It Depends on What the Meaning of IS is

by Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison

Stet is that proofreader’s mark that means “keep it that way.” We say keep it ISIS. President Obama was at pains on Wednesday night to reassure the world that ISIS is not Islamic. As National Review’s Jonah Goldberg put it, they sure aren’t Lutheran or Buddhist. The president will find it hard to rally the troops for a necessary response to terrorism when he cannot name the target.

So, what is IS? Doubtless, it depends on what your definition of IS is. Where’s that seasoned statesman Bill Clinton when you need him?

Mr. Obama’s confusion on this point is of a piece with his entire administration’s kid glove approach to the threat of international jihad. His CIA chief, John Brennan, refuses even to say the word “jihad” in the terror context because he said it was a legitimate tenet of a religion. If that is so, then that statement is pretty damning.

ISIS first called itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Then, it metamorphosed into ISIL ---Islamic State of the Levant. Now, what was that? Well, the Levant is a loosely-defined term for the entire region, including on some maps Turkey and Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. ISIL would also embrace Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and, of course, all of Israel. Not satisfied with ISIL, this cutthroat gang quickly molted and emerged as IS -- the Islamic State.

ISIS will do for us -- Islamist Savagery Inspired by Satan. If cutting off heads and putting the videos on the Internet is not savagery and if such cruelty is not of Satan, then savagery and Satan do not exist.

President Obama is locked in a Westphalian mindset. That seminal 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in Europe and gave us the nation-state system we see today. Or most of it. What ISIS shows, however, is that the Westphalian definitions really don’t apply in the Mideast. It was an Egyptian diplomat who famously said: “There is only one nation over here; the rest are tribes with flags.”

Fortunately, President Obama realizes that you cannot give credence to a border between Iraq and Syria. He says he will hammer ISIS in Syria. Go to it. (Unfortunately, this president seems not to recognize a border between the Mexico and the U.S., either.)

President Obama should have our support in going after ISIS. But we should not overlook the greater threat: IRAN. Everything ISIS has been doing, the Mullahs in Tehran did first.

The Mullahs introduced suicide bombing into the Muslim world in 1983. They used Hizb’allah to murder 241 U.S. Marines and Navy corpsmen in their bunks in Beirut. Many of these Americans were perforce beheaded by the force of that explosion. That was an act of war.

The Mullahs have attacked the U.S. directly. They kidnapped, tortured, and subjected to mock execute 52 Americans for 444 days. They seized and hold to this day our U.S. embassy in Tehran. These are acts of war.

The Mullahs have plotted a suicide bombing in Georgetown, in the District of Columbia.

The Mullahs murder children, as ISIS does. They sent thousands of little boys into Saddam Hussein’s minefields during the Iran-Iraq war. These lads had pathetic plastic keys around their necks, the keys to Paradise, these innocents were told. Any paradise so entered would be hell to the rest of humanity.

In August 1939, Albert Einstein’s letter about the possibility of Hitler developing an atomic bomb was hand-delivered to President Roosevelt in the White House. The president instantly moved upon this information. “Pa,” he said to General Watson, his military aide, “this requires action.”

President Roosevelt set in motion with those four words the largest scientific effort in world history to that point, the Manhattan Project. It produced six years later the first atomic weapons.

December 7, 1941 was a “day which will live in infamy” in FDR’s immortal words. President Roosevelt rallied a stricken nation to declare war on and defeat Japanese imperialism. But Roosevelt never forgot the greater danger.          

                                              
Ken Blackwell is a former U.S ambassador to the United Nations (1991-1993). Bob Morrison is a former Reagan administration official.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/it_depends_on_what_the_meaning_of_is_is.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamic State's financial independence poses quandary for its foes

by Reuters

Months before they took control of the Iraqi city of Mosul in June, Islamic State militants were already busy collecting money to finance their campaign of setting up a 7th century-style caliphate. 

 

Militant Islamist fighters parade on military vehicles along the streets of northern Raqqa province.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

 Sometimes they came pretending to buy things. Sometimes they texted, sometimes they called, but the message was always the same: "Give us money."

Months before they took control of the Iraqi city of Mosul in June, Islamic State militants were already busy collecting money to finance their campaign of setting up a 7th century-style caliphate.

The owner of a Mosul grocery store recounted how, when he hesitated to pay, militants exploded a bomb outside his shop as a warning. "If a person still refused, they kidnapped him and asked his family to pay ransom," he said.

The shopkeeper, who declined to be identified out of concern for his safety, said he had paid the militants $100 a month six or seven times this year.

In return, he was given a receipt that says: "Received from Mr. ...., the amount of ...., as support to the Mujahideen."

The shop keeper's tale illustrates how Islamic State has long been systematically collecting funds for a land grab that already includes a stretch of northern Iraq and Syria. Another Mosul worker corroborated the account of IS tactics.

"The tax system was well-organized. They took money from small merchants, petrol station owners, generator owners, small factories, big companies, even pharmacists and doctors," said the shop owner who, out of frustration and fear, closed his store and is now trying to make a living as a taxi driver.

Learning from their previous incarnation as the Islamic State of Iraq, when they received money from foreign fighters, Islamic State has almost weaned itself off private funds from sympathetic individual donors in the Gulf. Such money flows have come under increased scrutiny from the US Treasury.

Instead the group has formalized a system of internal financing that includes an Islamic form of taxation, looting and most significantly, oil sales, to run their 'state' effectively.

This suggests it will be harder to cut the group's access to the local funding that is fuelling its control of territory and strengthening its threat to the Middle East and the West.

Nevertheless, financing from Gulf donors may prove more critical in months to come, if US President Barack Obama's mission to "degrade and destroy" the group succeeds and the group loses territory and finds itself looking abroad for funds.

In the eastern Syrian city of Mayadin, an Islamic State supporter who goes by the name of Abu Hamza al-Masri, said the militants had set up checkpoints in the last few months demanding money from passing cars and trucks. The money purportedly goes into a 'zakat' or 'alms' fund, but Abu Hamza admitted some sums go to pay bonuses or salaries of fighters.

"Passengers are asked to open their wallets ... in some instances they are threatened at gunpoint if they resist," said another Syrian secular activist in Deir ez-Zor contacted by Reuters via Whatsapp.

But extortion is not Islamic State's top money-spinner.

Analysts and activists say the majority of the group's money comes from oil sales to local traders from wells under Islamic State control.

Luay Al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center who has done extensive research into Islamic State's oil smuggling, says the group now has access to five oilfields in Iraq, each of which have between 40 to 70 oil wells.

"They deal with a sophisticated network of middle men, some of whom are affiliated with the (Iraqi) oil companies. They have to pay various checkpoints to move around all these oil convoys and specifically to export the oil to Turkey," Khatteeb said.

"It is estimated that now, after recent territory losses, they can produce give or take 25,000 bpd, easily getting them about $1.2 million a day, on and off, even if they sell at a discount price of $25-$60 a barrel," Khatteeb said.

This volume of oil production would be on par with a small offshore field on the north slope of Alaska.

A high-level Iraqi security official put the number of oilfields under the group's control at four, with a fifth in contest between them and Kurdish peshmerga forces.

The group appears to have chosen areas of conquest carefully, with an eye to funding.

In the Syrian province of Raqqa, a stronghold of the group, the militants made sure they could effectively manage the area before moving on to conquer territory across the border in Iraq. They moved into Fallujah in Iraq's Anbar province in early 2014, before reaching Mosul in June, a major urban center.

"It's about controlling financial nodes. It's controlling commercial centres, it's controlling roads for checkpoints and there's no surprise in that, because there's significant value in that control. And the more finance you earn, the more you can develop. It's a reinforcing circuit," said Tom Keatinge, a finance and security analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

"There's no point in controlling acres of desert. You want to control the financial nodes so that you can continue to expand. You don't want to spread yourself too thin financially before you can operate effectively in an expanded area."

Documents from al-Qaida in Iraq captured by US forces near Iraq's Sinjar town in 2007 included reams of finance and expense reports, showing the group, a predecessor of Islamic State, "relied heavily on voluntary donations", says a 2008 report by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.

The report, "Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout", said the "financial reports and receipts in the Sinjar documents show that the Islamic State of Iraq relied on three sources of funding: transfers from other leaders in al-Qaida in Iraq, money foreign suicide bombers brought with them and fundraising from local Iraqis." The study said it was unclear from the documents whether the funds from locals were given voluntarily.

The bureaucratic obsession with accounting proved ironic - while it helped the group track funds, the documents, once in the hands of the US military, helped Washington understand how the financing worked - from the operatives who moved money, to the ones who donated money, to how the money was spent.

One lesson learned, the Sinjar documents show, was the need for more reliable financing, especially with countries trying harder to disrupt the flow of funds, Keatinge said.

"If you have a sophisticated understanding of financial management like Islamic State or al Shabaab in Somalia, you know very well that relying on diaspora or private donations or funds that can be disrupted by the international community is a risky way to go," said Keatinge.

By its own admission, Washington realizes funds from outside donors are not as significant a threat as their self-financing methods, but the United States and its allies have been slow to move to cut those sources off.

"(IS) receives some money from outside donors, but that pales in comparison to their self-funding through criminal and terrorist activities," a senior State Department official said.

Ransoms from kidnappings do not seem to compete with oil sales, and not much is reliably known about the amounts they have received. ABC News reported that one US hostage held by Islamic State is a 26-year-old female aid worker, for whom the group has demanded $6.6 million in ransom.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament he had no doubt that tens of millions of pounds of ransom payments were going to Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Focus, a German magazine said in April that France paid $18 million for the release of four French hostages who had been held by Islamic State, citing NATO sources in Brussels.

French officials say the French state does not pay ransoms.

Then there is crime. IS raided the central bank in Mosul and reportedly seized substantial sums of money, though the figures are disputed. The group apparently allows Iraqis in Mosul to withdraw 10 percent of their bank deposits and give 5 percent of the withdrawn amount, as zakat, or Islamic alms.

Kuwait has been one of the biggest humanitarian donors to Syrian refugees through the United Nations. It has also struggled to control unofficial fund-raising for opposition groups in Syria by private individuals.

Ahmed al-Sanee, head of charities in Kuwait's Social Affairs ministry, said recently there was "strict monitoring" of unlicensed donation collecting. Finance minister Anas al-Saleh said on Tuesday Kuwait was "committed to international efforts in fighting this terror".

"Whomever has been identified by the United Nations as a terrorist, we will be implementing our law on them," he said.

Washington has moved to cut off sources of private donations. Last month it imposed sanctions on three men it said funneled money from Kuwait to Islamic militant groups in Iraq and Syria. Kuwait briefly detained two of the men, both of whom are prominent clerics.

"If I were the Chief Financial Officer of IS or ISIS as it was then, I would be watching that development very closely. Because if I were receiving money from the Gulf states, at that point I for sure knew that it would get harder," said Keatinge.

In the end, squeezing the group's finances will involve a mixture of intelligence and force. Ending the group's control of a given area using military might would remove its ability to raise local taxes, for example. Tracking smuggling routes or Gulf donors, in contrast, would involve local informants.

Khatteeb, who is also the director of the Iraq Energy Institute, says Turkey must clamp down on oil smuggling routes through southern Turkey. This would dent a revenue stream Islamic State has used to fund a significant recruitment drive.

"Turkish authorities (need) to really pay attention in closing down these markets, put more work in intelligence and enforce the rule of law."

In an op-ed last month published in the New York Times Patrick Johnston and Benjamin Bahney of the RAND Corporation argued that strategies that focused on sanctioning international financial activities were unlikely to be effective.

The authors say that "the terrorist group's bookkeepers, its oil business and cash holdings" should be the targets of greater intelligence and scrutiny to help "disrupt ISIS's financing and provide additional intelligence on its inner workings."

Johnston told Reuters that even with the rapid expansion of Islamic State and its need to pay a larger number of recruits, the group could still make an estimated $100-$200 million surplus this year, given the amount of money it is making.

"They're making more money, they have less opposition militarily ... the question is what are they going to do with it?"


Reuters

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Islamic-States-financial-independence-poses-quandary-for-its-foes-375231

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Arnold Ahlert: The Obama DOJ’s Subversion of the IRS Investigation

by Arnold Ahlert


In a letter written to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), Issa reveals there was an attempt to coordinate media spin regarding the IRS investigation between the DOJ and the staff of the Committee’s Ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). How did Issa find out? A DOJ official in the Office of Public Affairs who thought he was calling Cummings’ office, mistakenly phoned Issa’s office instead.

“I write with serious concerns stemming from a telephone call my staff received late on Friday afternoon from the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) about the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants,” Issa states.

A senior OPA official—under the apparent mistaken belief he had called the staff of Ranking Member Elijah E. Cummings—asked if the Committee would release Committee documents to the media so that the Department could publicly comment on the material. I am extremely troubled by this attempt to improperly coordinate the release of Committee documents with the Minority staff. This effort to preemptively release incomplete and selectively chosen information undermines the Department’s claims that it is responding in good faith.

The senior OPA official to whom Issa refers is Brian Fallon, a former senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Although his name was not mentioned in the letter, he confirmed that he made the call, which took place last Friday at 5:01 p.m. EST. As Issa indicates, he believes Fallon thought he was talking to members of Rep. Elijah Cummings staff.

(Fallon) then asked the Committee employee if the Committee would agree to release the material to selected reporters and thereby allow the Department an opportunity to publicly comment on it.

The subject of the conversation was attorney Andrew Strelka, who is defending IRS commissioner John Koskinen in litigation initiated by the pro-Israel group Z Street. Prior to his job in the DOJ’s civil trial section, Strelka worked for Lois Lerner in the IRS’s Tax Exempt Organizations Division—where Z Street’s alleged mistreatment occurred. Documents indicate Strelka was kept in the loop about the IRS’s targeting practices.

The Committee wants to talk to Strelka about this apparent conflict of interest, but the DOJ has refused the request, prompting a Sept. 3 letter to Holder from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) accusing the DOJ of “conspiring with Mr. Strelka to prevent the American people from learning the truth.”

Issa spokesman Frederick Hill, who took Fallon’s call on a speaker phone in the presence of two other senior Committee employees, told him that Oversight Committee staffers would have to first examine the material—which is when Fallon apparently realized he was calling the office he was intending to undermine. After “abruptly” placing the call on hold for three minutes, an “audibly shaken” Fallon stated there would be a “change in plans,” with no effort to release the material early. Instead, the Department would “defer to the Chairman.”

Fallon then made an effort to cover his tracks, insisting that the reason for the call was to improve relations between the DOJ and Committee Republicans, who should “help one another.” When Fallon was subsequently asked if the material he had offered earlier would still be delivered Friday evening, he “attempted to walk back his earlier statement.”

Issa wasn’t buying any of it, noting that while communications are sometimes “erroneously shared,” he remains “disturbed to receive confirmation through this incident of apparently long-standing collaboration between the Obama Administration and Ranking Member Cummings’ staff to obfuscate and prejudice the Committee’s work through under-the-table communication.” Issa further insists that Fallon’s contention about improving relations with the Committee is “inconsistent” with the comments he made prior to putting the call on hold, and that it “strains credulity” to believe the DOJ would “seek to begin to improve relations via a telephone call between two individuals who had never spoken to each other before 5:01 p.m. on a Friday afternoon…”

In closing, Issa requested “a detailed explanation for each of the Department’s ex parte communications with the Minority Members or staff about Committee strategies for blocking and undermining oversight,” as well as “information about the number of times the Department has communicated with Minority staff to the exclusion of Majority staff.” Issa wants a DOJ response, “no later than Monday September 15, 2014.”

Those familiar with the stonewalling of the Holder-led DOJ know that such a request will likely be ignored. That reality was driven home once again on Tuesday when Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary. “The FBI and some other department components … have refused our requests for various types of documents. As a result, a number of our reviews have been significantly impeded,” he revealed.

And while Horowitz said he appreciated the efforts of Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole to intervene on behalf of the IG, such intervention is “inconsistent” with the “clear mandate” of the law and “compromises our independence.” Horowitz further noted that absent a resolution of the issue, “our struggles to access information relevant to our reviews in a timely manner continue to cause delays to our work and consume resources.”

That same day, Fallon dismissed Issa’s allegations in an interview with The Hill, claiming there was “nothing out of the ordinary” about his conversation with GOP Oversight Committee members. “There is nothing inappropriate about department staff having conversations with both the majority and minority staff as it prepares responses to formal inquiries,” Fallon said. “That includes conversations between the spokespeople for the department and the committee.”

An Oversight Democratic staffer dodged a question about whether Cummings had ever had a conversation with the DOJ as described by Issa, insisting that the Representative and his staff  “make their own independent decisions about when to release information to the public and do not improperly coordinate with any executive branch agency.”

That last bit is, quite simply, a lie. Last April emails released by the Oversight Committee revealed that Cummings and his staff communicated with the “executive branch agency” known as the IRS multiple times in 2012 and 2013, with regard to the conservative group True the Vote. The Committee documented communications between Cummings’ staffers and Lois Lerner—communications Cummings denied during a Subcommittee hearing the previous February. That would be the same Elijah Cummings who, despite being caught in a blatant lie, has labeled the ongoing investigation of the IRS as a “witch hunt,” and a waste of time and money.

On the same Friday Fallon made his call, the IRS revealed that emails from five other IRS workers involved in the investigation had also been lost. One of those workers was a senior aide to Lerner, and like the loss of her emails, the IRS blamed it on computer problems, further insisting there was no indication that any evidence had been deliberately destroyed. “To the contrary, the computer issues identified appear to be the same sorts of issues routinely experienced by employees within the IRS, in other government agencies and in the private sector,” the IRS said. “In addition, each of the five hard drive issues resulting in a probable loss of emails substantially predates the onset of the investigations in 2013.”

Thus the scandal with “not even a smidgeon of corruption” according to President Obama, takes another curious turn. Today the Democratically-controlled Senate is expected to release a report authored by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It will reportedly claim the 2013 report by J. Russell George, Treasury IG for Tax Administration concluding that conservative groups were targeted for additional scrutiny, is “unfair.” It will further allege the scandal amounts to nothing more than “mismanagement” by the IRS.

It’s going to be an uphill climb for Democrats. In a Fox poll taken in June, a whopping 76 percent of Americans, including 90 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of independents and 63 percent of Democrats said they believed that Lois Lerner’s emails were “deliberately destroyed” by the IRS. The gaffe committed by Fallon would be amusing were it not for the reality that it is yet another indication of the endemic corruption that infests the Obama administration, their Democrat colleagues and a willfully somnambulant mainstream media. All of them seemingly prefer to run interference for one of the most powerful agencies in government, than allow the truth, no matter how inconvenient, to come out.

Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may be reached at atahlert@comcast.net.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-obama-dojs-subversion-of-the-irs-investigation/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Malcolm Lowe: Evaluating Mahmoud Abbas - And How to Relate to Him

by Malcolm Lowe

Everything has now gone wrong for Abbas. The destruction in Gaza matches the destruction of the Second Intifada, precisely what Abbas deplored in respect of Arafat. Hamas exploited the formation of the unity government for a scheme to overthrow Abbas in the West Bank. Haniyeh is projected to defeat him by 61% to 32% in the upcoming election for the Palestinian presidency.
Israeli politicians who propose to renew peace negotiations, with Abbas or whomever, are advised to make two basic stipulations. First, that Israel will negotiate only with a Palestinian government that officially recognizes its obligation to demilitarize Gaza. Second, that no agreements can be signed until the Palestinians hold the projected elections for their parliament and presidency -- and the outcome is known.

The recent hostilities between Hamas and Israel have prompted various Israeli figures, in the governing coalition as well as in the opposition, to advocate an enhanced role for Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority [PA], in an eventual solution for Gaza. The implausibility of this idea has been pointed out elsewhere. What both the proponents and the critics of this idea have not asked, however, is a more fundamental question: To what extent was Abbas complicit in the aggression of Hamas?

For sure, Abbas did once criticize Hamas when the organization began to fire rockets at Israel early in July 2014. Hamas officials thereupon branded him "a criminal" and "a Likud member." From then on, Abbas denounced only Israel. Moreover, the envoys of his PA sought to mobilize international pressure to stop Israel from mounting a ground operation to destroy the tunnels that Hamas had built into Israeli territory. In the intermittent negotiations moderated by Egypt to establish a lasting ceasefire, the delegation from Abbas's Fatah faction endorsed all the preposterous demands made by Hamas upon Israel as a condition for ending hostilities.

Worse than that, Palestinian Media Watch has documented a stream of statements by Fatah officials that expressed identification with Hamas aggression. Criticism of Hamas did not emerge again until Hamas began to execute alleged collaborators without trial. Only then did Abbas aide Tayeb Abdel Rahim denounce Hamas for perpetrating "cold-blooded murders." With good reason: Hamas had confined known Fatah activists under house arrest and these would be obvious targets for summary execution.

When Abbas met Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas supremo, in Qatar during August 21-22, international speculation was that he would plead with Mashaal for a fresh ceasefire. Quite wrong. The meeting ended with a joint call to the United Nations for "a resolution that would define a timetable for the end of Israel's occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state." More significantly, the two leaders emphasized that the Palestinian unity government formed by Fatah and Hamas in June "represents all the Palestinian people and looks after their interests."

Best Frenemies? Mahmoud Abbas (r) meets with the Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal in Qatar, July 20, 2014. (Image source: Handout from the Palestinian Authority President's Office/Thaer Ghanem)

That is, this became a meeting of the founders of the unity government, in order to review developments and make further joint plans. It confirms that the decision of Abbas to form the unity government was the starting point for all subsequent developments. In order to evaluate Abbas's motives for taking that decision, let us recall three well-established facts about him.

First of all, he is Dr. Mahmoud Abbas, having in 1982 earned a doctorate in Moscow with a PhD dissertation denying the Holocaust, which was published as a book in 1984. Here he claimed that the Holocaust was a product of Nazi-Zionist collaboration aimed at driving Jews out of Europe into Mandatory Palestine. He also suggested that the number of Jewish victims may have been under a million, but that the Zionists inflated the figures in order to gain support for Israel. More recently he has made statements deploring the Holocaust as an "unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation," yet without repudiating his doctoral thesis.

Second, Abbas regarded Yasser Arafat's decision to launch the Second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000 as a ghastly mistake that inflicting great suffering on the Palestinian population without making significant political gains. But thirdly, Abbas and the Fatah movement in general have never differed from either Arafat or Hamas about the ultimate aim of Palestinian nationalism: the disappearance of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state in the whole area of Mandatory Palestine.

As explained elsewhere, all the Palestinian factions are agreed upon three fundamental "national issues": 1) Israel must withdraw to the lines preceding the Six Day War; 2) a Palestinian state must be created with Jerusalem as its capital; 3) all the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967, together with their millions of descendants, must be allowed to return to where they were living up to 1947. Of those three Palestinian "issues," the so-called "international community" is obviously sympathetic to the first two but does not take the third one seriously, regarding it as absurd.

For the Palestinians, on the other hand, the return of the refugees – which implies the creation of an Arab majority in Israel – is the most important issue. Hamas and its Islamist confederates long ago drew the conclusion that all peace negotiations with Israel are futile; at most an armed truce with Israel for a fixed period of time is permissible. Abbas and his Fatah faction did believe that negotiations with Israel could be useful if they led to a "two-state solution" in which the first two issues are decided in favor of the Palestinians, but without a Palestinian renunciation of the "right of return." That would enable the Palestinians to establish an internationally recognized state whose supreme aim would be to work for the return of the refugees, whether in international forums or by a return to violence.

The counter-strategy of the Netanyahu government was to demand that in a peace settlement the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a demand that implicitly excludes the Palestinian "right of return." By March 2014, Abbas realized that his strategy had failed. Previously, he had been using security collaboration with Israel to weaken Hamas, his chief rival. Now he chose the reverse tactic: by forming a Palestinian unity government supported by Hamas as well as Fatah, he hoped to use Hamas to weaken Israel to the point of succumbing to his demands.

This was a catastrophic miscalculation on the part of Abbas. Hamas had its own reasons for joining a unity government. Above all, Hamas had been made bankrupt by the Egyptian decision to eliminate the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, so it relied on the promise that the unity government would pay the long overdue salaries of its 40,000 civil servants. When that failed to happen, Hamas was left with nothing but its massive arsenal of weapons, to which it desperately resorted. For fifty days it mounted an attack upon Israel while proclaiming an absurd list of demands for a ceasefire, above all the payment of those salaries.

Everything has now gone wrong for Abbas. The destruction in Gaza matches the destruction of the Second Intifada, precisely what Abbas deplored in respect of Arafat. Furthermore, as the Israeli Security Service (Shin Bet) has discovered, Hamas exploited the formation of the unity government for a scheme to overthrow Abbas in the West Bank, while brutally injuring Fatah operatives in Gaza. Indeed, when Abbas was plotting further tactics against Israel with Mashaal in Qatar, he simultaneously moaned to the Emir of Qatar, the financial godfather of Hamas, about Mashaal's plots against himself.

Worst of all, an opinion poll shows that the Palestinian public -- in its characteristic mode of collective insanity -- accepts Hamas's claim of "victory" over Israel. Whereas until recently Abbas enjoyed clear superiority over Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh in opinion polls, now Haniyeh is projected to defeat him by 61% to 32% in the upcoming election for the Palestinian presidency. Remember that the agreement to form a unity government stipulated that fresh elections for both the Palestinian parliament and the presidency should take place within six months. The same poll ascribes even greater popularity to Haniyeh in the West Bank than in Gaza (66% versus 53%) and predicts that Haniyeh would also defeat the erstwhile Palestinian favorite, imprisoned terrorist murderer Marwan Barghouti.

In another misjudgment, Abbas finally opened his mouth to denounce Hamas's responsibility for the destruction of Gaza just days before that poll was published. That is, he was silent when the destruction could have been prevented, but chose to criticize it precisely when the broad Palestinian public had euphorically decided that it was a price worth paying.

Obviously, Abbas is a man whose policies have failed, who is out of touch with his own people, and who is due to be replaced -- probably by a Hamas candidate -- within months. Why should any Israeli vainly negotiate with him in these circumstances?

The answer is to be found in an article published by Gatestone Institute on June 13, before Hamas started its rocket campaign. In view of the formation of the Palestinian unity government on June 2, it was pointed out:

"The essential point that Israel needs to grasp, and to make understood internationally at every opportunity, is this: President Abbas will not become responsible for rockets in Gaza only when they are fired; he has made himself responsible for those rockets -- and for their elimination -- now. The new Palestinian government restores the rule of the PA to Gaza. So under its jurisdiction fall the rockets in Gaza and – for that matter – also the network of tunnels that Hamas has built with the aim of penetrating into Israel and kidnapping more Israelis."

The conclusion drawn was that any financial support from abroad for the unity government should be predicated on its agreement to eliminate the rockets and tunnels under international supervision, on the model of the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons. In other words, this was the first formulation of what is now called the "demilitarization of Gaza" – a recommendation made already weeks before the hostilities erupted. (The demand was repeated in articles published on June 24 and July 16.)

In mid-July, the demand was adopted by the Israeli government. It was subsequently endorsed by two meetings of the foreign ministers of the European Union and by the U.S. President, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense in various statements.

Unfortunately, their statements have mostly taken the form of demanding the disarmament of all the terrorist groups in Gaza, but without explicitly saying who should be responsible for doing it. Regarding Syria, the demand was pinned upon its President Assad, who was told to expect very unpleasant consequences if he rejected it. Therefore, in the present instance the demand should be imposed upon the Palestinian unity government. Moreover, neither the EU nor the US needs to commit a single soldier or airplane to imposing that demand: they can -- as was pointed out in the recent Gatestone articles -- promise unpleasant consequences by threatening to suspend financial support for the Palestinian government.

Israel, as it happens, has already embarked in this direction by withholding money from the tax revenues that it collects and passes on to the Palestinian Authority, ostensibly to cover unpaid bills to Israeli utilities. Israel just has to hint that this will continue until the Palestinian government acknowledges its obligation to demilitarize Gaza.

This is all the more urgent, since the Palestinian government has now recommitted itself to paying the 40,000 Hamas officials in Gaza in addition to the 70,000 PA officials who have been receiving salaries in Gaza since 2007 without actually working. In other words, the proposal is to pay 110,000 employees for the work that is currently done by 40,000 – and this out of a Palestinian budget that is already (as usual) in deep deficit.

As for Israeli politicians who propose to renew peace negotiations, with Abbas or whomever, they are advised to make two basic stipulations. First, that Israel will negotiate only with a Palestinian government that officially recognizes its obligation to demilitarize Gaza. Second, that no agreements can be signed until the Palestinians hold the projected elections for their parliament and presidency -- and the outcome is known.

All the above might also deflate the Palestinian public's delusions of victory. Palestinians will sober up only when they grasp that they reduced Gaza to ruins in vain and that without disarmament they will just have to live in those ruins. To allow them reconstruction before that will merely encourage fresh outbreaks of militant folly.


Malcolm Lowe

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4679/evaluating-mahmoud-abbas

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Matthew Vadum : Patriots Vow to Fight on for Benghazi Answers

by Matthew Vadum


Questions about the Obama administration’s decision to let helpless Americans die in the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya two years ago won’t go away anytime soon. 

But that won’t stop former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who desperately wants to be the next president, from trying to make the whole Benghazi episode that happened under her watch go away. So far the Clinton operation isn’t working.

Charles Woods, father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who died trying to fend off the Islamist attack, said he can’t understand why the Obama administration won’t answer even the most basic questions about what happened in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

“When a mission is compromised, the warriors, they know they will be extracted,” said Woods, who was also a Navy SEAL himself. “During all of the hours that this attack happened, there was no attempt made to rescue.”

The Obama administration’s refusal to launch such a rescue mission stands in stark contrast to its willingness to swap Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier who defected to the Taliban in Afghanistan, for five members of the terrorist high command. The White House and Secretary of State John Kerry justify the cynical Bergdahl transaction by loudly proclaiming that it is U.S. policy never to leave a man behind.

But to President Obama, it is standing policy to leave Americans to their doom when a rescue mission interferes with reelection plans. At the time of the attack, the Obama White House made a conscious, calculated decision to let American officials perish overseas, fully expecting the incurious pro-Obama media to ignore what really happened.

In the midst of a heated reelection campaign, Obama had claimed al-Qaeda was decimated and on the verge of annihilation. When it turned out the terrorist organization was doing just fine, he decided to scapegoat a YouTube video instead of admitting that al-Qaeda was roaring back, stronger than ever, under his watch.

For two weeks after the attack the Obama administration said over and over again that the incident in Benghazi was inspired by a low-quality anti-Islam video on YouTube. The American resident who made the video that virtually no one watched was jailed on the thinnest of legal pretexts after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed to grieving relatives over the flag-draped remains of the four dead men to get the video maker she claimed caused the attacks. White House adviser Susan Rice went on TV to back up the administration’s lie that the assault was related to a video. Eventually the administration acknowledged it was a terrorist attack.

During the attack, U.S. forces were in place in nearby Sicily, an hour or so away by air, but the order to fly to Benghazi in an attempt to rescue the besieged staff at the complex never came. That order was never issued by President Obama, because he knew it would reveal his policy of appeasement towards Islamic totalitarians to be in shambles as the Middle East and North Africa fell into the hands of America’s enemies.

“We still do not have the answers we need — the truthful answers we need as to why these American heroes were left to die,” Woods said at a press conference yesterday just outside the U.S. Capitol.

Today is the second anniversary of the election-season terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The White House has been stonewalling ever since the attack started in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, first advancing the false narrative that the assault had something to do with an anti-Islam video nobody saw. After the lie that incensed locals spontaneously came together to hit the consulate fell apart, the Obama administration has been blame-shifting furiously.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said the controversy won’t go away till answers are forthcoming.

“Now some are tempted to ask, ‘What difference at this point does it make,’” Gohmert said, echoing the infamous comment uttered by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she attempted to deflect responsibility for the deaths of four Americans killed during the Benghazi attack.

“And the answer should come swift and clear anytime it’s asked, because until we know what happened, we can’t avoid the same mistakes in the future,” he said.

The Obama administration “is following the example that was learned in the Clinton years, that if you keep refusing to provide documents, keep refusing to give answers, then eventually you can get to the point where you can say that’s old news,” Gohmert said.

“And the mainstream media can sometimes be compliant and say ‘Well it is old news,’” he said. “Well, it’s not old news because we still don’t have the answers.”

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said internal State Department documents have surfaced that show that three months before the Benghazi attack security guards were fleeing their posts “out of fear of their safety.” Those documents consisted of emails obtained by Judicial Watch under the the Freedom of Information Act, which is “at this time, is the best way to get information out of this administration — an administration that is committed to secrecy and stonewalling on something that would have taken down previous administrations,” Fitton said. “Which is the lying by a president and his officials, to protect his reelection, about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans.”

In an exclusive interview with FrontPage magazine after the press conference, Fitton said the narrative invented by White House aide Ben Rhodes after the attack “was used to guide [Ambassador] Susan Rice in her appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows” after Sept. 11, 2012.

The Rhodes narrative was crafted to make the president look good, not to provide an honest accounting of what happened in Benghazi, Fitton said.

“But other emails also released along with the Rhodes email show as the attack was happening, the State Department, presumably Susan Rice and people around her, were getting real-time information, they were concerned about a kidnapping, there was talk of an attack, no talk of demonstrations, no talk of videos.”

“It was what it was, which was an attack,” he said. The government had intelligence at the time that someone using the ambassador’s phone, issued by the State Department security operation, who was calling from the hospital saying that Stevens was alive and well.”

If the ambassador was alive and well at the hospital, why wasn’t an attempt made to rescue him, Fitton asked rhetorically.

“That piece of information is as outrageous as anything else we found, including the Rhodes email, because it showed the State Department had intelligence the ambassador was alive and nothing was done to rescue him we now know.”

And the American people still don’t know what Chris Stevens was doing in Benghazi, helpless and far away from his home base in the capital city of Tripoli.

One plausible theory is that Stevens may have been overseeing some kind of covert Obama-authorized weapon-smuggling operation in Libya.

Stevens was “gun-running to jihadists,” investigative reporter Aaron Klein told radio host Michael Savage yesterday. Klein is author of the soon-to-be-released book,The Real Benghazi Story: What the White House and Hillary Don’t Want You To Know.

How Stevens died remains a mystery. Although last month the Obama administration rushed to order a completely superfluous federal autopsy on the body of teenaged hoodlum Michael Brown that added nothing new to what was known about how the Ferguson, Mo.-based cop-attacker died, the Obama administration hasn’t released autopsy results for Stevens.

Like the deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, the ambassador was savagely sexually abused and murdered by adherents of the so-called religion of peace, according to news reports at the time that the Obama administration has not refuted.

Whether Americans will ever find out the truth while President Obama remains in power remains an open question.


Matthew Vadum is an award-winning investigative reporter and the author of the book, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers."

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/patriots-vow-to-find-benghazi-answers/

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Michael Curtis: Prevailing over the Islamic State

by Michael Curtis

What’s in a name?  That which we call ISIS by any other name would smell as foul.

It is puzzling that President Barack Obama has preferred the appellation "ISIL."  It does make a difference.  The variously named terrorist group began in 2003-4 as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), after the invasion of Iraq by the U.S.  Its original leader was killed in an air strike in 2006, and he was succeeded in 2010 by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  A new name, ISIS, was adopted in April 2013, reflecting what was supposed to be the merger of AQI with the Syrian based al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front.  A break between the two groups took place a few months later.  

Translating Arab phrases into English has its pitfalls, but it is generally agreed that ISIS means the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Syria).  Most commentators used this definition.  However, President Obama on numerous occasions, especially his speech at West Point on June 19, 2014, has referred to the group as ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).  There is an obvious political reason why he prefers “the Levant” to “Syria.”

Obama’s use of the term “Levant” is surprising in view of its wide ramifications.  The word, used by English speakers to refer to the Eastern Mediterranean and nearby islands, is less used than it once was for referring to the politics and societies of Middle East systems.  Though precise definitions have varied, "Levant" usually implies an area from the border of south Turkey to Egypt, including Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Palestinian-controlled territories, and Cyprus.  The terrorists are concerned with this area.

Both ISIS and ISIL are less meaningful or irrelevant since in June 2014 the group’s name was changed to “the Islamic State” (IS).  This reflected its territorial conquests in Mosul, Tikrit, and other areas of northern Iraq.  At the moment, the Islamic State controls areas, about 12,000 square miles (the size of Belgium or the state of Maryland), in west Iraq and in north and east Syria.  About eight million Iraqis and Syrians live in areas it controls.  It is the richest terrorist organization in the world.  Its resources come from a variety of sources, including oil sales from the oil and gas fields it controls, criminal activities such as robbing banks, intimidating businesses or blackmail or racketeering, getting protection money from non-Muslim groups, genuine business transactions, and collecting ransoms for release of kidnapped or captured Westerners.  Its army numbers at least 10,000 militants.

All this and its belligerent formal statements make the Islamic State the greatest threat to peace in the world.  Its leader, al-Baghdadi, has made himself the Islamic caliph of the new entity.  There is no secret about the nature and intentions of the State.  It says that the sun of jihad has risen from Aleppo to Diyala.  Muslims must gather around the caliph so that they may return to what they once had been for ages, the kings of the earth and knights of war.
In ominous words, the world is informed that the legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations will become null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority and the arrival of its troops into their areas.  One can therefore expect that the caliphate will extend not only over the whole of the Middle East, but also to Spain.  With extravagant ambition, it may extend to the whole world.

Western countries and Middle East states have all now recognized that the Islamic State is a formidable, ruthless foe, with its universal ambitions and strong military force enhanced by its captured equipment such as U.S. Humvees and Russian T-55 tanks.  The Middle East states finally appreciate the problem.  For some time President Assad, wanting to defeat and eliminate the Free Syrian Army opposing him, did not challenge ISIS and even supported it to some extent.  Thus, Assad aided the growth and success of ISIS, which, in return, captured territory from the FSA and imposed its rule on the area.  Finally, the Assad regime is more willing to act against the major threat and has carried out a number of airstrikes against some of IS's headquarters.  Similarly, Arab states and wealthy Sunni individuals in the Gulf area have substantially reduced if not totally ended any funding to the IS. 

That flow of money from the Arab states must be ended.  They know that their regimes are in danger from IS.

The Obama administration, if belatedly, understood the threat, and carried out airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq.  Yet Obama has been unwilling, so far, to carry out similar strikes against the ISIS positions in Syria.  Even if one does not see or admit that Iraq and Syria are failed states, no real border exists between them.  Politically, one can understand that for the United States, Syria is a more complex problem than is Iraq.  Nevertheless, the argument for striking Syria is as good as for striking Iraq.  Does Obama need congressional approval for action in Syria?  Though the legal position is not altogether clear, the U.S. Authorization Act of 2011, which authorizes funding for the defense of the U.S. and its interests abroad, would justify the decision of Obama and Congress to use military force there, as it has been used in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

The United States perforce has to lead the fight against the Islamist threat.  It has to go beyond humanitarian relief operations and protecting the 1,200 U.S. personnel in Iraq.  It is almost certain to undertake more airstrikes against the IS command centers, supply lines, and bases, and strikes that will help the Iraqi forces.  One can envisage action by Special Operations Forces, training, intelligence, and giving military weapons to the Kurds, and to Syrians, both the Assad regime and some of his moderate opponents.

It appears that a coalition formed by the U.S. of at least nine countries is in formation to counter the IS threat.  It is disconcerting that no Arab state has yet joined that coalition.  Nor have the Sunni tribes in Iraq, some of which supported ISIS because of their resentment against the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, joined the coalition.

In all of his speeches, President Obama has made clear that U.S. action will not be unilateral.  Now, in spite of difficult political problems, the U.S. must help in forging alliances among improbable and sometimes formerly feuding associates, be they Arab Gulf States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kurds, and even Iran, and lead in the most urgent fight today – that of Islamist extremism.  It is not a simple task, but it is an essential one.

Michael Curtis

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/prevailing_over_the_islamic_state.html

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Arnold Ahlert: Terrorist Recruiters in America

by Arnold Ahlert


A federal grand jury investigation going on all summer in St. Paul, Minnesota has been focused on a group of 20-30 Somali-Americans allegedly conspiring to join the fight with ISIS in Syria. Most of the youths being investigated have been going to the Al Farooq Youth and Family Center and mosque in Bloomington, where sources told the Star Tribune that 31-year-old Amir Meshal, an American of Egyptian descent, may have influenced them to join the jihadist movement.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been aware of Meshal for quite some time. The native New Jerseyan was detained and interrogated by the agency in 2007 in Kenya, following his escape from Somalia. Meshal admits he attended a terrorist training camp in Somalia, but insists he isn’t a terrorist, claiming he went to that war-torn nation to enrich his study of Islam.

A 2009 lawsuit filed by the ACLU on his behalf alleged that after being arrested in a joint U.S.-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation along the Somalia-Kenyan border, Meshal was transferred between jails in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia without ever being charged or having access to counsel. During that time he was allegedly interrogated by two Supervising Special Agents of the FBI more than 30 times, during which he said he was repeatedly threatened with “torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm” in order to coerce a confession. He was ultimately brought back to the United States and released without being charged.

Despite the ACLU’s contention that Meshal’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were violated, along with the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, the case was dismissed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on June 13. Despite buying the government’s argument that national security considerations abroad preclude judicial remedies for the mistreatment Meshal allegedly endured, Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, was distressed by the decision. “The facts alleged in this case and the legal questions presented are deeply troubling,” he contended, before conceding his hands were tied. “Although Congress has legislated with respect to detainee rights, it has provided no civil remedies for US citizens subject to the appalling mistreatment Mr. Meshal has alleged against officials of his own government.”

This past summer, Meshal began occasionally showing up at the Al Farooq Youth and Family Center, where hundreds of Muslims show up for prayer on Fridays at one of the largest mosques in the Twin Cities. He was known for having lots of money and driving a fancy BMW. In June, a parent at the center complained about Meshal promoting radical Islam. That aroused the suspicion of mosque director Hyder Aziz, who was so concerned about Meshal’s intentions he went to the police that same month and obtained a no-trespass order. “I made a decision that he needs to be removed from the premises,” Aziz said. “I will call police if he ever shows up and they will arrest him.”

It may be too late. Federal authorities believe that at least a dozen Somali men and three women have traveled to the Middle East to join in jihad directly, or aid the terrorists in some capacity, including two people who attended Al Farooq and disappeared, presumably to Syria. One is a 19-year-old Somali woman from St. Paul who was not identified. The other is 20-year-old Abdi Mohamed Nur who played basketball at the center and attended the Bloomington mosque. He disappeared around the same time the no trespass order against Meshal was issued.

In June the FBI prevented another teen from boarding a plane at the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport because they believed his final destination was Syria. He had been dropped off at school by his father, after which he allegedly changed clothes and headed to the airport with a suitcase. When the FBI arrested him they made it clear to his family they were less interested in him than who recruited him.

Yet as the grand jury investigation has revealed, the level of distrust among members of the community is impeding the investigation. “The relationship between our community and law enforcement has been, at times, very tense and full of suspicion,” said Omar Jamal, director of the St. Paul-based nonprofit American Friends of Somalia. “We’re improving, but we’re not there yet. Both sides are coming to realize that in order to stop these recruitments, we have to work together. One side can’t accomplish the task without the other.”

Nonetheless, many of those who have been subpoenaed are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to answer questions.

Hashi Shafi, director of the Somali Action Alliance in Minneapolis, claims many people want to speak, but are “scared.” Yet Shafi and other community leaders are urging families who have lost children to jihad recruitment to speak up. “We are the victims of this violent extremism so we have to stand up and lead these kinds of efforts,” he explained.

In the meantime, Meshal himself remains at large. The 18-year-old youth stopped at the airport in June has accused him of being his recruiter. The youth’s attorney upped the ante, accusing Meshal of being a double-agent for the FBI and ISIS. The lawsuit filed by the ACLU provides some insight into the accusation: Meshal claimed the FBI tried to turn him into a government informant, taking him off the government’s no-fly list if he cooperated. And while the youth’s lawyer is sticking with that assertion, the teen himself will not testify against Meshal unless he is granted immunity.

Last month two Americans from Minnesota, Douglas McCain and Abdirahmaan Muhumed, aka Abdifatah Ahmed, were killed fighting for ISIS. In a shocking revelation that underscores America’s continuing vulnerability to terror attacks, the Metropolitan Airports Commission conceded that Ahmed held a Secure Identification Display Area (SIDA) security badge, granting him airport security clearance and unfettered access to the tarmac and planes to perform his job as an aircraft fueler and cleaner. He performed the jobs intermittently between 2001 and 2011.

Shafi and other area leaders are apparently committed to rooting out the extremism afflicting their community. They have begun holding meetings with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department and Department of Homeland Security’s civil liberties division. An additional meeting is being planned with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and airport administrators. U.S. Attorney Andy Luger is also meeting with local imams on a regular basis “to develop strong personal and professional relationships with leaders in the Somali community,” in an effort to stop those “who seek to recruit Somali and other youth into a life of crime, violence and terror.”

Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann will introduce legislation aimed at preventing any citizen who goes overseas to engage in jihad from returning to America. “In my opinion, they should lose their American citizenship,” she explained. “Because at that point, you have turned against the United States. ISIS has declared the United States as their enemy. Once you join an enemy army … you should, by definition, lose your American citizenship, therefore your passport. You should have no ability to get back into the United States.”

All of these efforts are well-intended and may also be effective—up to a point. “For some, terrifyingly, the jihad has become a badge of radical chic,” writes journalist Alex Massie. “A lifestyle choice like any other.”

It is doubtful that the Obama administration is up to the task of deterring people from this lifestyle. Obama’s newfound commitment to take seriously the threat of ISIS has a troubling backdrop — namely, the administration’s ongoing determination to avoid identifying the threat as Islamic terror, Obama’s initial dismissal of ISIS as a “javee” organization, and a 2012 purge of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Analytic Lexicon, eliminating the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” “Muslim Brotherhood,” “Hamas,” and “sharia” in the process.

Absent a radical change of direction by this president and his administration, America will remain fertile ground for terrorist recruiters and their willing followers. Amir Meshal is ostensibly one of them. It is virtually certain there are many more.

Arnold Ahlert

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/terrorist-recruiters-in-america/

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