![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/sp_en_8.gif)
While you've been scraping to save for that once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disney World you promised the kids, Barack Obama has been regularly jetting his family around the world for multimillion-dollar vacations.
On your dime.
Finally, someone has tallied the bill ... Read the latest now on WND.com.
Declassified document hints Israel spy serving life for bogus reason
Jonathan Pollard
NEW YORK – With little fanfare and no news media coverage, a dramatic, potentially game-changing development in the Jonathan Pollard spy case quietly occurred three months ago.
Jonathan Pollard is currently serving his 30th year of an unprecedented life sentence in a U.S. prison for espionage on behalf of an ally, Israel.
After years of failed efforts petitioning the government and the court system to gain access to the classified material used to sentence their client, Pollards’ security-cleared attorneys finally won an appeal for declassification last fall.
As a result of the appeal, key sections of a 28-year-old classified document that was the central justification for Pollard’s unprecedentedly harsh sentence were declassified and released Nov. 13, 2014.
The 49-page document in question is a memorandum that was submitted to the sentencing judge in 1987 by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger.
The document was obtained and reviewed by WND.
Pollard, who worked as a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, was arrested in 1985 and indicted in 1987 on one count of passing classified information to an ally, Israel. He gave up his right to a trial and entered into a plea agreement, which was intended to spare both Israel and the U.S. the embarrassment and damage that a lengthy trial might incur. Despite the government’s acknowledgment that Pollard fulfilled all the terms of his plea agreement, the government reneged. He was sentenced to life despite the plea deal.
Pollard is the only person in U.S. history to receive a life sentence for spying for an ally. The median sentence for the offense is two to four years.
His sentence is generally acknowledged to have been driven by Weinberger’s memorandum, a document that was never disclosed to the public nor to any of Pollard’s security-cleared attorneys from the time that he was sentenced in 1987.
According to U.S. government representations of the memo for nearly three decades, the document was alleged to demonstrate that Pollard was the spy responsible for the greatest harm to U.S. national security up to the time of his sentencing. The government has persisted in this characterization of the document despite a number of other documents which have been brought to public attention and which appear to contradict the government’s claims. The material includes the victim impact statement and a recently declassified 1987 CIA damage assessment of the case. And now, the new declassifications of the Weinberger document itself.
Since his formal sentencing in 1987, the U.S. government has repeatedly cited the secret Weinberger document as its main basis to oppose either parole or presidential pardon for Pollard.
Last July, at Pollard’s first parole hearing after 29 years in prison, the government again cited the Weinberger declaration, claiming it contained sufficient evidence to warrant a denial of parole. Neither Pollard’s security-cleared attorneys nor the parole commission itself were allowed to view the document.
At the parole hearing, the government relied upon the document to claim Pollard’s case represented “the greatest compromise of U.S. national security to that date” – a charge which the parole board accepted without viewing the document. Numerous former U.S. officials who viewed the document have since stated categorically that representation is false.
Pollard’s spy activities listed
About 20 percent of the memo is still classified, while many of the section heads of the still secretive sections can now be seen in the declassified version.
According to the document, as reviewed by WND, the crux of Pollard’s spy activities described in the declassified sections affected the U.S. relationships with Middle Eastern countries.
It states that Pollard provided Israel with information on Soviet weaponry and radar systems, information of vital import to the Jewish state’s security since at the time almost all of the technology used by Israel’s enemies was Soviet-made.
The document notes Pollard “provided information on Soviet built air-to-air missile systems and Middle East air orders of battle,” even while allowing “[s]ince Israel depends for its national security on control of Middle East air space, much of this information was considered vital, and, as Col. Sella [of the Israeli Air Force] remarked, was not previously possessed by Israel.”
The memo states Pollard provided information concerning the fighting capabilities of Israel’s Mideast adversaries, with many of the specific examples still classified.
In one newly declassified section, the document reveals Pollard provided Israel with information on the Libyan air force. This data resulted in enabling an Israeli airstrike on Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia by helping the Israelis avoid confrontation with Libyan air defenses.
The Libyan case provides a glimmer into what Weinberger viewed as harmful to U.S. national security. Weinberger wrote in the memo the strike harmed U.S. regional interests because of the resultant damage and loss of life – 62 Palestinians and 27 Tunisians were killed in raid. Weinberger called those deaths a “detriment” to the U.S.
He further complained the Israeli airstrike may damage relations with Libya, which the Defense Secretary said he viewed as an “honest broker” for U.S. He said Libya was helpful when it volunteered, with U.S. assistance, to provide sanctuary to Yasser Arafat’s PLO – which at the time was regarded by Israel as an enemy terrorist organization – when Arafat’s group was exiled from Lebanon in 1982.
Weinberger further claimed Pollard caused “harm” to the U.S. intelligence community by sharing with Israel intelligence that the U.S. did not believe was in its interests to provide to the Jewish state.
States the document: “Defendant not only provided classified information to Israel, which Israel was not authorized to receive, but in doing so, he furnished original source documents, which had not been ‘sanitized,’ thus substantially compounding the harm.”
Weinberger is implying Israel was not supposed to receive full intelligence on some issues and Pollard undermined that policy. Weinberger himself signed the 1983 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding that established strategic military and intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Israel on regional threats.
Attorneys petition Obama
In an oped published at WND today, Pollard’s pro bono attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, stated, “The recent disclosures … show that the government has been dishonestly hiding behind the mask of ‘classified information’ to materially mischaracterize the nature and extent of the harm caused by Mr. Pollard.”
Lauer and Semmelman contend, “The newly disclosed material shows that any harm that may have been caused by Mr. Pollard was in the form of short-term disruption in foreign relations between the United States and certain Arab countries. That is not at all the same thing as harm to U.S. national security.”
In light of the new disclosures and the strong support from American officials who have long questioned Pollard’s “grossly disproportionate” life sentence, the attorneys urge President Obama to commute Pollard’s sentence immediately.
Obama “has the solemn duty to uphold the law of the land by finally putting a stop to this ongoing travesty. There are no more excuses. The president should exercise his constitutional power and grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard,” they state in the WND oped.
Weinberger contradicts own memo, Senior U.S. officials demand ‘justice’
Weinberger’s memorandum has been the U.S. government’s main basis for Pollard’s continued incarceration. Yet stunningly, even Weinberger, before his death in 2006, recanted. Weinberger stated in a 2002 interview that the Pollard case was “a very minor matter, but made very important. … It was made far bigger than its actual importance.”
Weinberger was one of the central figures accused in the Iran-Contra affair of trading arms to Iran for hostages. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice but was pardoned before trial by President George H. W. Bush, who was Reagan’s vice president during the scandal.
Since Pollard’s sentencing, a number of former Reagan Administration officials who worked with Weinberger have charged that he was biased against Israel and this affected his handling of the Pollard case.
Robert C. “Bud” McFarlane served as U.S. national security adviser and worked closely with Secretary Weinberger.
In a letter dated Feb. 9, 2012, McFarlane wrote, “The affidavit filed by former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was surely inspired in large part by his deeply held animus toward the state of Israel. His extreme bias against Israel was manifested in recurrent episodes of strong criticism and unbalanced reasoning when decisions involving Israel were being made.”
McFarlane went on to say the “imprisonment of Mr. Pollard for more than 26 years is more than excessive,” and “a great injustice.”
Dr. Lawrence J. Korb served as assistant secretary of Defense under Weinberger and worked closely with him from 1981 to 1985 (a period that includes Mr. Pollard’s arrest). In a declaration filed Dec. 20, 2013, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Korb stated that “the severity of Mr. Pollard’s sentence appears to be the result of Mr. Weinberger’s almost visceral dislike of the impact that Israel has on U.S. foreign policy.”
Korb went on to state, “I fully support Mr. Pollard’s application for release on parole.”
In a letter dated July 5, 2012, R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, wrote of Pollard that he supports his release and that it is time to “free him.” Woolsey has repeatedly contended in his public statements on the case that “anti-Semitism” is a factor in the on-going incarceration of Pollard, and he has repeatedly urged the administration in the pages of the Walls Street Journal and other newspapers to “Forget that Pollard is a Jew … pretend he’s a Greek- or Korean- or Filipino-American and free him!”
The day after the new Weinberger declassifications were released last fall, eight senior U.S. officials, fully versed in the classified material of the case wrote a strongly worded letter to Obama decrying the parole commission’s denial of parole to Pollard.
The officials include Woolsey, MacFarlane, Korb, former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum and other former heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In their Nov. 14, 2014, letter they slam the alleged “lie” that was used to deny Pollard parole.
The officials write, “The allegation that Pollard’s espionage ‘was the greatest compromise of U.S. security to that date’ is false; and not supported by any evidence in the public record or the classified file. Yet it was this fiction that the Parole Commission cited to deny parole.”
The officials continue by noting that the government relied on a “stale, largely discredited, 28-year-old classified memorandum written by former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger” in making its decision.
“Mr. Weinberger himself discounted his original damage assessment of the Pollard case in a 2002 interview … [and] the unreliability of the 1987 Weinberger document was known to and ignored by the Parole Commission,” the officials wrote.
Perhaps the most damning part of their letter to Obama, who when visiting Israel in March of 2013 and stated there he would ensure Pollard received a fair parole hearing, was the close of their appeal to the president: “Denying a man his freedom based on a claim of damage that is patently false while ignoring exculpatory documentary evidence and hiding behind a veil of secret evidence is neither fair nor just, and it simply is not the American way. …
“We therefore strongly urge you, Mr. President, to tolerate no further delay in rectifying an injustice that has gone on for far too long. We urge you to act expeditiously to commute Mr. Pollard’s life sentence to the [more than] 29 years which he has already served.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/exposed-secret-memo-reveals-pollard-sentence-a-sham/
No, even as the president refuses to use "Muslim" and "terrorist" in the same sentence, DHS is putting the word out to fear these other Americans even more ...
Jack Minor
GREELEY, Colo. – As police frequently face accusations of responding to calls with excessive force, illegal procedures and military weapons and tactics, one top cop with more than 45 years of law enforcement experience is taking action against the “warrior cop” mentality.
“This isn’t Iraq, this isn’t Afghanistan. I don’t think you want to indoctrinate your officers with the warrior mentality to the extent that if you’re a warrior then you have got to have a war,” Greeley, Colorado, Police Chief Jerry Garner said.
Garner’s department is not a typical small-town America operation. A 2008 situation report by the U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Intelligence Center showed Greeley is one of many American cities where the presence of Mexican drug cartels has been documented.
In 2010, Weld County Deputy Sam Brownlee was killed in Greeley after a high-speed pursuit in which the suspect grabbed the officer’s gun.
Despite events such as these, Garner believes the warrior-cop mentality isn’t necessary. He told WND he focuses his officer training on avoiding the use of deadly force when possible.
Much more to this article.“There’s an old adage in sports that says you play as you practice,” Garner said. “People need to understand that if an officer is trained right, when they get in an armed confrontation many times they almost go on autopilot.”
America’s porous southern border and the recent surge in illegal immigration is more than just a “humanitarian crisis,” claims the top U.S. general in charge of Central and South America, it’s a threat to the United States’ very existence.
Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly is commander of the U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, charged with responsibility for the Caribbean Sea and all lands south of Mexico.
Particularly in regards to the drug trade, murder rates and terrorist activity brewing in Central America, Kelly says, the waves of Latin Americans sweeping through Mexico and illegally into Texas presents a threat to the U.S. every bit as serious as Iran or North Korea.
“In comparison to other global threats, the near collapse of societies in [this] hemisphere with the associated drug and [illegal immigrant] flow are frequently viewed to be of low importance,” Kelly said in an interview with Defense One. “Many argue these threats are not existential and do not challenge our national security. I disagree.”
It isn’t the first time Kelly has sounded the alarm. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, Kelly complained that budget cuts in recent years have handcuffed the military’s ability to shut down many drug and human trafficking corridors.
“Last year, we had to cancel more than 200 very effective engagement activities and numerous multilateral exercises,” Kelly said, explaining that a full 74 percent of “actionable illicit trafficking events” simply go unanswered, because he doesn’t have the funds or resources to do anything about it.
“I simply sit and watch it go by,” he continued. “And because of service cuts, I don’t expect to get any immediate relief, in terms of assets, to work with in this region of the world.”
Worse yet, he continued, with smuggling routes wide open for business, it’s far more than cocaine or children seeking a better life getting a free pass across the border.
“Clearly, criminal networks can move just about anything on these smuggling pipelines,” Kelly said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in February. “Terrorist organizations could seek to leverage those same smuggling routes to move operatives with intent to cause grave harm to our citizens or even quite easily bring weapons of mass destruction into the United States.”
SOUTHCOM’s intelligence assets reveal the possibility is far more than just crying wolf.
“Supporters and sympathizers of Lebanese Hezbollah are involved in both licit and illicit activities in the region,” Kelly told Congress. “Members, supporters, and adherents of Islamic extremist groups are present in Latin America. Islamic extremists visit the region to proselytize, recruit, establish business venues to generate funds, and expand their radical networks. Some Muslim communities in the Caribbean and South America are exhibiting increasingly extremist ideology and activities, mostly as a result from ideologues’ activities and external influence from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Mr. Chairman, we take all these activities seriously.”
Threat spreads through U.S.
As America’s top military eye on Central America, Kelly is also warning that the recent spike in illegal immigrants moving from countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras across the U.S. border presents another level of threat. Those three countries, he noted, are all among the Top 5 nations worldwide in homicide rates, in part because of their rampant gang activity.
“Although there are a number of other countries I work with in Latin America and the Caribbean that are going in the same direction,” Kelly told Defense One, “the so-called Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) is far and away the worst off.”
Since October, tens of thousands of migrants have made the dangerous journey north from Latin America to the United States border. Many are children, and statistics show the vast majority of the immigrants in the recent influx are unaccompanied minors who have traveled from Central America’s “Northern Triangle.”
And between rampant drug trafficking and human trafficking of Central American youngsters, Kelly warned Congress, cartels and gangs that have already spread throughout the U.S. will only grow more dangerous.
“Chairman, gone are the days of the ‘cocaine cowboys,’” Kelly testified. “Instead, we and our partners are confronted with cocaine corporations that have franchises all over the world, including 1,200 American cities, as well as criminal enterprises like the violent transnational gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, that specialize in extortion and human trafficking.
“The FBI has warned that MS-13 has a significant presence in California, North Carolina, New York, and northern Virginia, and is expanding into new areas of the United States, including Indian reservations in South Dakota,” he concluded.
Roger Noriega, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs during the George W. Bush administration, was quoted last month in the Washington Free Beacon putting a fine point on how gang activity and arms smuggling could create problems not just along the border, but anywhere in the country.
“There’s going to be a time when MS-13 fires an RPG into an Alexandria [Va.] police car, and [Americans] are going to say, ‘What the hell happened?’” Noriega said.
Kelly concluded his appeal before the House Armed Services Committee by arguing the U.S. needs to call upon and equip the military to protect our southern border, now more than ever.
“Some of my counterparts perceive that the United States is disengaging from the region and from the world in general,” Kelly said. “We should remember that our friends and allies are not the only ones watching our actions closely. … And in the meantime, drug traffickers, criminal networks, and other actors, unburdened by budget cuts, cancelled activities, and employee furloughs, will have the opportunity to exploit the partnership vacuum left by reduced U.S. military engagement.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/general-border-crisis-threatens-u-s-existence/
The fight brought on by the homosexuals went all the way to the nation’s highest court, resulting in an order that the Christian couple pay the “gay” duo a couple thousand dollars in damages.
All based on the idea of “nondiscrimination” laws where homosexuals are protected, but Christians are not. That Christians’ beliefs and practices must cede to the trendy notion of homosexuality.
It was one of the earliest cases – which now have spread across the globe and are being repeated in several locations in the United States – in which judicial authorities are ordering Christians to violate their faith in order to accommodate the desires of “gays.”
Now a key judge in that British court case is having second thoughts.
Serious second thoughts.
In fact, according to a report in the Daily Mail, Baroness Hale, the deputy president of the Supreme Court, said in a speech that her decision may have been wrong.
She is warning that the law, according to the report, “has done too little to protect the beliefs of Christians.”
Hale and four other judges ruled against the Bulls in the case that started in 2008 by determining that the rights of homosexuals outweighed the conscience requirements of the Christians couple who said they could not allow that behavior in their home, which also is their business.
At the time, Hale said society should be “slow to accept” the rights of Christians.
Now, however, the Daily Mail said she has acknowledged that laws that ignore Christian beliefs might not be “sustainable.”
She put her words into action, too, ruling in a very unusual move with other judges that the Bulls are not obligated to pay the legal costs of the case against them.
While the court ordered them to pay the 3,600 pounds to the homosexual duo, Steven Preddy and Martin Hall, the legal fees could have run many times that.
The courts had determined the Bulls violated the 2007 Equalities Act by declining to bend their religious beliefs for the homosexual duo. The case was supported by the legal defense fund of the Christian Institute.
For a time, the Bulls feared they would have to sell their guest house because of the cost of the case backlash to their income.
The Mail originally reported that the court’s results “effectively sealed the supremacy of gay rights over Christian belief under the Sexual Orientation Regulations.”
Hazelmary Bull said the court’s conclusion was that “Some people are more equal than others.”
Mike Judge, spokesman for the Christian Institute, said, “It’s a chilling view of equality which ends up treating a pair of honest Christians like this.”
The Mail said in a report this week that Hale, in a speech to lawyers, said the courts need to take a “more nuanced approach.”
Perhaps a “conscience clause” that would recognize the beliefs of people, should be developed, she said.
The Mail said she told lawyers, “I am not sure our law has found a reasonable accommodation of all these different strands.”
And she said, “An example of treatment which Christians may feel to be unfair is the recent case of Bull v Hall. Should we be developing an explicit requirement upon providers of employment, goods and services to make reasonable accommodation for the manifestation of religious beliefs?”
Colin Hart, a spokesman for the Institute, told the Mail, “The penny is beginning to drop among judges that the law is unfair. I hope the Supreme Court will find more room to protect Christian consciences.”
The Bulls have run their Chymorvah Private Hotel in Cornwall under Christian rules since they opened it in 1986.
“Such rules are so strictly adhered to that Mrs. Bull has admitted that even her own brother, when he comes to stay, is required to stay in a separate room to his female partner,” the Mail said.
The issue might not be as settled, however, as some may have been suggesting.
WND reported recently that an appellate court ruled in a different UK dispute over homosexuals’ access to bed-and-breakfast facilities that religious rights are as valid as “gay” rights.
The opinion came in a case against the Swiss Bed and Breakfast in Cookham, Berkshire. The owner, Susanne Wilkinson, was ordered earlier to pay a homosexual duo, Michael Black and John Morgan, about $6,000 in damages for denying them permission to use a bedroom.
Nevertheless, the determination that religious rights are as valid as “gay” rights was significant, according to the Christian Institute.
“There is hope for Christian-owned bed and breakfasts that restrict double rooms to married couples only,” the organization reported.
The same fight is being seen across America, with different players. Just recently, a bakery owner in Colorado was ordered by a state board to violate his faith and provide “wedding” cakes to homosexuals, even though the state doesn’t recognize homosexual “marriage.”
The Colorado Civil Rights Division also ordered employees of Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who runs Masterpiece bakery, to attend a sensitivity training.
“The government … seek[s] to impose a new belief system upon Jack [Phillips], one that is fundamentally at odds with his conscience and his liberty,” explained a legal filing from attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom representing Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakes in Lakewood.
Two homosexuals filed the complaint after Phillips declined to provide them with a “wedding” cake. Phillips offered to provide other products but, citing his own Christian beliefs, declined to produce a message on a wedding cake that conflicted with his faith.
Administrative Law Judge Robert Spencer, however, earlier ordered Phillips, on pain of fines or even jail time, to violate his faith and provide the wedding cake to homosexuals Charlie Craig and David Mullins.
ADF appealed the “erroneous” ruling, filing a petition for review to the commission.
But the commission upheld the administrative judge’s opinion, rejecting ADF contentions that Spencer, under the state’s court rules of procedure, should have dismissed the complaint.
“America was founded on the fundamental freedom of all citizens to live and work without fear of government punishment,” said Nicole Martin, lead ADF counsel in the case. An appeal in the case remains an option.
A similar fight also has developed in the Pacific Northwest over a baker’s actions, and a photographer in New Mexico was fined thousands of dollars for refusing to lend her artistic talent to a homosexual ceremony there, in another state that did not recognize same-sex “weddings.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/judge-doubts-own-ruling-against-christians/
A decorated Iraq War veteran says he and others who fought there are dismayed and angry that their hard-earned gains appear to be unraveling rapidly and he doubts whether President Obama even cares.
In the past several months, radical Islamist militants have been on the march in Iraq, securing the bulk of the western Anbar Province in January and just this week taking control of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. They are now on the march to Baghdad to take control of the country and have declared an end to the border between Syria and Iraq. Iraqis are fleeing Mosul and other cities by the hundreds of thousands. The Islamists are reportedly beheading some of those left behind.
The primary actor behind the instability is the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, or ISIS, originally an al-Qaida affiliate responsible for such heinous atrocities in Syria that even al-Qaida has publicly distanced itself from the group.
The rapid progress of ISIS is particularly difficult to watch for veterans of the the Iraq War. Concerned Veterans for America CEO Pete Hegseth served in and around Samarra as a member of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division during the heat of the insurgency in 2005-2006.
He said veterans are deeply frustrated.
“[There's] universal, utter dismay and anger from veterans and those who’ve served to see what’s unfolding before our eyes in Iraq,” he said. “It’s one of the greatest foreign policy failures in a long time. To see the progress that we made and then watch it be given away is dismaying. The implications strategically are vast. I mean, we were so close. We were creating the conditions for a stable and strong and freer Iraq, not a perfect one but one that would at least protect America’s interests and ensure radicals were not able to find safe harbor there.”
Click on the following link and scroll down to listen to this compelling interview.Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Iraq veteran Pete Hegseth:
According to Hegseth, the Obama administration was handed an increasingly stable situation in Iraq, but the president had no interest in finishing the job.
“This administration was more obsessed with ending the war than winning it or being successful,” he said. “As a result, now we’ve turned the page and looked away from Iraq, and insurgents have taken advantage of it.”
\Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asked the United States to consider air strikes against ISIS as their progress became clear. The reports say the Obama administration refused those requests, concluding that once U.S. troops left Iraq at the end of 2011 the United States was done fighting in Iraq.
Hegseth minced few words in response to those reports.
“I don’t like to make blunt statements like this, but I don’t think the Obama administration cares,” he said. “Their only interest in Iraq has been to end the war, turn the page and talk about how they don’t support it. At this point, there’s no will, there’s no appetite, there’s no strategic thinking to re-engage in Iraq, even though what’s happening right now is a re-establishment of an even more dangerous element than we saw in the Taliban era in Afghanistan. These are folks who want a space from which to form a state and then project jihad, not just regionally but around the world.”
The turmoil in Iraq is the latest revelation to bring considerable frustration to veterans, following on the heels of the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal and the controversial exchange of five key Taliban figures for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was in Taliban custody.
Hegseth said Concerned Veterans for America is able to have a positive impact when it comes to reversing the problems at the VA. He said there’s not much they can do but watch Taliban figures go free and Iraq fall further and further into the hands of radicals.
“When it comes to the Bergdahl swap or watching Iraq fade away, you feel helpless as you watch the things you’ve invested in that were so critical to America’s national security,” he said. “How you finish things matters, regardless of the merits of how they were started. It’s a rough time for veterans of those conflicts, and I think it has given me a better understanding of how Vietnam veterans felt when Saigon fell. Even though Baghdad hasn’t fallen, and neither has Kabul, our commitment is waning and the enemy remains on the march. And that’s a bad equation.”
So what policy would Hegseth urge the administration to adopt now in Iraq?
“There are very few good options here,” Hegseth said. “I think the best response is to project strength rhetorically about what we will and will not tolerate, and where we can, putting our thumb on the scales to support the good guys. That requires intelligence in Iraq that we don’t really have. Immediate support for the regime is important to make sure Baghdad does not fall, and then from there, looking at ways we can push back advances the enemy has made.”
The U.S. withdrawal in 2011 largely followed the timetable established in the latter days of the George W. Bush administration. The major difference is that the United States and Iraq failed to reach a Status of Forces Agreement to keep a residual American force in the country.
Hegseth said that would have made a monumental difference in where Iraq stands right now.
“It’s less about the force and more about the signal that this is a country that will have continued emphasis and focus from the United States of America and an understanding in the enemies of that state that they were not going to have the ability to challenge the Iraqi military,” said Hegseth, who also believes the total U.S. departure exacerbated dysfunction within the Iraqi government and led to the Maliki government seeking to dominate the Sunni population rather than find common ground with it.
While Hegseth faults Obama administration policy for the current chaos in Iraq, arguments from elsewhere on the political spectrum suggest none of this would be happening if the U.S. never went into Iraq. They also assert that these same problems would have erupted whenever our residual forces left.
Hegseth said that line of reasoning is deeply flawed.
“I don’t grant that inevitably, down the line, it would descend into civil war,” he said. “I don’t accept that. I just don’t. I think Iraq had the seeds for the foundation of representative government, not Jeffersonian, perfect, American-looking government, but something where resolution was found through politics and not through the battlefield is possible.”
Hegseth added, “I think Iraq is somewhere where a stable outcome is more likely to happen than Afghanistan, which is the irony of Iraq being the bad war in everyone’s eyes and Afghanistan being the good war. At least Iraq has the seeds of a civil society: an educated populace, infrastructure, a history of central governance. All the things we’re seeing crumble before our eyes right now could have been shepherded through American commitment, but instead they’re slipping away.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/iraq-war-hero-blasts-obamas-white-flag/
An organization of former Border Patrol agents Wednesday charged that the federal government, under the administration of President Obama, is deliberately arranging for a flood of immigrant children to arrive in America for political purposes.
“This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a predictable, orchestrated and contrived assault on the compassionate side of Americans by her political leaders that knowingly puts minor illegal alien children at risk for purely political purposes,” said the statement released by officials with the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers.
“Certainly, we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of unaccompanied minor Central American children came to American without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States government.
“Anyone that has taken two six to seven year old children to an amusement park can only imagine the problems associated with bringing thousands of unaccompanied children that age up through Mexico and into the United States.”
There have been hundreds, even thousands, of illegal aliens, including many children, reported along the nation’s southwestern border with Mexico recently.
According to a report this week from Fox, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer calls the situation a “creation” of the federal government, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, assigned blame for the “calamity” to Obama.
Fox reported it had obtained a memo from an official with Customs and Border Protection who said the current policies are serving as an incentive for illegal aliens to sneak into the U.S.
“If the U.S. government fails to deliver adequate consequences to deter aliens from attempting to illegally enter the U.S., the result will be an even greater increase in the rate of recidivism and first-time illicit entries,” said Ronald Vitiello, a deputy Border Patrol chief.
Officials say among Obama’s policies that are attracting illegals is his instructions for “deferred action” for young illegals. Recently, the federal government said it was hunting for lawyers to provide legal help to children who are in the U.S. illegally.
The White House is asking for $1.4 billion more for the illegal alien children, which by some estimates will grow to 150,000 next year.
The former Border Patrol agents said the campaign is a “political deception” and the responsibility rests with the political leaders who support “a path to citizenship, regularization or any other form of amnesty for illegal aliens before providing for full protections for national security (jobs and economy) and public safety (the right of the people to be secure in their property and person).”
The officers argue that the non-enforcement of immigration laws is “the next step in becoming a failed state.”
“Yes, our leaders are guilty. However, we are responsible because it is the American voter [who] has placed untrustworthy people in positions of power and kept them there when they have clearly demonstrated that they have violated that public trust.
“These successful con artists are well dressed, attractive and charming,” the statement said.The officers even questioned whether “this heartless criminal exploitation of Central American infants and children [will] finally awaken Americans to the ruse being foisted upon them by their government, the media and other interested parties.”
“Has America lost her ability to stand up against the tyrants and do what is right rather than what is easy? Obviously, this administration thinks you are as corrupt as they are and will vote them back into office or these young children would not be streaming into America to tug at your hearts and empty your heads of reason,” the statement said.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest this week said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is leading an effort to respond to the number of illegal alien children arriving in the U.S. He said many of those are “escaping abuse or persecution.”He said those are being sent to locations in Texas and Oklahoma.
It’s become a worldwide issue, with the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom reporting the GOP is blaming Obama’s immigration policies, which “entice” illegals.
More than 33,000 have been caught in Texas alone over the last eight months,the report said, overwhelming Border Patrol capabilities.
The report cited Obama’s “controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,” which was launched in 2012 and recently renewed.
A federal judge even concluded the White House “has simply chosen not to enforce … border security laws.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/ex-border-agents-immigrant-flood-orchestrated
Nevada family in dispute with feds posts disturbing images
Bob Unruh
The Nevada rancher in a fight with the federal government over grazing land his family has been using since the late 1800s is revealing some of the damage he blames on the U.S. government: cattle shot and killed and then dumped into trenches and buried.
The Bureau of Land Management contends Cliven Bundy owes more than $1.2 million in grazing fees, but Bundy insists the federal government is overstepping its authority, charging him to use the same land on which his ancestors grazed cattle a century ago.
The conflict reached a flashpoint when the government moved in armed officers April 5 and started rounding up the family’s cattle with the apparent intention of selling them off and keeping the money.
However, hundreds of individuals the family has described as “patriots” also moved in. Rather than spark a pitched battle, the federal officers retreated after a weeklong standoff, with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., promising that the battle was not over.
The standoff has resulted in damaged fences, damaged water troughs and dead cattle, the family charged.
Family members have created a website and a Facebook page where images have been posted.
One of the images was accompanied by a note that said: “Digging up 1 of the HUGE holes where they threw the cows that they had ran to death or shot. I feel that this NEEDS to be put out for the public to see.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/cattle-shot-buried-on-bundy-ranch/
‘Touched by an Angel’ maker returns with inspiring new series
Drew Zahn
For years, “family-friendly television” has been practically an oxymoron.
But on Sunday, April 20, Martha Williamson, executive producer of the family favorite “Touched by an Angel,” returns to television after a 10-year absence with the debut of a new program called “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.”
WND obtained a preview copy of the first two episodes of “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” which reveals the show is heartwarming, funny, inspiring and, perhaps most significantly, a program adults and children alike can enjoy sitting down and watching together.
“That was the goal,” Williamson told WND, “to create a show that we could all watch together and still be entertained.
“‘Touched by an Angel’ was on the air at a time when the networks still considered families a target audience,” Williamson continued, “but as you’ve seen over the last 20 years since ‘Touched by an Angel’ first premiered, the landscape of television has changed significantly. But the audience hasn’t gone away. People are still having children; families are still looking for things to do together.
“I actually stopped working after ‘Touched by an Angel’ wrapped to raise my own children,” Williamson explained. “And I found myself standing at the back of Wal-Mart against that wall where all the DVDs were, looking for things we could all watch together, and it was either little kid stuff that certainly entertained our children but after a while my eyes started to glaze over, or there were more sophisticated and adult things to watch that were not appropriate or just not interesting to our children. I realized I was standing next to all kinds of parents looking for the same thing, and we would all bemoan the fact that we couldn’t find something to watch.
“I kept expecting somebody to recognize the success of ‘Touched by an Angel,’ thinking it should be mirrored by someone else, and it never quite seemed to happen,” she said. “So, I finally said once our children are up and running, let me see if I can go back to work and put something on television again that I feel strongly about and encourages and elevates our families.”
The result is “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” an original series combining romance, comedy and drama following the lives of four postal workers who transform themselves into an untraditional team of detectives to track down intended recipients of undeliverable mail. Their missions take them out of the office into an unpredictable world where letters from the past can change lives when they arrive late, but somehow just on time.
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered” stars Eric Mabius (“Ugly Betty”), Kristin Booth (“The Kennedys”), Crystal Lowe (“Smallville”) and Geoff Gustafson (“Primeval: New World”). Special guest stars announced to-date include Valerie Harper, Della Reese, Valerie Bertinelli and Marilu Henner, who will portray supervisors in a revolving role featuring television icons.
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered” premiers Sunday, April 20, at 8 p.m. ET/PT, 7 p.m. Central, on the Hallmark Channel.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/finally-a-tv-program-for-the-whole-family/
'Touched by an Angel' maker returns with inspiring new series
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/finally-a-tv-program-for-the-whole-family/#wOoqrmbfrzTAJRSd.99
Top doctor warns, ‘There’s no way to keep up with the workload’
Chelsea Schilling
The Army terminated its psychological testing contract at Fort Hood, Texas, only seven months before Spc. Ivan Lopez’s eight-minute shooting rampage that left Lopez and three other soldiers dead and 16 more wounded on April 2, WND has learned.
Instead, Fort Hood – one of the largest military installations in the world and the primary hub for deploying U.S. soldiers overseas – has been using free tests it finds on the Internet to evaluate soldiers’ psychological health and only employs a single neuropsychologist to treat up to 500 soldiers a month.
And while the post’s traumatic brain injury clinic has a brand-new hot tub in storage, it receives little money to test soldiers for psychological trauma.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/fort-hood-post-mortem-crisis-in-psych-testing/
The Army terminated its psychological testing contract at Fort Hood, Texas, only seven months before Spc. Ivan Lopez’s eight-minute shooting rampage that left Lopez and three other soldiers dead and 16 more wounded on April 2, WND has learned.
Instead, Fort Hood – one of the largest military installations in the world and the primary hub for deploying U.S. soldiers overseas – has been using free tests it finds on the Internet to evaluate soldiers’ psychological health and only employs a single neuropsychologist to treat up to 500 soldiers a month.
And while the post’s traumatic brain injury clinic has a brand-new hot tub in storage, it receives little money to test soldiers for psychological trauma.
The senior neuropsychologist in charge of Fort Hood’s outpatient psychiatry clinic – who resigned from his position only two months ago – tells WND the post has insufficient resources to treat soldiers seeking psychological help, including:
Lopez, who had been assigned to Fort Hood in February, was in treatment for anxiety and depression, among other health problems, and was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, Army officials said. Lopez claimed to have suffered a traumatic brain injury while he was deployed to Iraq from August to December 2011.
- Inferior testing and evaluation procedures,
- Lack of adequate funding for clinic services,
- Senior mental health professionals forced into retirement by the Army,
- Months-long wait times for soldiers seeking evaluation and treatment for psychological conditions,
- Only one trained clinical neuropsychologist for more than 50,000 soldiers
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/fort-hood-post-mortem-crisis-in-psych-testing/#cHpd24TxzOU8wM9S.99
Top doctor warns, 'There's no way to keep up with the workload'
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/fort-hood-post-mortem-crisis-in-psych-testing/#cHpd24TxzOU8wM9S.99
Most Colorado sheriffs are refusing to enforce new gun-control laws they consider unenforceable, saying they will not treat every citizen like a felon and won’t change their plans even if a federal judge rules against them.
Fifty-five of Colorado’s 62 sheriffs are in agreement on refusing to enforce the law. Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said the new rules on magazine capacity and other issues make it impossible for authorities to make arrests even if they wanted to.
“They’ve turned law-abiding citizens into criminals,” Cooke said. “They banned magazines that hold more than 15 rounds and what they’ve said is that any magazine that can be readily converted to hold more than 15 rounds is illegal. Well, that’s 99.999 percent of all magazines. They have a base plate and a spring that you can remove to repair or clean. If you can do that, then that magazine is illegal to possess after Jan. 1, and you can’t buy any. How do we enforce that?
“There’s a grandfather clause in the law that says if you own a magazine before July 1, 2013, that’s more than 15 rounds, you’re allowed to keep it. How are my deputies going to know who bought that magazine before or after July 1? So we’re not putting any resources into it or making it a priority,” he said.Read, Listen to and View more, at: http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/sheriff-feds-cant-make-me-enforce-gun-control/#XKG7STGOsz3PllBF.99
Kathy Shaidle
More than a dozen recent cases of criminal charges or investigations against elected officials, including a rash of arrests in just the past couple of days, have one major thing in common.
They’re all Democrats, and, in many instances, establishment media seems loath to report that fact.
On his nationally syndicated radio show today, Rush Limbaugh recounted a number of the cases, including the gun-trafficking charges brought today against California state Sen. Leland Yee.
Limbaugh pointed out that Yee “was among the most vocal anti-Second Amendment Democrats in the country.”
“This guy wanted to eliminate it. He didn’t want you to have any guns, and here he is indicted for trafficking in military grade weapons,” Limbaugh said.
Limbaugh recalled that in 2011, Yee unsuccessfully tried to organize a boycott of his show after he mocked the president of China.
Yee is the third Democratic California state senator recently tied to corruption charges. Earlier this year, Ron Calderon was indicted for bribery and Roderick Wright was convicted of perjury and voter fraud.
“Folks, the FBI is up to something,” said Limbaugh. “The FBI is raiding and arresting Democrats all over this country. You know, it’s incredible.”
The new Democratic mayor of Charlotte, N.C., Patrick Cannon, was arrested Wednesday by the FBI and accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes.
A historian told the Charlotte Observer that “such corruption charges are unprecedented in the city’s history.” The paper described the FBI investigation into Cannon’s activities as “an ‘American Hustle’-type operation.”
Cannon faces up to 50 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted on all charges.
Ray Nagin, the controversial mayor of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, was recently found guilty on 20 counts of accepting bribes and other charges.
Other former Democratic mayors charged with or convicted of serious crimes include Tony Mack of Trenton, N.J.; San Diego’s Bob Filner, Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit and Larry Langford of Birmingham, Ala.
Meanwhile, the offices of Democratic New York state Assemblyman William Scarborough were raided Wednesday , and Democratic state Sens. John Sampson and Malcolm Smith were indicted on federal corruption charges.
In Rhode Island, House Speaker Gordon Fox resigned after his office was raided this week as part of a joint investigation of the IRS, the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and state police.
Busy FBI
Limbaugh said he was fascinated by “all this FBI stuff.”
“These investigations that they’ve been engaged in have been going on for years,” he observed.
“It’s like they’ve been doing this for years under the cover of darkness and everything else in a way that is perhaps saving the country.”
Limbaugh speculated that the Democratic Party itself was behind this rash of stings in order to “take out all their bad apples before the next election.”
He asked: “It really is hard to believe that the FBI would be working against the wishes of the [Obama] regime, isn’t it?”
The radio host played an audio montage of establishment reports on the arrests in which none of the reporters mentioned that the accused were members of the Democratic Party.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/wave-of-lawmaker-arrests-theyre-all-democrats/
More than a dozen recent cases of criminal charges or investigations against elected officials, including a rash of arrests in just the past couple of days, have one major thing in common.
They’re all Democrats, and, in many instances, establishment media seems loath to report that fact.
On his nationally syndicated radio show today, Rush Limbaugh recounted a number of the cases, including the gun-trafficking charges brought today against California state Sen. Leland Yee.
Limbaugh pointed out that Yee “was among the most vocal anti-Second Amendment Democrats in the country.”
“This guy wanted to eliminate it. He didn’t want you to have any guns, and here he is indicted for trafficking in military grade weapons,” Limbaugh said.
Limbaugh recalled that in 2011, Yee unsuccessfully tried to organize a boycott of his show after he mocked the president of China.
Yee is the third Democratic California state senator recently tied to corruption charges. Earlier this year, Ron Calderon was indicted for bribery and Roderick Wright was convicted of perjury and voter fraud.
“Folks, the FBI is up to something,” said Limbaugh. “The FBI is raiding and arresting Democrats all over this country. You know, it’s incredible.”
The new Democratic mayor of Charlotte, N.C., Patrick Cannon, was arrested Wednesday by the FBI and accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes.
A historian told the Charlotte Observer that “such corruption charges are unprecedented in the city’s history.” The paper described the FBI investigation into Cannon’s activities as “an ‘American Hustle’-type operation.”
Cannon faces up to 50 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted on all charges.
Ray Nagin, the controversial mayor of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, was recently found guilty on 20 counts of accepting bribes and other charges.
Other former Democratic mayors charged with or convicted of serious crimes include Tony Mack of Trenton, N.J.; San Diego’s Bob Filner, Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit and Larry Langford of Birmingham, Ala.
Meanwhile, the offices of Democratic New York state Assemblyman William Scarborough were raided Wednesday, and Democratic state Sens. John Sampson and Malcolm Smith were indicted on federal corruption charges.
In Rhode Island, House Speaker Gordon Fox resigned after his office was raided this week as part of a joint investigation of the IRS, the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and state police.
Busy FBI
Limbaugh said he was fascinated by “all this FBI stuff.”
“These investigations that they’ve been engaged in have been going on for years,” he observed.
“It’s like they’ve been doing this for years under the cover of darkness and everything else in a way that is perhaps saving the country.”
Limbaugh speculated that the Democratic Party itself was behind this rash of stings in order to “take out all their bad apples before the next election.”
He asked: “It really is hard to believe that the FBI would be working against the wishes of the [Obama] regime, isn’t it?”
The radio host played an audio montage of establishment reports on the arrests in which none of the reporters mentioned that the accused were members of the Democratic Party.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/wave-of-lawmaker-arrests-theyre-all-democrats/#ZTZPZ3KtIEVWD4Z4.99
