The Muslim brother in the White House had very shallow and empty words in response to the jihad massacre in Chattanooga where 4 Marines were killed. Remember, Obama is their direct boss and Commander in Chief.
He is just not that into our military, much less Christians.
During the Islamic month of Ramadan, Obama provides deep recognition, respect and benevolence to Islam.
On Monday, Barack Obama, speaking at an Iftar dinner (the evening meal when Muslims end their daily Ramadanfast at sunset), he hosted at the White House, intoned to his audience, “The Koran teaches us that God’s children tread gently on the earth … We affirm that whatever our faith, we are one family.”
Praising two Muslim young women he invited to sit at his table, Obama lauded Samantha Elauf, who sued Abercrombie and Fitch and won in the Supreme Court after she claimed she was not hired because she wore a hijab, saying he had not spoken before the Supreme Court at her age.
Obama has never spoken before the Supreme Court.
Abercrombie and Fitch has hired other women wearing hijabs; Elauf, a Palestinian-American who boasts #free Palestine on her Twitter feed, was initially awarded $20,000 by a federal court in Tulsa, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver threw out that decision because Elauf had not asked Abercrombie to accommodate her head scarf.
Obama also praised Munira Khalif, who has spoken in front of the United Nations regarding women being counted in a census. Khalif recently graduated high school in Minnesota and was accepted by every Ivy League school, choosing Harvard. Obama said when he was 18 he had not spoken before the UN. Read more here.
There are 4 Americans in prison in Iran for which there have been countless calls and efforts for their release. Major Garrett of CBS asked Barack Obama during a press conference if he was content with leaving those Americans behind to which Obama responded by shaming Garrett for even asking the question.
It should also be noted that the Palestinian Authority demanded that thousands of terrorists in prison in Israel be released for a scheduled round of peace talks between Israel and the PA. Barack Obama forced Israel to comply for face financial extortion. Israel complied where later many of those terrorists were re-arrested in Qatar. The betrayal continues. The secrets were effective.
Mojtaba Atarodi, arrested in California for attempting to acquire equipment for Iran’s military-nuclear programs, was released in April as part of back channel talks, Times of Israel told. The contacts, mediated in Oman for years by close colleague of the Sultan, have seen a series of US-Iran prisoner releases, and there may be more to come
The secret back channel of negotiations between Iran and the United States, which led to this month’s interim deal in Geneva on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, has also seen a series of prisoner releases by both sides, which have played a central role in bridging the distance between the two nations, the Times of Israel has been told.
In the most dramatic of those releases, the US in April released a top Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, who had been arrested in 2011 for attempting to acquire equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs.
American and Iranian officials have been meeting secretly in Oman on and off for years, according to a respected Israeli intelligence analyst, Ronen Solomon. And in the past three years as a consequence of those talks, Iran released three American prisoners, all via Oman, and the US responded in kind. Then, most critically, in April, when the back channel was reactivated in advance of the Geneva P5+1 meetings, the US released a fourth Iranian prisoner, high-ranking Iranian scientist Atarodi, who was arrested in California on charges that remain sealed but relate to his attempt to acquire what are known as dual-use technologies, or equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs. Iran has not reciprocated for that latest release.
Solomon, an independent intelligence analyst (who in 2009 revealed the crucial role played by German Federal Intelligence Service officer Gerhard Conrad in the negotiations that led to the 2011 Gilad Shalit Israel-Hamas prisoner deal), has been following the US-Iran meetings in Oman for years. Detailing what he termed the “unwritten prisoner exchange deals” agreed over the years in Oman by the US and Iran, Solomon told The Times of Israel that “It’s clear what the Iranians got” with the release of top scientist Atarodi in April. “What’s unclear is what the US got.”
The history of these deals, though, he said, would suggest that in the coming months Iran will release at least one of three US citizens who are currently believed to be in Iranian custody. One of these three is former FBI agent Robert Levinson.
Solomon told The Times of Israel that the interlocutor in the Oman talks is a man named Salem Ben Nasser al Ismaily, who is the executive president of the Omani Center for Investment Promotion and Export Development and a close confidant of the Omani leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said.
The latter tells the fictional tale of John Wilkinson, a successful American businessman who fails in all of his business endeavors in the Gulf until he meets Sultan, who explains to him, according to the book’s promotional literature, how to forgo his hard-charging Western style and “surrender to very different values rooted in ancient tribal customs and traditions.” Those mores have been central to the murky prisoner swaps surrounding the nuclear negotiations, Solomon said.
Solomon said he identified Ismaily’s role back in September 2010, when Sarah Shourd, an American who apparently inadvertently crossed into Iran while hiking near the Iraqi border, was released, for what were called humanitarian reasons. She was delivered into Ismaily’s hands in Oman and from there was flown to the US — the first release in the series of deals brokered in Oman. One year later, in September 2011, her fiancé and fellow hiker, Shane Bauer, was set free along with their friend, Josh Fattal. The two men were also received at Muscat’s Seeb military airport by Ismaily before being flown back to the US.
The US began reciprocating in August 2012, Solomon said. It freed Shahrzad Mir Gholikhan, an Iranian convicted on three counts of weapons trafficking. Next Nosratollah Tajik, a former Iranian ambassador to Jordan — who, like Gholikhan, had been initially apprehended abroad trying to buy night-vision goggles from US agents — was freed after the US opted not to follow up an extradition request it had submitted to the British. Then, in January 2013, Amir Hossein Seirafi was released, also via Oman, having been arrested in Frankfurt and convicted in the US of trying to buy specialized vacuum pumps that could be used in the Iranian nuclear program.
Finally, in April, came the release of Mojtaba Atarodi.
The facts of his case are still shrouded. On December 7, 2011, Atarodi, a faculty member at the prestigious Sharif University of Technology (SUT) in Tehran — a US-educated electrical engineer with a heart condition, a green card and a brother living in the US — arrived at LAX and was arrested by US federal officials.
He appeared twice in US federal court in San Francisco and was incarcerated at a federal facility in Dublin, California and then kept under house arrest. The US government cloaked the contents of his indictment and released no statement upon his release. His lawyer, Matthew David Kohn, told The Times of Israel he would like to discuss the case further but that first he had to “make some inquiries” to see what he was allowed to reveal.
In January, shortly after Atarodi’s arrest, his colleagues wrote a letter to the journal Nature, protesting his detention. “We believe holding a distinguished 55-year-old professor in custody is a historical mistake and not commensurate with the image that America strives to extend throughout the world as a bastion of free scientific exchange among schools and academic institutions,” they said.
Solomon, who compiled a profile of Atarodi, believes that the scientist, prior to his arrest, played an important role in Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. Atarodi, he said, has co-authored more than 30 technical articles, mostly related to micro-electric engineering and, in 2011, won the Khwarizmi award for the design of a microchip receiver for digital photos. “That same technology,” he said, “can be used for missile guidance and the analysis of nuclear tests.”
Solomon further noted that the then-Iranian defense minister and former commander of the revolutionary guards, Ahmad Vahidi, attended the prize ceremony and that Professor Massoud Ali-Mahmoudi, an Iranian physics professor who was assassinated in 2010, was an earlier recipient of the prize.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Atarodi came to the US at the behest of the logistics wing of the IRGC [the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps],” Solomon said.
On April 26 Atarodi was flown from the US to Seeb military airbase in Oman, where he met with Ismaily, and onward to Iran. “The release of someone who holds that sort of information and has advanced strategic projects in Iran is a prize,” Solomon said. The US, said Solomon, must have already received something in return or will do so in the future.
Thus far, US-Iran prisoner swaps have been conducted in a manner utterly distinct from the old Cold War rituals, in which, as was the case with Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky, spies or prisoners from either side of the Iron Curtain walked across Berlin’s old Glienicke Bridge toward their respective home countries. Instead, with Iran claiming it knows nothing about the whereabouts of former FBI agent Levinson, for instance, and the US eager to show that it will not barter with hostage-takers, the deals have taken the form of a delayed quid pro quo.
There are currently three US nationals — Levinson, Saeed Abedini, and Amir Hekmati — still believed to be held in Iran.
US President Barak Obama raised the issue of the imprisoned Americans in his historic September phone call to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Tony Blinken, told CNN that aside from the nuclear program it was the only other issue that was brought up in the call.
The interim deal in Geneva did not include any reference to prisoner dealings. Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN, “you’ve got to decide how much you’re going to try to accomplish, and just tackling all the dimensions of the nuclear agreement is ambition enough.” A spokeswoman for the National Security Council added that the “talks focused exclusively on nuclear issues.”
The omission prompted the chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow, who is representing Pastor Saeed Abedini’s wife Naghmeh, to charge Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry with turning their backs on an American citizen. On the center’s website, he called the decision “outrageous and a betrayal” and said it sends the message that “Americans are expendable.”
Abedini, who was born in Iran and later converted to Christianity, was arrested earlier this year in Iran for what would seem was strictly Christian charity work and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was recently transferred from Evin Prison, a notorious jail for political prisoners in Tehran, Sukelow wrote in a letter to Kerry, “to the even more notorious and brutal Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj.”
Amir Hekmati, a 31-year-old former Marine from Flint, Michigan, who allegedly obtained permission to visit his grandmother in Iran in 2011, was charged with espionage and sentenced to death in 2012. In September, Hekmati managed to smuggle a letter out of prison. Published in the Guardian, it contended that his filmed admission of guilt had been coerced and that his arrest “is part of a propaganda and hostage-taking effort by Iranian intelligence to secure the release of Iranians abroad being held on security-related charges.”
Levinson, a 65-year-old veteran of the FBI, was last seen on March 9, 2007, on Kish Island, Iran. According to Solomon, Levinson was stationed in Dubai at the time as part of a US task force comprised of former officers operating in the United Arab Emirates, training officials there to combat weapons trafficking, and was tempted to come to Kish for a meeting.
The last person he is known to have had contact with, and with whom he shared a room the night before his abduction, according to a Reuters article from 2007, is Dawud Salahuddin, an American convert to Islam, who is wanted in the US for murder. According to a New Yorker profile of the Long Island-born Salahuddin, he showed up at the home of Ali Akbar Tabatabai’s Bethseda, Maryland door in July 1980, dressed as a mailman, and shot Tabatabai, a Shah supporter, three times in the abdomen, killing him. From there he fled to Canada and on to Switzerland and Iran.
Salahuddin has indicated that Levinson had come to Kish to meet with him.
In September, Rouhani denied any knowledge of Levinson’s whereabouts. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, he said that, “We don’t know where he is, who he is. He is an American who has disappeared. We have no news of him.”
This is highly doubtful. In 2010 and 2011 Levinson’s family received a video and photographs respectively of him in captivity. In January of this year the AP reported that “despite years of denials,” many US security officials now believe that “Iran’s intelligence service was almost certainly behind the 54-second video and five photographs of Levinson that were emailed anonymously to his family.” The photos and the videos traced back to different addresses in Afghanistan and Pakistan, suggesting, perhaps, that Levinson, the longest-held hostage in US history, was imprisoned in Balochistan, a desert region spanning the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, Levinson’s son Dan wrote a column in the Washington Post calling Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif “well-respected men committed to the goodwill of all human beings, regardless of their nationality.”
Several hours later, White House Spokesman Jay Carney published a statement saying that the US government welcomes the assistance “of our international partners” in attempting to bring Levinson home and, he added, “we respectfully ask the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to assist us in securing Mr. Levinson’s health, welfare, and safe return.”
As was the case with the Geneva negotiations, and as is likely happening with the upcoming round of talks regarding Syria, there is good reason to believe, and in this case to hope, that the movements played out under the spotlights of the international stage have been choreographed well in advance, perhaps in the sea-side city of Muscat, under the careful tutelage of Salem Ben Nasser al Ismaily.
The mainstream media appear eager to distract from the substantive issues raised by the email scandals continuing to plague Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. One example is the media’s focus on the timeline surrounding a Select Committee on Benghazi subpoena for her emails, and when those emails were deleted. As I recently argued, the media wish that these stories about Mrs. Clinton were not true. Most reporters cannot fathom, or will not acknowledge, that she routinely lies to the public about her activities—and those of the Clinton Foundation—while stonewalling both the press and the public.
The repeated revelations that Mrs. Clinton has been lying are apparently affecting her standing in the polls. Politico is now reporting that in the past couple of months she has dropped from having the support of 60% of Democrats, to now having just 51%. And that is before Vice President Joe Biden enters the race, which many signs indicate may happen in the not-too-distant future.
Ron Fournier of The National Journal captured the sentiment of many journalists in his recent letter to Mrs. Clinton, which, he writes, is based on interviews with those who are close to her. “Which brings us to the matter of trust,” he writes in their voice. “Hillary, this makes us want to cry. We can’t figure out why you would compromise the most important commodity of leadership over such banalities.” Fournier continues on to discuss the Clinton Foundation’s inexcusable conflicts of interest and the email scandal.
But while, according to Fournier, some of Clinton’s supporters may have decided that Mrs. Clinton is her own main obstacle to gaining the presidency, the media continue to attempt to salvage her campaign by whatever means possible. Andy McCarthy, writing for National Review, said that “when Benghazi came up in a one-on-one media interview setting, CNN couldn’t bring itself to call Mrs. Clinton on an obvious lie.”
“Plus, it was [Brianna] Keilar who brought up the subject of the subpoena, so one has to assume she did a modicum of research—which is all it would have taken to be ready to challenge Clinton’s false assertion,” writes McCarthy. “Yet, in the context of being asked about her destruction of emails from her private server, Clinton was permitted to tell the public she had not been subpoenaed. …she was able to frame suspicions that she has willfully obstructed probes of the Benghazi Massacre as outlandish.”
The Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Mrs. Clinton three Pinocchios for stating on CNN that “Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation.” However, like so many in the media, Kessler focused on minutiae, the technical details of whether government regulations permitted Mrs. Clinton to use private email exclusively.
The real implications of Clinton’s email scandal are not whether government regulations allowed her to use her own private email account, exclusively or otherwise. Rather, Mrs. Clinton’s actions demonstrate that she unilaterally flouted a transparency process designed to provide the public with the ability to hold her accountable for her work as Secretary of State. In the process, she jeopardized national security and may have hidden pay-for-play schemes involving the Clinton Foundation. Plus, in light of the recent revelations about the cyber-hacking of the government’s Office of Personnel Management, it is very likely that the Chinese or the Russians, or both, have possession of every one of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
The UK Guardian writes that Cherie Blair’s emails to Mrs. Clinton show that Mrs. Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, “appears to be acting directly as a fixer for the Qatari ruling dynasty.”
“Three years after the successful lobbying effort a Qatari-government backed telecommunications [firm] donated an undisclosed amount to Mrs. Blair’s own charity for women,” reports Raf Sanchez for The UK Telegraph.
“Meanwhile, the Qatari government was also giving millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton’s global charity,” writes Sanchez. “Charity records show that Qatar gave between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation while the controversial committee behind Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid donated up to $500,000 further.”
“She solicits Sid Blumenthal for advice, and not just on Libya,” continued Rubin. An August 9, 2009 email from Blumenthal appears to pass along a suggestion for a Clinton Global Initiative forum by Shaun Woodward, UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Blumenthal writes that he has already gotten Bill Clinton’s approval, and asks Hillary to “let me know how to move this forward.”
Blumenthal received $10,000 a month from the Clinton Foundation starting that year.
A couple of months earlier Blumenthal writes regarding Woodward that “he told me things you would in my judgment want and need to hear because they will likely involve your personal role.”
“I think you should step in and ask him to tell you directly,” Blumenthal continues.
“I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email,” Mrs. Clinton told the press this spring.
To the contrary, at least 25 of the emails that Mrs. Clinton did not delete have been upgraded to classified status by the State Department.
While technically that may not constitute having sent or received classified information through the personal email server located at her home in Chappaqua, New York, it does reveal that she certainly trafficked in sensitive information. We also learned recently that she had edited some of the emails that were handed over to the State Department, long past due. And she hadn’t handed over other emails that were clearly State Department-related business, though she had claimed that she had. That was discovered through the additional emails Blumenthal provided to the Select Committee on Benghazi when he testified before the Committee last month.
In addition, Mrs. Clinton has publicly acknowledged having self-selected and deleted approximately 30,000 emails that she deemed personal, and had the server wiped clean so that it could not be independently verified that they all were, in fact, personal. Who wouldn’t trust Hillary?
It’s impossible to know what information has been withheld by the State Department. However, here are just a couple of topics discussed in those emails containing now-classified information:
Discussions with family members of journalists detained in North Korea; and
A readout from a call with Tony Blair while he was still representing the Quartet, which mediates the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Mrs. Clinton’s ongoing efforts at deception have become so commonplace that perhaps reporters don’t believe that her lies and conflicts of interest deserve regular front-page treatment. Instead they write articles about how the GOP is trying to “vilify” her using her own falsehoods. The drive-by media may be disappointed in their attempts to save Hillary because the slow drip, drip release of her emails will repeatedly force them to confront these real issues, like it or not.
The mainstream media are celebrating, as a deal has been reached between Iran and the P5+1 nations. It appears, however, to be a complete capitulation by the West. CNN described it as “historic,” along the lines of Richard Nixon’s deal with China, which certainly must be music to President Obama’s ears.
But even as terms of the deal are starting to emerge, the holes in the agreement are becoming clear.
“Initial readings of the deal also indicate that Iran will be given the right to veto so-called ‘anywhere, anytime’ inspections of Iranian nuclear sites,” reports Adam Kredo for The Washington Free Beacon. “This concession has caused concern that Tehran will be able to continue hiding its nuclear work and potentially continue in secret along the pathway to a bomb.”
“In one of the most controversial concessions made by the Obama administration, a United Nations embargo on arms will also be lifted within around five years as part of the deal…” he writes. “A similar embargo on the construction of ballistic missiles, which could carry a nuclear payload, also will expire in around eight years under the deal.” So much for this deal being strictly about Iran’s nuclear program, as Secretary of State John Kerry has frequently asserted, such as when he was asked why the four Americans being held by the Iranians were not part of this agreement.
Regardless of what President Obama has said, the deal is not verifiable. Just the opposite. It actually rewards Iran with more than $100 billion in sanctions relief, money that is certain to be used by the totalitarian regime to continue to expand its hegemonic and terrorist pursuits. No one will be more determined to overlook any violations than the Obama administration, which is heavily invested in this as the President’s foreign policy legacy, which has mostly been a disaster. Obama is convinced, and rightly so, that the media will help him sell this debacle as a great foreign policy achievement.
It is clear that the two sides have different interpretations of the deal, just as they did with the so-called “framework” agreement reached in April of this year. In the official Iranian news agency IRNA the Iranians triumphantly declare that:
“All nuclear installations and sites are to continue their work contrary to the early demands of the other party, none of them will be dismantled;”
“The policy on preventing enrichment uranium is now failed and Iran will go ahead with its enrichment program;”
“Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, no centrifuges will be dismantled and research and development on key and advanced centrifuges such as IR-4, IR-5, IR-6, IR-8 will continue;” and
“All economic, financial sanctions in banking, finance, oil, gas, petrochemical, commerce, insurance and transportations leveled by the European Union and the US under the pretext to Iran’s nuclear program, will be lifted on early stages of the agreement.”
In addition, there are many details yet to be resolved, as this statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) makes clear. It refers to the “Road-map between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.” It includes a series of target dates this year to set “out a clear sequence of activities over the coming months, including the provision by Iran of explanations regarding outstanding issues.” In other words, details to be worked out later. But in the meantime, UN sanctions will have been lifted, taking virtually all of the pressure off of Iran to cooperate with the IAEA and the P5+1.
The media appear uninterested in detailing the number of red lines that have been broken by this administration. Here are just a couple:
The Secretary of State first said in 2013 that Iran did not have a right to enrich uranium. This agreement legitimizes Iranian enrichment only by limiting the “type” of centrifuge used and amount of uranium stockpiled and enriched.
Iran was supposed to submit to “anywhere, anytime” inspections. Now, it has “a very protracted process of advance warning and ‘consultation’ to resolve concerns.”
The editor of the Times of Israel has laid out “16 reasons nuke deal is an Iranian victory and a Western catastrophe,” including this: “Was the Iranian regime required, as a condition for this deal, to disclose the previous military dimensions of its nuclear program—to come clean on its violations—in order both to ensure effective inspections of all relevant facilities and to shatter the Iranian-dispelled myth that it has never breached its non-proliferation obligations? No.”
Also, “Has the Iranian regime been required to submit to ‘anywhere, anytime’ inspections of any and all facilities suspected of engaging in rogue nuclear-related activity? No. And there are 14 more.
The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation, laid out “…the Truth About 6 of Obama’s Iran Deal Claims,” including this claim, that “Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off.” Yet, as The Daily Signal points out, “Iran is permitted to retain its enrichment infrastructure, including advanced centrifuges. The administration’s concession on uranium enrichment is a serious blow to a decade old principle of U.S. nonproliferation policy. The United States worked very hard in the past to prevent allies from developing indigenous uranium enrichment capability because technologies for uranium enrichment and weapons grade enrichment are the same.”
In addition, from The Daily Signal, “Yet Iran, which developed this capability in defiance of its existing international obligations, is being rewarded for its bad behavior by lifting sanctions on its country, including sanctions concerning shipping, arms sales, transportation, banking and precious metal trade.”
“We have now gotten to the point where the President was saying a year ago, ‘No deal is better than a bad deal,’ and he’s now to the point where any deal will be fine,” argued KT McFarland, an American Conservative Union (ACU) Foundation senior fellow and the moderator of a very informative and underreported panel held last month by the ACU.
“Critics of the nuclear deal sought by President Obama fear that this will be a dangerous deal because of too many one sided U.S. concessions to Iran,” Clare Lopez, a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, presciently noted.
“Iran will keep all of its nuclear infrastructure, including a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor,” she wrote. “And the U.S. reportedly has now pledged to provide Iran technical assistance to further develop its nuclear program.” These concessions appear in the text of the final deal.
Lopez, who participated in the aforementioned ACU event, added that Iran continues to condemn Jews as cockroaches, bacteria, and insects.
“There has never been a year since 1988 or so when the Iranians did not have a clandestine nuclear weapons program,” Lopez said. “The one they are negotiating in Geneva, in Vienna, in Lausanne, that’s the overt side of the program, that’s just the overt part.”
“We don’t know what we don’t know about the covert part but we are pretty confident there is one.”
President Obama is not only using his executive power to engage a hostile, theocratic Iranian regime, he is also trying to pressure future presidents and Congress into perpetuating his damaging policies. His administration is also bending over backwards not to offend the Iranian regime, while this totalitarian government does everything possible to humiliate the United States.
Obama wants a much-needed foreign policy victory during his second term in office. The violations, and the disastrous consequences, can come later—and be blamed on the missteps of a future administration.
The ultimate solution to the Iranian nuclear question—and to the issue of Iran as the leading sponsor of terrorism—is regime change. But world powers are not ready for such a discussion—and neither are the media.
Congress still has a chance to stop this “agreement” from going forward, but President Obama requires only 34 U.S. senators to prevent the override of his veto if they disapprove. Congress has 60 days to consider the deal before voting on it. There is an event in New York City’s Times Square next Wednesday, July 22, with a distinguished list of individuals who will be speaking out about the dangers of this deal, why it can’t be trusted, and what should be done to stop it. The list includes former military leaders, CIA officers, congressmen, and other policy and political activists. You can see the full list of participants here.
Israel, which arguably has the most to lose, will surely be advocating against this agreement. Even so, there will be an intense, bruising conflict to move this deal along to the point of implementation. We know that the media will be doing everything possible to play down the risks and likely implications of this agreement. But will that be enough, along with an Obama administration that pays little attention to the law, the Constitution, and America’s best interests?
Update: Born in Kuwait, naturalized citizen. Was living in Hixson, TN at the time of the murders. His vehicle had a large cache of small arms.
He apparently worked for the City of Chattanooga as an unarmed security officer in the Stormwater Management Division and wrote a letter to President to GW Bush and that link is here.
Muhammad Youssef Abdulzeez from Arizona where public records show Abdulzeez is approximately 24 years old and a native of Phoenix. Abdulzeez has no prior criminal record, except a 2013 traffic violation.
Rest in Peace
Here’s the new Pentagon statement on the killing of four Marines in Chattanooga:
“We can confirm that four DoD servicemembers were tragically killed and one wounded in two separate shootings in Chattanooga, Tennessee today. The shootings took place at a Network Operations Support Center operated by the U.S. Navy and at an armed forces recruiting center. Names of the deceased will be released following next of kin notification. We are working with local and federal authorities. We will provide additional information as it becomes available.”
The killer was from Phoenix and immediately the FBI and law enforcement in Chattanooga called this an act of domestic terror.
For additional photos of the shooter who is alleged to have had contact with the Garland, Texas shooters, click here.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire at two military facilities Thursday in Tennessee, killing at least four Marines and wounding a soldier and a police officer, officials told CBS News. The suspect also was killed.
Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said five people died in all, including the gunman. Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that the shooting suspect was identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez.
9 Photos
Chattanooga shooting
Five people are dead, including the gunman, and three injured in two shootings at military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee
U.S. Attorney Bill Killian said officials were treating the attacks as an “act of domestic terrorism,” though FBI Special Agent in Charge Ed Reinhold said authorities were still investigating a motive.
Officials told CBS News correspondent David Marin that four U.S. Marines were among the dead and another was injured. The U.S. Marines released a statement saying that the injured Marine was a recruiter who treated and released after sustaining a wound to the leg.
A police officer also was shot in the ankle and is expected to be ok.
“Lives have been lost from some faithful people who have been serving our country, and I think I join all Tennesseans in being both sickened and saddened by this,” Gov. Bill Haslam said.
A facility 7 miles away on Old Lee Highway also was attacked. Brian Lepley, a spokesman with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Kentucky, said his recruiters there were told by law enforcement that the shooter was in a car, stopped in front of the facility, shot at the building and drove off.
The Army recruiters at the facility told Lepley they were not hurt and had evacuated; Lepley said he had no information about recruiters for the other branches at the facility.
Sgt. 1st Class Robert Dodge, 36, is the center leader for U.S. Army recruiting at the facility on Old Lee Highway. He said four Army personnel were in the office at the time. He said the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and National Guard all have their own offices right next to each other. Around 10:30 or 10:45 a.m., Dodge and the others heard a gunshot, “which kind of sparked our attention,” he said.
“Shortly after that, just a few seconds, the shooter began shooting more rounds. We realized it was an actual shooting,” he said. They then got on the ground and barricaded themselves in a safe place. Dodge estimated there were 30 to 50 shots fired.
He did not see the shooter or a vehicle.
The Army recruiting office was not damaged, but doors and glass were damaged at the neighboring Air Force, Navy and Marine offices.
Reinhold said all the dead were killed at the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center Chattanooga. It sits between Amnicola Highway and a pathway that runs through Tennessee RiverPark, a popular park at a bend in the Tennessee River northeast of downtown Chattanooga. It’s in a light industrial area that includes a Coca-Cola bottling plant and Binswanger Glass.
The two entrances to the fenced facility have unmanned gates and concrete barriers that require approaching cars to slow down to drive around them.
“I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many,” she said. “It was rapid fire, like pow pow pow pow pow, so quickly. The next thing I knew, there were police cars coming from every direction.”
She ran inside, where she remained locked down with other employees and a customer. The gunfire continued with occasional bursts she estimated for 20 minutes.
“We’re apprehensive,” Hutcheson said. “Not knowing what transpired, if it was a grievance or terroristic related, we just don’t know.”
They’ve seen dozens of emergency vehicles rush by: bomb teams, SWAT teams, and state, local and federal authorities.
The Armed Forces Career Center on Lee Highway sits in a short strip between a Cricket Wireless and an Italian restaurant with no apparent additional security.
Near the other shooting location on Lee Highway, Nicholas Donohue heard a blast of gunshots while working at Desktop Solutions. But he had music playing and wasn’t quite sure what the noise had been. He turned off the music and seconds later, a second blast thundered. He took shelter in a back room.
“Even though it knew it was most likely gunfire I heard, you also don’t want to believe it’s happening in the moment,” he said. “Since I didn’t see anything, I couldn’t be sure.”
By the time he emerged, police were cordoning off the area.
Yes, once again, It’s time to present this week’s statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!
Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week’s nominees were all particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner… the envelope please…
Pravda-on-the Hudson And The Compilers Of Its Faux ‘Best Seller ‘ List
Sometimes it’s small, sleazy actions that best bring out the true Weasel behavior.
Ted Cruz has a brand new book out, “A Time For Truth,” published on June 30. Unlike most of these sort of books, it’s an autobiography Ted Cruz wrote himself sans ghostwriter, and it really does give you an understanding of whom he is, what he believes and why. And it’s also a pretty good read.
The book sold 11,854 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen Bookscan’s hardcover sale numbers. That’s more than 18 of the 20 titles that appeared on the New York Time’s bestseller list for the week ending July 4. Aziz Ansari’s “Modern Romance,” which was #2 on the list, sold fewer than 10,000 copies. Ann Coulter’s “Adios America,” at #11, sold just over half as many copies that week.It is currently #4 on the Wall Street Journal hardcover list, #4 on the Publisher’s Weekly hardcover list, #4 on the Bookscan hardcover list, and #1 on the Conservative Book Club list.
Ted Cruz’s book did not appear on the New York Time’s bestseller list at all and still hasn’t even though it’s still selling in the top five.
When Harper Collins inquired why the Times was not listing the Cruz book, they were told by Times spokesmouth Eileen Murphy that the book “didn’t meet our standards for inclusion.”
“Our goal is that the list reflect authentic best sellers, so we look at and analyze not just numbers, but patterns of sales for every book.” She then accused Harper Collins of arranging bogus bulk sales, claiming that “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”
“As of yesterday, ‘A Time for Truth’ was the number 13 best-selling book, and there is no evidence of unusual bulk purchase activity in our sales data,” Sarah Gelman, Amazon’s director of press relations, said in an email.
Amazon’s findings match those of HarperCollins, the book’s publisher, which said Friday that it had “investigated the sales pattern” for Cruz’s book and found “no evidence of bulk orders or sales through any retailer or organization.” Moments after that announcement, Cruz’s campaign issued a press release accusing the Times of lying and calling on the paper to provide evidence of bulk purchasing or else formally apologize.
“The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out. But their response — alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’ — is a blatant falsehood,” Cruz campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler said in a statement Friday. “The evidence is directly to the contrary. In leveling this false charge, the Times has tried to impugn the integrity of Senator Cruz and of his publisher HarperCollins.”
Ironically, according to Keith Urbahn, the book’s literary agent, the Times’ weasel actions are actually helping sales.
You know, my father of blessed memory (Z”l) used to have a very Brooklyn expression I can’t repeat here for people who tried to pull this sort of weasel thing and got caught at it. The very pettiness of the action and the easily debunked blatant lie to try and justify it is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, and the Times handled it the same way she did – stonewalling it as long as possible and then very quietly, without admitting any wrongdoing or really apologizing just moving on:
Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said that the newspaper made no changes to its selection process, and so the fact that Cruz’s book is being included now suggests a rise in individual purchases, spurred by his public battle with the paper.
“This week’s NYT best seller list was arrived at using the same process as last week’s – and the week before that,” Murphy wrote. “That process involves a careful analysis of data, and is not influenced in any way by the content of a book, or by pressure from publishers or book sellers.”
Have you ever heard such horse manure? Now, after lying about ‘bulk strategic purchases’ as an excuse to blackball Cruz’s book and being outed by the publisher and biggest major retailers as the weasels they are, they finally admit Cruz’s book to their putrid list where it debuts at number 7 rather than number 3 where it would have had they allowed it on the list when it first came out. And this is the so-called ‘paper of record.’ If they’d lie about something like this, can you imagine what they lie about when they present ‘the news?’
And this Eileen Murphy… her official title at the Times where she’s worked for the last four and a half years is ‘vice president of corporate communications.’ I know, jobs are hard to come by, but imagine you had to wake up in the morning and mouth these sordid prevarications for a living to earn a paycheck. So, I decided to award the Weasel to her, so she can share it with her co-workers. It’ll look great right next to the Jayson Blair portrait, Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize and other mementos of Time’s history to remind them all of whom they really are every time they look at the Golden Weasel.
Well, there it is.
Check back next Tuesday to see who next week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week are!
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.
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