RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://news.yahoo.com/wave-bombings-kills-17-people-across-iraq-100903605.html

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi insurgents unleashed a new wave of bombings across the country early Wednesday targeting security forces and civilians, police and health officials said, killing 17 people and wounding dozens more in the latest challenge to government efforts to promote a sense of stability.The deadliest explosions took place in the disputed northern city of Kirkuk. In the first attack, a parked car bomb exploded near the offices of a Kurdish political party, then another bomb went off as police and rescuers gathered, a police officer said. Such double bombings are a common insurgent tactic. Five members of a security unit from the nearby Kurdistan self-rule region were killed and four others wounded, officials said.

About an hour later, another parked car bomb hit an Iraqi army patrol in the Sunni-dominated town of Hawija to the west of Kirkuk, killing five soldiers and wounding four others.

Kirkuk is located some 290 kilometers (175 miles) north of Baghdad, is home of mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen, all competing to control the city.

In Baghdad, a parked car bomb explosion shook the city center during the morning rush hour, killing one civilian and wounding 10 others, police said. The blast went off near the Palestine and Ishtar Sheraton hotels, two downtown landmarks, rattling buildings several blocks away.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2045/four_more_years_of_obama_s_middle_east Like most modern American presidents, Obama will likely try to secure his legacy by a bold foreign policy initiative. All the more reason to be concerned ow that America has re-elected Barack Obama, it is time to ask what his second term might usher in for the Middle East, especially Israel. If he is […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2041/abu_qatada_s_victory_incites_extremism_on_both_sides

“And indeed for those who now only give any weight to the rulings of transnational bodies it should be recalled that even the UN has sanctioned Qatada as an associate of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban.”

The images of Abu Qatada smirking to himself, and indeed perhaps to us, as he was driven from the court ruling that allows him to remain in the UK, should have been enough to rile anyone. Indeed, with the exception of a few fringe human rights groups and ultra-Left commentators it feels as if the entire country is united in its opposition to this man remaining in our land.

And yet he remains here all the same and today is released on bail from Long Lartin Prison.

That this man is a dangerous and hostile figure is hardly in dispute. Described as Osama Bin Laden’s ambassador to Europe and having been implicated in terror cells in Chechnya, Germany, Tunisia as well as in his home country Jordan, and indeed in the 9/11 attacks, his terrorist credentials are quite impeccable.

And indeed for those who now only give any weight to the rulings of transnational bodies it should be recalled that even the UN has sanctioned Qatada as an associate of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Yet, laughably, following the ruling Qatada could stay in Britain, his solicitor, Gareth Peirce, pleaded: “I think the time has come in the world, with the conflicts in the world, for us to talk to each other and understand each other and enter into dialogue, and perhaps nothing is as black and white as it is painted” – A statement of such astonishing moral relativism that one doubts whether even Peirce can really believe a word of it. After all, what’s not black and white about his client having called for the murder of Americans, Christians, and Jews?

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/11/13/petraeus-and-the-failure-of-american-intelligence/

My evaluation of the state of U.S. intelligence after the Petraeus scandal appears this morning at Asia Times Online.

No one rises through the ranks of intelligence services by reporting pertinent facts that politicians don’t want to hear, Edward Luttwak observes. Bad policy produces bad intelligence. If you believe that Hitler is an ally, at least of convenience, as Stalin did in 1941, you will reject as fraudulent hard evidence of an imminent German invasion of Russia. If you believe that the Soviet Union is a prosperous, peace-loving land, as the foreign policy establishment did when Reagan took office, you will ignore evidence of Russian vulnerability and fear-aggression, as did Robert Gates, then head of the CIA’s Soviet section. CIA Director William Casey brought in an alternative team headed by Fortune magazine editor Herbert Meyer to produce an alternative, correct analysis.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/global-cooling-a-far-more-dangerous-fate/?print=1 A poll conducted on November 5 by Rasmussen Reports found that an all-time high of 68% of “likely U.S. voters” say that global warming is “a serious problem”; 38% of them thought it was “very serious.” Considering the benefits of warming and the fact that even the UK Met office shows that there has […]

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/11/13/the-real-housewives-of-centcom-or-who-should-solve-benghazi/ Now we know why the Pentagon was built with five sides — its architect figured out what our military really wanted for its headquarters was not a conventional office building but a theater-in-the-round set for a French bedroom farce with all the doors ready to slam. I know — not funny. While history and […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/inoffensive_savagery.html When is the word “savage” not racist and offensive? In Tunisian citizen Souhir Stephenson’s “Tunisia, a Sad Year Later,” published last Wednesday in the New York Times, she wrote: “Tourism is dwindling. Who wants to vacation among bands of bearded savages raiding embassies, staking their black pirate flag over universities or burning trucks carrying […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/now_is_the_winter_of_our_discontent.html In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester wins a military campaign, later becoming Richard III and bringing tyranny and calamity to his opponents and to the realm. So, too, the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the USA will likely usher in an irrevocable death blow to America’s love of freedom […]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/husband-wrote-letter-nytimes-about-wife-having-affair-government-executive_662256.html
Husband Wrote Letter to NYTimes About Wife Having Affair with ‘Government Executive’ Related to the Petraeus affair? Daniel Halper
Here’s a letter to the New York Times Magazine’s “ethicist,” which was published over the summer:

My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is to manage a project whose progress is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership. (This might seem hyperbolic, but it is not an exaggeration.) I have met with him on several occasions, and he has been gracious. (I doubt if he is aware of my knowledge.) I have watched the affair intensify over the last year, and I have also benefited from his generosity. He is engaged in work that I am passionate about and is absolutely the right person for the job. I strongly feel that exposing the affair will create a major distraction that would adversely impact the success of an important effort. My issue: Should I acknowledge this affair and finally force closure? Should I suffer in silence for the next year or two for a project I feel must succeed? Should I be “true to my heart” and walk away from the entire miserable situation and put the episode behind me? NAME WITHHELD

There is, as one might imagine, much speculation that this is somehow related to CIA director David Petraeus’s affair with biographer Paula Broadwell. Or it could be completely unrelated.

UPDATE: New York Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren claims this is unrelated to the Petraeus affair:

http://politicalmavens.com/

The Petraeus Affair engages us on many levels, ranging from compromised security and political cover-ups to more fundamental questions of morality, duplicity, honor and human nature. Superficially, tales of adultery are always more fascinating when they are about good looking people in high places, both of which pertain here. It’s too soon to know how much deeper this plot will sink and how many other people may be involved, but as of Tues, Nov 13th, its disclosure is shaping up as the familiar saga of territoriality and competition between an alpha female and her perceived younger threat.

If you were creating a prototype for an ambitious, disciplined and determined go-getter, you would have conjured up Paula Broadwell, the athletic West Point graduate who fixed on David Petraeus as the subject for her PhD thesis, later turning it into a book with a journalist’s assistance. What started as a request for interviews and academic cooperation soon turned into a physical attraction and yada, yada, yada, you know the rest. What we don’t know is whether this began in Afghanistan or when Petraeus was already at the CIA, neither of which matters for the purpose of this essay. At some point during the affair, Ms Broadwell (or does she prefer the honorific Dr. as in Dr. Jill Biden?) became aware of Jill Kelley, another attractive married woman who is billed as a friend of Petraeus and someone active in helping wounded veterans and adorning Tampa society. As in stories we’ve read and seen in newspapers and movies, Alpha Paula regressed to the level of a high school cheerleader, sending nasty e-mails to Alpha Jill, warning her to keep her pom poms off this already claimed, adulterous, married general. Wily Jill, not wishing to descend into a catfight with her older challenger, instead resorted to the tried and true tactic of snitching to the FBI, conveniently contacting an agent who was already trying to win her favor by exposing his pecs and abs online.

To recap: we have one gloriously decorated Alpha male general, married to the scion of an illustrious military family, involved with a 40′ish married mother of two who is also a graduate of West Point and former homecoming queen; friendly with a younger married woman also involved with military men, who may or may not have been flirting with said general under the table or above, who tattles to the spooks about the nasty, sexually explicit e-mail she’s getting from an “anonymous” sender.