reject Israel’s request. They just added a level of bureaucracy to the handling of the request that made it impossible for Israel to receive assistance from the US government in real time.
As State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf put it at the time, “We’re not holding anything. A hold indicates, technically, that you are not moving forward on making a decision about a transfer…. These requests are still moving forward; there’s just additional steps in the process now, and there’s been no policy decision made to not move forward with them…. They’re just going to take a little while longer.”
The Hellfire missiles, along with other ammunition Israel requested during the war, arrived in September – a month after the cease-fire went into effect.
On Friday veteran military affairs reporter Amir Rappaport reported in Makor Rishon that the hold on the Hellfire missiles was only one aspect of the White House’s decision to stop arms shipments to Israel during the war. Shortly after Operation Protective Edge began, the administration stopped all contact with the Defense Ministry’s permanent procurement delegation in the US.
According to Rappaport, for the first time since the 1982 war in Lebanon, “The expected airlift of US ammunition [to the IDF] never arrived at its point of departure.”
The difference between Obama’s actions during Operation Protective Edge and Ronald Reagan’s partial arms embargo against Israel 32 years ago is that Reagan made his action publicly. He argued his case before the public, and Congress.
Obama has done no such thing. As was the case with the FAA’s scandalous ban on flights to Ben-Gurion Airport during the war, Holder’s prevention of the FBI from helping Israel find Oron, and Obama’s arms embargo were justified as mere bureaucratic measures.
As Harf claimed in relation to the embargo, there was no hostile policy behind any of the hostile policy moves.
Obama and his senior advisors are simply sticklers for procedure. And since during the war Obama insisted that he supported Israel, policymakers and the public had a hard time opposing his actions.
How can you oppose a hostile policy toward Israel that the administration insists doesn’t exist? Indeed, anyone who suggests otherwise runs the risk of being attacked as a conspiracy theorist or a firebrand.
The same goes for Obama’s policy toward Iran. This week we learned that the administration has now offered Iran a nuclear deal in which the mullahs can keep half of their 10,000 active centrifuges spinning.
Together with Iran’s 10,000 currently inactive centrifuges which the US offer ignores, the actual US position is to allow Iran to have enough centrifuges to enable it to build nuclear bombs within a year, at most.
In other words, the US policy toward Iran exposed by Obama’s nuclear offer is one that enables the most active state sponsor of terrorism to acquire nuclear weapons almost immediately.
But Obama denies this is his policy. For six years he has very deftly managed Congressional opposition to his wooing of the Iranian regime by insisting that his policy is to reduce the Iranian nuclear threat and to prevent war.
Opposing his policy means opposing these goals.
Consistent polling data show that Obama’s policies of harming Israel and facilitating Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear arsenal are deeply unpopular. His successful advancement of both policies despite this deep-seated public opposition is a testament to his extraordinary skill.
On the other hand, Obama’s virtuoso handling of the federal bureaucracy and Congress also reveal the Achilles heel of his policies. He conceals them because he cannot defend them.
Obama’s inability to defend these policies means that politicians from both parties can forthrightly set out opposing policies without risking criticism or opposition from the administration.
How can Obama criticize a serious policy to support Israel when he claims that this is his goal? And how can he oppose a serious policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons when he says that he shares that goal?
At least as far as Israel is concerned, Obama’s mastery of the federal bureaucracy is complete. It is not incompetence that guides his policy. It is malicious intent toward the US’s closest ally in the Middle East. And to defeat this policy, it is not necessary to prove incompetence that doesn’t exist. It is necessary to show that there are far better ways to achieve his declared aims of supporting Israel and blocking Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
2c)What The "Two State Solution" Has to Do with the Rise of Islamic Extremism: Zero
The "Arab Spring" did not erupt as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it was the outcome of decades of tyranny and corruption in the Arab world. The Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans and Yemenis who removed their dictators from power did not do so because of the lack of a "two-state solution." This is the last thing they had in mind.
The thousands of Muslims who are volunteering to join the Islamic State [IS] are not doing so because they are frustrated with the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The only solution the Islamic State believes in is a Sunni Islamic Caliphate where the surviving non-Muslims who are not massacred would be subject to sharia law.
What Kerry perhaps does not know is that the Islamic State is not interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all. Unlike Kerry, Sunni scholars fully understand that the Islamic State has more to do with Islam and terrorism than with any other conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's claim that the lack of a "two-state solution" has fueled the rise of the Islamic State [IS] terrorist group reinforces how clueless the U.S. Administration is about what is happening in the Arab and Islamic countries.
Speaking at a State Department ceremony marking the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Kerry said that the resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians was vital in the fight against Islamic extremism, including Islamic State.
"There wasn't a leader I met with in the region who didn't raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation," Kerry said. "People need to understand the connection of that. And it has something to do with the humiliation and denial and absence of dignity."
The U.S. State Department later denied that Kerry had made the statement
attributed to him.
Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters that Kerry's comments were distorted for political gains; she pointed a finger at Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett.
"What [Kerry] said was that during his travels to build a coalition against the Islamic State, he was told that should the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be resolved, the Middle East would be a better place," Harf explained.
The Islamic State is one of the by-products of the "Arab Spring," which began as a secular revolt against Arab dictatorships and degenerated into anarchy, lawlessness, terrorism and massacres that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims.
The "Arab Spring" did not erupt as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it was the natural and inevitable outcome of decades of tyranny and corruption in the Arab world.
The Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans and Yemenis who removed their dictators from power did not do so because of the lack of a "two-state solution."
Nor did the Arabs revolt because of the failure of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. This is the last thing these Arabs had in mind when they took to the streets to protest against decades of dictatorship and bad government.
It is this "Arab Spring," and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. And it is the same "Arab Spring" that saw the emergence of Islamic terror groups such as the Al-Nusra Front, the Islamic Front, the Army of Mujahedeen, Jund al-Sham and, most recently, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The rise of the Islamic State is a direct result of the anarchy and extremism that have been sweeping the Arab and Islamic countries over the past few years.
The thousands of Muslims who are volunteering to join Islamic State are not doing so because they are frustrated with the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. They are not knocking on the Islamic State's doors because they are disappointed that the two-state solution has not materialized.
Kerry is anyway naïve to think that the jihadis believe in something called a "two-state" solution. The only solution the Islamic State believes in is the one that would lead to the establishment of a radical Sunni Islamic Caliphate across the Middle East where the surviving non-Muslims who are not massacred would be subject to sharia law.
Not only is the Islamic State opposed to the "two-state solution," it is also opposed to the existence of both Israel and a Palestinian state. Under the new Islamic Caliphate, there is no room for Israel or Palestine or any of the Arab and Islamic countries.
Had Kerry studied the goals and ideology of the Islamic State, he would have discovered that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not even at the top of the group's list of priorities.
In fact, the "liberation of Bait al-Maqdis" [Jerusalem] is ranked sixth among Islamic State's objectives.
The group's first goal envisages stirring chaos in the Arab and Islamic countries.
Second, the group will move on to what it calls "management of savagery" in these countries.
Third, Islamic State will embark on the process of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.
Fourth, it will proceed with "liberating neighboring countries and expanding the size of the Islamic Caliphate.
Fifth, the group will start the process of "liberating the Islamic countries," including Bait al-Maqdis.
Obviously, Kerry must have missed the speech delivered by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last July.
Al-Baghdadi did not talk about the "two-state solution." Nor did he call on Muslims to join his group because of the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Instead, al-Baghdadi told his followers that, "Allah likes us to kill his enemies, and make jihad for his sake. O Allah, give Islam victory over the disbelief and the disbelievers, and give victory to the mujahideen, in the East of this earth and its West."
What Kerry perhaps does not know is that the Islamic State is not interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all. The terrorist group did not even bother to comment on the last military confrontation between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The failure of the Islamic State to express solidarity with the Palestinians or Hamas during the war drew strong condemnations from some of the Arab world's leading columnists.
"What is shocking and strange is that the Islamic State and other terrorist groups that claim to speak on behalf of Islam did not make a single move as Israeli planes were shelling civilians inside the Gaza Strip," remarked Egyptian columnist Jamil al-Afifi. "Nor did any of their wise men come out to condemn the ruthless killings (in the Gaza Strip).
Kerry did not reveal the identity of the "leaders" who told him that the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians was a "cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation" in the Arab and Islamic countries.
What is clear, however, is that Sunni scholars do not seem to share Kerry's assessment.
Last month, over 120 Sunni scholars issued an open letter denouncing the Islamic State and its religious arguments. "You have misinterpreted Islam into a religion of harshness, brutality, torture and murder," the letter said. "This is a great wrong and an offence to Islam, to Muslims and to the entire world."
Needless to say, the scholars did not mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a cause for the rise of Islamic State.
That is because unlike Kerry, the Sunni scholars know that the Islamic State is completely unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And unlike Kerry, the Muslim scholars fully understand that Islamic State has more to do with Islam and terrorism than with any other conflict.
While most of the attention on the Iran nuclear issue has rightly been on the negotiations being conducted by the U.S. and its allies with Tehran, the Obama administration is already planning for the aftermath of what it hopes will be a new agreement. But rather than preparing for an effort to persuade Congress of the merits of its diplomatic efforts, the president is planning on an end run around the laws it passed and unilaterally suspending enforcement of the sanctions on Iran. In doing so, he will not only be continuing a path he has pursued on issues such as immigration but will go even further in violating the constitutional requirement that the legislative branch approve all treaties with foreign powers.
The president’s problem isn’t limited to the fact that many Americans are rightly worried that the deal in the works with Iran is one that won’t do much to prevent the Islamist regime from eventually realizing its nuclear ambition. It’s that the economic sanctions that were imposed on Iran by laws enacted by Congress must be rescinded in the same manner that they were passed: by a vote. If the agreement that the U.S. is pushing hard to conclude with Iran is a good one, then the president and Secretary of State John Kerry should have no problem selling it to Congress, which could then simply vote to rescind the sanctions.
But such a vote would require hearings and a full debate on the matter. During the course of that debate, it almost certainly would become clear that what the administration is prepared to allow Iran would fall far short of the president’s campaign pledges to end Tehran’s nuclear program or to prevent it from ever getting a bomb. The administration has already publicly floated some of the terms it is offering the Iranians. While last year’s weak interim deal tacitly endorsed Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium that could be used for a weapon, the U.S. has retreated further from its initial tough position and is now prepared to allow the Iranians to have at least 1,000 centrifuges that could process the material to build nuclear fuel. Since the Iranians are insisting with their usual persistence that they be allowed to keep all of their centrifuges, most observers now assume that the U.S. will agree to a deal that will allow them to have thousands.
In order to save face, American negotiators have reportedly suggested that the pipes connecting the centrifuges be disconnected, a pathetic stance that further undermines American credibility since it is understood that they can easily be reconnected anytime the ayatollahs deem it in their interest. The same can be said of Iran’s agreement to deactivate its existing stockpile of enriched uranium since that too can be reversed with ease.
Seen in that light any agreement—assuming the Iranians are willing to agree to another weak deal rather than simply waiting until the international coalition Obama is leading unravels—will be difficult to sell to a skeptical Congress that pushed an unwilling administration into agreeing to the sanctions in the first place.
In order to evade the law, the president will have to do two things.
First, he will have to declare that any agreement will be merely an informal add-on to existing international deals rather than a treaty and so avoid a constitutionally required two-thirds ratification vote in the Senate he’d be unlikely to win. That will be a blatant lie but since the move would have to be taken to court, it’s a gamble he’d likely win.
Second, he will have to unilaterally suspend enforcement of the sanctions on Iran passed by Congress rather than have them rescinded. As even the New York Times notes in its article on the topic yesterday, that is not a stance even most Democrats would tolerate.
More to the point, the president’s prepared end run also signals the resumption of a political battle over renewed sanctions that the administration thought it had conclusively won last winter. At the time, majorities in the House and the Senate were prepared to enact even tougher restrictions on commerce with Iran that would have tightened the noose on Tehran’s oil business. But, with the able assistance of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the president was able to stop the Senate from voting on the measure proposed by Senator Robert Menendez, the Foreign Relations Committee chair and Senator Mark Kirk. Supporters of more sanctions (which would not have gone into effect until the next phase of negotiations with Iran was pronounced a failure) were branded “warmongers” who didn’t want to give diplomacy a chance and thus effectively silenced.
But this time that strategy won’t work.
After a year of talks that have been dragged beyond the original six-month deadline and may yet be further extended as Iran continues its decade-old strategy of running out the clock on the West, it is no longer possible to argue that Obama needs to be given an opportunity to test the good will of the Iranians. Nor can the president pretend that the current terms are anything but a transparent surrender to Iranian demands and not a fulfillment of his pledges.
That’s why Menendez is prepared to try again this fall when Congress returns to Washington after the midterm elections. As the Times reports:
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat, said over the weekend that, “If a potential deal does not substantially and effectively dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program, I expect Congress will respond. An agreement cannot allow Iran to be a threshold nuclear state.” He has sponsored legislation to tighten sanctions if no agreement is reached by Nov. 24.
If that weren’t enough of a threat to force the administration to stiffen its spin in negotiations with Iran, there is also the real possibility that in January the president will not be able to rely on Reid to spike sanctions legislation. If, as they are favored to do, the Republicans take control of the Senate, it is highly likely that Obama will find himself presented with new sanctions legislation on his desk in the new year whether or not he has signed off on a deal with Iran.
This is a crucial moment in the negotiations with Iran when the outcome is not yet determined. Unfortunately, the president’s efforts to loosen sanctions have already undermined international support for isolating Iran. With the possibility of a new deal, they are on the verge of complete collapse. But renewed and even tougher sanctions on Iran will signal to Europe that their expectations of a return to business as usual with Iran were a bit premature.
While the president thinks he can evade his constitutional requirements to let Congress vote on a treaty or rescind another law he doesn’t like, members of both parties appear ready to respond appropriately to this lawless plan. Unlike environmental regulations or even immigration laws, appeasement of Iran isn’t something that can be imposed on the country by presidential whim.
Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political blogger at www.commentarymagazine.com. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@commentarymagazine.com.
3a) REPORT SAYS U.S. MAY OK MORE CENTRIFUGES IN IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS
Authors Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim
The Obama administration has sweetened its offer to Iran in ongoing nuclear negotiations, saying it might accept Tehran operating 4,000 centrifuges, up from the previous 1,300, according to a semiofficial Iranian news agency. The Mehr news agency also said Monday that Iran and the six world powers seeking to negotiate a nuclear deal remained divided over how much uranium-enrichment capacity the Middle East nation should be allowed to maintain, and how to lift punitive sanctions from its economy.With a deadline for negotiators a month away, the two sides still differ on how to deal with two nuclear sites that have stirred international concern, the Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor and the Fordow underground enrichment facility, according to Mehr.Iran and the six world powers – France, Britain, the United States, Germany, Russia and China – are seeking a deal that would ease international sanctions on Iran's economy as long as it accepts limits designed to prevent it from gaining bomb-making capability.Mehr's account quotes conservative Iranian lawmaker Javad Qoddoushi, a member of the parliament's foreign affairs committee, which was briefed last weekend by Abbas Araqchi, a deputy foreign minister and nuclear negotiator.The article doesn't specify when the administration unveiled its latest offer on centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes but also potentially for nuclear weapons. It may have come last Wednesday, when U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry met in Vienna with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to try to end a five-month impasse in the talks.Araqchi told the Iranian lawmakers that the United States “made concessions,” the news agency said.The White House and State Department declined to comment.Mehr's account doesn't address other potentially important details of the U.S. offer, such as whether the administration would require Iran to dismantle other centrifuges and whether the 4,000 could include newer and more capable models. Iran currently has 9,400 operating centrifuges and another 10,000 that are installed but not in operation.Some analysts have been predicting that the United States and the other five world powers could end up with an offer of a few thousand centrifuges, a number that may be small enough to avoid strong resistance from Congress or the Mideast allies worried about the nuclear threat.Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist at the Eurasia Group risk-consulting firm, said the 4,000 figure “is sellable in Washington,” because with such an inventory it would still take Iran many months to complete a “nuclear breakout” – a sprint to gather enough enriched uranium for one weapon.Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. sweetener may encourage Iran to drag out negotiations to see what better offer it might receive after a few more months of talks.The Iranian negotiator “may be sitting there thinking: 'If I wait till March, how many will I have?' ” Takeyh said.Iranian and Russian officials have recently floated the idea of extending talks beyond the Nov. 24 deadline. Some observers think the group will end up extending the talks because they have been unable to overcome their impasse on key issues but don't want the talks to collapse.The disagreements over Arak and Fordow could be serious setbacks for the negotiations. Advocates for the deal-making say the apparent progress on these issues could be used to justify a further extension of the talks.U.S. officials have provided few details of the negotiations to journalists or U.S. lawmakers; much of what has emerged publicly has come from foreign diplomats.Last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Arak remained a sticking point, along with the issues of enrichment and sanctions relief.
Mehr is an independent organization but is affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.Times staff writer Richter reported from Washington and special correspondent Mostaghim from Tehran./
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4)-IF YOU HAD A HUNCH THE NEWS SYSTEM WAS RIGGED AND YOU COULDN'T PUT YOUR FINGER ON IT, THIS MIGHT SOLVE THE PUZZLE.
ABC News executive producer Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice,
National Security Adviser.
CBS President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes,
Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications.
ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman
is married to former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney who quit and now works for CNN
ABC News and Univision reporter Matthew Jaffe is married to Katie Hogan,
Obama’s Deputy Press Secretary
ABC President Ben Sherwood is the brother of
Obama’s Special Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood
CNN President Virginia Moseley is married to
former Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Secretary Tom Nides.
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5)
Abbas' advisor:
Murderer of baby is "heroic Martyr"
Abbas' Fatah movement "accompanies to his wedding
the heroic Martyr... who carried out the Jerusalem operation, in which settlers in the occupied city of Jerusalem were run over"
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' advisor has glorified the terrorist who murdered three-month-old Israeli-American Haya Zissel-Brown and injured eight othersyesterday, when he intentionally drove his car into people waiting for a train. Sultan Abu Al-Einein, advisor to Abbas, praised the terrorist, calling him a "heroic Martyr" on his official Facebook page.Abbas' Fatah movement likewise glorified the killer, posting an obituary for the murderer on its official Facebook page, and also using the words "heroic Martyr." Fatah portrayed his death as "his wedding" - a reference to the Islamic belief that Martyrs for Allah are wedded to 72 virgins in Paradise:  "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) - Silwan branch accompanies to his wedding the heroic Martyr Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi,
who carried out the Jerusalem operation, in which settlers in the occupied city of Jerusalem were run over.
Rest in peace! We are loyal to you."
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", Oct. 23, 2014]
Member of Fatah Central Committee, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, also copied this praise from Fatah on his personal Facebook page.Abbas' advisor, Sultan Al-Einein, has openly praised murderers in the past. When a terrorist stabbed an Israeli civilian to death, Al-Einein praised the murderer as a "heroic fighter" and offered "blessings to the breast that nursed" him. Five US Members of Congress acted on Palestinian Media Watch's exposure and demanded that Abbas dismiss Al-Einein and condemn his statement. The five American legislators who demanded Abbas remove Al-Einein for glorifying murder were:
Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Reps. Eliot Engel, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nita Lowey, Ranking Member of the Appropriations Committee,
Ted Deutch, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Middle East,
Brad Sherman, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation, and Trade.
[http://democrats.foreignaffairs.house.gov/press_display.asp?id=1050 May 15, 2013]
However, Abbas chose to ignore this request.Click to see additional examples of Al-Einein expressing his support for killers and terrorists. Click to see additional expressions of support for terrorist murderers by the Palestinian Authority and Fatah. The following is Abbas' advisor, Sultan Abu Al-Einein's recent post on Facebook glorifying the killer of the three-month-old baby:
"The heroic Martyr (Shahid) Abd Al-Rahman Idris Al-Shaloudi (23) was released from prison on Dec. 12, 2013, after serving 16 months in the occupation prisons. He was released from the Negev desert prison (Ktzi'ot Prison), and was arrested again several months later at his home in the Al-Bustan neighborhood [of East Jerusalem], which is in danger of being demolished. During his arrest, the occupation forces beat him aggressively, attacked his old grandmother and arrested his father. He spent three weeks in the jail cells of the Russian Compound [Detention Center]. The picture below [shows] the final moments before his death as a Martyr, after he was shot at point-blank range. He was murdered in cold blood."
[Facebook page of Abbas' advisor
and Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Oct. 23, 2014]
Abbas' Fatah movement's obituary pledging loyalty to the murderer:Image and text posted on Fatah's Facebook page, "Fatah - The Main Page:
"Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi, who died as a Martyr (Shahid) on the noble soil of Jerusalem. Rest in peace, we are loyal to you."
Text on image: "And never think of those who have been killed in the cause of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision." (Quran, Sura 3:169, translation Sahih International)
The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) - Silwan branch accompanies to his wedding the heroic Martyr Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi,
who carried out the Jerusalem operation, in which settlers in the occupied city of Jerusalem were run over.
Rest in peace, we are loyal to you."
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", Oct. 23, 2014]
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© Palestinian Media Watch, 1996-2014. Writings, translations, and videos may be used, provided that clear attribution is given to Palestinian Media Watch.
5a) U.S.-LED AIR STRIKES KILLED 521 FIGHTERS, 32 CIVILIANS IN SYRIA: MONITOR
Air strikes by U.S.-led forces have killed 521 Islamist fighters and 32 civilians during a month-long campaign in Syria, a monitoring group which tracks the violence said on Thursday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the vast majority of the deaths, 464, were militants from Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot which has grabbed large areas of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
The attacks also killed 57 members of the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, the Observatory said. Six of the civilians were children and five were women, it added.
The United States has been carrying out strikes in Iraq against Islamic State since July and in Syria since September with the help of Arab allies. Britain and France have also struck Islamic State targets in Iraq.
Washington justified its action in Syria under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which covers an individual or collective right to self-defense against armed attack.
U.S. Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said on Saturday that Washington took “reports of civilian casualties or damage to civilian facilities seriously and we have a process to investigate each allegation.”
Close to 200,000 people have been killed in Syria's three-year civil war, according to the United Nations.
Coalition strikes have hit the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Deir al-Zor, Idlib, Raqqa and al-Hassakah, the Observatory said.
Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Andrew Heavens
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