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When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries Tagged as 'National Security'

Obama speech on Iraq carries some pitfalls

September 1st, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Greed, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason

By Anne E. Kornblut Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 31, 2010

President Obama is promoting the decision to end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq on Tuesday as a fulfillment of his campaign promise to draw the war to a close. But some of the president’s detractors are using the same moment to question the wisdom of doing so – noting that Iraq is still afflicted with violence and has yet to form a government.

Obama will mark the occasion by flying to Fort Bliss, Tex., to meet with veterans. He will also deliver a prime-time Oval Office speech – only his second since taking office. On Monday, the president visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center and awarded 11 Purple Hearts to combat veterans. Vice President Biden traveled to Iraq to amplify the message.

“Maybe he’s entitled to the partial victory lap, but this is not the right moment for it,” said analyst Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, who has been critical of both Democratic and Republican approaches to the war. “If I were him, I’d wait until we have an Iraqi government, and do it with the Iraqis together.”

O’Hanlon said he was “confused about the planned Oval Office speech.” It could raise unrealistic expectations among the public about the chances for calm in Iraq, he said. And the timing of the pullout of combat troops may be seen as having more to do with the president’s political needs than with real signs of progress on the ground.

White House officials said the speech, scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. and last 15 to 20 minutes, would acknowledge this week’s deadline as a “milestone” and pay tribute to the 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq since 2003. Obama will address shifting U.S. options now that the country is no longer technically at war in Iraq, including a greater emphasis on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Dangers of war persist for soldiers left in Iraq

August 28th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Foreign Policy, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, War on Terrorism

By Leila Fadel Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 28, 2010; 12:13 AM

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, IRAQ – Col. Malcolm Frost knew there would be questions. The official end to the U.S. combat mission in Iraq was approaching, but his soldiers, operating in two of Iraq’s most dangerous provinces, would still be here.

He sat down and penned a letter to the soldiers’ families. “01 Sept. 2010 does not mean a light switched on or off in Iraq,” the brigade commander wrote. “. . . The weight of responsibility upon our shoulders is great, because we must follow through to the very finish.”

For the soldiers in Frost’s brigade, Sept. 1 will mark an arbitrary milestone. There are fewer troops here, just under 50,000 now, consistent with an Obama administration pledge, and the troops leave base less often. But Americans still die in Iraq, and the fight for stability is far from over.

Iraq remains a battleground, American soldiers say, even if they are no longer kicking down Iraqi doors.

Instead of carrying out combat missions, Frost’s unit has been designated an “advise and assist” brigade, like five other American brigades left behind in Iraq. Its task is to train Iraqi security forces, gather intelligence, assist Iraq’s fledgling air force, and, ultimately, close up shop and go home. The lower-profile approach under Operation New Dawn is the latest step in a transition that began more than a year ago when American soldiers were pulled back from Iraq’s urban centers and for the most part retreated into their bases.

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Tension over Obama policies within Immigration and Customs Enforcement

August 28th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Dissention, General, Homeland Security, Immigration, Immigration, National Security, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US

By Andrew Becker – Friday, August 27, 2010

As it poises for further immigration initiatives, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is struggling with festering internal divisions between political appointees and career officials over how to enforce laws and handle detainees facing deportation.

Under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus away from the worksite raids and sweeps employed during George W. Bush’s presidency to deporting more criminals and creating less prisonlike detention settings. But ICE, a branch of DHS, is facing intensified resistance from agency middle managers and attorneys, and the union that represents immigration officers.

The internal conflict has grown increasingly public over ICE’s plans, among them to expand a risk assessment tool to guide agents on detention decisions, cut down on transfers of detained immigrants, and open more “civil” detention facilities — what field directors call “soft” detention.

Immigration officers say the new measures limit their enforcement efforts and the revamped lockups will compromise their safety. In June, their union took the unprecedented step of issuing a vote of no confidence in the agency’s director, John Morton, and the official overseeing detention reform, Phyllis Coven.

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CIA sees increased threat from al-Qaeda in Yemen

August 24th, 2010 · Defense, Democrats, National Security, News Alert, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, War on Terrorism

By Greg Miller Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 24, 2010; 9:41 PM

For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA analysts see one of al-Qaeda’s off-shoots – rather than the core group now based in Pakistan – as the most urgent threat to U.S. security, officials said.

The sober new assessment of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen has helped prompt senior Obama administration officials to call for an escalation of U.S. operations there – including a proposal to add armed CIA drones to a clandestine campaign of U.S. military strikes, the officials said.

“We are looking to draw on all of the capabilities at our disposal,” said a senior Obama administration official, who described plans for “a ramp-up over a period of months.”

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, stressed that that analysts continue to see al-Qaeda and its allies in the tribal areas of Pakistan as supremely dangerous adversaries. The officials insisted there would be no letup in their pursuit of Osama bin Laden and other senior figures thought to be hiding in Pakistan.

Indeed, officials said it was largely because al-Qaeda has been decimated by Predator strikes in Pakistan that the franchise in Yemen has emerged as a more potent threat. A CIA strike killed a group of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen in 2002, but officials said the agency has not had that capability on the peninsula for several years.

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Billions of aid dollars buy U.S. little goodwill in Pakistan: Believed to be harboring Bin Laden

August 24th, 2010 · Democrats, Federal Spending, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Money Lost, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason, War on Terrorism

By Griff Witte – Tuesday, August 24, 2010

TARBELA, PAKISTAN — Everyone here remembers the Americans.

They came with their blueprints, their engineering know-how and their money. By the time they left in the early 1970s, they had helped build a world-class dam that kept parts of Pakistan dry this month while vast stretches of the country drowned.

“This dam gives great benefit to the nation, and if not for the Americans it would never have been constructed,” said Syed Naimat Shah, a local contractor.

But Shah hasn’t seen any new assistance from the Americans in decades, and apparently many Pakistanis haven’t, either. The U.S. government has provided about $18 billion in civilian and military aid to Pakistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made this country America’s most essential, and vexing, ally. Yet according to a Pew Research Center survey released last month, half of Pakistanis believe the United States gives little to no assistance here.

For Obama administration officials, that’s a source of deep anxiety — and frustration. Pakistan is at the center of U.S. hopes to turn around the flagging Afghan war, but persistent anti-American feelings limit the extent of Pakistani cooperation. On her visit to Pakistan last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton mused that Americans must wonder “why we’re sending money to a country that doesn’t want it.”

Pakistanis insist they are not ungrateful. They just don’t see any tangible impact from the massive sums the United States spends. Unlike assistance from decades ago, the money from the post-Sept. 11 era, Pakistanis say, tends to vanish without a trace.

“Everyone here hates the American government,” said Shah, a spirited 71-year-old with a stark white beard and a sharp tongue. “I haven’t seen a penny of this U.S. assistance.”

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Imam Rauf: Mosque planner has been mostly silent during noisy debate

August 23rd, 2010 · Defense, Democrats, Homeland Security, Immigration, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Treason, War on Terrorism

Remember:  Those who carried out 9/11 learned how to fly in the US; Nidal M. Hasan – Shooter at Fort Hood:  Simple Muslims Protected under the very freedom they wish to distroy.

By Michelle Boorstein – Monday, August 23, 2010

To pundits skeptical of Feisal Abdul Rauf, the New York imam is a wolf in sheep’s clothing who claims to be building a monument to tolerance near Ground Zero but is actually an apologist for radical, anti-American Muslims.

To people who have worked with him in the interfaith community, the white-bearded Sufi is a visionary for peace and progressive Islam, an American patriot who has toiled for decades to build bridges between this country and like-minded Muslims around the world.

Unquestionably, the 61-year-old Rauf (pronounced rah-oof) is the product of some strange circumstances.

Rocketed to prominence after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by government and interfaith leaders interested in promoting the voices of moderate Muslims, the former industrial filter salesman won a book contract and gigs representing the State Department in the Muslim world and teaching FBI agents about Islam. He was asked to become a member of the World Economic Forum and invited to speak with the likes of Antonin Scalia and Karen Hughes. In just a few years, he went from an ambitious, well-liked leader of a small TriBeCa prayer group to a world player.

“After September 11, when we were all afraid, Imam Feisal was one of the people who stood up for American Muslims who totally rejected terrorism. He built a significant network of Christian and Jewish supporters,” said D. Randall Benn, a D.C. lawyer and interfaith activist who has worked as Rauf’s Washington adviser for about two years. “It was where he was, and the power of his ideas, that made him big.”

Ironically, the same symbolic power of Ground Zero that elevated Rauf now threatens to take him down.

At the center of a global firestorm of debate, Rauf is absent, sticking to his commitment to lecture for the State Department in Bahrain about, of all things, “how we emphasize religious tolerance in our society,” department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters last week. Rauf’s wife said he would not be available for an interview until next month — though he told a gathering at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Bahrain on Sunday that the attention generated was a “sign of success” and could bring about greater understanding.

Though now largely invisible, Rauf seems to have become a proxy for Americans’ anxiety about Islam and its legal system, sharia. The intense reaction against Rauf’s proposed project and some of his political views have laid bare Americans’ fragile acceptance of its Muslim minority.

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State Dept. sponsors trip for imam connected to N.Y. mosque project

August 19th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Government, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason

By Foreign Policy’s Josh RoginThursday, August 19, 2010

State Dept. sponsors trip for imam connected to N.Y. mosque project

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Park51 Muslim community center and mosque proposed on a site near New York’s Ground Zero, leaves this week for a three-nation Middle East tour on behalf of the State Department, during which he is expected to speak about the controversy surrounding his project.

Rauf will leave New York and travel to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, a State Department official tells The Cable. The cost of the trip is $16,000.

The State Department has no knowledge or control of the specifics of what Rauf will talk about as he tours the region, but officials note that his agenda could not be more directly related to the backlash against his project, still slated to be built in Lower Manhattan.

“His program is about religious diversity and tolerance in America. Will he relate that to his personal situation? Probably,” another State Department official said.

The State Department has been shy about talking about Rauf and the trip, ostensibly to avoid wading into the controversy over the community center. But that didn’t stop officials from posting New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s impassioned defense of the project on the State Department-run Web site America.gov. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that because the site is directed at foreign audiences, State was not violating the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits the U.S. government from spreading propaganda inside American borders.

Rauf’s trip is organized by the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs and will not include any fundraising. This is his third trip with the State Department.

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Obama Leniency: Illegal Crack Cocaine & Illegal Immigrants. Americans Pay the Price.

August 17th, 2010 · Corruption, Defense, Democrats, Homeland Security, Immigration, Immigration, National Security, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason

Justice Dept. threatens to sue Ariz. sheriff Arpaio in civil rights inquiry

By Jerry Markon and Stephanie McCrummen Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 17, 2010; 3:55 PM

A federal investigation of a controversial Arizona sheriff known for tough immigration enforcement has intensified in recent days, escalating the conflict between the Obama administration and officials in the border state.

Justice Department officials in Washington have issued a rare threat to sue Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio if he doesn’t cooperate by Tuesday with their investigation into whether he discriminates against Hispanics. The civil rights probe is one of two targeting the man who calls himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff” — a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining whether Arpaio has used his power to investigate and intimidate political opponents and whether his office misappropriated government funds, sources said.

The standoff comes just weeks after the Justice Department sued Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer (R) over the state’s new immigration law, heightening tensions over the issue ahead of November’s midterm elections. It focuses renewed attention on Arpaio, a former D.C. police officer who runs a 3,800-employee department, and a state at the epicenter of the debate over the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

Once seen as a quirky figure who dresses inmates in pink underwear and forces them to work on chain gangs, Arpaio has in recent years become a kind of folk hero to those favoring his heavily publicized “crime sweeps,” conducted mostly in Hispanic neighborhoods. At the same time, civil rights groups accuse the 78-year-old lawman of racial profiling. And some Maricopa County officials say Arpaio has launched meritless corruption investigations against officials who have criticized his policies or opposed his requests.

Those allegations are at the core of the Justice Department investigations, according to documents, lawyers familiar with the probes and people who have been questioned by FBI agents and the grand jury.

The investigations reflect the tangled politics surrounding the immigration debate. The criminal probe is led by Dennis K. Burke, the U.S. attorney in Phoenix and a former top aide to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

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With mosque remarks, Obama purposefully walks against the traffic: Obama’s Promise to 57 States

August 17th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Defense, Dissention, Ethics, Federal Spending, Homeland Security, National Security, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorist Attack, Treason

By Michael D. Shear – Tuesday, August 17, 2010; 9:37 AM

As Washington and the nation continued this week to process President Obama‘s remarks on the Islamic cultural center planned near Ground Zero, one fact remained indisputable: This was a controversy of the president’s choosing.

True, some folks had been publicly pushing Obama to join the fray. But having chosen to stay silent for weeks, and with Washington virtually empty for August break, there seemed to be little pressure on him to do so.

And yet, with little warning, Obama decided that his voice — the president’s voice — was an important one to add to the debate.

One Republican consultant said flatly right after the remarks, “He is right on principle, but he will get slaughtered on the politics.”

“It’s almost like they’ve decided to throw in the towel” on the midterm elections, said the consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If the power to decide this was his alone, I could understand this, but it is not. He chose to walk into this from the sidelines, which seems to me a foolish waste of political capital on a local issue. A curious mix of ego and self-aggrandizement, albeit for the right cause.”

The president’s advisers often describe Obama’s early months in office as largely dictated by the crises unfolding around him. They say the economic collapse, the bank and auto failures, the H1N1 pandemic and the oil spill crisis all forced him to act.

But at other times, the president has seemed almost to welcome the danger that comes with wading into a difficult political situation. The more fraught, the better, it seems.

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Pentagon push to phase out top brass causing much consternation

August 16th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, Unemployment

By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 13, 2010

Of all the spending cuts and budget battles the Pentagon is confronting, none is causing more angst than Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates‘s vow to start getting rid of generals and admirals.

By almost any measure, the military is more top-heavy an institution than it has been for decades. Today, there are 40 four-star generals and admirals — one more than in 1971, during the Vietnam War, even though the number of active-duty troops has shrunk by almost half.

The number of active-duty generals and admirals of all rank, meanwhile, has increased by about 13 percent since 1996.

It is, as Gates puts it, “brass creep.”

But the defense secretary’s pledge Monday to cut about 5 percent of the brass is nothing short of seismic for many at the Pentagon. The cuts would be the largest in the upper ranks since a similar squeeze at the end of the Cold War, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the military to downsize.

The defense secretary has said he also wants to make similar trims in the civilian leadership, noting that the number of people assigned to his office has grown by nearly 1,000 over the past decade.

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