Author: Jonn Lilyea

The Washington Post reports that President Trump asked the Saudis for four billion dollars to help shore up victories in Syria to keep the Syrian government from reclaiming the areas and to prevent a resurgence of ISIS fighters as the US tries to disengage from middle east politics.

The Saudis have withdrawn from events in the Levant over the last few years, and Trump is asking them to pull their weight;

The Saudis…are questioning the eye-popping sum even as U.S. officials at one point were drawing up line items totaling $4 billion.

For Trump – who has long railed against insufficient burden-sharing by allies under the U.S. security umbrella – getting others to foot the bill for expensive postwar efforts is important.

A $4 billion Saudi contribution would go a long way toward U.S. goals in Syria that the Saudis say they share, particularly that of limiting Assad’s power and rolling back Iran’s influence. By comparison, the United States last month announced a $200 million donation to the stabilization effort.

At the same time, Trump is eager to get the United States out of a war in which he has already claimed that victory over the Islamic State is near.

Maybe, if our allies had been more willing to put some effort into stabilizing Iraq in 2003, our commitment there would have ended sooner and been less bloody for us. We’ve been doing the heavy lifting for the whole world for more than seventy years, it’s about time we asked for a little help.

Curtis Allen, Patrick Stein and Gavin Wright, who called their little militia group “the Crusaders”, face a jury trial in Wichita, Kansas soon, according to Associated Press, for planning to set off four car bombs in Garden City, a Somali immigrant community that toils at a local Tyson Foods cattle slaughterhouse on Election Day, 2016. Luckily, one of the original four Crusaders was an FBI informant wearing a wire;

According to prosecutors, Stein was recorded discussing the type of fuel-and-fertilizer bomb that Timothy McVeigh used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people. Stein was arrested when he delivered 300 pounds of fertilizer to undercover FBI agents to make explosives.

Prosecutors also allege that Wright and Allen made an explosive in the kitchen of Wright’s business and used it to successfully test a blasting cap, with the goal of using the cap to cause a much larger explosion at the apartment complex.

Agents also found aerial photographs in one vehicle depicting what appear to be apartment complexes marked with large X’s, as well as an aerial photo of a church and a Burmese mosque, authorities say. The group also discussed killing the apartment complex’s white owner to send a message to other landlords about renting to immigrants.

Defense lawyers filed a motion to expand the jury pool to include more Trump voters;

In that motion, they argued the case is “uniquely political” because much of the expected evidence is in reaction to the election. They contended the case will require jurors to weigh evidence regarding whether the suspected conduct amounts to criminal behavior or whether it is constitutionally protected speech.

Yeah, I suppose that Trump voters will disregard the potential for the loss of lives in favor of “constitutionally protected speech”. Somehow, I don’t think that is a winning strategy.

The trio have all pleaded “not guilty” and they face life sentences.