https://www.facebook.com/paul.
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The American political system is undergoing significant, if not lasting, tectonic type shifts.
The Centrist Democrat Party of Sam Nunn, is breaking apart and is about to be led by either an avowed Socialist or a liar who, in order to get the nomination, is embracing the policies of a radical president. The latter could also be recommended for indictment because of the manner in which she allegedly broke laws and mishandled state secrets that should ordinarily disqualify her from occupying The Oval Office.
Hillarious' campaign is based on embracing the policies of a president who wrought and accomplished major changes while maintaining empathy with his Muslim roots as the world is challenged by radical Islamists, which he refuses to name.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, has spent decades trying to win the presidency and retain power in Congress by drifting away from its conservative roots and claims. The so called Establishment is, finally being challenged by a non-politician and one who, though a Senator, is a bomb thrower type.
It is too early to say these two outliers/opportunists will capture the nomination but, for the moment, candidates with actual proven management and executive accomplishments are finding their messages rejected and /or falling on deaf ears.
As I look at the voter profile, I see disaffected traditional white Americans feeling their Republic is about to slip away to Black and Hispanic voters, whose voting allegiance has been bought by entitlements, dispensed by Democrats without regard to the nation's balance sheet.
Furthermore, the current president has engaged in class warfare tactics which are designed to heighten the latter's sense they have been deprived because of growing wealth disparity when, in fact, Progressive economics and crippling policies are more to blame for bringing our nation to its knees and diminishing its manufacturing sinews.
Republicans come in for their own shared blame because , in their desire to gain and retain power, they drifted from their moorings.
Where all this ends is anybody's guess but America has been weakened by this president and if the picture is not corrected our decline is inevitable. The vacuum created is likely to be filled by imperialists and religious radicals which can only result in long periods of heightened danger, at best, and prolonged and destructive wars, at worst.
No wonder markets are frightened and declining.
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As I have been postulating - Is there a bombshell waiting around the corner, will it explode and when?
I am beginning to think there may be a connection between the possible Petraeus reduction in rank issue and a connection with Hillarious. Obama might be preparing/allowing the boom to be lowered on the general and others in order to set the stage for ridding himself of Hillarious, so he can anoint and get behind Biden who would be beholden to Obama and a more likely dependable lackey.
Just a thought. I put nothing beyond Obama's reach as an Ayers' disciple..(See 1 below.)
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The Palestinian mind set. (See 2 below.)
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Is Obama going to desert a valuable ally? (See 3 below.)
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DUH! Obama is unwilling to or incapable of understanding dots get connected when you appease terrorists. (See 4 and 4a below.)
Dick
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1) What Happens if Hillary Isn't Indicted?
Just when we were thinking it couldn't get much worse with Hillary's email scandal, an inspector general's unclassified letter to lawmakers tells us the former secretary of state was keeping the most classified of all intelligence material -- beyond "top secret" -- on her home brew server.
Fox News exclusively obtained the unclassified letter, sent Jan. 14 from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III. It laid out the findings of a recent comprehensive review by intelligence agencies that identified "several dozen" additional classified emails -- including specific intelligence known as "special access programs" (SAP).
Note there were several dozen of these SAP emails, not just the two we previously heard about that didn't even reach this classification. Those included satellite photos of North Korea. What do you suppose this is? Gross negligence is the important criminal standard here and it sounds as if it's been passed by the proverbial country mile.
Nevertheless, it's undoubtedly more than mere negligence, gross or otherwise. Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne's report continues:
“There is absolutely no way that one could not recognize SAP material,” a former senior law enforcement with decades of experience investigating violations of SAP procedures told Fox News. “It is the most sensitive of the sensitive.”
So why was this public letter sent now? Although this does not come directly from the FBI, my sense is that we are being prepared for the recommendation of an indictment, probably indictments -- and that they will come soon, in all likelihood before we get too far into the primary season, possibly even before Iowa. It's a safe guess FBI Director Comey would not want to interrupt the electoral season more than necessary. That's one of the reasons 150 agents are investigating the case.
This does not mean, of course, that Clinton will be indicted. The Obama Justice Department could not be more politicized (at least in our system). The mainstream media will do their best to abet a cover-up -- a Google search of "New York Times + Charles McCullough III" yields, unsurprisingly, nothing on the letter, even though the allegations make Watergate seem the most minor faux pas. Who knows how many lives were put at risk, or even destroyed, by Clinton's "gross negligence."
So we are left with the equation of what happens if Hillary isn't indicted?
The most obvious part is that the rule of law will have, for all intents and purposes, ended in the United States. Equal justice flew out the window. How does the public react to that? A good portion of it will roll over, but a certain percentage will not. Their reactions will be contingent on a number of things -- whether Clinton is elected anyway (unlikely at this point, but possible), the steadfastness of opposition politicians and media, etc.
But in the final analysis, a democracy cannot exist without the consent of the governed. For that percentage in opposition, consent will have broken down pretty much completely. Then what? Civil war? That's perhaps a bit excessive, but civil wars can be of various types and evolve in different ways. All kinds of things could break down, which could result in anything from general disobedience to the law to mass tax refusal. Millions would no longer respect the system.
Loretta Lynch, Obama, et al, are actually facing a giant tinderbox, whether they know it or not. This is not your average Yogi Berra fork in the road. People fixate these days on the Black Lives Matter movement or on "social justice" activism on campus that is dominated by self-described "progressives" appalled by "microagressions" and such like. But what if the American heartland rebels? Left-wing rebellion in our culture has always been dependent on the center holding; it's a kind of play rebellion, college kids taking over a park while daddy pays their allowance. But suppose daddy started to rebel? That would be, as the saying goes, a whole other ball of wax.
Well, in not too long a time, we make get to see what that's like.
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2)"Hitler was not morally corrupt,
he was daring"
says Fatah leader Tawfiq Tirawi
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
"Hitler was not morally corrupt, he was daring," according to Fatah leader and Central Committee Member Tawfiq Tirawi. After these words the moderator on independent Ma'an TV stopped the interview saying: "Let's drink some tea and take a break. It would be a pity to be put in jail because of this interview."
Fatah Central Committee Member Tawfiq Tirawi: "There is a difference between an officer's discipline and loyalty to a leader. The leader could be morally corrupt."
Ma'an host: "And how would you know?"
Tawfiq Tirawi: "You have to know. Is there anyone who does not know his leader?"
Ma'an host: "The German people did not know that Hitler was morally corrupt."
Tawfiq Tirawi: "He was not morally corrupt."
Ma'an host: "The French think that de Gaulle was half a prophet. Churchill, I don't know what his story was, but people see him as one of the most important statesmen."
Tawfiq Tirawi: "Let us talk logically. Hitler was not morally corrupt. He was daring."
Ma'an host: "Is that the way to talk? I say: Let's drink some tea and take a break. It would be a pity to be put in jail because of this interview. We will drink tea and take a break. Let's leave Hitler."
[Ma'an TV, independent Palestinian channel, Jan. 16, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented other Palestinian Hitler glorification. Click to see examples from a PA-funded children's magazine, and schools' Facebook pages.
After PMW reported on Hitler glorification in the PA-funded Zayzafuna children's magazine,UNESCO ceased to fund this publication.
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3)
Why the U.S. Should Stand by the Saudis Against Iran
Much about the House of Saud is detestable, but that isn’t a reason to abandon a vital ally.
There is so much to detest about Saudi Arabia. The kingdom forbids women from driving and bars its doors to desperate Syrian refugees. For years its sybaritic leaders purchased their legitimacy by underwriting, and exporting, a bigoted and brutal version of Sunni Islam. Crude oil aside, it’s difficult to find much of value produced by the desert kingdom.
More recently, the Saudis have increased tensions with Iran by executing, over U.S. objections, a prominent radical Shiite cleric while waging a brutal war against Iran’s Shiite proxies in Yemen. So why should the U.S. feel obliged to take sides with the country that Israeli diplomat Dore Gold once called “Hatred’s Kingdom,” especially when the administration is also trying to pursue further opening with Tehran?
That’s a question that suddenly seems to be on Washington’s liberal foreign-policy minds, as if they’ve just discovered that we don’t exactly share Saudi moral values. Some on the right also seem to think that, with the U.S. leading the world in energy production, we no longer have much use for the Saudi alliance.
So let’s remind ourselves why it would be a bad—make that very bad—idea for the U.S. to abandon the House of Saud, especially when it is under increasing economic strain from falling oil prices and feels acutely threatened by a resurgent Iran. Despite fond White House hopes that the nuclear deal would moderate Iran’s behavior, Tehran hard-liners wasted no time this week disqualifying thousands of moderate candidates from running in next month’s parliamentary elections, and an Iranian-backed militia appears to be responsible for the recent kidnapping of three Americans in Iraq.
No wonder the Saudis are nervous. The nuclear deal guarantees Iran a $100 billion sanctions windfall that will offset its losses from falling oil prices while doing nothing to stop its regional imperialism. Russia’s military support for the Assad regime in Syria, along with its sale of advanced weaponry to Tehran, means that Riyadh’s regional enemies now enjoy the protection of a major nuclear power. Armed Iranian proxies are active in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and dominate much of southern Iraq. Restive Shiite populations in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province and neighboring Bahrain provide further openings for Iranian subversion on the Arabian peninsula.
Add to this an American president who is ambivalent about the House of Saud the way Jimmy Carter was about the Shah of Iran, and no wonder Riyadh is acting the way it is. If the administration is now unhappy about the Saudi war in Yemen or its execution of Shiite radicals, it has only itself to blame.
All this means that the right U.S. policy toward the Saudis is to hold them close and demonstrate serious support, lest they be tempted to continue freelancing their foreign policy in ways we might not like. It won’t happen in this administration, but a serious commitment to overthrow the Assad regime would be the place to start.
As it is, what’s the alternative? The House of Saud is not going to relocate en masse to its mansions on the French Riviera and leave a self-governing democracy behind. Instead, America’s distancing will bring them closer to the Russians or Chinese. They will also be tempted to repeat the mistakes of their past by drawing closer to Sunni extremists as a way of buying them off and as a counterweight to Iran.
Also contrary to the myth that the Saudis were somehow “behind” 9/11, the kingdom has been fighting al Qaeda for decades. It revoked Osama bin Laden’s citizenship in the early 1990s and pushed the Taliban to expel him from Afghanistan. Saudi intelligence has been vital in stopping major terrorist plots, including the 2010 al Qaeda plot to bomb cargo planes bound for the U.S.
The U.S. would not be safer without this kind of intelligence cooperation. Much worse would be a scenario in which the monarchy collapsed. The generally depressing results of the Arab Spring don’t inspire much hope of a peaceful democratic transition, and Saudi Arabia’s internal sectarian and tribal divisions could lead to an outcome similar to Syria’s. Islamic State and other jihadist groups would flourish. Iran would seek to extend its reach in the Arabian peninsula. The kingdom’s plentiful stores of advanced Western military equipment would also fall into dangerous hands.
Nor would such a civil war exhaust the region’s sectarian furies. As we’ve seen in Syria, Libya and Iraq, radical Islam flourishes in areas of chaos—the “management of savagery” is its explicit political aim. And a civil war in Saudi Arabia, population 30 million, could lead to a fresh refugee exodus that would further erode and overwhelm Europe’s borders.
So should the U.S. desist from encouraging the kingdom to reform? Of course not. Saudi women were allowed to participate as voters and candidates in municipal elections for the first time in December. That’s still a baby step, and the Saudis should use the city states of Dubai and Abu Dhabi as viable models for political reform. But it’s hard for the U.S. to urge such changes on a country that feels it’s being abandoned.
Foreign alliances are not like wardrobes: You cannot change them on the tide of fashion. America’s 71-year alliance with the kingdom is one we abandon at our peril.
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4)
CBS: Obama administration shocked that Iran still pursuing Americans as hostages
BY ED MORRISSEY
The kidnapping of three Americans in Iraq came after intelligence warnings that Iranian-backed militias sought US hostages, CBS News reported late last night. The intel surprised the Obama administration, according to CBS’ sources, because they figured the deal they had negotiated for the prisoner swap that took place this weekend had convinced Tehran to call off their proxies on further hostage-taking.
Oops:
“Gunmen in military uniforms came in five or six SUVs, they entered the building and then left almost immediately,” said Mohammad Jabar, 35, who runs a shop down the street from the three-story apartment building where the Americans had been invited by their Iraqi interpreter.“A few hours later we heard that three foreigners had been kidnapped by these gunmen,” Jabar said.The three were abducted in Dora, a mixed neighborhood that is home to both Shiites and Sunnis. However, they were then taken to Sadr City, a vast and densely populated Shiite district to the east, and there “all communication ceased,” an Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. …A State Department source told CBS News that the U.S. embassy received threat information last week that an Iranian-backed Shiite militia group wanted to seize an American or an American contractor.Officials in Washington had hoped the Iranian government would tell the militia group to hold off because of all the negotiations surrounding the prisoner swap that saw the release of five Americans. The State Department source said the fear was that one of the groups might have “gone off the reservation.”
Hoped? That’s a solid basis for dealing with antagonists in the Middle East. It also follows the Iranian attempts to seize two members of Jason Rezaian’s family as hostages before the prisoner swap, repeatedly keeping his wife and mother from joining the Americans on the plane arranged by the Swiss government.
What do these two incidents tell us? It tells us that the Iranians respond to perverse incentives. If we dispense with our leverage on American hostages to get a worthless nuclear-arms deal with Tehran and then pay Iran $1.7 billion and free up 21 Iranians to get back five Americans, then Iran understands the value of hostaging … again, let’s not forget. Iran’s proxy army Hezbollah conducted a series of long-term abductions of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, too, leading to the deeply misguided Iran-Contra scandal and weapons sales to the mullahs.
Michael Totten also sees this as a case of perverse incentives favoring the mullahs:
A fair swap would have been three innocent prisoners for three innocent prisoners, but the United States doesn’t randomly grab foreign nationals off the streets to use as bargaining chips, so that was never an option.If the Iranian government had released innocent people because they’re innocent like it’s supposed to—then we could say we had a good day. But that’s not what happened. That’s not even close to what happened. …Iran committed three criminal acts against American citizens and paid no price. We put kidnappers in prison for a very long time in this country, but the Iranian government was rewarded.What’s to stop that government from doing it again?Nothing.Why should the Iranian government stop? Kidnapping and ransoming hostages works. And the regime is already gearing up to do it again.
Whether Iran wants more leverage for broader purposes or just another opportunity to humiliate the US is anyone’s guess, but we’d better hope it’s the latter. That seems to be the basis of our foreign policy lately anyway. It certainly isn’t dealing from strength.
4a)The Terrorists Freed by Obama
The president has misled the American people about the detainees released from Guantanamo: Dozens are jihadists ready to kill.
By STEPHEN F. HAYES and THOMAS JOSCELYN
The Obama administration in recent days has proclaimed a “milestone” in its efforts to close the detention
facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after achieving its long-held goal of reducing the remaining population to fewer than 100 detainees. With the expedited release this month of 14 detainees, the total now stands at 93.
This is nothing to celebrate.
In reducing these numbers, the White House has freed dangerous terrorists and set aside military and intelligence assessments warning about the risks of doing so. The Obama administration has deceived recipient countries about the threats posed by the jihadists they’ve accepted. And President Obama has repeatedly misled the American people about Guantanamo, the detainees held there, and the consequences of releasing them.
On Jan. 6, as part of the Obama administration’s accelerated Guantanamo process, Mahmmoud Omar Mohammed Bin Atef was transferred to Ghana, along with another detainee named Khalid Mohammed Salih al Dhuby. Ghana’s government portrayed the deal as an act of “humanitarian assistance,” likening the Yemeni men to nonthreatening refugees from Rwanda and Syria, noting that they “were detained in Guantanamo but have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities, and are being released.”
That description isn’t true for either of the men. Mr. Atef, in particular, is a cause for concern. Long before his transfer, the intelligence analysts at Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) assessed him as a “high risk” and “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” (The JTF-GTMO threat assessments of 760 Guantanamo detainees, many written in 2008, were posted online in 2011 by WikiLeaks.) It is easy to understand the analysts’ worry about Mr. Atef. He was, they said, “a fighter in Usama bin Laden’s former 55th Arab Brigade and is an admitted member of the Taliban.” He trained at al Farouq, the infamous al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, “participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces, and continues to demonstrate his support of UBL and extremism.”
Most ominously, the report warns that he “has threatened to kill US citizens on multiple occasions including a specific threat to cut their throats upon release.”
The obvious question: Why did officials in Ghana claim that Mr. Atef had been “cleared”? Perhaps because that is what the Obama administration led them to believe. Jojo Bruce-Quansah, the information minister at Ghana’s embassy in Washington, D.C., told us that the U.S. government provided assurances that Mr. Atef was “never involved in terrorism” and presented little risk. “If that assurance was not there,” he said, there is “no way” his government “would have taken the detainees.”
How does the White House square the intelligence assessment of Mr. Atef with the assurances the administration gave Ghana? Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the National Security Council, wouldn’t address that question directly, instead telling us that Mr. Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force, which included officials from six government agencies, approved him for transfer “nearly six years ago.” Mr. Caggins declined to address the damning JTF-GTMO assessment.
But there is another problem with Mr. Caggins’s explanation. The president’s Guantanamo task force, which finished its work in January 2010, didn’t clear either Mr. Atef or Mr. Dhuby of involvement in terrorist activities, nor did the task force recommend their release.
The Obama administration is understandably reluctant to be forthcoming about the risks associated with closing Guantanamo—because the risks are significant. If the two detainees released to Ghana, or any of the 10 Yemeni men sent from Guantanamo to Oman on Thursday, return to waging jihad, they will hardly be alone among their former fellow detainees. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 196 ex-detainees are now confirmed as, or suspected of, having returned to the fight; 122 of these recidivists are currently at-large.
Mr. Obama has failed in his effort to shut Guantanamo, in part, because Congress has blocked efforts to move the detainees to the U.S. mainland. For now, the president simply keeps shipping detainees elsewhere, reiterating excuses for emptying Guantanamo that are entirely without merit. To counter the White’s House’s inaccurate claims, let us review some basic facts:
• President Obama inherited a population of high-risk detainees.
In its leaked threat assessments, JTF-GTMO gauged the threat posed by each detainee, based on his intent and capability, and then divided the population into three risk categories: low, medium and high.
By the time Mr. Obama took office in January 2009, 240 detainees remained at Guantanamo. But nearly all of the low-risk detainees and most of the medium-risk ones already had been transferred or released. Of the detainees left, the joint task force deemed approximately 180 (or 75%) to be high risk. In other words: If released, they were “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” Fifty-eight (or 24%) were considered medium risk because they “may” pose a threat. Just two of the detainees (1%) were low risk.
Today, 93 detainees are held at the facility. At least 83 of them—almost 90%—are high risk, according to the JTF-GTMO reports.
• President Obama’s own task force didn’t find any innocent goat herders or charity workers in Guantanamo.
Upon taking office, Mr. Obama created a panel to re-evaluate the detainees. The findings of the Guantanamo Review Task Force, which completed its work in January 2010, were broadly consistent with those of JTF-GTMO. The task force grouped the 240 detainees as of January 2009 into one of five categories: “Leaders, operatives, and facilitators involved in terrorist plots against U.S. targets” (10% of the detainees); “Others with significant organization roles within al-Qaida or associated terrorist organizations” (20%); “Taliban leaders and members of anti-Coalition militia groups” (10%); “Low-level foreign fighters” (55%); and “Miscellaneous others” (5%).
It is important to note that just because a detainee was designated “low-level” doesn’t mean he posed little threat. “Low-level” fighters carry out suicide attacks, or they can graduate to more important roles. JTF-GTMO deemed many “low-level” fighters to be “high risk” for this reason.
It is often reported that a detainee has been “cleared for release,” implying that he is no longer thought to be a threat. This is not true. Mr. Obama’s task force did not recommend that a single detainee be freed. Nor did the task force “clear” any detainees of wrongdoing. Instead, the task force used the phrase “approved for transfer,” meaning “release from confinement subject to appropriate security measures.” This key distinction is often lost.
The task force also placed 30 Yemeni detainees in “conditional detention,” meaning they were “approved for transfer” under certain circumstances, but not back to their home country unless the security situation there dramatically improved. Both Mr. Atef and Mr. Dhuby were placed in this “conditional detention” category. They were not supposed to be outright “released,” as Ghana claimed. Mr. Obama’s task force envisioned that some sort of security assurances would be implemented in whichever country ultimately accepted the pair—procedures that often fail on the rare occasions that they are actually put in place.
• Detainees transferred by the Obama administration have gone back into the fight, and some have become senior al Qaeda leaders.
In many cases, the Obama administration relies on foreign governments to keep tabs on jihadists who are transferred. But the rising number of recidivists shows that, in practice, this is nearly impossible. As noted above, the intelligence community acknowledges that 196 ex-detainees are confirmed or suspected recidivists; that number is almost certain to rise as we learn more about detainees’ activities after being freed.
One notable example: In July 2010, Ibrahim al Qosi, a high-risk detainee who had served Osama bin Laden in a variety of roles, accepted a favorable plea agreement from military prosecutors. Two years later, he was transferred to his home country of Sudan. By 2014 he had joined al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has repeatedly tried to strike the U.S. Last month AQAP revealed that Mr. Qosi has become one of its senior leaders.
Most of the Guantanamo recidivists were freed by the Bush administration. But by transferring Mr. Qosi and other high-risk detainees, Mr. Obama is repeating his predecessor’s mistakes. Under President Bush, dozens of high-risk detainees were transferred, including Said Ali al-Shihri, who helped establish AQAP in early 2009. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2013. Mr. Qosi has effectively taken his place.
• Guantanamo is not a “recruitment brochure” for jihadists.
President Obama has repeatedly attempted to justify the transfers by describing Guantanamo as a major recruiting tool for Islamic State and al Qaeda. “The existence of Guantanamo,” the president claimed in 2009, “likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.” At his year-end news conference in December, Mr. Obama called the prison a “key magnet” for jihadist recruitment. His administration has not offered any evidence to support this assertion. A careful review of jihadist propaganda reveals that it is simply not true.
We reviewed more than 200 videos produced by Islamic State and al Qaeda since 2014 and failed to find a single one that focused on Guantanamo. The 12 extant issues of Dabiq, Islamic State’s English-language magazine, contain only four references to Guantanamo. None of these mentions it in the context of recruiting. On the occasions that Inspire, al Qaeda’s English-language magazine, has mentioned Guantanamo, it has done so mainly to note that some of the group’s most senior leaders were once held there. If anything, Inspire highlights the dangers of Mr. Obama’s policy. Guantanamo has held far more terrorists than it ever created.
Mr. Obama’s obfuscation is not limited to his specious claim about Guantanamo’s importance for jihadist recruitment. In an interview last month with Yahoo News, the president said he expected that “a handful” of detainees would return to the fight once freed. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that the strategic gains we make by closing Guantanamo will outweigh, you know, those low-level individuals who, you know, have been released so far.”
As the numbers from the Director of National Intelligence and the examples above make clear, that’s simply not true. Nearly 200 former detainees have returned to jihad or are suspected of having done so, and they include senior leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban.
In a quest to burnish his record by fulfilling a campaign promise to close Guantanamo, President Obama is courting a dangerous legacy.
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