This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Terror War

  • Gates: Obama distrusts the military

    Years too late, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates comes forward to tell us that President Obama mistrusted the military leaders who were advising him on Afghanistan, you know, that war that Obama told us mattered. Gates told Fox News that voices in the White House were telling Obama that military was trying to make him look bad in the war against terror. From Breitbart;

    He stated, “I think this was particularly true in Afghanistan, and I think there were people in the White House, and I don’t want to name any names, who were constantly goading him and saying the military is trying to box you in. the military is trying to trap you. the military is trying to bully you. The military is trying to make you do something you don’t want to do.”

    When asked if Vice President Joe Biden was one of these people, Gates answered, “I think so. And I was told so. And I think — but he was not alone, and you can argue with the options that they were putting forward, as President Bush did. you can disagree with them, as President Bush did. I — that’s totally fair, in my view. But, to think that they are trying to mousetrap you, I think is a — if I were the president and i truly believed that, I would replace those commanders that I felt were trying to trick me. So, I just — I worried a lot that he was hearing from people, things that made him worry that the military was consciously trying to thwart his will, consciously trying to be insubordinate, and I never believed any of that for a second.”

    Of course it was Biden – Afghanistan was one of the little projects that the President gave Biden to handle so the President didn’t have to get his hands dirty.

    Like I’ve said a hundred times before – screw you, Gates. Where was all of this honesty when it could have made a difference? If the President wasn’t listening to you and your generals, why didn’t you just very vocally resign? Why didn’t you come out with all of this before the 2012 election to prevent what has befallen the Pentagon an the troops since the reelection?

    Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

  • Five Shi’ite “infidels” murdered by Sunni gun man

    According to France24, a Sunni gun man murdered five people and wounded nine more while they were attending a religious sermon at a Shi’ite meeting hall in the Qatif area of Saudi Arabia before he was finally gunned down by Saudi police. A group called Islamic State-Bahrain State took credit for the shooting;

    A group calling itself Islamic State-Bahrain State said in a communique that one of its “soldiers”, Shughaa al-Dosari, “attacked a Shiite infidel temple with an automatic weapon” in Saihat.

    It warned that “infidels will not be safe in the island of Mohammed”.

    So, I guess everyone is an infidel these days, if even some Muslims are considered infidels by other Muslims.

  • Ardit Ferizi, Kosovar hacker arrested

    Ardit Ferizi, Kosovar hacker arrested

    The Stars & Stripes reports that Ardit Ferizi, a Kosovar hacker was arrested in Malaysia for passing along PII that he gleaned from the internet on American service members to ISIS.

    Ferizi is accused of passing the data to Islamic State member Junaid Hussain, a British citizen who in August posted links on Twitter to the names, e-mail addresses, passwords, locations and phone numbers of 1,351 U.S. military and other government personnel. He included a warning that Islamic State “soldiers . . . will strike at your necks in your own lands!”

    Later that month, Hussain, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Hussain al-Britani, was killed in a drone strike in Syria.

    A few months ago, Ferizi hacked into a commercial retailer’s servers and stole information on about 100,000 customers, then he sent the PII on about 1300 service members that he found in his score to the Islamic State.

    Didn’t we just spend billions of dollars protecting Kosovo from the Serbs? I seem to remember something about that. I guess no good deed goes unpunished when you’re the United States. Well, I’m sure this State Department will not have any trouble extraditing this fellow, you know since we have so much good will in the world’s community of nations.

  • US troops to stay in Afghanistan

    US troops to stay in Afghanistan

    So while I was partying at Walter Reed yesterday, the President, Shotgun Joe Bite Me, Ashton Carter and the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs announced that those ten thousand troops in Afghanistan will remain there after this administration leaves office. Well, it’s no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. In 2009, the President and the rest of the White House was told that a “surge” of less than 60,000 troops to Afghanistan wouldn’t have any real impact against our enemies there. The politicians ignored this advice and half-assed the surge with a political compromise.

    Now the Taliban is controlling more of Afghanistan than they have since they were removed from power in 2001. They’re making more advances everyday – mostly because they want to give us a boot in the ass on our way out the door. Ashton Carter told the media that “there is still much work to be done”. Yeah because no one was willing to make the commitment six years ago. Obama didn’t want to completely piss off his anti-war base. Bad military decisions have a cost.

    Just a few years ago, this administration wouldn’t even let the US troops arm themselves in the presence of our enemies, creating an opportunity for green-on-blue murders. And then they blamed our own troops for the attacks.

    The administration’s strategy in Afghanistan really isn’t a strategy at all. It’s a big waiting game for a new administration that has the gonads to actually fight the war. But that administration has it’s job cut out for it. Not only is the Taliban stronger, ISIS has also made some gains in the country, in fact, there has been some fighting between the two, which isn’t unwelcome.

    The Fiscal Times says that keeping troops in Afghanistan longer is “bad news” for Biden’s campaign;

    Obama and Biden campaigned hard in the last election on their plan to end U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, which the U.S. invaded after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Voting for their Republican opponents, they warned, was voting to keep U.S. troops stationed in the volatile region indefinitely. That now appears to be the Obama administration’s plan as well.

    […]

    The problem for Biden is that U.S. policy in Afghanistan has been, in large part, his policy.

    Actually, it should just remind voters that Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of history on every single foreign policy issue over the last thirty years.

  • Cubans deploy to Syria?

    Fox News reports that some Arabs are claiming that they spotted Cuban soldiers in Syria to assist the Assad government and the Russians fighting against the rebels in the civil war there;

    An Arab military officer at the Damascus airport reportedly witnessed two Russian planes arrive there with Cuban military personnel on board. When the officer questioned the Cubans, they told him they were there to assist Assad because they are experts at operating Russian tanks, according to Jaime Suchlicki, the institute’s executive director.

    “It doesn’t surprise me,” Suchlicki told FoxNews.com, noting Russia’s long history of supplying military equipment to Cuba as well as Cuba’s assistance in Soviet-led operations in Africa the 1970’s.

    The Cubans haven’t fought in a war since their incursions in Africa and their limited engagements in South and Central America in the mid-80s so I don’t why the Russians would want them except for extra bodies. Of course, they did evict the Spanish with our help in 1898, so if they have veterans of that war, they’d come in handy.

    Cuba’s military is ranked the world’s 110th most powerful by the site globalfirepower.com. While small, the Cuban military is “very well-trained,” according to Suchlicki, who said their presence in Syria is a “departure from what the U.S. expected.”

    So, the Cubans will be designated as the Russian’s 71st Provincial Self-Propelled Sand Bag Brigade.

  • NYT: Is the Pentagon Telling the Truth About Afghanistan?

    NYT: Is the Pentagon Telling the Truth About Afghanistan?

    The New York Times editorial board charges that the Pentagon isn’t giving the President good information on the conduct and successes in Afghanistan based on a report from the United Nations that claims there is a resurgence of the Taliban.

    The fall of Kunduz two weeks ago was a startling sign of how the Taliban has reasserted itself, wresting a northern city from the control of the NATO-trained Afghan Security Forces, who are not doing a great job of showing they are up to defending their country. The United Nations data, reported by The Times on Monday and backed up by interviews with local officials, paint an even bleaker picture of an expanding insurgency that has spread through more of Afghanistan than at any point since the Taliban government was deposed at the end of 2001.

    Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure that the Pentagon is only giving the President the information that he wants to hear. The Pentagon gave him unbiased information when he was considering how many troops he was sending in the Afghanistan “surge” and he discounted the numbers that he was given by the Pentagon and the CIA. He disregarded their advice that not fully staffing the surge would have the results that we’ve been seeing for the last six years. So, the message from the White House, after Stan McCrystal was fired, was that the Pentagon should just tell the White House what they want to hear, that facts had no place in the daily briefings.

    Looking at the way the war against ISIS is being prosecuted, the truth doesn’t matter any-damn-way.

    When ISIS was at the gates of Ramadi earlier this year, the White House, weeks before the city fell to ISIS, discounted the city’s importance and let it go. So, really, what’s the point of telling the truth? the President is going to do what the President is going to do, regardless of the way the war is going.

  • Peace rally bombed

    Peace rally bombed

    Ankara bombing

    According to Fox News, the start of a peace rally in Ankara, Turkey was interrupted by two bombs causing 86 deaths and another 186 injured. The rally was to protest recent violence between Kurdish guerrillas and Turkish security forces;

    Television footage from Turkey’s Dogan news agency showed a line of protesters fanned out on the street near the train station, chanting and performing a traditional dance with their hands locked, when a large explosion hit behind them.

    The video also showed several people lying injured on the streets or being taken into ambulances.

    The reports aren’t clear on whether it was a suicide bombing or not. According to the Associated Press, about 70 of those casualties died immediately while the remainder died at the hospital

  • About that Iran Nuclear Deal . . . .

    Remember the current     group of feckless fools and clueless tools’     Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran? You know, the one that     that gang of incompetent neophytes     the Administration refused to allow to be made public for review before it was signed?

    Well, maybe now we know why. Turns out some some senior Administration officials who’ll have to implement the deal have taken a hard look at what this       clown krewe     Administration agreed to allow in that deal. And there’s a problem.

    The deal appears to violate existing US law.  Law signed by – you guessed it – the current POTUS himself.  In fact, it runs afoul of multiple existing laws.

    The deal purportedly allows subsidiaries of US firms to do business with Iran. This is a major part of the deal, and is expected to result in tens of billions of dollars of trade between Iran and those subsidiaries.

    However, it so happens there’s this little thing called the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012..  It was passed by Congress in the summer of 2012. It was signed into law by the current Occupant, 1600 Penn Ave, in August of that year.

    Section 218 of that law explicitly prohibits foreign subsidiaries of US companies from doing business with Iran. Section 605 of that law requires this to remain the case until (1) the POTUS certifies to Congress that Iran is no longer listed by the DoS as a state sponsor of international terrorism, and (2) the POTUS certifies to Congress that Iran has ceased efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.  Both are required.

    The Iran nuclear deal is not a treaty; it is an “executive agreement” It thus does not trump existing Federal law.

    What’s more, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015  – also signed by the current POTUS –  specifically states that prior sanctions on Iran mandated by Federal law are not affected by the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran; they thus remain in effect.  So the current POTUS has signed Federal law requiring any US nuclear deal with Iran to be IAW existing US laws regarding Iran sanctions not once, but twice.

    I mean, really – how freaking incompetent must a group be to “accidentally” sign off on an agreement that is patently illegal?  Did they not bother to have any of their legal staff look at the damn thing before signing on the dotted line?

    Looks to me like someone has painted themselves into a corner. Best I can tell, the only way to actually implement key parts of the Iran nuclear deal at this point would be to require a clear violation of Federal law. Or, alternatively, the POTUS could certify to Congress that Iran is now neither a sponsor of terrorism or pursuing any form of WMD program.

    Personally, I’m betting on the former (ignore existing law). This Administration IMO seems quite comfortable with that, and I don’t think even this clueless krewe is stupid enough to do the latter.  But that’s just me.