RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former Secretary of Defense under George Bush and Barack Obama Robert Gates feels “double-crossed” by Obama over his promise not to gut the defense budget.

The Hill:

When asked by Fox whether Obama kept to his word, Gates replied, “Well I think that began to fray. ‘Fray’ may be too gentle a word.”

According to the report, Gates was told to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget after already having slashed it.

“I guess I’d have to say I felt double-crossed,” Gates said. “After all those years in Washington, I was naïve.”

The former defense secretary added that he advised Obama to slow the cuts to the military because it would endanger U.S. troops.

“I think he acknowledged that what I was pitching at a minimum was, ‘The world doesn’t seem to be getting better. Before you head down a path of deep cuts in defense, why don’t you take it kind of slow,’ ” he said. “You know it was one of those things where I lost the argument.”

Fox also spoke with former Gen. Michael Flynn, who served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama.

“Frankly, the United States of America is in a less strong position today because of the readiness and the size of our armed forces,” Flynn said.

Douglas Murray, Associate Director of The Henry Jackson Society, in The Telegraph: ‘We Must Stop Blaming Ourselves for Islamist Extremism’

“The problem of Islamic extremism is caused – astonishingly enough – by Islamic extremism. As France, Belgium and many other societies can now attest, the larger your Muslim population, the larger your Islamic extremism problem. Not because most Muslims are terrorists. Obviously not. But because that “small minority” we always hear about grows proportionally bigger the larger the community is. What matters is the numbers, the density (thus their ability to hide and be hidden) and the type of Islam that is followed.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/03/25/we-must-stop-blaming-ourselves-for-islamist-terrorism/

Charles (Chuck) Brooks serves as the vice president for government relations & marketing for Sutherland Government Solutions. He served at the Department of Homeland Security as the first director of legislative affairs for the Science & Technology Directorate.

In response to the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said there is “no credible or specific intelligence regarding a similar plot that has been uncovered” in the U.S.

Regardless, the Brussels attacks have certainly brought a new focus by DHS, the intelligence community and law enforcement to mitigate future threats to soft targets.

Security is based on increased vigilance and layering elements of intelligence, surveillance technologies and trained personnel to guard vulnerabilities. The real challenge has always been deciding how much security to allocate to what, where and when.

Democratic societies by their nature are open and accessible, which poses a difficult challenge to secure all soft targets in public places such as airports, trains, buses, malls, schools, stadiums and hospitals. Or, for that matter, to secure any place where many people like to socially or commercially gather. The emergence of new capabilities could enable DHS to address these vulnerability issues, and there are protocols and systems that can make a difference.

DHS is exploring futuristic checkpoints that integrate the intelligent fusion of sensor components. The set-up could consist of behavioral sensors that try to measure hostile intent with micro facial and auditory sensors. Other physiological sensors could monitor respiratory, cardio, thermal and iris reactions of passengers who may mean harm.

These checkpoints could be combined with high-definition thermal cameras equipped with facial recognition software that feeds into real-time databases of suspected terrorists. The checkpoints could also use millimeter wave or 3-D imaging with stand-off abilities to detect bombs at a distance.

Last July, when the Administration had been intent on closing a nuclear deal with Iran and selling it to a skeptical American Congress and public, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emphatically stating that after the deal, Iran will continue to be denied access to the American banking system. “Iranian banks will not be able to clear U.S. dollars through New York, hold correspondent account relationships with U.S. financial institutions, or enter into financing arrangements with U.S. banks,” he said.

And while testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in September, Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam Szubin said, “No Iranian banks can access the U.S. financial system; not to open an account, not to purchase a security, and not even to execute a dollarized transaction‎ where a split seconds worth of business is done in a New York clearing bank.”

There are a multitude of reasons why this is an excellent idea. For starters: Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and launders money to be sent all around the world to their terrorist network and terror proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq , Bahrain, Yemen and Gaza.

Allowing Iran to participate in the US banking system will only add more dollars into their coffers to be transferred to their destabilizing and terrorist proxies. In February, the Financial Action Task Force, an inter-governmental body which is established to protect the international financial system from threats to its integrity, issued a public statement that “reaffirms its call on members and urges all jurisdictions to advise their financial institutions to give special attention to business relationships and transactions with Iran, including Iranian companies and financial institutions.”

Right before his first tango in Buenos Aires, President Obama addressed the Cuban people (and the world) in an instantly famous speech from Havana’s Grand Theater. Among the highlights:

“Here’s my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people: The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution, America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world, these ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy.” (U.S. President Obama, Havana Cuba, March 22, 2016.)

Let’s hope this astounding observation resulted from bad staff work. Because, in fact, from the mid-fifties on, both Obama’s recent host (Raul Castro) and his recent mural idol (Che Guevara) were Soviet agents committed to creating a Stalinist Cuba—a vassal to the Communist motherland.

Oh, I know, I know — the media, your professors, the History Channel, Francis Ford Coppola, etc., etc., all claim the Cuban revolutionaries were noble “nationalists” who were pushed kicking and screaming into the arms of Mother Russia by blockheaded Yankee “bullying.”

Stop by your local post office and you might just see a poster of Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londono hanging next to the Most Wanted posters of bank robbers and fugitives. The State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information about the Communist terrorist leader.

But all the State Department had to do was ask Secretary of State Kerry. Obama did the wave with the Cuban dictator and Kerry met with Timochenko , the leader of FARC, a Marxist terrorist organization that appears on his own department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations a little above Al Qaeda.

Timochenko is a Communist who was trained at the USSR’s infamous Patrice Lumumba University. The State Department accuses him of ordering the kidnapping of Americans and responsibility for much of the cocaine that is smuggled into the United States. But none of that bothered Kerry who accepted a signed copy of a memoir by the terror group’s former leader which was addressed to “Senor” Kerry.

The signatures in Kerry’s new keepsake include Pablo Catatumbo, a FARC leader with a $2.5 million reward on his head from the State Department, who is wanted for “the production, manufacture, and distribution of hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States and the world” and “the murder of hundreds of people who violated or interfered with the FARC’s cocaine policies.”Also signing Kerry’s book was Iván Márquez, who has a $5 million reward on his head for most of the same reasons.

Two of the men sitting opposite John Kerry had been convicted of forcing children to join the terror group as soldiers and sex slaves. FARC runs on thousands of child soldiers and sex slaves. Little girls as young as 7 and 9 were brought into the terror group whose fronts have a “quota” of women to fill. Families that refuse to turn over their daughters to FARC have been massacred as a warning to others.

Naive or stupid? And this dolt is in charge of homeland security ?rsk

The Homeland Security secretary said that while there is no “specific, credible piece of intel about a plot of the Belgian type here in the United States, we continue to be very concerned about terrorist-inspired acts that could be carried out here in the homeland.”

DHS leader Jeh Johnson told MSNBC today that the administration is “continually concerned about foreign terrorist travel, and we continue to focus on those things.”

“We know from their public calls and from social media and the Internet that ISIL has made efforts and called for attacks here in the homeland,” he said. “And that’s — that’s one of the things we’re focused on right now. Terrorist-inspired attacks are part of the new era that we’re in right now.”

President Obama convened a meeting of “key members of his counterterrorism and homeland security team,” according to the White House, on Monday.

“The President was briefed that there is currently no specific, credible intelligence of any plot to conduct similar attacks here in the United States,” the press secretary’s office said in a readout of the meeting. “The President’s team also updated him on recent expanded information-sharing with international partners and ways that the United States is working to disrupt and counter external plots emanating from ISIL-controlled territory.”

“Additionally, the President received briefings on ongoing efforts to address ISIL’s use of the Internet to recruit followers, incite them to violence, and mobilize them to engage in attacks in the United States and abroad.”

The White House said Obama “directed his team to continue to intensify efforts to degrade and destroy ISIL and to ensure that the United States is doing everything possible to disrupt any ISIL external plotting efforts, including by continuing our strong leadership in the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.”

Obama told the nation that there was no specific, credible threat against the homeland before and after the Dec. 2 San Bernardino terrorist attack — in statements reassuring Thanksgiving and Christmas travelers.

Johnson said today that “San Bernardino, Chattanooga, the attempt in Garland City, Texas, last year, reflect this new era that we’re in.”

“The FBI has made a number of arrests of those who have been inspired by ISIL’s calls, by al-Qaida’s calls, and that’s what we’re focused on right now in addition to the traditional concerns about aviation,” he said.

The DHS secretary urged Americans to “continue to go to public events, public gatherings, enjoy holidays, freedom to travel, freedom to associate, celebrate our immigrant heritage, but be vigilant and be aware and know that a lot of homeland security and law enforcement officials are working overtime to address the existing threats.”

State Department spokesman John Kirby refused to confirm “a hundred percent” on Monday what the rest of the world had already figured out: The suicide bombers in Lahore, Pakistan, on Sunday had specifically targeted Christians celebrating Easter. After an initial State Department statement neglected to mention the fact that Christians were targeted, Kirby did acknowledge yesterday that “that certainly appears to have been the case.”

The devastating blast killed more than 70 Pakistanis, 29 of them children, leaving more than 300 wounded.

Separately, at a White House press briefing yesterday, Press Secretary Josh Earnest did acknowledge that Christians were the intended targets of the bombing, but he stressed that most of the victims were Muslims.

Kirby told reporters that he did not have “the fidelity of information to confirm overtly” what the terrorists responsible for the bombing have already admitted.

Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, the breakaway Taliban faction claiming responsibility for the attacks, told the Associated Press on Sunday that the suicide bomber “deliberately targeted the Christian community celebrating Easter.” He also said the attack was meant to protest Pakistan’s military operation in the tribal regions.

Referring to the State Department’s statement condemning the attack, which conspicuously contained no reference to the targeting of Christians, AP reporter Matt Lee asked, “There’s been some commentary about why you guys didn’t mention either the Easter connection or the Christian connection in your condemnatory statements over the weekend and again today. Do you believe the claim of responsibility that Christians were targeted and are targets?”

“We have no indications that their claims of responsibility are false, though I can’t sit here and confirm it a hundred percent,” Kirby said. “Therefore I have no indications that their, the motivation that they claim was the reason is also false, but this is all going to be investigated by Pakistanis.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/another-terrorist-strike-another-obama-lecture-1459291616

President Obama’s weekly radio address on Saturday was his latest attempt to reassure the country that the U.S. is making significant progress in the fight against Islamic terrorism, notwithstanding the Brussels airport attack last week and the Paris massacre in November. Alas, it didn’t take long for reality to contradict the soothing rhetoric. The very next day, a Taliban splinter group inspired by Islamic State bombed a crowded park in Lahore, Pakistan, killing more than 70 people, mostly women and children.

“Members of the Christian community who were celebrating Easter today were our prime target,” a Taliban spokesman told NBC News. And the women and children weren’t collateral damage, mind you, they were the targets, according to Lahore’s police chief. Americans argue over whether hardened jihadists should be waterboarded, while the terrorists prey on the softest of targets.

Pakistan is a country of 190 million people, and 97% identify as Muslim. Christians make up less than 2% of the population but are under constant attack from Islamic terrorists. More than a dozen people died in two church bombings in Lahore last April, and some 80 people were killed in a 2013 church bombing in the city of Peshawar. Yet Mr. Obama spent the second half of his radio address lecturing Americans on the importance of religious tolerance. CONTINUE AT SITE