Religion of Peace?: Another Islamic Terrorist Stabbing in London

Here we go again. But, first the video made after the London police killed the terrorist:

Via BBC:

Quote:

A man has been shot dead by police in south London after he attacked people on a busy high street.

The man was under active police surveillance at the time of the attack, which police believe to be an Islamist-related terrorist incident.

He had a hoax device strapped to his body, police said. Three people were injured, with one person in a life-threatening condition.

Gunshots were heard on Streatham High Road just after 14:00 GMT on Sunday.

Reports suggest a man entered a shop and started stabbing people. It appears he then left the shop and stabbed a woman.

Witnesses reported hearing three gun shots and seeing a man lying on the ground, as armed police approached.

The BBC’s Daniel Sandford said the events appeared to unfold after witnesses saw an unmarked police car pull in front of another car near Streatham Common, forcing it to stop.

He said this could be linked to the subsequent stabbings and police shooting and it was possible somebody was stopped, before being followed by undercover officers.

[….]

Eyewitness Emma, from Streatham, told the BBC she saw an injured woman lying in the street.

She said she was told by another woman that an attacker had pulled out a knife in a shop before leaving and stabbing the woman.

Another eyewitness saw the shooting of the man take place in front of Boots pharmacy.

“I was crossing the road when I saw a man with a machete and silver canisters on his chest being chased by what I assume was an undercover police officer,” he told the PA news agency.

“The man was then shot. I heard three gunshots.”

Karker Tahir said he then saw police approach the man, before telling people nearby to move back in case a bomb went off.

More video:

If anyone, including President Trump, thinks that the War on Terror is over, you’re fooling yourselves. It’s still here and it will never end.

Others:

One America News Network, NPR, Breitbart and The Daily Beast, NBC

GOP and Dem Senators introduce bill to force a vote on selling arms to the Saudi’s

I am with The American Conservative on this one, it is about time. For years, the United States has been fighting Al-Qaeda and ISIS, all the while ignoring the fact that these terrorists are in fact Saudi’s and Sunni Muslims.

Via NBC News:

WASHINGTON — Two senators plan to introduce a bill Monday designed to force a vote on current and future U.S. arms sales and other military support to Saudi Arabia, saying it was time lawmakers checked President Donald Trump’s attempts to bypass Congress on foreign policy.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who both sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, marks the latest counterpunch by lawmakers who strongly oppose selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and who are outraged at the Trump administration’s recent decision to sidestep Congress on an arms deal worth billions of dollars.

“The process we are setting in motion will allow Congress to weigh in on the totality of our security relationship with Saudi Arabia, not just one arms sale, and restore Congress’s role in foreign policy-making,” Murphy said in a statement.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators, including Murphy and Young, proposed nearly two dozen resolutions that would require votes on each of the arms sales that make up the $8.1 billion weapons package to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan announced by the Trump administration on May 24. By law, arm sales require congressional approval but the Trump administration avoided any review by lawmakers for the controversial deal by declaring a national security “emergency,” citing the threat posed by Iran.

Daniel Larson at the American Conservative writes:

Murphy and Young have been two of the most consistent and active opponents of our government’s despicable Yemen policy, and they have been fighting to reassert Congress’ role in matters of war for the last several years. Young, a Republican from Indiana, has been one of a handful of senators from his party to break ranks with the administration and vote to end U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen. It is encouraging to see many members of Congress are standing up against executive overreach and abuse of power. The Murphy-Young legislation is just the latest example of how the president’s obnoxious subservience to the Saudis and the UAE has provoked growing dissatisfaction and resistance among our representatives in Washington. Murphy and Young’s bill complements the bipartisan effort to stop Trump’s bogus arms sale “emergency,” and it goes beyond that…

[…]

Congress should use every tool available to it to challenge the administration’s unconditional support for the Saudis. Each time they succeed in passing new measures against arms sales and the war on Yemen, they increase the number of people in Congress and the public willing to speak out and criticize the noxious U.S.-Saudi relationship. Thanks to the Trump administration’s contempt for Congress and the Constitution and their equally strong enthusiasm for the Saudi government, that relationship is in worse shape than it has been in decades, and there is a large and growing backlash against our government’s continued backing for the Saudis and their crimes.

Agreed. If we are going to hold Iran accountable, we should hold the rest of the Arab world accountable as well and this includes the Saudi Government as well. Good to see that both sides are coming together, if just for this one issue.

Video: Tucker Carlson says, “War with Iran will end Trump’s Presidency”

Looks like me and Tucker Carlson think much alike.

Tucker is right, if we move against Iran, it’s over for Trump and possibly even America.

The Neocons in the Trump Administration are steering America into another war

This also includes the Saudi Government as well. I say this, because of this piece of news here, via YNetNews.com:

A state-aligned Saudi newspaper is calling for “surgical” U.S. strikes in retaliation against alleged threats from Iran.

The Arab News published an editorial in English on Thursday, arguing that after incidents this week against Saudi energy targets, the next logical step “should be surgical strikes.”

The editorial says U.S. airstrikes in Syria, when the government there was suspected of using chemical weapons against civilians, “set a precedent.”

It added that it’s “clear that (U.S.) sanctions are not sending the right message” and that “they must be hit hard,” in reference to Iran, without elaborating on what specific targets should be struck.

The newspaper’s publisher is the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, a company that had long been chaired by various sons of King Salman until 2014 and is regarded as reflecting official position.

It seems that John Bolton is behind much of this:

Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton wants the United States to go to war with Iran.

We know this because he has been saying it for nearlytwodecades.

And everything that the Trump administration has done over its Iran policy, particularly since Bolton became Trump’s top foreign policy adviser in April of 2018, must be viewed through this lens, including the alarming US military posturing in the Middle East of the past two weeks.

Just after one month on the job, Bolton gave Trump the final push he needed to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, which at the time was (and still is, for now) successfully boxing in Iran’s nuclear program and blocking all pathways for Iran to build a bomb. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – as the Iran deal is formally known – was the biggest obstacle to Bolton’s drive for a regime change war, because it eliminated a helpful pretext that served so useful to sell the war in Iraq 17 years ago.

Since walking away from the deal, the Trump administration has claimed that with a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, it can achieve a “better deal” that magically turns Iran into a Jeffersonian democracy bowing to every and any American wish. But this has always been a fantastically bad-faith argument meant to obscure the actual goal (regime change) and provide cover for the incremental steps – the crushing sanctions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonizing military maneuvers – that have now put the United States closer to war with Iran than it has been since at least the latter half of the Bush administration, or perhaps ever.

And Bolton has no qualms about manipulating or outright ignoring intelligence to advance his agenda, which is exactly what’s happening right now.

In his White House statement 10 days ago announcing (an already pre-planned) carrier and bomber deployment to the Middle East, Bolton cited “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran to justify the bolstered US military presence. But multiple sources who have seen the same intelligence have since said that Bolton and the Trump administration blew it “out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was”. Even a British general operating in the region pushed back this week, saying he has seen no evidence of an increased Iranian threat.

Pat Buchanan observes:

After Venezuela’s army decided not to rise up and overthrow Nicholas Maduro, by Sunday night, it was Iran that was in our gun sights.

Bolton ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln, its carrier battle group and a bomber force to the Mideast “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

What “attack” was Bolton talking about?

According to Axios, Israel had alerted Bolton that an Iranian strike on U.S. interests in Iraq was imminent.

Flying to Finland, Pompeo echoed Bolton’s warning:

“We’ve seen escalatory actions from the Iranians, and … we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests. … (If) these actions take place, if they do by some third-party proxy, whether that’s a Shia militia group or the Houthis or Hezbollah, we will hold the … Iranian leadership directly accountable for that.”

Taken together, the Bolton-Pompeo threats add up to an ultimatum that any attack by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, or Iran-backed militias — on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria or the Gulf states — will bring a U.S. retaliatory response on Iran itself.

Did President Donald Trump approve of this? For he appears to be going along. He has pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions. Last week, he canceled waivers he had given eight nations to let them continue buying Iranian oil.

Purpose: Reduce Iran’s oil exports, 40% of GDP, to zero, to deepen an economic crisis that is already expected to cut Iran’s GDP this year by 6%.

Trump has also designated Iran a terrorist state and the Republican Guard a terrorist organization, the first time we have done that with the armed forces of a foreign nation. We don’t even do that with North Korea.

Iran responded last Tuesday by naming the U.S. a state sponsor of terror and designating U.S. forces in the Middle East as terrorists.

[…]

Today, Trump’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll has reached an all-time high, 46%, a level surely related to the astonishing performance of the U.S. economy following Trump’s tax cuts and sweeping deregulation.

While a Gulf war with Iran might be popular at the outset, what would it do for the U.S. economy or our ability to exit the forever war of the Middle East, as Trump has pledged to do?

In late April, in an interview with Fox News, Iran’s foreign minister identified those he believes truly want a U.S.-Iranian war.

Asked if Trump was seeking the confrontation and the “regime change” that Bolton championed before becoming his national security adviser, Mohammad Javad Zarif said no. “I do not believe President Trump wants to do that. I believe President Trump ran on a campaign promise of not bringing the United States into another war.

“President Trump himself has said that the U.S. spent $7 trillion in our region … and the only outcome of that was that we have more terror, we have more insecurity, and we have more instability.

“People in our region are making the determination that the presence of the United States is inherently destabilizing. I think President Trump agrees with that.”

But if it is not Trump pushing for confrontation and war with Iran, who is?

Said Zarif, “I believe ‘the B-team’ wants to actually push the United States, lure President Trump, into a confrontation that he doesn’t want.”

And who makes up “the B-team”?

Zarif identifies them: Bolton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.

Should the B-team succeed in its ambitions — it will be Trump’s war, and Trump’s presidency will pay the price.

Buchanan also writes:

After an exhausting two weeks, one is tempted to ask: How many quarrels, clashes and conflicts can even a superpower manage at one time? And is it not time for the United States, preoccupied with so many crises, to begin asking, “Why is this our problem?”

Perhaps the most serious issue is North Korea’s quest for nuclear-armed missiles that can reach the United States. But the reason Kim is developing missiles that can strike Seattle or LA is that 28,000 U.S. troops are in South Korea, committed to attack the North should war break out. That treaty commitment dates to a Korean War that ended in an armed truce 66 years ago.

If we cannot persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons in return for a lifting of sanctions, perhaps we should pull U.S. forces off the peninsula and let China deal with the possible acquisition of their own nuclear weapons by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Iran has no nukes or ICBMs. It wants no war with us. It does not threaten us. Why is Iran then our problem to solve rather than a problem for Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the Sunni Arabs?

Nor does Russia’s annexation of Crimea threaten us. When Ronald Reagan strolled through Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988, all of Ukraine was ruled by Moscow.

The Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro was established decades ago by his mentor, Hugo Chavez. When did that regime become so grave a threat that the U.S. should consider an invasion to remove it?

During the uprising in Caracas, Bolton cited the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. But according to President James Monroe, and Mike Pompeo’s predecessor John Quincy Adams, who wrote the message to Congress, under the Doctrine, while European powers were to keep their hands off our hemisphere — we would reciprocate and stay out of Europe’s quarrels and wars.

Wise folks, those Founding Fathers.

Bolton must go, if Trump wants to remain President. because those who elected him, who do not subscribe to the neocon foreign policy doctrine, will vote for someone else or not at all.

 

God Bless Shepard Smith at Fox News Channel

For this gem of a smack down of Donald Trump: (H/T to Mediaite)

https://youtu.be/weHjxfa4bvA

Shepard Smith is correct, we need NATO, no matter what people like Pat Buchanan might say.

Latest US Spying incident exposes the hypocrisy of the neocon right

The neocon right is having a hissy fit about this story here, which is behind a paywall, of course. So, I really cannot quote it.

However, I just laugh when I see stories like this; because it proves what I happen to know about the neocon right; is that they are just straight up hypocrites, when it comes to Israel.

I mean, are these not the same people who think that we should be spying on every last mosque in America? Are these not the same people who happen to think that if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about, when it comes to America spying on its own people?

The truth is Obama was spying on Israel and zionist members of Congress to see if there were any actual attempts to undermine the Iranian deal. Now, for the record, I have commented on that said deal and my feeling is that it stinks. However, what I think stinks worse, are that the neocons, in their blind hatred of this President, are not above trying to sabotage a deal with Iran, by leaking info to Israel for purposes of propaganda.

By the way, that deal; which I still do not think much of…. might actually be working:

 WASHINGTON — A ship carrying more than 25,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium materials left Iran for Russia on Monday in a step toward honoring Iran’s July 14 nuclear deal with major powers, the United States said.

Under the landmark nuclear accord, certain U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions are to be removed in exchange for Iran accepting long-term curbs on a nuclear program that the West has long suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.

A key provision of the agreement — negotiated by Iran with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany — is Tehran’s commitment to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to below 660 pounds (300 kg).

If much further refined, low-enriched uranium can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons.

“The shipment included the removal of all of Iran’s nuclear material enriched to 20 percent that was not already in the form of fabricated fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a written statement.

“This removal of all this enriched material out of Iran is a significant step toward Iran meeting its commitment to have no more than 300 kg of low-enriched uranium by Implementation Day,” Kerry added.

Implementation Day refers to the date when the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, confirms Iran has taken a series of steps to curb its nuclear program, paving the way to U.S., EU and U.N. sanctions relief.

Kerry said the low-enriched uranium shipment would more than triple Iran’s “breakout time” of an estimated two-to-three months. “Breakout time” refers to the amount of time needed to obtain enough nuclear material to make a single atomic bomb.

With full implementation, the nuclear deal is supposed to push Iran’s breakout time to at least one year.

Now, while I think it is great that the deal is working, maybe. I do not believe that we should just blindly trust Iran, here is an example as to why. Via Fox News:

The Video:

The Story:

Despite the Obama administration touting its Iran nuclear deal as a triumph of diplomacy that finally thaws a four-decade freeze, Tehran appears to be doing all it can to keep the flames of confrontation burning.

The latest challenge was a missile launch over the weekend less than a mile from a U.S. aircraft carrier — which came on the heels of two other similar incidents, two ballistic missile tests, and the harsh treatment of American prisoners including a Washington Post journalist.

These provocations, with the country potentially weeks away from receiving billions in sanctions relief under the nuclear deal, are fueling renewed concerns in Washington about whether Iran will be held to account for violations.

“Missile-tests, cyber-attacks, Americans taken hostage, and now this,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement Wednesday. “Until the Obama administration starts holding the Iranian regime accountable, we’ll see more of these hostile acts that put American lives in danger.”

The most recent confrontation occurred Saturday, when five Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels approached the USS Harry S. Truman, and one of them fired multiple unguided missiles within 1,500 yards of the U.S. aircraft carrier transiting the Strait of Hormuz. It was the third such provocation in the past 14 months, a spokesman for the Navy’s 5th Fleet, responsible for operations in the Persian Gulf, told Fox News.

“It’s getting closer,” Cmdr. Kevin Stephens said in discussing this trend of Iranian provocation near U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups.

In April, as the USS Theodore Roosevelt exited the Strait of Hormuz to pursue an Iranian flotilla carrying weapons in the direction of Yemen, a group of Iranian Revolutionary Guard small boats launched 11 unguided rockets five nautical miles from the aircraft carrier, Stephens said. One nautical mile equals 1.151 miles.

In October 2014, a Navy helicopter from the USS George H.W. Bush also observed Iranian small boats launching several unguided rockets about eight nautical miles away, he said.

The group of missile boats that approached the USS Harry S. Truman, as well as her escort ships, the day after Christmas launched missiles within 1,500 yards of the aircraft carrier following an impromptu announcement over bridge-to-bridge maritime radio just 23 minutes earlier. The first missiles were launched from inside internationally recognized maritime traffic lanes and Omani territorial waters, according to Stephens.

The Iranian missiles were fired just after Truman and her escort ships exited the Strait of Hormuz, according to a defense official. The American aircraft carrier had helicopters in the air after the launch “closely observing” the boats, which passed away from the U.S. and French Navy ships. F-18 Super Hornets also were ready to launch from Truman had the situation escalated further, the defense official said. The Strait of Hormuz connects the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf.

“The [Iranian Navy’s] actions were highly provocative. Firing weapons so close to passing coalition ships and commercial traffic within an internationally recognized maritime traffic lane is unsafe,” Stephens said.

The incident, first reported by NBC News, marks another flare-up as the Iranian nuclear pact is poised to take full effect.

Ahead of the planned sanctions relief, Iran earlier this week Iran shipped 25,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia as part of the agreement.

Secretary of State John Kerry called the transfer a “significant milestone.”

Yet on the sidelines, congressional lawmakers have been fuming over a series of missile firings.

Fox News was first to report the Nov. 21 launch of a Ghadr-110, a medium-range ballistic missile with a range of 1,200 miles, capable of striking U.S. military assets in the region as well as Israel.

Following the Fox News report of the second ballistic missile launch, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., wrote a letter to President Obama, signed by 35 of her GOP Senate colleagues, calling on the administration not to lift sanctions on Iran.

The launch in November followed a much more publicized ballistic missile launch inside Iran in October, which drew condemnation from U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power. The Iranian military released a video of the October launch as well as a video showing an underground network of tunnels where missiles are allegedly being stored.

Earlier this month, the United Nations said Iran had violated U.N. Security Council resolutions following the October launch. It is unclear how far the United Nations or United States will go to respond to the violations – though on Wednesday, the Treasury Department notified Capitol Hill of new pending sanctions against 11 individuals and entities accused of supporting Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Twenty-one Democratic senators also wrote to Obama last week voicing concerns about those missile launches.

“If there are no consequences for this violation, Iran’s leaders will certainly also question the willingness of the international community to respond to violations of the [nuclear agreement],” they wrote.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pointed to the latest rocket launch in the Strait of Hormuz in warning Wednesday against rushing into sanctions relief.

“[T]he Administration continues to turn a blind eye to Iranian saber rattling,” he said in a statement. “A rush to sanctions relief threatens to embolden an increasingly aggressive Iranian regime that has no intention of normalizing relations with the West or of retreating from a malign policy intended to destabilize the Middle East.”

Some lawmakers are pushing for Congress to renew an expiring Iran sanctions law, as leverage in case the U.S. needs to snap back sanctions should Iran violate the deal.

Yet Iran also is fuming over a Congress-passed law restricting people who have recently visited Iran or people holding dual Iranian citizenship from visiting the U.S. without a visa, a move the Iranian government called a violation of the nuclear agreement.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said at a news conference that “any steps taken outside the agreement are unacceptable to Iran, and Iran will take its own steps in response where necessary.”

The point I am making is this: Foreign Policy is like a game of chess; and not like a game of cowboys and indians as the neocons like to think that is. Iran is simply testing our President, to see what his actions will be. The hawks want us to attack Iran, which would be a disaster, just like Iraq was in 2003. Obama would be wise to continue what he is doing and not allow the neocon hawks to influence his decision making.

Mini-Movie: The frame job against Bashar al-Assad

This comes via Conservative-Headlines.com, and I know some people might not like it that I linked to these guys. Well, you know what? Tough! This video is a eye-opener; and I really do not even like Alex Jones for some very good reasons.

https://youtu.be/pqj4WzgnxDc

Just like Al-Qaeda, ISIS was created by the United States. Our biggest threat as Americans, is not terrorism; it is our own Government.

Leftist nutbag over at MSNBC calls Chris Kyle “a racist” who went on “Killing Sprees” in Iraq

They are not trying to hide their hatred of the American Military anymore.

The Video:

The Story Via ‘Busters:

Ayman Mohyeldin has suggested that Chris Kyle, the real “American Sniper,” was a “racist” whose military missions were nothing less than “killing sprees.”

With opinions like that, you might imagine Mohyeldin to be some unhinged bloviator from the bowels of the anti-American far left. Or, an NBC foreign correspondent [who formerly worked for Al Jazeera] who regularly reports on events in the Middle East.  Which is exactly what he is.  Ayman vented his bile on today’s Morning Joe.

Whatever one thinks of the Iraq War; whether you think that it was a Wilsonian wet dream turned a neoconservative nightmare or a legitimate war to prevent more terrorism — I think everyone, who is not some anti-American scumbag, who hates this Country and values it stands for — can agree that our Military serviceman should get the uttermost respect for the jobs that they do out on those battlefields.

Obviously, this America-hating leftist piece of dung didn’t get the memo. Here’s the complete transcript, the important parts highlighted:

AYMAN MOHYELDIN: It is a very compelling, very thought-provoking, very emotional movie.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: B-u-u-u-u-t?

MOHYELDIN: When you juxtapose it with the real Chris Kyle and what has emerged about what kind of personality he was, in his own words —

WILLIE GEIST: You’re talking about the stories when he was back home in Texas which may have not been true? Is that what you’re talking about?

MOHYELDIN: A lot of his stories when he was back home in Texas, a lot of his own personal opinions about what he was doing in Iraq, how he viewed Iraqis. Some of what people have described as his racist tendencies towards Iraqis and Muslims when he was going on some of these, you know, killing sprees in Iraq on assignment. So I think there are issues —

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, wait. Killing sprees? Chris Kyle was going on killing sprees? 

MOHYELDIN: When he was involved in his — on assignments in terms of what he was doing. A lot of the description that has come out from his book and some of the terminology that he has used, people have described as racist.

. . .

GEIST: It wasn’t a commentary about the war. It wasn’t about the politics of the war. It was a character study of what this guy went through. And you don’t have to like him and all the comments about him calling Iraqis savages. He was calling the people he was shooting savages. He was calling people who he thought had IEDs, who he thought were going to kill his buddies savages. He didn’t — some people have seized on that term that he thought all Iraqis or everyone in the Middle East is a savage. That’s just not what he said. It’s not what he said. He was talking about the people he was fighting in the theater, calling them savages.

SCARBOROUGH: All right, when we come back, Ayman is going to kick around Santa Claus. 

This, my friends…..this… is progressivism in 2015.

Related: Washington Free Beacon: MSNBC Reporter: ‘Racist’ Chris Kyle Went on ‘Killing Sprees’ in Iraq

Others: The Daily Caller and CBS ConnecticutHot Air, Conservatives4Palin and National Review

Rep. John Yarmuth is absolutely correct

The Audio:

The Story:

Rep. John Yarmuth says Republican House Speaker John Boehner inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to the House of Representatives is “close to subversion.”

Speaking with the Stephanie Miller Show on Friday, the Kentucky Democrat added some Congress members’ strong support for Israel “had to do with fundraising.”

“I am totally outraged at Speaker Boehner for doing it, I think it’s, it was deliberately

designed to undermine the president — that’s close to subversion,” said Yarmuth of Netanyahu’s upcoming address to Congress.

“I mean, the president is supposed to be conducting foreign policy, not the Speaker of the House.”

Yarmuth then said a lot of the strong support for Israel has to with fundraising and pressure from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“And you know, a lot of it has to do with fundraising — I’m sure some of it is sincere support for Israel,” Yarmuth said.

“You know, I’m a Jewish member of Congress, I’m a strong supporter of Israel, but my first obligation is to the Constitution of the United States, not to the Constitution of Israel. And unfortunately, I think, some of the demands that are made of members by AIPAC and some strong Jewish supporters are that we pay more attention — I guess we defer — to Israel more than we defer to the United States.”

“And that’s another thing, because if he’s going to come over here and say ‘well, my intelligence shows this’ — you know, there’s an implicit, I guess, admission — or not admission, I guess concession — that Israeli intelligence is superior to American intelligence. I’m not ready to sit there and endorse that kind of proposition, and I suspect he will, basically, talk about things like that — you know, try to match their assessment of the situation against ours. And I’m not willing to believe theirs is superior.”

via Democratic Congressman: A Lot Of Strong GOP Support For Israel “Has To Do With Fundraising” – BuzzFeed News.

Rep. John Yarmuth is absolutely correct. It is subversion and it has been happening for years in this Country. There some in the neocon media who are upset that this man would say this; but it is the truth and it has been happening for years.

Kudos to Rep. Yarmuth for having the guts to speak out about it too. 😀

The best words that John Mccain has ever spoken

These are the words of Senator John McCain from the Senate floor. Via his website:

“Mr. President, I rise in support of the release – the long-delayed release – of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summarized, unclassified review of the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ that were employed by the previous administration to extract information from captured terrorists. It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose – to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies – but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.

“I believe the American people have a right – indeed, a responsibility – to know what was done in their name; how these practices did or did not serve our interests; and how they comported with our most important values.

“I commend Chairman Feinstein and her staff for their diligence in seeking a truthful accounting of policies I hope we will never resort to again. I thank them for persevering against persistent opposition from many members of the intelligence community, from officials in two administrations, and from some of our colleagues.

“The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.

“They must know when the values that define our nation are intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies that are conducted in secret. They must be able to make informed judgments about whether those policies and the personnel who supported them were justified in compromising our values; whether they served a greater good; or whether, as I believe, they stained our national honor, did much harm and little practical good.

“What were the policies? What was their purpose? Did they achieve it? Did they make us safer? Less safe? Or did they make no difference? What did they gain us? What did they cost us? The American people need the answers to these questions. Yes, some things must be kept from public disclosure to protect clandestine operations, sources and methods, but not the answers to these questions.

“By providing them, the Committee has empowered the American people to come to their own decisions about whether we should have employed such practices in the past and whether we should consider permitting them in the future. This report strengthens self-government and, ultimately, I believe, America’s security and stature in the world. I thank the Committee for that valuable public service.

“I have long believed some of these practices amounted to torture, as a reasonable person would define it, especially, but not only the practice of waterboarding, which is a mock execution and an exquisite form of torture. Its use was shameful and unnecessary; and, contrary to assertions made by some of its defenders and as the Committee’s report makes clear, it produced little useful intelligence to help us track down the perpetrators of 9/11 or prevent new attacks and atrocities.

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored.

“I know, too, that bad things happen in war. I know in war good people can feel obliged for good reasons to do things they would normally object to and recoil from.

“I understand the reasons that governed the decision to resort to these interrogation methods, and I know that those who approved them and those who used them were dedicated to securing justice for the victims of terrorist attacks and to protecting Americans from further harm. I know their responsibilities were grave and urgent, and the strain of their duty was onerous.

“I respect their dedication and appreciate their dilemma. But I dispute wholeheartedly that it was right for them to use these methods, which this report makes clear were neither in the best interests of justice nor our security nor the ideals we have sacrificed so much blood and treasure to defend.

“The knowledge of torture’s dubious efficacy and my moral objections to the abuse of prisoners motivated my sponsorship of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ of captured combatants, whether they wear a nation’s uniform or not, and which passed the Senate by a vote of 90-9.

“Subsequently, I successfully offered amendments to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which, among other things, prevented the attempt to weaken Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and broadened definitions in the War Crimes Act to make the future use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ punishable as war crimes.

“There was considerable misinformation disseminated then about what was and wasn’t achieved using these methods in an effort to discourage support for the legislation. There was a good amount of misinformation used in 2011 to credit the use of these methods with the death of Osama bin Laden. And there is, I fear, misinformation being used today to prevent the release of this report, disputing its findings and warning about the security consequences of their public disclosure.

“Will the report’s release cause outrage that leads to violence in some parts of the Muslim world? Yes, I suppose that’s possible, perhaps likely. Sadly, violence needs little incentive in some quarters of the world today. But that doesn’t mean we will be telling the world something it will be shocked to learn. The entire world already knows that we water-boarded prisoners. It knows we subjected prisoners to various other types of degrading treatment. It knows we used black sites, secret prisons. Those practices haven’t been a secret for a decade.

“Terrorists might use the report’s re-identification of the practices as an excuse to attack Americans, but they hardly need an excuse for that. That has been their life’s calling for a while now.

“What might come as a surprise, not just to our enemies, but to many Americans, is how little these practices did to aid our efforts to bring 9/11 culprits to justice and to find and prevent terrorist attacks today and tomorrow. That could be a real surprise, since it contradicts the many assurances provided by intelligence officials on the record and in private that enhanced interrogation techniques were indispensable in the war against terrorism. And I suspect the objection of those same officials to the release of this report is really focused on that disclosure – torture’s ineffectiveness – because we gave up much in the expectation that torture would make us safer. Too much.

“Obviously, we need intelligence to defeat our enemies, but we need reliable intelligence. Torture produces more misleading information than actionable intelligence. And what the advocates of harsh and cruel interrogation methods have never established is that we couldn’t have gathered as good or more reliable intelligence from using humane methods.

“The most important lead we got in the search for bin Laden came from using conventional interrogation methods. I think it is an insult to the many intelligence officers who have acquired good intelligence without hurting or degrading prisoners to assert we can’t win this war without such methods. Yes, we can and we will.

“But in the end, torture’s failure to serve its intended purpose isn’t the main reason to oppose its use. I have often said, and will always maintain, that this question isn’t about our enemies; it’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.

“We have made our way in this often dangerous and cruel world, not by just strictly pursuing our geopolitical interests, but by exemplifying our political values, and influencing other nations to embrace them. When we fight to defend our security we fight also for an idea, not for a tribe or a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion or for a king, but for an idea that all men are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights. How much safer the world would be if all nations believed the same. How much more dangerous it can become when we forget it ourselves even momentarily.

“Our enemies act without conscience. We must not. This executive summary of the Committee’s report makes clear that acting without conscience isn’t necessary, it isn’t even helpful, in winning this strange and long war we’re fighting. We should be grateful to have that truth affirmed.

“Now, let us reassert the contrary proposition: that is it essential to our success in this war that we ask those who fight it for us to remember at all times that they are defending a sacred ideal of how nations should be governed and conduct their relations with others – even our enemies.

“Those of us who give them this duty are obliged by history, by our nation’s highest ideals and the many terrible sacrifices made to protect them, by our respect for human dignity to make clear we need not risk our national honor to prevail in this or any war. We need only remember in the worst of times, through the chaos and terror of war, when facing cruelty, suffering and loss, that we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.

“Thank you.”

God Bless Him for standing up for what is right.

(via Memeoradum)