RUTHFULLY YOURS

Americans used to laugh at the bereted Iraqi Information Minister screaming, “I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad”, even while they could be seen moving into the city.

Now Baghdad Bob’s rhetoric has been transplanted over from Baghdad to Washington D.C.

Last year, Obama said, “I want to be clear: the American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission.” A good way to get stinking drunk is to drink a shot every time Obama precedes a blatant lie with an “I want to be clear.” And this time was no different.

The year before that he told the American people, “I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.”

No word on whether soldiers in the “Specialized Expeditionary Targeting Force” will be wearing sandals or slippers as they carry out raids into Syria to free hostages and capture ISIS terrorists.

Obama had assured Americans that the mission “will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.” Did he annex Syria and Iraq as new states while Congress was in recess?

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Cynthia E. Ayers is currently Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. Prior to accepting the Task Force position, she served as Vice President of EMPact Amercia, having retired from the National Security Agency after over 38 years of federal service.

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a meeting held by the local chapter leaders of three rather prominent organizations of security professionals (mostly cyber-security). These organizations are generally known for keeping their membership up-to-date with current threats to national security; thus, I was utterly shocked when one of them told me that his members didn’t care about foreign policy. When pressed, he assured me that nobody outside the Washington DC beltway cared about foreign policy.

Having worked national security issues my entire life, I see foreign policy and our country’s national security as inextricably linked. With acts of terrorism from foreign and domestic sources making the news on a daily basis, reports of massive numbers of increasingly successful cyberattacks, acknowledgment of an ever-expanding nuclear threat as well as attacks (physical and cyber) on critical infrastructure, can anyone convincingly argue otherwise? Especially after Paris and San Bernardino?

A January 2015 announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists proclaimed that it is now “3 Minutes to Midnight” on the Doomsday Clock, a change — as they noted — that is reflective of an international leadership problem. As indicated, practically every threat we now face (and they are legion) is of international concern. Our foreign policy is driven by what goes on internationally.

According to a sensitive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report leaked to the press today on possible past nuclear-weapons-related work by Iran (click here to read), the agency found that Iran engaged in “coordinated” nuclear weapons activities until 2003, and some nuclear-weapons work continued until 2009. This contradicts a widely cited intelligence estimate declaring that Iran had given up nuclear-weapons work completely in 2003.

The IAEA said there were no “credible indications” of nuclear-weapons-related activities in Iran after 2009, though this is not the same as having positive evidence that they stopped. The IAEA also said that Iran’s nuclear-weapons work was limited to feasibility and scientific studies and to acquiring nuclear-weapons-related capabilities.

This IAEA report follows an investigation of the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program, an issue that the IAEA has been struggling to resolve for several years. Although this investigation was agreed to in the nuclear talks that produced the July 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it was formally separated from the nuclear accord at Iran’s insistence. For this reason, sanctions against Iran can be lifted regardless of the PMD investigation’s outcome.

It is unfortunate that Charles Mackay is no longer alive to add yet another chapter or two to his insightful book of human follies, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. First published in 1841, his book chronicles in sixteen examples of crowd psychology with some of the notable economic and social foibles of the past. The preface includes his observation that “[w]e find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds on one object, and go mad in its pursuit: that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it, til their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

Chapter headings include The Mississippi Scheme, The South-Sea Bubble, The Tulipomania, Fortune-Telling, The Magnetisers, The Crusades, and The Witch Mania. These and the other chapters were chosen by Mackay to illustrate recurring but transient moral and economic epidemics, and to “show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes.” The foreword by Bernard Baruch in the 1932 edition references Schiller’s dictum: “Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd he at once becomes a blockhead.”

Despite Iran’s repeated claims to the contrary, a report just issued by the nuclear watchdog agency concluded that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program.

The Obama administration welcomed the report issued Wednesday, Dec. 2, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying it would likely pave the way for the removal of economic sanctions on Tehran as early as January. The report is titled “Final Assessment of Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme.”

What did the Administration find reassuring in the report? That the IAEA was unable to find evidence that Tehran’s efforts to pursue a nuclear bomb extended beyond 2009. What is the administration prepared to ignore? That Iran has been lying all along when its leaders said its nation had never pursued creating nuclear weapons.

What sheer hypocrisy at Princeton. Woodrow Wilson bad…but boycott and divest from Israel is just dandy. And the Center for African American Studies says nothing about the Jihads in Africa against innocent civilians…..rsk

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2015/04/cornel_west_urges_princeton_university_to_divest_f.html

PRINCETON — Princeton University has a moral obligation to divest from Israel and its systematic injustices, activist Cornel West told an audience on campus Wednesday, comparing the current divestment movement on campus to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s.

“The Israeli occupation of my Palestinian brothers and sisters is a crime against humanity,” West said. “They are killing hundreds daily — but where are the voices?”

West, professor emeritus in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, spoke alongside a panel of other divestment activists including Max Blumenthal, Larry Hamm, Molly Greene and Robert Tignor.

The Princeton Divests Student Coalition, made up of Princeton students and faculty who seek to bring divestment referendum before undergraduate students, organized the event in McCosh Hall.

“There will be no security for our Jewish and brothers and sisters — who have a right to security after 2,000 years of vicious hatred — as there can be no security predicated on violence,” West said.

I haven’t checked lately to see if the oceans are still rising, due to human sinfulness and love of big cars, or whether the waters are finally receding, as per Obama’s instructions seven years ago.

Peace is breaking out all over. In Syria 200,000-300,000 people are dead in a civil war, where Obama supported terrorist gangs like Al Nusra and the “Free Syrian Army.” The U.S. created the “moderate” FSA, and gave it TOW anti-tank missiles, which it used to shoot down that Russian rescue helicopter last week, as it was trying to pick up the downed jet pilot.

The Free Syrian Army now turns out to be a front for the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama’s close ally in all his Middle East adventures. Meanwhile, Yemen and Libya have fallen apart. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has actually killed more people than ISIS. BH is still raiding towns to steal African children for the slave markets, without a word of protest from Jesse Jackson or Jeremiah Wright.

Apparently All Black Lives don’t really matter. Not if they are in Africa.

The territory controlled by ISIS now covers the most strategic points in all of Iraq and half of Syria, making up the single biggest would-be state in that region.

The peak of lunacy in the American fight against ISIS may have been reached.

Remember that in October 2013, with ISIS bearing down on a Yazidi city in Syria, Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby told reporters U.S. air power wouldn’t save Kobane, but that there was a “larger strategy” in place. “The primary goal of the campaign is not to save Syrian cities and towns,” U.S. Central Command officials echoed, “but to go after ISIS senior leadership, oil refineries, and other infrastructure that would curb the group’s ability to operate.” Individuals caught in the maelstrom were just unfortunate.

Last week, U.S. forces took out 116 of about 300 ISIS oil tanker trucks headed for Turkey. Not bad? Oh, yes it was – and it explains a lot about the ineffectual “war” we fighting.

Asked by The Washington Examiner why it took 14 months of air warfare to make the first strike on oil tanker trucks, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren replied that American officials were deeply worried about harming the truck drivers, who were working for the Islamic State but might not be ISIS themselves. U.S. officials settled on a plan to drop leaflets on the trucks about 45 minutes before the raid, warning the drivers that an attack was coming, while U.S. pilots flew low passes over the area. Planning all that took time.

Paris may not have burned, but it came under attack again by ruthless, Godless Islamic radicals. One hundred and thirty – mostly young – people were murdered in six incidents on Friday, the 13th of November. This was only the latest in a series of killings by terrorists invoking Islam as reason and cause. Earlier they had downed a Russian airliner and a few days later 41 Shiite Muslims were killed by two suicide Islamic terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon. Religion is a great comfort for those in need of spiritual uplift. It does far more good than harm. But religion, throughout the centuries, has also been a cause of wars, something we should not forget. The horror the world is now experiencing will not end until peace-loving Muslims assert leadership. And it will not end as long as the West fails to connect Islam with the terror and the desire for a caliphate that some of its members’ advocate.

After the Charlie Hebdo massacres, Western leaders traveled to Paris to march in solidarity. Millions of people wore signs, “I am Charlie.” In April, 2014, 200 school girls in Nigeria were kidnapped by Boko Haram. Like the “I am Charlie” signs, millions of people, including Michelle Obama, posted the hashtag, “save our girls.” That was the extent of the West’s involvement – feel-good symbols that made the wearer feel sanctimonious, but did nothing for the victims. This time there have been neither marches nor signs

Equally disturbing, though less deadly, have been the obsequious Uriah Heep’s that pass for college administrators and professors in many of our colleges and universities. Protests have risen supporting the concept of “safe places,” places where students can be assured of never hearing words that make them uncomfortable or feeling vulnerable. Yale president Peter Salovey sent an e-mail to his university’s community, which captured today’s campuses fawning, liberal orthodoxy. In the e-mail he apologized for the university, and said the he is committed “to a campus where hatred and discrimination are never tolerated.” In fact, he was yielding to a subtler, but equally insidious form of intolerance – toward those whose ideas do not conform with the liberal perspective that dominates his university. He wants a place where the prejudices of “victims” are never challenged – an institution that prefers the comfort of a student’s psyche to the confrontation of ideas. In doing so, he encourages fragility among his students. Whatever happened to the nursery rhyme my mother used to recite: “sticks and stones will break my bones…” Is Yale preparing its young women and men for the world outside its college gates?