Archive for the ‘middle east’ Category

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Why Bush Invaded Iraq.

Friday, May 15th, 2015

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There is quite a series of Republican politicians declaring that they would not invade Iraq if they knew then what they know now. JEB Bush is not the only one. Ted Cruz has made Talking Points Memo happy with a similar declaration.

Earlier in the week, Kelly asked Bush if he would have authorized the invasion, and he said he would have. On Tuesday, Bush told Sean Hannity that he hadn’t heard the question correctly and wasn’t sure what he would have done. Cruz, on the other hand, said he knows what he would have done.

“Of course not,” Cruz said in response to Kelly asking if he would have authorized an invasion. “I mean, the entire predicate of the war against Iraq was the intelligence that showed they had weapons of mass destruction and they might use them.

Of course, the “WMD” argument is a more recent addition to the story. Nobody talks anymore about why Bush was forced to invade in 2003. WMD were a small part of it. That is forgotten, of course.

Mr Speaker, thank you for recalling Parliament to debate the best way to deal with the issue of the present leadership of Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Today we published a 50 page dossier detailing the history of Iraq’s WMD, its breach of UN resolutions and the current attempts to rebuild the illegal WMD programme. I have placed a copy in the Library of the House.

At the end of the Gulf War, the full extent of Saddam’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes became clear. As a result, the UN passed a series of resolutions demanding Iraq disarm itself of such weapons and establishing a regime of weapons inspection and monitoring to do the task. They were to be given unconditional and unrestricted access to all and any Iraqi sites.

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Moderate Islam shows its hand.

Wednesday, May 13th, 2015

This is a college group. Listen to the speaker and ask yourself, “Is this the population we want to increase in this country ?”

Then, of course, we have the professors who defend poor misunderstood Muslims.

Bruce Lawrence is emeritus professor of Islamic studies at Duke University. In 2013 he was reported as saying that Islam “has no connection with terrorism and the propaganda of the forces which are trying to link Islam with terrorism is baseless.” In 2005, he said that Osama bin Laden sounded “like somebody who would be a very high-minded and welcome voice in global politics.”

There you have it ! Who do you believe ? Professor Lawrence or your lying eyes ?

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Is Iran entering a Vietnam-style Quagmire ?

Monday, April 27th, 2015

I have previously expressed concerns that Saudi Arabia was in a fight for its life.

The question is whether the Saudis will fall to their own Shiite population and whether the capture of Aden will allow Iran to block Saudi oil shipments.

“Once hailed by President Barack Obama as a model for fighting extremism, the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in Yemen has all but collapsed as the country descends into chaos, according to U.S. and Yemeni officials.”

Now, the Saudis take this war very seriously.

As for Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom is waging the first war in its history. Yet with its small, weak and inexperienced army, it cannot commit ground troops to fight both the Shiite Houthis or the Sunni Jihadists, and is relying mainly on its air power that has, thus far, caused the death of many innocent civilians.

It also is blockading ports to prevent Iranian resupply of Yemeni clients.

The Saudi-led coalition that’s fighting against Shiite rebels in Yemen said it completed a blockade of the country’s ports and is ready to step up airstrikes.
Bombing missions are seeking to stop the Shiite Houthis from moving forces between Yemen’s cities, Ahmed Asseri, a Saudi military officer, told reporters in Riyadh on Monday. Coalition aircraft and warships targeted the rebels as they advanced toward Aden, the southern port that’s the last stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s ally in Yemen, President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi. Shipping routes to and from the ports are under the coalition’s control, Asseri said.

The Egyptians are planning to help in Yemen. Even though Nasser’s campaign in Yeman was a disaster, that was in 1962 and run by Nasser, an incompetent.

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Those whom the gods would destroy…

Saturday, April 11th, 2015

Does Barack Obama know what he is doing ? There is room for doubt. In foreign affairs he seems to be over his head. In domestic policy, he seems to be accomplishing what he wants to do. Hugh Hewitt asked former Vice President Dick Cheney his opinion.

Cheney said, “I vacillate between the various theories I’ve heard. If you had somebody who, as president — who wanted to take America down. Who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world, reduce our capacity to influence events. Turn our back on our allies and encourage our enemies, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama is doing. I think his actions are constituted in my mind are those of the worst president we’ve ever had.”

Cheney has been involved in American government since Ford was president and knows a thing or two. What to make of Obama ?

The military correspondent of the Times of Israel has learned a few things since he supported Obama in 2008. Obama benefited from many people who saw him as a symbol and ignored his background and opaque record.

I noted, Bush, with his love of Zion, had been a disaster, inadvertently empowering Iran. Obama, with his cool detachment, was just what we needed.

Lastly, I encouraged her [his sister] to vote Democrat, now, before her Alex P. Keaton-like eldest got the right to vote and cancelled her out.

And she did (I think, maybe). She even wrote to me about the beauty of that cold January day in 2009 when he was sworn into office.

He was encouraging his sister to vote for Obama with the usual arguments made by intelligent people who believed Obama would be a good president. I never bought that argument. I knew the story of where he came from.

Then, reality began to creep in.

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A Preview of Coming Attractions.

Sunday, April 5th, 2015

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A significant number of Somali immigrants’ children have traveled to the middle east as jihadis.

ISIS has been luring thousands of Westerners to the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. The number of Americans who have traveled to Syria is still relatively small — in the neighborhood of 150 people — and a thin slice of that group, perhaps as many as two dozen Americans, are thought to have joined ISIS.

In the discussions at the White House this week, one city has focused minds: Minneapolis-St Paul. It had been ground zero for terrorist recruiters in the past, and is fast becoming the center of ISIS’ recruitment effort in the United States.

This is a growing problem with the emergence of “lone wolf” attacks by jihadis.

The young man pictured above is one of many young black men, many recruited in prison, who have committed these actions.

Over the weekend, the FBI announced that it would treat Islamist Alton Nolan’s alleged beheading of Colleen Hufford, 54, as a case of workplace violence. That despite the fact that Nolan’s Facebook page contains a picture of Nolan giving the ISIS salute, multiple pictures of Osama Bin Laden, a screenshot of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, and a quote reading, “I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smile ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.”

Then, of course, we have another example of “workplace violence” courtesy of Major Hassan.

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Drill, Baby, Drill.

Wednesday, March 25th, 2015

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It looks like the battle for Saudi Arabia has begun and, if it follows the pattern of other Obama wars, it will be soon lost, or so Richard Fernandez believes.

Even the New York Times sees it.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled Yemen by sea Wednesday as Shiite rebels and their allies moved on his last refuge in the south, captured its airport and put a bounty on his head, officials said.

The departure of the close U.S. ally and the imminent fall of the southern port of Aden pushed Yemen further toward a violent collapse. It also threatened to turn the impoverished but strategic country into another proxy battle between the Middle East’s Sunni powers and Shiite-led Iran.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies believe the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are tools for Iran to seize control of Yemen and say they intend to stop the takeover. The Houthis deny they are backed by Iran.

The stakes are very high for Europe, especially.

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The Obama strategy.

Sunday, March 22nd, 2015

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Many of us on the right have considered Obama to be feckless and uninterested in foreign policy. That seems to have been a mistake. He has strategy but it involves an alliance with Iran.

A lengthy essay by Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former senior director of the National Security Council, explains the strategy. He also explains why the Obama Administration is so determined to keep it a secret from the American public and, more importantly, the Congress.

How eager is the president to see Iran break through its isolation and become a very successful regional power? Very eager. A year ago, Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national-security adviser for strategic communication and a key member of the president’s inner circle, shared some good news with a friendly group of Democratic-party activists. The November 2013 nuclear agreement between Tehran and the “P5+1”—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—represented, he said, not only “the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve the Iranian [nuclear] issue,” but “probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy.” For the administration, Rhodes emphasized, “this is healthcare . . . , just to put it in context.” Unaware that he was being recorded, he then confided to his guests that Obama was planning to keep Congress in the dark and out of the picture: “We’re already kind of thinking through, how do we structure a deal so we don’t necessarily require legislative action right away.”

Things seem to be moving in the direction that Obama wishes but they are also increasing the danger of a disaster in foreign policy.

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A tipping point approaches.

Saturday, March 21st, 2015

The Obama Administration is close to announcing a deal with the government of Iran on their nuclear program. The deal will include some weak language on delay in the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by Iran and the dropping of all sanctions against the regime by the US and its European allies. This will be a disaster, in my opinion. The New York Times has another editorial today which includes delighted anticipation of the deal and more invective against Prime Minister Netanyahu who opposes the deal.

“In a way, the administration has already won,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations. “If you get agreement by the end of March, it will be historic in nature, it will have demonstrated that the administration is prepared to willfully stand up to Republican opposition in Congress and to deal with members of its own party who have doubts, and has withstood Israeli pressure.”

The “historic agreement” will fulfill the ambitions of the allegedly “moderate” Iranian president Rouhani. The Weekly Standard has a nice biography of Rouhani ( which means “pious” or “a cleric” in Arabic.)

Yet since 1979, throughout his entire political career, he has systematically violated what even hard-nosed Islamic jurists might consider sacred obligations that rulers owe their subjects.

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Netanyahu wins in Israel !

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

In spite of the best efforts of the Obama GOTV team, the Likud Party in Israel improved its position in the Knesset and its leader PM Netanyahu will be the PM again. The LA Times is, of couyrse, outraged at the “cynical ” win.

Netanyahu fought to hold on to power in the worst way. In a desperate attempt to win the support of hard-line voters, he repudiated his tepid-from-the-start support for a two-state solution in which Israel would coexist peacefully with an independent Palestinian state.

His previous support for the Palestinian state was “tepid-from-the -start” in 2009 because there was a new left wing government in the US and he wanted to avoid controversy even though he did not believe that the Palestinians were serious about two states. Mitt Romney was equally skeptical but willing to make gestures toward the hoary concept. This, of course, outrages the left, which is in a weird alliance with radical Islam.

Dropping all pretenses, he played the race card early on Election Day, posting a Facebook video with an explicit ethnic message: “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” The intent was obvious—to scare the hell out of right-wing and anti-Arab voters who had not yet hit the polls. This brazen move followed another brazen sop to the right. On Monday night, Netanyahu declared that if he were elected, he would never permit the establishment of a Palestinian state. With this last-minute pander, Netanyahu reversed his previous public position—announced in a 2009 speech—that he supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Arabs, of course, are not another “race.” They are Semites, just like Israeli Jews. The left insists that Jews are European and are oppressing the poor local Arabs. Mitt Romney was attacked in the same left wing article.

a donor asked Romney how he would solve the “Palestinian problem.” Romney provided a detailed reply and insisted that the Palestinians have “no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.”

He noted that a Palestinian state posed “thorny questions” and became quite passionate in detailing the issues at hand:

Some might say, well, let’s let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians…[B]ut the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It’s—what the border would be?

The writer helpfully points out that the “West Bank” does not share a border with Syria.

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As one can see, it is almost three miles to Syria from the West Bank. Romney’s point is made well by such maps.

The leftist hysteria over Netanyahu’s victory is shared by a sulking White House, which refuses to congratulate Netanyahu.

I will though. Congratulations !

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Posted in Islam, Israel, middle east, politics, terrorism | 1 Comment »

Going Rogue. Obama’s State Department.

Thursday, March 5th, 2015

We have had a series of stories about the State Department lately, from Obama’s approach to Iran, to ridicule of Spokeswoman Marie Harf.

The latest is about the attack on the US ambassador to South Korea, Obama intimate Mark Lippert. He was attacked by a man with a razor just before giving a speech.

The attack may have been prompted by another Obama foreign policy initiative.

The attack comes amid growing anti-U.S. protests here over comments made last week by State Department official Wendy Sherman.

Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, angered many South Koreans with comments that seemed to tell the country to give up hardline nationalist policies toward North Korea and to seek closer ties with its neighbor.

The South Korean government issued a formal diplomatic protest to the State Department over the remarks, sources said.

“Nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy,” Sherman said Friday in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment, a think tank.

“But such provocations produce paralysis, not progress,” she said. “To move ahead, we have to see beyond what was to envision what might be. And in thinking about the possibilities, we don’t have to look far for a cautionary tale of a country that has allowed itself to be trapped by its own history.”

The comments were interpreted by critics here as criticism of South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s hardline stance against North Korea.

Apparently, North Korea is next on Obama’s list of potential allies.

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