Obama’s race to chaos

On a tip from Alex Sedam

Would you give a baby a loaded .45? 

Then why in the world would you allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb?

NY POST

By Michael Goodwin

March 28, 2015 | 11:10pm

If you're confused about the Saudi Arabia-led air attacks against Islamist rebels in Yemen and can't tell one group of head-choppers in Iraq and Syria from another, don't despair. All you need is imagination.

Close your eyes and imagine that those countries and terrorists have nuclear weapons. Imagine their barbarism going nuclear as they blow up cities, wipe out ethnic and religious groups and turn the region into cinders.

Now open your eyes and realize you've seen the future, thanks to President Obama's policies. It is a future that will be defined by Obama's Wars. Yes, plural.

I've written frequently about the likelihood of a dystopian "Mad Max" scenario if Iran gets nukes. My thinking is guided by a belief among American military and intelligence officials

that a nuclear exchange would take place in the Mideast within five years of Iran getting the bomb. To judge from events, the future is arriving ahead of schedule.

The fact that a top Saudi official wouldn't answer a question about the kingdom's plan to get nukes is an answer in itself. Proliferation in the world's hottest spot was guaranteed once Obama abdicated American leadership, a decision that led our adversaries to conclude we would not stop them and our allies to conclude we would not protect them.

A future where it would be every nation for itself was trouble enough, but something far worse is unfolding now. Obama's courtship of Iran and his willingness to let it go nuclear is speeding up the race to chaos.

Iran wants it both ways — nukes and a free hand to impose its Islamic Revolution throughout the region. Against all good sense and the lessons of history, Obama is saying yes and yes.

Sightings of the Revolutionary Guard leader, Maj. Gen. Qasem Suleimani, leading Iranian-sponsored militias against Islamic State in Iraq has spread alarm throughout the region. The fears reached a fever pitch when Iranian-allied Houthi rebels took over Yemen, chasing out our soldiers and allies with chants of "Death to America, death to Israel."

Iran long held designs on a Shia Crescent and control over Arab lands, which helps explain why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others counted themselves as our allies. They are furious as they watch Iran get a nuclear pass from Obama and a green light to expand its power.

The nuclear program will have the United Nations stamp of approval, as will Iranian control of four Arab capitals — Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad and now Sanaa, Yemen. Indeed, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry suggest Iran even could be an ally in the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda. Already there has been coordination there, leading critics to say America is acting as the Iranian air force.

Israel, of course, sees the pattern as insane and a threat because Iran has threatened to wipe it off the face of the earth. In retaliation for complaining about the nuke deal, Obama denounces our ally and threatens to "re-evaluate" our support for the Jewish state.

But Israel is not alone, with our Sunni Arab allies also viewing Iran as their mortal enemy. Sen. John McCain quoted one of those Arab leaders as concluding, "We believe it is more dangerous to be a friend of America's than an enemy."

These are unprecedented developments, veering so far from the norm and happening so fast that consequences are piling up faster than they can be comprehended. Alliances built over decades are shattered in a relative flash, inviting aggression and endless conflict. The toxic brew of Islamic fanaticism and nuclear proliferation could ignite a world conflagration.

These are grim thoughts, expressed because it is impossible to imagine any other outcome of Iran's rise. It remains the world's largest sponsor of terrorism and supports Hezbollah and Hamas and now the Houthis in Yemen. As for Iranian influence in Iraq, one analyst is calling Suleimani, the Revolutionary Guard commander, Iraq's new "viceroy."

Remember, too, Iran muscle and munitions are keeping Bashar Assad still standing in Syria. The wholesale death and destruction there — an estimated 200,000 people killed and millions displaced within the country and out of it — could be a prototype of its new empire.

While there are many dark and complex forces in play and blame to spread around, the most important catalyst of the violent disorder has been the reversal of America's policies. Under Obama, we have switched sides, an abomination that ensures a legacy of infamy.

Obama’s race to chaos

Payback

On a tip from Ed Kilbane

US Declassifies Document Revealing Israel's Nuclear Program

Obama's revenge for Netanyahu's Congress talk? 1987 report on Israel's top secret nuclear program released in unprecedented move.

By Ari Yashar, Matt Wanderman 

First Publish: 3/25/2015, 8:00 PM 

Dimona nuclear reactor circa 1960s

In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel's nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.

But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel's nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.

The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu's March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran's nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.

Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel's sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.

The 386-page report entitled "Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations" gives a detailed description of how Israel advanced its military technology and developed its nuclear infrastructure and research in the 1970s and 1980s.

Israel is "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level," reveals the report, stating that in the 1980s Israelis were reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.

The revelation marks a first in which the US published in a document a description of how Israel attained hydrogen bombs.

The report also notes research laboratories in Israel "are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories," the key labs in developing America's nuclear arsenal.

Israel's nuclear infrastructure is "an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories," it adds.

"As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960," the report reveals, noting a time frame just after America tested its first hydrogen bomb.

Institute for Defense Analysis, a federally funded agency operating under the Pentagon, penned the report back in 1987. 

Aside from nuclear capabilities, the report revealed Israel at the time had "a totally integrated effort in systems development throughout the nation," with electronic combat all in one "integrated system, not separated systems for the Army, Navy and Air Force." It even acknowledged that in some cases, Israeli military technology "is more advanced than in the U.S."

Declassifying the report comes at a sensitive timing as noted above, and given that the process to have it published was started three years ago, that timing is seen as having been the choice of the American government.

US journalist Grant Smith petitioned to have the report published based on the Freedom of Information Act. Initially the Pentagon took its time answering, leading Smith to sue, and a District Court judge to order the Pentagon to respond to the request.

Smith, who heads the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, reportedly said he thinks this is the first time the US government has officially confirmed that Israel is a nuclear power, a status that Israel has long been widely known to have despite being undeclared. 

Payback

You can't kill a statue

Civil rights charges filed against Ole Miss student accused of putting noose on James Meredith statue

I don't advocate this kind of behavior. I just hate the double standard.

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The James Meredith statue on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, Miss. (Thomas Graning/Daily Mississippian via AP)

The Justice Department said Friday that it had charged a student at the University of Mississippi with federal civil rights crimes for placing a noose on a statue of James Meredith, the school’s first black student, in what federal authorities said was a “flagrant” attempt to threaten black students at the school.

These charges come a little more than a year after the noose was found on the neck of the Meredith statue, which has stood at the center of the Ole Miss campus in Oxford for nearly a decade. In February 2014, the noose was found along with an older Georgia state flag (before that state adopted a new flag without the Confederate symbol), prompting an investigation by the FBI and local police.

Graeme Phillip Harris, the student who was charged, and others hung the rope and the flag “with the intent to threaten and intimidate African American students and employees at the university,” the Justice Department said.

Only Harris was identified by federal officials, who said he has been indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of conspiring to violate civil rights and another count of using a threat of force to intimidate African American students due to their race.

“This shameful and ignorant act is an insult to all Americans and a violation of our most strongly-held values,” Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said in a statement Friday. “No one should ever be made to feel threatened or intimidated because of what they look like or who they are. By taking appropriate action to hold wrongdoers accountable, the Department of Justice is sending a clear message that flagrant infringements of our historic civil rights will not go unnoticed or unpunished.”

The university said after the noose was found that they were looking for men seen near the statue shouting racial slurs, and officials said that same week that they were looking to question three white freshmen at the school.

The school’s Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter and the national organization said that the three were members of that fraternity, which expelled the three men and suspended the chapter. The national fraternity later closed the Ole Miss chapter after learning that in addition to what happened at the Meredith statue, members had committed “serious acts of hazing,” Phillip A. Cox, grand president of Sig Ep, wrote in an e-mail to members.

The FBI and the University of Mississippi Police Department continue to investigate the noose placed on the Meredith statue.

You can't kill a statue

Under the radar

Ex-U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. released from prison

While everyone is consumed with Hillary's emails, Bergdahl, and a deliberate plane crash, this falls through the cracks. 

Jesse Jackson is released serving only half his sentence! 

What's worse... if he could run for re-election tomorrow he would win in a landslide! Check out some of the other "illustrious" members of the Illinois 2nd congressional district. 

http://hemingwayreport.blogspot.com/2013/01/mel-reynolds-ex-congressman-and.html



I'm not a bit surprised by this story either.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Brother-of-Rod-Blagojevich-Speaks-Out-About-Jackson-Jr-297608701.html

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(Reuters) - Former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. was released from an Alabama prison on Thursday after serving time for misusing about $750,000 in campaign funds on luxuries including fur capes and a Rolex watch, local media reported.

Jackson, a former Illinois lawmaker and the son of civil rights leader the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., spent roughly half of the 30-month sentence he received in August 2013 behind bars. 

His father told reporters that the younger Jackson was doing well when he left the prison facility in Montgomery early Thursday.

"I was so sad the day he left," the elder Jackson said, according to the CBS affiliate in Chicago. "I'm so glad he'll be returning. It excites me to no end."

On Wednesday, a friend of Jesse Jackson Jr., former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, said Jackson would serve the remainder of his sentence at a halfway house in Washington.

Jackson, 50, once considered one of the most promising black politicians in the country, pleaded guilty to illegally using campaign funds on luxuries such as fur capes, celebrity memorabilia, mounted elk heads and a Rolex watch.

His wife, Sandi, a former Chicago city council member, was sentenced to one year in prison for falsifying tax returns that failed to report the campaign money as income.

The judge ordered Sandi Jackson to report to prison 30 days after her husband was released to reduce the impact on their two children.

Under the radar

Bergdahl charged with desertion

What a f-ing negotiator!

5 for 1 swap and the end result... Bergdahl goes to jail - possibly for life. There can ONLY be one explanation. This is how desperate Barry is to close Gitmo and he illegally bypassed Congress to do it! 

From what I understand 6 of his fellow soldiers died trying to find Bergdahl. 

In addition, of the 5 released how many are they going to kill? Barry and Rice knew all the pitfalls beforehand and yet went ahead with it. You see, in the liberal world deserting your post is considered bravery. Dying for your country patriotic sap.

If it wasn't for lying Rice would be tongue-tied.

This is where we got"Gruberized".

Video 108

Rice said, “Bergdhal served with honor and distinction and was captured on the battlefield”?

Gutfeld's response, “Susan Rice is so divorced from reality she should get alimony payments”.

Unless...of course.. if they happened to be in Benghazi.

 With his negotiating skills imagine the Iranian "deal". Instead of sending them a 1000 centrifuges a month like they wanted Barry talked them down to 900.

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Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban after abandoning his post in Afghanistan and then freed five years later in a controversial trade for five Guantanamo detainees, was charged Wednesday with desertion. 

U.S. Army Forces Command announced the decision at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. 

The development comes 10 months after his May 2014 release -- which initially was a joyous occasion, with his parents joining President Obama in celebrating the news in the Rose Garden. Bob Bergdahl, who had studied Islam during his son's captivity, appeared with a full beard and read a Muslim prayer, while Bergdahl's mother Jani embraced the president.

But that euphoria quickly gave way to controversy in Washington as Bergdahl was accused of walking away from his post and putting his fellow soldiers in danger. The trade of hardened Taliban fighters for his freedom raised deep concerns on Capitol Hill that the administration struck an unbalanced and possibly illegal deal. 

Bergdahl was specifically charged Wednesday with desertion and misbehavior toward the enemy. The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. 

Bergdahl 28, walked away from his post in Afghanistan and was captured, then released years later by the Taliban in the controversial prisoner exchange. 

Gen. Mark Milley, head of U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, has been reviewing the massive case files and had a broad range of legal options, including various degrees of desertion charges. A major consideration was whether military officials would be able to prove that Bergdahl had no intention of returning to his unit -- a key element in the more serious desertion charges. 

The announcement marks a sharp turnaround for the administration's narrative of Bergdahl's service and release. After the swap last year, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction." 

But as Bergdahl faced criticism from fellow servicemembers for his actions, the administration faced heated complaints from Congress over the Taliban trade itself. 

"This fundamental shift in U.S. policy signals to terrorists around the world a greater incentive to take U.S. hostages," said former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Bergdahl disappeared from his base in the eastern Afghanistan province of Paktika on June 30, 2009. A private first class at the time, he had three days earlier emailed his parents expressing disillusionment with the war. 

"The future is too good to waste on lies," Bergdahl wrote, according to the late Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings. "And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American." 

Bob Bergdahl, a former UPS delivery driver in Sun Valley Idaho, replied with a message bearing the subject line, "OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!" 

Bergdahl left a note in his tent that said he was leaving to start a new life and intended to renounce his citizenship, Fox News reported last year. 

For the next five years, Bergdahl is believed to have been held by the Taliban and Pakistan's infamous Haqqani network. In one of several hostage videos released during his captivity, he said he was captured when he fell behind a patrol, but fellow soldiers, outraged after the trade was made with the Taliban, accused him of deserting. Some asserted that American servicemembers' lives were put at risk in the hunt for Bergdahl. 

Bergdahl was freed on May 31, 2014, after the White House agreed to trade five high value Taliban operatives held at Guantanamo Bay for him. He was turned over to Delta Force operatives in eastern Afghanistan, near the border village of Khost, while the Taliban members were handed over to authorities in Qatar, which helped broker the swap.

The trade was branded as illegal by lawmakers, who said they weren’t advised beforehand, It was also blasted by critics who said it violated America’s longstanding tradition of not negotiating with terrorists, and from Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers, many of whom view him as a traitor.

There were also concerns – which would prove well-founded – that the Taliban members would return to the fight against the West. Of the five, Mohammad Fazl, the former Taliban army chief of staff; Khairullah Khairkhwa, a Taliban intelligence official; Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former Taliban government official; and Norullah Noori and Mohammad Nabi Omari, at least three have attempted to rejoin their old comrades, sources told Fox News.

Then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Bergdahl was a “prisoner of war,” and that the deal did not amount to negotiating with terrorists. He also said concerns about Bergdahl’s deteriorating condition made it imperative that the U.S. move quickly to make the trade.

A Pentagon probe concluded in 2010 that Bergdahl had walked away from his base, but stopped short of accusing him of desertion, reopening the probe after his return. 

Bergdhal was promoted to sergeant while in captivity, and had accrued more than $200,000 in back pay by the time he was freed. He was assigned to duty at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, after his return and reportedly refused to speak with his parents. 

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin and Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Bergdahl charged with desertion