http://www.nationalreview.com/node/357517/print No. That’s the answer Congress should give to President Obama, who in a surprise decision late last week reversed course and asked Congress to endorse his proposed launch of a limited air attack on Syria. The president wishes to punish the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons to murder more than a […]
The five most populous states in order are: CA, TX, NY, FL, IL. It stands to reason that they would have the highest numbers of mosques.
Islam is supremacist and triumphalist. ‘The call to prayer should be heard throughout the land.’
A mosque is NOT like a church or a synagogue. In Muslim countries, there is NO separation between mosque and state. A mosque is a symbol of ultimate authority and serves the function of organizing EVERY aspect of life in a Muslim community. It exists as a seat of government, a school, a court, a community center, a jihad training center, a military command center and often a weapons depot. In essence, the mosque is a strategic base of operations – a beachhead – in an interconnected network of bases to teach jihad, advance Islam and impose shariah in due time.
Janet Levy,
Los Angeles
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/061213-659753-all-intrusive-obama-terror-dragnet-excludes-mosques.htm
Before you read this article, take a good look at this distribution map, look at your state, and know that mosques are and have been off-limits to FBI agents because NSA surveillance completely excludes Mosques!
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/09/03/the-syrian-rebels-and-chemical-weapons-remembering-your-al-qaeda-history/ Myopic focus on alleged chemical weapons use by the Assad regime in Syria is wrongheaded, as it has been all along. The salient issue is whether the United States should intervene militarily on behalf of enemies of the United States — the “rebel” factions, in which ties to al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood run […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
In 2007, the new Democratic Majority Leader defied President Bush by sitting down to meet with a member of the Axis of Evil.
“We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Pelosi told reporters after her talks with Assad.
Now the road to Damascus is the road to war. And Pelosi and Obama are racing down it along with everyone else.
Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour are nowhere to be found striding insouciantly through the desert or hoofing it alongside a camel. This road movie has an entirely different cast of characters.
It’s a race against time. And a race for blood.
Forget the Grand Prix or the Daytona 500, the real race right now is the race to Damascus. The racers include Syrian rebels in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns and homemade tanks, toting weapons and equipment supplied and paid for by Qatar and Turkey, and more covertly by the British and French intelligence services. Racing along with them are carloads of international diplomats urging their governments to give the militias more money and more weapons.
Everyone is on the road to Damascus in this amazing race. Christian refugees from Aleppo and Alawites packing in behind the tanks of the Syrian army, Iraqi militias that used to plant IEDs in front of American Humvees who have found new work blowing up churches and taking over Syrian bases.
There are international activists from around the world, reporters or citizen-journalists embedded with the rebels, Russian advisers embedded with Syrian units, Qatari trainers turning children into child soldiers with the rebels and Turkish officers trying to get the entire rabble moving in the right direction toward Damascus.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/09/a_vital_us_interest.html The Executive Branch has become increasingly powerful over the past century, simply because Congress has not successfully checked the president whenever a power overreach occurred. So now, more from fear of being mocked than dismay over 1,429 dead, including 400 children, Obama has placed himself in a politically precarious position, and the U.S. in […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/unrwa_and_palestinian_hatred.html
We in the West think about child abuse in terms of physical and sexual brutality. In all totalitarian societies, however, child abuse also takes the form of intense psychological manipulation.
And no better example can be found than this recent You Tube showing how Palestinian children are being taught to hate Israel in United Nations funded camps.
On August 16, 2013, the U.S. and the Palestinian Authority signed a new $148 million economic aid agreement. The money is used for the PA schools “many of which function in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) facilities.”
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was created in 1949 to help individuals (along with their spouses and dependents) whose homes were in Palestine from June 1, 1946 to May 15, 1948 and who lost both their homes and their livelihoods as a result of the attack on the newly formed country of Israel. It is, in reality, one large welfare and terrorist training program in perpetuity. UNRWA has been a hotbed for radical ideas, terrorist training, and anti-American and anti-Semitic ideology for 64 years. No other refugee group in the world has had a single U.N. agency devoted just for them. Yet world leaders continue to prop up this agency which infantilizes Palestinians and holds the world hostage to terrorist activities. According to Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon, as of 2013 “the UNRWA is responsible for the education of some 485,000 Palestinian children throughout the Middle East.”
Over the years, many authors have tried to shed light on the nefarious deeds of the UNRWA. In August 2006 Justus Reid Wiener and Noam Weissman stated that the
UNRWA educational institutions are controlled by individuals committed to Hamas ideology and they are educating terrorists. Numerous terrorist operatives and Hamas political leaders have been educated in UNRWA schools
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/09/marty-glickmans-triumph
Triumph in Adversity – The black runner Jesse Owens humiliated the Nazis at the 1936 Olympics, but U.S. coaches wouldn’t let his Jewish teammates do the same. Luckily, that wasn’t the end of the Marty Glickman story.
For a moment, it all seemed like a dream. Young Marty Glickman, an eighteen year old from Brooklyn, was at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, ready to run the 4 by 100 relay, in hopes of winning gold. It was early in Hitler’s dictatorship, but Jews had already been persecuted for several years. As a Jewish American athlete, proud of his heritage, and proud to represent his country, this was Marty’s opportunity to help expose Hitler’s mad theories about Aryan supremacy—just as Jesse Owens, his African-American teammate, had humiliated the Nazis by excelling in his events.
The morning of the Olympic trials, as Marty prepared to help secure a spot for his relay team in the finals, he and his teammates were called together by Lawson Robertson and Dean Cromwell, the coach and assistant coach of the US team, respectively. In a grim tone, Robertson announced that he had been informed that the Germans were hiding their “best sprinters” for the relay event, to upset the heavily favored Americans. Therefore, Marty and Sam Stoller (Glickman’s Jewish teammate) would be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, to give the US their best chance. Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff, whom Cromwell had coached at USC, would remain on the revised squad.
The decision never made any sense. Glickman and Stoller were at least as fast, if not faster, than Draper and Wykoff; and Glickman and Stoller had been specially trained in the 400 relay and its baton pass, which the otherwise exceptional Owens and Metcalfe had not. Shocked and angered, Marty spoke up: “Coach, there’s no reason to believe the Germans are any kind of threat to the relay.” The best German sprinter, Erich Borchmeyer, had finished a poor fifth in the 100 meter final. He was the best Germany had, and any of the American sprinters could defeat him.
Jesse Owens also spoke. “Coach, let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it. I’ve already won three gold medals. . . . They haven’t had the chance to run. Let them run. They deserve it.” But Dean Cromwell pointed his finger at the great Olympian and shouted him down: “You’ll do as you’re told!”
The race went on, without Glickman and Stoller participating, and the Americans, as expected, won. The Germans finished a distant third. Marty was forced to watch the relay from the stands, his heart breaking, as the second leg was run, thinking, “That oughta be me out there, that oughta be me!” Stoller, described by Glickman as “shattered” by the decision, wrote in his diary, “This is the one day in my life that I’ll remember to my dying day.”
In 2007 Obama asserted that American troops should be withdrawn from Iraq even if that would result in genocide:
“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now–where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife–which we haven’t done,” Mr. Obama told the AP. “We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324886704579051432219385214.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
President Obama made a compelling moral case Saturday for military action against Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria:
What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?
Make no mistake–this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorists who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?
Then, he asserted that although “I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization,” he will seek authorization anyway.
Our initial reaction was that if we were a member of Congress, we would be inclined to vote “no.” We ultimately, and with some difficulty, changed our mind, as we shall detail below. Our resistance–and our continuing misgivings about the prospect of an attack on Syria–are informed by reflection on our errors during the 2002-03 debate that preceded the Iraq war, of which we were a strong supporter.
This is not going to be one of those columns in which we repudiate wholesale our position back then, as no small number of former Iraq war supporters have done. That posture has always struck us as pusillanimous (abandoning one popular position for another), pointless (for one cannot annul an already-fought war), and intellectually lazy.
Administration officials downplayed any risk at the military level, saying they believed Obama’s strong words alone would prevent Assad or his allies from striking before the U.S. make [sic] a decision. One official simply called any future attack by Assad a “big mistake.”
This is an example of magical thinking that is not wishful. It would indeed be a big tactical mistake for Assad either to attack U.S. forces or again to use chemical weapons while congressional action is pending. But that is because of Obama’s political weakness, not his rhetorical strength. Congressional assent to Obama’s request for military authorization is far from assured; if Assad wants to keep it that way, he will lie low as the debate plays out.
Now, let us turn to analyzing the Syria situation in light of our three faulty assumptions about Iraq.
Obama is not making any claim that military action against Syria will have a transformative effect. His argument, instead, rests on the potential dire consequences of inaction. We find it persuasive. Maintaining the international taboo against the use of chemical weapons (and nuclear and biological ones) is a moral imperative. These armaments have the capacity to kill on a far greater scale than conventional explosives and bullets.
But if action is necessary as a moral matter, it must also be sufficient as a practical matter. And that is where Obama’s plan falls terrifyingly short. Here is what he said on Saturday:
This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope.
On Friday, before Obama made the decision to seek congressional authorization first, Secretary of State Kerry said that “whatever decision [the president] makes in Syria it will bear no resemblance to Afghanistan, Iraq or even Libya.” That’s a bizarre and illogical assertion: It will be a “resemblance” to Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, if Obama acts with congressional authorization, and to Libya had he chosen to act without it. But Kerry elaborated in words similar to those the president used the next day:
It will not involve any boots on the ground. It will not be open ended. And it will not assume responsibility for a civil war that is already well underway. The president has been clear: Any action that he might decide to take will be [a] limited and tailored response to ensure that a despot’s brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons is held accountable.
In short, the administration is promising a cakewalk: an easy strike with little American blood or treasure at stake. As we argued Friday, it is fatuous to assume that would prove sufficient to hold Assad “accountable” or to deter him and other dictators from further bad acts.
To be sure, the authorization the administration is seeking is more open-ended than its rhetoric would suggest. As Politico reports:
[Capitol] Hill aides noted the White House-originated draft did not prevent the deployment of American ground forces in Syria in order to fulfill the mission of interdicting the Assad regime use of chemical weapons. That restriction is seen by some in Congress as a key to winning support for the military effort in both the House and Senate.
According to Politico, the resolution as written is drawing objections from members of the president’s own party, which holds the majority in the Senate. “I know it’s going to be amended in the Senate,” said President Pro Tem Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey “are overseeing the revisions, which seek to narrow the scope for any U.S. military mission in Syria, Democratic sources said,” Politico reports.
In addition to reflecting Obama’s own aversion to decisive military intervention, his promise of a “limited” response can be seen as a bow to political reality–and not only within his own party but among Republicans, who control the House. Whereas only one Republican senator and six representatives voted against the Iraq war in 2002, today isolationism is resurgent across party lines. To differing degrees, each party learned the same “lesson” from Iraq.
Which makes the president’s request for congressional authorization difficult to understand as anything but a political ploy, at best an exercise in buck-passing, at worst–and this has been suggested approvingly by some of his admirers–a strategic effort to inflict political damage on congressional Republicans. In support of the latter hypothesis one may note that Obama maintained the element of surprise with his Capitol Hill adversaries while going to ridiculous lengths to spare Bashar Assad of it.
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Even we feel his pain.
For now, we’ll go with buck-passing as the likely explanation. After all, no one seemed more shell-shocked by Obama’s announcement than Kerry, whose performance on “Fox News Sunday” (he was on all the Sunday shows, but we could endure only one) was painful to watch. For this columnist, empathy for John Kerry was a completely novel emotion.
NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia—Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West against taking one-sided action in Syria but also said his country “doesn’t exclude” supporting a United Nations resolution on punitive military strikes if it is proved that Damascus used poison gas on its own people.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Associated Press and Russia’s state Channel 1 television, Mr. Putin said Moscow has provided some components of the S-300 air defense missile system to Syria but has frozen further shipments. He suggested that Russia may sell the potent missile systems elsewhere if Western nations attack Syria without U.N. Security Council backing.
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imageReuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin during an interview Sept. 3; he said a Western attack on Syria in the absence of a U.N. resolution and of proof it used poison gas on its people would represent an aggression.
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The interview Tuesday night at Mr. Putin’s country residence outside the Russian capital was the only one he granted prior to the summit of G-20 nations in St. Petersburg, which opens Thursday. The summit was supposed to concentrate on the global economy but now looks likely to be dominated by the international crisis over allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in the country’s civil war.
Mr. Putin said he was sorry that President Barack Obama canceled a one-on-one meeting in Moscow that was supposed to have happened before the summit. But he expressed hope the two will have serious discussions about Syria and other issues in St. Petersburg.
“President Obama hasn’t been elected by the American people in order to be pleasant to Russia,” he said of their relationship.” And your humble servant hasn’t been elected by the people of Russia to be pleasant to someone either.”
“We work, we argue about some issues,” Mr. Putin said. “We are human. Sometimes one of us gets vexed. But I would like to repeat once again that global mutual interests form a good basis for finding a joint solution to our problems.”
He also denied that Russia has anti-gay policies—an issue that has threatened to embarrass the country as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics in February.
The Russian leader, a year into his third term as president, appeared to go out of his way to be conciliatory amid a growing chill in U.S.-Russian relations. The two countries have sparred over Syria, the Edward Snowden affair, Russia’s treatment of its opposition and the diminishing scope in Russia for civil-society groups that receive funding from the West.
Mr. Putin called “ludicrous” the idea that the government of President Bashar Assad—a staunch ally of Russia—would use chemical weapons at a time held sway against the rebels.
“From our viewpoint, it seems absolutely absurd that the armed forces, the regular armed forces, which are on the offensive today and in some areas have encircled the so-called rebels and are finishing them off, that in these conditions they would start using forbidden chemical weapons while realizing quite well that it could serve as a pretext for applying sanctions against them, including the use of force,” he said.
The Obama administration says 1,429 people died in the Aug. 21 attack in a Damascus suburb. Casualty estimates by other groups are far lower, and Mr. Assad’s government blames the episode on rebels trying to overthrow him. A U.N. inspection team is awaiting lab results on tissue and soil samples it collected while in Syria before completing a report.
“If there are data that the chemical weapons have been used, and used specifically by the regular army, this evidence should be submitted to the U.N. Security Council,” added Mr. Putin, a former officer in the Soviet KGB. “And it ought to be convincing. It shouldn’t be based on some rumors and information obtained by special services through some kind of eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that.”
He noted that even in the U.S., “there are experts who believe that the evidence presented by the administration doesn’t look convincing, and they don’t exclude the possibility that the opposition conducted a premeditated provocative action trying to give their sponsors a pretext for military intervention.”
He compared the evidence presented by Washington to false data used by the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“All these arguments turned out to be untenable, but they were used to launch a military action, which many in the U.S. called a mistake. Did we forget about that?” Mr. Putin said.
He said he “doesn’t exclude” backing the use of force against Syria at the United Nations if there is objective evidence proving that the Assad regime used chemical weapons against its people. But he strongly warned Washington against launching military action without U.N. approval, saying it would represent an aggression.
Mr. Putin reinforced his demand that before taking action, Mr. Obama needs approval from the U.N. Security Council. Russia can veto resolutions in the council and has protected Syria from punitive actions there before.
Asked what kind of evidence on chemical weapons use would convince Russia, Putin said “it should be a deep and specific probe containing evidence that would be obvious and prove beyond doubt who did it and what means were used.”
Mr. Putin said it was “too early” to talk about what Russia would do if the U.S. attacked Syria.
“We have our ideas about what we will do and how we will do it in case the situation develops toward the use of force or otherwise,” he said. “We have our plans.”
Mr. Putin called the S-300 air defense missile system “a very efficient weapon” and said that Russia had a contract for its delivery of the S-300s to Syria. “We have supplied some of the components, but the delivery hasn’t been completed. We have suspended it for now,” he said.
“But if we see that steps are taken that violate the existing international norms, we shall think how we should act in the future, in particular regarding supplies of such sensitive weapons to certain regions of the world,” he said.
The statement could be a veiled threat to revive a contract for the delivery of the S-300s to Iran, which Russia canceled a few years ago under strong U.S. and Israeli pressure.
Mr. Putin praised Mr. Obama as a frank and constructive negotiating partner and denied reports that he had taken personal offense at remarks by Mr. Obama comparing Mr. Putin’s body language to that of a slouching, bored student. Mr. Putin said appearances can be deceiving.
Mr. Putin also accused U.S. intelligence agencies of bungling efforts to apprehend Mr. Snowden, the National Security Agency leader, who is wanted in the U.S. on espionage charges. He said the U.S. could have allowed Mr. Snowden to go to a country where his security would not be guaranteed or intercepted him along the way, but instead pressured other countries not to accept him or even to allow a plane carrying him to cross their airspace. Russia has granted him temporary asylum.
Mr. Putin also gave the first official confirmation that Mr. Snowden had been in touch with Russian officials in Hong Kong before flying to Moscow on June 23, but said he didn’t learn that Mr. Snowden was on the flight until two hours before it arrived. Mr. Putin once again denied that Russia’s security services are working with Mr. Snowden, whose stay in Russia has been shrouded in secrecy.
On another topic, he denied at length charges that Russia has anti-gay policies, indicating that Mr. Obama was welcome to meet with gay and lesbian activists in Russia during his visit. He even said he might meet with a similar group himself if there is interest from the gay community in Russia.
Mr. Putin rejected the criticism of a Russian law banning gay propaganda that prompted some activists to call for the boycott of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, arguing that it wouldn’t infringe on the rights of gays.
He also said that athletes and activists would not be punished if they raise rainbow flags or paint their fingernails in rainbow colors at the Feb. 7-23 Olympics.
But he clearly has no intention of allowing a gay-pride parade or other such actions: Last month, Mr. Putin signed a decree banning all demonstrations and rallies in Sochi throughout the Winter Games.
As for the body language between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama that some have said suggested a difficult working relationship, the Russian president urged everyone to avoid jumping to conclusions.
“There are some gestures, of course, that you can only interpret one way, but no one has ever seen those kinds of gestures directed by Obama at me or by me at Obama, and I hope that never happens,” he said. “Everything else is fantasy.”
“The hysterical focus on Israel has blinded both Obama and Kerry on what really troubles the Middle East: Arab against Arab.”
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/sep/3/syria-allahs-war-mr-obama/
— So are we going to war or not? Yes, no, maybe seems to be the answer of the day and it is only Tuesday.
Unsteady is the hand that rocks this cradle, the United States.
President Obama has decided to let Congress do the talking on whether to go after Syria’s President Assad. But here too Obama is hedging his bets. He seeks congressional approval. If he gets a yes vote, so we hear, he will take action… or maybe not. So, as Hillary might say, “What difference does it make?”
Meanwhile, as Obama resolutely dithers, the entire world is on edge. Friends and foes, among them England, China and Russia, are on standby for late word from our Obama/Kerry leadership.
And Kerry does seem to be especially gung-ho for this. Kerry, the 1960s peacenik, suddenly wants blood. London has already spoken, and the answer is “hell no, we won’t go.”
Israel, always sitting on a ticking time bomb, is simply waiting to get hit. Assad has generously provided a blueprint for where the bombs will fall.
