Reactions to Obama’s Cairo Speech

Click to Follow Link: Krauthammer on Obama Address: ‘Abstract, Vapid, and Self-Absorbed’

 

 

 

 

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From GlennBeck.com site:

President Barack Obama spoke to Muslims throughout Egypt as part of his U.S. apology tour (part 2) and said that tension

"has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations."

His speech was apparently somewhat well received by Muslims -- but he didn't quite capture the hearts of Hamas:

“There is a change between the speech of President Obama and previous speeches made by George Bush,’ said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza. But he complained that Obama did not specifically note the suffering in Gaza following the three-week Israeli incursion earlier this year and did not apologize for U.S. military attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Keep sucking up, Mr. President! It'll be so neat to be friends with Hamas! ( STORY)

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James S Robbins – “There really was nothing much new in Obama's speech today. Bush said most of it before.”

Click to Follow Link: EDITORIAL: Obama in Cairo - Washington Times

Source: www.washingtontimes.com

Respect is a two-way street. Recent polls suggest that about half of Americans hold negative views of Islam, and this is not merely blind bigotry.

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London Tribune – “If Al-Quida wants to destroy the United States, they better hurry up before Obama does it for them.”

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Miami Herald link to Story - Reactions to Obama's speech range from pride to concern to disappointment

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PRI’s The World link  - Lebanese reaction to President Obama's Cairo speech

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Michelle Malkin Blog - Rainbows and unicorns and a world without the j-word

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Wall Street Journal Online - Obama Speech Gets Solid Reaction World-Wide

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thestar.com - Reaction in Israel ranges from relief to outrage

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israel.jpost.com - J'lem warily applauds Obama's speech (publically)

AP

Do we hope President Obama’s speech is effective… absolutely!!  But we would say, “Don’t start singing Kumbia yet…”

Below Are Some General Comments Gathered from Individuals:

• A very mixed message
• Obama is working through his own personal issues at the expense of the United States
• sounds good, but the usual smoke and mirrors
• no actual meat
• is he still in college?
• how can he hang Israel out to dry as he did?
• is he going to support the women whose hopes he has stirred?
• a fool and his ideals!
• weakness weakness weakness…
• how naive is he?
• dreamer
• horrible moral equivalences drawn throughout his speech~
• easy applause getter… attack the United States and Israel!
• stop apologizing for the United States
• the only reason there hasn’t been a WWIII is nuclear weapons and their threat controlled by the major powers
• what kind of fool would believe Iran will only use nuclear power for energy?
• he really is a fool!
• maybe he is running for president of the whole Muslim world?
• the Arab World respects strength… not weakness and apologies
• who can trust someone that continually apologizes for their own country?
• who is going to pay for all his big ideas?
• great speech if you live in Fantasyland
• many promises; too few solutions
• philosophical disaster for U.S.
• typical Obama lawyer crap… trying to show “empathy”  without really understanding history, that he always misquotes!
• Too many important serious issues missed and left out
• in the end, it is all about him… not the United States!!!
• So focused on himself… and never mentioned Anwar Sadat
• perhaps it is a step toward a new beginning?
• The Hebrew scriptures and the Christian New Testament contain prophecies about the end of the world indicating that many nations will surround Israel and threaten its extinction but will not prevail. The Messiah will come and utterly destroy them. The Bible is clear that God has chosen to deal with the world (both bane and blessing) through Israel. Any nation that does not stand with Israel does not continue in God's blessing. Obama's attitude, statements, and actions are imperiling the security of this nation and dishonoring our Judeo-Christian heritage by placing us in opposition to God.

President Obama Addresses Muslim World in Cairo Speech Transcript - Washington Post

Posted:  Daily Thought Pad

WHAT'S KEEPING OBAMA UP? - THE ULTIMATE REALIZATION THAT THE CURE WAS WORSE THAN THE DISEASE

The Rasmussen poll conducted over the weekend of May 30-31 asked a key question designed to give us perspective on Obama's current popularity. The question was whether the current problems "are due to the recession that began under the Bush administration or to the policies Obama has put in place since taking office." In other words, who's to blame, Bush or Obama?

(For now) By 62-27, voters say Bush is still the culprit.

As long as this opinion remains prevalent, Obama will continue to enjoy high popularity. But when it changes, as it inevitably must, we will see him begin a long, long fall.

And this is the key measurement to watch.

The real recession -- dating from the stock market collapse -- began four months before Bush left office. And it is now four months since Obama was inaugurated. From this vantage, it still looks to voters like Bush's recession.

But it will become increasingly obvious that the large deficit Obama has incurred while pursuing his cure for the recession is, on its own, causing more problems than it solves. As high interest rates and, most likely, inflation, begin to set in -- with no relief in unemployment -- it will be obvious that Obamanomics isn't working and is, in fact, aggravating the economic trouble.

Obama, recognizing the danger, has recently begun to speak out -- without even cracking a guilty smile -- against the huge budget deficit he created. He is trying to blame the deficit, too, on Bush. But voters will not overlook the huge spending sprees of January and February, when Obama quadrupled the 2009 deficit. They will come to see that spending as a huge mistake and will shift their blame to the new president who proposed it.

Obama now faces a choice of poisons.

He can leave taxes as they are and take the poison of high interest rates, rapid inflation and a new recession, all caused by the massive borrowing he has forced on the Treasury. If the Treasury cannot sell enough bonds at a reasonable interest rate, it will, of course "monetize the deficit" -- economics-speak for printing money so that there will be enough to buy the Treasury debt at moderate interest rates. But the process of so vastly expanding the money supply (or even just leaving the current expansion in place without trying to soak up the extra money) will cause its own runaway inflation.

Or Obama can break his pledge and raise taxes on everybody. His soak-the-rich approach will not be enough to cover the deficit. Especially when one factors in his healthcare proposals, big tax increases on the middle class become an increasing likelihood. And when we consider his cap-and-trade legislation, huge increases in utility rates also loom.

Either poison will make it clear that the economy is suffering from the medicine Obama administered, rather than the original disease that started under Bush.
And, of course, while we cannot predict precisely the start date of the Obama-generated misery, it's pretty clear that it will be a long-lasting pain. Neither inflation nor the pain of higher taxes is going to go away soon. And either approach will probably kindle a new recession.

Some economists think we will have an L-shaped recession from which we do not emerge for years and years. Others think it will be a W-shaped recession (not Bush's W) in which we emerge briefly and then go back down again. But a U-shaped recession, in which we go down and then come bouncing back, probably cannot happen with Obama's deficits now firmly in place. Then it will become clear that the cure was worse than the disease.

By: DickMorris – Dick’s new book: Catastrophe

Thought For The Day - 09.12.08

“To Remember Is To Honor!” 

…Family Member of a 911 Victim

 The Victims of 911 Were Remembered and Honored All Over the United States as Well As in Countries All Over The World Yesterday.

  Pentagon Memorial Dedicated on 09.11.08

The Pentagon Memorial was dedicated and opened to the public today on September 11, 2008. President George W. Bush called the memorial "an everlasting tribute to the 184 souls who perished." Over 20,000 people attended the dedication ceremony, including past Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. It was opened to the public at 7:00 p.m. in a separate ceremony with a music performance by the Navy Band and the Sea Chanters Chorus.

As a part of the Pentagon military reservation, law enforcement there is under the jurisdiction of the United States Pentagon Police.

The Secret to Why We Have Not Been Attacked

The biggest secret in American political life is why we have not had another terrorist attack since 9/11.

The media and liberal politicians will tell you it’s an accident or a matter of luck. They are wrong.

Terrorists haven’t attacked during the past seven years because of the work of the FBI, the CIA, and our military, as well as the sweeping changes President Bush instigated in the intelligence community.

When Bush proclaimed that any country harboring a terrorist would be considered a terrorist country, Arab countries began cooperating in the war on terror, turning over thousands of terrorists and leads.

He also made the FBI become more prevention-oriented. Although the bureau’s mission always included stopping terrorist plots, and it often did so, it usually closed the case when it got the bad guys, as it did in the first World Trade Center bombing. Now every case becomes the basis to develop new sources, and these informants may be run out for years to infiltrate terrorist groups.

As FBI official Art Cummings told me for my book “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack,” “Pre-9/11, the first consideration was, I got an indictment in my pocket. ... Slap it down on the table, pick the guy up, you throw him on an airplane. You bring him home, you put him in jail, and you go, ‘Okay, I’ve done a great job today.’”

If that were to happen today, “I would have told my agents they basically just put Americans more in jeopardy rather than less in jeopardy. It’s a completely different approach and bears little resemblance to the previous one,” says Cummings, who heads the FBI’s international counterterrorism operations.

Now, Cummings tells agents, “Your objective is not to make the arrest. Your objective is to make that suspect our collection platform. That guy now is going to tell us just how big and broad the threat might be. He now becomes a means to collection, instead of the target of collection. I want you to understand his entire universe.”

The media will tell you that the FBI and CIA still don’t talk to each other. But in 2005, Bush established the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va., where 200 analysts from the CIA and FBI sit side by side analyzing threats 24 hours a day. Secure video conferences three times a day include representatives from all parts of the intelligence community and the White House analyzing threats and parceling out leads.

Bush’s Patriot Act tore down the so-called wall that Attorney General Janet Reno imposed, a wall that prevented FBI agents from sharing information with each other and with the CIA. The act, although maligned in the media, allowed the FBI to wiretap terrorists, regardless of what phones they happen to use, as the FBI could in organized crime cases.

The National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts that Bush ordered also opened a window for the FBI on terrorist activity within the U.S.

Since 9/11, the FBI, the CIA, and the military have rolled up about 5,000 terrorists worldwide. Every few months, the FBI announces new arrests of terrorists. Thus, many plots are never hatched because terrorists have been killed, arrested, or sent back to their own countries and imprisoned.

Instead of hailing the efforts to connect the dots, the media demonize those who are trying to protect us, portraying the tools that uncover clues to plots as “spying on innocent Americans.” When a plot is quashed, the media minimize it.

In June 2007, when the FBI foiled a plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, The New York Times buried the story. In the dream world of the Times editors, such threats to America are less important than the fact that 75-year-old Andrea Mosconi’s job is to play violins in a museum in Italy to keep them in shape, a feature the Times played on page one the same day.

The media have even managed to portray Saddam Hussein as benign. But as revealed in “The Terrorist Watch,” during seven months of secret debriefings, Hussein admitted to FBI agent George Piro that he had planned to resume his weapons of mass destruction program, including developing nuclear weapons, within a year.

Many in the media could not bear to hear that Bush might have done something right in removing Hussein. Few newspapers reported the story.

When the media and politicians run out of ways to deny Bush credit for making us safer, they will claim that al-Qaida has chosen to space out its attacks. But al-Qaida’s attempt to blow up nine American airliners crossing the Atlantic in 2006 and the alleged role of an al-Qaida affiliate in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto are reminders that al-Qaida is constantly on the attack.

While the media underplay the threats, distort descriptions of the measures needed to uncover the next plot, and mischaracterize the progress in the war on terror, they also undermine it by revealing secrets of how the FBI and CIA are trying to stop the next attack.

Without a reliable way to get information about this secret war, Americans are at the mercy of the media’s slanted portrayal. Yet, we face a critical choice in the 2008 presidential election: Given that al-Qaida is intent on wiping out the U.S. with nuclear weapons, as FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has told me, do we continue on the offense, dealing with threats before they materialize, or do we return to the pre-9/11 approach?

Back then, because of politically correct rules the Clinton administration imposed, FBI agents were not allowed to follow suspects into mosques that are open to the public. CIA officers had to get special permission to recruit sources with so-called human rights violations. FBI agents could not look at public online chat rooms to develop leads on people who might be recruiting terrorists or distributing information on making explosives, even though any 12-year-old could go on them.

Sen. Barack Obama has made it clear that, if he were elected president, he would roll back the clock and take away tools necessary not only to connect the dots but also to find them in the first place. In fact, he twice voted against — and eventually voted for — revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow the NSA to continue to monitor foreign terrorists’ calls without a warrant, even if all parties are foreigners situated overseas.

Like a Rip Van Winkle who is unaware of recent history, Obama has cited the government’s prosecution of those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as the correct way to deal with terrorism.

Apparently, Obama missed learning that the 9/11 hijackers wanted to be martyrs and were prepared to be jailed or killed. No threat of prosecution would have deterred them.

When the Rev. Rick Warren asked Obama whether evil exists, he said it does and named three examples, none of them the biggest threat to our safety.

In contrast, Sen. John McCain cited al-Qaida as evil, declaring, “And we must totally defeat it.”

In this election, the choice is clear: Do we continue to protect ourselves, our families, and our country with an aggressive approach? Or, blinded by media distortions, do we leave ourselves wide open to more attacks as Obama weakens our national security?

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.

Also author of:  “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack”

© 2008 Newsmax.

Bush to Shift Troops To Afghanistan From Iraq

THE FIGHT FOR IRAQ

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush will announce Tuesday a gradual redeployment of U.S. military personnel from Iraq to increasingly violent Afghanistan, with as many as 4,500 new troops slated to deploy to Afghanistan by January.

The additional forces will be charged with defeating the resurgent Taliban and protecting the Afghan populace. The troop increases in Afghanistan will be accompanied by the withdrawal of approximately 8,000 military personnel from Iraq by February. Additional troops may leave Iraq in early 2009 if "the progress in Iraq continues to hold," according to an advance copy of a speech Mr. Bush will deliver at Washington, D.C.'s Fort McNair Tuesday morning.

The planned changes represent an attempt to preserve Iraq's recent gains while freeing up modest numbers of additional forces for Afghanistan. Senior U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have said they need at least three additional combat brigades, or 10,500 to 12,000 more troops. The plan being announced by Mr. Bush would meet less than half of that request.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters Monday that Mr. Bush hoped to "cement" Iraq's gains while finding more troops for Afghanistan.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Mr. Bush's decision was an endorsement of a recommendation late last week from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In Iraq and Afghanistan the changing dynamics in the two war zones are a cause of concern -- and sometimes sharp disagreements -- for senior American commanders. Iraq's once-unrelenting violence has subsided markedly in recent months, with the numbers of attacks now down to levels not seen since 2004. In August, 23 U.S. troops died in Iraq, one of the lowest monthly tallies since the 2003 invasion.

FIGHT FOR IRAQ

• See continuing coverage of developments in Iraq, including an interactive map of day-to-day events in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, Taliban militants have stepped up their attacks on American and NATO forces across the country. In mid-August, insurgents killed 10 French paratroopers in a single incident. More U.S. troops now die in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

Military officials have been divided about how to respond to the shifting dynamics in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, initially wanted to keep the level of troops in Iraq -- now at 146,000 -- steady until next summer, according to military officials in Baghdad. Military commanders at the Pentagon favored withdrawing as many as three brigades in coming months to free up more personnel for Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said.

A Pentagon official said that the final compromise reflected the consensus views of Adm. Mullen; Gen. Petraeus; Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, who will assume command in Iraq later this month; Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; and Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the head of Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As detailed in Mr. Bush's prepared remarks, roughly 3,400 "combat support forces" -- aviation personnel, bomb-disposal experts and engineers -- will leave Iraq in coming months. A Marine battalion now serving in Anbar Province, once Iraq's deadliest place and now one of its most stable, will withdraw in November. An Army combat brigade of about 3,500 soldiers will withdraw in February.

Over roughly the same time period, troop levels in Afghanistan will move higher. Mr. Bush will announce plans to shift a Marine battalion slated to deploy to Iraq in November over to Afghanistan instead. In January, an additional Army brigade will deploy there.

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
Source:  Wall Street Journal