Kerry determines ISIS committing genocide in Iraq, Syria

WASHINGTON (AP) — US Secretary of State John Kerry has determined that the Islamic State group is committing genocide against Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria, according to US officials, as he acted to meet a congressional deadline.

But Kerry’s finding, set to be announced Thursday, will not obligate the United States to take additional action against ISIS militants and does not prejudge any prosecution against its members, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly preview Kerry’s decision.

A day after the State Department said Kerry would miss the March 17 deadline, the officials said Kerry had completed his review and determined that Christians, Yazidis and Shiite groups are victims of genocide. The US House of Representatives this week passed a nonbinding resolution by a 393-0 vote condemning IS atrocities as genocide.

Lawmakers and others who have advocated for the finding had sharply criticized the department’s disclosure Wednesday that deadline would be missed. The officials said Kerry concluded his review just hours after that announcement and that the criticism had not affected his decision.

The determination marks only the second time a US administration has declared that a genocide was being committed during an ongoing conflict.

The first was in 2004, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell determined that atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region constituted genocide. Powell reached that determination amid much lobbying from human rights groups, but only after State Department lawyers advised him that it would not — contrary to legal advice offered to previous administrations — obligate the United States to act to stop it.

In that case, the lawyers decided that the 1948 UN Convention against genocide did not require countries to prevent genocide from taking place outside their territory. Powell instead called for the UN Security Council to appoint a commission to investigate and take appropriate legal action if it agreed with the genocide determination.

The officials said Kerry’s determination followed a similar finding by department lawyers.

Although the United States is involved in military strikes against ISIS and has helped prevent some incidents of ethnic cleansing, notably of Yazidis, some advocates argue that a genocide determination would require additional US action.

In making his decision, Kerry weighed whether the militants’s targeting of Christians and other minorities meets the definition of genocide, according to the UN Convention: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

His determination, however, does not carry the legal implication of a verdict of guilt or conviction on genocide charges, the officials said. Such decisions will be left to international or other tribunals.

In a bid to push the review process, several groups released reports last week documenting what they said is clear evidence that the legal standard has been met.

The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians, which had applauded Monday’s House resolution, said they hoped the delay would ensure that Kerry makes the determination.

“There is only one legal term for this, and that is genocide,” said Knights of Columbus chief Carl Anderson.

The groups’ 280-page report identified by name more than 1,100 Christians who they said had been killed by IS. It detailed numerous instances of people kidnapped, raped, sold into slavery and driven from their homes, along with the destruction of churches.

Kerry determines ISIS committing genocide in Iraq, Syria

WAPO editoral

To defend our democracy against Trump, the GOP must aim for a brokered convention

I prefer John Kasich myself. But wow...WAPO really hates Trump! According to them he's a Klan member, a fascist, and Nazi, all rolled into one. Of course they left out the part where some of these protesters are paid to disrupt his campaign rallys. 

Got to love this:

"A democrat disavows violence; a demagogue wields it as a threat."

You know, like… The 1968 Democratic National Convention 

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DONALD TRUMP'S primary victories Tuesday present the Republican Party with a stark choice. Should leaders unite behind Mr. Trump, who has collected the most delegates but may reach the convention in July without a nominating majority? Or should they do everything they can to deny him the nomination? On a political level, this may be a dilemma. As a moral question, it is straightforward. The mission of any responsible Republican should be to block a Trump nomination and election.

We do not take this position because we believe Mr. Trump is perilously wrong on the issues, although he is. His proposed tariff on Chinese imports could spark a trade war and global depression. His proposed tax plan would bankrupt the government while enriching his fellow multimillionaires. But policy proposals, however ill-formed and destructive, are not the crux of the danger.

No, Mr. Trump must be stopped because he presents a threat to American democracy. Mr. Trump resembles other strongmen throughout history who have achieved power by manipulating democratic processes. Their playbook includes a casual embrace of violence; a willingness to wield government powers against personal enemies; contempt for a free press; demonization of anyone who is not white and Christian; intimations of dark conspiracies; and the propagation of sweeping, ugly lies. Mr. Trump has championed torture and the murder of innocent relatives of suspected terrorists. He has flirted with the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. He has libeled and stereotyped wide swaths of humanity, including Mexicans and Muslims. He considers himself exempt from the norms of democratic contests, such as the release of tax returns, policy papers, lists of advisers and other information that voters have a right to expect.

Does a respect for democracy require the Republican Party to anoint its leading vote-getter? Hardly. We are not advocating that rules be broken but that they be employed to maximum effect — to force a brokered convention and nominate a conservative candidate who respects the Constitution, or to defeat Mr. Trump in some other way. If Mr. Trump is attracting 40 percent of Republicans, who in turn represent about one-quarter of the country, that is a 10 percent slice of the population — hardly a mantle of legitimacy.

There are some Americans, Democrats in particular, who are happy to watch the Republican Party self-destruct with Mr. Trump at the helm. We cannot share in their equanimity. For one thing, though Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, would be heavily favored, a Trump defeat is far from sure. For another, the country needs two healthy parties and, ideally, a contest of ideas and ideology — not a slugfest of insults and bigotry. Mr. Trump's emergence already has done grave damage to American civility at home and prestige abroad. The cost of a Trump nomination would be far higher.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump offered what was meant as an argument for his nomination. If he reaches the convention with a lead short of an outright majority, and then fails to win, "I think you'd have riots," Mr. Trump said. "I think you'd have problems like you've never seen before. I think bad things would happen."

A democrat disavows violence; a demagogue wields it as a threat. The Republican Party should recognize the difference and act on it before it is too late.

WAPO editoral

Who didn't see this coming?

Bergdahl had psychiatric disorder when he left post, documents say

This is what he said earlier.

Bowe Bergdahl Thought He Was Going To Be Jason Bourne

  Maybe he suffers from multiple personality disorder.

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FILE - This undated file image provided by the U.S. Army shows Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The attorney for Bergdahl, who was released in exchange for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, says the soldier's case has been referred for trial by a general court-martial. (AP Photo/U.S. Army, File)

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had a psychiatric disorder when he walked away from his Afghanistan post in 2009, according to documents made public late Wednesday.

A document from July 2015 shows that an Army Sanity Board Evaluation concluded that Bergdahl suffered from schizotypal personality disorder when he left the post. A Mayo Clinic website says people with the disorder have trouble interpreting social cues and can develop significant distrust of others.

Attorneys for Bergdahl, who faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, acknowledged releasing the documents in the hope of counteracting negative publicity over the case.

"The more Americans know about this case, the better," attorney Eugene Fidell said in an email to the Associated Press. There was no immediate comment from the Army about the newly released documents.

Bergdahl was held for five years by the Taliban and its allies before being released in May 2014 as part of a swap involving five Guantanamo Bay detainees, prompting criticism from some in Congress that the move threatened national security.

Bergdahl told a general who investigated the case that he hoped to cause an alarm by leaving his post, then walk to a larger base in Afghanistan so he could have an audience with a top commander to draw attention to what he saw as bad decisions by officers above him.

"So, the idea was to -- it was-- literally, it was a sacrificial -- it was a self-sacrifice thing," Bergdahl said, according to the transcript of a 2014 interview with Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl.

In the interview, Bergdahl expressed misgivings about how he and other soldiers were sent to help retrieve a disabled armored vehicle before encountering explosives and enemy fire that turned a six-hour mission into one lasting several days. None of the men was killed, but Bergdahl said an officer complained they were unshaven upon their return to base.

He said he began to worry that if he didn't say anything, a future bad order could get someone in his platoon killed.

He described coming up with a plan to leave the observation post his platoon was manning: "The only thing that I could see was, I needed to get somebody's attention."

He ruled out going to the media and instead decided to trigger an alarm by sneaking off and then walking to a larger base nearby.

He described his thought process, referring to himself in the third-person: "That guy disappears. No one knows what happened to him. That call goes out. It hits every command. Everybody goes, what has happened?"

Within a couple days, he planned to show up at the base: "the Soldier shows up ... People recognize him. They ID him. They go, 'What did you just do?' And that Soldier says, 'I am not saying anything about what I did until I am talking to a general."'

Instead, he wound up in enemy captivity.

Bergdahl's military trial had been tentatively scheduled to begin over the summer, but it has been delayed by disagreements over access to classified materials.

Who didn't see this coming?

WOW... someone was actually fired at the VA!

VA Firing Three Top Officials at Phoenix VA Hospital

Three top officials at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona, are being targeted for removal.

VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson on Tuesday identified the three as Associate Director Lance Robinson, Chief of Health Administration Service Brad Curry, and hospital Chief of Staff Dr. Darren Deering.

The Phoenix VA became ground central to the wait-times scandal that eventually revealed that officials across the VA system were hiding their inability to meet appointment standards by keeping secret lists of veterans seeking care.

"It is vitally important to veterans in Phoenix and across the nation to understand that we will take appropriate accountability action as warranted by the evidence," Gibson said in a statement. "Frankly, I am disappointed that it took as long as it did for proposed actions to be made, but I am satisfied that we carefully reviewed a massive amount of evidence to ensure the accountability actions are supported."

The VA did not detail the allegations against the three but The Arizona Republic reported last month that the executives were under investigation to determine their "knowledge, involvement and culpability" in the wait-times manipulation and retaliation against whistle-blowers who exposed the problem.

Gibson said the cases against the three distracted from progress being made to improve veterans care, but removing them is an important step in getting past the past controversy and "refocusing solely on caring for our nation's veterans."

Two months ago Gibson changed VA policy to allow him to place officials subject to an administrative investigation into non-patient care where they could carry out duties as assigned. Previously, VA policy was to put the officials on paid administrative leave.

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Florida, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said he applauded Gibson and VA Secretary Bob McDonald's move to fire the three, saying it "is clearly the right thing" to do for the veterans depending on the hospital's care and employees working there.

"But we cannot forget the fact that it took nearly two years of investigations just to get to this point, and this is just the beginning of the disciplinary process," said Miller, who has been the leading voice in Congress demanding accountability for the wait-time delays.

"The truth is, because of arcane civil service protections that put the job security of corrupt bureaucrats before the safety of veterans, it will take many months and possibly years for VA to complete these proposed disciplinary actions."

But it should serve as a wake-up call -- including to the Senate -- to reform the system.

Had the Senate passed legislation sent over from the House last summer, the three Phoenix employees could have been fired in weeks rather than continue collecting salaries while the process moves forward, Miller said.

The wait-times scandal found its way into the public eye in 2014, leading to congressional hearings and, ultimately, to the resignations of senior leaders in Washington. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki demanded resignation of Under Secretary for Health Dr. Robert Petzel in May, but within weeks President Obama asked for Shinseki's resignation, as well.

Some 30 veterans awaiting appointments at the Phoenix medical center died before getting care, investigators concluded. VA inspectors concluded the delays contributed to the deaths but did not cause them.

After first placing Phoenix health care system Director Sharon Helman on administrative leave while it investigated the mess, the department fired her. She appealed to the Merit System Protections Board, but the firing was upheld -- not because of the wait-times manipulation but because she accepted lavish gifts from a former VA colleague turned lobbyist for a company wanting to do business with the hospital.

The Phoenix system's current director, Deborah Amdur, was appointed to the job in November. She previously was the medical center director of the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont.

WOW... someone was actually fired at the VA!

This is one for the annals of time

On a tip from Ed Kilbane

Ehsan Abdulaziz: Saudi millionaire who said he 'accidentally tripped and penetrated' teenage girl cleared of rape

And I thought the OJ and Casey Anthony jurors were stupid!!!

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A millionaire property developer has been cleared of raping a teenager after claiming he accidently tripped and fell on her.

Ehsan Abdulaziz, 46, was accused of forcing himself on an 18 year-old-girl who had slept on his sofa in his Maida Vale flat after a night out drinking.

The businessman had already had sex with the teenager’s 24-year-old friend, whom he already knew, in the bedroom and said his penis might have been poking out of his underwear when he fell on the teen.

The young woman said she had woken up in the early hours of the morning, with Mr Abdulaziz on top of her, forcing himself inside her.

He claimed he had gone to see if the young woman wanted a t-shirt to sleep in, or a taxi home. But he said she pulled him on top of her and placed his hand between her legs.

His semen and DNA was found inside the young woman, but he said it was possible he had semen on his hands from having sex with the 24-year-old earlier.

In the evidence, Mr Abdulaziz showed how the girl had put her hand behind his head to pull him towards her, which is how he says he fell.

He said: “I’m fragile, I fell down but nothing ever happened, between me and this girl nothing ever happened.”

Saudi Arabia 'may jail woman who posted video of husband cheating with housemaid'

The women met the millionaire in London’s West End club, Cirque le Soir nightclub, where he invited them to his private table.

The jury acquitted him in just 30 minutes of deliberations.

 (The Brit jurors were probably fearful of a Muslim retailiation.... because no one could be THAT stupid)

This is one for the annals of time