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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon

Doomed to Repeat It

Posted on March 4, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/03/doomed-to-repeat-it/

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U.S. won’t provide airstrikes for Iraqi offensive against Islamic State: Pentagon

By Rowan Scarborough – The Washington Times – Monday, March 2, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/2/us-wont-provide-airstrikes-iraqi-offensive/

Iraqi Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of their comrade, Ali Mansour, who his family says was killed in Tikrit fighting Islamic militants, during his funeral procession, in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Baghdad, … more >

The U.S. is not providing airstrikes to help the Iraqi government’s new counteroffensive to again try to take back the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Tikrit from the Islamic State terrorist army. The American-led coalition has conducted thousands of airstrikes since August to whittle down the Islamic State occupiers, but in this case, it is letting Iraqi aircraft do the bombing.

After at least two failed attempts in recent months to capture Tikrit, Iraq has mustered a much larger force of 25,000. A large number of them are not the regular Iraqi army but Shiite militia fighters who are battling Iraqi Sunni groups loyal to the Islamic State, also called ISIL and ISIS. Iraq’s largest counteroffensive to date began Monday morning with thrusts from the south and north aimed at retaking Saddam Hussein’s old neighborhood. Press reports from Baghdad said Iranians were backing up the Shia militias, creating a possible combustible ethnic mix that could break out into sectarian violence instead of a well-orchestrated campaign.

“The Sunnis are torn between holding their nose and siding with ISIS or putting up with Shia militia and Iranian proxies,” said Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and military analyst. “Sectarianism is very much alive, and will drive this conflict far more than the political leaders admit.”

The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the attack with an olive branch to Iraqi Sunnis who joined the Islamic State: Leave the group and win a grant of amnesty. Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, referred to the battle as “their [Iraq’s] operation. The U.S. has not provided airstrikes in support of the operation,” Cmdr. Smith said. “From my understanding, the Iraqis haven’t asked us to. All of our airstrikes are conducted in coordination with the Iraqis.”

Mr. Maginnis said much of the fighting will be done by Shiite militiamen guided by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, which trained the same types of fighters in how to kill Americans during the 2003-2011 Iraq War. “The Iraqi Security Forces are unprepared for close-in combat and won’t be [ready] for some time,” Mr. Maginnis said.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Quds force commander Gen. Ghasem Soleimani arrived in Iraq two days ago to coordinate the attack. The Islamic State condemns all Shiites, including Iranians, as apostates or nonbelievers. The large presence of Iranian-backed fighters may be the reason for no U.S. airstrikes since the Americans would, in effect, be providing close air support for Iran.

Home to about 250,000 Iraqis, Tikrit sits 80 miles north of Baghdad and is the capital of Salauhddin province. The city put up considerable resistance to the U.S. occupation. It was home to a number of al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist cells, out of which sprung the Islamic State. The Associated Press in Baghdad reported that special U.N. envoy Nickolay Mladenov urged fighters to spare civilians. “Military operations reinforced by international and Iraqi air support must be conducted with the utmost care to avoid civilian casualties and with full respect for fundamental human rights principles and humanitarian law,” Mr. Mladenov said. Controlling the city would be a big boost to the six-month-old Shiite-dominated government of Mr. Abadi and possibly provide a launching point to invade the large city of Mosul farther north.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said many questions remain: Can Iraq’s government reclaim Tikrit? How does Baghdad plan to hold it? Will any recriminations follow? On Mr. Abadi’s timing, Mr. Dubik said, the operation may be a chance to increase confidence in the Iraqi Security Forces, test the Islamic State’s defenses and shorten ground supply routes for battle in Mosul. Mr. Abadi traveled to Samarra on Sunday to address fighters poised to attack.

Samarra is the hometown of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a cleric who rose in the ranks of al Qaeda in Iraq and then formed the Islamic State in eastern Syria amid the so-called Arab Spring that spawned opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Islamic State’s conquests in Iraq began in January 2014, when it invaded the western portion of the country, eventually capturing the city of Fallujah, for which the U.S. expended much blood in 2004 in two major battles. Six months later, Islamic State terrorists swept out of Syria into northern Iraq, taking Sunni-dominated cities such as Mosul and Tikrit. The Iraqi Security Forces put up little resistance. Sunni commanders felt little allegiance to the Shiite government of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The U.S. said Mr. al-Maliki ruined the military’s command structure by firing competent generals and alienating Sunni tribal leaders.

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Netanyahu warns pending nuclear deal ‘paves Iran’s path to the bomb’

Published March 03, 2015, FoxNews.com

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/03/netanyahu-makes-case-against-iran-deal-in-address-to-congress/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a controversial speech before the U.S. Congress to appeal to President Obama to pull back on nuclear talks with Iran, warning the “bad deal” in the works “paves Iran’s path to the bomb” and could lead to a “potential nuclear nightmare.” The Israeli leader made his impassioned case Tuesday in a highly anticipated address in Washington. He claimed the potential deal would make two major concessions which would threaten the security of Israel and the region by retaining Iran’s ability to start up a nuclear weapons program.

“This is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We’re better off without it,” Netanyahu said.

The Israeli leader spoke as part of a high-profile push to make his case against the pending deal. He said the agreement in the works makes two major concessions. First, it would leave in place a “vast nuclear infrastructure,” since it wouldn’t require nuclear facilities to be destroyed — some centrifuges would be allowed to keep running, while others would merely be disconnected, he said.

Second, Netanyahu said the restrictions would “automatically expire” in about a decade. “It’s the blink of an eye in the life of a nation,” Netanyahu said. The deal, he said, “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb. It paves Iran’s path to the bomb.” He reminded the audience of Iran’s deep history of funding terror and threatening Israel.

Countering the argument that the alternative to this deal is war, Netanyahu argued that the alternative is actually a “much better deal” — and suggested the U.S. has the leverage to achieve that.

The address was the centerpiece of a controversial visit that has fueled diplomatic tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations — and political tensions on Capitol Hill. House Speaker John Boehner had invited the Israeli leader without involving Obama, which is considered a breach in protocol. Republican leaders defended the move, saying it’s important for Netanyahu to explain the threats posed by Iran and his concerns with the current nuclear talks. But dozens of Democrats sat out the Israeli leader’s speech. And Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice went so far in recent days as to call Netanyahu’s speech “destructive” to U.S.-Israeli ties — though administration officials have since toned down their characterization of his visit.

In his opening remarks, Netanyahu said he regrets some have perceived his visit as political. “That was never my intention,” he said. Despite the controversy, he received a standing ovation from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and was interrupted roughly 40 times by applause.

Meanwhile, he urged the U.S. not to “be fooled” by Iran’s recent efforts to oppose the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a group the U.S. also is fighting. Netanyahu said those groups are “competing for the crown of militant Islam.” “When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy — is your enemy,” he said.

He also blasted the terms of the potential nuclear deal. He said Iran is notorious for playing a game of “hide and cheat” with inspectors. Both the Obama and Netanyahu administrations, as a matter of policy, agree that Iran must not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon. But the Israeli leader has concerns that the framework of the current diplomatic talks could lead to an ineffective deal.

Obama, speaking in an interview Monday night with Reuters on the eve of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, acknowledged the shared goal, then added Netanyahu “thinks that the best way to do that is either through doubling down on more sanctions or through military action, ensuring that Iran has absolutely no enrichment capabilities whatsoever.” He added, “there’s no good reason for us not to let the negotiations play themselves out.”

Obama has no plans to meet with the prime minister — though the White House insists this is out of a desire not to appear to be influencing upcoming Israeli elections. Netanyahu considers unacceptable any deal that does not entirely end Iran’s nuclear program. But Obama is willing to leave some nuclear activity intact, backed by safeguards that Iran is not trying to develop a weapon. Iran insists its program is solely for peaceful energy and medical research.

The address comes as Congress also weighs legislation that would trigger more sanctions against Iran if a diplomatic deal fails. Obama opposes that bill.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon

Suspicious Ties

Posted on March 3, 2015

URL of the original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/03/suspicious-ties/

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Iranian forces advance toward Israel

Posted By Aaron Klein On 02/11/2015

Article printed from WND: http://www.wnd.com

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/iranian-forces-advance-toward-israel/

TEL AVIV – Iranian officers working with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization are fighting their way closer to Israel’s northern border with Syria and could soon be in control of the Syrian side of the armistice line. A government source from Syria’s Ministry of Information confirmed to WND a report Tuesday from a U.K.-based human rights organization which stated Hezbollah and Iranian forces were leading a counterinsurgency targeting rebel strongholds in Quneitra, just on the other side of Israel’s border with Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Hezbollah-Iran axis is also leading battles against Islamist insurgents in Daraa, at the Jordan-Israel border and along the southwest of Damascus province.

WND last month was first to report that according to Mideast defense officials, Hezbollah and Iran were planning an imminent counterinsurgency against rebel-held positions inside and near the Syrian sections of the Golan Heights aimed at taking the strategic border territory. Now the source from Syria’s Information Ministry has confirmed to WND that “dozens” of Iranian officers are leading the battle with both strategy and field tactics. The source said Iranian forces are giving instructions to both the Syrian army and Hezbollah, who are carrying out the attacks.

“The operation started two days ago and is very big,” Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said Tuesday. “Regime troops and their Hezbollah-led allies are advancing in the area linking Daraa, Quneitra and Damascus provinces,” the group stated.

On Wednesday, Syrian television for the first time reportedly recognized the contribution of Iranian forces to the counterinsurgency. “The operation launched by the Syrian army is being fought in cooperation with … Hezbollah and Iran,” a Syrian army officer told state television, Agence France-Presse reported.

Israel has been on alert and anticipating retaliation after an Israeli official took the unusual step of recognizing his country was responsible for a strike last month a Hezbollah convoy near the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. The attack killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Mohammed Allahdadi as well as a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group’s late military leader, Imad Muughniyeh. Hezbollah said six of its members died in the strike.

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Cruz Files Bill to Ban American Islamic State Fighters from Returning to U.S.

BY: Adam Kredo, January 23, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cruz-files-bill-to-ban-americans-islamic-state-fighters-from-returning-to-u-s/

“Blasts Obama’s foreign policy as ‘detached from reality’”

Cruz said that he is filing the bill partly in response to President Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address, which he described as “detached from reality” on the foreign policy front.

“President Obama’s approach to foreign policy refuses to acknowledge the threats our enemies pose to our national security—it is detached from reality and making the world a more dangerous place,” said Cruz, who also is releasing a new video that takes aim at Obama for misleading the nation about these threats in his annual address.

Cruz said stripping American IS fighters of their citizenship is a step toward securing the country and restoring the country’s image.

“We’ve seen the grave consequence of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy unravel with respect to Iran, Russia, and now Yemen,” Cruz said. “These consequences are not confined to faraway lands. They directly threaten America and our allies.”

“That is why this week, I am re-filing the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which prevents Americans who have fought abroad for designated terrorist groups from returning to the United States,” he said. “I look forward to working with senators on both sides of the aisle on this and additional measures to secure our nation and restore America’s leadership in the world.”

In his new video, an advance copy of which was provided to the Free Beacon, Cruz makes the case that Obama’s statements on the foreign policy front do not comport with reality. From Iran to Russia, Yemen, and beyond, Obama painted a picture of his actions that do not comport with the truth on the ground. Multiple media outlets noted after the address that Obama’s remarks were “not close to reality.”

In the wake of the attacks in Paris and in the midst of upheaval in Yemen, the president refused to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Regarding Iran, Obama said on Tuesday, “Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”

Cruz’s video, called “It’s Time to Face Reality,” points out that Iran is continuing work on new nuclear reactors and still enriching uranium, the key component in a nuclear bombs. It also challenges Obama’s statements on Russia, Yemen, and the fight against terrorism.

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Netanyahu ‘spat in our face,’ White House officials said to say

Posted By Times of Israel staff January 23, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-spat-in-our-face-white-house-officials-say/#ixzz3PfvyEaze

“PM ‘will pay price’ for spat over Congress address; Obama said to have asked him to tone down pro-sanctions rhetoric; Wash. Post: Kerry’s enthusiasm for defending Israel may wane”

: US President Barack Obama, November 13, 2014 (photo credit: AFP/Christophe Archambault)

The White House’s outrage over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to speak before Congress in March — a move he failed to coordinate with the administration — began to seep through the diplomatic cracks on Friday, with officials telling Haaretz the Israeli leader had “spat” in President Barack Obama’s face.

“We thought we’ve seen everything,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying. “But Bibi managed to surprise even us.’

“There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price,” he said.

Officials in Washington said that the “chickenshit” epithet — with which an anonymous administration official branded Netanyahu several months ago — was mild compared to the language used in the White House when news of Netanyahu’s planned speech came in.

In his address the Israeli leader is expected to speak about stalled US-led nuclear negotiations with Iran, and to urge lawmakers to slap Tehran with a new round of tougher sanctions in order to force it to comply with international demands. The Mossad intelligence service on Thursday went to the rare length of issuing a press statement to deny claims, cited by Kerry, that its chief Tamir Pardo had told visiting US politicians that he opposed further sanctions.

Haaretz reported that Obama had personally demanded that Netanyahu tone down his pro-sanctions rhetoric in a phone call between the two last week. The president has said a sanctions bill would cripple negotiations with Iranian leaders at a critical stage, and has threatened to veto such a bill should it come through.

The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu’s apparent disrespect for the US leadership was particularly offensive to Secretary of State John Kerry, who over the past month had made frenzied efforts on Israel’s behalf on the world stage — making dozens of calls to world leaders to convince them to oppose a UN Security Council resolution which would have set a timeframe for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“The secretary’s patience is not infinite,” a source close to Kerry told the Post. “The bilateral relationship is unshakable. But playing politics with that relationship could blunt Secretary Kerry’s enthusiasm for being Israel’s primary defender.”

The White House said Thursday that Obama would not meet with Netanyahu when he travels to Washington, with a spokeswoman citing a “long-standing practice and principle” by which the president does not meet with heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections. Kerry will also not meet with Netanyahu. Netanyahu will be in Washington in part for a March 3 address to a joint session of Congress. House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress without consulting the Obama administration.

The White House initially reacted icily to Netanyahu’s plans to address Congress, an appearance apparently meant to bolster opposition to a nuclear deal with Iran as it is currently shaping up, as well as opposition to new sanctions against Tehran.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggested Wednesday that Netanyahu and Boehner had broken with protocol in not informing Obama of the prime minister’s travel plans.

“We haven’t heard from the Israelis directly about the trip at all,” he said, adding the White House would “reserve judgment” about any possible face-to-face meeting until explanations are made.

“The typical protocol would suggest that the leader of a country would contact the leader of another country when he is traveling there. That is certainly how President Obama’s trips are planned,” explained Earnest.

“So this particular event seems to be a departure from that protocol.”

Speaking several hours after Earnest, top US diplomat Kerry said Netanyahu was welcome to give a speech at “any time” in the United States. But Kerry agreed it had been a “little unusual” to hear about the Israeli leader’s speech to US Congress next month from the office of Boehner and not via the usual diplomatic channels.

: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, meets with US president Barack Obama, at the White House, Washington DC on October 01, 2014. (Photo credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO)

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats, said that Boehner blundered when he invited Netanyahu to address Congress amid sensitive negotiations about Iran’s nuclear program and in the shadow of Israel’s elections.

“If that’s the purpose of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit two weeks before his own election, right in the midst of our negotiations, I just don’t think it’s appropriate and helpful,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday at her weekly news conference. The speech, Pelosi suggested, could give Netanyahu a political boost in elections a few weeks later and inflame international talks aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel is scheduled to hold elections on March 17. Netanyahu confirmed Thursday that he would address Congress in early March. He was initially slated to speak on February 11, but changed the date so he could attend the AIPAC conference.

“The Prime Minister is expected to arrive in the US at the beginning of March and will also participate in the AIPAC conference,” read a statement from the PMO. “The speech in front of both houses of Congress will give the prime minister the opportunity to thank President Barack Obama, Congress, and the American people for their support of Israel.

“I look forward to the opportunity to express before the joint session Israel’s vision for a joint effort to deal with [Islamist terrorism and Iran’s nuclear program], and to emphasize Israel’s commitment to the special bond between our two democracies,” Netanyahu said, according to the statement.

Israel and the United States are close allies, but personal relations between Obama and Netanyahu have reportedly deteriorated over the years. The pair have publicly clashed over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and about how to tackle Iran’s disputed nuclear program. Obama’s allies fear Netanyahu’s March trip could be used by Israel and by Republicans to rally opposition to a nuclear deal, undercutting years of sensitive negotiations just as they appear poised to bear fruit.

In November the already faltering ties between the leaders were served a new blow when an anonymous US official was quoted calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit” in an article published by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the American magazine The Atlantic. The article portrayed the rift between the United States and Israel as a “full-blown crisis.”

AP and Lazar Berman contributed to this report.

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2014 Political Cartoons, Drawings and Presentations You Might Have Missed

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Exclusive: FBI warns of ‘destructive’ malware in wake of Sony attack

By Jim Finkle, BOSTON Tue Dec 2, 2014

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/02/us-sony-cybersecurity-malware-idUSKCN0JF3FE20141202

: An entrance gate to Sony Pictures Entertainment at the Sony Pictures lot is pictured in Culver City, California in this April 14, 2013 file photo.

The word 'password' on a computer screen is magnified with a magnifying glass in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. REUTERS-Pawel Kopczynski

Credit: Reuters/Fred Prouser/Files

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned U.S. businesses that hackers have used malicious software to launch a destructive cyberattack in the United States, following a devastating breach last week at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Cybersecurity experts said the malicious software described in the alert appeared to describe the one that affected Sony, which would mark first major destructive cyber attack waged against a company on U.S. soil. Such attacks have been launched in Asia and the Middle East, but none have been reported in the United States. The FBI report did not say how many companies had been victims of destructive attacks.

“I believe the coordinated cyberattack with destructive payloads against a corporation in the U.S. represents a watershed event,” said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer with security software maker Trend Micro Inc. “Geopolitics now serve as harbingers for destructive cyberattacks.”The five-page, confidential “flash” FBI warning issued to businesses late on Monday provided some technical details about the malicious software used in the attack. It provided advice on how to respond to the malware and asked businesses to contact the FBI if they identified similar malware.

The report said the malware overrides all data on hard drives of computers, including the master boot record, which prevents them from booting up.

“The overwriting of the data files will make it extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, to recover the data using standard forensic methods,” the report said.The document was sent to security staff at some U.S. companies in an email that asked them not to share the information.

The FBI released the document in the wake of last Monday’s unprecedented attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, which brought corporate email down for a week and crippled other systems as the company prepares to release several highly anticipated films during the crucial holiday film season.

A Sony spokeswoman said the company had “restored a number of important services” and was “working closely with law enforcement officials to investigate the matter.”

She declined to comment on the FBI warning.

The FBI said it is investigating the attack with help from the Department of Homeland Security. Sony has hired FireEye Inc’s (FEYE.O) Mandiant incident response team to help clean up after the attack, a move that experts say indicates the severity of the breach.

While the FBI report did not name the victim of the destructive attack in its bulletin, two cybersecurity experts who reviewed the document said it was clearly referring to the breach at the California-based unit of Sony Corp (6758.T).

“This correlates with information about that many of us in the security industry have been tracking,” said one of the people who reviewed the document. “It looks exactly like information from the Sony attack.”

FBI spokesman Joshua Campbell declined comment when asked if the software had been used against the California-based unit of Sony Corp, although he confirmed that the agency had issued the confidential “flash” warning, which Reuters independently obtained.

“The FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations,” he said. “This data is provided in order to help systems administrators guard against the actions of persistent cyber criminals.”

The FBI typically does not identify victims of attacks in those reports.

Hackers used malware similar to that described in the FBI report to launch attacks on businesses in highly destructive attacks in South Korea and the Middle East, including one against oil producer Saudi Aramco that knocked out some 30,000 computers. Those attacks are widely believed to have been launched by hackers working on behalf of the governments of North Korea and Iran.

Security experts said that repairing the computers requires technicians to manually either replace the hard drives on each computer, or re-image them, a time-consuming and expensive process.

Monday’s FBI report said the attackers were “unknown.”

Yet the technology news site Re/code reported that Sony was investigating to determine whether hackers working on behalf of North Korea were responsible for the attack as retribution for the company’s backing of the film “The Interview.”

The movie, which is due to be released in the United States and Canada on Dec. 25, is a comedy about two journalists recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The Pyongyang government denounced the film as “undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war” in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

The technical section of the FBI report said some of the software used by the hackers had been compiled in Korean, but it did not discuss any possible connection to North Korea.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle. Additional reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Ken Wills)

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon

Enemy Of My Enemy

Posted on November 26, 2014

URL of Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2014/11/enemy-enemy/

By WhatDidYouSay.org

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Exclusive: Cornered but unbound by nuclear pact, Israel reconsiders military action against Iran

By MICHAEL WILNER \ 11/22/2014

URL of Original Posting Site: http://www.jpost.com/International/Exclusive-Cornered-but-unbound-by-nuclear-pact-Israel-reconsiders-military-action-against-Iran-382541

“Israeli official cites “sunset clause” in proposed comprehensive deal, which guarantees Iran a path into the nuclear club and may corner Israel into war”.

: Israel Air Force planes fly over Tel Aviv. . (photo credit:IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)

WASHINGTON – Historic negotiations with Iran will reach an inflection point on Monday, as world powers seek to clinch a comprehensive deal that will, to their satisfaction, end concerns over the nature of its vast, decade-old nuclear program.

But reflecting on the deal under discussion with The Jerusalem Post on the eve of the deadline, Israel has issued a stark, public warning to its allies with a clear argument: Current proposals guarantee the perpetuation of a crisis, backing Israel into a corner from which military force against Iran provides the only logical exit.

The deal on the table

World powers have presented Iran with an accord that would restrict its nuclear program for roughly ten years and cap its ability to produce fissile material for a weapon during that time to a minimum nine-month additional period, from the current three months.

Should Tehran agree, the deal may rely on Russia to convert Iran’s current uranium stockpile into fuel rods for peaceful use. The proposal would also include an inspection regime that would attempt to follow the program’s entire supply chain, from the mining of raw material to the syphoning of that material to various nuclear facilities across Iran.

Israel’s leaders believe the best of a worst-case scenario, should that deal be reached, is for inspections to go perfectly and for Iran to choose to abide by the deal for the entire decade-long period.

But “our intelligence agencies are not perfect,” an Israeli official said. “We did not know for years about Natanz and Qom. And inspection regimes are certainly not perfect. They weren’t in the case in North Korea, and it isn’t the case now – Iran’s been giving the IAEA the run around for years about its past activities.”

“What’s going to happen with that?” the official continued. “Are they going to sweep that under the rug if there’s a deal?”

On Saturday afternoon, reports from Vienna suggested the P5+1 – the US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany – are willing to stop short of demanding full disclosure of any secret weapon work by Tehran.

Speaking to the Post, a senior US official rejected concern over limited surveillance capabilities, during or after a deal.

“If we can conclude a comprehensive agreement, we will have significantly more ability to detect covert facilities – even after its duration is over – than we do today,” the senior US official said. “After the duration of the agreement, the most intrusive inspections will continue: the Additional Protocol – which encompasses very intrusive transparency, and which Iran has already said it will implement – will continue.”

But compounding Israel’s fears, the proposal Jerusalem has seen shows that mass dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure – including the destruction, and not the mere warehousing, of its parts – is no longer on the table in Vienna.

“Iran’s not being asked to dismantle the nuclear infrastructure,” the Israeli official said, having seen the proposal before the weekend. “Right now what they’re talking about is something very different. They’re talking about Ayatollah Khamenei allowing the P5+1 to save face.”

Officials in the Netanyahu government are satisfied that their ideas and concerns have been given a fair hearing by their American counterparts. They praise the US for granting Israel unprecedented visibility into the process.

But while those discussions may have affected the talks at the margins, large gaps – on whether to grant Iran the right to enrich uranium, or allow it to keep much of its infrastructure – have remained largely unaddressed.

“It’s like the chemical weapons deal in Syria,” the official said. “They didn’t just say: Here, let’s get rid of the stockpile and the weapons, but we will leave all the plants and assembly lines.”

‘Sunset clause’

Yet, more than any single enforcement standard or cap included in the deal, Israel believes the Achilles’ heel of the proposed agreement is its definitive end date – the sunset clause.

“You’ve not dismantled the infrastructure, you’ve basically tried to put limits that you think are going to be monitored by inspectors and intelligence,” said the official, “and then after this period of time, Iran is basically free to do whatever it wants.”

The Obama administration also rejects this claim. By e-mail, the senior US administration official said that, “‘following successful implementation of the final step of the comprehensive solution for its duration, the Iranian nuclear program will be treated in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT – with an emphasis on non-nuclear weapon.”

“That has in no way changed,” the American official continued, quoting the interim Joint Plan of Action reached last year.

But the treatment of Iran as any other signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty –189 countries are members, including Iran – would allow Tehran to ultimately acquire “an industrial-sized capability,” the Israelis say. “The breakout times [to a nuclear weapon] will be effectively zero.”

Israel and world powers seek to maximize the amount of time they would have to identify non-compliance from a nuclear deal, should Iran choose to defy its tenets and build a bomb.

But in the deal under discussion in Vienna, Iran would be able to comply with international standards for a decade and, from Israel’s perspective, then walk, not sneak, into the nuclear club.

“You’ve not only created a deal that leaves Iran as a threshold nuclear power today, because they have the capability to break out quickly if they wanted to,” the Israeli official contended. “But you’ve also legitimized Iran as a military nuclear power in the future.”

From the moment this deal is clinched, Israel fears it will guarantee Iran as a military nuclear power. There will be no off ramp, because Iran’s reentry into the international community will be fixed, a fait accompli, by the very powers trying to contain it.

“The statement that says we’ve prevented them from having a nuclear weapon is not a true statement,” the Israeli official continued. “What you’ve said is, you’re going to put restrictions on Iran for a given number of years, after which there will be no restrictions and no sanctions. That’s the deal that’s on the table.”

Revisiting the use of force

Without an exit ramp, Israel insists its hands will not be tied by an agreement reached this week, this month or next, should it contain a clause that ultimately normalizes Iran’s home-grown enrichment program.

On the surface, its leadership dismisses fears that Israel will be punished or delegitimized if it disrupts an historic, international deal on the nuclear program with unilateral military action against its infrastructure.

By framing the deal as fundamentally flawed, regardless of its enforcement, Israel is telling the world that it will not wait to see whether inspectors do their jobs as ordered.

“Ten, fifteen years in the life of a politician is a long time,” the Israeli said, in a vague swipe against the political directors now scrambling in Vienna. “In the life of a nation, it’s nothing.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened the use of force against Iran several times since 2009, even seeking authorization from his cabinet in 2011. Iran’s program has since grown in size and scope.

According to his aides, the prime minister’s preference is not war, but the continuation of a tight sanctions regime on Iran’s economy coupled with a credible threat of military force. Netanyahu believes more time under duress would have led to an acceptable deal. But that opportunity, in his mind, may now be lost.

Whether Israel still has the ability to strike Iran, without American assistance, is an open question. Quoted last month in the Atlantic magazine, US officials suggested that window for Netanyahu closed over two years ago.

But responding to claims by that same official, quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg, over Netanyahu’s courage and will, the Israeli official responded sternly: “The prime minister is a very serious man who knows the serious responsibility that rests on his shoulders. He wouldn’t say the statements that he made if he didn’t mean them.”

“People have underestimated Israel many, many times in the past,” he continued, “and they underestimate it now.”

By WhatDidYouSay.org

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While you were watching ISIS, Iran took Yemen

Posted by David Gerstman Wednesday, October 8, 2014

http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/10/while-you-were-watching-isis-iran-took-yemen/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29

: The Houthis, Iranian backed rebels have taken control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. [Photo: WochitGeneralNews / YouTube ]

The Washington Post reports:

The capital of Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest and perhaps most chronically unstable nation, has new masters. Shiite rebels man checkpoints and roam the streets in pickups mounted with antiaircraft guns.

The fighters control almost all state buildings, from the airport and the central bank to the Defense Ministry.

Only a few police officers and soldiers are left on the streets. Rebel fighters have plastered the city with fliers proclaiming their slogan — “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam” — a variation of a popular Iranian slogan often chanted by Shiite militants in Iraq and supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The comparison to Hezbollah is apt as Reuters is reporting that the Houthi are blocking the appointment of Yemen’s president.

Abdel-Malek al-Ejri said Hadi had suggested five names at a meeting of his advisors, who represent various political parties in Yemen. When the aides failed to agree on a candidate Hadi suggested his presidential office director, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, as a compromise.

“But we did not agree, and the matter is still under consultation,” Ejri told Reuters.

Similarly, Hezbollah has kept Lebanon’s politics unsettled preventing the appointment of a President.

So what’s Iran’s interest in Yemen? It was spelled out by Michael Segall of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs two and a half years ago. A couple of Segall’s observations are sobering:

Iran regards Yemen in general, and its Shia northern part in particular, as a springboard for subversion and for creating a tangible threat to Saudi Arabia, its main religious-political rival in the region. Iran also seeks to establish a physical Iranian presence, ground and naval, in the countries and ports of the Red Sea littoral, which control the shipping (and weapon-supply) lanes leading from the Persian Gulf to the heart of the Middle East and to Europe.

Islamic Iran aspires to superpower status. It is actively involved in the region’s primary crisis centers. These include the “Arab Spring’s” main fronts with the West and the moderate Arab states: Syria, where Iran backs Bashar Assad through thick and thin; Bahrain, where Iran calls for the overthrow of the Royal House and supports the Shia demonstrators; and Yemen, where Iran is active in attempts to create a new order that is not based on support for the West.

While the West is obsessed with ISIS, Iran has continued its quest for dominance in the Middle East. In Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and now Yemen Iran is emerging as a major player.

In defending the nuclear deal with Iran President Obama said last year, “But if we can negotiate on the nuclear program in the same way that Ronald Reagan was able to negotiate with the Soviet Union even as we were still contesting them around the world, that removes one more threat — and a critical, existential threat — takes it out of their arsenal. And it allows us then to ultimately I think win them — defeat some of their agenda throughout the region without worrying that somehow it’s going to escalate or trigger a nuclear arms race in the most volatile part of the world.”

The problem is that even if the deal the P5+1 is negotiating with Iran is as effective as the president claimed it would be (and it appears to be a total capitulation), Iran continues to promote its agenda throughout the Middle East at little or no cost.

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International Politics, Islamic Alert

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Israel Fears U.S. May Cozy Up to Iran in Fight with Islamic State

On the eve of President Obama’s prime-time address on confronting IS, Israel National News reports that Israel’s official position was one of approval. “I praise the American initiative to take action and form a coalition against the Islamic State and hope those efforts will succeed,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said in comments broadcast on public radio.

Lieberman’s comments coincided with US Secretary of State John Kerry’s arrival in Baghdad on an unannounced visit at the start of a Middle East tour aimed at building a regional coalition to combat IS, the extremist Sunni militants who have taken over significant territory in both Syria and Iraq. Kerry is not scheduled to visit Israel on his trip.

Yesterday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon called for greater cooperation between the world’s intelligence agencies in an effort to defeat IS.

But underneath the expressions of unity with America and calls for global cooperation, Israel is concerned that American efforts to build a coalition to fight IS will involve a degree of rapprochement with Iran at a time that the Iranians are widely believed to be developing nuclear weapons.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzahi Hanegbi, who is close to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, praised the initiative but warned it may signal closer ties between the United States and Iran, which has also pledged to join the struggle.

“There could be some kind of flexibility vis-a-vis Iran by the Americans in the fight against IS,” he said.

Israel is anxious about the interim nuclear deal that Washington and other Western powers reached with Tehran last November, which Israel fears is buying the Iranians time to develop their nuclear capabilities.

Those negotiations already passed one deadline in July, but the parties agreed to extend the talks until November 24 to allow more time to reach a historic deal. The new talks are to open in New York ahead of the opening of the UN General Assembly on September 16. Meanwhile, Iranian centrifuges continue to spin.

Israel has refused to rule out military action against Iranian nuclear facilities to prevent the possibility of developing the technology for an atomic bomb. Israel fears that, should the rabidly anti-Israel Iranians cross the nuclear threshold, they will target the Jewish state with nuclear weapons.

Fledgling efforts to combat IS have already placed America and Iran on the same side in Iraq. American airstrikes in Iraq have supported Shia Islamist militias backed by Iran, including during the breaking of the Islamic State’s siege of the Shia town of Amerli last week.

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Crisis in Ukraine; Putin Poised to Retaliate Against Obama by Trashing Iran Deal

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/18/putin-set-to-retaliate-against-obama-by-trashing-iran-deal.html

07.18.14

Now that the U.S.-Russia relationship has broken down, Moscow could throw a wrench into the teetering nuclear negotiations with Iran.

The escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow, brought to fever by the MH17 airliner disaster, are finally to the point where they threaten to spoil the number one item on President Obama’s foreign policy agenda: the nuclear talks with Iran. The man doing the threatening is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Earlier this week, Putin promised to retaliate against the United States for new sanctions targeting his friends and business associates, as well as large Russian defense, energy, and financial firms. On Thursday, Putin called President Obama to alert him a civilian jetliner had crashed over Eastern Ukraine, a tragedy the U.S. says was caused by a missile shot from a Russian-made SA-11 mobile surface to air missile system located in a separatist-held area.

Putin’s next call was to none other than the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani.

“Mr. Putin and Mr. Rouhani exchanged views on the state of talks on Iran’s nuclear program,” stated the Kremlin readout of the call. “The two leaders also examined bilateral cooperation matters of mutual interest, including joint projects in the oil and gas sector and in peaceful nuclear energy.”

“An extension is the only thing the Iranians need to complete their bomb work. The whole point of the sanctions was to make sure that time is not on the side of the Iranians.”

U.S. officials, lawmakers, and experts, have been watching and waiting for Putin to use the Iran negotiations as a way to mess with Obama ever since the tit-

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for-tat sanctions began in March.

Moscow and Tehran have been negotiating a $1.5 billion oil-for-goods exchange, which could undermine international pressure on Iran to make a deal with the West. But overall, Moscow has continued to be a reasonably constructive part of the international coalition pressing Iran to roll back its nuclear program.

The Obama administration on Friday announced a four-month extension to the talks, which would constitute perhaps the last chance Iran has to land a deal. “This will give us a short amount of additional time to continue working to conclude a comprehensive agreement, which we believe is warranted by the progress we’ve made and the path forward we can envision,” Kerry said in a statement.

But if Putin decides that retaliating against the U.S. and ruining Obama’s foreign policy legacy is more important than sealing a pact with Iran, the whole thing could unravel.

The shooting down of MH17 has escalated the diplomatic war between Washington and Moscow and made that scenario more likely because it could result in more sanctions and legal action against the Russian government.

“Right now, as the U.S. should move legally against Russia, Russia will begin to see its overseas portfolios start to really become encumbered and therefore they might decide to be less helpful on Iran,” Sen. Mark Kirk told The Daily Beast. “Then, the big goose egg that the administration is going to get from Iran will more obviously be a zip.”

Kirk is part of a chorus of GOP senators calling for the administration to impose more sanctions on Russia in the wake of the MH17 disaster. That includes measures like the Russian Aggression Prevention Act, which would cut all senior Russian officials, their companies, and their supporters off from the world’s financial system; target any Russian entities owned by the Russian government or sanctioned individuals across the arms, defense, energy, financial services, metals, or mining sectors in Russia; and ban all Russian banks from the U.S. financial system.

The Obama administration Wednesday imposed limited sanctions on many key players in those sectors, saying that broader sectoral sanctions were still on the table.

“Once we realize that [top State Department negotiator] Wendy Sherman got squat in Geneva, I think the Republican leadership will be highly supportive of any legislation on Iran,” Kirk said, referring to the latest round of negotiations.

Lawmakers in both parties are also set to push for new sanctions on Iran this year to be passed into law during the four month extension but not put into force until negotiations fail outright. One Democratic lawmaker who met with Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday at the State Department told The Daily Beast that Kerry said he was open to that idea. The State Department press shop denied Kerry made such remarks.

“An extension is the only thing the Iranians need to complete their bomb work,” said Kirk. “The whole point of the sanctions was to make sure that time is not on the side of the Iranians.”

Even top Democrats in Congress are worried that the MH17 disaster and its effect on U.S.-Russian relations will harm the effort to strike a nuclear deal with Iran.

The incident was “a serious act of terror, and if there was Russian complicity in it, that makes it even worse,” said Elliott Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Considering that we are doing the P5+1 [world power negotiations with Iran] and Russia’s part of that, there are all kinds of intertwining complications involving that.”

Until now, Moscow has retaliated to U.S. financial pressure with sanctions of their own against U.S. officials, lawmakers, and even donors to President Obama who are linked to the gay advocacy community. Putin hasn’t always made the retaliatory sanctions public, but his government sought to respond proportionally and kept other issues out of the dispute.

“A few things that had gone on between the U.S. and Russia despite the sanctions have been the P5+1 talks, the effort to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, and the implantation of treaties like New START,” said Sam Charap, senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies.

But Russian can’t punish American banks and energy firms the same way the U.S. punishes Russian entities. American businesses rarely depend on access to the Russian financial system and U.S. officials don’t have assets in Russia.

“If it’s true that the Russians are now diverging from the rest of the P5+1 in the Iran negotiations, that would be a clear sign that they have retaliated for the sanctions,” Charap said.

By cutting off leading Russian oil and gas firms from the American finance system, including Gazprombank and Rosneft, Washington is imposing some of the same sanctions on Russian that it has levied on Iranian entities. This incentivises Putin to seek energy deals with countries including Iran and China. Russia and China inked a $400 billion energy deal only last month, another Russian response to U.S, sanctions.

Also, Russian officials note the irony of American asking Russia to enforce sanctions on Iran’s oil sector while the U.S. goes after Russian oil interests. For the Kremlin, that’s seen as Washington putting Moscow and Tehran in the same boat, so they conclude Russia and Iran might as well work together to subvert what they see as unfair trade practices.

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REVEALED: If This Is True, Benghazi Is Even Worse Than We Ever Thought

http://www.westernjournalism.com/revealed-obama-admin-knew-benghazi-consulate-going-attacked/#4cgEOI4w3FysscLe.99

Warning: This video contains images that may be disturbing to some viewers.

Kris Zane — June 25, 2014

Warning: This video contains images that may be disturbing to some viewers;

The plan was to kidnap Ambassador Christopher Stevens and attack the CIA annex on 9/11. A team of Iranian operatives under the control of Qassem Suleymani, the head of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, arrived a few days before September 11, 2012 in order to put the plan into operation.

There was only one hitch: the NSA, which had a top secret listening station at the CIA annex in Benghazi, picked up on local jihadist chatter, revealing the plan. But Suleymani had a CIA source that told him of the NSA’s discovery. A backup plan was then quickly put into motion that sounds like something out of a spy novel.

The Iranian operatives, posing as doctors as part of the Red Crescent—the Islamic version of the Red Cross—travelled in a caravan of Red Crescent vehicles to their hotel. In a hail of gunfire, the al-Qaeda-linked group, Ansar al-Sharia, surrounded the caravan and took the Iranian operatives captive. Through the CIA’s contacts, they found out that Ansar al-Sharia had taken them prisoner and shipped them back to Iran, thus ending the Iranians’ plan to kidnap Chris Stevens and attack the CIA annex. And thus, no precautions were taken to protect the ambassador and fortify the CIA annex.

But it was all part an elaborate ruse.

Click on image to see movie trailer and more

According to the book Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi by Kenneth R. Timmerman, released today, the attack and kidnapping of Suleymani’s men by Ansar al-Sharia was completely staged to make the NSA and CIA think the plan to kidnap Chris Stevens and attack the CIA annex had been cancelled. The plan was merely altered, however, to have Ansar al-Sharia carry out the attack on the Benghazi consulate and CIA annex instead of Suleymani’s men. Suleymani didn’t believe Ansar al-Sharia could successfully kidnap Chris Stevens, so Suleymani ordered Chris Stevens to be murdered instead.

The NSA, CIA, and Obama fell for an elaborate ruse that left four Americans dead.

That was why Obama would not send in help to Benghazi. That was the reason for the ridiculous story of a protest turned violent over an internet video. And that was the reason for the biggest coverup in U.S. history.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WhatDidYouSay.org

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon

Meanwhile in Iran

Posted on June 25, 2014

http://conservativebyte.com/2014/06/meanwhile-iran/#iXpMrgKBu1emQQHH.99

Click on image to see movie trailer and more

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If I were in charge: solutions for Iraq

http://allenbwest.com/2014/06/charge-solutions-iraq/#l2HD6QcIcJMbTt9E.99

Written by Allen West on June 16, 2014

Image via NBC News

There is without a doubt a crisis brewing in Iraq, but you’d never know it based on the actions of President Obama. Ol’ “No-Drama-Obama” made a worthless speech to the press on his way to a helicopter whisking him away for a nice trip to North Dakota – and oh yeah, more golf. Meanwhile Russian separatists, supported by Vladimir Putin, shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane killing nearly 50. But no big deal, Obama had a Democrat fundraiser to attend.

There is lots of speculation about what is happening in Iraq, but it’s clear the responsibility of these events fall squarely in the lap of two men:

Click on image to see movie trailer and more

Barack Hussein Obama and Nouri al-Maliki.

Obama sided with campaign promises and not strategic policy. Al-Maliki sided with his Shiite sentiments and did not seek to unify Iraq. Obama did not press the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and al-Maliki acted belligerently — that cannot be debated, and Faoud Ajami does a great job in explaining that in his Wall Street Journal article.

But with all that aside, we are we now? Who is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also referred to as Levant), ISIS/L? And what do we do about ti?

First it starts with understanding who leads ISIS. According to The Daily Beast, the Islamist extremist some are now calling the most dangerous man in the world is the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who served four years at the biggest U.S. detention camp in Iraq. And he was released in 2009.

During his time at Bucca, he learned the art and importance of avoiding notice. As the Beast reports al-Baghdadi clearly remembered some of the lessons of his time there. He has made no videos, unlike Osama bin Laden and many of the other extremist leaders. The news reports might not have had a photo of him at all were it not for the one taken by the Americans when he was first captured in 2005.

So it seems al-Baghdadi learned to minimize himself and avoid any attention that could have singled him out. Now he is leading a barbaric movement that is threatening to upset the balance in the heart of the Middle East.

Does he have the military capacity and capability to take Baghdad? Probably not, especially since he will be running into the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and al-Quds forces.

Instead of conventional-type operations, which have enabled him and his force to take large swaths of territory, they will potentially resort to the typical Islamic terrorist tools: suicide bombings (man and vehicle), as well as targeted assassinations. I believe it’s not unlikely they would try an assault against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as a symbolic measure.

The real threat of al-Baghdadi and ISIS is the establishment of an Islamist state extending from Northern Syria across northern and western Iraq. It could be a base of operations and training, in order to enable Islamic terrorist attacks regionally, and globally — no different from the Taliban doing the same in Afghanistan and welcoming al-Qaida.

Since Obama and the U.S. suffer from “war fatigue” and publicly state so, ISIS has no fear of U.S. intervention — but they do of Iran. Obama stated that al-Mailki has to solve this himself, and he will by siding with his Shiite brothers in Iraq — Iranian President Hasan Rouhani has already issued his intent and has the al-Quds force Commander, who was in Syria, now in Baghdad.

The Obama administration should have seen this coming when the black al-Qaida flags showed up in al-Anbar province. The options are now few, and just shooting a bunch of Hellfire missiles from drones will not solve the problem. Air strikes would require a ground element, which could adequately bring munitions to bear against the enemy.

Possibly the only remaining option would be to ally with the Kurdish Peshmerga Army and cut ISIS off from the rear and target their base of operations in Syria. Let us not forget that there are western fighters in ISIS ranks. As well, the last thing we would want is for an Islamist group to influence the flow of oil out of the second-largest oil producing country in the Middle East.

The bottom line is, we can deal with ISIS now, or we will deal with them later, when they stronger and more entrenched. With Obama in charge, chances are it will be later — after all al-Qaida is decimated and on the run.

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America Arms Jihadists in Syria – Then Fights Exact Same Jihadists in Iraq

http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/06/america-arms-jihadists-syria-fights-exact-jihadists-iraq/#qFkhkXPx1sVWIjr7.99

Reported by Dean Garrison

It is OK to be confused at this point. *scratches head*

If I could pick one word to describe Barack Obama’s foreign policy, it would be “chaos.”

I am not sure how many Americans actually realize that the people we are now going to fight in Iraq are the same men that Barack Obama and

Click on image to see movie trailer and more

congress have funded in Syria. Though this would not be the first time that our own soldiers have been shot at with guns we provided, this is now far beyond the point of insanity.

Fox News is drifting more and more left every single day. They reported yesterday that ISIS has American-made Stinger Missiles.

U.S. officials with access to the latest U.S. intelligence on Iraq told Fox News it “appears likely/probable” that U.S.-made Stinger missiles have fallen into the hands of Sunni insurgents.

It is possible that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters acquired them from army bases they have taken over in recent days, the sources said.

This just in! There is another possibility as well. Anyone who thinks that these terrorists have to beg, borrow or steal Stinger Missiles is a complete idiot. The CIA was running Stingers through Libya, and those missiles were making their way to Syria. That is how we were funding the rebels before we officially funded the rebels.

And now those same rebels become our enemy, but only if they cross the Iraqi border. Those inside of Syria are still our friends. And if any of those in Iraq should take a break to head back to Syria, they become our friends once again. Any questions?

Furthermore, the same Iranians, whose motto is “Death to America,” are now clearly our friends, but only inside the borders of Iraq. Actually, with Obama, that is not the case. He loves Iran. For those of us with common sense, we are now being asked to consider Iran an ally, but only within the context of this new Iraqi conflict. We will all kill each other later.

You don’t hear much truth from the news media in America. But for anyone with any doubts, I’d like to share with you with a quote from the CBC:

You only have to look at the ruined towns northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo to understand what happened in Iraq’s Mosul.

The names of “martyred” fighters line the walls, alongside invocations to obey Sharia law, through miles of crumpled buildings, rubble and unexploded ammunition.

“These people use different names, so if one is defeated the other can claim victory,” says Col. Mohamed Saleh of the Syrian army as he surveys the wreckage of a factory in which 27 of his soldiers were killed.

“They call themselves ISIL, al-Nusrah Front, Deach, but they are all the same.”

These very same jihadis — which the Syrian forces have been defeating — are now surging towards Baghdad, some of them, perhaps, the very same men who fought Bashar al-Assad’s regime in northern Syria.

Is it all crystal-clear now?

If you choose to believe this narrative that we are only supplying aid to the “good rebels” or “moderate rebels” in Syria then be my guest. Either way, they have weapons that were made here and will use them to try to kill our people. If you want to believe that they stole them from the “good rebels,” or from those they conquered, then I will respectfully disagree, but it does not change the fact that this was bad foreign policy.

It isn’t much different than the Stingers that were “stolen” in Libya or the M-16s that were “stolen” in Kuwait. At best it is incompetence. At worst it is complicity, which spells TREASON.

This is America. We expect results.

Before you jump on the “Bush did this…” bandwagon, please save your breath. Bush did his fair share of damage. We have to find a way to deal with what is happening now. This is about having a leader who is not doing his job.

Obama has to go

About Dean Garrison

Dean Garrison is editor and writer at DCClothesline.com. He is a conservative independent who seeks only to recover the truth.

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5 Times Obama Abandoned US Allies

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/06/13/5-Times-Obama-Abandoned-Allies

by Ben Shapiro 13 Jun 2014, 7:01 AM PDT

In October 2011, President Obama stated that the last American troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year. “Today,” he chortled, “I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.” He celebrated “another season of homecomings,” stating, “Our troops will definitely be home for the holidays.”

Just a few months later, Obama would campaign on the slogan that al Qaeda was on the run. On November 1, 2012, just days before his re-election, Obama stated, “Thanks to sacrifice and service of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.”

The war in Iraq may be over. But thanks to President Obama, it was lost. And our erstwhile allies are paying the price as al Qaeda regains a strong foothold in the country, taking over the major cities of Mosul and Tikrit and promptly engaging in mass beheadings. Approximately half a million Iraqis have now fled Mosul, attempting to run to Kurdistan. In total, al Qaeda-connected terror groups now control 10 to 15 percent of the country. Terror is worse in the country than it has been since 2007, before President Bush’s troop surge.

President Obama and his allies desperately wanted another Vietnam in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many on the left still see America’s purposeful self-defeat in Vietnam as a sort of moral moment, despite the utter carnage that followed in Cambodia. Taking the “imperialistic” United States down a peg is the highest priority. Betraying our allies is merely an afterthought.

Afghanistan.

President Obama’s solution to the Iraq problem: let’s do the same in Afghanistan. He has now laid out yet another timetable, with a full withdrawal of US troops in the works. He has no plan for transitioning security to the Afghans, who are incapable of handling their own security at this point. And to make matters worse, Obama has decided to begin freeing as many terrorists from Guantanamo Bay as possible, including Taliban leaders responsible for coordinating with al Qaeda before 9/11.

Israel.

President Obama hates the state of Israel, so it is no surprise to see him undercutting it yet again – this time, by totally legitimizing the terrorist group Hamas. American taxpayers will now be sending their paychecks to the Palestinian unity government, run by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. “Based on what we know now,” said State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, “we intend to work with this government.” This means taxpayer dollars paying terrorists.

Iran.

By signing onto a faux nuclear deal with the Iranian regime, President Obama has dramatically undercut – for a second time – any Iranian opposition to the Islamist dictatorship. In 2009, President Obama did nothing while the government of Iran gunned down protesters in the streets. Today, Obama works with that same government, proclaiming that he has achieved peace in our time, loosening sanctions while doing nothing to stop Iran’s nuclear development.

Ukraine.

The Ukrainian coup against Russian-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych was initially celebrated by the White House. But when Russian strongman Vladimir Putin sent troops into Crimea, rigged an election, and began threatening Eastern Ukraine, the United States went largely silent, except for levying ineffective sanctions on specific individuals. Unsurprisingly, the Ukrainian public reacted by replacing Yanukovych with Russian-friendly Petro Poroshenko, who is seeking closer relations with Moscow. Poroshenko has openly stated that he is doing so because no one is willing to guarantee Ukraine’s security against Russia.

President Obama’s consistent agenda has been to weaken the United States and our allies in pursuit of a more “balanced” global power structure. The result: our allies creep toward the door, looking for new friends to protect themselves. Or they become victims of their enemies. Or both. And America grows ever weaker.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.

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A ‘nightmare becoming reality’? Iran unveils American drone replica.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2014/0512/A-nightmare-becoming-reality-Iran-unveils-American-drone-replica

Iran captured a US stealth surveillance drone in 2011, and started working to reverse engineer its own. Yesterday it unveiled what it claims is a replica, plus bombing capabilities.

By Scott Peterson, Staff writer / May 12, 2014

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seated left, listens to an official during his visit at an aerospace exhibition in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 11, 2014. The exhibition revealed an advanced CIA spy drone, front, captured in 2011 by Iran, and its Iranian-made copy, back. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/AP

Tehran, Iran

Iran has unveiled its own copy of an American stealth drone it captured in late 2011, claiming to have cracked the “secrets” of the bat-wing craft and added weapons capabilities.

Today, Fars News Agency reported that while Iran’s duplicate of the US RQ-170 Sentinel drone was smaller, it also had a “bombing capability to attack the US warships in any possible battle.” The story in Persian was headlined: “America’s nightmare has become reality.” State television showed footage on Sunday it said was of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf filmed by an Iranian drone.

The drone replica was unveiled at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) exhibition on Sunday, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was briefed on how the drone, its systems, and structure had been reverse-engineered. He called it a “sweet day.”

The stealth replica would “soon take a test flight,” an IRGC officer said on Sunday. Aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh said today that they are working on two more models of the replica drone.

Proving its prowess

Engineers with the IRGC were ordered to reverse engineer the captured US drone, which was on a CIA mission to spy on nuclear and military sites in Iran when it was brought down in Iran largely intact. Iran reacted with euphoria, trumpeting the capture in an “electronic ambush” showed Iran’s technical prowess.

“And thus the Iranian-RQ [project] was designated,” said an IRGC aerospace officer, according to Fars News. “To achieve this, considering the difficulties and flight dynamics, we designed a bird with a smaller size that would be cheaper and simpler, and that we have done now. We have done ground tests already, and after this fair, we will do air tests too.”

“Here we didn’t know what type of information we were looking for. There was an issue of encoding and passwords, which thanks to God’s help we have overcome,” said the officer. He said data included video and advanced imaging and was “completely recovered.”

US officials said Iran was incapable of replicating the drone’s sophisticated radar-evading skin and shape, its aerodynamics, and top-of-the-line surveillance equipment, though it might be able to do so with the help of Russia or China. Iran has often made claims of cutting-edge military advances that later did not prove accurate, and it is not clear today what capabilities the replica has.

Khamenei said the lesson of the exhibition – which included unveiling a new cruise missile called “Ya Ali” with a 700 km range, among other new military hardware – was to show that Iranian engineers are capable.

“[It] gives the message of our internal power and capabilities … and declares that: ‘We can’,” said Khamenei.

Different stories

An Iranian engineer tasked with decoding the drone’s memory told The Christian Science Monitor in December 2011 that Iran had incrementally “spoofed” the drone’s GPS system, causing it to land in Iran instead of its home base in western Afghanistan. Just months before, the US military had approved two $47 million contracts to find ways to replace vulnerable military GPS systems.

The US government and intelligence community claim that the RQ-170 drone was not electronically “hijacked” by Iran, and say it crash-landed instead. The stealth drone’s existence was never officially acknowledged until Iran exhibited it on television, largely intact.

Iranian engineers had decoded two hard drives and determined that the US drone had made 13 missions over Pakistan and Afghanistan. They did not mention any visual or other data that might have pertained to Iran. Iran has previously made public video footage it said was taken from the drone’s memory, of a landing at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan.

Official images released Sunday showed the undercarriage of the American drone for the first time, with little apparent damage to the housing of the sensors and camera section, or the landing gear. When the drone was first shown on television 2-1/2 years ago, those elements were hidden by anti-American banners and camouflage material.

“How do you trust a people who confess that their culture is to lie? Trust but verify? JB

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“Meanwhile”

Posted on April 17, 2014

http://conservativebyte.com/2014/04/meanwhile/

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New developments for U.S. pastor jailed in Iran

Rick Perry, Steve Stockman, Louie Gohmert sound off

Reported by Alana Cook

Alana Cook has worked as a proposal and business development manager, editor and writer over the last eight years in the government-contracting arena in Washington, D.C. She worked as a business editor, features writer and beat reporter for news outlets in southeast Texas where she covered emerging issues in energy, local politics, as well as breaking news. A former congressional intern for Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark., she blogs on women’s issues, faith, politics and policy.

WASHINGTON — Spring has brought new reason to hope for the release of Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini, a U.S. citizen shackled and imprisoned in Iran.

The Persian New Year “Nowruz,” which began on the first day of spring, is a 13-day celebration of the rebirth of nature, but it’s also when Iranian prisoners are historically granted amnesty.

The Iran Daily Brief reported 12 prisoners were released March 20. Although there is no sign yet of clemency for Abedini, politicians and religious leaders remain hopeful.

“Pastor Saeed Abedini should be released from prison immediately. So, too, should all those languishing in Iranian prisons for merely practicing their faith or expressing their political views,” David Brog, executive director for Christians United for Israel, the largest pro-Israel organization in America, told WND.

Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry told WND: “I join pastor Abedini’s family in praying for his health, safety and immediate release.”

In a phone interview, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, said he can’t comprehend how the president of the free world can seemingly look away while Christians, including Abedini, are jailed in hostile countries for their religious beliefs. At the same time, the U.S. has released prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

“This shows Obama’s impotence and lack of concern,” Stockman said. “(Former President Jimmy) Carter even spoke up for imprisoned Americans in the Cold War, but this president seems reluctant to bring up the prisoner situation, whether it’s in North Korea or Iran.”

Abedini, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced in 2012 to eight years in an Iranian prison on charges related to his religious beliefs.

Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, or ACLJ, represents Abedini. He told WND his client is receiving medication and some treatment for beatings stemming from his initial arrest, but he’s still being refused the critical surgery he needs to treat his injuries.

Stockman believes Obama must pressure the Iranians and that the president could be effective if he would do it the right way.

“In a clever ploy, if I were president, I would tell Iranian leaders what they are doing is worse than what was done to terrorists in Gitmo,” he said.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told WND that if the U.S. lets “thugs loose from Guantanamo,” it should be able “to stand up for Christians who have never done anything but try to save souls.”

“At this point, we ought to be demand his release,’ he said. ‘If we can’t secure the release of nonviolent Christians who commit no crimes, then we shouldn’t be talking about dealing with other nations.”

Sekulow said the clemency tradition of the Persian New Year opens the door for the Iranian government to quietly release Abedini to his family for further medical care without having to directly admit fault.

“It’s an important time for any prisoners of conscience, a time when most people are taking off of work because the government shuts down. It would be a key time for the prisoner release when you look at the historical practices of the Iranian government,” he said. “They could say he wouldn’t have to report back to jail.”
http://www.gospelherald.com/data/images/full/4309/saeed-abedini.jpg?w=720

Pastor Abedini and his children Rebecca and Jacob

Meanwhile, Abedini’s children grow older in their father’s absence. Jacob just celebrated his sixth birthday with his 8-year-old sister, Rebecca, and their mother, Naghmeh, who has launched a relentless campaign for the release of her husband.

“I had anticipated that I would battle the Iranian government for my husband’s freedom. I never anticipated that I would also have to battle my own government and that the journey would become even much more difficult than it had been,” she told Fox News last December after the Obama administration failed to negotiate the release of her husband in a deal with Iran.

In the deal, Iran reportedly received billions in sanctions relief and the ability to keep its centrifuges, key to building nuclear weapons. Also immediately prior to the deal, the U.S. released an Iranian scientist who was being held in a U.S. prison.

“These brave prisoners of conscience are shining a light on the true nature of the Iranian regime – a regime which has not changed one iota since the recent presidential election,” CUNF’s Brog said. “We in the West must not forget these heroes. And we dare not ignore the troubling truths about Iran to which their continued incarceration testifies.”

Since Abedini was detained in Iran two years ago, Christian persecution has grown at an alarming rate. One in four of the world’s Christians live in countries now hostile to their faith, according to a report released March 20 by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

President Hassan Rouhani’s new regime hasn’t brought Iran’s Christians any relief, according to a new United Nations report that found the Islamic Republic’s Bible believers more persecuted than ever.

The U.N. also reported Iran has continued to imprison Christians for their faith and has designated house churches and evangelical Christians as “threats to national security.” At least 49 Christians were among 307 religious minorities being held in Iranian jails as of January, noted the U.N., which also blasted the regime for its hostility to Jews, Bahais, Zoroastrians and Dervish Muslims.

“Most Americans think the U.S. wouldn’t tolerate things getting this bad, but they are,” Gohmert said. “Persecution is growing as nations see us appear to be weaker than we have been.”

WND recently reported on slaughterhouses where Muslims are killing Christians in Syria.

“I have never seen something like this,” Christian convert and former Muslim terrorist Walid Shoebat told WND.

“I have been investigating this story for the past two weeks. The story is probably the most horrific I have ever [done]. It proves with footage actual systematic slaughterhouses of human beings, including Christians in Syria.”

“Look to your own soul, and understand your own obligation to help the Christians,” Shoebat said.

As Obama prepares to meet with the Vatican Thursday, Stockman said it would be a good time for both the pope and Obama to “go public on religious liberties and not just give generic statements.”

“They need to be specific on Christian persecution and pastors locked up in Korea and Iran,” he said.

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Could the U.S. Face a Cruise Missile Threat from the Gulf of Mexico?

http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/could-the-u-s-face-a-cruise-missile-threat-from-the-gulf-of-mexico-20140321

Russian President Vladimir Putin poses inside a cruise missile-equipped Tu-160 strategic bomber in 2005. The United States is working “very hard” to bolster its defenses against potential cruise-missile threats from the Gulf of Mexico, a senior military official said last week.(Vladimir Rodionov/AFP/Getty Images)

By Diane Barnes

March 21, 2014

The United States is puzzling over how to block cruise missiles that theoretically could be launched from the Gulf of Mexico, even after throwing some of its most advanced technologies at the problem.

Russia and Iran have been cited as possible threats that might, at some point, lurk in the waters just off U.S. shores.

A 2013 military exercise pitted systems such as Patriot interceptors, Aegis warships and combat aircraft against potential cruise-missile or short-range ballistic missiles fired from the Gulf. But the drill highlighted a particular vulnerability to cruise missiles lobbed from that region, U.S. Northern Command head Gen. Charles Jacoby indicated in congressional testimony last week.

He said the Pentagon has “some significant challenges” in countering these missiles, but is exploring “some opportunities to use existing systems more effectively to do that.” Many detailed results of the Oct. 11 drill conducted near Key West, Fla., remain classified, Jacoby said.

“The cruise-missile threat portion of that we are working on very hard,” the general added at the March 13 Senate Armed Service Committee hearing, in response to a question from Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

The military leader — whose command focuses on defense of the U.S. homeland — referenced an initiative to quickly mobilize assets against such threats in a configuration called the Joint Deployable Integrated Air and Missile Defense system.

The effort is housed within the Pentagon’s Joint Test and Evaluation program, which aims to address “operational deficiencies” in military preparedness, according to information released by the Pentagon.

“The idea is to cobble together enough stuff [so] that maybe something will work. But none of these systems were designed for cruise-missile defense,” Kingston Reif, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, said in an e-mail.

Cruise missiles can be particularly challenging to defend against, as they can be more difficult than aircraft to detect on radar and are sometimes tricky to shoot down, according to military experts.

A 2013 U.S. military intelligence report forecasted that cruise missiles would spread into more hands over the coming decade. The document also hints at the ability to evade defenses designed against ballistic missiles.

“Cruise missiles can fly at low altitudes to stay below enemy radar and, in some cases, hide behind terrain features. Newer missiles are incorporating stealth features to make them even less visible to radars and infrared detectors,” says the 2013 assessment by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.

Cruz’s office did not respond to requests to discuss his specific concerns about potential attack risks facing the United States from the Gulf of Mexico. His comments came, though, in the wake of some other public discussion of possible threats of this kind.

Iran last month announced it intended to deploy warships near the U.S. maritime border, prompting heightened discussion of the Middle Eastern nation’s growing military capabilities.

At last week’s hearing, Jacoby also spoke to Moscow’s cruise-missile capabilities.

Responding to a question from Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the Northern Command leader said the United States has been “tracking for a number of years Russia’s continued investment in improved cruise missile technology.”

The Kremlin has armed its bomber aircraft with cruise missiles for decades, he noted.

“They also are capable of introducing cruise missiles into a theater from submarines,” said Jacoby, without elaborating on the specific regions to which these vessels could deploy. “They’ve just begun production of a new class of quiet nuclear submarines specifically designed to deliver cruise missiles.”

One 2012 news article quotes U.S. government insiders asserting that a Russian submarine equipped with cruise missiles had evaded detection for weeks in the Gulf of Mexico. However, the Defense Department denied the contentions described in the Washington Free Beacon report.

The fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill, enacted in December, mandates a U.S. defense focus on “ballistic missiles that could be launched from vessels on the seas around the United States, including the Gulf of Mexico.”

Jacoby said the increased focus on cruise-missile defense took shape well over a year ago, at the direction of then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

This article was published in Global Security Newswire, which is produced independently by National Journal Group under contract with the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group working to reduce global threats from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

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Today’s Political Cartoon

“Unarmed Forces”

Posted on March 4, 2014

DHS Denies Muslim Terrorists Crossing US Mexican Border – Local Reporter Finds Evidence to the Contrary

http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/02/dhs-denies-muslim-terrorists-crossing-us-mexican-border-local-reporter-finds-evidence-contrary/#BrTERJhgI2gJSh8Y.99

By Pamela Geller

A local news station found Border Patrol documents that indicated that thousands of OTMs — “Other Than Mexicans” — have been caught crossing the Mexican border into the U.S., including some known terrorists.

I wrote an article for The Washington Times about this back in 2010. I warned of the influx of OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) over the Mexican border.

With fresh evidence of Hezbollah activity just south of the border, and numerous reports of Muslims from various countries posing as Mexicans and crossing into the United States from Mexico, our porous southern border is a national security nightmare waiting to happen.

Whenever Arizona law enforcement officials contact Homeland Security about a suspected OTM (Other Than Mexican) they have detained, federal authorities swoop down, cart off the illegal entrant, and tell local officials nothing more about the case. OTMs have utilized sophisticated human smuggling networks to enter the United States from as many as 157 countries around the world – including Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco and Egypt.

All this is happening against the backdrop of President Obama’s refusal to admit that the global jihad even exists. John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director, even denies that jihad is a motive for jihadists.

Unpoliced borders. Friendships with and outreach to tyrants and autocrats.

What needs to happen people for appropriate action to be taken? Here’s the latest:

“After DHS Denial, Local Reporter Finds Evidence Terrorists Crossed the Border,” Top Right News, February 23, 2014

As we reported last week, a local news station found Border Patrol documents that indicated that thousands of OTMs — “Other Than Mexicans” — have been caught crossing the Mexican border into the U.S., including some known terrorists.

But since that report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has DENIED that there is any “credible evidence” that any terrorists have crossed over.

So the reporter took another look — and the evidence he found is even worse than originally revealed.

He found that 300 terrorists from the Somali Al Qaeda group Al-Shabaab — the group behind the terror attack at the Kenyan shopping mall last September – have entered the U.S. and are unaccounted for.

About Pamela Geller

&lt;img alt=” src=’http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/86ede7ddece7724821b4aa818caad921?s=68&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D68&amp;r=G’ class=’avatar avatar-68 photo’ height=’68’ width=’68’ />

Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of Atlas Shrugs.com and President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She is the author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton), (Simon & Schuster). Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. She is also a regular columnist for World Net Daily, the American Thinker, and other publications.

Follow her on Facebook & Twitter

View all posts by Pamela Geller →

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Iran Beating the War Drums — How Does America Respond?

You can’t expect a Community Organizer to know a real threat when he sees one. The following report proves it.

Jerry Broussard

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

http://clashdaily.com/2014/02/iran-beating-war-drums-america-respond/#7HdyqeDz0JAcIy6S.99

By Andrew Linn / 10 February 2014

Recently, Iran announced it was sending warships to the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, their warships were being sent close to America’s shores, in response to America having its naval forces close to Iranian shores.

So Iran all of the sudden feels threatened? After all, the United States has had its armed forces fairly close to Iran for quite some time.

Meanwhile, Iran plans to send its naval forces as far as Antarctica.

Just what are the Iranians’ intentions? Are their actions part of a training exercise? It is saber rattling? Is it a bluff in order to provoke an American response? Or are they trying to start a war?

* If it is a training exercise, then why send the ships so far from home?

* If the intention is saber rattling, then what does Iran hope to achieve? To force the United States to withdraw its fleet? That would be an unlikely scenario. To become a world power? After all, Iran is trying to be the dominant nation within the Middle East. And given Iran’s nuclear ambitions, we might wind up having a Cuban Missile Crisis II (with Venezuela taking the place of Cuba) or worse if the situation is not kept in check.

Perhaps it is a bluff- just to see how America reacts. After all, the Iranians abducted several British sailors in 2007, but released them soon afterwards. By doing so, Iran was basically taunting the British, hence they were asking “what are you going to do about it?” Given Obama’s disregard for national security, that might be the case.

But then again, maybe Iran is wanting war with the United States. Actually, they have been doing it for years. From the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran to sponsoring Hezbollah (e.g. the 1983 suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon) Iran has been at war with America. Now, they seem to want an actual confrontation instead of using proxies.

Now the question remains: how will America react? Will the Obama Administration force Iran to back down, or will it take the same approach it is doing in regards to Iran’s nuclear program?

I heard that not too long ago China announced its plans to hold a series of war games in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama had no objections, but when Rick Perry found out, he threatened to mobilize the Texas National Guard, Home Guard, etc. to drive out the Chinese. As a result, Obama rescinded his permission to China.

In conclusion, such actions by Iran (and inaction by the Obama Administration) demonstrate the threat posed by Iran, as well as the lack of leadership we have in Washington, especially when it comes to national security. Strong leadership is needed in order to protect our nation. Because without strong leadership, then no one in America (or the world for that matter) will be safe.

About the author: Andrew Linn

Andrew Linn is a member of the Owensboro Tea Party and a former Field Representative for the Media Research Center. An ex-Democrat, he became a Republican one week after the 2008 Presidential Election. He has an M.A. in history from the University of Louisville, where he became a member of the Phi Alpha Theta historical honors society. He has also contributed to examiner.com and Right Impulse Media.

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Political Cartoon of the Day

Written

on January 31, 2014

Obama Administration Caught in More Lies

DISMANTLE THIS: Iran, ‘We Did Not Agree to Dismantle Anything’

http://clashdaily.com/2014/01/dismantle-iran-agree-dismantle-anything/#BFGWUwzCH6iwgOcs.99

By Clash Daily / 23 January 2014

Watch CNN’s full interview with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani Sunday at 10 a.m. on “Fareed Zakaria GPS”

(CNN) — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif insisted Wednesday that the Obama administration mischaracterizes concessions by his side in the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that “we did not agree to dismantle anything.”

Zarif told CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto that terminology used by the White House to describe the agreement differed from the text agreed to by Iran and the other countries in the talks — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

“The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments” under the agreement that took effect Monday, Zarif said in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum.

As part of the accord, Iran was required to dilute its stockpile of uranium that had been enriched to 20%, well above the 5% level needed for power generation but still below the level for developing a nuclear weapon.

In addition, the deal mandated that Iran halt all enrichment above 5% and “dismantle the technical connections required to enrich above 5%,” according to a White House fact sheet issued in November after the initial agreement was reached.

Zarif accused the Obama administration of creating a false impression with such language.

“The White House tries to portray it as basically a dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program. That is the word they use time and again,” he said, urging Sciutto to read the actual text of the agreement. “If you find a single, a single word, that even closely resembles dismantling or could be defined as dismantling in the entire text, then I would take back my comment.”

He repeated that “we are not dismantling any centrifuges, we’re not dismantling any equipment, we’re simply not producing, not enriching over 5%.”

“You don’t need to over-emphasize it,” Zarif said of the White House language. A separate summary sent out by the White House last week did not use the word dismantle.

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani echoed Zarif’s statement, saying the government will not destroy existing centrifuges. However, he added: “We are ready to provide confidence that there should be no concern about Iran’s program.”

Congressman pleads for Christian pastor’s life

http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/congressman-pleads-for-christian-pastors-life/#FVDQPXPZsY1CS75o.99

Says secret diplomacy wrong, State should make noise about American jailed in Iran

Published: 15 hours ago

Michael Carl

Michael Carl is a veteran journalist with overseas military experience and experience as a political consultant. He also has two Master’s Degrees, is a bi-vocational pastor and lives with his family in the Northeast United States.

Saeed Abedini and his family.

A Texas congressman charges the State Department is mishandling the case of American pastor Saeed Abedini, who is being held in an Iranian prison.

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said federal officials appear to be using quiet diplomacy in Abedini’s case.

That approach, he contends, is the opposite of what should be done.

“The State Department almost universally when it’s a hostage situation, and this is really what it is, [stays] quiet for fear of doing harm. And I think it’s the exact opposite. When you stay quiet, you will cause harm, and it doesn’t raise the problem to the people who are in charge,” he said.

Stockman said the Iranians originally intended to use the pastor as a “bargaining chip.”

“You know, we had some of their officers in the Quds Force, and the Iranians were going to bargain for their release.

But apparently, the Obama administration while negotiating just traded the prisoners without getting anything in return, which kind of surprised the Iranians,” Stockman said.

“Normally there’s an exchange and we got nothing in return, when in reality we should have pushed for the release of the pastor,” said the congressman.

He said now he would “encourage” the American people to get more involved directly in Abedini’s case, because he’s not seeing much input from the public.

“I would like to see something more visible and the family actually get involved more, going on TV and other things,” Stockman said.

American Center for Law and Justice Executive Director Jordan Sekulow agrees. More public involvement is what is needed in light of the government’s nearly uniform silence on the American pastor, he said.

“The issue is getting the attention of Congress. I think the petitions have worked to the extent that they got Congress’ attention. We’ve had congressional hearings. They have done what they can and they will continue to help. But, they can only do so much,” Sekulow said.

Sekulow acknowledges that Congress isn’t the State Department, but petitions can still generate some attention.

“We’ve seen bipartisan support and we’ve seen the State Department have to pay attention,” Sekulow said. “We wouldn’t have had the congressional hearings, the message … to Secretary Kerry, and we wouldn’t have had the White House make any statements at all but for the American people speaking up.”

International Christian Concern Middle East analyst Todd Daniels believes citizen action can be effective, if it mobilizes larger sections of the population.

“The strategy to engage other parties that have a vested interest is certainly possible as part of the overall efforts to see Saeed be released, as sanctions on certain sectors are being lifted,” Daniels said.

Human rights activists have been disappointed with the limited amount of attention shown to Abedini’s case.

However, Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes isn’t surprised by the lack of government engagement. He said the U. S. government historically has shown little interest in Iran’s human rights record.

“The U.S. government historically has downplayed human rights issues vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic of Iran, focusing instead on terrorism and the nuclear buildup,” Pipes said.

He said it adds a burden for citizen groups.

“This leaves NGOs in the unenviable position of trying to raise human rights issues, which are largely ignored by Tehran. Unless Washington and the other powers include human rights, this will not change,” Pipes said.

Daniels believes NGOs and the U.N. could play a role.

“There may be steps remaining for pushing for international bodies to review his case for what appear to be irregularities and a violation of international norms. While these may not be binding measures, it could force Iran to give an account for the charges on which Saeed is being held and could lead to an avenue by which his conviction or sentencing could be overturned,” Daniels said.

However, Daniels noted actions on the non-governmental level have had little impact on Iran.

“Many of these options have been pursued to no avail, but the injustice in this case demands that the efforts to see his release come should continue. While it appears that the huge amount of effort so far has fallen on deaf ears, it is important to remember that God, who ultimately moves on these decisions, does hear. So the appeals before that throne should continually be made by His people,” Daniels said.

Sekulow believes that reaching out to corporations that do business in Iran could become an avenue to build more interest in Abedini’s case.

“We’re looking at learning how we can positively work with the businesses that may be gaining from the sanctions being lifted. We’re not looking to do anything negatively but to see how we can positively let those people who they work with in Iran … see what can be done to get this American released,” Sekulow said.

Daniels agrees with Sekulow that the concept of corporations acting on Abedini’s interest has potential.

“Iran is slowly becoming increasingly integrated with the global economy. So if there were corporations willing to call for tangible improvements on rights issues (the release of Abedini) as part of their bargaining to pursue business ventures, that may be leveraged to help move the decision makers towards releasing Saeed,” Daniels said.

Mark Durie, an adjunct fellow at Australia’s Center for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths, is skeptical that corporate pressure can succeed, because Iran’s “business interests” have limited power.

“The potential problems with this suggestion are twofold:

one is that Iranian business people generally do not have that much leverage with the regime. Indeed for them to lobby on behalf of a Christian in prison could be personally dangerous for them.
Iran is not an open and free society in which it is open to people to lobby their government on such matters,” Durie said.

Pipes believes that, ultimately, the movement to free the American pastor will have to come from within Iran.

Sekulow said the American government and its people both need to be pressing Iran for Abedini’s release.

WND reported in December that Saeed Abedini’s wife, Nagmeh Abedini, testified before a House subcommittee hearing on human rights. The hearing was chaired by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who observed the injustice of the pastor’s jail time.

“Pastor Abedini is an American citizen, but he was told he could re-enter Iran to carry on his relief work. The Iranian government offered him safe entry. He accepted the Iranian government’s offer for safe passage, but the Iranian government hasn’t kept its promise,” Smith said.

Smith said “the fact that they moved him to the more dangerous prison shows that they knew he would be an important factor in the negotiations.”

“He’s an American citizen, and he remains in an absolute hell-hole in Iran. We can’t waste this opportunity.”

Nagmeh Abedini has announced she plans to attend the sixth annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy in February.

“This will give me a worldwide platform to speak out about religious freedom issues and Christian persecution,” she said.

Abedini first was held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and later was transferred to an even worse location – the 22,000-inmate Rajai Shahr, home to drug dealers, murderers and rapists. He was working in Iran under a government-approved building plan when he was arrested in 2012.

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Arab Spring: Worst soap ever

Ann Coulter Letter // http://www.humanevents.com/2013/08/21/arab-spring-worst-soap-ever/

Arab Spring: Worst soap ever

By: Ann Coulter

I didn’t care for the “Arab Spring,” but the “Arab Summer” is a blockbuster!

Liberals’ rosy predictions for Egypt’s Islamic revolution didn’t turn out as planned. Who could have guessed that howling mobs in Tahrir Square in 2011 would fail to produce a peaceful democracy?

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had supported U.S. policy, used his military to fight Muslim extremists and recognized Israel’s right to exist. So naturally, Obama told him he had to go.

Let’s review what liberals said at the time about that glorious people’s revolution — only from The New York Times:

– “(Egyptian) Officials blamed the Muslim Brotherhood (for the protests). … Even if the Brotherhood had a role — the group denies it; the truth seems more complex — it is easy to understand why Egyptians are fed up.” (Editorial: “Mr. Mubarak Is Put on Notice,” Jan. 26, 2011)

– “The mistake, which still emanates from think tanks stocked with neoconservatives, is assuming that democracy can come at the end of sword. … Now that some of the dominoes appear to be falling, this has more to do with Facebook and the frustrations of young, educated adults who can’t earn enough money to marry than it does with tanks rolling into Baghdad, or naive neocons guiding the State Department.” (Timothy Egan, “Bonfire of American Vanities,” Feb. 3, 2011)

– “It’s time to be clear: Mubarak’s time is up.” (Roger Cohen, “Hosni Mubarak Agonistes,” Feb. 4, 2011)

– “What is unfolding in Arab streets is not an assertion of religious reaction but a yearning for democracy with all its burdens and rewards.” (Ray Takeyh, “What Democracy Could Bring,” Feb. 4, 2011)

Oops! Within less than a year, we found out that the truth wasn’t “complex”: The Muslim Brotherhood was behind the revolution. They rigged an election and were planning to implement Sharia law — until the Egyptian military stepped in on behalf of the people this year and removed the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi as president.

In Arab countries, at least, it seems that democracy can come only “at the end of a sword.”

Also in 2011, Obama ordered air strikes in Libya against Moammar Gadhafi — at the precise moment Gadhafi was no longer a threat to anyone. After Bush invaded Iraq, Gadhafi promptly gave up his nuclear program and invited U.N. weapons inspectors in to prove it. Apparently, he wasn’t interested in becoming the next Saddam Hussein.

Obama’s bombing of Gadhafi was also enthusiastically supported at the Times. Gadhafi, you see, had killed hundreds of his own people. Meanwhile, President Bashar Hafez al-Assad of Syria can preside over the slaughter of more than 100,000 of his people since that time without a cross word from the left.

Libyan people proceeded to stalk and kill Gadhafi in the desert (video on YouTube). A year later, the happy people of Libya murdered our ambassador and three other Embassy staff. But as Hillary said, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

After all their carping about the Iraq War, you’d think liberals would have waited a few years before getting sentimental about democracy in Egypt and Libya. At least democracy is working in Iraq, despite Obama’s attempt to wreck it by withdrawing all U.S. troops. (We still have troops in Germany — but not in Bush’s Iraq.) Still, our ambassador wasn’t assassinated in Baghdad.

Speaking of which, what is the geopolitical strategy behind Obama’s sending more troops to Afghanistan? The 9/11 attack was not committed by Afghanistan. That country has no history of exporting terrorism. Afghans have traditionally been the invaded, not the invaders. They’re too busy herding goats.

The 9/11 attack was planned by foreigners who had decamped to Afghanistan. Although the Taliban was eager for al-Qaida’s help in fighting the Northern Alliance, it had no interest in attacking America. Mullah Omar dissented from Osama bin Laden on that brilliant idea.

It was one thing to go in and wipe out the Taliban after 9/11 in retaliation for their allowing bin Laden to set up shop there, but what was the point after that? Three months into President Bush’s war in Afghanistan, we had accomplished all we were ever going to accomplish in that godforsaken area of the world.

To quote one of liberals’ favorite arguments against the Iraq War: What does victory in Afghanistan look like?

The one place Obama should have intervened was Iran. The moderate, pro-Western, educated Iranian people were being shot in the street in 2010 for protesting an election stolen by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a messianic lunatic in a Members Only jacket. There was a clear alternative in that case that didn’t involve the Muslim Brotherhood, to wit: the actual winner of the election.

But Obama turned his back on the Iranians. Democrats are so opposed to promoting the United States’ interests around the globe, it doesn’t occur to them that, sometimes, our national interests might coincide with the interests of other people.

Liberals made fun of Sarah Palin for not being able to define “the Bush doctrine.” Can Obama tell us what “the Obama doctrine” is? Leap in only to make the rest of the world a more dangerous place? At least Egyptians are safe now, thanks to their military and no thanks to Obama.

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Posts tagged ‘Iran’

Doomed to Repeat It

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/03/doomed-to-repeat-it/

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By Rowan Scarborough – The Washington Times – Monday, March 2, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/2/us-wont-provide-airstrikes-iraqi-offensive/

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Published March 03, 2015, FoxNews.com

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/03/netanyahu-makes-case-against-iran-deal-in-address-to-congress/

“This is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We’re better off without it,” Netanyahu said.

SEE FOX NEWS BROADCAST OF THE SPEECHBELOW:

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Suspicious Ties

URL of the original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/03/suspicious-ties/

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Posted By Aaron Klein On 02/11/2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/iranian-forces-advance-toward-israel/

“The operation started two days ago and is very big,” Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said Tuesday. “Regime troops and their Hezbollah-led allies are advancing in the area linking Daraa, Quneitra and Damascus provinces,” the group stated.

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BY: Adam Kredo, January 23, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cruz-files-bill-to-ban-americans-islamic-state-fighters-from-returning-to-u-s/

“Blasts Obama’s foreign policy as ‘detached from reality’”

Cruz said stripping American IS fighters of their citizenship is a step toward securing the country and restoring the country’s image.

In the wake of the attacks in Paris and in the midst of upheaval in Yemen, the president refused to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism.”

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Posted By Times of Israel staff January 23, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-spat-in-our-face-white-house-officials-say/#ixzz3PfvyEaze

“PM ‘will pay price’ for spat over Congress address; Obama said to have asked him to tone down pro-sanctions rhetoric; Wash. Post: Kerry’s enthusiasm for defending Israel may wane”

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By Jim Finkle, BOSTON Tue Dec 2, 2014

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/02/us-sony-cybersecurity-malware-idUSKCN0JF3FE20141202

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Enemy Of My Enemy

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By MICHAEL WILNER \ 11/22/2014

URL of Original Posting Site: http://www.jpost.com/International/Exclusive-Cornered-but-unbound-by-nuclear-pact-Israel-reconsiders-military-action-against-Iran-382541

“Israeli official cites “sunset clause” in proposed comprehensive deal, which guarantees Iran a path into the nuclear club and may corner Israel into war”.

The deal on the table

‘Sunset clause’

Revisiting the use of force

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Posted by David Gerstman Wednesday, October 8, 2014

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by Abe Katsman 10 Sep 2014

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Warning: This video contains images that may be disturbing to some viewers.

Warning: This video contains images that may be disturbing to some viewers;

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Meanwhile in Iran

Posted on June 25, 2014

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Written by Allen West on June 16, 2014

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You only have to look at the ruined towns northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo to understand what happened in Iraq’s Mosul.

The names of “martyred” fighters line the walls, alongside invocations to obey Sharia law, through miles of crumpled buildings, rubble and unexploded ammunition.

“These people use different names, so if one is defeated the other can claim victory,” says Col. Mohamed Saleh of the Syrian army as he surveys the wreckage of a factory in which 27 of his soldiers were killed.

“They call themselves ISIL, al-Nusrah Front, Deach, but they are all the same.”

These very same jihadis — which the Syrian forces have been defeating — are now surging towards Baghdad, some of them, perhaps, the very same men who fought Bashar al-Assad’s regime in northern Syria.

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by Ben Shapiro 13 Jun 2014, 7:01 AM PDT

Afghanistan.

Israel.

Iran.

Ukraine.

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Iran captured a US stealth surveillance drone in 2011, and started working to reverse engineer its own. Yesterday it unveiled what it claims is a replica, plus bombing capabilities.

By Scott Peterson, Staff writer / May 12, 2014

The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

Proving its prowess

Different stories

“How do you trust a people who confess that their culture is to lie? Trust but verify? JB

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“Meanwhile”

Posted on April 17, 2014

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Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/new-developments-for-u-s-pastor-jailed-in-iran/#xtsAGzVmYKLgzIvr.99

Rick Perry, Steve Stockman, Louie Gohmert sound off Reported by Alana Cook

The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Rick Perry, Steve Stockman, Louie Gohmert sound off

Reported by Alana Cook