RUTHFULLY YOURS

Yesterday I attended a small private luncheon in honor of Monica Crowley, the charming, witty, erudite author of the incredibly timely book “What the Beep Just Happened?- The Happy Warrior’s Guide to the Great American Comeback.” Ms. Crowley delivered a stunning and brilliant speech on our current dilemma as Americans and lovers of freedom. Her remarks were, at her request, off the record and so they shall remain.

Now, in my opinion there are none so sappy as men who worry and fret about “women’s rights” and how the GOP ignores them and blah, blah, blah. One of the questioners was just such a man. To my delight and surprise, another man present, a well respected commentator,countered with the following:

It is the Democrats who are anti women….they have consistently ignored Moslem abuse of women who are harassed, forced into childhood marriages, and beaten, tortured, flogged and stoned to death for minor infractions of sharia law.

Right he is and those who ignore this are guilty of abetting crimes against women while they prattle about “reproductive rights.”

http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/
What a difference just a few days can make. Just a day or so before the election, the White House was still grappling with exactly how to categorize the coordinated attack by members of Ansar Al Shariah on the US compound in Benghazi. Apparently, the 52% of the voting block in the US who chose to keep the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave for another fun filled four years isn’t concerned about that. In fact they are not apparently concerned with any of the inconsistencies in our foreign policy.

Yes, inconsistencies; policies that are inconsistent with the traditional and constitutional vision of US national security. If someone wants to try and convince me that wasting the precious blood of American War Fighters for the benefit of another people, in another land, who are taught from birth to hate the great western satan is either rational or patriotic; have at it! So what does this have to do with revelations of David Petraeus’s extra-curricular activities?

Absolutely nothing! And that is the point!

Unfortunately, it took an attack on a small, unprotected compound in Libya which ended with the death of two Bureaucrats and two genuine, American Heroes, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods to cause the dead in DC to even consider that something might be wrong. Why? Simply because it hit close to home. No longer were those who were betrayed nameless, uniformed, men and women from towns with obscure names. The two principals killed in the coordinated attack launched by Ansar Al Shariah on the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Towers in New York City, September 11th, were, for all practical purposes, kin.

They were of the DC crowd and the DC crowd takes notice when their own are threatened.

But what the media – all the media, the vast majority of the DC crowd and most Americans seem to have missed is that the very same foreign policy vision that caused the attack in Benghazi, is that which has been killing American Service Members and ISAF forces in Afghanistan! But as with all things, the squeaky wheel gets the attention; and DC can be very squeaky when the carnage they have caused hits too close to home.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ngo-hypocrisy-in-gaza/ Gerald Steinberg is professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor MORE IN THIS BLOG Restoring Israeli deterrenceWaiting for Turkey’s ApologyBecause of our sins, we were exiled from our landEuro President Barroso: Freeze Funding for Political NGOsFacing the facts: Human rights, bias, and professional standards As in all of […]

Another Tack: Remarkably déjà vu President Shimon Peres these days casually dismisses talk of his return to politics as “mere speculation. I myself never said anything.” He rarely does. He just enjoys the hype. He relishes the buildup, the attention and excitement. But, despite the thrill and flattery, there really is no way Peres would have […]

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3810/rockets-what-hamas-rockets Violence between Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian terrorist organizations in Gaza this week is prompting the usual outcry from Islamist groups in America and abroad. Rallies are planned in major cities throughout the United States Friday. Twitter feeds teemed with righteous outrage at what Islamists describe as Israeli aggression. Tunisia’s ruling Ennahda Party issued […]

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/11/15/when-an-israeli-terror-victim-is-thrown-out-of-a-jewish-community-center/

So here is a story that may make you shudder–one that has been relayed to me by three individuals, all confirming the validity of the following details.

This past Saturday night, thirty five year old Jacob Kimchy (full disclosure: a friend, and Algemeiner blogger) and his new bride Alecia Pulman attended a viewing of A Bottle in the Gaza Sea at the Other Israel Film Festival hosted by the Manhattan Jewish Community Center in New York’s Upper West Side. The film about an “email friendship between Israeli and Palestinian youths,” was described by Variety as “An Internet-age Romeo & Juliet tale in which the tragedy is more political than personal.” According to fashion executive and former editor of Manhattan Movie Magazine, Steven Elihu, who was in the audience as well, the film represents the Arab narrative 65-70% of the time, and the Israeli side for 30-35% of the film’s duration.

Following the viewing, the event moderator Isaac Zablocki, executive director of The Film Festival and program director of the Israel Film Center of the JCC, introduced a Swedish journalist named Caterin Ormestad as a Gaza expert who was supposed to engage in a question and answer session with the audience of about 200.

Ormestad opened by saying that she was impressed that so many people had showed up because, if the event would have been in Tel Aviv, no one would have come because Israelis don’t care about Gaza. (Whilst this quote is not exact, it has been corroborated by several people as the intent of her message.) Throughout the course of her talk she referred to an “Israeli occupation of Gaza,” and blamed Israel for a supposed lack of pencils in Gaza schools.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2319/Petraeus-Betrayed-His-Country-Before-He-Betrayed-His-Wife.aspx=

Was David Petraeus as great a general as the write-ups of his downfall routinely claim? This is a provocative question that I will begin to answer with another question: Did America prevail in the Iraq War? I suspect few would say “yes” and believe it, which is no reflection on the valor and sacrifice of the American and allied troops who fought there. On the contrary, it was the vaunted strategy of the two-step Petraeus “surge” that was the blueprint of failure.

While U.S. troops carried out Part One successfully by fighting to establish basic security, the “trust” and “political reconciliation” that such security was supposed to trigger within Iraqi society never materialized in Part Two. Meanwhile, the “Sunni awakening” lasted only as long as the U.S. payroll for Sunni fighters did.

Today, Iraq is more an ally of Iran than the United States (while dollars keep flowing to Baghdad). This failure is one of imagination as much as strategy. But having blocked rational analysis of Islam from entering into military plans for the Islamic world, the Bush administration effectively blinded itself and undermined its own war-making capacity. In this knowledge vacuum, David Petraeus’ see-no-Islam counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine would fill but not satisfy the void.

The basis of COIN is “population protection” — Iraqi populations, Afghan populations — over “force protection.” Or, as lead author David Petraeus wrote in the 2007 Counterinsurgency Field Manual: “Ultimate success in COIN is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force.” (“COIN force” families must have loved that.) Further, the Petraeus COIN manual tells us: “The more successful the counterinsurgency is, the less force can be used and the more risk can be accepted.” “Less force” and “more risk” translate into highly restrictive rules of engagement.

To date, 46 states have prosecuted or convicted cases of voter fraud.
More than 24 million voter registrations are invalid, yet remain on the rolls nationwide.
There are over 1.8 million dead voters still eligible on the rolls across the country.
More than 2.75 million Americans are registered to vote in more than one state.
True The Vote recently found 99 cases of potential felony interstate voter fraud.
Maryland affiliates of True the Vote uncovered cases of people registering and voting after their respective deaths.
This year, True the Vote uncovered more than 348,000 dead people on the rolls in 27 states.

California: 49,000
Florida: 30,000
Texas: 28,500
Michigan: 25,000
Illinois: 24,000

12 Indiana counties have more registered voters than residents.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/years-after-infamous-intifada-hoax-french-jewish-crusader-fights-on/ He says he would let the matter drop were it not for the fact that so many, especially Israel’s enemies, still believe al-Dura died at the hands of Jewish soldiers. “The al-Dura myth lives on in the Arab and Muslim world,” he said. Postage stamps memorializing al-Dura have appeared in Tunisia, Egypt, Iran and […]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/15/the-presidents-benghazi-problem/

“Ambassador Rice’s credibility has been massively damaged because she misled the public (probably unknowingly) long after there was evidence that her claims were at least questionable and probably wrong. To the degree that she’s an “easy target,” it’s because the case against her and the administration is overwhelming. And the gallant Obama need not worry. The concerns about the negligence and misconduct of his administration don’t stop with Ms. Rice. Those concerns go right to the top.”

During his press conference yesterday, President Obama was asked about the statements by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who said if Susan Rice is nominated to be secretary of state, they will do everything in their power to block her nomination, and they simply don’t trust Ambassador Rice after her misleading accounts about the lethal attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11.

In response, the president, after lavishly praising Ms. Rice, said this:

As I’ve said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her. If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. Ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous… When they go after the U.N. Ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me.