Today, I basically was able to wrap up the SIRC President Day Speakers for Monday, February 18, 2019. Chairman Guy Randolph will make the announcement and it should be another sell out dinner because when you hear who are coming you will want to be there. More anon.
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Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand Hebrew.
I am sure you will enjoy.......guaranteed
Just click below
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Before Mueller is finished with whatever he has been about, indicting and suing etc. I suspect Flynn will go free. The same tactics were used against Sen Stevens and I believe this same judge harshly criticized the federal officers who participated.
Eventually not best practice "gum shoe" type tactics leave a prosecutor's conduct vulnerable to an honest and tough judge.
Mueller has the power and open war chest of the federal government at his disposal and his overly aggressive use has probably gone beyond what this judge is willing to tolerate.(See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
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On a population equivalent when an Israeli is killed you have to multiply by 50 to equal and American equivalent. Would we tolerate the killing of 100 American military by illegal immigrants?
| In Israel, the deception of quiet has been shattered. Now what? |
| By YAAKOV LAPPIN |
| Terrorism threatens both Israeli and Palestinian civilians. The coming weeks will see whether Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be able to contain an escalating situation and roll back the violence, or whether the region will slide into a new and dangerous phase. Two IDF soldiers laid to rest, another two in serious condition after multiple terror attacks Meanwhile Israel equips U.S Bradley tanks. (See 2 below.) And:
Because the 150,000 rockets in Lebanon are not being fired ( yet). An Israel attack now won't be "retaliating," but rather they’d be considered the aggressor at least in the eyes of the world - which does matter. It was necessary for Israel to establish that Hezbollah is a growing problem, not a static one. That's why they attacked the tunnels now and told the UN to fix the problem on the Lebanese side. They don't expect UNIFIL or the UN to fix anything - but at least UNIFIL was forced to admit that they knew there was a problem and they were responsible for it.
Time is running out……….Israel may also have to attack missile factories in Lebanon . (See 2a below.)
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1)
TABLES TURNED: Judge Orders Special Counsel Robert Mueller To Hand Over Documents
In a new twist, a U.S. District Court judge has ordered special counsel Robert Mueller to hand over all secret documents related to the questioning of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Flynn's legal team claims the Federal Bureau of Investigation urged the retired United States Army lieutenant general not to bring a lawyer to an interview with agents at the White House in January 2017. Flynn has since pleaded guilty to one count of lying to prosecutors and is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Wednesday ordered Mueller to turn over all documents and "memoranda" related to Flynn's questioning by 3 p.m. Friday. Sullivan is the same judge who overturned a 2008 conviction of former Sen. Ted Stevens after government misconduct was revealed.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe set up the White House interview with Flynn, suggesting he not have a lawyer present. "I explained that I thought the quickest way to get this done was to have a conversation between [Flynn] and the agents only," McCabe wrote, according to newly filed court documents.
"I further stated that if LTG Flynn wished to include anyone else in the meeting, like the White House counsel for instance, that I would need to involve the Department of Justice. [Flynn] stated that this would not be necessary and agreed to meet with the agents without any additional participants."
FBI officials also decided not to warn Flynn that he could face perjury charges if he made false statements during what appeared to be an informal interview.
In his ruling, Judge Sullivan also ordered the Flynn team "to turn over the documents backing up its assertions. The judge could determine why the FBI apparently took a significantly more aggressive tack in handling the Flynn interview than it did during other similar matters, including the agency's sit-downs with Hillary Clinton and ex-Trump adviser George Papadopoulos."
1a) Will Trump Be Impeached? Here's What Comes Next.
By Ben Shapiro
This week, it has become clear that House Democrats will likely be forced to vote to impeach President Trump in 2019 on allegations of conspiracy to violate campaign finance law, obstruction of justice, and suborning of perjury. The case that Trump committed such violations isn’t implausible, at least after developments this week concerning American Media Inc. (AMI), parent company of The National Enquirer, and Michael Cohen. That doesn’t mean there’s enough evidence to prosecute — but it does mean that there may soon be. And it doesn't mean that there's enough there to impeach — but it's likely that Democrats will do it anyway.
Here’s the quick breakdown on each potential charge:
Campaign Finance Violation. The case here is that Trump worked with Michael Cohen, pushing Cohen to pay off former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels in the midst of an election cycle after hearing via AMI that Daniels was looking to tell her story. The alleged crime would be that the Daniels hush money was a campaign expenditure, given that it would not have existed “irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” How do we know that Trump wouldn’t have paid off Daniels outside the campaign? AMI has now admitted that it paid former Trump paramour Karen MacDougal $150,000 “in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that [MacDougal] did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election. AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.” Cohen has said that his payoffs were made at Trump’s direction, as well.
Trump’s defense that he would have paid off Daniels “irrespective” of the election thus relies on him calling AMI and Michael Cohen liars — or at least pointing out his long history of hush payments outside of the election. The only alternative defense Trump can offer is that he relied on his lawyer, Cohen, not to violate campaign finance laws; Cohen failed, but that’s not his fault. The problem is that today, Trump stated in an interview that Cohen was responsible more for “public relations than law” and handled “low level work.”
Surborning Perjury And Obstructing Justice. The crime of suborning perjury requires these elements, according to the Department of Justice: “that perjury was committed; that the defendant procured the perjury corruptly, knowing, believing or having reason to believe it to be false testimony; and that the defendant knew, believed or had reason to believe that the perjurer had knowledge of the falsity of his or her testimony.” Cohen is already setting Trump up for this, having pled guilty to perjury himself in his testimony before Congress. Now all he has to establish is that Trump instructed him to lie for him. Trump’s defense: Cohen is lying to procure a better deal from prosecutors. It’s not merely Cohen who puts Trump in the line of fire for suborning perjury: Michael Flynn, who has plead guilty to lying to the FBI, could theoretically do the same, although we’ve seen no indicators that Flynn will blame his lying to the FBI on Trump.
1b) Liberal Lawyer Destroys Cohen'
Liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz is calling
out Michael Cohen for claims he made
regarding President Trump's supposed
"hush money" payment.
By TTN Staff
According to The Daily Wire:
Dershowitz also pointed out that presidential candidates can spend as much as they like on their campaign without it being illegal.Always ready to set the record straight, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is poking holes in former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's claims that the then-candidate illegally instructed him to pay hush money to his alleged paramours for the campaign.
In an exclusive interview with ABC on Friday, Michael Cohen not only told George Stephanopoulos that President Trump instructed him to pay off his mistresses but also knew it was the "wrong" thing to do.
Speaking with Fox News on Friday, Alan Dershowitz picked apart Cohen's case, asserting that he does not seem to understand the difference between "wrong" and "illegal."
"Reasonable people can disagree about whether it's wrong to pay hush money to somebody to stop them from disclosing alleged improprieties sexually. Reasonable people can say that's wrong or that's right," Dershowitz said. "It's not illegal."
He went on to say at the worst Trump ordered Cohen to pay hush money to help his campaign which would be sleazy but not illegal.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++2) Army Bradley Brigade Will Get Israeli Anti-Missile System: Iron Fist
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
WASHINGTON: Seeking to stop Russian-made anti-tank missiles, the US Army will buy Israel’s Iron Fist Active Protection System for a brigade of its M2 Bradley armored vehicles, Breaking Defense has learned.
The decision comes after weeks of confusing statements by Army officials and months of delays fitting the high-tech active protection on a Cold War-vintage vehicle — one already upgraded to the limits of available space, weight, and electrical power. Full execution will also have to await the 2020 budget or at least a congressionally-approved reprogramming: The Army currently has only $80 million of the approximately $200 million required to buy and install Iron Fist on an armored brigade’s 138 Bradleys, plus spares.
The Iron Fist launcher, shown here, shoots down incoming anti-tank rockets and missiles.
Meanwhile, the Army will continue testing Iron Fist on the Bradley — although it’s assiduously avoided the term “test” because of its legal implications in Pentagon procurement. Officially, the initial phase that Iron Fist has completed is merely “characterization,” while the second, more in-depth phase it’s entering now is “qualification.”
Whatever terms you use, the decision by the Army Requirements Oversight Council to buy a brigade of Iron Fist is not contingent on any particular level of performance in this new round of testing/qualification. (Presumably, though, some unexpected disaster could cause the service to reconsider).
That’s been a point of confusion after Army officials publicly contradicted each other at a recent conference in Detroit — one at which reporters were barred — but well-informed sources I’m unfortunately unable to identify made it unequivocally clear. The AROC has decided the threat is urgent, so the Army is not waiting on the test results: The only reason it’s not buying a brigade of Iron Fist immediately is that it’s $120 million short.
Nor is the Army currently considering an alternative to Iron Fist for Bradley, despite a “market survey” posted on Tuesday afternoon that seems open to any company with an APS on offer. That Request For Information was another source of severe confusion, but I’ve been walked through the wording and it’s written so that only Iron Fist can qualify.
Specifically, the survey asks for information on “current market manufacturing capability to produce a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 Active Protection System (APS)” — TRL 6 means there’s already been a field-tested prototype — and “This APS shall have been proven and characterized on the Bradley Family of Vehicles (FOV).” (Emphasis ours). Iron Fist is the only active protection system that the Army’s “characterized” on the Bradley.
US Army M1 Abrams tank with Trophy Active Protection Systems (APS) and improved protection for machinegun operator.
The only potential challenger is the Trophy APS, also Israeli, which is the only active protection system in the Western world that’s actually been mass-produced and used in combat — qualifying it as TRL 9. (The Russians have plenty of APS in service, as Ukrainian anti-tank teams have learned to their sorrow, but they’re not in the running for a US Army contract).
The Army is already buying Trophy for four brigades of M1 Abrams heavy tanks — a decision it also made without waiting for the results of Phase 2 “qualification” trials. Both the size of the purchase and speed testify to the Army’s confidence in Trophy’s track record and the importance it places on the Abrams.
In January, the Army will also evaluate Trophy for the eight-wheel drive Stryker troop carrier, having earlier rejected the US-made Iron Curtain. An APS from Germany’s Rheinmetall is already in live-fire testing for Stryker, under a congressional mandate to explore additional options. Whichever the Army ends up choosing — if it chooses either — there’s no money yet set aside to actually buy an APS for Stryker, or even to complete Phase 2 “qualification” testing for it.
The Army has no current plans to try out Trophy on a Bradley, at all. However, Trophy’s manufacturer, Rafael, did install a variant of Trophy on an Israeli-owned Bradley and tested it in Israel — at their own expense but with American observers.
Upgraded Stryker A1 model
Since the US Army didn’t run that test, it almost certainly doesn’t meet the Army’s definition of “proven and characterized.” Rafael and its American partner Leonardo DRS could make a good case that their Israeli tests should count for something. But given how the market survey is worded, and how urgently Army leadership wants to upgrade the Bradley’s defenses, the odds are that IMI and its American partner, General Dynamics, will get a sole-source contract for at least this first brigade.
All bets are off after that brigade, however. While it’s currently looking at off-the-shelf “non-developmental” options like Iron Fist and Trophy, the Army’s long-running, long-term program of record is to develop something called the Modular Active Protection System. MAPS aims to create a standardized control system with an open architecture that lets you mix and match subsystems from multiple vendors — a radar from here, an interceptor from there, a jammer from the other place — on a single vehicle. That way the Army could keep upgrading piece by piece with the best components from any company, without being beholden to one vendor for the system as a whole.
The Army also wants to replace the aging M2 Bradley altogether with a cutting-edge Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle that, among other features, is designed with active protection in mind, rather than having APS added on wherever it fits.
Those are worthy ambitions, but technically tricky to realize, and they’ll take time — with a non-negligible chance of turning into one of the Army’s periodic acquisition disasters. Meanwhile, the Army is buying what it can get right now.
The Army’s full statement to me on the Iron Fist decision is below, courtesy of Ashley John, public affairs director for Program Executive Officer – Ground Combat Systems (PEO-GCS). It’s somewhat opaque, so read it with the explanations above in mind:
“At the end of November, the Army Requirements Oversight Council met to assess the performance of the Bradley Expedited Active Protection System non-developmental solution (Iron Fist) and to determine if the system was suitable for urgent qualification and deployment. After reviewing the results of the Army Test and Evaluation Command’s testing, the AROC determined that the Iron Fist system improved the survivability of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle without meaningful impact to the vehicle’s performance or increased risk to dismounted Soldiers. The AROC directed that Bradley ExAPS move into the next phase of urgent qualification testing and in parallel plan for fielding of at least a brigade’s worth of capability on an urgent basis in accordance with existing approved requirements.”
2a)1C) The Curtain Is Falling On Bibi's Lebanense Belly Dance
By Tony Badran
For seven years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stridently warned Israel’s citizens and the world of a multi-pronged Iranian threat to his nation’s security and strategic position. And there is no shortage of evidence to suggest that the Iranian threat, which
Over the past several days, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been uncovering and neutralizing a series of attack tunnels crossing from Lebanon into Israel—an operation likely to go on for many weeks. These tunnels are part of Hezbollah’s declared military plan to infiltrate and possibly hold positions in the Galilee in the next war with Israel.
Strategically, though, the tunnels are the lesser part of the threat that is being posed to Israel by Iran and its proxies. The more pressing element is Hezbollah’s missile capability. Specifically, with Iranian assistance, Hezbollah has embarked on what Israeli officials refer to as the “missile precision project”—an effort to upgrade its large arsenal of rockets with guidance systems, increasing their accuracy, and thereby changing the severity of the threat they pose.
Iran and Hezbollah have been developing and deploying their guided missile project both in Lebanon and Syria, where, over the past seven years, the Iranians and Hezbollah have increased their military deployment and entrenchment. Iranian-led and Hezbollah forces and infrastructure are now positioned throughout Syria, in key strategic areas including along the Lebanese-Syrian and Iraqi-Syrian borders, as well as in southern Syria, near the border with Israel. It is clear that the combined threat of Iran’s positioning on Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria—as well as Gaza—is a strategic one. Just look at a map.
The question of whether Israel’s current actions to uncover and dismantle Hezbollah’s cross-border tunnels, dubbed Operation Northern Shield, is a preface to a larger action to neutralize the Iranian threat the Israeli government has been warning about is harder to answer.
Israel’s dilemma over the past decade has been whether to go to war with Hezbollah now or later, when its security environment has deteriorated even further. The Israeli government’s answer to this dilemma so far has been to continue to buy time by reducing as much as possible the growth in Hezbollah’s capabilities, which have increased notably over that time, during which Israel has enjoyed a burst of economic growth unprecedented in the country’s history.
One reason that the peace has been kept so far is the Syrian War. As the war intensified, Israel ramped up its operations targeting Hezbollah and Iranian assets and personnel inside Syrian territory, turning Syria into a cost-free kill zone for the Israel Air Force (IAF). The Russian deployment in the country in late 2015 did not stop IAF activity—nor is Russia’s recent deployment of S-300 anti-air missile batteries likely to much affect Israel’s ability or willingness to hit Iranian targets inside Syria.
There’s no question that IAF action in Syria has been effective, not just in targeting weapons shipments arriving at Damascus airport, or in transit to Lebanon, but also in hitting facilities in Syria used by Iran and Hezbollah to upgrade missile accuracy. But there was a catch to Israel’s freedom of action inside Syria: If Iran and Hezbollah had little choice but to absorb Israeli strikes in Syria, hitting targets inside Lebanon would precipitate retaliation. As Israel worked to reduce the threat from Syria, the threat from Lebanese soil therefore continued to grow.
Israel has understood and accepted this equation. With but two exceptions over the past seven years, Israel has refrained from striking inside Lebanese territory, while Lebanon never stopped being Hezbollah’s and Iran’s operational headquarters.
In early 2017, there were reports of Iran and Hezbollah having set up production and assembly facilities in Lebanon to upgrade the group’s rockets—an effort that had begun the year before. While their operations in and through Syria continued, Iran and Hezbollah amplified their project in Lebanon as well. Soon, it became routine to see reports, citing U.S. and Western intelligence sources, of Iranian flights carrying arms and components for the missile upgrade facilities in Lebanon, landing directly in Beirut Airport.
These moves are the logical result of the agreement to keep Lebanon off limits. As Israel refrained from taking action in Lebanon for the past seven years, with the expressed recognition that to do so could, or likely even would, trigger a war, Hezbollah interpreted Israel’s decision as a form of effective deterrence. Sure, Netanyahu publicized Hezbollah’s missile facilities at the United Nations in September, and warned that Israel would not let them get away with it. But as of yet, not one missile facility or Iranian plane inside Lebanon has been blown up as they have in Syria. Now, Hezbollah is pushing the envelope, stretching the limits of the prevailing equation as far as they will go.
Which brings us back to Operation Northern Shield. There are two ways to read the operation. The first possibility is that Israel is setting the stage for military action, at the diplomatic level, by highlighting Hezbollah’s activities and the failure of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese government to stop them, as well as at the military level, by neutralizing an integral part of Hezbollah’s strategy for the next conflict. Like the publicizing of the missile facilities and the Iranian flights to Beirut Airport, this is all part of the necessary preparatory work ahead of any military campaign. For instance, if UNIFIL and the Lebanese government fail to dismantle the tunnels inside Lebanon and Israel is forced to do so by itself, and Hezbollah attacks, then the political legwork already will have been done, and the onus for any wider conflict will be on Hezbollah and Iran.
The other possibility is that the operation falls within the framework of the past seven years, meaning that it aims to diminish Hezbollah’s capabilities and thus forestall a larger conflagration. As evidence for this possibility, one could point to reports of Israel’s advance warnings to Lebanon and to Hezbollah ahead of the operation, its decision, so far, to limit the operation to the Israeli side of the border while calling on UNIFIL to handle the Lebanese side, and its reported reassurances to Lebanon about its intention to avoid any escalation. This would fall in the category of calling on “the international community” to take action before Israel is forced to, a gesture whose goal is to buy time within the existing status quo.
But it’s entirely unclear whether Israel truly believes “the international community,” or, let’s be serious, the United States, will take action, and, if so, what that action might be. It’s not as though the United States has not been aware of the Iranian flights or the missile facilities, for example. In fact, over the past seven years, “preserving Lebanon’s stability” has been the declared U.S. policy, which dovetailed with Israel’s and Hezbollah’s de facto agreement to sideline Lebanon and focus on Syria. By “preserving Lebanon’s stability,” the United States allowed Hezbollah to shield itself and its activities in, and from, the country.
The paradox of current U.S. policy of “preserving the stability” of a country whose politics and armed forces are directly controlled by an Iranian terror group has created an open political farce. The two pillars of Washington’s policy of “stability” in Lebanon, UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), have been shown to be at best an embarrassing failure. At worst, they show the institutions of the Lebanese state to be actively shielding and facilitating Hezbollah’s military buildup. Not only were the tunnels that Israel is now destroying dug literally under UNIFIL’s nose, but Beirut Airport, where the Iranian flights are landing, is guarded by the LAF.
The premise of the current U.S. policy of distinguishing between the bad Hezbollah and the good “Lebanese government,” which might have once been seen as a noble fiction, is now an open joke. But the reality is, nobody other than Israel is going to do anything about it. The approach of the past seven years—that Israel can focus its operations on Syria and avoid them in Lebanon—is reaching the end of the line, if it hasn’t expired already.
With Iran and Hezbollah holding their positions in Syria, and no longer concerned about the collapse of their Syrian client Bashar Assad, the Lebanon problem is now firmly back at center stage. Hezbollah and its Lebanese government are betting the bipartisan embrace by U.S. policymakers of the fiction of Lebanese state institutions, which in reality are controlled by and provide institutional cover for Hezbollah, will complicate any Israeli decision to act against the strategic threat being posed by Iran. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Israel will accept a large arsenal of guided missiles controlled by Iran and targeting its major population centers and strategic sites as part of a new regional status quo.
Instead of confining itself within Hezbollah’s preferred rules of engagement, and thereby cementing the group’s dangerous delusion that it has achieved deterrence—a delusion that is likely to lead to further aggression—Israel might consider throwing the ball in Hezbollah’s court. If they think they’re immune in Lebanon, even now that the Syrian war is decided, they should think again. If Hezbollah then chooses to escalate by provoking another conflict, they would invite a devastating thrashing, along with the destruction of considerable portions of Lebanese infrastructure, all while Iran reels under sanctions.
In May, Netanyahu spelled out the choice Israel faces in clear terms: “We don’t want confrontation, but if there needs to be one, it is better now than later.” While the political and PR risks of such a conflict are very real, as are the lives of Israeli civilians, to say nothing of the Lebanese who are being used as human shields by Iran and Hezbollah, they would only worsen with a large alteration of the strategic status quo in Iran’s favor, which is likely to lead to an exponentially greater loss of life on the Israeli side of the border.
Alternatively, Netanyahu might well opt to kick the can down the road one more time. But he is running out of road.
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