National security briefing, December 20, 2014 Commentary and insight on U.S. national security.
This Week's Analysis:
#1 Reason enough to control our border
#2 Cheap shots while giving aid and comfort fto our enemies
#3 The homegrown terrorist is less homegrown than we imagine.
#4 Exactly what is this all about?
#1 - REASON ENOUGH TO CONTROL OUR BORDER
Analysts' commentary & insight: See U.S. Muslims formally ask Obama to block counter-terror training -- Obama capitulates to Nuclear Iran: Return of the Twelfth Imam now closer -- Stunning Report Reveals Alarming Iranian Recruitment Efforts in Central and South America. Our Islamist enemy is known to be operating inside our borders. Some of our elected officials generally does not yet recognize the threat, while others are complicit with a 5th Column inside the U.S. Fort Collins, Colorado police have asked local religious organizations to keep an eye out for suspicious behavior after a self-proclaimed “Islamist jihadist” threatened Mormons and Catholics “would be destroyed.” There is even New law 'allows Obama Disinformation & Indoctrination to take over all U.S. media.' All this while we are warned NEXT 9/11 COMING? IRANIAN 'DEATH SQUAD' HAS ALREADY INFILTRATED U.S.
Progressives (socialist/Marxist/communist) now operating within our White House, and well beyond, are acting as a "Fifth Column." In addition to the socialist agenda, Barack Hussein Obama and his administration are using the Islamist ideology headed by the Muslim Brotherhood to help unions, the Federal Reserve, and other organizations. Together their goal is to undermine & destroy America from within in order to help in the creation of a "one-world order."
The reason is a never ending quest for power and gain. We are watching sedition, sabotage and treason in action as they "march" through American institutions. Unless this is stopped it will ultimately end with their use of the sword used for the implementation of sharia law.
We also note that NumbersUSA said recently in a statement sent to all senators:
NumbersUSA will score a vote for the Cruz Point of Order on the constitutionality of the executive amnesty as a vote to stop this unlawful amnesty, and we will score a vote against the Point of Order as a vote for amnesty. The President of the United States does not have the authority to make, ignore, or alter Federal law, and yet that is exactly what President Obama has done with his unlawful amnesty. It is incumbent upon Congress to stand up for the Constitution and for American workers.
The CROmnibus funds an unconstitutional executive usurpation of legislative power. Every United States Senator should be outraged and should support the Cruz Point of Order. A ‘no’ vote on the Cruz point of order is a vote for unconstitutional amnesty.
Al Qaeda Terrorist Wanted by FBI Crossed Back and Forth Into U.S. From Mexico, Family Security Matters - by Judicial Watch
An Al Qaeda terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list for years crossed back and forth into the United States from Mexico to meet fellow militant Islamists in Texas and piloted an aircraft into the Cielo Dorado airfield in Anthony, New Mexico, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch.
The same Al Qaeda operative helped plan the 2009 bombing of talk-show superstar Oprah Winfrey's Chicago studios and the iconic Sears Tower (renamed Willis Tower), a story that Judicial Watch broke just last week. His name is Adnan G. El Shukrijumah (also known as "Javier Robles") and over the weekend he was killed in Pakistan, according to military officials in the Islamic republic.
In 2010 Shukrijumah was indicted in the Eastern District of New York for his role in a terrorist plot to attack targets in the United States-including New York City's subway system-and the United Kingdom, according the FBI. The plot against New York City's subway system was directed by senior Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, the FBI says, and was also directly related to a scheme by Al Qaeda plotters in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United States.
.... Despite being one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, Shukrijumah for years managed to slip in and out of the U.S. through the southern border to meet fellow militant Islamists-including Karakrah and Huerta-in the El Paso region, JW's law enforcement sources confirm. In fact, in March the most wanted terrorist piloted a private aircraft from Mexico into the airfield at Cielo Dorado in Anthony New Mexico, according to JW's high-level government sources....
Iranian commander: We have targets within America, The Daily Caller - Reza Kahlili (contributor)
A top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards boasted Saturday that his forces have plans in place to attack the United States from within, should the U.S. attack the Islamic Republic.
“America, with its strategic ignorance, does not have a full understanding of the power of the Islamic Republic,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said in a televised interview. “We have recognized America’s military strategy, and have arranged our abilities, and have identified centers in America [for attack] that will create a shock.”
Reports indicate that terrorist Hezbollah forces — allies of Iran — have infiltrated the U.S. and have mapped out targets.
“We will conduct such a blow in which they [America] will be destroyed from within,” Salami said.
This is the second warning by a high-ranking officer of the Guards in two weeks. The chief commander of the Guards, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Jafari, addressing Secretary of State John Kerry, said on Jan. 24 that a direct conflict with America is the “strongest dream of the faithful and revolutionary men around the world.”
Kerry had previously said that if Iran did not live up to the agreement reached in Geneva on its nuclear program, “all options are on the table.” ....
House funds Obama's amnesty; GOP Leaders vow to fight in 2015, NumbersUSA
The House of Representatives passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill on Thursday evening that would fully fund Pres. Obama's executive amnesty. The vote came after a 6-hour recess while Leaders from both parties tried to gather enough support to pass the measure and prevent a government shutdown. NumbersUSA will grade the vote as a vote for amnesty.
The bill passed 219-to-206 with 67 Republicans bucking their leadership and opposing the measure. 57 Democrats voted for the measure at the urging of Pres. Obama. Here's the full roll-call vote.
House Speaker John Boehner sent the following tweet moments after the bill passed, pledging to fight Obama's amnesty in the next Congress. However, without the leverage of a full spending bill, there's little GOP Leaders can do to force Obama to sign a bill defunding his amnesty....
#2 CHEAP SHOTS WHILE GIVING AID AND COMFORT TO OUR ENEMIES
Analysts' commentary & insight: Here is REAL Torture is sawing off the heads of live human beings with short blade knives. BTW, Judicial Watch – Docs Confirm Congress Approved EITs "As expected, evidence that Diane Feinstein and others in Congress like Nancy Pelosi that they were indeed briefed and signed off on interrogations for years despite blatant denials. Subsequently we know that the enhanced techniques were last used in December of 2007, long before Obama banned them in 2009.
It is just more and more stunning that Feinstein and the Democrats not only released the scathing report, one that now jeopardizes our future safety and security, they lied about it and twisted the facts. Why? Because they had a political vendetta to fulfill.
Once again, does anyone realize that videos and taped audio have been in existence for many years?"
Giving our enemies aid and comfort
by COLONEL KENNETH ALLARD (US ARMY, RET.)
Because our Founders understood very well what fates awaited them had the Revolution not ended in victory, Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution draws a crucial definition very narrowly: 'Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
This week, and by any reasonable measure, the lame-duck Democratic majority of the United States Senate gave our enemies aid and comfort. If you doubt that, then you haven't been paying attention to the outraged howls of the jihadis or the stern school-marm lectures delivered from the unlikeliest of places: Russia, China and even the UN's special rapporteur for human rights. Red Foxx was right: Life is hard but it's ever harder if you're stupid.
Meanwhile, our press establishments delivered holier-than-thou lectures that betrayed the double standards they learned in journalism school. Equally compelling: Their all-pervasive ignorance of war and history, particularly the already forgotten post-9/11 history.
An especially low point was reached when my former NBC News colleague Brian Williams interrogated another old friend, former CIA Director Michael Hayden. Mr. Williams had either the temerity or the lapsed judgment to ask how General Hayden would have felt if members of his family had received the same rough treatment being inflicted on prisoners held by the CIA while Hayden was its director. General Hayden restrained himself more effectively than I would have, replying calmly that none of his family was responsible for three thousand American deaths on 9/11.
Having known General Hayden for over a quarter-century, he has always set the standard for keeping his various chains of command exquisitely well-informed. As Director of the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency, and whether briefing his superiors in the White House or the select committees of Congress, it would have been his practice to keep precise and detailed records. Bottom lines: Who he briefed, When and about What, including copies of his briefing slides.
You see, all intelligence offices remember the Curse of Cassandra, the legendary prophetess of Troy gifted by the gods with second sight but also cursed when her prophecies were fated to be ignored or disbelieved. If for no other reason than self-preservation, information-age intelligence officers understand the value of having documentary back-up, accurate records being an essential insurance policy when historical memories fade. Or else, as was clearly the case this week, are re-interpreted for purely political reasons.
That truth is part of the reason why General Hayden, two of his predecessors and three of their deputies published a detailed rebuttal in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that the CIA interrogation program was legally vetted, operationally effective and explicitly authorized by the chain of command on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Democratic lame ducks such as Mark Udall and Carl Levin took a final opportunity to deliver their invective. Udall insisted that the CIA is "still lying" while Levin resurrected an old canard that President George W. Bush had consciously misled the nation during the run-up to the second Gulf War.
Actually, Senator Levin also knows a thing or two about misleading the public. As Rowan Scarborough reported in a Washington Times story in November, 2011, "The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is intervening with a Pentagon investigator to influence the final wording of a report that exonerates George W. Bush-era officials who gave war briefings to retired military TV and radio commentators." Senator Levin had been one of the Congressional Democrats who prompted that ill-advised investigation and simply could not tolerate being conclusively proven wrong. Thanks to Mr. Scarborough's courageous reporting, we know that a powerful Democratic senator tried his best to cook the books, the precise equivalent of jury-tampering.
Full disclosure: I was one of those military TV commentators who knew at first-hand that Scarborough's reporting was accurate, that my colleagues and I were innocent and Carl Levin was dead-wrong. So it is easy to recognize what General Hayden and his CIA colleagues are enduring at this very moment. The same enemies, the same lies, and the same ingratitude - gratuitously and shamelessly extended to patriots who placed their lives and reputations on the line in order to serve a sometimes forgetful nation.
By their deplorable conduct, the Senate Democrats not only aided our enemies but also undermined a tradition of bipartisan trust that has been the bedrock of intelligence oversight for more than a generation. Our recent elections have only begun the longer and more difficult process of putting things right.
Colonel Ken Allard is a widely known commentator on foreign policy and security issues. For more than a decade, he was a featured military analyst on NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC. That experience provided the backdrop for his most recent book, Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War.
The Feinstein Report Is Going to Cost Us
The so-called torture report is worthless as an investigation, but it’s valuable to our enemies.
Jihadists are still waging their war against the civilized world. Check that: Jihadists are currently winning their war against the civilized world. Thank Barack Obama, who fails to grasp the difference between being “the president who ends wars” and the president who retreats from wars, and thus surrenders while the enemy is on the rise.
What is the response of Senate sages to this predicament? Dianne Feinstein and her fellow Democrats saw it as the perfect time to savage the CIA, further burn America’s bridges with anti-terrorism allies, and hand jihadists a huge propaganda victory.
The Islamic State had a response, too: They beheaded four Christian children for refusing to renounce Jesus Christ.
You see where this is going, no?
The Democrats’ “torture” report is a gratuitous hit job — brought to you by the same party that, out of political calculation, aggressively undermined the American war effort in Iraq — only after voting to send our men and women into grave danger there, also out of political calculation.
To be sure, the report is a highly disturbing document. It graphically illustrates the severity of enhanced interrogation tactics used against a small group of top-tier terrorists — terrorists who were responsible for brutally murdering thousands of Americans and who, at the time of their capture, were actively plotting to kill thousands more.
Still, notwithstanding the revelation of a few new gory details, this is old news and its disclosure serves no useful purpose — it is just a settling of scores.
“Old news” is not used here in the familiar Clinton/Obama sense of acknowledging a few embarrassing scandal details on Friday night to pave the way for dismissing scandal coverage as stale by Monday morning. The CIA’s interrogation program happened over a decade ago. It was investigated by Justice Department prosecutors for years — and not once but twice. The second time, even Eric Holder, the hyper-politicized, hard-Left attorney general who had promised Obama’s base a “reckoning,” could not help but concede that the case against our intelligence agents should be dropped because the evidence was insufficient to warrant torture prosecutions.
As I have frequently argued here over the years, there is a world of difference between what is couched in political rhetoric as “torture,” a conversation stopper that the Left cavalierly applies to every instance of prisoner abuse, and the federal crime of torture, which has a strict legal definition and is a difficult offense to prove, precisely to ensure that torture is not trivialized. Not surprisingly, then, the fact that the interrogations investigation was terminated has never been regarded as a clean bill of health.
To the contrary, disclosure was made to the public, through congressional investigations as well as through the criminal probe, that the tactics used were troubling. The treatment of a bare fraction of the tens of thousands of detainees held for a time raised concerns about abuse — far less than the norm in previous wars. The abuses that did occur, however, became notorious. And they were not trivial. Indeed, two detainees died: one under suspicious circumstances in Iraq, another of hypothermia in Afghanistan.
But we’ve known this for years. In conjunction with the Left’s shameful “Bush lied, people died” Iraq war meme — along with the Bush administration’s peculiar decision not to defend itself from scurrilous allegations — the “torture” narrative helped propel Democrats to decisive victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Feinstein’s report similarly serves no useful purpose when it comes to the ostensible rationale for its release, namely: the quest to corroborate the strictly ideological — and demonstrably false — claim that coercive interrogation does not yield vital intelligence.
On this score, it is almost not worth pointing to the averments of current and former CIA directors and operatives that the techniques employed produced essential wartime intelligence. It is even tempting to omit mention of the fact that the 9/11 Commission Report — lauded by members of both parties as the definitive account of the 9/11 attacks and the foundation of American counterterrorism policy — is largely the product of intelligence culled from top terrorists subjected to waterboarding and other indignities.
These are time-wasting exercises because the Feinstein report, as a piece of government investigative work, is laughably incompetent — at least as much as a taxpayer can laugh at a $50 million political stunt. An investigation that, as Rich Lowry notes, neglects to interview a single participant in the relevant events is a fraud. There is no other word for it.
This one will cost us dearly — and I’m not just talking about the $50 mil. The allies we need to prosecute a global anti-terror campaign — the ones from whom Obama’s election was supposed to win us renewed respect and affection — despise us for what Senate Democrats have done. As someone who has been around the block as many times as Feinstein must be aware, the report embarrasses governments that cooperate with the United States and raises their vulnerability as terror targets.
And just as our allies are reminded that America is an unfaithful friend, so, too, have American national-security officials, intelligence agents, and warriors been given a cautionary lesson: If you take actions to protect the American people — in wartime, in the heat of the moment amid a palpably justified fear of mass-murder attacks after nearly 3,000 of your fellow citizens have been slaughtered — better prepare to be hounded as a war criminal for the succeeding decade or more.
Jihadists, meanwhile, will go on beheading teenagers and planning massive attacks.
It has been one thing to tell our ascendant enemies — in actions and omissions that speak louder than words — that we have no stomach to fight them where they must be fought: on the ground where, we know, given time and space, they plot to kill Americans. It is quite another thing to buoy them with the assurance that a major party in this country has a bottomless appetite to fight Americans whose major allegiance is to America.
— Andrew C. McCarthy is a policy fellow at the National Review Institute. His latest book is Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.
#3 - The homegrown terrorist is less homegrown than we imagine.
How to Fight the Lone Wolf
The lone wolf is the new national nightmare, dramatized and amplified this week by the hostage-taking attack in Sydney, Australia. But there are two kinds of lone wolves — the crazy and the evil — and the distinction is important.
The real terrorists are rational. Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, had been functioning as an Army doctor for years. Psychotics cannot carry that off. Hasan even had a business card listing his occupation as S of A (Soldier of Allah). He then went out and, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” shot dead 13 fellow soldiers. To this day, Hasan speaks coherently and proudly of the massacre. That’s terrorism.
Sydney’s Man Haron Monis, on the other hand, was a marginal, alienated Iranian immigrant with a cauldron of psychopathologies. Described by his own former lawyer as “unhinged,” Monis was increasingly paranoid. He’d been charged as accessory to the murder of his ex-wife and convicted of sending threatening letters to the families of dead Australian soldiers.
His religiosity was both fanatical and confused. A Shiite recently converted to Sunni Islam, his Internet postings showed not just the zeal of the convert but a remarkable ignorance of Islam and Islamism. He even brought the wrong Islamic banner to the attack. He had to ask the authorities to provide him with an Islamic State flag.
Which led to a frantic search to find an Islamic State connection or conspiracy. But for the disturbed like Monis, the terror group does not provide instructions, it provides a script. It offers the disoriented and deranged a context, a purpose, a chance even at heroism.
I suspect this is the case with most of the recent cluster of lone-wolf terrorist incidents, from the beheading of a fellow worker in Oklahoma to the Queens ax attack on New York City police. We fear these attackers because the psychopathological raw material is everywhere, in the interstices of every society. Normally in and out of mental hospitals, in and out of homelessness, some are now redirected to find a twisted redemption in terror.
Nonetheless, in the scheme of things, the crazies are limited in what they can carry out. They are too disorganized to do more than localized, small-scale damage. The larger danger is the Major Hasan with his mental faculties intact and his purpose unwavering.
The still greater threat is organized terror, as we were reminded just hours after Sydney by the Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar that killed at least 148, mostly children.
This is evil in its purest form. Consider that many of the children were killed not by explosive device or sprayed gunfire but by a single bullet to the head, the point-blank execution of an innocent, rivaling in sheer barbarism the mass murders of the Islamic State and its proud videotaped beheadings of hostages.
The purity of such evil is clarifying. It banishes thoughts of negotiation or compromise. Indeed, in response to the Peshawar atrocity, the Pakistani Prime Minister suspended his country’s prohibition of the death penalty.
In the face of similar savagery, Barack Obama committed the U.S. to a military campaign against the Islamic State. Which, if successful, would not just affect the region. Reversing the fortunes of the terror masters abroad is the key to diminishing the lone-wolf threat at home.
These groups inspire and influence because of their prestige, which, as for most messianic movements, depends on their successes — measured in growing power, territorial conquest, and persuasive propaganda.
You don’t find many local terrorists invoking al-Qaeda nowadays. They fly the flag of the Islamic State. It is the strong horse, on the rise.
The first line of defense against lone wolves is, of course, protective measures: identification, tracking, and preemption. But given the sheer number of the disturbed, unstable, and potentially impressionable among us, and given the strictures that civil liberties have placed on prior restraint, that defensive posture can take us only so far.
The Islamic State has discovered that the projection of terror does not depend, al-Qaeda–style, on sending expeditionary cells to kill infidels abroad. It can do so long-distance by inspiration, by wire, as it were. Which is why the ultimate line of defense against lone wolves is to turn the fortunes of the warrior tribes themselves, the script writers of jihad.
The great new specter is the homegrown terrorist. But he is less homegrown than we imagine. He is fed from abroad. Which is where, as ever since 9/11, the battle must be fought.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2014 The Washington Post Writers Group
#4 - EXACTLY WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?
Analysts' commentary & insight: This is modern-day highway robbery that most Americans don't know they are paying.
A gasoline tax map that explains a lot at Exxon Mobile Perspectives by Ken Cohan (Feb 7, 2014)
In last week’s post about ExxonMobil’s 2013 earnings, I noted that we earned about 5.5 cents for every gallon of gasoline and other petroleum products we refined, shipped, and sold in the United States.
Consider this: The federal and state and local governments collected 40 to 60 cents per gallon in taxes.
The American Petroleum Institute just updated their map showing the combined local, state and federal tax rate in each state as of Jan. 1, when new taxes took effect.
The federal gasoline tax is the same from coast-to-coast –18.4 cents a gallon – which means any variations have been implemented by state and local governments.
The highest gasoline tax in the country is in California, where it now exceeds 70 cents a gallon. Combined with California-specific fuel-blending regulations that drive up refining costs, these taxes help make Golden State gasoline prices the most expensive in the country.
Several other states, such as New York, Connecticut, and Hawaii, are close to California in terms of the fuel-tax burden their residents bear, though none has yet joined in crossing the 70-cent-per-gallon threshold.
I encourage you to study API’s map (click the graphic above to enlarge), or dig into its interactive version for state-and-local-level specifics.
Analysts' commentary & insight: With the massive omnibus spending bill just passed the Republican leadership betrayed everything they claimed the bill would do to stop Obama care and the Obama's illegal amnesty by decree.The Republican compromise bill has a whopping 512 billion for defense spending and 492 billion for social welfare and foreign aid. But did you know the main reason these omnibus spending bills contain so many special provisions for states and special-interest is that the sponsors have to promise something for each of the politicians they need to bring on board to form a majority.
Most of this that I'm pointing out here would not be an issue if Congress were to adhere strictly to the U.S. Constitution. Under such circumstances, the government would never be permitted to spend for social welfareand other wealth distribution schemes. Among other things here is what the bill does.
What is not being pointed out is that a continuing resolution does just that -- it continues existing programs without change, which will allow Republican leader John Boehner to secretly continue funding Obama care, despite claiming to fight it.
-- The bill adds $64 billion to combat the rise of the Islamic state underfund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq [money under the same guys went to fund ISIS. Anyone who thinks the US is funding any benign Syrian rebels are kidding themselves]
--The bill adds $5.4 billion To deal with the Ebola outbreak domestically and overseas. If that same kind of money was really going to the victims, they would each have more than $1 million to spend on their individual treatment.
-- The bill adds $260 million for the Central American regional initiative to support Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador supposedly to provide for children in their countries and discourage migration to the United States.
-- The bill adds $14 million in education grants to help states with the highest levels of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children. With this the federal government hopes to relieve some of the financial pressure, as the administration dampens down the protest from schools within the impacted states.
-- The big banks and major establishment political donors. It allows individuals to give the Democrats and Republican congressional campaign committees far more than now permitted for Rick recounts and other legal initiatives and the same amount for each committees building fund. This would be in addition to the current $32,400 limit.As a result of this omnibus bill taxpayers now are on the hook for losses caused by risky derivative contracts. Talking about $303 trillion in US derivatives [just the top 25 US holding companies alone] the entire system will eventually collapse all over again without another multitrillion dollar taxpayer bailout. Just to provide some perspective the US gross domestic product, or the sum total of all goods and services produced by the economy is only $16 trillion. So if banks need another ale out again where is the money coming from? This has the potential of destroying the American economy if not the global economy.
-- Among the provisions causing the biggest error was a potentially significant change in the Dodd Frank financial regulatory overhaul, reportedly pushed by Citigroup. The bill will give larger banks more freedom over their derivative business, loosening controls put on after the 2008 financial crash. [The key controversy here is that the big banks want to do speculative buying of derivatives with depositor funds that are protected by the FDIC insurance. This puts the US taxpayer at risk for their reckless behavior. This is another benefit or big bank profits.]
-- And finally, as the Washington Post reports, there is a provision allowing certain types of pensions to start reducing benefits in order to stay solvent.
The major Republican betrayal in this spending bill is found and what it doesn't do: (1) it doesn't block any of the president's executive action on immigration and (2) the deal doesn't rollback any major portions of Obama care since it continues funding at the current level, for exquisite detail of this betrayal see the The American Thinker.
If there was any doubt the globalists behind Obama (as well is the Republican leaders) are trying to destroy this nation and its culture, the very abbreviated litany of betrayals provided above should erase any at any doubts. Still it's nothing compared to the damage on America that the global war would unleash someday as the globalist finally cement their will in the place.
Title with URL & author
