RUTHFULLY YOURS

TO: President-elect Donald Trump
Secretary of Defense (nominee) Gen. James Mattis
National Security Advisor (designee) Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
CC: Director of Central Intelligence (nominee) Cong. Mike Pompeo
Director of National Intelligence (nominee) Sen. Dan Coates
SUBJECT: Restoring America’s Defenses

Americans pay little attention to the war in which we are engaged for several reasons, first among which is that only about one percent of America fights, lives and dies in it. The war was brought to our homes, cities and streets by the 9/11 attacks, but you already understand that it began long before. It began with the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis and took many lives in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. The war was only later declared in Osama bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa against America.

Though Congress authorized military action against al-Qaeda and other 9/11 terrorist participants in those attacks, we have never declared war against them or the nations that sponsor them.

Some of you understand that the principal lesson of Vietnam is that if you don’t fight a war in a manner intended to win it decisively you will lose it inevitably. That is why we are losing the war being waged against us by the terrorist networks and the nations that support them.

We were deflected from victory by President Bush’s nation-building strategy which gave the enemy control of the pace and direction of the war. Our forces have been further hobbled by the politically correct means in which we have fought the war.

The war against Islamic terrorists and terrorist powers is not the only conflict in which we are engaged. Cold wars are going on with Russia, China and Iran (which, of course, is also the world’s principal sponsor of terrorist networks). Americans aren’t thinking about those wars either. The media, the Democrats, and the Republican establishment all share responsibility for that fact.

It’s your collective job to win these wars and to deter or defeat the other threats. To do so will require you to do at least three things simultaneously and which you should begin immediately: (1) derive a national military strategy and budget to win these conflicts from an intensive analysis of intelligence on our enemies’ intentions and capabilities; (2) conduct the kind of intense ideological war that President Bush shied away from and Mr. Obama surrendered preemptively; and (3) act on the “personnel is policy” lesson we learned during the Reagan era.

Each will require months or years to accomplish. But every one of these tasks must be done if we are going to restore our nation’s security.

Even some die-hard Democrats will admit that rebuilding our military and intelligence capabilities is necessary. But how?

We really don’t know how many or what types of ships, aircraft, satellites and people we need. The Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, is supposed to be based on the analysis and required to be the foundation of our national defense strategy as well as the defense budget. But the QDR has become a bloated bureaucratic exercise diverted from facts by politics. The 2012 QDR was used by the Obama administration to justify defense cuts that had already been decided in disregard of actual requirements.

WASHINGTON—Congressional Republicans’ worries over President-elect Donald Trump’s views on Russia are deepening, with GOP hawks saying they still have questions about approving Rex Tillerson for secretary of state days before his scheduled confirmation hearing.

Two key Republicans, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said in a joint interview Sunday on NBC that they are pushing forward with legislation to impose new sanctions on Russia, a move that would contradict Mr. Trump’s desire for a rapprochement with the Kremlin. Broad support for such a bill would put pressure on Mr. Trump to go along or risk appearing further isolated from his party on U.S.-Russia relations by vetoing such a measure.

The release Friday of a U.S. intelligence community report that pointed a finger at the Kremlin for interference in the 2016 presidential election is expected to heighten tensions around Mr. Tillerson’s confirmation hearings and the full Senate vote on his nomination.

More broadly, the divide over Russia threatens to thwart hopes by Republican leaders for a smooth start that would include rapid confirmation of the Trump cabinet and a quick vote on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Democrats are additionally complaining about the fact that several committees haven’t received financial and ethics paperwork that nominees are required to file.

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The US Congress has swiftly moved to rebuff the efforts by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to reverse long-standing American policy in relation to Israel. By a vote of 342:80 Congress resolved on 5 January 2017:

“the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 undermined the long-standing position of the United States to oppose and veto United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel, reversing decades of bipartisan agreement”

Congress’s decision goes a long way to restoring America’s reputation and integrity.

Vice President-elect Pence has certainly signalled the incoming Trump Administration’s approval of such Congress action with the following tweet:

Congress now needs to rectify Obama’s abandonment of the written commitments made to Israel by President Bush in his letter to then Israeli Prime Minister Sharon on 14 April 2004 (“Commitments”).

Congress has a vested interest in seeing those Commitments restored – because it overwhelmingly approved Bush giving those Commitments to Israel by a massive vote of 502 to 12.

Among those voting to support those Commitments was Senator Hillary Clinton.

Senator John Kerry – whilst not casting a vote in the Senate – made his position very clear to moderator Tim Russert on Meet The Press on 18 April 2004:

Russert: On Thursday, President Bush broke with the tradition and policy of six predecessors when he said that Israel can keep part of the land seized in the 1967 Middle East War and asserted the Palestinian refugees cannot go back to their particular homes. Do you support President Bush?

Kerry: Yes.

Russert: Completely?

Kerry: Yes.

Subsequent decisions by both Clinton and Kerry respectively as Secretary of State played an active role in aiding and abetting Obama’s abandonment of the Bush Commitments – marking a shameful period in American history.

Vice president-elect Mike Pence on Thursday hailed a vote by the US House of Representatives declaring a United Nations Security Council resolution a “one-sided” obstacle to peace.

The House resolution was seen as a rejection of the Obama administration, which did not veto UNSC Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements as illegal.

“Great to see strong bipartisan vote in Congress opposing recent UN resolution against our most cherished ally,” Pence tweeted early Friday morning. “America stands with Israel.”

House Resolution 11 declared the UN motion a “one-sided” effort that is an obstacle to peace, placing disproportionate blame on Israel for the continuation of the conflict and encouraging Palestinians not to engage in direct, bilateral negotiations.

Passed by a vote of 342-80, the measure puts the lower chamber of Congress firmly against President Barack Obama’s decision to withhold the US veto power from shielding Israel against the censure.

WASHINGTON—The House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a measure disavowing a United Nations resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement activities, in a rare show of bipartisan force that doubled as a rebuke to President Barack Obama’s approach to the U.S.-Israel relationship.

On a 342 to 80 vote, more than 100 Democrats joined with a nearly unanimous Republican caucus to back the measure — a significant margin that shows the depth of congressional support for the Jewish state.

A similar measure is expected to be taken up in the Senate, where it has the support of both Republican and Democratic leaders.

The congressional disapproval, which doesn’t carry the force of law, states that the U.S. “should oppose and veto future United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel.”

The show of support for Israel in Congress comes amid years of frosty relations between Mr. Obama and the conservative government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Though Mr. Obama maintained the traditional security alliance between the two countries and sent unprecedented amounts of military assistance, the leaders have had a difficult relationship, characterized by major clashes over Israeli settlement policy and the U.S-backed international nuclear accord with Iran, among other issues.

The relationship was further strained by the passage last month of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, a non-binding censure that accuses Israel of violating international law with its construction of settlements in the disputed West Bank and East Jerusalem. The UN resolution passed on a vote of 14-0, with the U.S. abstaining.

The U.S. previously used its veto on the Security Council to stop similar resolutions targeted at Israel, but Mr. Obama’s administration decided to allow this resolution to proceed, citing the long-stalled peace process. CONTINUE AT SITE

The deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Defense Department by an enemy agent in modern history was pulled off by a spy working for the Castro regime.

Problem is, the mainstream media treasures their Havana bureaus. So they always strive to avoid any stories that might unduly upset the Stalinist apparatchiks who make these “news” (i.e. propaganda) bureaus possible.

“Cuba as tourist hot-spot!” “The magnanimity of the Castroites as health-care providers!” “The wickedness of the (so-called) U.S. embargo!” “Obama’s wisdom and courage in (unconstitutionally) loopholing the embargo half to death!” These themes pretty much sum up the MSM’s “reporting” on Cuba.

But in a rare hiccup of honesty (or an oversight) CNN itself admits to some very important Cuba-sponsored unpleasantness, about which most Americans remain ignorant. “The Most Dangerous U.S. Spy You’ve Never Heard of,” is how they titled a special (16 years after her arrest) on this Castro-sponsored spy named Ana Belen Montes.

In brief: the spy’s name is Ana Belen Montes, known as “Castro’s Queen Jewel” in the intelligence community. In 2002 she was convicted of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and today she serves a 25-year sentence in Federal prison. Only a plea bargain spared her from sizzling in the electric chair like the Rosenbergs.

Significantly, Ana Belen Montes was arrested on September 21st 2001. That’s exactly ten days after Al Qaeda demolished the Twin Towers. By then she had been uncovered for a while, but, as is customary in such cases, was being monitored to see if her activities would reveal others within her spy network. That monitoring was scheduled to continue for much longer, but her access to U.S. intelligence secrets unrelated to Cuba (mid-east, for instance) demanded she be shut down—and quickly.

Interestingly, just days after the 9-11 terror attack, Castro’s KGB-founded and mentored intelligence mounted a major deception operation attempting to trip-up our investigation into the terrorist culprits:

“In the six months after the 9/11 attacks,” ran the Miami Herald investigative report, “up to 20 Cubans walked into U.S. embassies around the world and offered information on terrorism threats. Eventually, all were deemed to be Cuban intelligence agents and collaborators, purveying fabricated information. Two Cuba experts said spies sent by Cuba to the United States were part of a permanent intelligence program to mislead, misinform and identify U.S. spies.”

A Cuban spy named Gustavo Machin, who worked under diplomatic cover in Washington D.C. (and thus enjoyed “diplomatic immunity”) along with 14 of his KGB-trained Cuban colleagues, were all booted from the U.S. for serving as accomplices to super-spy Ana Belen Montes.

A week and a half ago President Obama gave the order for the U.S. to abstain on UN Security Council Resolution 2334, thereby—effectively—voting in favor and allowing the resolution to pass.

As I noted, the resolution goes beyond “moral equivalency” by obfuscating Palestinian terror and incitement while branding Jewish life beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines a “flagrant violation under international law” and a “major obstacle…to peace.”

But the administration wasn’t through with Israel. A few days later, with the Middle East aflame from Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Libya to Sudan and Iranian expansionism on the march, Secretary of State Kerry delivered a 75-minute harangue against what he called Israel’s “pernicious policy of settlement construction that is making peace impossible.”

Critics have noted that—in the real world—Israeli construction in settlements under the recent Netanyahu governments has been so modest that it has not affected the Israeli-Palestinian population balance in the West Bank; and that if any and all Israeli presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines is “illegal,” then the idea of a “peace process” to settle claims over disputed land appears to be invalidated, since Israel is then nothing but a rapacious thief and the Palestinians its victims seeking redress.

As international-law scholar Eugene Kontorovich notes in the Washington Post:

The…condemnation of any Jewish presence whatsoever in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank is a unique rule invented for Israel. There has never been a prolonged belligerent occupation—from the U.S. occupation of West Berlin to Turkey’s ongoing occupation of Cyprus to Russia’s of Crimea—where the occupying power has blocked its citizens from living in the territory under its control. Moreover, neither the United Nations nor any other international body has ever suggested they must do so. What is being demanded of Israel in its historical homeland has never been demanded of any other state, and never will be.

The Obama administration’s stepped-up diplomatic and verbal assault on Israel in the last weeks of its tenure has not gone unnoticed, sparking bitter criticism even from Democratic lawmakers and mainstream American Jewish organizations that are far from any right-wing agenda.

But the extent to which the administration listens to such protests, or can be budged from its wholesale endorsement of Palestinian claims regarding the West Bank and Jerusalem, can be gauged from the fact that the Obama-Kerry team has still more in store for Israel.