RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Memorial Day, the flowers bloom. A dozen towns in a dozen states all claim that it began there when after the long weary struggle of the Civil War, the mothers and sisters of the lost and the fallen brought fresh cut flowers to bring a touch of life to the dead men entombed in the cold, gray stone.

“From the silence of sorrowful hours, The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers, Alike for the friend and the foe,” reads the famous Francis Miles Finch poem which helped popularize the practice.

Today the wars are no longer fraternal. The First World War is the last war that had anything brotherly in it. It was a war where soldiers from both sides could observe a Christmas truce and hurl nothing deadlier than snowballs at each other. The end of that terrible war on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” became Armistice Day and then, when the “war to end all wars” did not end them, but instead gave way to wars fought against terrible evils, Nazism, Communism, Islam, it became Veteran’s Day to remember those who would go on sacrificing in this eternal struggle against evil.

But while wars are no longer fraternal, the flowers are laid now on the graves of foes, not friends.

The men and women who die fighting for the cause of freedom are not accorded a fraction of the tender affection from the press that it lavishes on a single imprisoned Al Qaeda terrorist. We live today in an America in which the butchers of the Jihad in Guantanamo Bay receive better medical care than veterans waiting endlessly at the VA. While Obama cut off hot meals for Marines in Afghanistan, Islamic terrorists in Guantanamo Bay were enjoying lemon baked fish, honey glazed chicken, lyonaise rice, tandouri chicken breast, okra, hummus, dates, honey and seasoned lentils.

While veterans died at the VA, the men they had fought and helped capture were gifted with a $750,000 soccer field. This treatment is an obscene echo of the days of segregation when German POWs were allowed to sit inside at eateries while the African-American soldiers who guarded them had to wait outside. This segregation no longer occurs by race, but by patriotism and creed.

Obama denies that Islamic terrorism exists and suppresses any training materials about the role of Islam in Islamic terrorism while his administration warns of domestic terror threats from veterans. Muslim migrants from Syria receive lavish social benefits while health care for veterans is slashed. The Muslim migrants, many of whom support Islamic terrorists, benefit from job programs while veterans head for the unemployment line. This hatefully discriminatory attitude has become pervasive on the left.

Hollywood bends over backward to avoid accurately portraying Muslim terrorists, but depicts returning veterans as unstable killers and ticking time bombs. The media gushes over each petty Islamophobia grievance, like Tahera Ahmad, who claimed that she didn’t receive a Diet Coke can on a plane only because she was Muslim, while sweeping the sweeping the thousand veterans who died because of the VA scandal under the progressive prayer rug. A Muslim Diet Coke matters more than a thousand dead veterans.

State John Kerry, said Friday that the doctoring of several minutes of videotape from a State Department press briefing about the Iran nuclear negotiations was “clumsy and stupid and inappropriate”…..Could have described himself….rsk

WASHINGTON—State Department officials tried Friday to address the widening fallout from their admission this past week that a videotaped press briefing had been doctored to remove contradictory public statements about the Obama administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.

Congressional Republicans demanded documents related to the episode and called Friday for an investigation by the department’s inspector general. But senior Obama administration officials were unclear about just how much cooperation they would lend to Capitol Hill investigators or whether an additional internal review was warranted.

State Department officials confirmed this past week that a lower-level civil servant was asked to expunge roughly nine minutes of tape from a Dec. 2, 2013, briefing during which a Fox News reporter quizzed then-State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, about whether the administration had lied about holding secret negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Earlier that year, Ms. Psaki’s predecessor said there had been no secret, one-on-one talks between the U.S. and Iran. Asked about that assertion, Ms. Psaki replied indirectly, saying that sometimes “diplomacy needs privacy.” That was the portion deleted from the video, though it remained in a text transcript.

State Department officials have said Ms. Psaki didn’t herself order the doctoring of the tape. But they haven’t determined which official in the State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs made the request, and have suggested they might never find out.

“We’re in the process of studying the letters. We’re in the process of seeing how to be responsive,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Friday, asked about the congressional demands. “We believe we have investigated the incident to the point we can.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
At ’em boys, Give ‘er the gun! (Give ‘er the gun now!)
Down we dive, spouting our flame from under,
Off with one heckuva roar!
We live in fame or go down in flame.
Hey! Nothing’ll stop the U.S. Air Force!

Words and Music by Captain Robert Crawford, ©1939 as the “Army Air Corps Song
This is a memoir of a hero and patriot gifted with memory and insight published by Casemate, a UK publishing firm for military history. Colonel Brim is 93 years old.

In this engaging book we see how an 18-year-old miner shoveling ore from deep in the ground in Utah suddenly found himself, only two years later, 30,000 feet in the air over Nazi Germany, piloting a Flying Fortress in the first wave of America’s air counteroffensive in Europe.

Like thousands of other young Americans, Ray Brim was plucked by the U.S. Army to be a combat flyer, and was quickly pitted against the hardened veterans of the Luftwaffe. Brim turned out to have a natural knack for flying, however, and was assigned to the select squadron developing lead Pathfinder techniques, while experimenting with radar. He was among the first to test the teeth of the Luftwaffe’s defenses, and once those techniques had been honed, thousands of other bomber crews would follow into the maelstrom, from which 80,000 never returned.

This work gives us vivid insights into the genesis of the American air campaign, told with the humor, attention to detail and humility that captures the heart and soul of our “Greatest Generation.” Brim was one of the first Pathfinder pilots to fly both day and night missions leading bomb groups of 600-plus bombers to their targets. At the onset of his missions in the spring of 1943, B-17 crews were given a 50-50 chance of returning. Each of his raids were nerve-wracking forays into the unknown; with struggles to survive the damage to his plane due to flak and German fighter attacks, in order to bring his 10-man crew home, often wounded but still alive.

Mark Twain famously said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” So distorted is the news coverage about the Middle East today, you’re better off uninformed. Whether in the media or academia, treatment of the topic drips with anti-Israel bias and historical ignorance. Dr. Steven Carol’s new book Understanding the Volatile and Dangerous Middle East is a necessary antidote. The purpose of the book, according to Dr. Carol, is to “combat the mistaken beliefs, misrepresentations, and outright fabrications that have been perpetrated to the present.” He achieves his object in this impressive work, a nearly 1,000-page volume (with historical maps the author himself made) covering virtually every aspect of the Middle East, from the Arab-Jewish conflict to the history of the Kurds, Sharia law, Islamic culture, and more.

Understanding the Volatile and Dangerous Middle East succeeds both as a reference work and an entertaining read. Even those knowledgeable about Middle East history will learn from this book. For instance, did you know that the secret signal for Egyptian forces to seize the Suez Canal was “Ferdinand de Lesseps” – the name of the chief engineer in the construction of the canal? Egyptian President Nasser embedded the signal in a speech he gave at Mansheyya Square in Alexandria on July 26, 1956. He repeated it “fourteen times in the space of 10 minutes,” Dr. Carol relates, which is amusing as it suggests Nasser didn’t trust his forces to get the message.

It isn’t surprising that the book is filled with such tidbits for Dr. Carol has spent a lifetime studying his subject. The author of six books, including Middle East Rules of Thumb, he will be most familiar to Arizona residents, where he has taught at the high school, college and graduate levels and is the official historian of the Sunday radio program “The Middle East Radio Forum.” He is also Middle East consultant to the Salem Radio Network.

The author’s section on Israel is first-rate, including an overview of Jewish ties to the Land from ancient times. There’s a strong section on population exchanges throughout history where Dr. Carol zeroes in on the double standard applied to Palestinian Arab refugees compared to the vastly greater number of those displaced in other conflicts. Carol also explains the true nature of the conflict: “It is not the ‘occupation’ of various territories that is the issue, but rather the Arab/Muslim pre-occupation with destroying the Jewish state, no matter what borders it has.” All of this will be familiar to readers ofOutpost, but sadly not to the wider public.

The book is refreshingly un-PC, which becomes apparent right from the start when Dr. Carol opens with a list of basic principles. Here are just a few examples: “In the Arab/Muslim culture, pride, dignity and honor outrank truth on any scale of political values”; “The Arab/Muslim world views their history as starting in 622 C.E. Anything that happened before is an irrelevant myth”; and, “In the Islamic Middle East, the rational desire for peace is often perceived as weakness – a despised trait in that culture.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263082/benghazi-cover-frontpagemagcom

Editor’s note: The following video was produced by journalist Lee Stranahan and exposes the coordinated campaign between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the media to conceal the truth about the Benghazi terrorist attack until after the 2012 presidential election. The video sequence is featured in Stranahan’s film “The Caliphate.”

Some inexplicable response seems to take hold of the French when the subject concerns Jews in general, and Israel in particular. Whatever has induced the French government to choose this moment to hold a conference in favour of a Palestinian state? The absence of Palestinians and Israelis is confirmation that the self-importance of the French is the sole subject here. Secretary of State John Kerry has already proved that the peace process is dead for the time being; perhaps the Quai d’Orsay wanted only to rub the American nose as usual deep into humiliation.

Contempt for Jews and their state is the other side of France’s continuous pro-Arab policy. When a French ambassador a few years ago called Israel “a shitty little country,” he was only voicing ingrained institutional prejudice. Since the days of Yasser Arafat, France has always supported the cause of Palestine unconditionally, in spite of, or because of the harm to Israel. It is the sole Western country, for instance, to allow its financial subsidies to be paid without supervision, so that the money finishes in the hands of terrorists. Muslim immigrants numbering in the millions are on the edge of lawlessness. France has suffered more Islamist violence and murder than every other country except the United States. In response, Jews are leaving in their thousands for Israel. This has prompted Christophe Barbier, editor of the prestigious magazine L’Express, to accuse them of a cowardly failure to stand their corner. This in a country from which in the last world war at least 75,000 Jews were deported to be murdered — and this in a magazine once edited by Raymond Aron who polemicized against General de Gaulle for observations about Jews as “dominating people.”

At which point, I happened to read a book with the title “The Black Flag of Jihad Stalks la République.” The author, Nidra Poller, is an American living in France. She is the researcher who exposed that photography of a small boy supposedly killed by Israeli gunfire in battle, and therefore a symbol of Palestinian victimhood, was merely a “lethal narrative,” her term for propaganda designed to generate hatred of Jews and Israel. Israel’s self-defense in the recent campaign against Hamas in Gaza gave rise to plenty more lethal narratives that is classic anti-Semitism in a contemporary expression. As if it wasn’t enough to be misled by its government and its media about the reality of Islamism, France also has to endure Socialism. Strikes and riots are already bringing the whole country to the edge of lawlessness. Nidra Poller is in the role of Cassandra.

Iran, the nation that has built a well-deserved reputation as the world’s premier state-sponsor of terrorism has a new lobbyist and he is none other than U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Since the Obama administration inked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in January, Kerry has been busying himself with ensuring that European banks start doing business with the Iranians. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only has the United States and its European allies agreed to lift sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the administration is now encouraging the private banking sector to do the same. It appears however, that their intense lobbying efforts are being received with a healthy dose of skepticism.

HSBC’s chief legal officer, Stuart Levey confirmed that Kerry had requested that HSBC start opening its banking doors to the Iranians and transact business with them. Levey criticized Kerry’s misguided initiative noting that the U.S. still maintains other non-nuclear related sanctions against the Islamic Republic and that doing business with Iran runs the risk of running afoul of those sanctions. HSBC has had prior negative experience with the U.S. Treasury and Justice departments. In 2012, the bank was forced to fork over $1.9 billion to U.S. authorities to settle allegations involving money laundering for Mexican drug barons.

Levey also noted that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which controls large swaths of the Iranian economy, has been slapped with sanctions by both the U.S. and Europe because of the central role it plays in illicit regional and international activities. Doing business with Iran will almost certainly result in facilitating IRGC operations. Adding to the uncertainty, Iran has over the years developed a penchant for hiding money, engaging in shady deals and money laundering thus making it difficult, if not impossible for banking institutions to engage the Iranians in legitimate business transactions without being complicit in their illegal dealings.

The Obama administration had many tense exchanges with reporters as it pursued diplomatic talks with Iran on its nuclear program. But it revealed on Wednesday that at least one of those exchanges, from 2013, had been deliberately deleted from the State Department’s public online video archives.

A State Department editor erased a portion of the Dec. 2, 2013 briefing before posting the footage online, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

The editor did so after receiving a phone call from another employee in the State Department’s public affairs bureau transmitting the request, Mr. Kirby said, adding that the deletion probably happened on the same day as the briefing and he didn’t know who specifically requested the footage be erased. Earlier this month, a different State Department official had attributed the deletion to a “glitch.”

In the tape, which has since been restored, a Fox News reporter asked then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether her predecessor had been truthful when responding to questions in 2013 about secret contacts with Iran.

The backstory: In February 2013, the reporter, James Rosen, had asked previous State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland whether the U.S. was holding secret bilateral talks with Iran outside of the formal channel between Iran and six world powers. She said the U.S. wasn’t.

It was later reported that the U.S. had done just that. CONTINUE AT SITE

From a personal perspective, “lusty” is not an adjective I would have used, but some things in May did go “blissfully astray,” and a few provoked smiles: The man in New York’s Times Square, with a sign “Free Hugs,” who punched a woman in the face for naively believing the sign meant what it said. India reported that it was doing its bit for global warming; they are developing a feedstock that will make cows and other ruminants less flatulent. President Obama, claiming equality for transgenders, demanded that public high school bathrooms and showers be available to students based on gender identity, rather than gender at birth. (The Sidwell Friends School in Bethesda, I am sure, will be exempt.)

But these are not really funny. The first reflects a lack of civility necessary for society to function smoothly. The second, a questionable government expenditure in a country that is home to the world’s largest population of poor. And the third, identity politics substituting for common sense.

On the other hand, Boris Johnson’s winning limerick about Turkish President Recap Tayyip Erdogan’s fictional love affair with a goat was funny. London’s mayor had submitted his poem to The Spectator’s “President Erdogan Offensive Poetry contest.” The limerick, which cannot be repeated in this PG publication but which will elicit a smile from all but the most politically correct, can be found by googling “Johnson,” “limerick,” “Erdogan” and “goat.” Mr. Erdogan had asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to allow a lawsuit under some dusty 19th Century law that forbade German citizens from insulting foreign leaders. With eyes focused on Turkey’s large number of refugees and not wanting to upset its authoritarian leader, Ms. Merkel permitted the suit against German comedian Jan Bohmermann.

Rep. Randy Forbes speaks out on the Farsi Island incident and other threats to our diminishing seapower.

On January 12 two U.S. Navy riverine boats were sailing south through the Persian Gulf to Bahrain near Iran’s Farsi Island. One of the boats had broken down and the other stayed with it. Six Iranian boats surrounded them and demanded their surrender at gunpoint. The Americans did. They were forced to their knees and taken into captivity on the island.

It’s not clear how the Iranians treated the U.S. sailors, but we know a few key facts. The Iranians seized Navy computers aboard the boats and copied their contents. The sailors were interrogated individually — constantly — and paraded before Iranian television crews. In footage broadcast internationally, they were apparently compelled to admit that they were in the wrong for entering Iranian waters — though the evidence showed they had not — and to apologize for doing so.

But every American soldier, sailor, airman and Marine is trained to refuse to aid the enemy in that manner. It’s a violation of their duty to do so. So were they abused? Tortured? Threatened with immediate execution? We don’t know because the Obama administration has classified everything about how the sailors were treated.

They were released after about sixteen hours. The only reaction from President Obama was a statement by Secretary of State John Kerry thanking the Iranians for their cooperation and patting himself on the back for effective diplomacy. There was never even a word condemning the Iranians for violating international law by seizing the American boats in international waters.

Two weeks ago Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) got our attention when he said that the classified information about the incident, if made public, would shock the American people. He said that we would be shocked by not only how Iran treated our sailors but also how the Obama administration responded. As Forbes pointed out, Obama did nothing at all to help the sailors while they were in captivity.