The White House Ain't Got No Class (And That's a Good Thing)

In a surprise move the White House dropped today one of the more budget busting provisions of the Obamacare legislation, called the CLASS Act (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports), it was designed to provide people with long term in-home care. The CLASS Act wasn't part of the Obamacare debate, and few people outside of those who read the legislation knew about it but experts agreed that it could've exploded the federal budget deficit down the road and personal budgets before that.

The Community Living Services and Support (CLASS) Act was designed to assist people who need in-home assistance with basic daily tasks There are a few problems with the plan. First of all Congress wrote the legislation so people were automatically enrolled in the plan, employers were to automatically take the money out of your check unless one opted-out. The plan, was constructed in a way that it couldn't pay for itself over the long run and it would have have been one of the biggest budget busting parts of Obamacare.

 According to  Kathleen Sebelius the Care Act was dropped because they even the free-spending Obama Administration couldn't find a way to make it financially viable.

In a letter to Congress, Sebelius wrote, "Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time."

But a senior administration official told CNN that there were big questions whether CLASS could be self-sustaining even when the health care reform law was being considered by Congress. And as a result, lawmakers specified that the HHS secretary had to determine that the program would be sustainable for 75 years before certifying it.

In a blog entry on Healthcare.gov, Sebelius cited warnings that not enough young healthy people would sign up.

"This could have led to a vicious cycle where premiums would have to be set higher and higher to cover the likely costs of benefits, leading fewer and fewer healthier people to sign up for the program," she wrote.

Sebelius said she wasn't giving up.

"So even as we suspend work on implementing CLASS, we are recommitting ourselves to the ultimate goal of making sure Americans can get the long-term care they need, whether it's a working-age mom with disabilities who needs daily support right now or a young man at his first job who wants to protect himself and his family against the possibility of huge long-term care costs in the future," Sebelius wrote.

House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan issued this statement about the end of the Class Act.

“To hide the true cost of their health-care overhaul, the leaders of the Democratic party loaded it with gimmicks and double-counting. One of the most egregious of these gimmicks involved the CLASS Act, a new long-term care program that was scored as an offset against the ten-year, trillion-dollar cost of the Democrats new law. Independent health care experts warned that the CLASS Act program would turn into a classic ‘insurance death spiral.’ Not only would the short-term savings fail to materialize, but the long-term costs would prove catastrophically high. Even Democratic Senator Kent Conrad called the program ‘A Ponzi scheme Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.’

“Today, the Obama Administration finally surrendered to reality: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has informed Congressional leaders that she ‘does not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time.' The smoke and mirrors that the Democrats employed to sell their health care overhaul are finally falling away, one broken promise at a time. When all of these gimmicks are stripped out, the new law would add hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink over the next decade, as health-care costs send the debt spiraling out of control. Now it is time for Congress to do the responsible thing: Repeal the disastrous new law and replace it with true, patient-centered reforms.

The Dropping of the Class Act just a small victory in the "war" against Obamacare. As Rep Ryan said above, now it is time to get rid of the entire disastrous health care law, our grandchildren are depending on us. 

Iran Terror Plot-Will Obama Miss His 3AM Phone Call?

By Barry Rubin

Remember that Hillary Clinton ad about it being the early morning hours and the phone’s ringing in the White House? Well it’s arrived in real life, and the phone is — or isn’t — going to be answered by Barack Obama. And the question is: What are you going to do about the dramatic announcement of an Iranian plot to attack targets in Washington, D.C.?

True, it’s a bizarre story about Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Mexican drug lords. But, after all, the United States was impelled a step toward entering World War One by the Zimmerman Note in which German agents sought to entice Mexico to go to war against the United States.

Vice President Joe Biden has said that “nothing has been taken off the table” when it comes to the U.S. response. The Saudis, who are famous for keeping a low profile and trying to avoid problems — often through money — are openly livid. They’re basically saying something along the lines of, “We told you so.” They tried and gave up because they didn’t get U.S. or Western help. Will anything change now?

Is This Story True?

There are some points that would make one question this whole garish tale. Most important:

–This does not match past Iranian practice. Many “experts” think this is the clincher, but precedent is not always a reliable guide. Things change. Be careful on this point. But clearly this does not correspond with past Iranian operations that went through either direct agents or trusted Muslim Islamist clients.

–Why should some Iranian-American businessman in Texas be a key Iranian agent? It’s called secret agent work for a reason. A sleeper cell should not be obvious. And he did have a relative in the Revolutionary Guards hierarchy, if the indictment is to be believed, who helped him.

–Why didn’t Iran use its own assets? Again, I think this is a strongest argument against the story. The whole thing is amateurish but more importantly it was Iran’s most sensitive operation ever and the absurdly high danger of exposure was obvious. Even if Iran was going to do this kind of operation, it would have developed these contacts with the Mexicans and not immediately entrusted some drug gang official that one of their guys barely knew.

–What was the Iranian goal? Certainly, Iran has been threatening the United States with dire consequences for a while. But why the sudden decision to escalate? Revenge for sanctions? And what was their plan for concealing Iranian involvement if the attack did happen? One can explain such a change, but one cannot explain it very well. This raises questions, but again is not a definitive answer.

The Administration is telling its favored reporters that the Iranians were desperate (sanctions are biting; Tehran is become more aggressive in Syria to fight the revolution there and in Afghanistan. I don’t buy it. Iran’s operations are designed to spread or protect existing influence among Muslims and not to launch a direct bin Ladin style Jihad on American soil. Again, if the evidence exists I’ll accept it but on an analytical basis it doesn’t compute.

Did the Administration make the whole thing up to protect itself politically? No, it wouldn’t dare since such behavior would eventually be easily exposed and backfire big-time. And besides, if it were going to do such a thing it would invent a free-lance terror plot, not drag the United States into a potential confrontation with Iran, a country that it’s been trying to avoid confrontation with.

(If I had to make a guess–and it is too early to do so–I’d speculate that the Iranian agent(s) involved didn’t have full authorization to organize such attacks but that’s an educated guess. The problem with that theory is that Iranian regime organizations tend to be heavily top-down, Iran is a dictatorship, and the counter-intelligence groups keep an eye on everyone. But even if my theory were to be correct, since the Iranians would never admit it was a rogue operation that wouldn’t save the regime from potential consequences, if any. )

All that’s important is this: If the U.S. government has persuasive evidence that it can present, then it happened. Since the main defendent has turned state’s evidence then he will supply details and we would see that the story is true and the trail does lead back to Iran’s government. BUT if the Obama Administration can make the charges stick that is only the beginning of its problems!

Might This Blow Up in the Obama’s Administration’s Face?

Absolutely yes. If they were fooled by a fabricator, if revealing the case too soon (to stave off criticism of Attorney General Holder over the gun-smuggling case) damaged the chance of success in uncovering the terrorist network, or if the government’s response is not equal to the crisis they’ve developed, then the Obama administration will look worse.

This whole affair is extremely dangerous for the White House. Any idea that this is an easy win for the administration — see how good we are at protecting America — is dead wrong.

I am not arguing and do not believe that they created this plot, but this would not be the first time that U.S. officials have been fooled by Iranians with an agenda to fool them.

What Will the Administration Do about It?

The response is fraught with peril. The immediate reaction — we’ll mobilize world opinion! — makes the administration look buffoonish. If this is true, it is an act of war by Iran, at least by elements in the Iranian government (you know, the kind of people who could one day give nuclear weapons to terrorists).

Response A: Do Nothing

Wow, can you see that in the presidential debates in 2012? An enemy chose to attack the very capital city and the Obama administration could only respond with press releases and Biden growling!

Response B: The “Sunni Strategy”

This really scares me. This administration is quite capable of saying: Iran is the enemy so what we must do is work with our good Muslim friends, you know the Muslim Brotherhood? We need to win over Hamas and Hizballah from Iran by proving we are nice to them. Oh, and we need to work closely with that wonderful Turkish government, like letting them organize the political succession in Syria!

And so on. Do not underestimate the stupidity, incompetence, and ignorance of this administration regarding the Middle East.

Response C: A United Front against Revolutionary Islamism

The U.S. government takes the lead in organizing and supporting Europe, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and Jordan into a cooperative alignment. Back the oppositions in Iran, Turkey, and Lebanon. Punish enemies and reward friends. Whatever shortcomings Saudi Arabia has, its leaders have been correct about the Iranian threat and their frustration with Obama’s failure to lead. The Saudis even tried to save Lebanon from Iranian-Syrian domination but gave up when Washington wouldn’t help them.

The point is not to go to war with Iran but to oppose Iranian interests and allies everywhere, including the use of covert operations. Challenge Iranian agents of influence in Lebanon and Iraq. Containment is not just about nuclear weapons for Tehran, but about the spreading influence of that regime and, more broadly, the gains being made by revolutionary Islamists throughout the region.

That also means the United States must seem like a strong and determined leader. It must have very serious credibility. And it will have to identify revolutionary Islamism as the enemy.

Look, this is the Obama administration we are talking about. I don’t think they can do it. Hopefully, the next president can do so. There better be a next president in sight because there are a lot more crises on the way.

As I said at the start, I do not think this is some brilliant maneuver that will end up being to the Obama administration’s advantage. They have either made a huge mistake that’s going to be exposed or presented themselves with a challenge they cannot meet.

Ring! Ring! It’s your telephone, Mr. President.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com
 

Bob Beckel is Either Too Partisan or Too Lazy to Check His Israeli "Settlement" Facts

Whenever I think that Barack Obama has had his worst week ever...he finds a way to make it worse. This week began with more Solyndra revelations tying the failed Solar Panel firm's federal loan to politics directed by the Obama White House and it ended at the United Nations where President Abbas made a disastrous application for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian Statehood, which more than anything was a result of Barack Obama's disastrous Middle East policy.

According to Bob Beckel on Friday's The Five Obama's policies had nothing to do with the UN disaster, nothing to do with the fact that Abbas refuses to negotiate, and nothing to do with the fact that Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as the Jewish State, its all the fault of the settlements, the settlements, the settlements. To be hones I can't remember if he repeated the words "the settlements" three or four times but Beckel certainly made his point. He also proved that he is either too partisan to admit the truth, or too lazy to research recent  history, but either way he is wrong.

Allow me to explain the facts and for brevity's sake I will start with the Obama Administration.

While the Palestinian's have never accepted Israeli settlements, secession of all settlement building has never been a precondition to talks. Israel had long ago agreed not to build new communities  in Judea and Samaria but would continue to add housing units to existing communities.

During the government of PM Ehud Barak, there were direct talks and construction continued in existing communities.

It was the Obama administration's naiveté that made the settlements an issue. Hillary Clinton first demanded the freeze in 2009 and was quickly backed up by Obama. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession (a settlement freeze including no new housing units in existing communities) was for Israel a grave sacrifice. From their point of view Obama was telling Adult Israelis that their children could no longer live near their parents. He was also saying that a policy not accepted in the United States (allowing people of a certain faith to live anywhere they want) was OK as long as it appeased the Arab world.

It is interesting that the man who pushed for Muslims to build a mosque on Ground Zero, and for Illegal immigrants to live in Arizona, believes that Jews should be banned from living on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Making the Settlement a cornerstone of the new administration's Middle East policy, was a major naivete-driven error by the Obama administration which was compounded by their inclusion of Jerusalem in the mix and their constant public berating of the Jewish State. This turned the Israeli population against Obama, especially the Israeli left who would be more inclined to support a settlement freeze demand. A May 2011 Smith Poll conducted for the Jerusalem Post showed that only 12% of Israelis believe Obama is pro-Israel, 40% believe he is pro-Palestinian.

Obama's demand for a freeze of natural community growth broke a US/Israel agreement made during the Bush administration.

Obama, through his Secretary of State Ms Clinton, said there was never an agreement between Israel and the US about natural expansion of existing settlements. Elliot Abrams who negotiated the agreement for the United States says that the Administration is lying.

Immediately the Palestinians seized upon the Obama-created issue. Seeing an opportunity to avoid talking, they used Obama’s demands to make a settlement freeze a precondition to further talks, even though there were negotiations and construction going on simultaneously before Obama became president.

In August 2009 Prime Minister Netanyahu announced a ten month settlement building freeze in Judea and Samaria. It was approved by the Knesset and implemented on November 25, 2009 and ran till September 25, 2010. Despite pressure from the United States, the Palestinians wasted the first 9  months of the freeze and would not come to the negotiation table till September 2010, three weeks before the freeze ended. A fact lost on Mr. Beckel.

After the freeze ended, Abbas once again hid behind Obama's naivete, another fact that Beckel forgets. With the end of the freeze pressure was put on Jewish State to extend it indefinitely.  No one questioned the Palestinian Authority’s refusal talk for the first nine months of a ten month freeze.

The US began to negotiate with the Israel to extend the freeze. And the two sides came close to a deal. Based on their experience with Obama and the deal negotiated by Elliot Abrams during the Bush Administration, Israel demanded that any proposal be presented in writing as any oral deal with the Obama administration was worth the paper it was printed on.

The written offer never came and worse yet, the Secretary of State wasn’t negotiating in good faith. Instead Ms Clinton was playing "Bait and Switch."

As Israel waited for a letter clarifying America's guarantees in exchange for a proposed building ban for Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, a diplomatic source has come forward saying that no such letter is on its way. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton misled Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and contrary to reports, the U.S. did not guarantee an end to the freeze, the source said.

The source, a senior diplomat with inside knowledge of Netanyahu's recent meetings in Washington, said Clinton made commitments when talking to Netanyahu, but later slipped out of them by claiming that she had not been speaking on behalf of U.S. President Obama – who, she said in the end, did not give his approval.

Despite the Obama administration's bait and switch, Netanyahu tried to give the Palestinian side an "out." In early October 2010 he made a very simple offer to the PA.  If you were to recognize Israel as the Jewish State, we will extend the freeze.  As reported by Al Jazeera the answer was a resounding no:

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has offered to renew a partial settlement construction freeze in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. 

He announced the offer on Monday, just three days after the Palestinians and Arab states gave the US a month to persuade Israel to renew a 10-month moratorium on settlement housing starts that expired on September 26.

Netanyahu's proposal met with swift rejection from senior Palestinian officials.

"The whole world holds Netanyahu responsible for what is happening in the region, after he chose to push ahead with the settlement project at the expense of an advance in the peace process. Settlement freeze is a commitment Netanyahu should respect," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Al Jazeera.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior official of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, described the settlement issue as "an aggression on Palestinian rights and land".

"What Israel calls itself is an Israeli matter that does not concern us. The two issues are not related," he told Al Jazeera in reference to Netanyahu's condition that Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

Nabil Abu Rudainah, the spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said a return to peace talks required a freeze on settlement building by Israel.

"The issue of the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the matter," he told the Reuters news agency.

The Palestinian side still refuses to take that first step toward peace, recognizing the Jewish  State of Israel. And while Barack Obama was willing to destroy the prospects for negotiations by making the settlements an issue the way it never had before, he has avoided upsetting the Palestinians by demanding that they recognize the Jewish State of Israel.  Something Obama tap danced around the issue as recently as his speech in front of the General Assembly last week. Those, Mr. Beckel is what are called facts.

Its not just Bob Beckel, he is just the most annoying. The real story of a settlement freeze has been ignored by the mainstream media, Earlier this week Gretchen Carlson of Fox and Friends reported that the Administration was trying to get Israel to return to the table, despite the fact that Israel never left the table, the Palestinians did. Israel offered a ten month freeze to help the US out of a problem caused by our President's naiveté, the Palestinians ignored the freeze until it was too late, an extension of the freeze was first sabotaged by Hilary Clinton's bait and switch tactics and a refusal to put things in writing, then by PA President Abbas because he didn't want to recognize Israel.

Whether Beckel is ignoring the truth because he desperately wants to turn around the progressive Obama's fortunes, or because he is too lazy to investigate the truth it doesn't really matter.What matters is that there is a dearth of truth coming out of the main stream media, even on Fox News. I guess bias and or/laziness is bipartisan.

Labor Secretary Solis-Obama Hasn't Been Ignoring Jobs (He's Just Incompetent)

Sometimes when administration hacks defend their boss they don't quite understand what they are saying. For example, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumpka criticized the President's effort on fixing the job market.  He said said Obama has not offered bold enough solutions to fix the economy and has been distracted by Republican demands to bring down the national deficit.

Today Labor Secretary Solis rejected Trumka's criticism and said the president has been focused on jobs.

Solis said Obama has “absolutely not” been nibbling around the edges in trying to fix the economy and instead had offered bold solutions to create jobs as the economy struggles. She highlighted Obama’s efforts to help the U.S. auto industry.

"Absolutely not,” Solis told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Monitor. “I can say that because the last two and a half years I have spent a tremendous amount of time ramping, reforming and reinventing some of our job-creating programs to strengthen them, to better coordinate them with our partners in the field.”

Maybe Solis should have let well enough alone.  Think about it for a moment.  Trumka was claiming Obama wasn't doing enough in the job market.  He may be right, after all the unemployment is over 9% (and he promised it wouldn't go over 8%).  But according to Solis the administration has been working hard on jobs, which means their programs haven't been working. Instead of jobs not being a priority the Secretary of Labor is saying something much worse, the Obama administration is simply not up to the task.

Sales of Chevy Volt Are Running Out of Power

 Operating on direction from the Obama administration, GM is in the process of re-tooling its line toward more energy efficient products.  The Chevy Volt is supposed to be the signature car of that "new" General Motors.

The way thing look right now the Chevy Volt may turn out to be one of those infamous Harvard Business School case studies where they explain why a product failed.  

In the case of the Volt, the reason is simple, most drivers  don't want tiny energy efficient cars, especially the electric ones with their limited range between charges and their very high out of pocket costs.

As GM is ramping up production of the volt, sales have not been going well, neither have the sales of Nissan's battery operated car the Leaf. Piling on the bad sales reports is a new study showing that the limited interest consumers had in the Volt is declining

Through the end of July, Chevy has sold about 3,200 of the plug-in hybrids compared to 4,500 Nissan Leafs. But both makers have begun ramping up production, General Motors forecasting sales of around 16,000 for the year as a whole – including a small number of Volt clone Opel Amperas targeted at markets abroad.

But a new study by CNW marketing shows dark clouds hovering over the GM electric vehicle:

In March, 21% of so-called Early Adapters said they were “very likely” to consider buying a Volt, while 38.1% said they were “likely” to do the same. That slipped to 14.6% saying “very likely” in July, and 31.1% “likely.” Among EV Enthusiasts, reports the CNW study, the number of those likely or very likely to consider Volt fell from a combined 71% to 51% during the same four-month period.

“It’s way too early to tell, but the signs aren’t encouraging,” said CNW’s chief analyst Art Spinella. 

When it comes to mainstream consumers Volt has all but slipped off the radar screen, only about 3% of new car buyers likely to consider the Chevrolet Volt, the analyst added.

The big problem is the plug-in’s price, CNW data indicate. When first introduced, the Volt carried a $41,000 sticker, though it qualified for a $7,500 federal tax credit. For 2012, the Chevy will drop to $39,995, a $1,005 cut, though it is still thousands more than the Leaf – and nearly double the price of a base Chevrolet Cruze compact, which shares the same underpinnings as Volt.

.....GM’s commitment to electric propulsion is, if anything, being charged up. As TheDetroitBureau.com reported last week, the maker has inked a deal with battery supplier A123 that will be used for a range of new battery-electric vehicles that will begin to reach market in 2014.

Don't forget that much of the electric and hybrid car business is in the US are subsidized by the US Govt.In 2010, one fourth of GM and Ford’s hybrids were purchased by the federal government.  Nissan got a $1.4 billion dollar loan from the feds to develop their electric car, the Leaf.  Several thousands of dollars in tax credits per car have to be shelled out to make these models attractive for sale.

Electric cars are turning out to be a typical example of what happens when the government picks winners in the marketplace rather than let the market pick the winners. We now have government inefficiently using tax dollars to create a limited and declining market. There is a reduced incentive to improve battery technology to increase the cars range and price, as long as the government subsidizes the market.  The government will have to continue to subsidize the hybrid, hybrid electric, and electric car marketplace for the foreseeable future or else it will collapse from the reduced demand. That's if it doesn't collapse anyway.

Obstruction of Justice? Obama Administration Accused of Intimidating Fast and Furious Witnesses

It appears that the Obama administration is forgetting a key rule of politics, its not the mistake that gets you, it's the cover-up.

For the second time in less than a month they are being accused of obstructing the Congressional  inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF operation which allowed Mexican drug cartels and convicted felons to obtain weapons. The purpose of these committee hearings is to discover how such a lame-brained scheme was allowed to proceed.

Today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is holding hearings continuing its investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.

According to Committee Chairman Issa, the Obama administration sought to intimidate witnesses into not testifying before his committee. Issa said at least two scheduled witnesses ”received warning letters from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to limit their testimony.

Issa made this revelation in an interview last night with the Washington Times.

But after receiving subpoenas, at least two of the agents got letters from ATF Associate Chief Counsel Barry S. Orlow warning them to keep certain areas off-limits, including those still under investigation. Neither of the targeted agents was identified.

Mr. Issa said at least one witness wanted to back out of testifying to his committee after receiving the letter, but the chairman declined that request. Instead he fired a letter back to William J. Hoover, deputy director of ATF, saying the “timing and content of this letter strongly suggest that ATF is obstructing and interfering with the congressional investigation.” 

This is the second time, there have been charges of obstruction made against the Obama administration regarding the Fast and Furious scandal.  On July 4th ATF Director Ken Melson testified before Darrell Issa's  Committee. As a result of the meeting, Issa along with ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley  fired off a letter about  Melson's charge that he had been directed to obstruct the Congressional investigation.

"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."

Issa  told the Washington Times  he is certain Fast and Furious was known about by most top officials at the Justice Department and that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. either knew and misled Congress, or was so out of the loop that he’s guilty of mismanagement.

“How is it that the No. 2, 3, 4 at Justice all knew about this program, but the No. 1 didn’t?,” Mr. Issa said. “Is it because he said ‘don’t tell me’? Is it because they knew what they were doing is wrong, and they were protecting their boss? Or is it that Eric Holder is just so disconnected … ?

“Whichever it is — he knew and he’s lied to Congress, or he didn’t know, and he’s so detached that he wasn’t doing his job — that really probably is for the administration to make a decision on, sooner not later,” Mr. Issa said.

It will be interesting to see this play out, what can be stated as fact is that this was a misguided program which led to the death of at least one ATF Agent.  We also know that as of today there are two separate distinct charges of obstruction of justice against this, the "most transparent" administration in American history.

In more Fast And Furious News Chairman Issa released a report that summarized what the committee has discovered so far (embedded below). The report found:

• In the fall of 2009, ATF officials in Mexico began noticing a spike in guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes. Many of those guns traced directly to an ongoing investigation out of ATF’s Phoenix Field Division.

• As Operation Fast and Furious progressed, there were numerous recoveries of large weapons caches in Mexico. These heavy-duty weapons included AK-47s, AR-15s, and even Barrett .50 caliber rifles – the preferred weapons of drug cartels.

• At a March 5, 2010 briefing, ATF intelligence analysts told ATF and DOJ leadership that the number of firearms bought by known straw purchasers had exceeded the 1,000 mark. The briefing also made clear these weapons were ending up in Mexico.

• ATF and DOJ leadership kept their own personnel in Mexico and Mexican government officials totally in the dark about all aspects of Fast and Furious. Meanwhile, ATF officials in Mexico grew increasingly worried about the number of weapons recovered in Mexico that traced back to an ongoing investigation out of ATF’s Phoenix Field Division.

• ATF officials in Mexico raised their concerns about the number of weapons recovered up the chain of command to ATF leadership in Washington, D.C. Instead of acting decisively to end Fast and Furious, the senior leadership at both ATF and DOJ praised the investigation and the positive results it had produced. Frustrations reached a boiling point, leading former ATF Attaché Darren Gil to engage in screaming matches with his supervisor, International Affairs Chief Daniel Kumor, about the need to shut down the Phoenix-based investigation.

• Despite assurances that the program would be shut down as early as March 2010, it took the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent in December 2010 to actually bring the program to a close.

• ATF officials in Mexico finally realized the truth: ATF allowed guns to walk. By withholding this critical information from its own personnel in Mexico, ATF jeopardized relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

• The high-risk tactics of cessation of surveillance, gunwalking, and non-interdiction of weapons that ATF used in Operation Fast and Furious went against the core of ATF’s mission, as well as the training and field experience of its agents. These flaws inherent in Operation Fast and Furious made its tragic consequences inevitable.

ATF 07-26-11 Report on Impact on Mexico 2

New Obama Administration Achievement: Messing Up Turkey, Syria, and Libya Within 24 Hours

It’s truly amazing that literally every day the Obama administration finds a new way to mess up the Middle East. July 14-15, 2011, is a new record since it damaged Western interests and any hope for a stable future in three countries almost simultaneously!

I noted a few days ago that the Obama government finally seemed to call for the end to Syria’s current regime, but within hours it backtracked. Now the administration favors conciliation talks between the opposition and the Assad dictatorship. They’re still urging the regime to make reforms, they’re just urging it more loudly.

And with whom is the U.S. government coordinating this effort? With the Turkish regime, an ally of Iran and Syria, and specifically with its foreign minister who wrote a book in Turkish calling for all the Muslim-majority states to ally against the West (and now has written a book in English saying that all countries should be good buddies). True, Clinton did urge the Turkish government to allow more free speech.

Generally, though, she praised the regime and its growing role in the region. (Does that include its unbending hostility toward Israel and support for Hamas and Hizballah?) She also said:

“Stability inside Syria is important for Turkey. But the right kind of stability — a transition to democracy — is what would be best for Turkey and even more importantly what would be best for the Syrian people.”

Now let me ask you a question: What kind of stable regime in Syria would a Turkey governed by a stealth Islamist regime allied with Iran like to see? How about either a radical anti-Western regime or, even better, an Islamist regime?

On the same day that Clinton was urging the opposition to conciliate with the Syrian government, reliable opposition sources (though that doesn’t mean their numbers are accurate) reported 41 protesters killed by government forces, many of them in Damascus.

Regarding Libya, the Obama administration recognized the opposition Transitional National Council “as the legitimate governing authority.” Funny, it’s never thought of doing that in Syria!

This is a big step and the next step is to hand over huge amounts of Libyan financial assets frozen in the United States to this opposition group, whose control of the revolution is totally insecure, whose own political composition is unclear, and whose behavior in the field is not so great.

Let’s be clear: Muammar Gaddafi was and is a terrible tyrant. But now that NATO is supporting the “good guys,” we should keep posted on their doings. Remember that Obama era foreign policy is run by people who villify the United States for supporting “bad guys” in the past. But I wonder how the behavior of the Libyan rebels would stack up compared to the Nicaraguan “Contras.” At best the same, or possibly worse?

Here’s what New York Times reporter Brian Denton, on the scene when the rebels took the town of Qawalish, wrote:

“A short while later rebels were shooting padlocks off the metal doors to shops…and shops were being aggressively looted by armed men in rebel attire. Every few minutes, a truck would pass by on the road, headed back toward Zintan loaded with what seemed to be stolen goods. …

“By Sunday evening … all of the shops in the town had been ransacked. … In building after building, furniture was flipped over, dishes and mirrors shattered, and everything torn apart. … The town was … a shattered, emptied ghost town decorated with broken glass.

“No one could reasonably dispute that when the Qaddafi forces … crushed the demonstrations in Tripoli, besieged Misurata, stormed Ajdabiya, shelled Benghazi—that all of these resulted in more damage to civilian property and loss of civilian life than what happened when the rebels captured tiny Qawalish. But … if [the rebels] think that the smaller scale of their crimes excuses or justifies them, then they risk embarrassing their backers, losing international support and fueling exactly the kind of war they have insisted they and NATO would prevent.”

So much for protecting civilians. Remember, the Obama administration has turned over the fate of U.S. policy in Libya and handed over the services of the U.S. (and NATO, along with European governments) armed forces to an unknown group of rebels who, if they succeed, will probably massacre those from tribes and regions they don’t like. Ironically, in an age obsessed with racism, the opposition has been killing blacks because Gaddafi imported sub-Saharan Africans to work and fight for the regime.

Oh, but the opposition has hired an American public relations firm, one that has experience in making dictatorial regimes look good in Washington.

If Libya is Obama’s Iraq, he is going to have to compare the rationales for intervention and the results some day.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com     

The Obama Administration’s “Mission Accomplished” Fallacy in the War on Terrorism

By Barry Rubin

Leon Panetta, leaving the CIA directorship post to become secretary of defense, and General David Petraeus, leaving the job of commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to become CIA chief, have just come close to declaring victory in the war against terrorism, though that’s a phrase the Obama Administration refuses to use.

Good news, says Panetta. Once the United States knocks off about 20 al-Qaida leaders currently in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and North Africa, that organization will be out of commission. And while the Taliban cannot be quickly wiped out, says Petraeus, it can be “neutralized” so that it won’t cause much trouble in future.

Oh, and Panetta said that the U.S. goal is to force the Taliban to negotiate a deal to allow for national conciliation in Afghanistan. Here’s my proposed headline: Obama Administration Says: Make Deal with September 11 Accomplices. How’s that sound? That’s what’s really going on, a deal with the terrorists and not their defeat.

Uh-oh. Let’s assume that they are correct. So the forces that carried out the September 11 attack will not matter any more. So the Obama administration won’t have to worry about Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood– which it seems to think are now moderate, democratic-oriented groups. Nor will it have to be much concerned about all those other revolutionary Islamist organizations out there. Perhaps it can then focus on what seems to be the White House’s main priority, the “War on Islamophobia.”

Presumably, without those defeated threats, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria won’t be a problem for U.S. interests and security. Iraq and Afghanistan will be stable and friendly polities.

One can only think of the lines from the satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer:

“Once all the Germans/were warlike and mean/but that couldn’t happen again!/We taught them a lesson in 1918/and they have hardly bothered us since then!”

In other words, the Obama Administration will lull itself even more into a false sense of security as the revolutionary Islamists advance in their effort to overthrow all the region’s regimes, take over the Middle East, and expel Western influence.

But let’s not assume they are correct on the specifics. The most basic principle of counter-terrorism is that just because the leaders are killed (and despite efforts to assuage grievances) broad-based terrorists groups don’t disappear. Obviously, the administration wants to play off its successful killing of Osama bin Ladin to imply that a few more such operations will do the trick. But al-Qaida is a very decentralized group.

Local affiliates continue to exist especially in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Algeria. They aren’t going away so easily. I’ll bet that parallel, albeit non-member groups, will soon appear in Egypt and elsewhere. Preventing terrorist bombers from blowing up U.S. airliners and embassies is a worthwhile task, but that’s not the same thing as stopping terrorist groups–even if they momentarily aren’t using violence–from seizing control of countries and then using violence to intimidate opponents and launch attacks on neighbors.

The fact that Petraeus has become a national hero because of being right on Iraq should not obscure the fact that he was wrong on Afghanistan. Petraeus has long believed that the United States could defeat the Taliban, use civic projects to win Afghan hearts and minds, and to build Afghanistan into a stable democratic polity. The idea that the United States can depend on the Afghan government and military to hold off radical Islamists isn’t going to work. Afghanistan isn’t Iraq.

As for the Taliban it isn’t going to be “neutralized” in any real sense. It might just lay low and let the U.S. forces leave the country, then go into action again. Indeed, it has been revealed that the secret negotiations between the U.S. government and the Taliban seek to obtain precisely that outcome. Does anyone seriously believe–other than the Obama Administration–that the Taliban is going to live up to its commitments? Can one imagine “conciliation” in Afghanistan?

I want to be clear that I do not favor a continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. But a withdrawal must be accompanied by ensuring that local anti-Taliban forces keep up that battle in their own self-interest. Pressing them to make a deal with the Taliban, which can then use any such gains in trying to seize state power, is the worst possible policy. Remember that the United States is withdrawing from Iraq with a strategy of helping the Iraqi government defeat the al-Qaida allied terrorists there, not making a deal with the insurgents.

The underlying problem is that Panetta and Patraeus are articulating two of the many myths held by the Obama Administration: that revolutionary Islamist groups aren’t a threat unless they are trying to blow up American skyscrapers and that they can be moderated by killing a few terrorist leaders or making a deal with them.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com    

Obama's Syria Policy; One Step Forward Two Steps Back

By Barry Rubin


It took 2.5 years, months of massive revolutionary upheaval, and a violent attack on the embassy in Damascus, but U.S. policy toward Syria is finally changing. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked:“President [Bashar al-] Assad is not indispensable and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power….Our goal is to see that the will of the Syrian people for a democratic transformation occurs.”

Hooray! Hooray! Oops! For despite this major step forward, the Obama administration can’t stop itself from setting up a new potential disaster. For how are they going about this regime transition effort? Why, with Syria’s neighbor, Turkey. The regime thinks it can create a sphere of influence for itself in Syria. In other words, Turkish interests (as defined by the regime) and American interests in Syria are diametrically opposed! Obama is relying on a mediator who will support an Islamist state in Syria or at least one dominated by Islamist forces.

Obama’s colleagues and supporters rightly say that they worry about Syria’s future yet are now following a strategy most likely to lead to a bad result.

Turkey? Why not the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia directly, and also Jordan? Remember these (ex-?) U.S. allies? Like Syria, these are Arab states. Ah, but for the Obama administration, Arabism isn’t important. Only Islam is. And if you undermine Arab identity–as Obama has been doing since his Cairo speech–in favor of Islam, then you’ll get Islamists, not nationalists.

In Iraq, the State Department advocated, as it always does, a Sunni Arab approach. This was a big problem since there Sunni Arabs only comprise a 20 percent minority. But in Syria, Sunni Arabs are 60 percent of the population. In Iraq, where Shia Muslims are the largest group, Saudi and Jordanian intervention was a problem; in Syria, though, going through the countries that have long been U.S. allies makes far more sense.

The U.S. military loves Turkey and many officers have served there. But these same officers know from the bitter complaints of their Turkish colleages–who hate the current regime–just how bad things are with that regime.

Of the many mistakes made by the Obama administration, the preference of Muslim over Arab identity is one of the more neglected but very dangerous ones. Nationalism in the Arab world has many sins and catastrophes to its name, but what other bulwark will there be to Islamism, as an alternative identity? (Democracy is not an identity.) This bad idea was probably dreamed up in the CIA as a brilliant innovation: the United States will promote an Islamic identity to combat the radical Islamist doctrine of al-Qaida and Iran.

Yet if one looks at various struggles–say that between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, or within Lebanon or in Egypt–the Islam card is going to be dominated by radicals. There is no organized body of moderate Islam; though some relatively moderate Islamic groups are evolving they are quite weak and probably likely to ally with the Islamists in the end.

And as for Turkey, it is run by an Islamist regime that is aligned with Iran, Hamas, and Hizballah. Why partner with a government that opposes all of your interests? Well, most of them anyway since there is some parallelism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many people have asked me why Turkey is now opposed to the Syrian regime, often assuming it is out of a love of democracy on the part of those running things in Ankara. But that’s not it at all. Rather, as a Sunni Islamist movement, the Turkish regime has decided to back the Muslim Brotherhood and other forces in Syria. It dreams of having a sphere of influence in Syria.

In other words, the Obama administration has turned to the worst possible partner in Syria whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the United States on this issue. Thus, it has now chosen a strategy most likely to bring about that bad result.

Another mistake of the Obama administration thus appears here: supporting one’s enemies rather than one’s friends. I don’t mean to suggest that “Turkey” is an enemy of the United States. But on a number of issues (Israel-Palestinian, Lebanon, Syria, Iran), the Turkish regime is on the opposite side of where the United States should be.

For now, Clinton’s statement marks an improvement in U.S. policy. But in the long run, Obama administration’s policy on Syria may have taken, to quote Lenin, one step forward, two steps back.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com  

Why Is the U.S. in Libya? Good Question !

 by Barry Rubin

Listening to President Barack Obama talk about the administration’s Libya policy is a strange experience. He makes various arguments justifying the war there along the lines of: dictator Muammar Gaddafi is a bad guy, he has killed a lot of Americans in the past, and he was threatening to kill his own people so the United States must protect them.

As one listens to this, however, it seems as if even Obama doesn’t believe what his teleprompter is saying. The arguments are ridiculously transparent and if the media wanted to be critical they could tear Obama apart on the issue. First, Gaddafi was not a threat to U.S. interests at the time a decision was made to intervene. The reason why is important to remember. Whether or not the war in Iraq was a good idea, the fate of his fellow dictator, Saddam Hussein, scared Gaddafi badly. He was quick to play nice and turn over information on his nuclear program to the United States.

The Americans then accepted his “repentance.” It would be strange to put much moral commitment into a deal with Gaddafi. But for the record, the U.S. government did in a sense betray a promise to leave him alone if he left U.S. interests alone and didn’t subvert his neighbors or sponsor terrorism. Combined with the U.S. treatment of Husni Mubarak, dictators aren’t going to put much faith in the Obama administration’s promises. That’s one more reason why it seems to make more sense to be America’s enemy than its friend nowadays.

Second, while Gaddafi is a brutal dictator, rulers in Algeria, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries are equally willing to kill and torture their citizens. What the U.S. government must justify is why human rights violations in some countries deserve intervention and the same thing or worse in others don’t. Usually, the distinction is made on the basis of national interest. The regimes in Iran and Syria are enemies of America and thus helping their oppositions and subverting them should be of higher priority. An exception can be made in countries — Rwanda or Uganda under Idi Amin being two examples — when the repression is so bloody and horrendous that it should not be ignored.

What has happened — without any serious public debate! — is that the Obama administration has abandoned the main traditional determinants of U.S. foreign policy — especially a priority on national interests — that have been taken for granted by presidents of both parties for decades.

Aside from Obama’s poor justifications, there is a clever national interests argument made by defenders of the administration that the United States is intervening in Libya due to oil there. That seems reasonable, but I don’t think there is actual evidence to prove this was the White House’s motive, though it was a factor in European thinking that, in turn, did help shape U.S. policy.

I would suggest that the actual main reasons revolve around ideology. The administration is now obsessed with proving that it supports reform and democracy, having adopted a whole interpretation of the Middle East that accords with this concept. Ironically, the administration is doing this only after that view has been disproven by events, including the experiences of its predecessor. Remarkably, the very approach used by the Obama administration is one that its current leaders spent years ridiculing. Nevertheless, this contradictory situation seems to be what’s happening.

To show that America is “on the side of history,” the “masses,” and reform — also in line with the administration’s distaste for realpolitik — Libya seemed to be a great opportunity to pull another revolution as in Egypt and Tunisia. This time, however, the Obama administration would get even more credit–at least that’s what the White House thought. “Bad dictator removed by good president,” might be the headline.

Not knowing very much about American history, the Obama administration (and apparently the media and academics) doesn’t notice how often this approach has been carried out by previous presidents with poor results. The idea of making allies better to justify their being allies or making other countries better so they can be allies goes back to U.S. Cold War views of the 1950s. Such approaches were used to justify, for example, U.S. support for another Egyptian revolution (in 1952) that caused disaster as did the belief that Iran’s 1979 revolution would end by being benign.

There are many examples of this in U.S. Latin American policy of the 1960s and 1970s. President John F. Kennedy’s strategy in Vietnam (get rid of the bad dictator to show America’s friendship toward the people and its backing a “clean” ally) helped start that country into the downward spiral that was to claim so many lives.

The other key element in its thinking is that the adminstration expected that the Libya operation would be an easy one. By the way, that”s a key reason why the U.S. government was so quick to intervene militarily in Libya and so slow to even intervene verbally in Iran and Syria. Gaddafi must be unpopular, the “people” wouldn’t want him, so he’d be quickly overthrown. Having abandoned the national interests concept, the Obama administration really didn’t think through what might replace Gaddafi, just as it hasn’t factored in that point elsewhere.

Even the Arab League passed a resolution to get rid of Gaddafi, followed by the UN. Thus,unlike other potential targets, Gaddafi had no friends or allies. Neither Arabs nor Muslims would mourn him. A few weeks of bombing without any American casualties was expected to bring total victory. That’s why the White House didn’t deal with Congress or handle the War Powers Act issue.

Before any of those things caused trouble, Obama expected Gaddafi to be on his way to exile. Who will replace him? Someone nice, no doubt. Don’t the Arabs yearn for democracy and friendship with America? Isn’t Islam no problem at all? Won’t everyone inevitably like Obama? Of course, I am putting this in sarcastic terms — as used in the blogging style of writing — but fundamentally that is precisely what’s happening. Who would ever think of overthrowing a government — even a bad one — with no thought to what might come next and whether that could be even worse?

This answers the question of the U.S. war goal in Libya. It wanted to overthrow Gaddafi and install a friendly, moderate, democratic government. But since the rest of the world — which is allowed to define U.S. policy — wasn’t ready for that, Obama can never say so publicly.

Now the administration is stuck and has no way out. The war cannot be won without a significant escalation. There is no end in sight. Obama has no end game, no strategy, and absolutely no idea of what to do. And if you find that hard to believe just wait and see. The decision is not in the White House’s hands any more according to the Obama policy. It must continue to pursue the conflict in Libya until the rebels win. So their military fortunes, not U.S. interests, are in control of the situation.

Fortunately for the Obama administration, the war is costing little enough in money and casualties that it can get away with continuing the war and hoping for a rebel victory for quite some time. And since much of the media is pretty tame, it doesn’t have to worry about the kind of withering criticism faced by a George W. Bush over Iraq, much less a Richard Nixon over Vietnam. Pull out of Afghanistan, pull out of Iraq, and how can anyone complain about Libya?

Yet the Libya story is a perfect case study for this administration’s ignorance, incompetence, ideology, abandonment of traditional bipartisan foreign policy thinking, and wishful thinking. It is a trial run for the longer-term mess unfolding in Egypt and several other countries around the world. To study the Libya issue is to understand the Obama administration.

REVERSAL! DHS Now Says Putting Israel on Terrorist Watch List Was A Mistake

Last week we reported that the Department of Homeland Security Israel on a list of 36 nations which “have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members.” That's right Israel, who had been on the front lines of the war against Islamist terror almost since its creation 63 years ago was named a supporter of terror by the Obama administration.

The reaction to the report was immediate and wide-spread. After a week of feeling the pressure, the DHS announced today that it was all a bad mistake.

Israel was included erroneously on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security terrorist watch list, a U.S. official said.

John Morton, the director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the department, said Israel's recent appearance on a list compiled by the department's office of the inspector general was a mistake.

"The addition of Israel in the OIG’s list of ICE's 'Third-Agency Checks' (TAC) was based on inaccurate information provided to the OIG during the course of its audit," Morton said in a statement sent by e-mail to JTA. "The U.S. does not and never has considered Israel to have links to terrorism, but rather they are a partner in our efforts to combat global terrorism. The United States maintains close intelligence-sharing relationships with Israel in order to address security issues within its own borders and in our mutual pursuit of safety and security around the globe."

Forgive me for being a bit on the suspicious side but mistake my arse.  The Obama administration which already has a reputation of being anti-Israel got its fingers caught in the cookie jar and is now trying to cover it up with a "oops I made a mistake."  Why do you think they made the "oops" announcement to JTA, a liberal Jewish website.

This entire incident is another example of the naivete of this administration,  they act first and if they can't cover things up, they make excuses later.

Related articles

• UNBELIEVABLE! Obama Administration Puts Israel On List Of Countries That Support Terrorism (yidwithlid.blogspot.com)

Obama Admin is Disguising Its Major Policy Shift to the Muslim Brotherhood

By Barry Rubin


Here’s the headline: “U.S. to resume formal Muslim Brotherhood contacts.” But that’s not true. In fact, as the Reuters article itself admits, there have never been “formal” contacts before but only informal ones. Let’s examine the language, which stems from a “senior U.S. official,” to see what the Obama administration thinks about the Muslim Brotherhood:

A step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers.

Note how it is portrayed as an Israel-related issue. Won’t it upset people who care about U.S. interests? Won’t it upset Egyptian Christians? The Saudis and Jordanians and other relatively moderate Arab regimes? Won’t it upset Muslims who oppose revolutionary Islamism?

We are supposed to believe that only Israel and the Jews will be upset about the Obama administration moving closer to a radical antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist group that wants to repress women, kill gays, and overturn pretty much every existing government in the region. But just those Jews and their friends will be upset. You know, just like in the 1930s when certain people said that opposition to the totalitarian threat of those years was just coming from the Jews.

Reuters portrays the Brotherhood, as do many, as “a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.” Conservative? You mean they are like the Republican Party? You mean they are for the status quo? And of course one of the things they did since 1928 was to ally with Nazi Germany, and the Brotherhood continues to voice the same political line toward Jews that it did back then

We are also told that the Brotherhood “long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt….” This is simply not true. The Brotherhood merely temporarily renounced violence within Egypt because they knew that any resort to it would get them wiped out by the regime and the army. They postponed using violence until the revolutionary era arrived. Of course, if they can take over Egypt without violence they are happy to do so.

But there’s more. Every day for decades the Brotherhood has supported violence against Israel. It has supported violence against Americans in Iraq, and on various other fronts. Why is this so hard to see?

The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the February 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.

That is arguably true, but by recognizing the Brotherhood and having contacts with it, the Obama administration also makes a unilateral concession encouraging the Brotherhood. People who know the Middle East understand how this works: Soon many Egyptians will say (as they said in Iran and as they now say in Turkey) that the United States wants the Islamists to win.

But, the article continues:


U.S. President Barack Obama will surely face criticism for engaging with the Brotherhood, even tentatively.

And who do they go to — Middle East analysts who can explain why this is dangerous? No, to the head of AIPAC in order to perpetuate the theme that this is merely a problem with the Jewish lobby! And who is presented to refute this? Former American diplomats. So it is the people who know versus the Jews.

And what are we told about the Brotherhood’s goals? This:


The group says it wants a civil state based on Islamic principles, but talk by some members of an “Islamic state” or “Islamic government” have raised concerns that their goal is a state where full Islamic sharia law is implemented. The group says such comments have been taken out of context.

“Some members” include the leader and deputy leader of the group. It is apparently too much trouble to read and quote what Brotherhood officials say, or their publications openly state, or their political platform calls for. Never are these statements fully quoted. Always they are dismissed as insignificant, like the statements of the late Usama bin Ladin once were.

Moreover, Egypt under Mubarak could reasonably be said to be a “civil state based on Islamic principles.” And since “Islamic principles” are mandated by Allah, democracy is ultimately unacceptable since no human vote could alter those principles. How can an elected parliament pass a law limiting a man to one wife, or accepting religious conversion, outlawing amputations, or maintaining peace with Israel — to cite just a few examples — since those are against “Islamic principles,” at least under the interpretation of Islam held by the Brotherhood?

So we just can’t tell if the Muslim Brotherhood wants a radical Islamist state before it takes power. Just like it was presumably a mystery about what Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wanted to do in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

And finally the article doesn’t even mention the most important development in U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood relations during that group’s eighty-year history: President Barack Obama’s explicit (and uninvited) statement accepting the Brotherhood being in government. U.S. policy is paving the way for a radical, possibly Islamist, Egypt. It is a catastrophic strategy.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org.

Why Is the US Sending Money To China To Help It Meet Air Pollution Standards ?

What's $100 million between friends?  Over the past decade the Environmental Protection agency has given $100 Million dollars to foreign governments and organizations to help them solve their environmental problems.  While the program began under the Bush administration, like all kinds of spending it has intensified under President Obama $27 of the $100 million was spend during the past year and a half.

As the report (embedded below) describes:

"At a time of record debt and soaring unemployment here in the United States, the committee has discovered that EPA has intensified its foreign grants program," the report said.

The Committee sent EPA head Lisa Jackson a letter which said in part

“We are concerned that, more broadly, EPA’s awarding of foreign grants reflects a surprising detachment from our nation’s foremost priorities, including those in the environmental realm,” the top Republicans on the panel said Monday in a letter to Jackson."

Some of the money given out by the Obama administration-led EPA includes

• $718,000 to help China comply with both the Stockholm and Long Range Transport of Air Pollutants Convention (can't they count this as a partial payback of the money we own them?)

• $700,000 for Thailand to recover methane gas at 12 pig farms

• $1,226,841 for the United Nations to promote clean fuels

• $150,000 for INTERPOL to combat fraud in carbon trading

• $15,000 for Indonesia’s “Breathe Easy, Jakarta” publicity campaign

The GOP lawmakers on the committee requested that EPA provide a series of documents related to the grants.

“We hope you would agree that in these challenging economic times, with unemployment at over 9 percent, federal spending should reflect the priorities of the American people,” the letter says. “This includes investment in the American economy and its greatest assets — the American worker and those who create the jobs they fill.

...Assisting the Chinese mining industry or the Chinese government with methane recovery would probably not occur to most Americans as the most valuable use of these funds- especially as China holds over $1.1 trillion in United States Treasury Securities. We are concerned that, more broadly, EPA’s awarding of foreign grants reflects a surprising detachment from our nation’s foremost priorities, including those in the environmental realm.”

It is incredible that the same progressive Democrats who want to kill more job through increased taxation, are OK with giving money to Thailand so they can collect methane from Pigs.  This same administration that is doing its best to prevent us from attaining energy independence by exploiting our own energy resources is perfectly willing to send money to an unfriendly Brazil so they can exploit theirs.  Isn't it time to stop the madness and handcuff some of these  job killing, money wasting federal government functions before we even consider raising new revenue? A good place to begin maybe the dismantling of both the EPA and the Department of Energy and transferring any necessary functions to other Departments.

062711MajMemorandum

Emperor Obama Has Declared Amnesty For Illegal Aliens by Executive Fiat

A year ago, we reported that Obama was working on a way to grant amnesty for illegal immigrants by executive fiat.  The ICE union has released an internal memo proving that prediction true. The Obama administration is quietly offering a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, an obvious ploy to win reelection by mobilizing a wave of new Hispanic voters.

 The new rules were announced Friday with a new memo from top officials at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency (embedded below). The policy outlines a policy which seems to mirror the Dream Act which has been rejected by the congress as recently as last year. The memo calls for “prosecutorial discretion” and says officials need not enforce immigration laws if illegal immigrants are enrolled in an education center or if their relatives have volunteered for the US military.

"Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what's coming," said Chris Crane, President of the National ICE Council which represents approximately 7,000 ICE agents, officers and employees, "this is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States. Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the Administration is now implementing it through agency policy."

"ICE and the Administration have excluded our union and our agents from the entire process of developing policies, it was all kept secret from us, we found out from the newspapers. ICE worked hand-in-hand with immigrants rights groups, but excluded its own officers."

Sounds just like our President, who just announced a new Afghanistan policy which went against the recommendation of his top generals. This time however, he didn't even seek the opinion of the people on the "front."  Heck why should he, there is an election to win?

When you read the entire memo embedded below you realize that ICE is also talking about aliens who have been arrested for committing other crimes (so when you add entering the country illegally, we are talking two-time lawbreakers. Most officers who are arresting law breakers are allowed to consider one thing, evidence whether or not they committed the crime. But the ICE “prosecutorial discretion” memo adds much more to be considered, most of which push the agent not to arrest the illegal alien:

This new policy is only half the story as there are additional directives which the "most transparent administration in history" has refused to put in writing.

The union says just as concerning is the way policies are implemented at ICE. Agents claim that under Director John Morton the agency always presents written policies for public consumption, but then makes "secret changes" to the policies which ICE refuses to put in writing. ICE knows the policy changes will create a political outcry, or could place the public or ICE officers at risk. "Our officers are already under orders not to make arrests or even talk to foreign nationals in most cases unless another agency has already arrested them; you won't find that written in any public ICE policy."

With regard to the entire idea of prosecutorial discretion, Agents say they will have none. "Tell any ICE agent he or she will have the final say on making an arrest or holding someone in custody and they'll tell you you're crazy, officers will be ordered not to make arrests and failure to comply will result in the end of the agent or officer's career, that's business as usual at ICE. It's unfortunate but the Administration protects foreign nationals illegally in the U.S. but does nothing for our employees." The Union also alleges that ICE Field Office Directors (FODs) have confided in the Union that when the FODs raised questions about the effectiveness of the new policies ICE Headquarters responded by telling the FODs to turn in their badges and file for retirement.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano claims that this Administration is protecting our borders from illegal entry better than any in history, but according to the Ice Agents involve it is just another Obama lie.

What this memo as well as other ICE revelations, and other DOJ cases such as the New Black Panther case prove is that under the Obama administration there are two types of law enforcement, one for those of whom can help the progressives generate more votes, and one for the rest of Americans.  Kind of makes you wonder what happened to equality under the law.

283 284 Mortons Prosecutorial Discretion Memo