By now, you’ve all seen this picture. lord knows I’ve seen it a hundred times in my Inbox. But I was just wondering, how many secret service agents would it take to pull one of you guys off of the Vice President if he did this to your wife, or your daughter, or your mother. Ladies, how many secret service agents would you be willing to punch to get in one last smack on this creepy turd?
Breitbart reports that King Abdullah of Jordan has reacted differently to the gruesome death of one his pilots than our own president reacted to the beheading of American James Foley;
Shafaqna news and Iraqinews.com claimed to have confirmed with their sources that King Abdullah is personally involved in conducting the air strikes. What remains unclear is whether Abdullah is personally suiting up and flying a plane, or instead commanding units involved in the mission.
“The Jordanian King Abdullah II will participate personally on Thursday in conducting air strikes against the shelters of the terrorist ISIL organization to revenge the execution of the Jordanian pilot [Kasasbeh] by the ISIL,” said the IraqiNews report.
I don’t expect our president to fly Cobras or an A-10, but it would be nice if he acted like there’s a war.
Chief Tango sends us a link to The Blaze which tells about more of Obama’s plan to balance spending (not balancing the budget – that is history) on the backs of veterans. You probably remember last summer when everyone wanted to fix the Veterans’ healthcare system because the VA wasn’t getting it right. So, Congress and the White House hammered out the Veterans’ Choice Program which allowed veterans to get their health care from civilian providers. In an uncharacteristic effort, everyone worked together to get the bill out of Congress and on the street.
Well, that’s one of the things that the White House wants to cut, while it’s barely six months old;
…Obama released a budget plan that said he would try to pare it back, and would offer legislation to do so. “In the coming months, the administration will submit legislation to reallocate a portion of Veterans Choice Program funding to support essential investments in VA system priorities in a fiscally-responsible, budget-neutral manner,” the budget said.
VA Secretary Robert McDonald added that he would propose this chance in order to provide flexibility at the VA, in order to “serve veterans the way they want and deserve to be served.”
Congress ain’t standing for it…well, for now, anyway;
“When a near-unanimous Congress worked with President Obama last year to create the choice program, we made a promise to veterans to give them more freedom in their health care decisions,” [House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.)] said. “I will not stand idly by while the president attempts to renege on that promise.”
“It is unacceptable to me that the president would begin to dismantle the Veterans’ Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 that he just signed into law last August by taking the resources allocated to enact this legislation for use elsewhere,” said Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).
I guess we can take that as a swipe at us veterans for not electing a Democrat Congress for the President. We’re not his constituency, even though he claims to be “everyone’s President”.
The Washington Times reports that the president, sending his nearly $4 trillion budget to Congress, has proclaimed that the economy has recovered and that it is “time to begin spending again” hinting that the so-called sequester, you know, the idea that came out of the White House in the first place, should end.
“I’m not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward,” the president said. “It would be bad for our security and bad for our growth. I will not accept a budget that severs the vital link between our national security and our economic security.”
His plans include some tax increases he has tried before, such as a “Buffet tax” to impose a mandatory minimum levy on the wealthy, as well as hikes on repatriation of foreign income and capital gains. His spending proposals, likewise, are a mix of new and old.
So, I guess he’s given up any pretense of balancing the budget, and of course, the new taxes on the rich (Bill Clinton decided that I was one of the rich in the 90s so who knows where tax increases will end) won’t be matched by cuts in social spending. Like I predicted in 2008, before the election, the only budget balancing was on the backs of veterans and at the expense of our national security.
You would think that now that the President has declared the end of our economic crisis (like he declared the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars), veterans wouldn’t be in the crosshairs of the budget-slashing crowd, but, no, the new budget plan includes increases to our healthcare costs (even though they already raided our Tricare premium surplus). So, I guess veterans and military retirees are among “the rich” who will have to shoulder the burden of his plan to increase spending.
I could spend everyday posting the tips I get about about the President. I could be like every other conservative blogger and just repeat over and over how much I dislike this President. I don’t because you’d get as bored reading it as I would get writing it. I don’t dislike him because of his race, I don’t dislike him because he’s a Democrat. I dislike him because he’s just a crappy person. To wit;
Army captains Natalie Heimel and Edward Mallue Jr. knew Obama was headed to Hawaii for the holidays, so on a whim, they extended him an invite to attend their Dec. 28 wedding — one he politely declined. That same day, they were informed they would have to move their wedding location.
The wedding was set to be at the 16th tee box at Kaneohe Kipper Golf Course on the Marine Corps Base in Hawaii — a favorite of both Mallue and Obama.
If it had been me, or any other decent person, we would have suspended our plans for the day to accommodate the betrothed couple on their day. But I guess that was too hard for this crowd at the White House. The captains were gracious, according the White Housians;
After Bloomberg asked Obama officials about the scheduling conflict, Obama called the bride.
“He apologized and congratulated them,” McCarthy said, who said they had a “wonderful talk.”
Yeah, well, he didn’t call them before the media asked about it. Good on the couple for not making a big deal out of it. But it never should have happened in the first place. I understand the security concerns of having a wedding party near the President, but he should have removed himself from the area instead of expecting the couple to change their plans. Did it all work out in the end? Yes, but it never should have happened in the first place.
Thanks to Richard for the link.
So, ignoring the warnings that it would put Americans at risk around the world, the highly partisan Senate did that anyway. Because, you know, what are the lives of a few Americans compared to them being removed from their seats of power? The Washington Post is shocked by what they read in the report. Apparently they’re much less shocked by videos of Americans having their heads removed on video screens around the world. They’re much less shocked that Americans and Europeans are heading off to Syria by the thousands to join the organization that sprung from al Qaeda. Those terrorists are heartened by Senator Feinstein;
In her foreword to the report, Feinstein does not characterize the CIA’s actions as torture, but said the trauma of Sept. 11 led the agency to employ “brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations and our values.” The report should serve as “a warning for the future,” she said. “We cannot again allow history to be forgotten and grievous past mistakes to be repeated.”
Yeah, if pumping water up the anus of a terrorist is something that makes them talk, they can use my hose. The report focuses on the treatment of Abu Zubaida. He operated the Khalden Camp which trained al Qaeda operatives and Taliban soldiers. He was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death by Jordan for plotting bombings of US and Israeli targets there. He had ties to Ahmed Ressam, the “Millennium Bomber” who was foiled at the Canadian/US border.
Zubaida was shot by Pakistani intelligence officials when they arrested him. When he was turned over to the FBI, those agents took him straight to the hospital for treatment. I wonder if John McCain wishes that he had been treated as humanely by the North Vietnamese troops who captured him when he was injured?
But this is what the report said about his treatment;
One of the most lengthy sections describes the interrogation of the CIA’s first prisoner, Abu Zubaida, who was detained in Pakistan in March 2002. Zubaida, badly injured when he was captured, was largely cooperative when jointly questioned by the CIA and FBI but was then subjected to confusing and increasingly violent interrogation as the agency assumed control.
After being transferred to a site in Thailand, Zubaida was placed in isolation for 47 days, a period during which the presumably important source on al-Qaida faced no questions. Then, at 11:50 a.m. on Aug. 4, 2002, the CIA launched a round-the-clock interrogation assault — slamming Zubaida against walls, stuffing him into a coffin-sized box and waterboarding him until he coughed, vomited and had “involuntary spasms of the torso and extremities.”
The treatment continued for 17 days. At one point, the waterboarding left Zubaida “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.” CIA memos described employees who were distraught and concerned about the legality of what they had witnessed. One said that “two, perhaps three” were “likely to elect transfer.”
Good. Even if they didn’t get any information out of him, he was obviously a terrorist and deserved everything he got. And you’ll note that no one chopped off his head during this treatment.
Zubaida was waterboarded 83 times and kept in cramped boxes for nearly 300 hours. In October 2002, Bush was informed in his daily intelligence briefing that Zubaida was still withholding “significant threat information,” despite views from the black site that he had been truthful from the outset and was “compliant and cooperative,” the report said.
The document provides a similarly detailed account of the interrogation of the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who fed his interrogators a stream of falsehoods and intelligence fragments. Waterboarding was supposed to simulate suffocation with a damp cloth and a trickle of liquid. But with Mohammed, CIA operatives used their hands to form a standing pool of water over his mouth. KSM, as he is known in agency documents, was ingesting “a LOT of water,” a CIA medical officer wrote, saying that the application had been so altered that “we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
From Wiki;
In March 2007, through the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] confessed to masterminding the September 11 attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the murder of Daniel Pearl, and various foiled attacks, as well as numerous other crimes.
And now I’m supposed to regret that treatment of a fellow who had a hand in nearly every terrorist plot for the decade before his arrest? Yeah, let me dig deep for some GAF.
I wonder if the media will shove a microphone in the face of any Democrat Senator who took part in the release of the report and ask them if they regret the loss of any lives that result from this release. And have no doubt, that the release of this report is purely political. Most of the members of Congress were fully aware of the interrogation techniques that were employed at the time they were used, but now suddenly it’s “never again” as they’re being shown the door.
According to Fox News, six thousand Marines in Europe are on “high alert” as a Crisis Response Force solely because the Senate Democrats released this report.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal writes that they’re convinced that the interrogation techniques used by the CIA saved lives;
What is wrong with the committee’s report?
First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:
• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.
A powerful example of the interrogation program’s importance is the information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda operative, and from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, known as KSM, the 9/11 mastermind. We are convinced that both would not have talked absent the interrogation program.
By the way, John McCain was quoted as saying “This question isn’t about our enemies. It’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.” The Senate report is not accurate – like any report that comes out of Congress – everything is a compromise vote. They only release information that the Democrat majority allows to be released. Butthurt McCain voting with them insures that nothing even close to accurate is going to be in the report.
The world needs to know that we’re tired of taking their shit. The whining and hand-wringing by the Senate doesn’t send that message.