Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Syria – The Tipping Point Into Hell
By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton - the NoisyRoom
Ask yourself, what happens if we intervene in Syria? Nothing good will come of it. As the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine raises its rough countenance and swivels its sights towards Syria, America should pause and consider where this road leads. Straight to a world war drawing in Iran, Russia and China, courtesy of the Obama administration and its thuggish goons.
I have no love for the Ayatollahs and the whack jobs that rule Iran. War with them is almost a foregone conclusion, primarily because we never had the backbone to take out their nuclear ambitions or smack them for their terrorist forays. That confrontation is coming and will rock the world. However, sticking our nose into Syria as we did in Libya, will poke the badger, so to speak. You won’t free Syria from a tyrant, you’ll solidify Islamic radicalism and embolden it. Iran will not let it go, they are vested in Syria and will step in to dance with us almost immediately. Russia is using Iran for all they are worth and will back them in conflict, as will the Chinese. That’s your formula for the war to end all wars, considering how Obama and Panetta have neutered a great deal of our military muscle. It will also get many Christians slaughtered in Syria, but our Marxist-in-Chief cares little about that I would wager.
Think of Russia as the Mob and Iran as one of their enforcers. Russia is angling for control in the Middle East and Europe. You would not want to play Risk with these guys, trust me. They will let the Islamic extremists do their dirty work by invading, warring and wiping Israel off the map. When Russia is done with them, they will attempt to put the Islamists down. Who will win? Well, Russia has might, but Iran has insane religious fervor. They are willing to take everyone out to win. My money is on the Jihadists, but that roll of the dice is anyone’s guess. Let’s pray it never gets that far, but it sure looks like it’s progressing in that direction. I suspect in the end, the Chinese will be there to claim whatever is left, if anything is.
So, why would we stick our nose once again where it does not belong? Power, control and delusion. The Progressives always believe they will come out on top and in control. But they are not the biggest dog in this fight and they will get the crap kicked out of them by the big boys in Russia, Iran and China. And there are no do-overs in this game.
I understand Syria is murdering their own. That is evil and heinous, but nothing we do will change Islamic rule there. Either Iran will win or the Muslim Brotherhood will. Both are horrific and both are very bad for us. Both sides of that coin are our enemies, make no mistake about it. Pushing the so-called Arab Spring there is just enough to really stir the war pot.
Obama’s actions massively pushed forward the worldwide Caliphate agenda. Should a Caliphate emerge, Christian and Jewish blood will be all over Obama’s hands. He won’t care. In a White House that bans Christians and enables the Muslim Brotherhood, his agenda is pretty damn clear.
R2P in Syria would set off a powder keg, ushering in war. The Obama administration knows this and they may see it as a tool to help get Obama reelected. It’s just the right kind of emergency that slays numerous dragons at once, bolstering election time patriotism to help reelect a beleaguered president and to abridge Constitutional rights even more than they already have been.
It is unlikely that the US will directly confront Syria. It is more likely that, as in Libya, we will drop bombs and encourage the locals. It’s a classic R2P template, but it will inflame the situation even more. Remember how the Arab Spring has now brought the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt. It did not improve freedom or the lives of the people living there. Nope – Christians are being slaughtered, people are starving and the religious fanatics are cracking down on everyone. Wow, that really worked well, huh?
And as our leaders here in the US blithely pass legislation that will allow the indefinite detention of American citizens on American soil (such a breathtaking violation of the Constitution, I can’t even begin to fathom it), it is clear this administration is intent on waging war abroad and at home to further Progressive agendas. Yes, we finished pulling out of Iraq yesterday. Now there is another power vacuum for Iran to fill, increasing their reach and power even more. We’ve also gifted Iran with one of our drones. Well done. We don’t need enemies without, we have plenty within. Egypt suffered from the same affliction.
I believe that Syria is the tipping point into hell. R2P should not be used there and we should stay out of it, period. The Assad regime has been called a ‘dead man walking‘ by numerous parties recently. Let’s not zombify the situation.
You’d think after a decade of pointless waltzes in the Middle East, we would be disabused of that romance. Having not the stomach for real war (the breaking of things and the killing of enemies), we delude ourselves into the belief that war is something other than hell. Perhaps, somewhere in the Ninth Circle, we’ll finally get the point. Well past the tipping point.
Pelted by Raining Fire in Dante’s Seventh Circle Hell
Related:
Alarming Rise of Muslim ‘Honor Attacks’ in the UK as Police Admit that Thousands Were Carried Out Last Year - Perhaps Ron Paul needs to check some of the facts?!? Just sayin’… (Ron Paul on Bachmann: She Hates Muslims)
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Has the War with Iran Already Begun?
The evidence of an extensive Western covert program against Tehran, and Iranian retaliation, is now too obvious to ignore
Updated: December 4, 2011 | 5:18 p.m.
December 4, 2011 | 2:19 p.m.
UPI/Maryam Rahmanian - Iranian soldiers march during the annual military parade on September 22, 2011 in front of the mausoleum of the Iran's late leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran,Iran. The parade marks the beginning of the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq.
Two incidents that occurred on Sunday—Iran’s claim of a shoot-down of a U.S. drone, and an explosion outside the British embassy in Bahrain—may have been unrelated. But they appear to add to growing evidence that an escalating covert war by the West is under way against Iran, and that Tehran is retaliating with greater intensity than ever.
Asked whether the United States, in cooperation with Israel, was now engaged in a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program that may include the Stuxnet virus, the blowing-up of facilities and the assassination or kidnapping of scientists, one recently retired U.S. official privy to up-to-date intelligence would not deny it.
“It’s safe to say the Israelis are very active,” the official said, adding about U.S. efforts: “Everything that [GOP presidential candidate] Mitt Romney said we should be doing—tough sanctions, covert action and pressuring the international community -- are all of the things we are actually doing.” Though the activities are classified, a senior Obama administration official also would not deny that such a program was under way. He indicated that the U.S. was not involved in every action, referring to recent alleged explosions at Isfahan and elsewhere. But, he added: “I wouldn’t assume that everything we do is coordinated."
Former undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who oversaw America’s Iran engagement during the Bush administration, asked Sunday about reports that the U.S. program began under George W. Bush, said he could not comment on intelligence matters.
In September, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, accused Great Britain, Israel and the U.S. of conducting attacks on him and other Iranian scientists."Six years ago the intelligence service of the UK began collecting information and data regarding my past, my family, the number of children," Abbasi-Davani told a news conference at the annual conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Abbasi-Davani, who was said to have been wounded in 2010 car bomb explosion, said the attacks were carried out by Israel with the "support of the intelligence services of the United States and England."
Last week, Iranian protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Dominick Chilcott, Britain's ambassador to Iran, later said the attack occurred "with the acquiescence and the support of the state." Then, on Sunday, Bahrain's interior ministry announced that an explosion occurred inside a minibus parked near the British Embassy. There were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.
U.S. officials alleged in October that agents acting for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which has increasingly exerted control over the Tehran regime, were involved in a plot to kill that Saudi ambassador to Washington in a restaurant. Iran denied the allegations. Then, on Sunday, in what have been another escalation, Iran’s news agency reported that Iranian armed forces shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that illegally crossed the country's eastern border.
Responding to the Iranian report, NATO command in Afghanistan released a terse statement Sunday: "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status."
The White House declined to comment but officials did not seem unduly alarmed, suggesting that the drone's capture would not provide Iran with significant information about U.S. surveillance technology and techniques.
Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council in Washington, said the tit-for-tat incidents “add up to a very worrisome picture,” in part because “the Iranians are absorbing all of these assassinations without seeing the pace of their nuclear program slow down to the extent it would be acceptable to the West.” But if Iranian retaliations grow serious enough, he said, they could provide “the pretext for a much larger war” in which the Israelis, and possibly the Americans, launch a full attack on Iran.
Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment in Germany, says the intensity of the covert war indicates that this is where the U.S. and Israel are putting their energy for now. “If the U.S. or Israel were determined to take Iran’s nuclear installations out they wouldn’t be wasting time pinpointing individual scientists like this,” he says. Still, he points out, that Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor was also preceded by assassination attempts on Iraqi scientists.
By accident or not, it’s entirely possible the covert war could escalate into a real one, experts say. “I am less enthusiastic about how effective all this going to be than some people in the administration,” says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear investigator at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Bunn says he has occasionally discussed the program with the Obama administration officials, and “some have broadly suggested they think this is major element of slowing down Iranian progress.”
He’s not so sure. “Take Stuxnet. It’s possible that a thousand centrifuges went down” because of sabotage by the mystery computer virus _ a super sophisticated program said to have caused substantial parts of Iran's uranium enrichment program to self-destruct several years ago. “But Iran has a thousand more than they would require to enrich to highly enriched uranium” needed for a bomb. Bunn also notes that Iran is increasingly keeping its key scientists such as Mohsen Fakrizadeh, said to be the “Oppenheimer” of the Iranian program, hidden away from sight and burying its facilities deeper underground.
Beyond that, says Hibbs, “Some of the concern in the expert community is that in going this route we’re unleashing forces we cannot control.”
Source: The National Journal
Friday, May 1, 2009
On Torture And War Criminals
Jon Stewart says Truman was a ‘War Criminal’ because he ordered the use of the atomic bomb against Japan. Forget that it saved hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who didn’t have to die during a land invasion of Japan. America killed it’s enemies, and now that’s wrong. Apparently...
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
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As Allah notes, “Behold the face of mindless anti-torture absolutism." Like what you see?
For the record, during the debates, both Obama and Hillary listed Truman as among their most admired Presidents. Who knew that Obama condoned war crimes?
But now that Obama and the liberal Democratic Congress have opened the door to the notion that like a Banana Republic the United States should retroactively judge and prosecute former leaders and administrations instead of being the shining example that we have always been of the smooth and perfect transfer of power after a civilized election… people like Jon Stewart think it is acceptable to judge and disparage a former wartime president that has always been praised by his peers and for generations since, for his courage and decisiveness at a time when we needed it.
These types of statements and behavior and what they lead to is only the beginning of the drama caused by the release of the Top Secret classified CIA memos:
Cliff May was a guest on the Daily Show and posed a series of interesting questions to host Jon Stewart regarding interrogation, war and war crimes. It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse.
Stewart repeats the charge again later in the interview, but you have to wonder whether this was one of the rare times that he just got outmaneuvered on his own show. Serious people have debated Truman's decision for 60 years, but even those who disagree with that decision rarely describe it as "criminal." And if it was criminal, whatever crimes the left alleges of President Bush seem pretty trivial in comparison.
See Video: Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2
“Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved by averting a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands, and all ‘this tool’ can do is point a finger and mumble ‘yes’ in response to whether Truman’s a war criminal or not.”
As always, it is hard to tell whether Stewart's clown nose is off or on, but it appeared to be off at that moment -- that is, he was giving a serious answer, not one intended to get laughs.
The rapid end to the War in the Pacific was a blessing to many Americans.
I don't believe that President Truman was a "war criminal" and the rapid end to the War in the Pacific was a blessing to many Americans. You can bet that neither Jon Stewart’s mindless comment nor the clip will make it to the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.
Torture? No. Except...
WASHINGTON -- Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. We know we must act but have no idea where or how -- and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.
Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding.
Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."
Michael Hayden, CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 ... fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.
Asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened." Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.
Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a Washington Post report that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."
Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.
On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."
But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."
On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."
More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.
By: Charles Krauthammer - a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.
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