That was Quirk for ya, alright, back in those days. Train the bear, not to dumpster dive, but to just take the whole dumpster. You would not have believed how much junk and garbage there was out in Q's shop. Really indescribable. Q had a blow torch too out there, and was cutting dumpsters for the scrap metal to sell.
We keep fucking with people, killing them, threatening them, pursuing economic warfare, picking sides, interfering where we have no business and the we are shocked, shocked…
(Reuters) - The chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee said al Qaeda appears to be behind a threat that has prompted several U.S. embassies to close on Sunday.
"It's my understanding that it is al Qaeda linked ... and the threat emanates in the Middle East and in Central Asia," Representative Ed Royce said Friday on CNN's "New Day" program.
Royce, a Republican, said he and several other lawmakers met two days ago with Vice President Joe Biden on the threat, "and as you know we're going to take whatever steps necessary to protect our personnel overseas. When we do have an indication of a threat, we take that seriously."
We are arming al Qaeda in Syria. We armed them in Libya.
"and as you know we're going to take whatever steps necessary to protect our personnel overseas. When we do have an indication of a threat, we take that seriously.”
We are aiding and abetting the Israeli attacking of legal Russian arms shipments to Syria and can you believe it, Putin offers asylum to an “American Traitor” that has a greater approval rating than the US President and really kicks ass when compared to the US Congress, who funds all this intervention and disruption.
While John McCain continues the push to arm the terrorists in Syria, the King of Jordan sees the writing on the wall.
An army spokesman in Jordan said Thursday that border police have arrested smugglers trying to sneak in a large cache of arms from neighboring Syria.
The spokesman said the group arrested late Thursday included Jordanians and other Arab nationalities.
The official said the arms included mainly machine guns. He said and an investigation had begun.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with army regulations.
Jordan has been concerned that Al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria may use its territory as a haven as they escape attacks from the Syrian army. There is also concern that the militants may try to smuggle in weapons to use in attacks to destabilize the pro-U.S. kingdom, one of two Arabs states with a signed peace treaty with Israel. http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.539396
Ursus americanus rise out of their slumber and forage each spring, and human encounters with bears are more common in this part of Pennsylvania, depending on where there is suitable habitat.
Julie Cramer, of Duncannon, captured a photo of a black bear last week, as did the Straka family in Gettysburg, and the Falkners in Orrtanna.
The range for black bears appears to be expanding southward in the commonwealth. Reported sightings throughout the year suggest the bears are denning in themountainous, rocky, wooded habitat in this part of the state.
Even in an ideal habitat this far south, it’s a small, sporadic population. Don’t expect to cross paths with a black bear on your next nature hike.
Flat, agricultural areas aren’t likely to harbor black bears. When they have shown up, it’s usually been a relocated nuisance bear.
Most bears set out on their own after their second winter in the den, at a year-and-a-half old. Though they had time to frolic with mother as small cubs that first spring, it’s a big world one year later when they are alone — curiosity and hunger can get the best of them.
If they seem to be wandering aimlessly, it’s because they are. Neighbors upset that a bear is treed in their backyard should keep in mind that the bear isn’t pleased about being there either.
Bird feeders are bear magnets in the spring. They love the seeds and it’s easy pickings. A lot of bear photographs are taken shortly before or after a feeder is annihilated. It’s suggested that homeowners in bear-prone areas take their bird feeders down during the spring and summer to avoid confrontations. Most birds won’t mind, as our feathered friends have a greater supply of natural foodstuffs than normal during these months.
Homeowners can take steps to reduce the likelihood a bear will make a backyard pit stop. In true Yogi style, black bears are opportunists and will rummage through garbage and camping groceries left outside, if a picnic basket isn’t readily available. They aren’t usually so desperate as to break into a vehicle for a leftover candy bar, but they have been known to try to lick a barbecue grill left slathered with years of grease.
A black bear encounter, from a distance, can be some fine entertainment, especially when there is the glass of a sliding door or window between you and the bear. Their dexterity and impish behavior is impressive and humorous. Still, humans should respect the bear’s instinct and be cautious. While they are not aggressive by nature and not inclined to initiate attacks, sows will tussle to the death to protect cubs. Be careful, because the presence of babies isn’t always obvious.
Still no response to the question of why the secular state of Israel, smack dab in the middle of the Middle East, populated by people of Middle Eastern ancestry and Middle Eastern culture and Middle Eastern religion should be considered "Western".
Why a land where the population speak Semitic languages would be considered "Western".
Especially in the face of their denials that the secular state of Israel is a colony of Europeon peoples. Even if those people are of Middle Eastern ancestry who have returned to their homeland.
Why do they continually refer to the secular state of Israel as being "Western", when it is not?
Seems a relatively simple question, why is our AIPAC contingent silent about these historical, cultural and religious realities?
We can’t protect our embassies in Muslim countries. Now why do you suppose that is?
The United States is shuttering its embassies and consulates throughout the Muslim world on Sunday after receiving an unspecified threat, officials said.
State Department officials said Thursday that they were taking action out of an “abundance of caution.”
Spokeswoman Marie Harf cited information indicating a threat to U.S. facilities overseas and said some diplomatic offices may stay closed for more than a day.
Other U.S. officials said the threat was in the Muslim world, where Sunday is a workday. American diplomatic missions in Europe, Latin America and many other places are closed on Sunday.
Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The State Department issued a major warning last year informing American diplomatic facilities across the Muslim world about potential violence connected to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Dozens of American installations were besieged by protest over an anti-Islam video made by an American resident.
In Benghazi, Libya, the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed when militants assaulted a diplomatic post. The administration no longer says that attack was related to the demonstrations.
Do you think that the attack in Benghazi was related to the 11SEP date, the presence of the US Ambassador or to the arms shipments transiting to Syria?
Would the attack have occurred without the Ambassador being there? Was the Ambassador the target and the date of the attack an incidental coincidence? Or was the attack initiated on the 11SEP date, unrelated to the Ambassador being there?
In the later, a case could be made that it was part of an internationally organized series of coordinated actions, riots in Egypt and Yemen, an attack in Benghazi. All timed to create stress and confusion on the US response capabilities.
Is there a coordinated international threat against US interests or were all those riots and the attack occurring at the same time just coincidental happenstance?
If those demonstrations were not coordinated, we are seeing the Muslim political thrown on their ass, in Egypt. Being bloodied and on the run in Syria.
If they were coordinated, doug may be right. Along with the administration, who said it was.
But that Team Obama, they don't get nuttin' right, aye.
CIA Said To Target Rescuers Responding to Initial Drone Strikes. Is this terrorism?
J.D. Tuccille| Aug. 2, 2013 10:31 am Reason
Terrorists have been known to plant two bombs at a time — one intended not only to do damage, but to attract police and emergency personnel, and the other targeted at those first responders. Such a double attack was attempted at a shopping area in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010. It was also a favorite tactic of Eric Rudolph, who planted two bombs at an Atlanta gay bar as well as at a clinic that provided abortions. You know who uses a similar tactic? If reports are true, the United States government's own Central Intelligence Agency finds this approach irresistable.
From the Bureau of Investigative Journalism:
A field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan’s tribal areas appears to confirm that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.
The Bureau’s new study focused mainly on strikes around a single village in North Waziristan – attacks that were aimed at one of al Qaeda’s few remaining senior figures, Yahya al-Libi. He was finally killed by a CIA drone strike on June 4 2012.
Congressional aides have previously been reported as describing to the Los Angeles Times reviewing a CIA video showing Yahya al-Libi alone being killed. But the Bureau’s field research appears to confirm what others reported at the time – that al-Libi’s death was part of a sequence of strikes on the same location that killed up to 16 people.
If correct, that would indicate that Congressional aides were not shown crucial additional video material.
The CIA denies all. It knows nothing of such perfidious activities. But other news outlets have reported similar double drone strikes. Last July, CNN reported on an attack in North Waziristan.:
In the incident, which occurred shortly after 10 p.m., two missiles struck the compound in the residential area followed by another four missiles that were fired 10 minutes later, the officer said. The death toll rose from nine to 20 as people who had gathered at the site after the first strike were hit in the second, the officer said.
It should go without saying that even the best-targeted initial strike can draw unknown and perfectly innocent people to offer assistance. Justifying an attack on those people requires stretching moral flexibility to the breaking point.
Since boobie brought the subject of the secular state of Israel and the opposition of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to the policies of that secular government in regards to the murder of 20,000 Jews annually, guess we're back in business.
Seems that the murder of Jews is what he wants to discuss, not bear and mountain lion, or even wolf hunts in the United States. Not game and land management policies across the Americas.
No, I don't value any Middle Eastern soul very much at all. I do see the comedy in the portrayal of a secular state as being a homeland for a religious group, then that government behaving like the Pharaohs of old.
Then the Chief Rabbinate of the state in question announcing to the world that his people are being murdered, by the policies of the state. While the supposed champions of the religion cast aspersions on the Rabbinate, and seek to claim equivalency with gentiles and pagans.
When all the while I have campaigned for the Equivalency Standard be applied to the secular state, now the AIPAC champions are scrambling to claim that the equivalency standard should be applied.
Their claims to cultural and moral superiority, all vanished in the wind. The AIPAC shills, they're twisting in it.
Wettest July that I can remember, the rain just keeps on falling, the grass is sure growing.
You know bears like to dumpster dive -- but one in Colorado practically took out the trash.
The Denver Post reports a bear with a taste for German food recently visited the back of a Colorado Springs restaurant and moved a garbage bin about 50 feet into the parking lot.
The hungry guy apparently then flipped it over, opened the lid and chowed down.
It is sad when some can re-define first responders as 'reinforcements' and justify their murder as war instead of what it is, terror.
Double-taps and signature strikes, the new way of war for the CIA, acts condemned as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions yet rationalized and excused here.
It is not rationalization, Q. It is neither an expression of happiness or sadness on my part. It is merely an observation of the reality of the world at war.
War is a terrible thing, of that there is no doubt.
We operate under the "Golden Rule" ... ... those with the gold make the rules.
If you could change that reality, I'd be more than happy to observe the change, too.
Instead of coming out and openly deploying double-taps, signature strikes, bombing weddings and funerals, you offer us "Shit happens, what are you going to do".
I wouldn't have even brought it up but you specifically countered Deuce's attack on the practices by offering us The follow on targeting of reinforcements is nothing new. It is a standard military tactic, on both a large and small scale" or as an alternative, if the shits can't afford a can't afford a uniform (combatants or not) screw em."
Follow on targeting IS a standard military practice, Q.
It is not "Shit Happens". It is good tactics, in a war zone. It is standard practice, in a war zone.
If you were to challenge the 14SEP2011 AUMF, advocate for its repeal, I would concur. If you were to advocate for a total military withdrawal from Afpakistan, I would concur.
If want to limit the tactics employed by the US to putting boots on the ground, I would object.
As long as the US Congress considers the nation's interests to be so vital that military force is authorized we should not eschew our technological tactical advantages. We should not take military actions lightly but should not limit the prosecution of those actions arbitrarily.
As to what constitutes a legal combatant, well, I did not write the rules. The "Western" powers did. Article 4 of the Geneva Accords states it plainly. Uniforms are the key to legitimacy, like it or not.
If in the course of the war the options are strategic bombing, targeted strikes or inserting troops, well, it seems clear that the US is best advantaged using targeted strikes.
The risk of civilian collateral damage is much less in targeted strikes than in strategic bombing. The risk to US troops is much less in exercising targeted strikes than by inserting troops.
If you want to include some other options, feel free.
If you want to advocate for withdrawal from the War on Terror, I would be with you. Until such time as the US does withdraw from the use of military force against terrorists of international scope, those that the President decides threaten US interests, well, better UAV's than small arms and combat boots.
Please don't read me the Geneva Conventions. I have already read it.
The 'uniform issue' is a canard. What we are talking about are first responders. While you are reading the Geneva Conventions try reading the part where they talk about how attacking first responders is a war crime. You would fit nicely with the current administration and their ideas on the Constitution and international law. You, like them, seem to think the Constitution and the treaties we sign are more or less idealistic guidelines rather rules.
The killing of first responders and other innocents is defined as a war crime and a crime against humanity. The US signed on to that definition when they signed the Geneva Conventions and joined the UN. When we can define those as a legitimate acts of war we are no better than any other inhumane regime we have seen in recent history.
The impulse of an ordinary human is to run towards a disaster to help. We saw it in Boston. Yet, if some of those running to help aren't wearing uniforms, be they men, women, or children you justify killing them as an 'effective tactics'. I call it terrorism.
Technological advantage has nothing to do with this. We are not talking about the drones themselves, we are talking about the policy.
Do you think the term 'targeted killing' justifies second strikes that are equivalent to 'signature strikes' where we strike a group of people (men, women, children) hoping to get lucky and hit a terrorist and only finding out later after they sort through the body parts if we were lucky, THIS TIME?
Also, please don't talk to me about how effective the policy is. Is it effective when we kill one capo and he is replaced the same day by another and in the process we make enemies of the relatives and friends of every innocent we kill?
Besides didn't Obama say that al-Queda along with OBL was dead?
As to what ever Mr Obama said, when ever he said it with regards al-Queda, it is pretty much inconsequential.
Obama does not write the Law. He could set in place a new doctrine, but even Rumsfeld said that the RoE were written by staff lawyers and beyond his authority to change. It would be possible for the President to do it, but quite unlikely any President would.
Why should any President dictate a military doctrine to the US military that advantages the enemy?
If the War on Terror is over, repeal or rescind the AUMF. That would be simple enough.
I would support that, wholeheartedly.
But until it occurs the US should not refrain from standard military practices and procedures.
As for antagonizing the enemy's civilian population, the technique used in killing the combatants is of little matter.
I would reference the antagonism that the Japanese generated in the US population by their attack on Pearl Harbor. The antagonism generated by the Japanese by their policies in Korea during their occupation of the peninsula.
How the mainland Chinese still have antagonism towards the Japanese, after the occupation of China.
It is not the techniques used, but the deed itself that causes the animosity. Little matter whether the US shoots the cousin with a .223 round or a Hellfire missile.
If the idea is that the US should not antagonize the civilian populations of Afpakistan, the only way to do that is to leave, not adjust the methods we use to prosecute the war. If the idea is to make the US acceptable to the civilian population, it is necessary to end the US involvement in the War on Terror, not "tone it down" to some "acceptable" level of violence.
... if some of those running to help aren't wearing uniforms, be they men, women, or children you justify killing them as an 'effective tactics'. I call it terrorism.
Fire bombing Tokyo, nuking Nagasaki, the destruction of Dresden, the buzz bomb attacks on London, do you consider those actions to be terrorism, too?
War is Hell, terror is a part and parcel of Hell.
The idea that anyone can prosecute a war, and not terrorize those caught up in it, naive at best.
How does one differentiate "First Responders" from "Reinforcements",
If you don't understand that, there is no sense talking about it. What 'reinforcements' are going to rush to a site where people have just been taken out by a drone attack and what would they do once they got there, take out a drone at 5000 feet with AK-47's? Now, you are just being silly.
Why should the US change its tactical doctrine when the enemy refuse to play by the rules?
Supposedly, we are the good guys and they are the murderers. It's the same excuse used to justify torture. It does no good, paints us as hypocrites, and lowers our credibility around the war. It is the same tactic used by the Vandals in the 5th Century and every other warmonger nation since.
Obama does not write the Law. He could set in place a new doctrine, but even Rumsfeld said that the RoE were written by staff lawyers and beyond his authority to change
Rat, this comment verges on the idiotic. Sensenbrenner, the 'father' of the Patriot Act has stated that Obama's actions go way beyond anything envisioned by Congress when the law was written. Bush and Obama have written the law as they went along merely by having their 'bought' lawyers draw up supposed opinions justifying the actions. I say 'supposed' because they are so 'secret' even Congress, the people who wrote the law in the first place aren't allowed to see them. Get fucking real.
Why should any President dictate a military doctrine to the US military that advantages the enemy?
Gee, I don't know. Perhaps, because he is a human being and, oh yeah, the friggin Commander-in-chief.
But until it occurs the US should not refrain from standard military practices and procedures.
You justify the unnecessary killing of innocents on the basis that is standard operating procedure. As I've said before, rat, you are I are of different stripes.
As for antagonizing the enemy's civilian population, the technique used in killing the combatants is of little matter.
Good lord.
Little matter whether the US shoots the cousin with a .223 round or a Hellfire missile.
Once again, you seem incapable of understanding this isn't about drones but about policy. It's about precipitating events, about unreasoning inhumanity, its about polices like those used in the Rape of Nanking, the Cultural Revolution, and the Holocaust. You are right, there is little difference whether we kill some innocent with a hellfire missile or we sent someone around with a .223 round to take them out one by one. It's the policy stupid.
If the idea is to make the US acceptable to the civilian population
It's not, it is to not exacerbate an already bad situations. Try explaining to a family in Libya, loyalist or rebel, that its unfortunate we bombed your home but we did it for 'humanitarian' reasons. Pure bull. The hypocrisy is palpable.
If the idea is to make the US acceptable to the civilian population, it is necessary to end the US involvement in the War on Terror, not "tone it down" to some "acceptable" level of violence.
More simplistic rationalization and excuses for that which is inexcusable. Evidently, to you that "acceptable" level of violence involves war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Attacking them does not advantage the enemy. To not attack them, just may.
What makes a congregation of terrorists at a funeral differ from a congregation of terrorists in the chow line, different from a congregation of terrorists in a command and control headquarters, when all those activities occur in the same geographic location?
How does anyone on our side differentiate 'tween combatant and noncombatant? How can anyone in the enemy camp be innocent?
They are all part of the support infrastructure or the command and control or combatant infrastructure. From those that cook the meals to those that tend the trucks.
All of those functions, in the US military, are carried out by combatants. The truck drivers, the cooks, the bridge builders, the telephone operators. Why would those in the enemy camp be different?
There are no non-combatants, Q, when they are in the war zone.
Just as there were no innocents in Dresden, London, Tokyo or Nagasaki. None in the Pentagon, none at Pearl Harbor.
Sad as the results of that may be.
War is Hell.
End it or get on with it, but don't advocate to equivocate. Don't you become a player in the Kabuki theater.
Lord, rat, you sound just like Obama and the people who work for Clapper.
You make the absurd argument, the leap, that assumes everyone we are killing on a daily basis is in the enemy camp, that they are combatants because combatants invaded their neighborhood. Tell it to those two small boys playing on the corner one moment and blown to pieces the next.
You accept it with innocents in Pakistan, you accept in Libya for 'humanitarian' reasons, then you accept it when without indictment or trial an American in Yemen is killed for hate speech, then you accept it when his 16 year old son is killed with a "whoops!", next you'll be accepting it with American citizens in the US with a shrug and a "Well he must have been guilty of something or why would the government have killed him."
Who defines the friggin war zone these days? Right now, its anywhere Obama says it is.
Equivocating? You're projecting, rat. Go on back to your flock, I'm done with you.
No, Q, I never "accepted" the supposed humanitarian intervention in Libya. It was a NATO operation, which we supported from the air.
Never a boot on the ground. When we did insert some boots, they were killed, a poor showing to be sure. But one which strengthens the case for a no boots on the ground strategy.
That Colonel Q was an old advesary, made following the French and Italian lead palatable. There are no innocents in Afpakistan, not until we leave.
As for the 16 year old in a war zone, whoops, his father fucked up.
From US history, Q, the evidence that a 16 year old qualifies as a combatant, clear enough
“If minors present themselves, they are to be treated with great candor.” So states the regulations of both armies during the Civil War.
Instructions for recruiting officers go to state: “The names and residences of their parents or guardians, if they have any, must be ascertained, and these will be informed of the minor’s wish to enlist, that they may make their objections or give their consent.”
We have all seen it — the precocious band of 9, 10 and 11-year- old boys, dressed in perfect and imperfect, miniature military uniforms. They tag along at the end of many company formations.
They are seen struggling to stay in step and keep up while lugging (and very rarely properly playing) a drum that is almost as large as themselves.
How about the “junior” hospital steward or the color bearer positions, which we know were adult positions of responsibility or honor? The boys are seen there too.
The most frightening scene is the little “powder monkey” scampering to the muzzle of an artillery piece delivering a dangerous, half pound or more of black powder. Isn’t it cute — and isn’t it inaccurate and dangerous!
The typical participating parent’s response is that there is no one to watch out for little “Ned” or there are no activities for the young boys at events. And, by the way, “they are just doing what Johnny Clem did.”
... study of enlistment ages in the 17th Michigan Infantry provides one sample database. This regiment was mustered into Federal service in August 1862. The following is an age breakdown of soldiers who were under 21 years old at enlistment:
One 13-year-old enlisted in August 1862. He was a drummer who was sent home one month later. One 14-year-old and one 15-year-old enlisted in August 1862. They were discharged “on account of youth” by December 1862.
Three of four 16-year-olds (three enlisting in August 1862 and one in 1864) were mustered out well before June 1865. The remaining boy, a fifer who enlisted in August 1862, returned with the regiment to Michigan June 1865.
Of 15 17-year-olds (12 enlisting in 1862, two in 1863 and one in 1865), seven mustered out in 1865 and two deserted. The other six were casualties or were discharged on account of wounds or disease.
Youth is no reason to believe he could not be a combatant, especially with the approval of the parent.
He could have soldiered and seen battle in the American Civil War on either side of the conflict.
You are placing the modern legal standards of Michigan upon people who see the world differently. People who are still fighting for the standards and mores 19th century to prevail.
If a 16 year old takes up arms, little matter where he was born, or where he is, he is still a capable combatant, legal or not by current Michigan statute.
As to the location of the war zone, you're correct. The Congress gave the Commander in Chief the authority to define both the enemy and the battle field.
You've said you are to old to take up the fight to repeal or rescind the AUMF.
If you do not care enough to to that, if you are to old and find such comforts in your cave, well you have no standing to complain about the Law that you will not oppose, with vigor.
Most of those that rush to the scene of an artillery attack, mortar or other explosion are fellow combatants. Drone attacks would be no different. There is no doctrine that suggests that after a volley, the enemy should be given a respite to recover, before pressing on with the attack.
There are few others but combatants in combatant camps, if there are, they should not be. I'd reference US military experiences at Khe Sanh, or at Pearl Harbor. Those that rushed to the aid of the wounded, were combatants, themselves.
There are not that many medics assigned to line units.
If targeted strikes bother you, then advocate for B52 strikes, there would be many fewer wounded.
Good lord, rat, are you a complete idiot? How long did you spend googling all that shit? Did you really think it would convince anyone?
You distort everything you touch.
As for the 16 year old in a war zone, whoops, his father fucked up.
They killed him by mistake. He was not a combatant. You can't seem to get that simple fact through your head.
Your rant about kids participating in the civil war? Looney tunes. Awlaki son was killed by mistake. He was not a combatant. The two small boys playing at a street corner in Afghanistan? Also, a mistake but just as dead. They weren't combatants. You dream up scenarios that make no sense.
The Michigan Calvary Brigade? Custer? The Civil War? You are nuts.
If a 16 year old takes up arms...
He didn't take up arms. Try really, really hard to get that through your head.
You are placing the modern legal standards of Michigan upon people who see the world differently. People who are still fighting for the standards and mores 19th century to prevail.
No, you moron, I'm putting them on the US, a country that purports to be enlightened, one that considers itself above those very people who fight for the standards and mores of the 19th century.
I'm through on this subject, rat. Trying to argue with you gives me a head ache.
You've said you are to old to take up the fight to repeal or rescind the AUMF.
I think what I said was I was too old to be leading a march on D.C.
I continue my communications with my elected reps in D.C. letting them know my views (possibly a dangerous practice these days based on recent revelations).
And, I recently joined the A.C.L.U. I don't agree with their stands on all issues but I do agree with them on those issues most important to me. Until, Manning, Wikileaks, and Snowden destroyed the puzzle palace, I had little hope that anything could be done to reverse the trend towards what I perceive to be a more authoritarian police state. However, now that the extent of government actions by the executive branch and its enablers in the Congress have been revealed, it has weakened the government's ability to keep lawsuits out of the courts by claiming 'secrecy' and 'national security' concerns.
The A.C.L.U. is the leader in pushing these lawsuits. If I come across other groups willing to get involved in the fight, I intend to support them too. I might even throw a few shekels Rand Paul's way, especially were Christie to run in 2016.
I have to find out more about the MI legislator, Amash, before I can support him but that may happen also.
Based on the trends in Congress the public, and the five or so lawsuits working their way through the courts, I am at least cautiously optimistic that there might be some progress coming in curbing some of the worst abuses currently being perpetrated under the Patriot Act. This is the first time in many years that I had any hope at all.
As for you, you can stay involved with the horses (a worthwhile endeavor) or you can expand and send an attaboy to Obama.
The home ownership rate is now down to 65.1 percent taking us back into the past of two decades ago (prior to any of the toxic mortgage shenanigans). Los Angeles is virtually half renters and half home owners. At the same time, the rental vacancy rate is also falling dramatically as more households become renters. After all, when you foreclose on 5,000,000 households the needs of shelter still exist.
In housing unlike many other investment vehicles, the options are rather simple. You either rent or buy. Given the current market, many are renting either by choice or necessity. In a place like California, many are simply being priced out by investors, flippers, or foreign money. The all-cash crowd is hard to compete with and this year we have seen a record amount of cash buying in California.
For one, many people that “owned” a home during the last decade had no business buying just like banks have no business making the loans. Even today, the home ownership rate would be a few percentage points lower if we inputted all the negative equity households. If you are underwater you do not “own” your home. Try selling it right now and see how much money you will get for it.
You would think that somehow with such a low amount of inventory that supply is nowhere to be found:
Was the person that planted the bomb wearing a uniform? If the bomber was wearing a uniform, then the targeting of government employees is legitimate. As would be the targeting of military reservists.
As long as the bomber is in uniform, it is a legitimate military strike. If the bomber is in civilian clothes, he is a terrorist.
State sponsored strikes at civilian or military targets, using bombers in civilian clothing, classifies those attacks as terrorism. That seems to be the "Western" standard.
Regimes that are culturally Middle Eastern, they march to the beat of a different drummer. They have developed a different set of rules.
Attacks upon their enemies are never terrorism, while attacks on them always are. Cultural disparity as it were.
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ...
Nuclear attacks on civilian population centers, done by men in uniform, legitimate military action. Bombing a military headquarters, committed by men in civilian clothing, terrorism.
Funny thing, I was raised on this concept ... Expressed by Mr Kipling
OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
The usual suspect has described Mr Kipling as being anit-Semitic.
Judging men by the content of their character and not their religion, the color of their skin nor the place of their birth, well, that is just beyond the pale for Team AIPAC.
We had a big break up, particularly when I finally whoomped their asses, with one hand behind my back. They were some what disillusioned by this development.
We have repaired our relationships with the passage of time. Looking back on it, everyone (nearly) agrees with me, it wasn't worth it. Buy, they started it, now we are good buds again.
Trey Gowdy: Feds are changing the names of Benghazi survivors and dispersing them throughout the country
posted at 2:01 pm on August 2, 2013 by Allahpundit
An essential follow-up to yesterday’s CNN bombshell. Skip to 2:30 if you don’t have time for it all. The implication, very clearly, is that this is being done not to protect intelligence assets from terrorist retribution but to “protect” them from Republicans asking inconvenient questions. Which isn’t the first time the GOP’s had trouble talking to relevant personnel: Marine Col. George Bristol was somehow indisposed for months, with the Pentagon unwilling to reveal his whereabouts to investigators, before the House Armed Services Committee finally landed him for a classified briefing this past week.
New from Fox:
Fox News has learned that at least five CIA employees were forced to sign additional nondisclosure agreements this past spring in the wake of the Benghazi attack. These employees had already signed such agreements before the attack but were made to sign new agreements aimed at discouraging survivors from leaking their stories to the media or anyone else…
Lawmakers penned a letter earlier this week to newly confirmed FBI Director James Comey urging him to aggressively identify and pursue the [Benghazi] suspects.
“It has been more than 10 months since the attacks. We appear to be no closer to knowing who was responsible today than we were in the early weeks following the attack,” they wrote. “This is simply unacceptable.”
My theory for why the FBI’s been keeping its distance from the Benghazi jihadis is that the White House doesn’t do want to do anything rash, like order a wave of captures and arrests, that might further destabilize the Libyan government. There’s an obvious alternative explanation, though, after yesterday’s CNN report: If the CIA and White House are so paranoid about info on Benghazi leaking that they’d try to intimidate American operatives into silence, maybe they don’t want the FBI investigating what happened. The more the Bureau knows, the greater the chance that someone there will leak. Assuming there’s something to the theory that the CIA was helping Libyan jihadis send weapons to Syria, what happens if a team of FBI sits down with someone who knows what was going on and he spills the beans?
Of course, that raises the question of why the attackers — some of whom have been interviewed by U.S. media — haven’t already spilled the beans to reporters. Maybe they fear that if they say something, then the White House is sure to target them; if they keep quiet, could be that they’ll be let off the hook. Then again, that same logic applied to Snowden and he calculated, not unreasonably, that his best defense was to ID himself precisely because it would make the feds think twice about taking him out. If you’re a Benghazi jihadi, what’s the smarter way to keep Uncle Sam’s hands off of you — lie low and hope that he doesn’t come knocking on the door, or step into the spotlight so that he can’t kill you without the whole world perceiving it as an attempt to silence a key witness?
All of which is to say, if this really was some sort of arms-smuggling operation, why have none of the bad guys confirmed it yet?
My favorite corrupt Congressman, Charlie Rangel, who was seemingly born in the House of Representatives, and is a good bet to die there, a likable crook, and tax cheat, all around lovable scoundrel, has just called me a "Terrorist White Cracker".
Why, thanks a bunch, Charlie, after all the times when I've stuck for you, and when it was most unpopular too, and you should have by all that's Sacred been going to Jail.
These Tea Partiers Are The Same Terrorist White Crackers We Fought During Desegregation
Rolling Stone Magazine puts a picture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover. FOX News deplores it, non-stop, communities and politicos call for boycotts and major retailers take the issue off the shelves ...
Retail sales of the issue jumped 102 percent over average per-issue sales for the past year, according to Magazine Information Network. Figures are based on point of sale data from 1,420 retailers from July 19 to July 29. Among those retailers, 13,232 copies were sold, more than double the magazine’s average sales for the prior year.
One time a friend told him he thought certain aspects of religion were harmful, and brought up the 9/11 attacks.
At which point Tsarnaev, his friend Will says, told him he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Will asked why. “He said, ‘Well, you’re not going to like my view.’”
He said, “…Some of those acts were justified because of what the U.S. does in other countries, and that they do it so frequently, dropping bombs all the time.”
He liked Alex Jones' InfoWars website
Tamerlan began to read more Islamic websites, as well as U.S. conspiracy sites, like Alex Jones’ InfoWars.
The kid Twittered ...
“Never underestimate the rebel with a cause,”
Last, but certainly not least ...
“Friends of Jahar’s would later tell the FBI that he’d once mentioned he knew how to build bombs. But no one seemed to really take it all that seriously.”
Doesn't everyone have an old copy of the Anarchist Cookbook?
Here is a list of reasons why Secretary Kerry's Mideast peace process is unfairly flawed in ways that endanger Israel.
1) No Palestinian reciprocity at the outset. Israel agreed to release 104 convicted terrorists just to get the Palestinians to talk peace. Would the U.S. agree to release 104 Guantanamo prisoners for talks with anyone?
Israel will undoubtedly be blamed if negotiations fail, so it's unlikely that fair judgment by the international community motivated the release. Perhaps it was the price that Israel had to pay for a U.S. promise to prevent Iranian nukes and/or support Israel's efforts to stop them. If so, is the U.S. good for its word (despite Obama's repeated demonstrations that his Mideast "red lines" are meaningless)?
Whatever the explanation for Israel's good-faith opening, there were plenty of ways for the Palestinians to reciprocate: removing anti-Israel incitement from their textbooks and/or official media, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, promising to "freeze" their anti-Israel diplomatic offensives, etc. But Secretary of State John Kerry preferred to establish that Palestinian reciprocity is optional: if Israel isn't volunteering what the Palestinians demand, they need only threaten to leave the talks and Kerry will compel the Israelis to comply.
2) No Palestinian good faith. The Palestinians will be represented by Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh. Shtayyeh’s Facebook page displays a map of Israel's internationally recognized borders, plus the West Bank and Gaza – all emblazoned with the Arabic letters for “Palestine." So the person entrusted with negotiating a "two-state solution" openly admits that his Mideast map has room for only a Palestinian state. Just as alarming, during a recent sermon attended by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and broadcast on Palestinian television, Religious Endowments Minister Mahmoud al-Habbash compared the PA's decision to negotiate with Israel to the Prophet Muhammad's Treaty of Hudaibiya (in the year 628 CE): “in less than two years, based on this treaty, the Prophet returned and conquered Mecca. This is the example. It is the model.”
3) No religious freedom in a future Palestinian state. Palestinians insist (ironically) that "peaceful coexistence" means no Jewish settlers in their state. But, on principle, why should Jews be banned from living in a future Palestinian state -- particularly when Muslims constitute over 17% of Israel's population? Will the future Palestinian state be as hostile to religious minorities as other Muslim majority states are? Unfortunately, recent history gives little reason to hope otherwise. Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning, Arab journalist reported the following about a year ago:
According to the Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip, at least five Christians have been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam in recent weeks...Church leaders...accused a prominent Hamas man of being behind the kidnapping and forced conversion of a Christian woman, Huda Abu Daoud, and her three daughters. Radical Islam, and not checkpoints or a security fence, remains the main threat to defenseless Christians not only in the Palestinians territories, but in the entire Middle East as well.
While Gaza is ruled by Islamists, the PA has also shown its hostility to Christians. On March 12, 2012, Algemeiner reported that:
"A week after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told an [international] audience of Evangelical Protestants...that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities, [PA] officials...informed Bethlehem pastor Rev. Naim Khoury that his church lacked the authority to function as a religious institution under the PA...[T]here is a sense among Christians in Bethlehem that anti-Christian animus has gotten worse in the city...Khoury said.”
A few weeks ago, Palestinians vandalized the Cave of the Patriarchs, Judaism's second holiest site. How safe will non-Muslim holy sites be if there is no more Israeli presence in the West Bank? Will a future peace agreement specifically guarantee protection of and Israeli access to Jewish holy sites?
If Israel's presence in the West Bank has helped to moderate Muslim rule there, will Israel's complete departure mean that West Bank Christians can expect their persecution to worsen to Gazan levels (with abductions and forced conversions)? Palestinian insistence that their future West Bank state be "Judenrein" doesn't bode well for the indigenous Christians there (or for religious freedom).
4) No Palestinian mandate to negotiate peace. There are about 2.1 million Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and 1.7 million in the Gaza Strip. But Hamas-ruled Gaza vehemently opposes peace negotiations and denies Israel's right to exist. Islamic Jihad and Hamas recently lambasted PA leaders for meeting with Israelis to talk peace. The last time that the PA announced direct talks with Israel, Hamas announced plans to launch terrorist attacks at Israel, in coordination with 12 other Gaza terrorist organizations.
And it's not even clear that West Bank Palestinians favor these talks. Last Sunday, they rallied against peace until PA police violently suppressed the protest. Human Rights Watch has urged the Palestinian government to investigate the police beatings. Moreover, Abbas himself has no legal mandate, as his term of political office expired long ago yet he continues to rule with no elections in sight.
At best, the PA can deliver only half of any peace that it promises, which lets Palestinians have their cake and eat it too: the PA can extract painful territorial concessions from Israel at the negotiating table, while Hamas can continue terrorist attacks to achieve the one-state solution embraced on Facebook by PA "peace negotiator" Mohammad Shtayyeh.
5) Transferring the West Bank could be Israel's geo-strategic undoing. Jordan could collapse any day from a flood of about 500,000 Syrian refugees (and growing daily); severe poverty; popular discontent over corruption, inequality, and lack of freedom; acute water shortages; and/or Muslim Brotherhood action to overthrow King Abdullah's monarchy. These factors make the Abdullah regime's survival increasingly uncertain. After Israel militarily withdraws from the West Bank, will Hamas topple the PA there as it did in Gaza (two years after Israel's 2005 Gaza withdrawal)? What if the Hamas-allied Muslim Brotherhood then takes over Jordan? If Jordanian-Palestinians -- the largest ethnic group in Jordan -- create a Palestinian state there (as advocated by this Jordanian-Palestinian writer), would Palestinians effectively have two states? The range and severity of threats to Israel from the combination of a post-Abdullah Jordan and a Palestinian West Bank state are considerable. Is it even possible to address these Israeli security concerns in a way that leaves Palestinian negotiators satisfied enough to sign a peace treaty?
With so many inherent defects in the current peace talks, why would the U.S. push its most reliable Mideast ally (and the only Middle East democracy) into such perilous waters or inevitable blame? One explanation is the increasingly fashionable idea (promoted by Arab governments) that settlements are blocking a peace deal that would produce Mideast stability. But inconvenient facts completely contradict this idea: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen (etc.) would remain the same conflict-torn mess as they are now after any Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.
Mostly true, although some lines were either naïve or fabrications for effect.
However, while there are many reasons the PA will not sign a peace agreement, the same can be said of Israel.
If I had any money, I would bet that when the talks eventually fail, the PA'a next step will involve going back to the UN. Since a request for statehood would doubtless lead to a US veto in the Security Council, I would see the PA lobbying to be allowed to join various UN organizations and expanding their UN influence in any way possible, an incremental approach that will allow them to build friends and influence over time with the hope that this would eventually build pressure for allowing them their own state.
The other way would be to forget the two-state solution and try to convince the UN to confront the conflict by pushing a one-state solution.
Egypt: Pardon revoked for all jihadis granted amnesty under Morsi
Aug 02, 2013 10:36 am | Raymond
The interim government of Egypt has just issued another blow to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. According to a new report, the Interior Ministry has announced that Egyptian leadership “is preparing to cancel any presidential pardons issued during Morsi’s era to terrorists or criminals.” Unbeknownst to many in the...
This is good.
Syria: Jihad violence emptying entire Christian towns
Aug 02, 2013 06:51 pm | Robert
And both sides are victimizing Christians and pressuring them to convert to Islam. "Syrian Christian towns emptied by sectarian violence," by Ruth Sherlock for the Telegraph, August 2: Towns and villages in Syria that have been home to Christians for hundreds of years are being steadily emptied by sectarian violence...
This is bad.
Tennessee imam delivers Jew-hating rant
Aug 02, 2013 07:01 pm | Robert
Here is more from this hateful imam, Yasir Qadhi. According to Charles Jacobs, Qadhi tried to preserve his "moderate" credibility by scrubbing this and another clip in which he called Christians mushrikun (those who worship others besides Allah) from the Internet by filing a copyright claim with YouTube. However,...
This is ugly.
Ramadan observance in Nigeria: Islamic jihadists murder eight, military warns of "massive attacks" to come
Aug 02, 2013 03:15 pm | Robert
But remember: the real problem is "Islamophobia." The real problem are the greasy Islamophobes who give people the crazy idea that Islam is the world's most violent religion. Boko Haram and al-Qaeda and the Taliban and Hamas and Hizballah and Nidal Hasan and all the rest don't make people think...
"Obama has now united the world -- not a single country trusts us anymore, because our hero has shafted those who relied on us: Britain, Poland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, even Syria and Libya. Our solemn national pledges kept the peace for sixty years; now they are worthless. Even Russia's Putin has a visceral dislike for our hero. Half the American people don't trust Obama either, and now the rest of the world agrees."
August 3, 2013 Obama is trapped in Syria By James Lewis
"No wonder Israel and the Saudis are worried. Obama was going to solve Middle Eastern troubles forever and ever. For four years Obama begged and wheedled the mullahs, and took no decisive action during the critical window of opportunity before they acquired nukes and missiles. The mullahs were not interested in those peace overtures. They follow a war theology, and celebrate martyrdom, not peace. Think Imperial Japan in World War II and you get the idea. The mullahs are not liberals; they are not even conservatives; they are throwbacks to the Dark Ages."
So now Iran is biting back. We are trapped in a classic quagmire, with no way to pull out without making things worse.
This all started when Obama promised a bold new age of peace to the Muslim world, and then showed how it was done by pulling down Mubarak's Egypt, which had kept a real peace for thirty years. Rather than knocking down a fast-nuclearizing Iran, Obama failed even to show symbolic support for the young people of the Green Revolution in Tehran."
What a genius. Who else could have done all this.
He is on a well deserved rest at Martha's Vineyard this weekend/next week.
It did not start with Obama, it "started" when the US and England deposed the elected government of Iran and installed the Shah, back in 1953.
It started when FDR negotiated a deal with King Ibn Saud met aboard the U.S.S. Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal, in February, 1945...
Roosevelt and Saud concluded a secret agreement in which the U.S. would provide Saudi Arabia military security — military assistance, training and a military base at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia — in exchange for secure access to supplies of oil.
Regarding Jews, Saud expressed sympathy for their plight, but he argued that a homeland for Jews in Palestine would be unfair to Palestinian Arabs. On the issue of Palestine, Ibn Saud was uncompromising.
President Roosevelt, constrained by the uncompromising attitude of Ibn Saud and impressed by the simple clarity with which Ibn Saud presented the Arab case, gave two undertakings to Ibn Saud; first that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs in Palestine and, secondly, that he would never do anything to harm the Arab people. He promised that the United States Government would not make any changes to its policy on Palestine without prior consultation with both the Arabs and the Jews.
These verbal assurances were confirmed in a letter, dated April 5th, 1945, in which Roosevelt made it clear that he was committing himself, not as an individual, but as “Chief of the Executive Branch” of the United States Government. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and his policy was subsequently reversed by his successor, Harry Truman who was a strong supporter of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The US has a long history of deceit and misrepresentations in the region, a history that dates back to long before Mr Obama became President
The Letter from President Roosevelt to King Ibn Saud, April 5th, 1945:
GREAT AND GOODFRIEND:
I have received the communication which Your Majesty sent me under date of March 10, 1945, in which you refer to the question of Palestine and to the continuing interest of the Arabs in current developments affecting that country.
I am gratified that Your Majesty took this occasion to bring your views on this question to my attention and I have given the most careful attention to the statements which you make in your letter. I am also mindful of the memorable conversation which we had not so long ago and in the course of which I had an opportunity to obtain so vivid an impression of Your Majesty’s sentiments on this question.
Your Majesty will recall that on previous occasions I communicated to you the attitude of the American Government toward Palestine and made clear our desire that no decision be taken with respect to the basic situation in that country without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews. Your Majesty will also doubtless recall that during our recent conversation I assured you that I would take no action, in my capacity as Chief of the Executive Branch of this Government, which might prove hostile to the Arab people.
It gives me pleasure to renew to Your Majesty the assurances which you have previously received regarding the attitude of my Government and my own, as Chief Executive, with regard to the question of Palestine and to inform you that the policy of this Government in this respect is unchanged.
I desire also at this time to send you my best wishes for Your Majesty’s continued good health and for the welfare of your people.
Your Good Friend,
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The United States lied, people died. Well before Mr Obama was even born. The consequences of US deceit haunt the region to this day.
I see no story that we have not already debated to a pulp.
ReplyDeleteWhat could be more important than "The Thieving Bear Epidemic?"
ReplyDelete:)
I understand this started in New Jersey, and has now spread to 37 states, and DC.
DeleteSome blame it on Obama, and the Democratic "something for nothing" culture.
DeleteThat video must have been filmed last Winter; otherwise, why would Rufus IV have been wearing a fur coat?
DeleteHey, wake up, everyone; we've got a jobs report coming out in a few minutes.
ReplyDeleteThis one is actually a little bit interesting.
(although, I think the one next month will be a Lot more interesting.)
Pick a number.
ReplyDelete200,000
ReplyDeleteOOooh, a "risk-taker."
Delete:)
227,000!
DeleteProbably a pretty silly number. :)
DeleteI imagine I'm about a month early with that number.
DeleteBut, maybe not. :)
DeleteThat's the bear that was one of the two unpaid employees of 'SoulsRUs' when I acquired Souls from Quirk!
ReplyDeleteThat was Quirk for ya, alright, back in those days. Train the bear, not to dumpster dive, but to just take the whole dumpster. You would not have believed how much junk and garbage there was out in Q's shop. Really indescribable. Q had a blow torch too out there, and was cutting dumpsters for the scrap metal to sell.
DeleteThe number stinks
ReplyDeleteThey are revising previous number lower. They are manipulating the data to give cover for the immigration bill.
ReplyDeleteTable A:
ReplyDeleteNumber Employed Up 227,000
Thank you; Thank you very much.
:)
In other words, more small-business job creation. - A number not caught in the "payroll number."
DeleteAlways look to the "household data" during times of inflection.
Part-time for economic reasons - flat as a pancake at 8,245,000
DeleteWhere are you seeing that?
DeleteHousehold data - Summary Table A
DeleteLabor participation drops and of course the unemployment rates drops. Hourly earnings drop.
ReplyDeleteHow much money did we piss away last month in the ME.
As best I can figure it, the 0.1% drop in Participation Rate is mostly attributable to Baby Boomers retiring.
DeleteI think, also, we had quite a few teenagers not even bother trying to find jobs this Summer.
DeleteWe keep fucking with people, killing them, threatening them, pursuing economic warfare, picking sides, interfering where we have no business and the we are shocked, shocked…
ReplyDelete(Reuters) - The chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee said al Qaeda appears to be behind a threat that has prompted several U.S. embassies to close on Sunday.
"It's my understanding that it is al Qaeda linked ... and the threat emanates in the Middle East and in Central Asia," Representative Ed Royce said Friday on CNN's "New Day" program.
Royce, a Republican, said he and several other lawmakers met two days ago with Vice President Joe Biden on the threat, "and as you know we're going to take whatever steps necessary to protect our personnel overseas. When we do have an indication of a threat, we take that seriously."
We are arming al Qaeda in Syria. We armed them in Libya.
ReplyDelete"and as you know we're going to take whatever steps necessary to protect our personnel overseas. When we do have an indication of a threat, we take that seriously.”
We are killing people by the score in Pakistan and Afghanistan. How could they be not appreciate that? Ingrates like the Iraqis.
ReplyDeleteWe are aiding and abetting the Israeli attacking of legal Russian arms shipments to Syria and can you believe it, Putin offers asylum to an “American Traitor” that has a greater approval rating than the US President and really kicks ass when compared to the US Congress, who funds all this intervention and disruption.
ReplyDeleteWhy do they hate our freedom loving asses?
" legal Russian arms shipments to Syria "
DeleteLOL
Now that's funny.
At last look Syria was in an official state of war with Israel.
Those weapons? Fair legal targets.
Don't like it? Tell Assad to make PEACE with Israel and not to supply the terrorists called Hezbollah.
Until that happens?
Happy hunting...
How could the reds not appreciate the reset button?
ReplyDeleteWe could not have a more FUBAR foreign policy if we had it written for us by the crew at SNL.
ReplyDeleteIndiana continues to benefit from some of the lowest E85 prices in the country - $2.28/gal in Clermont.
ReplyDelete30% Spread
$2.29/gal (35% Spread) in St. Ansgar, Ia.
DeleteIowa Spreads
While John McCain continues the push to arm the terrorists in Syria, the King of Jordan sees the writing on the wall.
ReplyDeleteAn army spokesman in Jordan said Thursday that border police have arrested smugglers trying to sneak in a large cache of arms from neighboring Syria.
The spokesman said the group arrested late Thursday included Jordanians and other Arab nationalities.
The official said the arms included mainly machine guns. He said and an investigation had begun.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with army regulations.
Jordan has been concerned that Al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria may use its territory as a haven as they escape attacks from the Syrian army. There is also concern that the militants may try to smuggle in weapons to use in attacks to destabilize the pro-U.S. kingdom, one of two Arabs states with a signed peace treaty with Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.539396
ReplyDeleteUrsus americanus rise out of their slumber and forage each spring, and human encounters with bears are more common in this part of Pennsylvania, depending on where there is suitable habitat.
Julie Cramer, of Duncannon, captured a photo of a black bear last week, as did the Straka family in Gettysburg, and the Falkners in Orrtanna.
The range for black bears appears to be expanding southward in the commonwealth. Reported sightings throughout the year suggest the bears are denning in themountainous, rocky, wooded habitat in this part of the state.
Even in an ideal habitat this far south, it’s a small, sporadic population. Don’t expect to cross paths with a black bear on your next nature hike.
Flat, agricultural areas aren’t likely to harbor black bears. When they have shown up, it’s usually been a relocated nuisance bear.
Most bears set out on their own after their second winter in the den, at a year-and-a-half old. Though they had time to frolic with mother as small cubs that first spring, it’s a big world one year later when they are alone — curiosity and hunger can get the best of them.
If they seem to be wandering aimlessly, it’s because they are. Neighbors upset that a bear is treed in their backyard should keep in mind that the bear isn’t pleased about being there either.
Bird feeders are bear magnets in the spring. They love the seeds and it’s easy pickings. A lot of bear photographs are taken shortly before or after a feeder is annihilated. It’s suggested that homeowners in bear-prone areas take their bird feeders down during the spring and summer to avoid confrontations. Most birds won’t mind, as our feathered friends have a greater supply of natural foodstuffs than normal during these months.
Homeowners can take steps to reduce the likelihood a bear will make a backyard pit stop. In true Yogi style, black bears are opportunists and will rummage through garbage and camping groceries left outside, if a picnic basket isn’t readily available. They aren’t usually so desperate as to break into a vehicle for a leftover candy bar, but they have been known to try to lick a barbecue grill left slathered with years of grease.
A black bear encounter, from a distance, can be some fine entertainment, especially when there is the glass of a sliding door or window between you and the bear. Their dexterity and impish behavior is impressive and humorous. Still, humans should respect the bear’s instinct and be cautious. While they are not aggressive by nature and not inclined to initiate attacks, sows will tussle to the death to protect cubs. Be careful, because the presence of babies isn’t always obvious.
Is there a bear hunting season, back in PA?
O yea
DeleteWe don’t hunt, we harvest bears:
Deletehttp://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=595202&mode=2
These fellas will take a tourist out hunting bears ...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.arizonahunting.net/bear.htm
Five days $2,900. plus a hunting license and tag, another $389 for out of state tourists.
Mountain lion hunts are a little pricer, $3500 plus the license and tag.
They don't use dogs for the bear hunts, gotta have 'em for any chance of success with the lions.
Still no response to the question of why the secular state of Israel, smack dab in the middle of the Middle East, populated by people of Middle Eastern ancestry and Middle Eastern culture and Middle Eastern religion should be considered "Western".
ReplyDeleteWhy a land where the population speak Semitic languages would be considered "Western".
The silence on this subject is amazing.
Especially in the face of their denials that the secular state of Israel is a colony of Europeon peoples.
DeleteEven if those people are of Middle Eastern ancestry who have returned to their homeland.
Why do they continually refer to the secular state of Israel as being "Western", when it is not?
Seems a relatively simple question, why is our AIPAC contingent silent about these historical, cultural and religious realities?
No response?
DeleteWhy should any one try to explain anything to you?
You lie twist and distort anything that is said.
Pearl before swine baby... (and you are the pig)
Yeah, no response to your propaganda claims being challenged.
DeleteWhen it comes to the twist, I play the tune, you do the twist.
Or do not dance at all.
It's all the same to me.
Leave the field, or play the game.
I win either way.
We can’t protect our embassies in Muslim countries. Now why do you suppose that is?
ReplyDeleteThe United States is shuttering its embassies and consulates throughout the Muslim world on Sunday after receiving an unspecified threat, officials said.
State Department officials said Thursday that they were taking action out of an “abundance of caution.”
Spokeswoman Marie Harf cited information indicating a threat to U.S. facilities overseas and said some diplomatic offices may stay closed for more than a day.
Other U.S. officials said the threat was in the Muslim world, where Sunday is a workday. American diplomatic missions in Europe, Latin America and many other places are closed on Sunday.
Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The State Department issued a major warning last year informing American diplomatic facilities across the Muslim world about potential violence connected to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Dozens of American installations were besieged by protest over an anti-Islam video made by an American resident.
In Benghazi, Libya, the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed when militants assaulted a diplomatic post. The administration no longer says that attack was related to the demonstrations.
Do you think that the attack in Benghazi was related to the 11SEP date, the presence of the US Ambassador or to the arms shipments transiting to Syria?
DeleteWould the attack have occurred without the Ambassador being there?
Was the Ambassador the target and the date of the attack an incidental coincidence?
Or was the attack initiated on the 11SEP date, unrelated to the Ambassador being there?
In the later, a case could be made that it was part of an internationally organized series of coordinated actions, riots in Egypt and Yemen, an attack in Benghazi. All timed to create stress and confusion on the US response capabilities.
Is there a coordinated international threat against US interests or were all those riots and the attack occurring at the same time just coincidental happenstance?
Whatever:
DeleteWe're seeing to it that Bin Laden's tiny little training playground in Afghanistan is being re-created on larger pallete's throughout the ME.
We ain't seen nuthin yet!
Is that what we're seeing?
DeleteWhat state is sponsoring those training grounds?
If those demonstrations were not coordinated, we are seeing the Muslim political thrown on their ass, in Egypt. Being bloodied and on the run in Syria.
If they were coordinated, doug may be right.
Along with the administration, who said it was.
But that Team Obama, they don't get nuttin' right, aye.
CIA Said To Target Rescuers Responding to Initial Drone Strikes. Is this terrorism?
ReplyDeleteJ.D. Tuccille|
Aug. 2, 2013 10:31 am
Reason
Terrorists have been known to plant two bombs at a time — one intended not only to do damage, but to attract police and emergency personnel, and the other targeted at those first responders. Such a double attack was attempted at a shopping area in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010. It was also a favorite tactic of Eric Rudolph, who planted two bombs at an Atlanta gay bar as well as at a clinic that provided abortions. You know who uses a similar tactic? If reports are true, the United States government's own Central Intelligence Agency finds this approach irresistable.
From the Bureau of Investigative Journalism:
A field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan’s tribal areas appears to confirm that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.
The Bureau’s new study focused mainly on strikes around a single village in North Waziristan – attacks that were aimed at one of al Qaeda’s few remaining senior figures, Yahya al-Libi. He was finally killed by a CIA drone strike on June 4 2012.
Congressional aides have previously been reported as describing to the Los Angeles Times reviewing a CIA video showing Yahya al-Libi alone being killed. But the Bureau’s field research appears to confirm what others reported at the time – that al-Libi’s death was part of a sequence of strikes on the same location that killed up to 16 people.
If correct, that would indicate that Congressional aides were not shown crucial additional video material.
The CIA denies all. It knows nothing of such perfidious activities. But other news outlets have reported similar double drone strikes. Last July, CNN reported on an attack in North Waziristan.:
In the incident, which occurred shortly after 10 p.m., two missiles struck the compound in the residential area followed by another four missiles that were fired 10 minutes later, the officer said. The death toll rose from nine to 20 as people who had gathered at the site after the first strike were hit in the second, the officer said.
It should go without saying that even the best-targeted initial strike can draw unknown and perfectly innocent people to offer assistance. Justifying an attack on those people requires stretching moral flexibility to the breaking point.
Only a dumb F like you would not know the answer to that.
ReplyDeleteThink hard now, maybe it will come to you. Try, try really really hard.
You can do it, I know you.......I think you......I hope you can.
Since you're back ruining a perfectly good thread about a burglar bear, I'm going back to bed.
Soon you will be back on abortions in Israel, and I do want to miss it.
out
Since boobie brought the subject of the secular state of Israel and the opposition of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to the policies of that secular government in regards to the murder of 20,000 Jews annually, guess we're back in business.
DeleteSeems that the murder of Jews is what he wants to discuss, not bear and mountain lion, or even wolf hunts in the United States. Not game and land management policies across the Americas.
Well, we tried.
;-)
The murder of Jews, it is the subject that is on boobie's mind.
DeleteHe just will not let it go.
It gnaws at his soul, that he has been put in the position of defending the policies reminiscent of a biblical Pharaoh.
Not to worry, 55 million Americans murdered should could for more, but Rat values a Jewish soul to thousands of "humans" to one Jew.
DeleteJust like Hamas.
No, I don't value any Middle Eastern soul very much at all.
DeleteI do see the comedy in the portrayal of a secular state as being a homeland for a religious group, then that government behaving like the Pharaohs of old.
Then the Chief Rabbinate of the state in question announcing to the world that his people are being murdered, by the policies of the state. While the supposed champions of the religion cast aspersions on the Rabbinate, and seek to claim equivalency with gentiles and pagans.
When all the while I have campaigned for the Equivalency Standard be applied to the secular state, now the AIPAC champions are scrambling to claim that the equivalency standard should be applied.
Their claims to cultural and moral superiority, all vanished in the wind. The AIPAC shills, they're twisting in it.
Wettest July that I can remember, the rain just keeps on falling, the grass is sure growing.
Life is sweet.
No chocolate required.
;-)
you are a twisted, obsessed, sick person.
DeleteI pity your family.
Who are the criminals?
ReplyDeleteYou are the criminal, sir:
DeleteYou stole my Bear Story Cache!
---
Bear Steals Dumpster
You know bears like to dumpster dive -- but one in Colorado practically took out the trash.
The Denver Post reports a bear with a taste for German food recently visited the back of a Colorado Springs restaurant and moved a garbage bin about 50 feet into the parking lot.
The hungry guy apparently then flipped it over, opened the lid and chowed down.
Unbelievable!
DeleteWeird:
DeleteMine shows Bear eating before moving, yours shows him/her moving bin further.
Nothing is real.
Who can you trust?
Who can we trust?
Does trust matter anymore?
I like the way an animal that strong uses the momentum of his swinging butt to assist the pullout.
DeleteJust like us.
Just like landing a jet liner in the back of a pickup truck, aye
DeleteThe follow on targeting of reinforcements is nothing new.
ReplyDeleteIt is a standard military tactic, on both a large and small scale.
If the bomber is wearing a uniform, is a legal combatant, it is not terrorism.
That freedom fighters of Middle Eastern and Southwest Asian ancestry eschew wearing uniforms, there lies the rub.
Who wrote the rules?
The other perspective, if the target is not wearing a uniform, then the attacker is a terrorist.
DeleteA different standard entirely, one advocated by a member of our AIPAC contingent.
The camp follower never opined on that specific issue
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DeleteIt is sad when some can re-define first responders as 'reinforcements' and justify their murder as war instead of what it is, terror.
Double-taps and signature strikes, the new way of war for the CIA, acts condemned as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions yet rationalized and excused here.
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It is not rationalization, Q.
DeleteIt is neither an expression of happiness or sadness on my part.
It is merely an observation of the reality of the world at war.
War is a terrible thing, of that there is no doubt.
We operate under the "Golden Rule" ...
... those with the gold make the rules.
If you could change that reality, I'd be more than happy to observe the change, too.
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DeleteOf course, it is rationalization, rat.
Instead of coming out and openly deploying double-taps, signature strikes, bombing weddings and funerals, you offer us "Shit happens, what are you going to do".
I wouldn't have even brought it up but you specifically countered Deuce's attack on the practices by offering us The follow on targeting of reinforcements is nothing new. It is a standard military tactic, on both a large and small scale" or as an alternative, if the shits can't afford a can't afford a uniform (combatants or not) screw em."
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DeleteFollow on targeting IS a standard military practice, Q.
It is not "Shit Happens".
It is good tactics, in a war zone.
It is standard practice, in a war zone.
If you were to challenge the 14SEP2011 AUMF, advocate for its repeal, I would concur.
If you were to advocate for a total military withdrawal from Afpakistan, I would concur.
If want to limit the tactics employed by the US to putting boots on the ground, I would object.
As long as the US Congress considers the nation's interests to be so vital that military force is authorized we should not eschew our technological tactical advantages. We should not take military actions lightly but should not limit the prosecution of those actions arbitrarily.
As to what constitutes a legal combatant, well, I did not write the rules.
The "Western" powers did. Article 4 of the Geneva Accords states it plainly.
Uniforms are the key to legitimacy, like it or not.
If in the course of the war the options are strategic bombing, targeted strikes or inserting troops, well, it seems clear that the US is best advantaged using targeted strikes.
DeleteThe risk of civilian collateral damage is much less in targeted strikes than in strategic bombing.
The risk to US troops is much less in exercising targeted strikes than by inserting troops.
If you want to include some other options, feel free.
If you want to advocate for withdrawal from the War on Terror, I would be with you.
Until such time as the US does withdraw from the use of military force against terrorists of international scope, those that the President decides threaten US interests, well, better UAV's than small arms and combat boots.
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DeletePlease don't read me the Geneva Conventions. I have already read it.
The 'uniform issue' is a canard. What we are talking about are first responders. While you are reading the Geneva Conventions try reading the part where they talk about how attacking first responders is a war crime. You would fit nicely with the current administration and their ideas on the Constitution and international law. You, like them, seem to think the Constitution and the treaties we sign are more or less idealistic guidelines rather rules.
The killing of first responders and other innocents is defined as a war crime and a crime against humanity. The US signed on to that definition when they signed the Geneva Conventions and joined the UN. When we can define those as a legitimate acts of war we are no better than any other inhumane regime we have seen in recent history.
The impulse of an ordinary human is to run towards a disaster to help. We saw it in Boston. Yet, if some of those running to help aren't wearing uniforms, be they men, women, or children you justify killing them as an 'effective tactics'. I call it terrorism.
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DeletePlease, rat. Spare me the bullshit.
Technological advantage has nothing to do with this. We are not talking about the drones themselves, we are talking about the policy.
Do you think the term 'targeted killing' justifies second strikes that are equivalent to 'signature strikes' where we strike a group of people (men, women, children) hoping to get lucky and hit a terrorist and only finding out later after they sort through the body parts if we were lucky, THIS TIME?
Also, please don't talk to me about how effective the policy is. Is it effective when we kill one capo and he is replaced the same day by another and in the process we make enemies of the relatives and friends of every innocent we kill?
Besides didn't Obama say that al-Queda along with OBL was dead?
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DeleteHow does one differentiate "First Responders" from "Reinforcements", when neither are in uniform?
Why should the US change its tactical doctrine when the enemy refuse to play by the rules?
As to what ever Mr Obama said, when ever he said it with regards al-Queda, it is pretty much inconsequential.
DeleteObama does not write the Law. He could set in place a new doctrine, but even Rumsfeld said that the RoE were written by staff lawyers and beyond his authority to change. It would be possible for the President to do it, but quite unlikely any President would.
Why should any President dictate a military doctrine to the US military that advantages the enemy?
If the War on Terror is over, repeal or rescind the AUMF.
That would be simple enough.
I would support that, wholeheartedly.
But until it occurs the US should not refrain from standard military practices and procedures.
As for antagonizing the enemy's civilian population, the technique used in killing the combatants is of little matter.
DeleteI would reference the antagonism that the Japanese generated in the US population by their attack on Pearl Harbor. The antagonism generated by the Japanese by their policies in Korea during their occupation of the peninsula.
How the mainland Chinese still have antagonism towards the Japanese, after the occupation of China.
It is not the techniques used, but the deed itself that causes the animosity.
Little matter whether the US shoots the cousin with a .223 round or a Hellfire missile.
If the idea is that the US should not antagonize the civilian populations of Afpakistan, the only way to do that is to leave, not adjust the methods we use to prosecute the war. If the idea is to make the US acceptable to the civilian population, it is necessary to end the US involvement in the War on Terror, not "tone it down" to some "acceptable" level of violence.
There is no such thing.
... if some of those running to help aren't wearing uniforms, be they men, women, or children you justify killing them as an 'effective tactics'. I call it terrorism.
DeleteFire bombing Tokyo, nuking Nagasaki, the destruction of Dresden, the buzz bomb attacks on London, do you consider those actions to be terrorism, too?
War is Hell, terror is a part and parcel of Hell.
The idea that anyone can prosecute a war, and not terrorize those caught up in it, naive at best.
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DeleteHow does one differentiate "First Responders" from "Reinforcements",
If you don't understand that, there is no sense talking about it. What 'reinforcements' are going to rush to a site where people have just been taken out by a drone attack and what would they do once they got there, take out a drone at 5000 feet with AK-47's? Now, you are just being silly.
Why should the US change its tactical doctrine when the enemy refuse to play by the rules?
Supposedly, we are the good guys and they are the murderers. It's the same excuse used to justify torture. It does no good, paints us as hypocrites, and lowers our credibility around the war. It is the same tactic used by the Vandals in the 5th Century and every other warmonger nation since.
Obama does not write the Law. He could set in place a new doctrine, but even Rumsfeld said that the RoE were written by staff lawyers and beyond his authority to change
Rat, this comment verges on the idiotic. Sensenbrenner, the 'father' of the Patriot Act has stated that Obama's actions go way beyond anything envisioned by Congress when the law was written. Bush and Obama have written the law as they went along merely by having their 'bought' lawyers draw up supposed opinions justifying the actions. I say 'supposed' because they are so 'secret' even Congress, the people who wrote the law in the first place aren't allowed to see them. Get fucking real.
Why should any President dictate a military doctrine to the US military that advantages the enemy?
Gee, I don't know. Perhaps, because he is a human being and, oh yeah, the friggin Commander-in-chief.
But until it occurs the US should not refrain from standard military practices and procedures.
You justify the unnecessary killing of innocents on the basis that is standard operating procedure. As I've said before, rat, you are I are of different stripes.
As for antagonizing the enemy's civilian population, the technique used in killing the combatants is of little matter.
Good lord.
Little matter whether the US shoots the cousin with a .223 round or a Hellfire missile.
Once again, you seem incapable of understanding this isn't about drones but about policy. It's about precipitating events, about unreasoning inhumanity, its about polices like those used in the Rape of Nanking, the Cultural Revolution, and the Holocaust. You are right, there is little difference whether we kill some innocent with a hellfire missile or we sent someone around with a .223 round to take them out one by one. It's the policy stupid.
If the idea is to make the US acceptable to the civilian population
It's not, it is to not exacerbate an already bad situations. Try explaining to a family in Libya, loyalist or rebel, that its unfortunate we bombed your home but we did it for 'humanitarian' reasons. Pure bull. The hypocrisy is palpable.
If the idea is to make the US acceptable to the civilian population, it is necessary to end the US involvement in the War on Terror, not "tone it down" to some "acceptable" level of violence.
More simplistic rationalization and excuses for that which is inexcusable. Evidently, to you that "acceptable" level of violence involves war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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DeleteBack to this gem.
Why should any President dictate a military doctrine to the US military that advantages the enemy?
How the hell does attacking funerals and weddings, 'signature strikes', and double-taps that kill innocents indiscriminately advantage the enemy?
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Attacking them does not advantage the enemy.
DeleteTo not attack them, just may.
What makes a congregation of terrorists at a funeral differ from a congregation of terrorists in the chow line, different from a congregation of terrorists in a command and control headquarters, when all those activities occur in the same geographic location?
How does anyone on our side differentiate 'tween combatant and noncombatant?
How can anyone in the enemy camp be innocent?
They are all part of the support infrastructure or the command and control or combatant infrastructure.
From those that cook the meals to those that tend the trucks.
All of those functions, in the US military, are carried out by combatants. The truck drivers, the cooks, the bridge builders, the telephone operators. Why would those in the enemy camp be different?
There are no non-combatants, Q, when they are in the war zone.
Just as there were no innocents in Dresden, London, Tokyo or Nagasaki.
None in the Pentagon, none at Pearl Harbor.
Sad as the results of that may be.
War is Hell.
End it or get on with it, but don't advocate to equivocate.
Don't you become a player in the Kabuki theater.
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DeleteLord, rat, you sound just like Obama and the people who work for Clapper.
You make the absurd argument, the leap, that assumes everyone we are killing on a daily basis is in the enemy camp, that they are combatants because combatants invaded their neighborhood. Tell it to those two small boys playing on the corner one moment and blown to pieces the next.
You accept it with innocents in Pakistan, you accept in Libya for 'humanitarian' reasons, then you accept it when without indictment or trial an American in Yemen is killed for hate speech, then you accept it when his 16 year old son is killed with a "whoops!", next you'll be accepting it with American citizens in the US with a shrug and a "Well he must have been guilty of something or why would the government have killed him."
Who defines the friggin war zone these days? Right now, its anywhere Obama says it is.
Equivocating? You're projecting, rat. Go on back to your flock, I'm done with you.
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"Equivocating? You're projecting, rat. Go on back to your flock, I'm done with you."
DeleteQuirk
He that see the Light late enters into the Sacred Enclosure equally with those who saw it first.
"Rat, there's something really wrong with you."
Trish
Welcome, Quirk.
No, Q, I never "accepted" the supposed humanitarian intervention in Libya.
DeleteIt was a NATO operation, which we supported from the air.
Never a boot on the ground. When we did insert some boots, they were killed, a poor showing to be sure. But one which strengthens the case for a no boots on the ground strategy.
That Colonel Q was an old advesary, made following the French and Italian lead palatable.
There are no innocents in Afpakistan, not until we leave.
As for the 16 year old in a war zone, whoops, his father fucked up.
From US history, Q, the evidence that a 16 year old qualifies as a combatant, clear enough
“If minors present themselves, they are to be treated with great candor.” So states the regulations of both armies during the Civil War.
Instructions for recruiting officers go to state: “The names and residences of their parents or guardians, if they have any, must be ascertained, and these will be informed of the minor’s wish to enlist, that they may make their objections or give their consent.”
We have all seen it — the precocious band of 9, 10 and 11-year- old boys, dressed in perfect and imperfect, miniature military uniforms. They tag along at the end of many company formations.
They are seen struggling to stay in step and keep up while lugging (and very rarely properly playing) a drum that is almost as large as themselves.
How about the “junior” hospital steward or the color bearer positions, which we know were adult positions of responsibility or honor? The boys are seen there too.
The most frightening scene is the little “powder monkey” scampering to the muzzle of an artillery piece delivering a dangerous, half pound or more of black powder. Isn’t it cute — and isn’t it inaccurate and dangerous!
The typical participating parent’s response is that there is no one to watch out for little “Ned” or there are no activities for the young boys at events. And, by the way, “they are just doing what Johnny Clem did.”
... study of enlistment ages in the 17th Michigan Infantry provides one sample database. This regiment was mustered into Federal service in August 1862. The following is an age breakdown of soldiers who were under 21 years old at enlistment:
DeleteOne 13-year-old enlisted in August 1862. He was a drummer who was sent home one month later. One 14-year-old and one 15-year-old enlisted in August 1862. They were discharged “on account of youth” by December 1862.
Three of four 16-year-olds (three enlisting in August 1862 and one in 1864) were mustered out well before June 1865. The remaining boy, a fifer who enlisted in August 1862, returned with the regiment to Michigan June 1865.
Of 15 17-year-olds (12 enlisting in 1862, two in 1863 and one in 1865), seven mustered out in 1865 and two deserted. The other six were casualties or were discharged on account of wounds or disease.
Youth is no reason to believe he could not be a combatant, especially with the approval of the parent.
DeleteHe could have soldiered and seen battle in the American Civil War on either side of the conflict.
You are placing the modern legal standards of Michigan upon people who see the world differently.
People who are still fighting for the standards and mores 19th century to prevail.
If a 16 year old takes up arms, little matter where he was born, or where he is, he is still a capable combatant, legal or not by current Michigan statute.
1862, there were 50,000 people in Detroit, it was vibrant and growing.
DeleteThere is no easily accessible account of how many minors rode with George Custer and his Wolverines, The Michigan Calvary Brigade
As to the location of the war zone, you're correct. The Congress gave the Commander in Chief the authority to define both the enemy and the battle field.
DeleteYou've said you are to old to take up the fight to repeal or rescind the AUMF.
If you do not care enough to to that, if you are to old and find such comforts in your cave, well you have no standing to complain about the Law that you will not oppose, with vigor.
It may be time for you to exit, Stage Left.
Most of those that rush to the scene of an artillery attack, mortar or other explosion are fellow combatants. Drone attacks would be no different. There is no doctrine that suggests that after a volley, the enemy should be given a respite to recover, before pressing on with the attack.
DeleteThere are few others but combatants in combatant camps, if there are, they should not be.
I'd reference US military experiences at Khe Sanh, or at Pearl Harbor.
Those that rushed to the aid of the wounded, were combatants, themselves.
There are not that many medics assigned to line units.
If targeted strikes bother you, then advocate for B52 strikes, there would be many fewer wounded.
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DeleteGood lord, rat, are you a complete idiot? How long did you spend googling all that shit? Did you really think it would convince anyone?
You distort everything you touch.
As for the 16 year old in a war zone, whoops, his father fucked up.
They killed him by mistake. He was not a combatant. You can't seem to get that simple fact through your head.
Your rant about kids participating in the civil war? Looney tunes. Awlaki son was killed by mistake. He was not a combatant. The two small boys playing at a street corner in Afghanistan? Also, a mistake but just as dead. They weren't combatants. You dream up scenarios that make no sense.
The Michigan Calvary Brigade? Custer? The Civil War? You are nuts.
If a 16 year old takes up arms...
He didn't take up arms. Try really, really hard to get that through your head.
You are placing the modern legal standards of Michigan upon people who see the world differently. People who are still fighting for the standards and mores 19th century to prevail.
No, you moron, I'm putting them on the US, a country that purports to be enlightened, one that considers itself above those very people who fight for the standards and mores of the 19th century.
I'm through on this subject, rat. Trying to argue with you gives me a head ache.
You display the amorality of a sociopath.
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DeleteYou've said you are to old to take up the fight to repeal or rescind the AUMF.
I think what I said was I was too old to be leading a march on D.C.
I continue my communications with my elected reps in D.C. letting them know my views (possibly a dangerous practice these days based on recent revelations).
And, I recently joined the A.C.L.U. I don't agree with their stands on all issues but I do agree with them on those issues most important to me. Until, Manning, Wikileaks, and Snowden destroyed the puzzle palace, I had little hope that anything could be done to reverse the trend towards what I perceive to be a more authoritarian police state. However, now that the extent of government actions by the executive branch and its enablers in the Congress have been revealed, it has weakened the government's ability to keep lawsuits out of the courts by claiming 'secrecy' and 'national security' concerns.
The A.C.L.U. is the leader in pushing these lawsuits. If I come across other groups willing to get involved in the fight, I intend to support them too. I might even throw a few shekels Rand Paul's way, especially were Christie to run in 2016.
I have to find out more about the MI legislator, Amash, before I can support him but that may happen also.
Based on the trends in Congress the public, and the five or so lawsuits working their way through the courts, I am at least cautiously optimistic that there might be some progress coming in curbing some of the worst abuses currently being perpetrated under the Patriot Act. This is the first time in many years that I had any hope at all.
As for you, you can stay involved with the horses (a worthwhile endeavor) or you can expand and send an attaboy to Obama.
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Rental Nation
ReplyDeleteThe home ownership rate is now down to 65.1 percent taking us back into the past of two decades ago (prior to any of the toxic mortgage shenanigans). Los Angeles is virtually half renters and half home owners. At the same time, the rental vacancy rate is also falling dramatically as more households become renters. After all, when you foreclose on 5,000,000 households the needs of shelter still exist.
In housing unlike many other investment vehicles, the options are rather simple. You either rent or buy. Given the current market, many are renting either by choice or necessity. In a place like California, many are simply being priced out by investors, flippers, or foreign money. The all-cash crowd is hard to compete with and this year we have seen a record amount of cash buying in California.
For one, many people that “owned” a home during the last decade had no business buying just like banks have no business making the loans. Even today, the home ownership rate would be a few percentage points lower if we inputted all the negative equity households. If you are underwater you do not “own” your home. Try selling it right now and see how much money you will get for it.
You would think that somehow with such a low amount of inventory that supply is nowhere to be found:
How about remote control explosives on a family car of a civilian scientist?
ReplyDeleteWas the person that planted the bomb wearing a uniform?
DeleteIf the bomber was wearing a uniform, then the targeting of government employees is legitimate.
As would be the targeting of military reservists.
As long as the bomber is in uniform, it is a legitimate military strike.
If the bomber is in civilian clothes, he is a terrorist.
State sponsored strikes at civilian or military targets, using bombers in civilian clothing, classifies those attacks as terrorism. That seems to be the "Western" standard.
Regimes that are culturally Middle Eastern, they march to the beat of a different drummer.
They have developed a different set of rules.
Attacks upon their enemies are never terrorism, while attacks on them always are.
Cultural disparity as it were.
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ...
Nuclear attacks on civilian population centers, done by men in uniform, legitimate military action.
DeleteBombing a military headquarters, committed by men in civilian clothing, terrorism.
It is all in how they are dressed.
Wardrobe sets the Western Standard.
;-)
If that were the case, Rat would be wearing a one piece romper suit with footies
Delete:)
DeleteFunny thing, I was raised on this concept ...
ReplyDeleteExpressed by Mr Kipling
OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
The usual suspect has described Mr Kipling as being anit-Semitic.
Judging men by the content of their character and not their religion, the color of their skin nor the place of their birth, well, that is just beyond the pale for Team AIPAC.
Many, oh so many, have judged you by the content of your character, and found it utterly lacking.
Delete....................
East and West met in Walt Whitman, here in US of A, though he may not have realized it. Before that, in Thoreau, and he realized it.
I have met East in my niece, and she has met West in her uncle.
Egypt met India in the form of a White Bull coming from the East.
Kipling was a really lousy poet. Not much there.
It is understandable why you should like him so.
Your fictional characters are all you have, boobie.
DeleteYou've told us that your real family abandoned you, years ago.
You had to get your retired lawyer to fund your fight against them.
You won the legal case, but lost your family.
Was it worth it?
Has the money soothed your soul?
We had a big break up, particularly when I finally whoomped their asses, with one hand behind my back. They were some what disillusioned by this development.
DeleteWe have repaired our relationships with the passage of time. Looking back on it, everyone (nearly) agrees with me, it wasn't worth it. Buy, they started it, now we are good buds again.
Heh
Try some other avenue of attack, butthole.
Attack?
DeleteWhy would I attack the camp follower?
Who else would be there to give service at the comfort station?
Was the money worth it? Yes, as my family's financial future depended on it.
DeleteAlso, I am now able to help my niece pursue her PhD in psychology if she chooses.
She is not wealthy, like my other friends, Dale of the rundown motel, and Umatilla Jack, living in a camper in his surviving son's back yard.
Ratto, your last little statement there is one of the reason nobody likes you.
out
DeleteI dare you not to smile.
ReplyDeleteOK, I took the dare, and failed.
DeleteAll is well in God's great happy kingdom.
For awhile I thought maybe the hog had suffered a heart attack, and died, but finally saw its move an inch.
Trey Gowdy: Feds are changing the names of Benghazi survivors and dispersing them throughout the country
ReplyDeleteposted at 2:01 pm on August 2, 2013 by Allahpundit
An essential follow-up to yesterday’s CNN bombshell. Skip to 2:30 if you don’t have time for it all. The implication, very clearly, is that this is being done not to protect intelligence assets from terrorist retribution but to “protect” them from Republicans asking inconvenient questions. Which isn’t the first time the GOP’s had trouble talking to relevant personnel: Marine Col. George Bristol was somehow indisposed for months, with the Pentagon unwilling to reveal his whereabouts to investigators, before the House Armed Services Committee finally landed him for a classified briefing this past week.
New from Fox:
Fox News has learned that at least five CIA employees were forced to sign additional nondisclosure agreements this past spring in the wake of the Benghazi attack. These employees had already signed such agreements before the attack but were made to sign new agreements aimed at discouraging survivors from leaking their stories to the media or anyone else…
Lawmakers penned a letter earlier this week to newly confirmed FBI Director James Comey urging him to aggressively identify and pursue the [Benghazi] suspects.
“It has been more than 10 months since the attacks. We appear to be no closer to knowing who was responsible today than we were in the early weeks following the attack,” they wrote. “This is simply unacceptable.”
My theory for why the FBI’s been keeping its distance from the Benghazi jihadis is that the White House doesn’t do want to do anything rash, like order a wave of captures and arrests, that might further destabilize the Libyan government. There’s an obvious alternative explanation, though, after yesterday’s CNN report: If the CIA and White House are so paranoid about info on Benghazi leaking that they’d try to intimidate American operatives into silence, maybe they don’t want the FBI investigating what happened. The more the Bureau knows, the greater the chance that someone there will leak. Assuming there’s something to the theory that the CIA was helping Libyan jihadis send weapons to Syria, what happens if a team of FBI sits down with someone who knows what was going on and he spills the beans?
Of course, that raises the question of why the attackers — some of whom have been interviewed by U.S. media — haven’t already spilled the beans to reporters. Maybe they fear that if they say something, then the White House is sure to target them; if they keep quiet, could be that they’ll be let off the hook. Then again, that same logic applied to Snowden and he calculated, not unreasonably, that his best defense was to ID himself precisely because it would make the feds think twice about taking him out. If you’re a Benghazi jihadi, what’s the smarter way to keep Uncle Sam’s hands off of you — lie low and hope that he doesn’t come knocking on the door, or step into the spotlight so that he can’t kill you without the whole world perceiving it as an attempt to silence a key witness?
All of which is to say, if this really was some sort of arms-smuggling operation, why have none of the bad guys confirmed it yet?
My favorite corrupt Congressman, Charlie Rangel, who was seemingly born in the House of Representatives, and is a good bet to die there, a likable crook, and tax cheat, all around lovable scoundrel, has just called me a "Terrorist White Cracker".
ReplyDeleteWhy, thanks a bunch, Charlie, after all the times when I've stuck for you, and when it was most unpopular too, and you should have by all that's Sacred been going to Jail.
These Tea Partiers Are The Same Terrorist White Crackers We Fought During Desegregation
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/02/charlie-rangel-these-tea-partiers-are-the-same-terrorist-white-crackers-we-fought-during-desegregation/
Rolling Stone Magazine puts a picture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover. FOX News deplores it, non-stop, communities and politicos call for boycotts and major retailers take the issue off the shelves ...
ReplyDeleteRetail sales of the issue jumped 102 percent over average per-issue sales for the past year, according to Magazine Information Network. Figures are based on point of sale data from 1,420 retailers from July 19 to July 29. Among those retailers, 13,232 copies were sold, more than double the magazine’s average sales for the prior year.
One time a friend told him he thought certain aspects of religion were harmful, and brought up the 9/11 attacks.
DeleteAt which point Tsarnaev, his friend Will says, told him he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Will asked why. “He said, ‘Well, you’re not going to like my view.’”
He said, “…Some of those acts were justified because of what the U.S. does in other countries, and that they do it so frequently, dropping bombs all the time.”
He liked Alex Jones' InfoWars website
Tamerlan began to read more Islamic websites, as well as U.S. conspiracy sites, like Alex Jones’ InfoWars.
The kid Twittered ...
“Never underestimate the rebel with a cause,”
Last, but certainly not least ...
“Friends of Jahar’s would later tell the FBI that he’d once mentioned he knew how to build bombs. But no one seemed to really take it all that seriously.”
Doesn't everyone have an old copy of the Anarchist Cookbook?
Recipe for Failure
ReplyDeleteThe Five Flaws of Kerry's Mideast Peace Process
Friday, August 02, 2013 | Noah Beck
Peace Process
Here is a list of reasons why Secretary Kerry's Mideast peace process is unfairly flawed in ways that endanger Israel.
1) No Palestinian reciprocity at the outset. Israel agreed to release 104 convicted terrorists just to get the Palestinians to talk peace. Would the U.S. agree to release 104 Guantanamo prisoners for talks with anyone?
Israel will undoubtedly be blamed if negotiations fail, so it's unlikely that fair judgment by the international community motivated the release. Perhaps it was the price that Israel had to pay for a U.S. promise to prevent Iranian nukes and/or support Israel's efforts to stop them. If so, is the U.S. good for its word (despite Obama's repeated demonstrations that his Mideast "red lines" are meaningless)?
Whatever the explanation for Israel's good-faith opening, there were plenty of ways for the Palestinians to reciprocate: removing anti-Israel incitement from their textbooks and/or official media, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, promising to "freeze" their anti-Israel diplomatic offensives, etc. But Secretary of State John Kerry preferred to establish that Palestinian reciprocity is optional: if Israel isn't volunteering what the Palestinians demand, they need only threaten to leave the talks and Kerry will compel the Israelis to comply.
2) No Palestinian good faith. The Palestinians will be represented by Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh. Shtayyeh’s Facebook page displays a map of Israel's internationally recognized borders, plus the West Bank and Gaza – all emblazoned with the Arabic letters for “Palestine." So the person entrusted with negotiating a "two-state solution" openly admits that his Mideast map has room for only a Palestinian state. Just as alarming, during a recent sermon attended by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and broadcast on Palestinian television, Religious Endowments Minister Mahmoud al-Habbash compared the PA's decision to negotiate with Israel to the Prophet Muhammad's Treaty of Hudaibiya (in the year 628 CE): “in less than two years, based on this treaty, the Prophet returned and conquered Mecca. This is the example. It is the model.”
3) No religious freedom in a future Palestinian state. Palestinians insist (ironically) that "peaceful coexistence" means no Jewish settlers in their state. But, on principle, why should Jews be banned from living in a future Palestinian state -- particularly when Muslims constitute over 17% of Israel's population? Will the future Palestinian state be as hostile to religious minorities as other Muslim majority states are? Unfortunately, recent history gives little reason to hope otherwise. Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning, Arab journalist reported the following about a year ago:
DeleteAccording to the Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip, at least five Christians have been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam in recent weeks...Church leaders...accused a prominent Hamas man of being behind the kidnapping and forced conversion of a Christian woman, Huda Abu Daoud, and her three daughters. Radical Islam, and not checkpoints or a security fence, remains the main threat to defenseless Christians not only in the Palestinians territories, but in the entire Middle East as well.
While Gaza is ruled by Islamists, the PA has also shown its hostility to Christians. On March 12, 2012, Algemeiner reported that:
"A week after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told an [international] audience of Evangelical Protestants...that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities, [PA] officials...informed Bethlehem pastor Rev. Naim Khoury that his church lacked the authority to function as a religious institution under the PA...[T]here is a sense among Christians in Bethlehem that anti-Christian animus has gotten worse in the city...Khoury said.”
A few weeks ago, Palestinians vandalized the Cave of the Patriarchs, Judaism's second holiest site. How safe will non-Muslim holy sites be if there is no more Israeli presence in the West Bank? Will a future peace agreement specifically guarantee protection of and Israeli access to Jewish holy sites?
If Israel's presence in the West Bank has helped to moderate Muslim rule there, will Israel's complete departure mean that West Bank Christians can expect their persecution to worsen to Gazan levels (with abductions and forced conversions)? Palestinian insistence that their future West Bank state be "Judenrein" doesn't bode well for the indigenous Christians there (or for religious freedom).
Delete4) No Palestinian mandate to negotiate peace. There are about 2.1 million Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and 1.7 million in the Gaza Strip. But Hamas-ruled Gaza vehemently opposes peace negotiations and denies Israel's right to exist. Islamic Jihad and Hamas recently lambasted PA leaders for meeting with Israelis to talk peace. The last time that the PA announced direct talks with Israel, Hamas announced plans to launch terrorist attacks at Israel, in coordination with 12 other Gaza terrorist organizations.
And it's not even clear that West Bank Palestinians favor these talks. Last Sunday, they rallied against peace until PA police violently suppressed the protest. Human Rights Watch has urged the Palestinian government to investigate the police beatings. Moreover, Abbas himself has no legal mandate, as his term of political office expired long ago yet he continues to rule with no elections in sight.
At best, the PA can deliver only half of any peace that it promises, which lets Palestinians have their cake and eat it too: the PA can extract painful territorial concessions from Israel at the negotiating table, while Hamas can continue terrorist attacks to achieve the one-state solution embraced on Facebook by PA "peace negotiator" Mohammad Shtayyeh.
5) Transferring the West Bank could be Israel's geo-strategic undoing. Jordan could collapse any day from a flood of about 500,000 Syrian refugees (and growing daily); severe poverty; popular discontent over corruption, inequality, and lack of freedom; acute water shortages; and/or Muslim Brotherhood action to overthrow King Abdullah's monarchy. These factors make the Abdullah regime's survival increasingly uncertain. After Israel militarily withdraws from the West Bank, will Hamas topple the PA there as it did in Gaza (two years after Israel's 2005 Gaza withdrawal)? What if the Hamas-allied Muslim Brotherhood then takes over Jordan? If Jordanian-Palestinians -- the largest ethnic group in Jordan -- create a Palestinian state there (as advocated by this Jordanian-Palestinian writer), would Palestinians effectively have two states? The range and severity of threats to Israel from the combination of a post-Abdullah Jordan and a Palestinian West Bank state are considerable. Is it even possible to address these Israeli security concerns in a way that leaves Palestinian negotiators satisfied enough to sign a peace treaty?
With so many inherent defects in the current peace talks, why would the U.S. push its most reliable Mideast ally (and the only Middle East democracy) into such perilous waters or inevitable blame? One explanation is the increasingly fashionable idea (promoted by Arab governments) that settlements are blocking a peace deal that would produce Mideast stability. But inconvenient facts completely contradict this idea: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen (etc.) would remain the same conflict-torn mess as they are now after any Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.
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DeleteMostly true, although some lines were either naïve or fabrications for effect.
However, while there are many reasons the PA will not sign a peace agreement, the same can be said of Israel.
If I had any money, I would bet that when the talks eventually fail, the PA'a next step will involve going back to the UN. Since a request for statehood would doubtless lead to a US veto in the Security Council, I would see the PA lobbying to be allowed to join various UN organizations and expanding their UN influence in any way possible, an incremental approach that will allow them to build friends and influence over time with the hope that this would eventually build pressure for allowing them their own state.
The other way would be to forget the two-state solution and try to convince the UN to confront the conflict by pushing a one-state solution.
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I'm at the point of thinking we ought to just get out of the UN.
DeleteWhich used to seem a crazy idea to me.
But, really, what's it good for?
Nothing I can discern.
Egypt: Pardon revoked for all jihadis granted amnesty under Morsi
ReplyDeleteAug 02, 2013 10:36 am | Raymond
The interim government of Egypt has just issued another blow to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. According to a new report, the Interior Ministry has announced that Egyptian leadership “is preparing to cancel any presidential pardons issued during Morsi’s era to terrorists or criminals.” Unbeknownst to many in the...
This is good.
Syria: Jihad violence emptying entire Christian towns
Aug 02, 2013 06:51 pm | Robert
And both sides are victimizing Christians and pressuring them to convert to Islam. "Syrian Christian towns emptied by sectarian violence," by Ruth Sherlock for the Telegraph, August 2: Towns and villages in Syria that have been home to Christians for hundreds of years are being steadily emptied by sectarian violence...
This is bad.
Tennessee imam delivers Jew-hating rant
Aug 02, 2013 07:01 pm | Robert
Here is more from this hateful imam, Yasir Qadhi. According to Charles Jacobs, Qadhi tried to preserve his "moderate" credibility by scrubbing this and another clip in which he called Christians mushrikun (those who worship others besides Allah) from the Internet by filing a copyright claim with YouTube. However,...
This is ugly.
Ramadan observance in Nigeria: Islamic jihadists murder eight, military warns of "massive attacks" to come
Aug 02, 2013 03:15 pm | Robert
But remember: the real problem is "Islamophobia." The real problem are the greasy Islamophobes who give people the crazy idea that Islam is the world's most violent religion. Boko Haram and al-Qaeda and the Taliban and Hamas and Hizballah and Nidal Hasan and all the rest don't make people think...
This is to be expected.
from Jihad Watch/offerings for this day
Five scary charts and facts about who’s working and not working in this economy
ReplyDeleteposted at 7:21 pm on August 2, 2013 by Mary Katharine Ham
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/02/five-scary-charts-and-facts-about-whos-working-and-not-working-in-this-economy/
There is no 'economic recovery'.
Just the opposite, things have gotten worse.
Nifty charts for those that like nifty charts.
ReplyDelete"Obama has now united the world -- not a single country trusts us anymore, because our hero has shafted those who relied on us: Britain, Poland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, even Syria and Libya. Our solemn national pledges kept the peace for sixty years; now they are worthless. Even Russia's Putin has a visceral dislike for our hero. Half the American people don't trust Obama either, and now the rest of the world agrees."
August 3, 2013
Obama is trapped in Syria
By James Lewis
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/obama_is_trapped_in_syria.html#ixzz2apvNruhr
Worst President evah.
"No wonder Israel and the Saudis are worried. Obama was going to solve Middle Eastern troubles forever and ever. For four years Obama begged and wheedled the mullahs, and took no decisive action during the critical window of opportunity before they acquired nukes and missiles. The mullahs were not interested in those peace overtures. They follow a war theology, and celebrate martyrdom, not peace. Think Imperial Japan in World War II and you get the idea. The mullahs are not liberals; they are not even conservatives; they are throwbacks to the Dark Ages."
So now Iran is biting back. We are trapped in a classic quagmire, with no way to pull out without making things worse.
This all started when Obama promised a bold new age of peace to the Muslim world, and then showed how it was done by pulling down Mubarak's Egypt, which had kept a real peace for thirty years. Rather than knocking down a fast-nuclearizing Iran, Obama failed even to show symbolic support for the young people of the Green Revolution in Tehran."
What a genius. Who else could have done all this.
He is on a well deserved rest at Martha's Vineyard this weekend/next week.
It did not start with Obama, it "started" when the US and England deposed the elected government of Iran and installed the Shah, back in 1953.
DeleteIt started when FDR negotiated a deal with King Ibn Saud met aboard the U.S.S. Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal, in February, 1945...
Roosevelt and Saud concluded a secret agreement in which the U.S. would provide Saudi Arabia military security — military assistance, training and a military base at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia — in exchange for secure access to supplies of oil.
Regarding Jews, Saud expressed sympathy for their plight, but he argued that a homeland for Jews in Palestine would be unfair to Palestinian Arabs. On the issue of Palestine, Ibn Saud was uncompromising.
President Roosevelt, constrained by the uncompromising attitude of Ibn Saud and impressed by the simple clarity with which Ibn Saud presented the Arab case, gave two undertakings to Ibn Saud; first that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs in Palestine and, secondly, that he would never do anything to harm the Arab people. He promised that the United States Government would not make any changes to its policy on Palestine without prior consultation with both the Arabs and the Jews.
These verbal assurances were confirmed in a letter, dated April 5th, 1945, in which Roosevelt made it clear that he was committing himself, not as an individual, but as “Chief of the Executive Branch” of the United States Government. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and his policy was subsequently reversed by his successor, Harry Truman who was a strong supporter of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The US has a long history of deceit and misrepresentations in the region, a history that dates back to long before Mr Obama became President
You have the cognitive ability of a gnat.
The Letter from President Roosevelt to King Ibn Saud, April 5th, 1945:
DeleteGREAT AND GOODFRIEND:
I have received the communication which Your Majesty sent me under date of March 10, 1945, in which you refer to the question of Palestine and to the continuing interest of the Arabs in current developments affecting that country.
I am gratified that Your Majesty took this occasion to bring your views on this question to my attention and I have given the most careful attention to the statements which you make in your letter. I am also mindful of the memorable conversation which we had not so long ago and in the course of which I had an opportunity to obtain so vivid an impression of Your Majesty’s sentiments on this question.
Your Majesty will recall that on previous occasions I communicated to you the attitude of the American Government toward Palestine and made clear our desire that no decision be taken with respect to the basic situation in that country without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews. Your Majesty will also doubtless recall that during our recent conversation I assured you that I would take no action, in my capacity as Chief of the Executive Branch of this Government, which might prove hostile to the Arab people.
It gives me pleasure to renew to Your Majesty the assurances which you have previously received regarding the attitude of my Government and my own, as Chief Executive, with regard to the question of Palestine and to inform you that the policy of this Government in this respect is unchanged.
I desire also at this time to send you my best wishes for Your Majesty’s continued good health and for the welfare of your people.
Your Good Friend,
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The United States lied, people died.
Well before Mr Obama was even born.
The consequences of US deceit haunt the region to this day.