Saturday, January 04, 2014
The New York Times Shreds Obama
The New York Times just delivered a mortal blow to the Obama administration and its Middle East policy. Call it fratricide. It was clearly unintentional. Indeed, is far from clear that the paper realizes what it has done.
Last Saturday the Times published an 8,000-word account by David Kirkpatrick detailing the terrorist strike against the US Consulate and the CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. In it, Kirkpatrick tore to shreds the foundations of President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism strategy and his overall policy in the Middle East.Obama first enunciated those foundations in his June 4, 2009, speech to the Muslim world at Cairo University. Ever since, they have been the rationale behind US counterterror strategy and US Middle East policy.Obama’s first assertion is that radical Islam is not inherently hostile to the US. As a consequence, America can appease radical Islamists. Moreover, once radical Muslims are appeased, they will become US allies, (replacing the allies the US abandons to appease the radical Muslims).
Obama’s second strategic guidepost is his claim that the only Islamic group that is a bona fide terrorist organization is the faction of al-Qaida directly subordinate to Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Only this group cannot be appeased and must be destroyed through force.The administration has dubbed the Zawahiri faction of al-Qaida “core al-Qaida.” And anyone who operates in the name of al-Qaida, or any other group that does not have courtroom-certified operational links to Zawahiri, is not really al-Qaida, and therefore, not really a terrorist group or a US enemy.
These foundations have led the US to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan. They are the rationale for the US’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide. They are the basis for Obama’s allegiance to Turkey’s Islamist government, and his early support for the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.
They are the basis for the administration’s kneejerk support for the PLO against Israel.
Friday, January 03, 2014
Thursday, January 02, 2014
Female Israeli Soldiers Who Shattered Barriers in 2013
See the complete list at the IDF Blog.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Commander-In-Chief Comix
I wonder what Melissa Harris-Tampon-Perry thinks about pointing these kinds of facts out?
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
New York Times: We Had a Reporter Embedded With Terrorists in Benghazi During the Attack
Which begs the question: who in the hell was this "reporter" and just what the hell was he doing during the attack -- and for the last 15 months? Biff Spackle offers some possibilities:NYT reporter says NYT knows who Benghazi attackers are > @ddknyt: we had a reporter on the scene talking to the attackers during the attack
—
Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) December 31, 2013What’s that? The New York Times had a reporter on the scene of the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya? Reporter David D. Kirkpatrick, who wrote this weekend’s piece on Benghazi, says it was invaluable to have a reporter on the ground talking to the attackers during the attack.
This scandal needs to go viral.
@RichardGrenell @ddknyt Please see "Secret Benghazi Reporter Comics" for helpful illustration: http://t.co/m0UvQ4wkT4 pic.twitter.com/YNlC6HNmln
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) December 31, 2013Saturday, December 28, 2013
Please Congratulate Thomas Friedman of the New York Times for His Dumbest Quote o' the Year Award
MRC recognized Melissa ("Tampon Earrings") Harris-Perry as the winner, but it's clear in our view that Friedman was the true winner.
Hat tip: JTT
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Ferocious, Weak and Crazy: The North Korean Strategy
North Korea's state-run media reported earlier this year that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the country's top security officials to take "substantial and high-profile important state measures," which has been widely interpreted to mean that North Korea is planning its third nuclear test. Kim said the orders were retaliation for the U.S.-led push to tighten U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang following North Korea's missile test in October. A few days before Kim's statement emerged, the North Koreans said future tests would target the United States, which North Korea regards as its key adversary along with Washington's tool, South Korea.
North Korea has been using the threat of tests and the tests themselves as weapons against its neighbors and the United States for years. On the surface, threatening to test weapons does not appear particularly sensible. If the test fails, you look weak. If it succeeds, you look dangerous without actually having a deliverable weapon. And the closer you come to having a weapon, the more likely someone is to attack you so you don't succeed in actually getting one. Developing a weapon in absolute secret would seem to make more sense. When the weapon is ready, you display it, and you have something solid to threaten enemies with.
North Korea, of course, has been doing this for years and doing it successfully, so what appears absurd on the surface quite obviously isn't. On the contrary, it has proved to be a very effective maneuver. North Korea is estimated to have a gross domestic product of about $28 billion, about the same as Latvia or Turkmenistan. Yet it has maneuvered itself into a situation where the United States, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea have sat down with it at the negotiating table in a bid to persuade it not to build weapons. Sometimes, the great powers give North Korea money and food to persuade it not to develop weapons. It sometimes agrees to a halt, but then resumes its nuclear activities. It never completes a weapon, but it frequently threatens to test one. And when it carries out such tests, it claims its tests are directed at the United States and South Korea, as if the test itself were a threat.
There is brilliance in North Korea's strategy. When the Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea was left in dire economic straits. There were reasonable expectations that its government would soon collapse, leading to the unification of the Korean Peninsula. Naturally, the goal of the North Korean government was regime survival, so it was terrified that outside powers would invade or support an uprising against it. It needed a strategy that would dissuade anyone from trying that. Being weak in every sense, this wasn't going to be easy, but the North Koreans developed a strategy that we described more than 10 years ago as ferocious, weak and crazy. North Korea has pursued this course since the 1990s, and the latest manifestation of this strategy was on display last week. The strategy has worked marvelously and is still working.
Egypt Stays One Step Ahead of Obama [Dan From New York]
I had argued some time ago that the fall of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt dealt a crushing blow to Obama’s scheme to empower the Islamist side in Israel’s volatile region – one which would be hard-to-impossible for Obama to turn back.
Now comes word the Egyptian military has taken further steps to shore up its gains; gains which Obama is now in no position to reverse.
To date, most of Obama’s foreign debacles have been easy for him and the White House media to sweep under the rug.
But this one is different. It’s disruptive, permanent and impossible to cover up.
12/25/2013
Egypt Names Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's military-backed interim government has declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, a dramatic escalation that gives authorities more power in cracking down on them.
Hossam Eissa, the Minister of Higher Education, read out the Cabinet statement after long meeting on Wednesday.
Eissa said: "The Cabinet has declared the Muslim Brotherhood group and its organization as a terrorist organization."
Eissa added that the implications of the declaration punish those who belong to the group, financing it and those promoting the group's activities.
Continue reading here...
Image: Frontpage
Monday, December 23, 2013
Susan Rice Stars as Pajamaboy on "60 Minutes"
NSA Spying: The diplomat who blamed four American deaths in Benghazi on a video claims the denials by the director of national intelligence of blanket surveillance of Americans were inadvertent false representations.
It might have been slightly more credible had Pajama Boy appeared on CBS' "60 Minutes" broadcast on Sunday instead of Susan Rice. The current national security adviser and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations participated in a puff piece that might have been an episode of, "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?"For viewers, it was deja vu all over again.
Rice went on five Sunday talk shows on Sept. 16, 2012, five days after an al-Qaida-linked terrorist attack killed four Americans — including the first U.S. ambassador to die on duty in three decades — to parrot the administration lie that it was a spontaneous demonstration provoked by a video. This time, she claimed she had no time to revisit a "false controversy" about talking points, or, as President Obama has described Benghazi, just one of many "phony scandals."
Rice did have time, though, to repeat the line that she subbed for Secretary Hillary Clinton that Sunday because Clinton "had just gone through an incredibly painful and stressful week" and "had to reach out to the families, had to greet the bodies upon their arrival at Andrews Air Force Base."
Part of that stressful week in September 2012 included Clinton repeating the video lie to Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, one of the four killed in Benghazi, in front of his son's casket.
Monday, December 16, 2013
China lands rover on the moon while U.S. space program is reduced to begging the Russians for rides
Unexceptional: China becomes the third country to land a spacecraft on the moon in preparation for a manned visit. Meanwhile, U.S. astronauts have to ride Russian spacecraft to fix toilets on the International Space Station.
Tourists visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where one of America's retired space shuttles now resides, were no doubt able to see news reports of the landing of China's first lunar vehicle, a solar-powered rover, on the surface of the moon.
The landing of the rover 37 years after the last such mission by the Soviet Luna 24 sample-return voyage in 1976 makes China just the third nation to accomplish such a feat, joining the U.S. and Russia. Clearly, Beijing intends to be a player in space, just as on the global scene. On both scores, the Obama administration seems intent on making the U.S. a spectator.The Chang'e 3 spacecraft and its lunar rover, sent aboard a Long March 3B rocket launched on Dec. 2 from Southwest China, is the latest triumph of an ambitious military-backed space program. Its goals include a manned orbiting space station and landing Chinese astronauts on the moon, possibly to plant their flag next to the U.S. flag left there in 1969. The rover itself is called Yutu or Jade Rabbit after the pet of Chang'e, Chinese mythology's goddess of the moon.
On Oct. 15, 2003, China's first manned spaceflight sent astronaut Yang Liwei on a 21-hour mission. An 8.5-ton space station module orbited in September 2011 was launched into space aboard a Long March 2F rocket. It was to be the prototype for a planned 60-ton Chinese space laboratory to be in orbit by 2020.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
KAPOW: Police Chief Shreds Kanye West for Comparing His Job to Police and Military
Dear Kanye West,
I am honored to be writing such an important star. I am a mere Internet sensation. I’m not sure I am worthy to address you, although the Huffington Post did say I was “Humorous and Insanely Popular.” I don't pay much attention to those things. Anyway, please excuse my interference in your life for a quick second.
I read your interview and also watched it on video. You said: “I’m just giving of my body on the stage and putting my life at risk, literally.….and I think about it. I think about my family and I’m like, wow, this is like being a police officer or something, in war or something.”
I want to thank you for putting your life on the line for all of us every day. I know that being a rapper is tough work. I have tried to rap, and it is very difficult to keep up with the pulse of the rhyme flow…although when Ice Ice Baby comes on the radio, I can usually keep up with ol’ Vanilla. Anywho, your job is just some very dangerous work. Most people don't consider... if you rap really fast, without a chance to inhale, you could pass out and hit your head.
That last paragraph was covered in sarcasm. I’m letting you know, just so you do not think I agree with your very ignorant assessment of your career (or any other performer)as it relates to a person in the military or a police officer’s service. You sir, are as misguided as they come. I do have a suggestion for you. Since you are accustomed to danger, from your life as an international rapper, I am strongly encouraging you immediately abandon you career as a super star and join the military. After joining, I would like you to volunteer to be deployed in Afghanistan or one of the numerous other forward locations where our men an women are currently serving. When the Taliban starts shooting at you, perhaps you could stand up and let the words flow. It could be something like “I’m Kanye West, wearing a flak vest.” I’m sure they would just drop weapons and surrender. You could quite possibly end all wars, just from the enemy being star-struck.
Your line of thinking is part of the problem in the world today….which include entertainers thinking they are something more than just entertainers. I know it is supply and demand and the demand for your services is high. I get economics. What I do not get is you EVER comparing what you do for a living to our heroic military members, who are always in harm’s way… and my brother and sister police officers who have to go to work carrying weapons and wearing a bullet-proof vest to protect themselves.
Check yourself, before you wreck yourself, fool.
Chief Oliver.
Note: I added the word "fool" at the end. Follow Chief Oliver on Facebook
EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Iran sends monkey into space, president says
EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Iran sends second monkey into space, president says http://t.co/SzEu9FybC1 #claustrophobic pic.twitter.com/dgQwcjluZy
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) December 14, 2013Hat tip: Biff Spackle.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Missing Radioactive Material Highlights the Nuclear Terror Threat Lurking on our Porous Southern Border
National Security: The theft of a truck carrying dangerous radioactive material combined with terrorist group activity in the hemisphere shows that the need for a secure border involves more than illegal immigration.
Mexican authorities said Wednesday they found the stolen truck and likely recovered all of the radioactive cobalt taken by a group of thieves who were probably after the truck, unaware it carried a deadly cargo.
Cobalt-60, which is used in radiation therapy to treat cancer, was being transported from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center. But what if the thieves were terrorists who knew what the truck was carrying and targeted it to gain material for a so-called "dirty bomb"?
At a nuclear security summit in South Korea last year, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), identified cobalt-60 as one of the materials that could be used with conventional explosives to make such a weapon.
"A dirty bomb detonated in a major city could cause mass panic, as well as serious economic and environmental consequences," Amano said, according to a copy of his speech. Detonation of such a bomb in a big city, he warned, "could cause mass panic, as well as serious economic and environmental consequences."
Bombs made with cobalt-60 "pose a threat mainly because even a fraction of a gram emits a huge number of high-energy gamma rays; such material is harmful whether outside or inside the body," according to a 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service.
The U.S. government has sensors at border crossings and seaports to prevent radioactive materials from entering the country. But nuclear terrorists are not likely to check themselves through customs or show up at border checkpoints. They'd more than likely cross through porous openings in our border with Mexico, or maybe through one of the sophisticated tunnels that have been dug under the border.
We know state sponsors of terror have nuclear material and that terrorist groups have plans for such material. We know OTMs — other than Mexicans — have been coming across our border with the flood of illegal immigrants. We also know that cross-border tunnels capable of smuggling more than drugs, guns and people have been uncovered.
Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., recently sent a letter to the Homeland Security Department asking that a task force investigate growing ties between Hezbollah and the drug cartels as well as growing evidence of a Hezbollah presence in Mexico. If the cartels can smuggle drugs and people into America, Hezbollah and al-Qaida have to know they can smuggle in trained terrorists or the makings of a dirty bomb.
Sunday, December 08, 2013
PRENTICE-HALL OUTRAGE: Its Common Core-aligned History Textbooks Depict World War II-Era America as Evil
The opening page of the slim chapter devoted to World War II called “War Shock” features a photograph of a woman inspecting a large stockpile of thousand-pound bomb castings. The notes in the margins of the Teacher’s Edition set the tone:
In this section, nonfiction prose and a single stark poem etch into a reader’s mind the dehumanizing horror of world war. . . .The editors of the textbook script the question teachers are supposed to ask students in light of the photograph as well as provide the answer:
Ask: What dominant impression do you take away from this photograph?Translation: Americans made lots of big bombs that killed lots of people.
Possible response: Students may say that the piled rows of giant munitions give a strong impression of America’s power of mass production and the bombs’ potential for mass destruction.
The principal selection of the chapter is taken from John Hersey’s Hiroshima. It is a description of ordinary men and women in Hiroshima living out their lives the day the bomb was dropped...
There is no reading in this chapter ostensibly devoted to World War II that tells why America entered the war. There is no document on Pearl Harbor or the Rape of Nanking or the atrocities committed against the Jews or the bombing of Britain. The book contains no speech of Winston Churchill or F.D.R.
The United States of America, you turds at Prentice-Hall, was engaged in an existential fight against pure evil.
Tell me, schmucks: did you show some of the photographs taken by Japanese soldiers at the Rape of Nanking as they impaled babies on bayonets and raped women to death with sharp sticks?
Tell me, you freaking moonbats: did you show the bodies stacked like cord-wood at Auschwitz?
Millions upon millions murdered -- gassed, shot, starved -- and America is the malevolent actor?
History lesson for the progressive dimwits at Prentice-Hall: World War II drew to an abrupt conclusion with the detonation of two nuclear weapons.Had the bombs not gone off, tens of millions on both sides would have perished and the war would have continued for years on end.
In fact, had the bombs failed to detonate, the Allies were prepared to launch Operation Downfall, the invasion of mainland Japan. Downfall was itself split into two massive ops: Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet.
Given the suicidal defensive stands mounted by the Japanese at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, war planners assumed for a minimum of "millions for American casualties and the tens of millions for Japanese casualties."
Put simply, Prentice-Hall should celebrate America's nuclear weapons as helping to defeat pure evil while preventing tens of millions of additional deaths.
Moore concludes with an excellent question:
Do we want the children just now entering school and in the years to come—who may have never met their great-grandparents—to be made ashamed of that Greatest Generation, of America, and of our resolution to remain free?
No, it is Prentice-Hall -- not our veterans -- that should be ashamed of itself. I would recommend any school board reject that company's left-wing propaganda and utilize real American History books instead.
Related: No Substitute for Victory. Hat tip: Sara Noble.
Saturday, December 07, 2013
EXCLUSIVE: President Obama offers solemn commemorative tweet of Pearl Harbor attack
EXCLUSIVE: President Obama offers solemn commemorative tweet of Pearl Harbor attack. pic.twitter.com/0KWJEtoroO
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) December 7, 2013Hat tip: Biff Spackle, the hardest working intern in blogging.
HECKUVA JOB, BARRY: Saudi Arabia Seeks Russian Help As Mideast Nuclear Arms Race Heats Up
As Caroline Glick put it, Obama "never explained how allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium decreases the likelihood of war":
The negotiations with the Iranians that culminated in [the] agreement went on for a year.
And yet, the final deal reflects Iran’s opening positions.
That is, over the course of the entire year, American and European negotiators were not able to move Iran’s positions one iota.
So what has the Obama administration been doing for the past year? Since Iran’s positions were the same all along, why didn’t they sign this deal a year ago? The US’s strength relative to Iran did not diminish significantly since a year ago. So the US didn’t need this agreement more now than it did a year ago.
Clearly, Obama did not spend the last year trying to build domestic American support for a deal that enables the regime that calls daily for the annihilation of America to become a nuclear power. With Iran building military bases all over Central and South America, Obama never bothered trying to make the case to the American people that they would be more secure with this regime in possession of the capacity to kill millions of Americans with one bomb.
Obama never stood before the Congress to explain how a deal that gives America’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program advances US national security. He never explained how allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium decreases the likelihood of war.
As anyone could have predicted, the other shoe has dropped. Fars News reports that Riyadh has gone to Russia to seek its assistance in building nukes.
Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan in a recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked him to help Riyadh construct a nuclear power plant, the Arab-language al-Qods al-Arabi newspaper quoted informed diplomatic sources in the Persian Gulf Arab littoral states as saying.
According to the report, Prince Bandar has told Putin that if Russia declares readiness in this regard, Saudi Arabia can provide Moscow with preliminary studies that it has conducted since six years ago.
Saudi Arabia and other members of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) have been conducting nuclear studies and the PGCC secretariat has been in charge of these studies.
Last month, a report said that Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will.
In 2009, Obama famously said, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act" to reduce their proliferation.
That statement had about as much veracity as his infamous "If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan" trope.
Although I feel certain that, at least when it comes to disarming America, Obama means business. He intends to strip away America's nuclear deterrent force by 80 percent or more while China, Russia and Iran are ramping up their militaries to unprecedented heights.
This president is, without question, making the world a far more dangerous place and is actively undermining America's national security interests.
Hat tips: BB and BadBlue News
Friday, December 06, 2013
Russia and the ACLU (But I Repeat Myself) Extremely Perturbed by New Spy Agency Logo
That said, English language periodical Russia Today ain't happy:
The US National Reconnaissance Office launched a top-secret surveillance satellite into space Thursday evening, and the official emblem for the spy agency’s latest mission is, well, certainly accurate, to say the least.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence live-tweeted Thursday’s launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and throughout the course of the ordeal made no effort to ignore the logo for the NROL-39 mission... The latest spy satellite to be sent into orbit by the NRO can be recognized by its seal: a malevolent octopus with furrowed brows that also happens to be wrapping its tentacles around all corners of the Earth...
Ready for launch? An Atlas 5 will blast off at just past 11PM, PST carrying an classified NRO payload (also cubesats) pic.twitter.com/ll7s0nCOPg
— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) December 5, 2013
...For half a year now, leaked NSA documents have let the world learn that the US monitors the phone habits of not just Americans, but also foreigners sitting atop the governments of allied nations.
...That being said, you’d think ODNI would reconsider launching a new spy satellite. Or maybe even not put an octopus strangling the Earth on the outside.
Advice to @ODNIgov: You may want to downplay the massive dragnet spying thing right now. This logo isn't helping. pic.twitter.com/ws2sW01UtJ
— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) December 5, 2013
If the ACLU protected Second Amendment rights as diligently as they pretend to protect First Amendment rights, they might have a modicum of credibility left.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
PREEMPTIVE SURRENDER IN THE PACIFIC: Obama Bows to China, Humiliates Japan
National Security: As the media praised the president for sending two B-52s through disputed air space claimed by China, the administration instructed U.S. airlines to get approval as demanded from the Chinese government.
After China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea encompassing the Japanese Senkaku Islands, two U.S. B-52s flew through the claimed air space without informing Beijing. It was an appropriate response.Not so appropriate, however, was the Obama administration's instructions to U.S. carriers that they accede to China's demands for prior notification.
China announced last week that all aircraft entering the zone over the East China Sea, an area two-thirds the size of Britain located between China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, must notify Chinese authorities beforehand, and that it will take unspecified defensive measures against those that don't comply.
The Japanese government, bristling at this infringement of its sovereignty, instructed its carriers not to comply with China's demand. In contrast, the New York Times reports, administration officials said they made the decision to urge civilian planes to adhere to Beijing's new rules in part because they worried about an unintended confrontation.
Unintended confrontation? China's move was carefully planned and its move to control the air space over and around the Senkaku Islands is no accident but part of a plan to project power far beyond its coastal waters.
United, American and Delta have said they have begun notifying Chinese authorities of flight plans when traveling through China's ADIZ in response to the Obama administration's request.
This is a slap in the face to Tokyo. And since Japan has refused Beijing's demand, just how does the administration's capitulation end the risk of confrontation? As China's power grows, so will its assertiveness.


















