BHO is so bad that he makes George W. Bush look ...well, not "good," but not nearly as bad as he actually was BR --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Christian Post Islamic State Threatens to Behead Statue of Liberty, Extend Its Territory to New York City IS Twitter Accounts Share Image of Headless Lady Liberty Holding Terror Group's Black Flag By _Hermoine Macura_ (http://www.christianpost.com/author/hermoine-macura/) , CP Contributor July 29, 2015|3:40 pm (Photo: Screengrab/Twitter) The image depicts a beheaded Statue of Liberty waving the Islamic State flag shared on IS' twitter accounts in July 2015. The Islamic State is threatening to behead America's Statue of Liberty and even published a picture depicting a headless Lady Liberty holding their black flag of terror on Twitter. Featuring the New York City skyline burning in the background, written beneath the Islamic State picture are the words "soon the state of the Islamic caliphate." The message also included a slogan in English, with some versions saying, "coming soon." The image began circulating shortly after reports that Hafez Saeed, the top Islamic State commander in Afghanistan, had been killed in a U.S. drone strike earlier this month. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, is known for launching terror campaigns and threats designed to "strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah," (Quran 8:60). Last year, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., _warned that the militant Islamic State_ (http://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-a-direct-threat-that-could-launch-attack-on-us-soil-warns-sen-lindsey-graham-124636/) group could launch a direct attack on U.S. soil and urged President Barack Obama to do more to counter the group. "Mr. President, be honest with the threat we face," Graham said in a Fox News interview. "They are coming." The Republican senator, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, identified the militants as a "direct threat to our homeland." Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has also warned that the militants are "getting stronger all the time" and growing in numbers. "They have attracted 1,000 young men from around the world who are now fighting on their side," McCain explained. "Their end goal, as they've stated openly time after time, is the destruction of United States of America." Last September, _Obama blamed the U.S. intelligence agencies_ (http://www.christianpost.com/news/obama-claims-us-intelligence-agencies-underestimated-is is-al-qaida-threatens-to-attack-the-west-127193/) for underestimating the threat posed to the West by IS militants. In 2009, a similar threat was made by a group of vandals who stole a Statue of Liberty replica from a Brooklyn coffee shop and posted a web video showing them cutting off the statue's blindfolded head. It opened with a shot of a waving U.S. flag, followed by the words, "We don't want your freedom," and ended with the slogan "Death to America." The YouTube video was subsequently investigated by the FBI. The Islamic State finances its own terror campaigns and is considered to be the richest armed organization in the world. Recently, the Islamic State received $6.9 billion in money transfers via Iraqi banks, according to the Iraqi Parliament's Finance Committee. Companies were able to transfer the funds from the main banks in Iraq to banks in the regions controlled by IS, despite strict security measures the Iraqi government said it has taken to cripple the terror organization. The group also makes money through the sale of oil as well as through taxes, protection money, contributions, tithes, and "charity" from merchants in regions under its control. Since their inception, IS has seized all the funds from more than 60 governmental and civilian banks in Iraq and Syria. ADVERTISEMENT Experts have said oil wells under control of the terror organization export_ $100 million _ (http://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-rakes-in-800-million-in-black-market-oil-sales-per-year-2-million-daily-report-estimates-128439/ ) worth of oil monthly. The Christian Post first reported last October that the IHS, a leading source in global information and analytics, found that IS was making twice as much off of their oil production per day than the $1 million per day figure U.S. lawmakers were previously told when the Deputy Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Nicholas Rasmussen testified before Congress in September. The IHS report stated that IS generates the income needed to continue funding its deadly jihadist movement through the production of over 50,000 barrels of crude oil per day, which is sold to black market traders. The report also added that IS is only producing "a fraction" of the total oil capacity of the oil regions it controls. "Oil fuels ISIL's war machine, notably including the military vehicles vital to its movements and fighting capabilities," the report said. "Oil directly finances ISIL's myriad activities and encourages the activities of middlemen who sell, transport and export the oil and thus have a vested interest in ISIL." ================================== Barack Obama’s inability to grasp reality By _Wesley Pruden_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/wesley-pruden/) - The Washington Times - Monday, August 10, 2015 ANALYSIS/OPINION: _Barack Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) is afraid he might be a warmonger at heart. Who knew? But making war against an Islamic enemy? That defies everyone’s imagination. The president keeps changing his arguments for approval of his deal with the mullahs in _Iran_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/iran/) , and the tone of his denunciations of anybody who argues with him grows ever harsher and disrespectful. The latest refinement of tone is his assertion that it’ s his way or the highway, that war with _Iran_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/iran/) lies at the end of that forbidden highway. But who would start such a war? He doesn’t say. As crazy as the mullahs are, the craziness lies in a distorted theology, not in statecraft. The mullahs are smart enough not to believe everything they say, and go to war against the United States. We logically conclude that _Mr. Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) is afraid that he might be the one to start the war. Who else does he think it could be? His “it’s me or war” is rendered nonsense, and he knows it. Many bad things happen when a leader is weak, confused and forever searching for a reason to do nothing. For all his softness on Islam, he has little insight into the men who send out mobs to cry “death to America.” He can’t imagine that men who listen to the call to evening prayer that so captivated him as a boy in Indonesia — “the prettiest sound on Earth” — actually dream of bringing death to America. The international order so carefully put together, and guarded so faithfully, by American presidents after the Cold War was won, has begun to unravel under this president to the consternation of America’s most faithful allies and to the unexpected delight of the nation’s enemies. The anarchy that follows this unraveling is the legacy that he will leave behind him when he takes that long, lingering helicopter ride out of town on inauguration day 2017. “When [Mr.] _Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) came to office in 2009,” writes Alexander Woolfson in Standpoint, a London political monthly, “it would have been unimaginable that a caliphate could be allowed to thrive in the midst of the Middle East, or that a U.S. president would be foolish enough to exploit ancient Persian and Arab enmity for the purposes of American retrenchment. [Mr.] _Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) ’s now familiar refrain is to counsel “ strategic patience” while suggesting that America cannot solve every world problem. He remains oblivious to the fact that his worldview is the problem. ISIS has created a version of the future which _Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) appears unable to grasp. Its caliphate is being sustained through the mass murder and repression of those who do not belong.” “Unable to grasp.” That will be the epitaph and the legacy of _Mr. Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) ’s presidency. When an American president says he wants to “lead from behind,” the enemies in the Middle East, and there are many, naturally assume that he means he wants to fool about on the margins, make speeches, play a little golf (or a lot), insult those who disagree with him. Commanders in chief no less than privates and corporals can decamp from sworn duty. President _Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) flinches from the sound of the guns. He orders air strikes, everyone’s favorite weapon of war, reluctantly and with half a heart. In the month before ISIS captured Ramadi, the United States flew 165 air strikes. Bill Clinton ordered that many in a single day in the campaign in Kosovo. George H.W. Bush ordered 42,000 in a month of Operation Desert Storm. Only _Mr. Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) can be surprised when the situation on the ground not so slowly deteriorates, Iraqi soldiers flee their posts and the black flags of ISIS steadily advance, fluttering in the wind of White House spin. He can’t talk about a strategy in the Middle East because he doesn’t have one. He thinks he doesn’t need one because ISIS will helpfully implode. He cannot even bring himself to say the words “Islamic violence,” and thus cannot understand the nature of radical Islam. He insists that ISIS is just another manifestation of terrorism, not a caliphate that demands to be recognized as a state. “Nobody,” he says, “is under illusions that [ISIS] can actually in a sustained way feed people or educate people or organize a society that would work.” Blinded by what he wants to see, he would be a bowl of mush in the hands of the mullahs if push comes to shove with the United States. _Barack Obama_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/barack-obama/) , paralyzed by the ideology of the left, could never pull the trigger in a confrontation with _Iran_ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/iran/) , and the mullahs — and the world — know it. The summer soldiers in the U.S. Senate need not fear war if they take the highway rather than the Obama way. They should fear the Islamic bomb if they don’t. ------------------------------------- Real Clear Politics Real Clear World Obama's Failure to Learn in the Middle East Posted by _Aaron David Miller_ (http://www.realclearworld.com/authors/aaron_david_miller/) on August 26, 2015 Whether you count yourself a fan of President Barack Obama's Middle East policies or a foe, one thing should be stunningly obvious by now: A good part of the president's foreign policy travails in this region stem from a pattern of needlessly high-flying rhetoric. Indeed, time after time again, Obama has gratuitously and unnecessarily raised expectations and then failed to deliver on them. These largely self-inflicted wounds created an early gap between Obama's words and his administration's deeds -- a gap that damaged America's credibility and fed doubts about U.S. resolve in the minds of allies and adversaries alike. That gap has never closed, and far from learning from his mistakes, Obama has carried on his pattern of making commitments upon which he cannot deliver. Consider the following. Israeli-Palestinian peace: The pattern of setting high bars in the total absence of a valid or even compelling policy reason started almost immediately. Two days after his inauguration, Obama, in a personal appearance at the Department of State, appointed George Mitchell as his special Middle East envoy. No president since Jimmy Carter had invested so much so early in an issue that simply was not ready for prime time. The matter was made worse by administration's calls for a comprehensive Israeli freeze on settlements that it was unwilling or unable to pressure Israel to accept, and for a peace agreement within two years, a notion that even then looked like a fantasy. It was also hampered by an intensive effort by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013-2014 to produce a draft peace accord that had zero chance of becoming reality. Today, the administration's peace process lies in ruins. It has no credibility among Arabs and Israelis. ‘Assad Must Go' and the Syrian Red-Line: Next came two more examples of presidential rhetoric outstripping U.S. willingness and motivation to act. Perhaps understandably, in response to the Assad regime's savage use of air and artillery strikes against civilians, including the use of barrel bombs, the president repeatedly called for the removal of the Syrian dictator and in 2011 warned that the regime's use of chemical weapons was unacceptable, suggesting a tough U.S. response. The backstory of Obama's retreat from the so-called redline need not detain us here. The point is that for a second time in the Middle East, on a crisis far more important than the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian problem, the president committed himself to actions he did not take. There was no military response to the red line's crossing by Assad. Not only does the dictator still hold power, but the United States may well have no choice, if there is a political process to end Syria's civil war, but to accept Assad as part of the solution. Defeating ISIS: Having first underestimated the danger of the Islamic State, characterizing it in 2014 as a JV team, the president soon began to talk of degrading and ultimately destroying the putative terror state. The latest rhetorical formulation Obama used was that of being "on track to defeat" ISIS. The president cannot afford to take the threat lightly. But none of the words he has used -- first destroy, then defeat -- seem to have any grounding in reality. A year after the Islamic State established its caliphate, it is ensconced in Syria, and in Iraq too. And while the United States has had success in killing ISIS fighters and leaders, and in working with local allies to recover territory, the Islamic State seems here to stay. Recent reports that the administration has only trained some 60 Syrian recruits for the battle against ISIS -- some of whom were promptly killed or captured by Jabhat al-Nusrah, al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria -- only attest to the gap between promises and delivery. The Iran Agreement: Clearly the nuclear deal is the one issue on which the administration has actually delivered on its commitment. Paradoxically, it is also the one issue over the past several years on which the president and his advisers have actually lowballed their expectations and not raised hopes to unrealistic levels. But even here, there seems to be a tendency to oversell, with Kerry suggesting that inspections would be carried out forever or saying that the United States has absolute certainty that it will know what Iran may be hiding. Selling the agreement to Congress is more difficult because of the administration's earlier commitments to seek anywhere, anytime inspections and to ensure that Tehran will come clean on the so-called possible military dimensions of Iran's past nuclear activities. Neither of these objectives was probably ever achievable, and the administration likely knew that at the time. All administrations promise more than they can deliver. Just look at Obama's predecessor when it came to Iraq. What is odd is that this president deemed himself a realist, not a transformer, when it comes to the Middle East; and yet he seems to fall into the expectations gap so frequently. When you do not or will not act, words become substitutes for deeds. Part of the problem may be that the administration sees the world the way it wants it to be, not the way it really is. Perhaps part of the issue is a desire to deflect pressure by the use of bold words. Whatever the explanation, to have credibility in foreign policy you must say what you mean, and mean what you say. Sadly, far too many times, the Obama administration has done exactly the opposite. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[RC] Obama fiddles while the Mid East burns
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Thu, 27 Aug 2015 10:01:50 -0700
