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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; release</title>
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		<title>Obama Frees a Nuclear Terrorist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-frees-a-nuclear-terrorist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-frees-a-nuclear-terrorist</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-frees-a-nuclear-terrorist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 05:47:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gitmo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mohammed Zahir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248321</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is there any terrorist Obama won’t liberate?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ws.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248323" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ws-284x350.jpg" alt="ws" width="213" height="263" /></a>Which terrorist will Obama set loose next from Gitmo? A better question might be is there any terrorist he won’t free? Is there an Al Qaeda or Taliban Jihadist who poses too much of a threat to the United States for Obama to free with a lot of airline miles and Michelle Obama’s recipe for arugula fruitcake?</p>
<p>If Obama has a red line when it comes to releasing terrorists, we haven’t seen it yet.</p>
<p>There appears to be no threat that a terrorist can pose and no crime he has committed too severe to prevent him from getting a plane trip out of Gitmo at taxpayer expense.</p>
<p>The last releases saw terrorists rated as high risk freed by Obama. They included fighters with experience on the battlefield and covert operations. <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-christmas-gift-to-isis-and-al-qaeda/">Obama set loose a suicide bomber</a>, a document forger and a bomb maker who trained other terrorists to make bombs. Those are exactly the sorts of enemies whose license to Jihad will cost lives.</p>
<p>But that’s nothing compared to Obama’s latest gift to the Jihad.</p>
<p>When Mohammed Zahir was caught, among his possessions was found a small sealed can marked, in Russian, “Heavy Water U235 150 Grams.”</p>
<p>According to the classified report, the uranium had been identified by Zahir “in his memorandum as being intended for the production of an “atom bomb.”</p>
<p>Zahir was not just another captured Jihadist. He was the Secretary General of the Taliban’s Intelligence Directorate and was in contact with top leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. His possessions included a fax with questions intended for Osama bin Laden and he had been arrested on suspicion of possessing Stinger missiles.</p>
<p>But that may not have even been the worst of it.</p>
<p>Among the items was a notebook containing references to large sugar shipments to Washington D.C. Investigators believed that sugar was used as a code word for heroin. The Black Sea stops mentioned in the notebook are major hubs for smuggling heroin and for nuclear smuggling as well.</p>
<p>Not only was Mohammed Zahir a terrorist kingpin, but he was also a drug kingpin and the notebook suggested that his eye was on the United States of America.</p>
<p>It was no wonder that Mohammad Zahir had been rated as posing a high risk, but Obama had already freed a number of other high risk Guantanamo Bay detainees. Yet Zahir was the closest thing to a major nuclear terrorist in United States custody. Freeing him was wildly irresponsible even by the standards of a leader who had sacrificed thousands of Americans in a futile effort to “win” Afghan hearts and minds.</p>
<p>Nor did Obama even bother with the plausible deniability of releasing him to a South American country, the way he had with his previous batch of ISIS recruits, or at least to Qatar. Instead Mohammed Zahir went back directly to the battlefield in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Obama couldn’t have done more without handing over the blueprints for constructing a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>And yet it wasn’t surprising that Obama would free Mohammed Zahir. He had <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/12/4_gitmo_detainees_tr.php">already freed Zahir’s old boss</a>, the Taliban’s Deputy Minister of Intelligence, as well as another senior Taliban intel official under whom Zahir had used to work. It just happened to be Zahir’s turn.</p>
<p>If the other Gitmo detainees freed by Obama are deadly, Zahir was part of an effort to engage in the mass murder of Americans using weapons of mass destruction. Considering how many Gitmo detainees returned to terrorism once they were released, it is highly likely that Zahir will go on doing what he used to do and that American soldiers and civilians will end up paying the price for Obama’s license to Jihad.</p>
<p>Zahir wasn’t released on his own. Accompanying him back to the motherland of terror were Khi Ali Gul, who was linked to Al Qaeda’s Haqqani Network, Shawali Khan, the member of group that merged with Al Qaeda and Abdul Ghani, who had frequently bragged about his high rank in the Taliban and had participated in rocket and mine attacks on American soldiers.</p>
<p>These men were assessed as very dangerous. Like the last batch released, they’re almost certain to return to the industry of terror.</p>
<p>Even as <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/12/oops-u-s-offers-5-mil-reward-al-qaeda-terrorist-released-gitmo/">a $5 million bounty has been put on</a> the head of Ibrahim al-Rubaysh, a Gitmo terrorist released for rest and rehabilitation in Saudi Arabia, the same mistakes that led to his release continue to be made.</p>
<p>Ibrahim al-Rubaysh returned to play a leading role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mohammed Zahir and his pals will have an even shorter trip to get back into the fight. They won’t even have to go through the charade of being rehabilitated before they return to their bloody trade.</p>
<p>With the release of the latest batch of Taliban figures, Obama is helping the Taliban rebuild its organizational structure at the top. Even while he’s declaring victory over the Taliban, he is helping the Taliban win.</p>
<p>And in the process he is sending dangerous men back into the fight. Men like Mohammed Zahir.</p>
<p>Mohammed Zahir may not go back to his old tasks of smuggling heroin to Washington D.C. or trying to assemble materials for an atomic bomb. Or this top Taliban intelligence official may decide to pick up where he left off. It’s bad enough that Obama is empowering Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb, but now he has also managed to aid the Taliban’s search for weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>Americans no longer expect the man in the White House not to release terrorists. We no longer expect him not to release dangerous terrorists who will go on to kill Americans. Now we also know that it’s useless to expect him not to release terrorists caught trying to assemble materials for a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>We’ve tried to grade Obama on a curve when it comes to national security, but the curve just got nuked.</p>
<p>The very lowest possible expectation we can have of Obama is that he won’t release a nuclear terrorist. And even this lowest of all possible expectations proved too much for him to live up to.</p>
<p>Which terrorists will Obama release next? The answer appears to be all of them.</p>
<p>Obama had sought to take Osama alive so he could receive a trial in civilian court. The SEALS put a stop to that plan and to Osama, but if they hadn’t, then next week we might be seeing Osama bin Laden boarding a plane to Qatar or Afghanistan with a can of uranium tucked under one arm.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Obama&#8217;s Christmas Gift to ISIS and Al Qaeda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-christmas-gift-to-isis-and-al-qaeda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-christmas-gift-to-isis-and-al-qaeda</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:24:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gitmo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guantanamo Bay]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246936</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bomb maker, a forger and a suicide bomber in a pear-tree.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/obama-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246938" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/obama-1-419x350.jpg" alt="obama-1" width="318" height="266" /></a>Everyone likes presents; even murderous Muslim terrorists.</p>
<p>That must be why Obama decided to give ISIS, Hamas and Al Qaeda an early Christmas present by freeing their followers from Guantanamo Bay and dispatching them to Uruguay.</p>
<p>Why Uruguay? It’s one of several South American countries run by Marxist terrorists.</p>
<p>Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, a former Marxist terrorist, already offered to take in Syrian refugees and a number of the freed Gitmo Jihadists are Syrians who trained under the future leader of what would become ISIS. If they stay on in Uruguay, they can try to finish the job of killing the Syrian refugees resettled there. If they don’t, they can just join ISIS and kill Christian and Yazidi refugees back in Syria.</p>
<p>It’s a win-win situation for ISIS and Marxist terrorists; less so for their victims.</p>
<p>Most of the Guantanamo detainees freed by Obama were rated as presenting a high risk to America and our allies. They include a bomb maker, a trained suicide bomber, a document forger and a terrorist who had received training in everything up to RPGs and mortars.</p>
<p>The only thing Obama left out was the partridge in the pear tree. It probably wasn’t Halal.</p>
<p>These terrorists aren’t about to settle down in a country best known for its agricultural sector. There is no major demand for bomb makers to herd sheep or suicide bombers to milk cows.</p>
<p>Obama’s Christmas gift to Islamic terrorists includes Mohammed Tahanmatan, a Hamas terrorist who told American personnel at Gitmo that he &#8220;hates all enemies of Islam, including Americans, Jews, Christians and Muslims who do not think as he does.&#8221;</p>
<p>Uruguay is filled with these enemies of Islam, but so is the rest of the world. There’s no telling where Mohammed Tahanmatan will take his Jihad against Americans, Christians and Jews; he might go back to Israel or head over to Syria. Or he might just go back to Afghanistan and Pakistan to kill the American soldiers still left there.</p>
<p>Either way the blood of his victims will be on Obama’s hands.</p>
<p>And yet Mohammed Tahanmatan is the least dangerous of the terrorists freed by Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Ahmed Adnan Ahjam, Abd al Hadi Omar Mahmoud Faraj, Ali Husain Shaabaan and Jihad Ahmed Diyab were members of the Syrian Group which left an Assad crackdown to join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Syrian Group was headed by Abu Musab al-Suri, a key ideological figure in international Jihadist circles, who was linked to multiple bombings in Europe, including one that wounded American soldiers.</p>
<p>The Damascus Cell of the Syrian Group was run by the uncle of Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi who also sat on AQIQ’s advisory council. Al Qaeda in Iraq is known today as ISIS.</p>
<p>Even while Obama bombs ISIS in Syria and Iraq, he releases experienced ISIS recruits from Gitmo.</p>
<p>Ahmed Adnan Ahjam was listed as receiving advanced training from Al Qaeda in the use of a wide range of battlefield weapons up to artillery. He will be invaluable to ISIS in its campaign in Kobani.</p>
<p>Obama’s present of Ahjam to ISIS will aid in genocide against the Kurds of Kobani. Ahjam was rated a “high risk” and should never have been released.</p>
<p>Abd al Hadi Omar Mahmoud Faraj received training at a camp run by Zarqawi providing him with an even more direct link to ISIS. He is a trained suicide bomber. ISIS will make use of him to train suicide bombers including its growing army of brainwashed and abused child soldiers.</p>
<p>Faraj was rated “high risk”. He should never have been released.</p>
<p>Ali Husain Shaabaan also trained at a Zarqawi camp. He was listed as “high risk”. Like Farj and Ahjam, there is little doubt that he will be in Syria before too long.</p>
<p>Jihad Ahmed Diyab is a document forger who provided documents to the Jihadist network of Abu Zubaydah linked to the bombing plot against Los Angeles International Airport, he worked with Zarqawi and associated with 9/11 terrorist recruiter Mohammed Zammar.</p>
<p>Jihad Diyab was not only listed as being “high risk”, but also as being of high intelligence value. He has connections to multiple Islamic terrorist groups around the world. That makes Jihad potentially the most valuable member of the Syrian Group to be released by Obama in his Christmas gift to ISIS.</p>
<p>ISIS will find Jihad Diyab useful for providing forged documents to smuggle its fighters into Syria and also to potentially move terrorists into Europe and America.</p>
<p>And yet giving this gift of Jihad to ISIS may pale next to Abdul Bin Mohammed Abis Ourgy, the final Gitmo Jihadist, who not only has many links to Muslim terrorist groups, but is a bomb maker who also trained terrorists in his explosive arts. The United States suspected that he may have even known beforehand about 9/11.</p>
<p>Ourgy is likely to head for North Africa and his ability to move money around will help strengthen the operations of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda linked groups in the area. His bomb making skills will be used to train the next generation of terrorists. The blood of those they kill will be on Obama’s hands.</p>
<p>It goes without saying that Ourgy was listed as “high risk” and that releasing a bomb maker who will train other terrorists to build bombs is about as irresponsible as it gets.</p>
<p>Obama didn’t just free six more Gitmo detainees. He dumped “high risk” Jihadists with skills that make them extremely useful to ISIS and extremely dangerous to us into a country run by a former terrorist.</p>
<p>These terrorists are not just Al Qaeda, but the majority of them have personal links to Syria and to the network of what has become ISIS.</p>
<p>“We’ve offered our hospitality for human beings who have suffered a terrible kidnapping in Guantanamo,” President Jose Mujica has said, making it clear once again where his sympathies lie.</p>
<p>The former Marxist terrorist predictably sympathizes with the terrorists, not the terrorized. Obama might as well have given the new ISIS recruits a plane ticket directly to Istanbul. The only difference between doing that and doing what he did is plausible deniability.</p>
<p>As soon as the money gets wired to them from Saudi Arabia or Qatar, they’ll be at Carrasco International Airport. After a plane trip from there to Buenos Aires to Istanbul, the rest will be a jaunt across the border with a wink and a nod from friendly Turkish border guards happy that ISIS is committing the genocide that their prospective position in the European Union won’t allow them to openly carry out.</p>
<p>Of the terrorists released from Gitmo, 100 were confirmed as having returned to terrorism. Thanks to Obama’s Christmas present to Hamas, Al Qaeda and ISIS, that number is about to go up.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on <strong>The</strong> <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing <span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" tabindex="0" data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}"><span class="hasCaption"><strong>Obama&#8217;s Fantasies about Un-Islamic Jihad:</strong></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/28J1kYbaqbc" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
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		<title>Uncovering Obama&#8217;s IRS Enemies List</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/uncovering-obamas-irs-enemies-list/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=uncovering-obamas-irs-enemies-list</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2014 05:55:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enemies list]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246685</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thousands of pages of smoking gun documents remain in legal limbo.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1207-obama-bush-tax-cuts_full_6001-600x350.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246694" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1207-obama-bush-tax-cuts_full_6001-600x350-450x324.jpg" alt="1207-obama-bush-tax-cuts_full_6001-600x350" width="315" height="227" /></a>More proof has emerged that President Obama is using the IRS as a weapon against his perceived enemies as the administration abruptly canceled the release of 2,500 damning documents reportedly showing that the IRS illegally shared taxpayer files with the White House.</p>
<p>The existence of the documents is yet more proof that Obama maintains an extensive enemies&#8217; list and that he treats the IRS as his personal plaything while he closely collaborates with senior IRS officials <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/16752-irs-officials-visited-white-house-over-150-times-during-period-of-scandal"><span style="color: #0433ff;">who have practically taken up residence</span></a> with him in the White House. To Obama, the IRS is an instrument of political repression and taxpayer terror. Although it isn&#8217;t exactly breaking news that Obama is doing Machiavellian things with the IRS that the nearly-impeached President Nixon only fantasized about doing, hard documentary evidence of wrongdoing has been slow in coming.</p>
<p>The abortive document dump comes as former IRS mandarin Lois Lerner remains at liberty. Instead of becoming a long-term guest of the Bureau of Prisons, the unrepentant left-wing Democratic activist continues to live a life of luxury in Bethesda, Md., a fancy suburb of Washington, D.C. Despite the severity of her crimes, she doesn&#8217;t even have to wear a monitoring anklet. She hasn&#8217;t even been charged with breaking the law, an oversight that may be corrected by the incoming Republican-dominated Congress.</p>
<p>With Lerner taking the lead, Obama&#8217;s IRS targeted conservative “social welfare” nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status under section 501c4 of the Internal Revenue Code. Evidence establishes that hundreds of groups affiliated with the Tea Party movement were bullied and intimidated from engaging in constitutionally protected political activism. The IRS also subjected conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to heightened scrutiny, harassment, and extended processing delays that may have hindered their activities during previous election cycles.</p>
<p>But now the Obama administration, which barely acknowledges the historic electoral whooping it received last month, has placed the 2,500 documents that are <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/feds-balk-at-releasing-docs-showing-irs-sharing-tax-returns-with-white-house/article/2556890"><span style="color: #0433ff;">apparently not related</span></a> to Lerner&#8217;s escapades in limbo as it hides behind privacy laws that are supposed to protect taxpayers, as opposed to corrupt government officials.</p>
<p>The inspector general&#8217;s office for the U.S. Department of the Treasury is making the novel claim that privacy laws prevent the promised document release from taking place.</p>
<p>“All of the 2,043 pages of documents we have determined to be responsive were collected by the Secretary of the Treasury with respect to the determination of possible liability under Title 26 of the United States Code. These pages consist of return information protected by 26 U.S.C. § 6103 and may not be disclosed absent an express statutory exception,” the office indicated in a Dec. 1 letter.</p>
<p>The Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, apparently hasn&#8217;t yet decided what to do with another 466 documents.</p>
<p>Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, was highly skeptical. Treasury is  using “sophisticated” lawyering to worm out of producing the documents.</p>
<p>Treasury Secretary Jack Lew acknowledges he is examining “potential liability” that his underlings violated the law by providing taxpayer information to the White House. Treasury is either “stonewalling” Cause of Action, or Lew “is incompetent” for only now getting around to investigating possible lawbreaking on a two-year-old case.</p>
<p>Asked about the case Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/03/watchdog-finds-thousands-docs-relating-to-improper-disclosure-taxpayer-data-to/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">claimed</span></a> he didn&#8217;t know about it. He said, apparently with a straight face, that the administration “very closely” follows rules shielding the IRS from political interference.</p>
<p>“I can tell you that, as a rule, that the Obama administration has been very rigorous in following all of the rules and regulations that govern proper communication between Treasury officials and White House officials and the Internal Revenue Service,” Earnest said.</p>
<p>Epstein says Earnest isn&#8217;t telling the truth. “We know for a fact that the IRS broke the law,” he said. “If there is any evidence that the White House requested (unauthorized taxpayer information), then people in the White House are going to be implicated,” he said.</p>
<p>The Treasury Department&#8217;s decision to stonewall just so happens to coincide with publication this week of a four-part series by the <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/feds-balk-at-releasing-docs-showing-irs-sharing-tax-returns-with-white-house/article/2556890"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Washington Examiner</i></span></a> about the benefits and pitfalls of the federal inspectors-general system. The series details several occasions in which inspector generals &#8220;provided cover for agency managers seeking to avoid more rigorous evaluations.&#8221;</p>
<p>It goes without saying that Obama has been using the IRS improperly since he was sworn in as president. That&#8217;s the Chicago way.</p>
<p>Ask Catherine Engelbrecht, leader of the Houston-based good government group True the Vote. Since getting involved in the fight for ballot box integrity she has been <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/the-mounting-proof-of-an-irs-cover-up/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">subjected</span></a> to a slew of audits, surprise inspections, and all manner of bureaucratic harassment. Ask supporters of the Manassas, Va.-based Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, whose tax-exempt charitable status was yanked by the IRS because it disseminated criticism of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry a decade ago.</p>
<p>Ask officials of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). Obama&#8217;s IRS has admitted it illegally provided the group&#8217;s confidential donor information to its left-wing arch-enemy, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which favors same-sex marriage. The IRS later agreed to settle a lawsuit by paying $50,000 in damages to NOM. The release of the tax filing, known as an IRS Form 990 was not the issue as such; in fact federal law requires 990s to be publicly disclosed.</p>
<p>But the IRS claimed one of its employees innocently neglected to redact the names and addresses of NOM’s donors before releasing the group&#8217;s amended 2008 Form 990 to an individual. The law requires groups like NOM to list top donors on Schedule B to the form. The information on Schedule B is supposed to be held in strictest confidence by the IRS. Unauthorized disclosure of confidential tax information is a felony that can lead to a five-year term of imprisonment, but Eric Holder’s Justice Department never got around to filing criminal charges in the case.</p>
<p>The egregious IRS leak allowed the HRC in February 2012 to post online NOM’s 2008 tax return and the names and contact information of NOM’s major donors, including Mitt Romney who became the Republican presidential nominee later that year. Making that normally confidential information public allowed progressive activists to harass and intimidate NOM’s donors, just as they had done in the wake of California’s Proposition 8 that affirmed traditional marriage in 2008. The most prominent victim of leftist venom was former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who was forced out of his post because he dared to donate $1,000 to the “pro” traditional marriage side in the Prop 8 battle.</p>
<p>Left-wing activists call this kind of in-your-face harassment “accountability,” an Orwellian euphemism to be sure. Accountability actions focus on harassing and intimidating political enemies, disrupting their activities, and forcing them to waste resources dealing with activists’ provocations. It is a tactic of radical community organizers, open borders fanatics, and union goons. Taking a cue from Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse, they want to shut down, humiliate, and silence those who fail to genuflect before their policy agenda.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s IRS is all about accountability, but not in the way that normal, patriotic Americans use the term.</p>
<p><em>*Clarification: Mr. Brendan Eich&#8217;s contribution in support of Proposition 8 was published by the Los Angeles Times using state public records and was a separate incident from the IRS&#8217;s illicit disclosure of NOM donors. </em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Releasing Criminally Convicted Illegals onto Our Streets</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/releasing-criminally-convicted-illegals-onto-our-streets/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=releasing-criminally-convicted-illegals-onto-our-streets</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2014 04:54:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Criminal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[illegal alien]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Violent]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243679</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Killers and sexual predators let loose in America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/arrests1-25855073b79ecfce6f39e800d04801e52308fc1d-s6-c30.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243680" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/arrests1-25855073b79ecfce6f39e800d04801e52308fc1d-s6-c30-450x337.jpg" alt="arrests1-25855073b79ecfce6f39e800d04801e52308fc1d-s6-c30" width="355" height="266" /></a>In a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/22/immigration-detainees-released-criminal-records/17714925/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revelation</span></a> that will surprise almost no one at this point, the Obama administration has been caught in another lie. Records obtained by <i>USA Today</i> contradict the administration’s assertions the 2,228 people freed from immigration jails in 2013 only included those with minor criminal records. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials released a number of illegal aliens facing serious criminal charges that include &#8220;kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide,” the paper reports.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Despite last year’s furor surrounding the release, the administration continued to insist that only &#8220;<a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1312297-redacted-part3.html#document/p18/a183451"><span style="color: #1255cc;">low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records</span></a>,” had been set free. That statement was part of the hundreds of emails and spreadsheets obtained by the newspaper showing that while two-thirds of those released had no criminal records, several had significant criminal records.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">These realities blatantly contradict <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg80066/pdf/CHRG-113hhrg80066.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">testimony</span></a> by then-ICE Director John Morton before the House Judiciary Committee on March 19, 2013. Morton assured the Committee there were “no mass releases of dangerous criminals underway or any planned for the future, just efforts to live within our budget.&#8221; He also had the following exchange with Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA):</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Forbes: Let me ask you this question. On the aggravated felonies that you talked about, I am looking at the list here, and I am just running through a couple of them. But no one on that list was charged or convicted with murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a minor, were they?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Morton: They were not.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>USA Today, </i>which obtained the ICE data via a Freedom of Information Act request, reveals the fraudulence of Morton’s claims, noting there was &#8220;one person in Texas charged with aggravated kidnapping and sexually assaulting a child, as well as others charged with armed assaults or assaulting police officers,” the paper states. &#8220;Another immigrant released from Miami had been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. Two detainees from Boston had been charged with aggravated assault using a weapon.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Lying aside, the reference to living within ICE’s budget is a key component of the discussion. Morton, the Obama administration, Democrats, and their media cheerleaders would all like Americans to believe the “draconian” budget cuts engendered by sequestration left the agency no other choice. Those “cuts&#8221; represented just over 2 percent of the 2013 budget, while federal spending in 2013 was <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/341106/sequester-proportion-yuval-levin"><span style="color: #1255cc;">$15 billion</span></a> <i>higher</i> than in 2012.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nonetheless, the Obama administration sought to portray the sequester as the ultimate undoing of American’s massive welfare state. Thus a massive scare campaign was promoted, including <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-obamas-sequester-sleight-of-hand/2013/05/02/35155df0-b28f-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warnings</span></a> from Obama that thousands of layoffs would ensue, airport delays would be massive, hundreds of thousands of Americans would lose access to healthcare, meat would not be properly inspected, federal prosecutors would have to close cases allowing criminals to go free, immigration control would be forced to allow more illegal aliens to enter the country—and ICE would be forced to undertake &#8220;a mass release of immigrants,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/us/immigrants-released-ahead-of-automatic-budget-cuts.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warned</span></a> the <i>New York Times</i>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thus it was completely unsurprising that <i>USA Today </i>would frame the ICE’s unconscionable felon release program as one engendered by an agency faced with &#8220;steep, across-the-government spending cuts in February 2013.” ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen maintained the ongoing charade, insisting that &#8220;discretionary releases made by ICE were of low-level offenders. However, the releases involving individuals with more significant criminal histories were, by and large, dictated by special circumstances outside of the agency&#8217;s control.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those special circumstances were not explained.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The former head of ICE&#8217;s detention operation, Gary Mead, doubled down as well, insisting there was no deliberate attempt to deceive the public. He claimed the release of the 2,228 detainees happened so quickly ICE managers were unaware of who they freed until they heard about it in the media. &#8220;We had been asking for some time whether we would have enough money to sustain the level of detention we had, and we didn&#8217;t get an answer,&#8221; Mead said. &#8220;When we did get an answer, it was that we had to start releasing people today.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Inspector General (IG) also circled the wagons. Despite reporting in August that ICE’s cost-cutting efforts were so rushed and mismanaged the agency never informed then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano or the White House of the mishandled detainee release, the IG’s audit ultimately concluded the agency had acted “appropriately” when determining who should be freed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the congressional hearing, Morton confirmed that ICE’s blasé attitude regarding illegal alien criminal records started right at the top, telling Rep. Forbes that while he had “reviewed the summaries of all 2,228” he had “not looked at the actual conviction records personally on such a number.” Furthermore, he inadvertently revealed the conclusion reached by the IG was nonsensical: under questioning, he couldn’t explain why the agency had made no preparation whatsoever for the sequester before January 2013, despite the fact that it had been passed in August of 2011.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Morton also revealed something else equally as telling. When asked if he opposed statutory language in the 2012 and 2013 budget requests mandating that ICE maintain at least 34,000 detention beds on a daily basis, Morton acknowledged that President Obama’s budget called for a lower number of 32,800 beds. The Appropriations Committee eventually insisted otherwise, maintaining the 34,000 bed limit. In other words it was Obama himself who sought to hamstring ICE even more than the sequester ostensibly did.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The would be the very same sequester that was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-fanciful-claim-that-congress-proposed-the-sequester/2012/10/25/8651dc6a-1eed-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama’s idea</span></a>, all denials to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Of the 2,228 detainees released, 629 had criminal records, according to Morton’s testimony. Yet he characterized those released as people charged with misdemeanors &#8220;or other criminals whose prior conviction did not pose a violent threat to public safety.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">This story is undoubtedly a revelation for many Americans. Unfortunately, it represents the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Last May, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a detailed <a href="http://cis.org/ICE-Document-Details-36000-Criminal-Aliens-Release-in-2013"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> revealing that in 2013, ICE freed an eye-popping <i>36,007 criminal aliens</i> &#8220;convicted of hundreds of violent and serious crimes, including homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.” CIS further explained that the “vast majority of these releases from ICE custody were discretionary, not required by law,” and in some cases &#8220;apparently contrary to law.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the time, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) framed that release in no uncertain terms. “This would be considered the worst prison break in American history, except it was sanctioned by the president and perpetrated by our own immigration officials,” he declared.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And while the left-leaning <i>USA Today,</i> which referred to the 2,228 released individual as “undocumented immigrants” rather than the illegal aliens that they truly are, provides nothing more than the aforementioned handful of details regarding their criminal records, CIS was far more forthcoming. The 36,007 convicted criminal aliens released accounted for a whopping 88,000 convictions that included 193 for homicide, 436 for sexual assault, 303 for kidnapping, and 1,075 for aggravated assaults. Other offenses apparently considered “non-serious” by ICE included 1,160 stolen vehicle convictions, 9,187 dangerous drug convictions, 16,070 drunk or drugged driving convictions, and 303 flight escape convictions.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Adding insult to injury, CIS further noted that &#8220;ICE declined to bring immigration charges in 68,000 cases of criminal aliens they encountered in 2013.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is critical to remember the same Obama administration orchestrating this chaos is the one that plans to allow as many as 100,000 Haitians entry in to the United States in 2015 <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/17/obama-admin-to-allow-haitians-into-us-before-visas/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">without a visa</span></a> under its Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program. This &#8220;irresponsible overreach of the executive branch’s authority” as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) characterizes it, will be followed shortly after the 2014 election by the president’s <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/25/Report-Obama-Expected-to-Enact-Exec-Amnesty-for-Nearly-5-Million-Illegals-After-European-Trip-Next-Week"><span style="color: #1255cc;">promise</span></a> to grant amnesty to millions of illegals again via executive order, possibly precipitating the most serious constitutional crisis in modern history.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And make no mistake: it is a constitutional crisis <i>wholeheartedly supported</i> by a Democratic Party more than willing to sell out millions of American citizens and legal immigrants in a fevered quest for unassailable power.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"> “Well, look, here’s the bottom line,” <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-dems-running-away-him-these-are-all-folks-who-vote-me_816522.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Obama during a recent interview with Al Sharpton. “We’ve got a tough (election) map. A lot of the states that are contested this time are states that I didn’t win. And so some of the candidates there, you know, it is difficult for them to have me in the state because the Republicans will use that to try to fan Republican turn-out. The bottom line is, though, these are all <i>folks who vote with me”</i> (italics mine). Truer words were never spoken, and Americans heading to the voting booth should take them to heart.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Leader of Jihadist Onslaught in Iraq Released on Obama’s Watch</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/leader-of-jihadist-onslaught-in-iraq-released-on-obamas-watch/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=leader-of-jihadist-onslaught-in-iraq-released-on-obamas-watch</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jun 2014 04:16:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abu Bakr al Baghdadi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prison]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234134</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The catastrophic consequences of a Radical-in-Chief's defeatism.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Abu-bakr-al-Baghdadi.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-234147 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Abu-bakr-al-Baghdadi-450x299.jpg" alt="Abu-bakr-al-Baghdadi" width="318" height="211" /></a>On October 22nd, 2007, Osama bin Laden admitted in an audio tape, entitled &#8220;Message to the people of Iraq,&#8221; that al Qaeda was losing the war in Iraq because it had made mistakes and no longer had the allegiance of Sunni insurgents who had switched sides. When Barack Obama became president on January 20, 2009, the war in Iraq was essentially won. The al Qaeda-backed insurgency was reduced to smoldering embers. George W. Bush’s surge had succeeded.</p>
<p>Safely behind bars at the time was Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, an al Qaeda-linked point man who was imprisoned at Camp Bucca in Iraq, after being captured by U.S. forces in 2005. According to a Pentagon assessment at the time, al Baghdadi “would kidnap individuals or entire families, accuse them, pronounce sentence and then publicly execute them.”</p>
<p>However, the Obama administration decided to shut down the Bucca prison camp and hand over its prisoners to the Iraqi government, including Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in 2009. The Iraqi government later released him. Al Baghadi boasted to the U.S. soldiers who had held him prisoner, “I’ll see you in New York.”</p>
<p>The release of al Baghadi and other jihadist insurgents from the Bucca prison, coupled with President Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 rather than follow the military’s advice to leave a residual force behind, turned the smoldering embers of the once defeated al Qaeda-backed insurgency into a raging out-of-control conflagration.</p>
<p>Abu Bakr al Baghdadi has re-emerged to become the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).  The jihadist group split with “core” al Qaeda after it refused to obey “core” al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri’s order to withdraw ISIS’s forces from Syria back to its home in Iraq and leave the Syrian fighting to the more local Syrian al Qaeda affiliated operatives. ISIS instead consolidated its seizure of territory in Syria from weaker rebel groups. Then, using its bases in Syria to launch more aggressive attacks in Iraq, ISIS in recent days has taken control of large portions of northern and western Iraq including Iraq’s second largest city Mosul. ISIS freed at least 1,000 militants held in prisons in Mosul, adding more jihadists to its swelling ranks. It has looted hundreds of millions of dollars from northern Iraqi banks and taken sophisticated military equipment left behind by fleeing Iraqi soldiers. ISIS has attracted Sunnis disaffected by Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister al-Maliki’s imperious attitude towards the Sunni minority population.</p>
<p>ISIS’s goal is to create an Islamic caliphate stretching across Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq and Syria. It has also threatened to destroy Shiite holy sites in Iraq and move towards the capital, Baghdad. Under al Baghdadi’s leadership, ISIS has been ruthless, methodically executing its opponents and imposing strict Sharia law wherever it has established control. The United States now has a $10 million bounty on Baghdadi’s head.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has been completely clueless on the dangerous situation that has been brewing in Iraq since its decision to release from U.S. custody Baghdadi and the other prisoners in the Bucca prison camp in 2009 and the total withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq in 2011. Indeed, the administration has been delusional in its belief that everything has been going so well in Iraq because of Obama’s policies.</p>
<p>Back in 2010, Vice President Joe Biden made this preposterous claim:</p>
<blockquote><p>I am very optimistic about Iraq. I think it’s gonna be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re gonna see 90,000 American troops come marchin’ home by the end of the summer. You’re gonna see a stable government in Iraq that is actually movin’ toward a representative government. I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months, three months. I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed, how they have been deciding to use the political process, rather than guns, to settle their differences.</p></blockquote>
<p>Was Abu Bakr al Baghdadi one of “the major players in all the segments of that society” with whom Biden was impressed?</p>
<p>Commenting on his decision to pull all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, President Obama said that “in Iraq, we’ve succeeded in our strategy to end the war.” He added “the tide of war is receding” and “we’ve renewed American leadership in the world.”</p>
<p>In the middle of 2012, after U.S. troops had been totally withdrawn, Antony J. Blinken, the national security adviser to Vice President Biden wrote that violence in Iraq was “at historic lows.”</p>
<p>And during a presidential debate with Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign, Obama said: “We ended the war in Iraq, refocused our attention on those who actually killed us on 9/11. And as a consequence, al-Qaeda’s core leadership has been decimated. What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East.”</p>
<p>While Obama has bragged about decimating “core” al Qaeda with drone attacks, his focus has been on yesterday’s leaders. There is a new generation of jihadists, inspired by the successes of Baghdadi in the battlefield now encompassing Syria as well as Iraq.</p>
<p>“Not since Osama bin Laden has a leader been held in such reverence among Sunni fighters, scored such stunning and shocking victories, and threatened so much of the established order,” wrote Graeme Baker, an online editor with Al Jazeera. “Baghdadi supporters speak of him as al-Qaeda mark two, the leader of a new generation working to bring about the Islamic caliphate envisioned by Bin Laden.”</p>
<p>Tragically, President Obama is making the same mistake in Afghanistan. He has publicly announced his timetable for complete withdrawal of American troops. And he agreed to release five high level Taliban leaders with ties to al Qaeda from Guantanamo in exchange for an American soldier who left his post without permission and may have deserted his platoon.  As reported by AirForceTimes, Rob Williams, the U.S. national intelligence officer for South Asia, told the Senate intelligence committee that four out of the five prisoners swapped for Bowe Bergdahl “are expected to resume activities with the Taliban.”</p>
<p>Albert Einstein is said to have famously proclaimed, “The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results.” That describes President Obama’s policies towards the jihadists to a tee.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>Don&#8217;t miss Daniel Greenfield on this week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang</em> discussing &#8220;<em>How Obama Surrendered Iraq&#8221;</em>:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WUz9-fhF9uw" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Military Bases: Obama&#8217;s New Illegal Alien Dumping Grounds</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michellemalkin/military-bases-obamas-new-illegal-alien-dumping-grounds/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=military-bases-obamas-new-illegal-alien-dumping-grounds</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Jun 2014 04:02:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[military bases]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233909</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How many bases across the country are redistributing illegal immigrants?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ILLEGALIMMIGRATION_NEVELEOT.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-233912 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ILLEGALIMMIGRATION_NEVELEOT.jpg" alt="ILLEGALIMMIGRATION_NEVELEOT" width="271" height="203" /></a>A source tipped me off last week to a curious occurrence: It seems that two planeloads of illegal aliens were recently shipped to Massachusetts. The first reportedly landed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. According to my tipster, approximately 160 illegal immigrants arrived on that flight and stayed nearly a week before being transferred to a Department of Homeland Security site and then released.</p>
<p>The second flight reportedly was diverted from Hanscom to Boston&#8217;s Logan Airport this past weekend. I am told that both Massachusetts and New Hampshire officials were on hand. I reached out to Hanscom AFB for confirmation, but did not receive a call back by my deadline.</p>
<p>Question: How many other military bases are stealthily being used to redistribute, house, process and release illegal border crossers?</p>
<p>What we do know for sure is that the Obama administration already has converted several other military bases across the country into outposts for tens of thousands of illegal aliens from Central and South America.</p>
<p>San Antonio&#8217;s Lackland Air Force Base opened its doors as an illegal immigrant camp last month. Port Hueneme Naval Base in Ventura County, Calif., will shelter nearly 600 illegal border-crossing children and teens. The Fort Sill Army post in Lawton, Okla., was ordered on Friday to take in 1,200 illegal aliens despite the objections of GOP Gov. Mary Fallin, who blasted the White House, saying, &#8220;The Obama administration continues to fail in its duty to protect our borders and continues to promote policies that encourage, rather than discourage, illegal immigration.&#8221;</p>
<p>A makeshift detention center in Nogales, Ariz., is being used as the central clearing station for the latest illegal alien surge. The deluge is a threat to national security, public safety and public health — not to mention a slap in the face to the law-abiding men and women in uniform on those bases and a kick in the teeth to law-abiding people around the world patiently waiting for approval of their visas.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a law enforcement source in Texas tells me this week that countless illegal aliens are being released into the general public despite testing positive for tuberculosis.</p>
<p>&#8220;The feds are putting them on public transportation to God knows where,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Another source, working in the border patrol in south Texas, tells me: &#8220;Our station, along with every other station, is flooded with women and small children. One lady yesterday had a baby as young as 8 months. And they&#8217;re coming over with pink eye and scabies. So getting them medically cleared becomes a priority. They&#8217;ll be here for almost a week, so we provide them with formula and diapers. We have a catering service contracted to feed them because it&#8217;s too many for us to feed on our own. And of course, they end up being released because every family housing facility is full. They&#8217;re supposed to show up for immigration court at a later date, but they don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
<p>Same old, same old. I&#8217;ve reported for years on the feds&#8217; catch-and-release games and deportation Kabuki. The &#8220;notice to appear&#8221; letters — known as &#8220;run letters&#8221; — are a notorious joke in open-borders circles.</p>
<p>The latest &#8220;crisis&#8221; is a wholly manufactured byproduct of White House administrative amnesties, which are supported by a toxic alliance of ethnic-vote-seeking Democrats and cheap-labor-hungry Big Business Republicans. The flood comes just as Obama&#8217;s DHS announced a two-year extension for beneficiaries of the &#8220;Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals&#8221; (DACA) program. A whopping 560,000 illegal aliens have been granted amnesty under DACA and also have received employment authorization.</p>
<p>As I&#8217;ve said for two decades, illegal alien amnesties guarantee two things: more illegal immigration and more Democratic voters. Now we have a White House forcing U.S. military bases to provide interminable benefits and services to illegal aliens for political gain, while said White House evades responsibility for allowing military veterans to die waiting for the most basic of medical services.</p>
<p>And where&#8217;s the GOP &#8220;leadership&#8221; in this country? Doing the bidding of the amnesty-loving U.S. Chamber of Commerce and demonizing Republican candidates at every level who are sick and tired of giving away the store and the country.</p>
<p>God save us from bipartisanship.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Partisan Politics, Bad Ideas &amp; the Bergdahl Swap</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/partisan-politics-and-bad-ideas-a-recipe-for-foreign-policy-disaster/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=partisan-politics-and-bad-ideas-a-recipe-for-foreign-policy-disaster</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Jun 2014 04:45:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233369</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the controversial exchange encapsulates everything that is wrong with Obama's foreign policy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/aaUSA_PFC_BoweBergdahl_ACU_Cropped.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233370" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/aaUSA_PFC_BoweBergdahl_ACU_Cropped.png" alt="aaUSA_PFC_BoweBergdahl_ACU_Cropped" width="272" height="245" /></a>President Obama’s exchange of 5 high-ranking Taliban murderers for a soldier who possibly was a deserter and collaborator encapsulates everything that is wrong with this administration’s foreign policy. The serial failures of the past 5 years reflect a toxic brew of partisan politics and naïve ideology.</p>
<p>The staging of the announcement last Saturday in the Rose Garden obviously was intended to milk every drop of photogenic pathos and political gain from a decision rife with moral hazard and questionable legality. To reap political advantage from this disaster of a deal, lies and half-truths were necessary for creating the narrative behind the picture of Obama flanked by Bergdahl’s joyful, if somewhat bizarre, parents. Contrary to the president and his supporters, Bergdahl was not a “hero” or “prisoner of war.” Nor had he served with “honor and distinction,” or been “captured on the battlefield,” as the terminally mendacious Susan Rice said on a Sunday morning news-show.</p>
<p>In fact, evidence continues to mount that Bergdahl voluntarily left his post to connect with English-speaking Taliban, a move consistent with his renunciation of his citizenship and disgruntled anti-American emails. Whether he is just a flake, as his earlier biography and strange comments suggest, or had more sinister motives will become clearer as more information surfaces. He may even be a traitor. His team leader on the night he disappeared, former Army Sergeant Evan Buetow, has told CNN that radio intercepts revealed that Bergdahl was looking for the Taliban, and that after his capture, the Taliban’s attacks on Americans became “far more directed.”</p>
<p>The serious questions about Bergdahl were known to the administration, if only from a 2012 <i>Rolling Stone</i> article. Yet consistent with Obama’s foreign policy approach, facts are never an impediment to political advantage, as his record shows. The Benghazi disaster was created by politics and covered up for political reasons. Beefing up security for the diplomatic mission was nixed because it contradicted the political narrative that the multilateral “leading from behind” removal of Ghaddafi had started Libya on the road to Jeffersonian democracy and peace, when in reality it had unleashed hundreds of feral jihadists gangs now armed with missiles and other weapons. Likewise blaming the attack on an obscure video rather than an al Qaeda franchise reinforced the “al Qaeda on its heels” and “bin Laden dead” memes peddled during the presidential campaign in order to prove the success of Obama’s anti-Bush foreign policy.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;"><span style="color: #000000;">So too the Bergdahl weeper is another episode in the “end the wars and bring the troops home” political narrative demonstrating the superiority of “</span>collective action” and “diplomacy and development, sanctions and isolation, appeals to international law, and, if just, necessary and effective, multilateral military action,” as Obama said at West Point, over George Bush’s alleged trigger-happy, blood-for-oil, Halliburton-enriching unilateralism. Just don’t think about the 6 soldiers who died looking for Bergdahl, or the violation of legal protocols for releasing Guantanamo detainees, or the dismissal of the concerns of the intelligence community, or the snubbing of Congress in making the deal, or the moral hazard of paying ransom to hostage-takers. Never mind that under Obama’s watch Iraq is once again an inferno of sectarian violence and is fast becoming a satellite of Iran. Just forget that the Taliban, given a date-certain for our withdrawal, are poised to reassert control over large swaths of eastern Afghanistan, squandering the sacrifices made by our troops. Those facts must be obscured in order to achieve a political advantage. So too the enormous risk to our soldiers’ lives and our national interests that attends the release of 5 battle-hardened jihadist murderers does not figure in political calculations for firing up the base ahead of the midterm election.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;">Politics may be all there is to Obama’s foreign policy. With some justification, he may calculate that despite a few occasional bleats of protest, the ovine press corps will always watch his back and deliver the political dividends his actions seek. The scandal of Benghazi––both the incompetence that lead to 4 dead Americans, and the blatantly dishonest cover-up afterwards––that unfolded a few months before the 2012 elections should have put his reelection at risk. Yet with an indifferent press corps downplaying the story, and partisan hack Candy Crowley watching his back during the presidential debates, the worst scandal of his presidency had no effect on the election. So we shouldn’t be surprised that team Obama thinks this latest shameless political stunt will work too. As Guy Benson at <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/06/03/nyt-bergdahl-left-a-desertion-note-n1847046"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Townhall.com</span></a> analyzes the Obama crew’s thinking, “<span style="color: #000000;">They figured that the feel-good nature of the ‘POW’ returning home narrative would be blindly seized upon and enabled by a media exhausted by the egregious VA scandal story. Unpleasant details would be whitewashed or mostly ignored, and the only real outrage would emanate from the usual suspects on the Right. They thought they could counter critiques of the nature and terms of the trade with faux-indignant questions about whether skeptics were in favor of ‘leaving Americans behind.’” In short, the White House’s political <i>modus operandi</i> on every bonehead decision for the past 5 years.</span></p>
<p style="color: #272727;">Yet there is also an ideology behind Obama’s foreign policy, one shared by most progressives. This naïve view assumes the whole world is just like us, wants freedom, human rights, leisure, and prosperity as much as we do, and is kept from achieving those boons by environmental forces, lingering superstitions like religion, and the fallout from historical crimes most of which have been committed by the West. <span style="color: #000000;">Thus </span>it assumes America’s guilt and need to atone for its neo-colonial and neo-imperialist sins, and its racism, plunder of resources, and militarist adventurism, the very attitude struck in Obama’s infamous 2009 Cairo speech. Then follows the imperative for American withdrawal and retreat, a dangerous dereliction of global duty rationalized with the magical thinking of “international law,” “engagement,” “multilateralism,” “smart diplomacy,” “sanctions,” “international pressure,” and all the other camouflage for an unwillingness to make the tough, risky choices necessary in a hard world of bad men. This ideology bespeaks a monumental failure of imagination, and a parochial inability to understand that different peoples and cultures have different mores and goals.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;">Every one of Obama’s foreign policy debacles reveals this shopworn idealism. It explains the impulse to rely on negotiations and concessions with enemies like Iran, who only yield at the point of a gun; the reliance on bluster and bluff with killers like Bashar al Assad, who can read every tell announcing a weak hand; or the feeble threats of disapproval from an international community issued to Vladimir Putin, whose past brutal behavior in Chechnya and Georgia shows that he cares nothing for the estimation of some imagined “international community” that still wants to buy his oil. And now comes Obama’s absurd claim that releasing 5 seasoned killers will “<span style="color: #000000;">open the door for broader discussions among Afghans about the future of their country by building confidence that it is possible for all sides to find common ground.” That Obama thinks the Taliban––who brutally murdered their own people in a soccer stadium, stone homosexuals, throw acid in the face of schoolgirls, honor-kill their own wives and daughters, and blow up women and children–– can have any “common ground” with anyone not sharing their barbarous religious ideology is profoundly delusional. </span></p>
<p>As the Bergdahl fiasco shows yet again, partisan politics and bad ideas make for a world dangerous to our interests and security.</p>
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		<title>The Lawless Bergdahl Swap</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/the-lawless-bergdahl-swap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-lawless-bergdahl-swap</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:59:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Abdul Mutallab]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233319</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Congress fumes over secret deal to trade a possible defector for five hardened terrorists. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/306586629.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233321" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/306586629-450x291.jpg" alt="306586629" width="328" height="212" /></a>Virtually no one in the nation&#8217;s capital now doubts that President Obama violated the law when he approved an unconscionable prisoner swap that repatriates an American deserter while freeing five Islamofascist terrorist field commanders.</p>
<p>Just throw it on the growing pile of impeachable offenses committed almost daily now by President Obama.</p>
<p>In yet another new historical first that paints a bulls-eye on the backs of U.S. citizens and military service members around the globe, Americans learned this week not only that Obama negotiates with Islamofascist terrorists &#8212; but that he does so with all the skill an 18-year-old boy who just won the lottery employs when dealing with a Porsche salesman.</p>
<p>Perhaps Obama thought that the release of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl who was held for five years by the Taliban in Afghanistan would be a sure-fire good news story to distract from the Veterans Affairs hospital waiting list scandal. If so, he guessed wrong.</p>
<p>Bergdahl, it turns out, expressed dismay about the war and walked off his base overseas in search of terrorists to whom he could surrender. There are conflicting reports, but it appears Bergdahl became <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/06/03/oh-my-us-intel-officials-worried-bergdahl-may-have-been-active-collaborator-with-the-enemy-n1846705?utm_source=thdailypm&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nl_pm">an active collaborator</a> with America&#8217;s enemies and fed them valuable information that helped them strike U.S. military targets in Afghanistan with enhanced efficiency.</p>
<p>Bergdahl, whom one of his former military colleagues described on TV as at best a deserter, and at worst, a traitor, was traded for five high-value Guantanamo Bay inmates in a clandestine transaction that might be the modern-day equivalent of swapping the high command of Nazi Germany&#8217;s armed forces for a <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/nazi-saboteurs">wartime saboteur</a> like Ernest Peter Burger or Herbert Hans Haupt.</p>
<p>Thanks to Obama and the same people who brought you <a href="http://HealthCare.gov">HealthCare.gov</a> and a growing list of governmental monstrosities, bearded unlawful combatants are now at liberty in Qatar where supposedly somebody is keeping an eye on them. They will, no doubt, return to plotting against the United States and orchestrating plans to kill Americans.</p>
<p>In carrying out the deal President Obama bypassed most of the congressional leadership and violated a statute he recently signed into law. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), ever the Obama water carrier, took time out from his ambitious hate speech campaign against the Koch brothers to claim the administration let him know of the operation in advance. Apart from Reid, just about nobody else on Capitol Hill makes the same claim.</p>
<p>House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/defense/208081-boehner-white-house-kept-prisoner-trade-secret-because-congress-opposed-it">said</a> he was not notified of the unseemly transaction until it had already happened. Boehner said the administration gave congressional leadership a heads-up about a prospective prisoner swap over two years ago but did not revisit the issue with lawmakers.</p>
<p>&#8220;Unfortunately, the questions and concerns we had were never satisfactorily answered and they remain today,&#8221; Boehner said. &#8220;At the time, the administration deferred further engagement because the prospects of the exchange had diminished.&#8221;</p>
<p>As recently as June 21, 2013, White House spokesman Jay Carney said &#8220;we would not make any decision about transfer of any detainees without consulting with Congress.&#8221;</p>
<p>“There was every expectation that the administration would re-engage with Congress, as it did before, and the only reason it did not is because the administration knew it faced serious and sober bipartisan concern and opposition,” Boehner said in a statement. His office was reportedly notified of the swap, by that time a fait accompli, on Saturday at 11:52 in the morning.</p>
<p>Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) corroborated Boehner&#8217;s version of events, explaining that a prisoner exchange was discussed with congressional intelligence panels and met with more or less unanimous opposition.</p>
<p>Lawmakers reportedly worried such a deal would provide terrorist groups with an incentive to hold more U.S. soldiers and that the administration would be powerless to stop the released detainees from returning to the battlefield.</p>
<p>House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who is ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/06/02/Palin-Challenges-Media-Find-Out-Why-Obama-Broke-Law-in-Very-Concerning-POW-Exchange">said in a joint statement</a> that the president &#8220;clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress thirty days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated.&#8221;</p>
<p>The 2014 National Defense Authorization Act mandates that the defense secretary advise the relevant congressional committees 30 days before freeing any prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. Obama signed the measure into law and griped in an accompanying signing statement that such a requirement was unconstitutional.</p>
<p>&#8220;Trading five senior Taliban leaders from detention in Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl’s release may have consequences for the rest of our forces and all Americans,&#8221; the two lawmakers said. &#8220;Our terrorist adversaries now have a strong incentive to capture Americans. That incentive will put our forces in Afghanistan and around the world at even greater risk.&#8221;</p>
<p>Two prominent left-wing legal commentators who are otherwise sympathetic to Obama&#8217;s policy agenda accused the president of <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/02/toobin-turley-yep-obama-broke-the-law-in-bergdahl-deal/">breaking</a> the law by executing the prisoner exchange.</p>
<p>“I think he clearly broke the law,” said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. “The law says 30-days’ notice. He didn’t give 30-days’ notice.”</p>
<p>“The law is on the books, and he didn’t follow it,” he added.</p>
<p>When asked if the Obama White House violated federal law, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley replied, &#8220;they did.&#8221;</p>
<p>“I don’t think that the White House is seriously arguing that they’re not violating federal law. And to make matters worse, this is a long series of violations of federal law that the president’s been accused of. … This is going to add to that pile. I don’t think there’s much debate that they’re in violation of the law.”</p>
<p>President Obama “is essentially arguing the very same principle as George Bush, that when it comes to Gitmo, he has almost absolute power, that it’s his prerogative, his inherent authority, to be able to make these decisions as he sees fit.”</p>
<p>Strangely, the normally docile Speaker Boehner wants to do something about the Bergdahl swap, which he said “invited serious questions into how this exchange went down.” He said he supports calls for congressional hearings on the issue.</p>
<p>Because of Obama&#8217;s action, U.S. personnel abroad now face an elevated risk of being kidnapped by terrorists.</p>
<p>“One of their greatest protections — knowing that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists — have been compromised,” Boehner said.</p>
<p>Obama unleashed the White House propaganda machine over the weekend to spread false information about this stinker of a deal. Naturally, he used White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice as his TV talking head. Rice also served as reelection candidate Obama&#8217;s emergency first-prevaricator on the Benghazi coverup in fall 2012.</p>
<p>Rice went on TV <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/susan-rice-bergdahl-served-honor-and-distinction_794066.html">to spread</a> the administration&#8217;s bogus cover story. She said with a straight face that Bergdahl &#8220;served the United States with honor and distinction.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Sergeant Bergdahl wasn&#8217;t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield.&#8221;</p>
<p>No doubt Rice won&#8217;t have any difficulty landing a job in public relations or academia after Obama leaves office in 2017.</p>
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		<title>Our Bad Habit of Negotiating with Terrorists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/our-bad-habit-of-negotiating-with-terrorists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=our-bad-habit-of-negotiating-with-terrorists</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:52:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bergdahl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exchange]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guantanamo Bay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[swap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taliban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226712</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Destructive tactics of a destructive foreign policy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/hy.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226787" alt="hy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/hy-450x229.jpg" width="288" height="146" /></a>Every parent should be happy for the Bergdahl family, whose son was returned to them after five years of captivity among the Taliban. But every parent is not the president of the United States, whose primary responsibility is to protect the security and interests of all Americans, both now and in the long-term. The release of 5 “high-risk”––a phrase meaning they’re eager to kill Americans–– Taliban jihadists held in Guantanamo Bay is nothing more than ransom paid to kidnappers, and an invitation to the enemy to take more Americans captive and to hold them as bargaining chips for more concessions. And the release of hardened, high-ranking Taliban terrorists means there will be more dead Americans after theses soldiers of Allah return to the battlefield.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We shouldn’t give credence, however, to the criticism that Obama’s action uniquely violates the principle that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Obama’s administration has already been negotiating with the Taliban in order to craft some chimeric “peace agreement” with the Afghan government after we leave. And talking with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, is de facto “negotiating with terrorists.” But before Obama we have negotiated with terrorists on numerous occasions, and each time we have confirmed the moral hazard that attends trying to talk with fanatic ideologues that, like Auric Goldfinger, don’t expect us to talk, but to die.</span></p>
<p>How else did we secure the release of the 52 Americans held for 444 days by the Iranians starting in 1979, other than by negotiating ransom with hostage-takers? The hostages came home after Jimmy Carter issued a series of Executive Orders that released billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets in American banks, and that indemnified the Iranians from any lawsuits suing the regime for the destruction of American property and the abuse of the diplomats. So much for Carter’s bluster that “we will not yield to blackmail.” During the negotiations the Iranians serially humiliated the Americans. For example, Carter aide Hamilton Jordan donned a fake moustache and wig to meet with the Iranian negotiator in Paris. After weeks of negotiations, with a deal seemingly close, Ayatollah Khomeini killed it with a public speech in which he called the embassy kidnappings “a crushing blow to the world-devouring USA” and left the decision to the new Iranian parliament, which was months from being seated. Negotiations continued with a series of concessions offered by Carter, all of which were contemptuously slapped down by the Iranians. As a result, the prestige of Iran as the foremost jihadist foe of the infidel West expanded across the globe, providing inspiration and material support to other jihadist groups convinced by America’s weakness that we were a civilization with “foundations of straw,” as bin Laden put it, and ripe for destruction.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Then there’s the sorry spectacle of the 1985-86 Iran-Contra affair that unfolded during Reagan’s second term. This was a Rube-Goldberg plot to secure the release of 7American hostages taken by Iranian terrorist proxies, and to improve relations with the Iranian regime by providing them with 2200 TOW anti-tank missiles and over 100 HAWK anti-aircraft missiles in violation of an arms embargo, with the profits going to arm the Nicaraguan Contras. These were the same Iranians, by the way, that only a few years earlier had trained and funded the jihadists who had murdered 241 American military personnel in the Beirut Marine-barracks bombing, and that were funding numerous other jihadist groups like Hezbollah. The naïve belief in improved relations with these murderers and so-called “moderates” has no better symbol than a cake in the shape of a key––apparently the “key” to better American-Iranian relations–– that the American emissary brought to Iran along with a Bible signed by Reagan, both items bespeaking a criminal ignorance about the nature of the Iranian theocrats with whom they were dealing. In the end, only 3 hostages were released, only to be immediately replaced by three other kidnapped Americans.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Once again, the willingness to provide advanced weaponry to a regime that publicly and frequently expressed its desire to destroy us only confirmed the mullahs in their belief that we are weak and can be manipulated. Indeed, the intervening years suggest their insight has been correct, as they have murdered with impunity Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, trained and funded numerous terrorist outfits, and continue to pursue nuclear weaponry even as they engage in specious negotiations spiced with contemptuous public statements.</span></p>
<p>Worse than even these examples are the decades we have spent negotiating with the Palestinian terrorist gang known as the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was rebooted as the Palestinian Authority after the 1993 Oslo Agreements. A whole atlas could be filled with the cities hosting these futile negotiations, many of which delivered nothing but concessions to terrorist murderers. Camp David, Madrid, Wye River, Sharm el-Sheikh, Taba, Annapolis––all have been the sites of negotiations with terrorists for whom violence against Israeli civilians is a negotiating tactic used to complement the tactic of attending “summits” and “conferences” at which the Palestinian leadership has no intentions of negotiating in good faith, instead extracting concessions from gullible Westerners. PLO honcho Yasser Arafat, a die-hard terrorist whose creed was “jihad, jihad, jihad,” was feted and hosted at capitals around the globe and treated as a legitimate chief of state instead of as the head of a murderous, kleptocratic gang that he was. During the Clinton years he visited the White House more often than any other world leader, only in the end to betray Clinton at Camp David by refusing the offered “national homeland” he supposedly wanted, and then launching the Second Intifada that killed 1000 Israelis.</p>
<p>And it isn’t just talk we have shared with the Palestinian terrorists. As the <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf">Congressional Research Office</a> documents, since the Oslo Accords the U.S. has transferred $5 billion to the Palestinians, with much of the money that escaped the Swiss bank accounts of the PA “leadership” going to fund terrorist outfits. This is in addition to funds channeled through the United Nations Relief Works Agency, the only U.N. entity committed to one refugee group and self-identified as an advocate for Palestinians. The U.S. has provided a quarter of the agency’s funds, which since 1950 has totaled nearly $5 billion. Then there’s the money given since Oslo to train, arm, and support the PA security forces, presumably to fight against terrorists. In fact, these “security forces” have participated in or facilitated terrorist attacks. As Caroline Glick writes in her indispensible <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Israeli-Solution-One-State-Peace-Middle-ebook/dp/B00F1W0DK4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1401636671&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+israeli+solution+a+one-state+plan+for+peace+in+the+middle+east"><i>The Israeli Solution</i></a>, “The more aid the Palestinian authority receives from the international community, the more terror attacks the Palestinians carry out against Israel.” We’re not just negotiating with terrorists; we’re funding them as well.</p>
<p>There are many reasons for this compulsion to try to talk or bribe out of their hatred enemies who have no intention of peaceful coexistence. Politics, of course, is ever a factor in such bad decisions. For Obama, ransoming Bergdahl deflected attention from the VA scandal with a photogenic feel-good story. Pursuing futile negotiations with the Iranians creates the illusion of action when the administration has no intention of doing anything concrete to keep a malignant theocracy from acquiring nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>More broadly, the modern West clings to the hoary notion that negotiation and diplomacy are the best means of resolving conflicts and creating peace. Obama recycled this received wisdom in his recent West Point address. In addressing global disorder, Obama said, “we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action. We have to broaden our tools to include diplomacy and development, sanctions and isolation, appeals to international law, and, if just, necessary and effective, multilateral military action.” But as his disastrous foreign policy record demonstrates, negotiation works only with those who sincerely share our goal to end violence, coexist peacefully, and create peace. The jihadist gangs from the Taliban to Iran, and our geopolitical rivals like Russia and China, have other plans. With those actors, negotiation works only when backed by a credible threat of force, something Obama has serially squandered with his “red lines” bluster and bluff. Yet ever the foreign policy naïf, Obama claimed in his statement about Bergdahl’s release, “While we are mindful of the challenges, it is our hope Sergeant Bergdahl’s recovery could potentially open the door for broader discussions among Afghans about the future of their country by building confidence that it is possible for all sides to find common ground.” If sincere, this statement represents a massive failure of imagination, ever the hallmark foreign policy failure. The Taliban have one aim: to impose once more their hegemony over Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Exchanging Bergdahl for 5 seasoned jihadists is a shortsighted, dangerous deal, but it isn’t unprecedented. It’s a recurring bad foreign policy habit driven by politics and idealism.</p>
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		<title>The Release of Meriam Ibrahim?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/the-release-of-meriam-ibrahim/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-release-of-meriam-ibrahim</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:40:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Faith J. H. McDonnell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[apostasy]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226738</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Khartoum regime's charm offensive.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mi.gif"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-226740" alt="mi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mi-371x350.gif" width="371" height="350" /></a>The Government of Sudan is attempting a public relations outreach (a.k.a. “charm offensive”). Khartoum has been stung by the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2635074/FIRST-PICTURE-The-American-toddler-held-brutal-Sudanese-jail-pregnant-mother-sentenced-hang-Christian.html">reaction</a> of the international community to its <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/christian-woman-married-to-u-s-citizen-sentenced-to-death-in-sudan/">treatment</a> of Sudanese Christian mother Dr. Meriam Yahya Ibrahim, 27, incarcerated in a Khartoum prison with her 20-month-old son, Martin, and as of May 27, 2014, with her <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/05/27/American-Citizen-Born-in-Sudanese-Prison-Now-the-Clock-is-Running-Down-for-Her-Mother">newborn daughter</a>, Maya.  Khartoum’s charm offensives – in which the ruling National Congress Party officials <a href="http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110118221448/v__/images/a/a6/V_2009_Serpent-s_Tooth_S02E02_Anna_eating_large_rat.jpg">assume</a> a humane veneer, declaring their commitment to peace, always – usually are reserved for the U.S. State Department and Foreign Service personnel, naïve Christian peacemakers, and others afflicted with willful blindness. This tactic of pleasant conversation over cups of cardamom-spiced coffee, cloaking genocide in diplomacy and cultural diversity, has enabled the regime to survive for decades.</p>
<p>The Meriam Ibrahim Offensive began just days after the shocking ruling of Judge Abbas al Khalifia that Dr. Ibrahim be hanged for apostasy. The Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC released a <a href="http://www.sudanembassy.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=1073:the-case-of-mariam-is-neither-religious-nor-political-it-is-legal&amp;catid=13:news-and-events&amp;Itemid=207">statement</a> to assuage the concerns of those who heard of the death sentence. In that zany way in which President Omar al Bashir’s government lies and tells the truth simultaneously, the statement declared that “The Case of Mariam is neither religious nor political, it is Legal.” (It omitted the fact that the legal case against Ibrahim is <i>Islamic</i> law, the Shariah. Both Ibrahim’s marriage and her religious faith violate the Shariah.) The statement also reaffirmed the Government of Sudan’s commitment to human rights and freedom of belief, and very prettily thanked “all those who have raised their concern and sympathy on this issue.”</p>
<p>But the international community did not fall for this typical Sudanese diplomacy, not when it comes to shackling a pregnant mom and a toddler to a prison wall to wait for her eventual flogging and hanging. Most rational people around the world do not hear Meriam’s story and think “Oh, a law violator! She must be punished!”</p>
<p>Instead, the world sees the plight of a courageous Christian woman, who has refused to renounce her faith. It sees a little boy shackled in prison with his mother because the Sudanese government will not allow his Christian father to have custody of a child they consider to be Muslim. It sees a tiny baby girl, in squalid, disease-ridden conditions. The world sees a loving husband and father, Daniel Wani, a South Sudanese Christian who made a good life in a new country, and became an American citizen and a biochemist. They see himWani now, separated from his family, suffering from muscular dystrophy, bereft. And so <a href="http://touchstonemag.com/merecomments/2014/05/sudanese-christian-sentenced-death/">protest letters</a> and <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/sudan-more-half-million-call-free-pregnant-woman-sentenced-death-her-religious-choice-lawyers-l">petitions</a> condemning Ibrahim’s apostasy sentence continue to land at the Massachusetts Avenue doors of the Sudanese Embassy, and to also wing their way to Khartoum, in spite of the Sudanese government’s efforts to reduce a family tragedy to a “legal issue.”</p>
<p>Therefore, as of Saturday, May 31, the Khartoum regime has gone into a second phase of its charm offensive, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2644796/Sudanese-woman-facing-barbaric-death-sentence-marrying-Christian-FREED-U-turn-authorities.html">hinting</a> coyly that Ibrahim may soon be released. Foreign Ministry Under-Secretary Abdelah Al-Azrak told <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/31/us-sudan-deathsentence-idUSKBN0EB0T720140531?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=worldNews">Reuters News Service</a> that government authorities in the country are “working to release” Ibrahim “through legal measures.”</p>
<p>Al-Azrak also told <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27651483">the BBC</a> that Sudan &#8220;guaranteed religious freedom and was committed to protecting the woman.&#8221; Oddly, Ibrahim’s team of attorneys, nor her husband had not been advised of this development before the foreign ministry spoke the news agencies, nor have they been contacted since. <i>The Daily Mail</i>, which has provided some of lead reporting on Ibrahim’s treatment <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2644796/Sudanese-woman-facing-barbaric-death-sentence-marrying-Christian-FREED-U-turn-authorities.html">revealed</a> that her lawyers “do not believe the offer is genuine, and is a ploy to silence the growing outcry.”</p>
<p>Speaking to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/10867220/Sudanese-woman-Meriam-Ibrahim-sentenced-to-death-for-apostasy-to-be-freed.html"><i>The Telegraph</i></a><i> </i>on May 31, Ibrahim’s attorney, Elshareef Ali Mohammed said,</p>
<blockquote><p>“It’s a statement to silence the international media. This is what the government does. We will not believe that she is being freed until she walks out of the prison.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Hopefully, the United States and other Western nations that are putting pressure on Khartoum will not be gullible either. Too often, the U.S. government has trusted the promises and declarations of Khartoum, and while the U.S. has acted according to the “carrots” it has promised the Sudan government for good behavior, the regime has failed to honor its promises. Whether the U.S. has offered any incentives to Khartoum to release Ibrahim is not known, but her imprisonment has drawn international outrage. It would seem possible that Khartoum has felt the sting and decided that the approval of the world for pardoning Ibrahim outweighs the approval of the hard-core Islamists who want her dead. As attorney Mohammed <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/10867220/Sudanese-woman-Meriam-Ibrahim-sentenced-to-death-for-apostasy-to-be-freed.html#source=refresh">said</a>, “It shows our campaign to free Meriam is rattling them. We must keep up the pressure.”</p>
<p>While the world community, members of the U.S. Congress, and the British government – including both Prime Minister David Cameron and the Foreign Office, put pressure on Khartoum, the regime continues its shameless pressure on Ibrahim to renounce her Christian faith and convert to Islam. <i>The Daily Mail </i><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2644796/Sudanese-woman-facing-barbaric-death-sentence-marrying-Christian-FREED-U-turn-authorities.html">quoted</a> a spokesperson from the US-based Sudan Justice Center who said that “they have been promising Meriam money and security if she becomes a Muslim.” According the Center, Muslim clerics spend almost the whole day in her cell, telling her to give up her Christian faith. “They have said they will protect her and her family if she does what they want.”</p>
<p>In addition, <i>The Telegraph </i><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/10867220/Sudanese-woman-Meriam-Ibrahim-sentenced-to-death-for-apostasy-to-be-freed.html">reported</a> that the Bashir government recently sent some 10 employees of the state-controlled press to see Ibrahim, photograph her, and publish a series of articles claiming that she was actually a practicing Muslim.</p>
<p>“They wrote that she prayed five times a day and read the Koran – which is totally not true,” Ibrahim’s attorney Mohammed told <i>The Telegraph</i>. “She didn’t want to talk to them but did not have the right to say no. They took photos and filmed her, and she did not like the photos. She asked them to delete the photos, but they said no.” Then they further tormented her by showing her their articles published in the government-owned <i>Hikayat</i>, <i>Al Dar</i>, <i>Al Sudani</i>, and<i> Al Intibaha</i>. <i>Al Intibaha </i>is owned by the uncle of President Bashir. Mohammed said that Ibrahim was very upset by this and that the attorneys were angry “because it could influence the court of appeal.”</p>
<p>If Ibrahim should be released, continued pressure is needed to ensure her safety and that of her children &#8212; both American citizens by virtue of Wani – and the safety of her husband and attorneys. Pressure is also needed on the other player in the matter, the U.S. State Department, to obtain the spousal visa that rightfully belongs to Dr. Ibrahim, or alternately, political asylum.</p>
<p>Wani’s pleas to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum were ignored not once, but three times. The State Department needs to be reminded that little Maya joins brother Martin as what must surely be the youngest American citizens incarcerated in a Sudanese prison. Maya probably also holds the dubious honor of being the only American citizen <i>born</i> in a Sudanese prison – and definitely the only American citizen born in a Sudanese prison to a mother who was <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2642655/Mother-facing-death-penalty-marrying-Christian-forced-birth-legs-shackled-Sudanese-jail.html">kept in shackles <i>during labor</i></a>.</p>
<p>Advocates will not relax the pressure on the Khartoum regime to halt the draconian implementation of Shariah law under which most of the people of Sudan are suffering. The treatment of this little family by the regime is not unusual. Christian persecution, Arab imperialism, slavery, and genocide which demonstrate the hypocrisy of the National Congress Party Government of Sudan’s claim that it is committed to “all human rights and freedoms of beliefs” span the length and width of the country. Khartoum is currently waging genocidal war in at least three regions of Sudan – the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile State, and Darfur. In the space of four days, May 27-30, the Sudanese air force <a href="http://nubareports.org/safbombs/">dropped 55 bombs</a> on Kauda town in the Nuba Mountains. On May 1 it <a href="http://nubareports.org/sudan-targets-only-hospital-in-nuba-mountains/">bombed</a> the only hospital in the Nuba Mountain war zone for two days in a row. And the regime is similarly waging violent jihad in Blue Nile State and Darfur.</p>
<p>Ibrahim’s situation has been a microcosm of both the abuse of human rights perpetrated by Sudan, and of U.S. foreign policy in response to that situation. There have been valiant efforts, particularly by members of Congress, and there has been neglect and apathy. But the plight of Meriam Yahya Ibrahim has put a face, actually four faces, on Sudan’s human rights abuses and enabled people around the world to witness the personal rather than theoretical implications of Shariah.</p>
<p>Is it possible that this growing, massive awareness will not only result in the kind of push needed to pressure the U.S. government to demand Dr. Ibrahim’s freedom, but also result in the kind of ongoing push required for it to no longer fall for Khartoum’s charm offensives and to take actions needed so desperately in the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile State, Darfur, and everywhere that the Sudanese government is violating human rights?</p>
<p><em>Faith J. H. McDonnell directs the </em><a href="http://www.theird.org/page.aspx?pid=226"><i>Institute on Religion and Democracy’s</i></a><em> Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan and is the author of</em> <a href="http://www.theird.org/page.aspx?pid=383">Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children</a> <em>(Chosen Books, 2007).</em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere: A Mother’s Plea</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frimet-roth/injustice-anywhere-is-a-threat-to-justice-everywhere-a-mothers-plea/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=injustice-anywhere-is-a-threat-to-justice-everywhere-a-mothers-plea</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Apr 2014 04:55:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frimet Roth]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The immorality of releasing Palestinian murderers from prison. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/F131028YS45-e1383004378639-635x357.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222475" alt="F131028YS45-e1383004378639-635x357" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/F131028YS45-e1383004378639-635x357-450x313.jpg" width="315" height="219" /></a>One oppressively hot August morning, my daughter Malki set off with her best friend Michal to decorate with welcome signs the bedroom of another friend returning from vacation.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Afterward, Malki called me to say that she and Michal were heading to the city center. There she would catch a bus to a summer camp counselors&#8217; meeting in another Jerusalem suburb. &#8220;I love you&#8221; we told each other – as we usually ended our conversations. It promised to be a day of giving and sharing like every day was for Malki.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Thirteen years later, I still love her and pine for her dreadfully. But now, the only way for me to express that is to seek justice for her murder. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Because that same hot August morning another young woman, Ahlam Tamimi, set off on a very different type of mission. A twenty year old self-described journalism student, she took two weapons &#8211; a 10 kg. bomb and an eager suicide bomber. They proceeded to the Sbarro pizza restaurant which Tamimi had scouted days earlier. Jewish women and children frequent it at lunchtime and Tamimi liked that. As this embodiment of evil would later brag, she hungered for child victims and the more the better.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Malki and Michal had detoured from their intended route to eat there too. They were among the fifteen men, women and children who perished in the explosion.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Today, Malki and Michal lie buried side by side, while their murderer, who smiled happily to learn her tally of dead children, is free and thriving in Jordan. She frequently travels in the Arab world to incite adoring crowds to follow in her footsteps. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In my country, my husband and I are not welcome to decry this. Parents of murdered children are hailed as heroes when they declare that they want the murderer to go unpunished. Whether for the sake of a prisoner “swap,” to prolong the negotiations with the PA or, as the cliche goes, “to promote peace.” Waiving our right to justice is considered the noble, patriotic thing to do. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Our quest for justice, for a life sentence for Tamimi – there is no capital punishment here – has invited accusations that we are merely vengeful.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet nothing will convince us that freeing murderers is an acceptable, integral part of any peace process.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Malki’s murderer was released in October 2011, the beneficiary of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/10/19-oct-11-haaretz-shalit-prisoner-swap.html">another terrorists-walk-free deal</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Some would say we should have learned to live with that reality.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet, with each release of terrorist murderers &#8211; tried, convicted and unrepentant &#8211; my government thrusts a fresh dagger into my heart and conveys the message again and again: &#8220;Your child was not </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">really</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> murdered. And your child&#8217;s killer does not </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">really </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">deserve to be punished.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">True, my leaders have been subjected to inordinate pressure to free terrorist murderers from the West, and in particular, from the US. Threats and rewards have been dangled before prime minister Bibi Netanyahu to elicit from him a travesty of justice that they themselves would never consider.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We saw that hypocrisy in sharp relief when terrorists who had not even been tried yet but were strongly suspected of murders of American soldiers were recently released from Afghani prisons. The United States government was outraged. The US embassy criticized the releases as &#8220;</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://kabul.usembassy.gov/st-021314.html">deeply regrettable</a>,&#8221;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a move that could lead to further violence in Afghanistan. The US military in Afghanistan </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/13/afghanistan-releases-65-accused-militants-despite-american-protest/">warned</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that “release of these dangerous individuals poses a threat to U.S., Coalition and Afghan National Security Forces, as well as the Afghan population”.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It is a tight spot into which our prime minister has been rammed. Still, that is a lame excuse for releasing murderers imprisoned in Israel. Netanyahu holds the keys to their cells and the decision to use them is his and his alone. For a politician who has cast himself as a tough talker, Netanyahu has, in this instance, chosen the softest route available.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But it was a carefully-made choice.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He is a seasoned and savvy politician who knows his constituency well. In both the left and the right camps, these releases are &#8216;acceptable&#8217;. Terrorists are deemed currency for him to dole out whenever he sees fit. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Unspecified calculations, secret strategies, and the deepest wisdom have been attributed to Netanyahu by his supporters to rationalize his odious actions. And so it has been left predominantly to the victims themselves to take up the fight. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It has been a fruitless challenge.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Our prime minister has neither deigned to meet with any of us nor even to respond to our written pleas, although he did say publicly in 2011 that he had sent all of us personal letters of explanation. Surprisingly none of those personal letters ever reached any of us.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The media have played no small part in pressuring Israel. We have all been subjected to sob-stories about ex- prisoners who either maintain their innocence or their rehabilitation to garner favor. Gullible journalists like the New York Times&#8217; Jodi Rudoren are ready willing and able to oblige with sympathetic pieces. Her most recent specimen, “</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/world/middleeast/remaking-a-life-after-years-in-an-israeli-prison.html">Remaking a Life After Years in an Israeli Prison</a>,<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">” was particularly abhorrent.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Where are the pieces about the terrorists like Ahlam Tamimi who declare “</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/11/17-nov-11-monster-walks-streets-and-she.html">I have no regrets</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">” and who return to terrorism &#8211; as nearly 50% of them do? </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Many families of victims are incensed, pained and fearful of the consequences these releases entail. Some of us have noted that the conduct of the PA, of its chief Mahmoud Abbas and of the entire Palestinian people does not justify a gesture of this sort. They have pointed out that the celebrations and glory that are lavished on released murderers contradict their claims of a desire for peace and rejection of terrorism. They remind us of the high rate of recidivism.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But those are not the strongest arguments.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There is really only one constant, immutable, irrefutable flaw in these releases. </span><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">They are unjust</b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Plain and simple: undeniably unjust. They isolate one category of murders from the rest and declare them less significant, less tragic, less criminal, less intolerable.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Justice, as we all know, is blind. Or at least it should be. It should be blind to the race, religion, creed and gender of both the murderer and his victim. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These releases contravene a basic tenet of any democratic state. It is time for Netanyahu to regain his moral compass, turn back the clock, and reinstate the inviolability of Israel’s judiciary.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This time, Netanyahu needs to show some spine and say ‘no’ to the impending prisoner release.</span></p>
<p><em>Frimet Roth, a native New Yorker, is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. Her daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in the Sbarro restaurant bombing in 2001. With her husband Arnold, she founded the Malki Foundation (<a href="http://www.malkifoundation.org/">www.malkifoundation.org</a>) in their daughter&#8217;s name. It provides concrete support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child. The title of this op-ed is derived from Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.</em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama Frees a Terror Lawyer</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-frees-a-terror-lawyer/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-frees-a-terror-lawyer</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:24:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blind Sheikh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cancer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lynne Stewart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Omar Abdel Rahman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorist lawyer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214633</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The liberation of Lynne Stewart.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/stewart.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214636" alt="stewart" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/stewart-450x299.jpg" width="315" height="209" /></a>&#8220;Oh, Muslims everywhere!&#8221; <a href="http://www.cie.ugent.be/documenten/jihad-dk.pdf">Omar Abdel Rahman wrote from</a> his American prison cell. &#8220;Cut the transportation of their countries, tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, on land.&#8221;</p>
<p>This fatwa, or one very similar to it, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=aTL9wSjurfAC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">was distributed to Al Qaeda terrorists</a> in terror training camps while Mohammed Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh’s son, lectured them on their duties as Jihadists.</p>
<p>While Al Qaeda was working on terror plots that would eventually develop into the attacks of September 11, the blind sheikh was producing threatening sermons from prison warning that America would bring “destruction” on itself if it interfered with the forces of Islam.</p>
<p>On September 2000, a year before the attack, Bin Laden released a video together with Rahman’s son, vowing to free the blind sheikh while Rahman’s son urged Muslims to “move forward and shed blood.”</p>
<p>A year later they did.</p>
<p>It wasn’t easy for the blind terror chief to remain relevant in prison. His devoted attorney <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=861">Lynne Stewart</a> helped keep Omar Abdel Rahman relevant by helping him pass messages to his followers from prison. After Stewart’s crimes were exposed and this lifeline was cut, the blind sheikh became so forgotten that Bin Laden talked of avenging his death even though Omar Abdel-Rahman was still among the living.</p>
<p>Omar Abdel Rahman’s followers carried out the first attack against the World Trade Center. Ramzi Yousef, the perpetrator of the World Trade Center bombing, was a follower of the blind sheikh, and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was also the architect of the September 11 attacks.</p>
<p>Afterward, the blind sheikh’s followers unspooled a terror plot larger in scale than September 11 targeting New York landmarks.</p>
<p>Lynne Stewart didn’t just conspire to aid any terrorist. The man she was aiding was a crucial figure in a wave of terror rolling around the world from Egypt to Afghanistan. Islamic terrorists, including Al Qaeda, hung on his words and derived inspiration from his incitement to violence.</p>
<p>Stewart was present when Rahman was told that the bombing of the USS Cole had been carried out in his name and that there were plans to carry out further operations unless he was released. While the sheikh and his follower talked of terror, Lynne Stewart sat and scribbled, pretending to take notes so that the prison guards would not become suspicious.</p>
<p>In an interview, Lynne Stewart suggested that maintaining the blind sheikh’s “exchange value” was part of her job. “It could be very important that that person is still perceived as worth exchanging, perhaps, for someone else,” she suggested.</p>
<p>“Once he… becomes a non-person on the international scene, he loses currency, he loses credibility. He is no longer someone who perhaps would be viable for people to consider in some kind of swap or exchange.”</p>
<p>Stewart was admitting that her goal was to maintain Omar Abdel Rahman as a viable terrorist kingpin whose release his followers would want to obtain through a prisoner exchange.</p>
<p>A year after Rahman was sentenced to life in prison, terrorists from his Muslim Brotherhood splinter organization, the Islamic Group, carried out the Luxor Massacre in Egypt. European tourists had their ears and noses cut off before being killed. The attack had been carried out to take hostages to exchange for Lynne Stewart’s client. A note calling for the release of Rahman was found in a disemboweled body.</p>
<p>When asked about the Luxor Massacre, Stewart accused Americans of being “two-faced about violence” adding that, “The basic desire of people to be free hasn&#8217;t changed. And I&#8217;m not sure that I want to second-guess what methods other people use.”</p>
<p>In the massacre that Lynne Stewart refused to second-guess; the methods included the murder of Shaunnah Turner, a 5-year-old girl.</p>
<p>Rosemarie Dousse, an elderly survivor of the massacre, said, that the killers “took all the young women, the girls, and disappeared with them. I don’t know where they went with the women, but they hurt them. We could hear screams of pain.”</p>
<p>Stewart continued to work for Rahman even after his conviction and played her part in helping him pass along messages of terror.</p>
<p>Finally a year before the September 11 attacks, the terror lawyer went too far and held a press conference confirming that the blind sheikh wanted an end to the temporary ceasefire between the Islamic Group and the Egyptian government that had been brokered the year of the Luxor Massacre.</p>
<p>When Lynne Stewart announced an end to the ceasefire, she was doing nothing less than calling for the murder of more Shaunnah Turners and she has never apologized for it.</p>
<p>Lynne Stewart was no longer functioning as an attorney. Instead she was acting as the spokeswoman for a terrorist organization. After September 11 fulfilled the fatwa of her client, she <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/magazine/left-behind.html?pagewanted=7&amp;src=pm">expressed her support</a> for Osama bin Laden and said, “I&#8217;m pretty inured to the notion that in a war or in an armed struggle, people die.”</p>
<p>The people in the World Trade Center &#8221;never knew what hit them. They had no idea that they could ever be a target for somebody&#8217;s wrath, just by virtue of being American. They took it personally. And actually, it wasn&#8217;t a personal thing.&#8221;</p>
<p>Lynne Stewart’s career of defending domestic terrorists had prepared her to take this callous view of the lives of the men, women and children murdered by her clients. Stewart had defended Weather Underground terrorists not for money, but because she agreed with their views.</p>
<p>“I am guilty of no crime,” Stewart has said. And she has gone on playing the victim while showing not an ounce of remorse.</p>
<p>“Oh, I would do it again in a minute,” she told an interviewer. And now that Obama has decided to set her free; she may get the chance.</p>
<p>Stewart has cancer and the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Attorney&#8217;s office asked for her compassionate release. The request has been granted.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/terrorist-abetting-lynne-stewart-released-from-prison-thanks-to-obama-administration.php">Compassionate releases</a> <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/terrorist-abetting-lynne-stewart-released-from-prison-thanks-to-obama-administration.php">are rare</a>, but the old radical has friends in high places. Less than <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/terrorist-abetting-lynne-stewart-released-from-prison-thanks-to-obama-administration.php">a dozen prisoners</a> are granted compassionate release each year. Lynne Stewart won the lottery, but it’s doubtful that luck had anything to do with it.</p>
<p>Holder has filled the Justice Department with terrorist sympathizers and made it a place where Lynne Stewart would feel right at home.</p>
<p>The American Taliban’s lawyer is now the Acting Associate Attorney General and the Principal Deputy Solicitor General was the lawyer for Bin Laden’s driver. They join at least seven other lawyers who have defended terrorists. Lawyers whom Attorney General Eric Holder <a href="http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/03/19/holder-detainees-lawyers-are-patriots/">declared were “patriots”</a> for representing terrorists.</p>
<p>The Second Circuit Court wrote that Stewart suffered from a “stark inability to understand the seriousness of her crimes.” But Lynne Stewart did understand. What she did not accept was that they were crimes. That is something that she has in common with Attorney General Eric Holder.</p>
<p>In her opening argument for the blind sheikh, Stewart contended that &#8221;he has advocated for the suffering of his people at home, in Egypt. He has advocated by any means necessary, and that is not acceptable to this government.”</p>
<p>Omar Abdel Rahman’s idea of advocacy was mass murder. So was Lynne Stewart’s.</p>
<p>Now Stewart is being treated with the compassion that she denied his many victims; including Shaunnah Turner. And if Lynne Stewart lives to continue her crimes, she will repay that compassion the same way that her favorite terrorists always have.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>The Strange Moral Calculus of John Kerry</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/the-strange-moral-calculus-of-john-kerry/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-strange-moral-calculus-of-john-kerry</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/the-strange-moral-calculus-of-john-kerry/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Jan 2014 05:09:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prisoners]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214452</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Don’t build in Jerusalem; set murderers free.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-02-at-2.51.25-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214453" alt="Screen Shot 2014-01-02 at 2.51.25 PM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-02-at-2.51.25-PM-427x350.png" width="299" height="245" /></a>On Wednesday the Israeli daily <i>Maariv</i> <a href="http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/535/673.html?hp=1&amp;cat=404">reported</a> (summarized in English <a href="http://www.dailyalert.org/archive/2014-01/2014-01-01.html">here</a>) that the Israeli defense establishment</p>
<blockquote><p><i>totally reject[s] the American proposal for security arrangements in the Jordan Valley…. The American proposal presented to Israel was based on a limited Israeli presence at the border crossings along the Jordan River for a limited number of years, together with the massive use of technological means such as satellites and drones that would replace the army’s presence on the ground.</i></p>
<p><i>The position of the security services, as agreed upon recently by the Defense Minister, is that no replacement for the IDF will protect Israel’s security interests, and that even the most advanced technological means do not offer a serious alternative.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Thursday found Secretary of State John Kerry in Israel for the tenth time since taking office last February. His mission was <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Netanyahu-to-Kerry-Doubts-rising-about-Palestinian-commitment-to-peace-336930">described</a> as “pushing for the sides to agree on guidelines for what the final deal would look like.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile it was <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4471446,00.html">reported</a> again that the Palestinian side—including Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and all his negotiators and officials—totally rejects any compromise, even a diluted, temporary Israeli military presence, in the Jordan Valley, calling it “Palestinian” even though it has never been under Palestinian rule and has been an Israeli territory since 1967.</p>
<p>Considering that other “core issues” like Jerusalem, “refugees,” and the borders of a putative Palestinian state are no less difficult, it is, as usual, perplexing to see Kerry continuing to invest American resources and prestige in pursuit of “guidelines” for a “final deal.”</p>
<p>But the show has to go on, and on Tuesday a third batch of twenty-six convicted Palestinian terrorist murders were freed; the release of four such groups was, after all, Abbas’s condition for entering the talks at all.</p>
<p>As Elliott Abrams <a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2014/01/01/confidence-destroying-measures/?cid=otr-%20Partner_site-Israelhayom">noted</a> in a perceptive blog post:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>the prisoner releases are not CBMs [confidence-building measures]; they are CDMs, confidence-destroying measures. With some American pressure, Prime Minister Netanyahu has released a third tranche of long-serving security prisoners—murderers, to be exact.</i></p>
<p><i>The first thing this does is diminish confidence in the United States. After all, we never do this; we never release murderers or terrorists from our prisons for political reasons. That we expect Israel to do so teaches Israelis that we will ask Israel to take risks we would not take, and do not fully understand the security situation they face.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Abrams goes on to quote from a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10544550/Israeli-anger-over-prisoner-release-threatens-to-cloud-John-Kerrys-visit.html">report in <i>The Telegraph</i></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>scenes of…Abbas…kissing and hugging each prisoner after their release provoked revulsion in Israel, with critics complaining that most of the inmates had been convicted of murdering Israelis. “Each one of us sees this and we ask ourselves, can we make peace with these people, who welcome murderers with flowers as if they were heroes,” Silvan Shalom, the Israeli regional development minister, told Israel Radio.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The released prisoners <a href="http://www.jpost.com/National-News/List-of-Palestinian-prisoners-to-be-released-includes-terrorists-convicted-of-brutal-crimes-330020">included</a>—just a few out of the twenty-six:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Damouni Saad Mohammed Ahmed will be released to the Gaza Strip this week more than 20 years after he was convicted of taking part in the brutal lynching of IDF reservist Amnon Pomerantz, who took a wrong turn into a refugee camp in the coastal territory in 1990—he was beaten to death before his car was set alight by firebombs.</i></p>
<p><i>Yosef Mahmad Haza Haza was only 17 when he and a friend murdered hikers Leah Elmakayis and Yossi Eliyahu at a forest on the Gilboa mountain range in 1985….</i></p>
<p><i>Fatah member Abu-Dahila Hasan Atik Sharif will be released to the West Bank 21 years after his arrest for the murder of Avi Osher, who employed him for 15 years at his Jordan Valley farm before Sharif beat and stabbed him to death.</i></p>
<p><i>The list includes Amer Massoud Issa Rajib, one of those convicted in the murder of Ian Feinberg, who was hacked and shot to death in April 1993 in the Gaza Strip, where he had been working on economic revitalization plans for the area.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Netanyahu has followed these prisoner releases with announcements of Israeli building plans in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). Although these moves have been criticized for seeming to create an equivalency between freeing murderers and building homes, they have some psychological value for Israelis in allaying feelings of helplessness and humiliation.</p>
<p>This time, though, Netanyahu is delaying the announcement—until after Kerry’s visit. The aim is not to “embarrass” him—as Vice-President Joe Biden was grievously embarrassed during a March 2010 visit to Israel. What then <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/israel-in-the-hot-seat-again-%E2%80%94-for-building-homes/">provoked a major contretemps</a> with the Obama administration was an announcement of plans to build in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.</p>
<p>Kerry, though, evidently feels no embarrassment at President Abbas’s kissing and hugging murderers. True, they were released with Kerry’s full approval.</p>
<p>Abrams’s point about “confidence-destroying measures” can be taken further. The U.S. wants Israel to be pliant like Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. But trying to put the Jordan Valley up for grabs, even though a four-and-a-half-decade consensus of Israeli military leaders views it as indispensable to Israel’s security, is not the way to achieve that.</p>
<p>Nor is signaling that Israeli lives don’t count for much, and taking Israeli lives isn’t much of a crime.</p>
<p>Nor is treating parts of Jerusalem that were illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949-1967, or “West Bank settlements” that we’re told will remain part of Israel anyway, as Jew-free zones.</p>
<p>Though a nationalistic, distrustful Israel with a sense of beleaguerment may not be what John Kerry wants, it’s what he’s increasingly promoting. How much better it would be to treat Israel as an ally.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Empowering Palestinians Who Reject Israel’s Right to Exist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/empowering-palestinians-who-reject-israels-right-to-exist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=empowering-palestinians-who-reject-israels-right-to-exist</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 31 Dec 2013 05:26:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[bombing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214295</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the prisoner releases reveal about the "peace process." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/pic1.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214296" alt="pic1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/pic1-450x341.png" width="315" height="239" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=336600">Jerusalem Post</a>.</em></p>
<p>US Secretary of State John Kerry will arrive in Israel for his 14th visit this week. And to assure that his stay will be a happy one, Saturday night the government approved the release of 26 more Palestinian mass murderers from prison. This will please Kerry because today a core goal of US Middle East policy is to secure the release of Palestinian mass murderers from Israeli prisons.</p>
<p>That’s right. The same America that until a few years ago led the free world in the global war against terror, now conditions its support for Israel, its chief regional ally in that war, on the Jewish state’s willingness to release unrepentant, mass murdering terrorists back into Palestinian society.</p>
<p>Not to put too fine a point on it, but it ought to go without saying that this policy hinders, rather than advances the cause of peace. It is impossible to rationally claim that by coercing Israel into releasing people like Juma Ibrahim Juma Adam and Mahmoud Salam Saliman Abu Karbish that the US is advancing the cause of peace.</p>
<p>In 1992, the two men firebombed a civilian bus, murdering Rachel Weiss, who was nine months pregnant, and three of her pre-school aged children, as well as IDF soldier David Delarosa, who tried to save them.</p>
<p>They were released on Monday, due to US pressure on Israel and received back home to heroes’ welcomes. Their freedom empowers Palestinians who reject Israel’s right to exist and seek its destruction through acts of genocide against its Jewish citizens.</p>
<p>Indeed, their release all but guarantees that the new round of terror war that Kerry threatened Israelis would break out if we aren’t forthcoming to PLO demands, will take place. In other words, by supporting the release of terrorists from prison, the US government is enabling the next round of the Palestinian terror war against Israel.</p>
<p>Beyond that, both the Palestinian demand for the terrorist releases, and the US support for those releases make a mockery of the whole concept of the two-state solution. A society that insists on the release from prison of its worst, most prolific murderers is not a society with any interest in making peace with the society targeted and victimized by their crimes.</p>
<p>And US support for this Palestinian demand puts paid to Kerry and President Barack Obama’s claims that they seek a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict with Israel.</p>
<p>The Palestinians’ support for terrorists doesn’t merely demonstrate their ill-intentions. It shows that the whole peace process that has become the centerpiece of US Middle East policy is based on a fiction.</p>
<p>When Israel agreed to accept the PLO as its partner in peacemaking two decades ago, that agreement was predicated on the terror group’s pledge to abjure further terrorism and to cooperate with Israel in fighting and defeating terrorists within Palestinian society. Without that pledge Israel would never have agreed to recognize the PLO . And that pledge, as we were reminded yet again on Monday, was a complete lie.</p>
<p>Then there is the international legal aspect to the Palestinian demand for Israel to free terrorists, and to the US support for this demand. Binding UN Security Council resolution 1373 requires all states to “Deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts, or provide safe havens.”</p>
<p>So by sheltering terrorists the Palestinian Authority stands in breach of binding international law. And by supporting the PA ’s sheltering of those terrorists, by coercing Israel into releasing them, the US has placed itself in a deeply problematic position in relation to international law. It has also forced Israel into a deeply problematic position by bowing to the US demand to release them.</p>
<p>The Israeli public, rightly, views the release of Palestinian mass murderers as insane, dangerous and immoral. In a bid to placate public opinion, every time his government agrees to free terrorists from prison, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announces that he is approving another stage in a seemingly endless process of permitting Israeli Jews to build homes in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. At this point, few in Israel are won over by Netanyahu’s largely hollow, transparently opportunistic gesture.</p>
<p>But whereas few Israelis are convinced Netanyahu is sincere, internationally his action has the egregious effect of reinforcing the deeply hostile and widely held perception that there is moral equivalence between murdering Jews and permitting Jews to live near Arabs. Netanyahu’s political pandering is counterproductive.</p>
<p>But on Sunday the government took what may be the first productive action that Israel has taken toward the Palestinians since the onset of the phony peace process 20 years ago.</p>
<p>On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill sponsored by Likud MK Miri Regev to apply Israeli law over the Jordan Valley.</p>
<p>The Jordan Valley protects Israel from invasion and other acts of aggression from the east. And since 1967, there has been a consensus among Israelis that the area must remain under Israel’s sovereign control in perpetuity. This position remains inarguable today in light of the PLO ’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.</p>
<p>Were Israel to transfer control over the Jordan Valley to the PLO , it would enable the Palestinians to collaborate with outside actors in the planning and execution of major acts of aggression against Israel. Safeguarding against such an eventuality by asserting Israel’s international legal right to sovereignty over the area is an eminently reasonable, and indeed required means of ensuring Israel’s long-term survivability.</p>
<p>On the face of it, it is the champions of Palestinian statehood, led by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who should be most in favor of applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley. Only by doing so does the two-state solution Livni has staked her career on have a chance of producing peace.</p>
<p>But of course, Livni and her colleagues on the far Left don’t see things this way. She and her comrades responded with apoplectic fits of rage at the cabinet committee’s vote, saying that Israel would be to blame for destroying the peace process.</p>
<p>Livni and her friends, of course, had not a word of criticism for Abbas and his followers for their unlawful championing of terrorist mass murderers.</p>
<p>She gave no indication that she views their continued support for Israel’s destruction as an obstacle to peace. Her wrath and that of her colleagues is reserved for Israeli elected officials who seek to safeguard Israel’s survival.</p>
<p>The media assures us that Netanyahu will bury the bill in governmental bureaucracy and proceed on course with further negotiations with the PLO , and further terrorist releases, in order to keep Kerry and Obama happy.</p>
<p>We must encourage the government to surprise the media.</p>
<p>Twenty years ago Israel crossed the Rubicon from strategic rationality into irrationality when we embraced the PLO and the chimerical twostate solution. This week’s cabinet decision was the first step in crossing back to the other side.</p>
<p>And we must work with our elected representatives to ensure that it is not an isolated event.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Khodorkovsky and the Freedom Agenda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/khodorkovsky-and-the-freedom-agenda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=khodorkovsky-and-the-freedom-agenda</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Dec 2013 05:49:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Khodorkovsky]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213968</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Until a people choose liberty, no one can give it to them. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Mikhail-Khodorkovsky.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213974" alt="Jailed Russian former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky stands in the defendants' cage before the start of a court session in Moscow" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Mikhail-Khodorkovsky.jpg" width="269" height="199" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-One-Khodorkovsky-and-the-freedom-agenda-336278">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Until his arrest in October 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch and oil executive, was the richest man in Russia. He might have still been the richest man in Russia today if he hadn’t started thinking about politics, and objecting to the fact that under President Vladimir Putin, Russia had abandoned all prospects for democracy.<br />
With his billions, Khodorkovsky had the means to finance a challenge to Putin’s authoritarian rule. His arrest in 2003 and his 10-year imprisonment was ordered and orchestrated by Putin as a means of silencing and destroying the former KGB officer’s only potent challenger for power.</p>
<p>After 10 years behind bars, Khodorkovsky was suddenly released from prison last Friday, immediately after Putin issued him a presidential pardon.</p>
<p>He held a press conference in Berlin the next day. There he showed that prison had changed his political thinking.</p>
<p>Whereas in 2003, Khodorkovsky thought it was possible to transform Russia into a democracy by simply winning an election, after 10 years behind bars, he recognizes that elections are not enough.</p>
<p>“The Russian problem is not just the president as a person,” he explained. “The problem is that our citizens in the large majority don’t understand that their fate, they have to be responsible for it themselves. They are so happy to delegate it to, say, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and then they will entrust it to somebody else.”</p>
<p>In other words, until the Russian people come to the conclusion that they want liberty, no one can give it to them. They will just replace one dictator with another one. In his words, “If you have a ‘most important person’ in the opposition… you will get another Putin.”</p>
<p>So whereas George Washington was seen as the first among equals, an opposition leader who would succeed Putin, would be more like Robespierre in post-revolutionary France.</p>
<p>Khodorkovsky’s remarks show that you can’t instantly import democracy from abroad. The US defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War. But the Soviet defeat didn’t make the Russians liberal democrats. Until the seeds of democracy are planted in a nation’s hearts and minds, the overthrow of its overlord will make little difference to the aspirations of the people.</p>
<p>Over the past two months, in neighboring Ukraine, we have seen the flipside of Khodorkovsky’s warning. There, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been braving the winter cold to protest President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to ignore the public’s desire to associate with the European Union, rather than with Russia. As the protesters have made clear, they view a closer association with the EU as a means of securing Ukrainian independence from Russia.</p>
<p>For the past two months, Yanukovych has been alternatively assaulting and ignoring the masses rallying in Kiev’s Independence Square.</p>
<p>And last week he signed a deal with Russia that paves the way for Ukraine’s incorporation into Russia’s custom’s union, and its effective subordination to the Kremlin.</p>
<p>At this point, the opposition and Yanukovych are deadlocked. According to National Review’s Askold Krushelnyck, the protesters are trying to break the deadlock by turning to the US and the EU for help.</p>
<p>No, they are not asking for military support.</p>
<p>They have gathered information about financial crimes carried out by Yanukovych, his relatives and cronies. And they are asking the US and the EU to take legal action against them in accordance with their domestic statutes. They translated their information into English and posted it on a website (yanukovich.info), and ask that Western governments freeze their accounts and stop providing financial services to their shell companies.</p>
<p>What Ukraine’s protesters’ actions show is that they understand that when you are dealing with an authoritarian regime – particularly one supported by Putin’s authoritarian regime – it is not enough for a nation to seek democracy and independence. Outside help is also necessary.</p>
<p>So far, however, aside from throwing out a few angry condemnations of Yanukovych’s assaults on the protesters, neither the US nor the EU has done anything to indicate that it cares whether or not the Ukrainians live freely or under the Russian jackboot.</p>
<p>Russia, on the other hand, has been actively promoting its interests. And as a result, just as American passivity in the face of Iran’s Green Revolution in 2009 empowered the regime to pound the Iranian people into submission, so today, American and European passivity in the Ukraine is tantamount to support for Putin.</p>
<p>The same of course is the case in Iraq, where between 2003 and 2012, 4,500 US troops paid the ultimate price to bring freedom to the Iraqi people.</p>
<p>On Christmas Day this week, 38 Christians were massacred in two separate bombings in Baghdad. Their deaths are just the latest in a nearly uninterrupted record of persecution and massacre of Iraq’s Christian minority since the US overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. At the time of the US-led invasion, there were some 1.4 million Christians in Iraq. Today only 500,000 remain. The rest have fled the country to avoid the fate of the Christmas worshipers on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The Christians are of course not the only ones targeted in Iraq. Since President Barack Obama pulled all US forces out of Iraq in what he claimed was a “responsible end” of the war, Iraq has descended into sectarian warfare.</p>
<p>Al-Qaida forces are resurgent. According to the State Department they are gaining control over territory in western Iraq as well as on the Syrian side of the border.</p>
<p>Since the beginning of 2013, 8,000 Iraqis have been killed. Seven thousand of them were civilians.</p>
<p>Iraq is an example of a country that lacks both preconditions for democracy. From the perspective of outside support, under Obama the US is unwilling to take the basic steps necessary to prevent al-Qaida from taking over Iraqi territory.</p>
<p>This month, the White House rushed some primitive drones and missiles to the Iraqi government to fight al-Qaida. But in an interview with The New York Times, Michael Knights, an expert on Iraqi security issues from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, explained that the US assistance is grossly insufficient.</p>
<p>At a minimum, he advised, the US needs to begin carrying out Predator drone attacks against al-Qaida forces in Iraq – and in Syria – in the same manner it carries out such attacks against al-Qaida throughout the region. As Knights explained, “There is one place in the world where al-Qaida can run a major affiliate without fear of a US drone or air attack, and that is in Iraq and Syria.”</p>
<p>US forces fought a ferocious, complex and protracted battle against al-Qaida and its Shi’ite counterparts in Iraq for nearly a decade. But during that same period, the US government spent scant resources cultivating Iraqis who seek to build a working, liberal democracy. While Iran lavished resources on its allies, and established more than a hundred newspapers to propagate Tehran’s message to the Shi’ites of Iraq, the US insisted that it didn’t have the “right” to interfere in Iraqi politics. So while Shi’ite chauvinists in bed with Tehran’s mullahs were showered with aid, democratic liberals received no US support.</p>
<p>And yet, for the first six years of the US deployment in Iraq, just the presence of US forces deployed in strength countrywide was enough to keep the worst sectarian passions at bay.</p>
<p>Sunni and Shi’ite politicians worked together, if unwillingly. They even began learning to art of political compromise – otherwise known as horse-trading.</p>
<p>All of that began to unravel, however, with Obama’s rise to power. Obama’s promise to withdraw US forces from Iraq meant that the US would soon cease to serve as Iraq’s power broker.</p>
<p>And so, in the final year of the US deployment in Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki repositioned himself as an enemy of the US’s military presence in Iraq. He refused to sign a status of forces agreement with the US. And at the end of 2011, just ahead of the US withdrawal, Maliki forced Iraq’s Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi to flee to Kurdistan ahead of an arrest warrant issued by the Maliki-controlled Interior Ministry.</p>
<p>The situation in Iraq, and in Ukraine – as well as in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and beyond – makes clear that Obama has killed America’s freedom agenda. And that isn’t all.</p>
<p>Obama doesn’t simply neglect democratic forces in favor of authoritarian regimes. In country after country, under his leadership the US sides with anti-American forces of authoritarianism against pro-American forces, whether they are liberals or authoritarians.</p>
<p>Many Americans, who rightly rue Obama’s betrayal of America’s allies, wish to see a reinstatement of George W. Bush’s freedom agenda.</p>
<p>For them, Khodorkovsky’s message must serve as a warning. Bush called the battle in Iraq “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” He called the battle in Afghanistan “Operation Enduring Freedom.”</p>
<p>But what the resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan make clear is that true promotion of freedom cannot be a simple slogan. A yearning for freedom cannot be imported to an indifferent or hostile society.</p>
<p>Khodorkovsky concluded his remarks with what he considered the most important lesson he learned during his prolonged confinement.</p>
<p>“The main lesson that I have drawn [is]: Don’t push your fellow citizens – be they opponents, or in power, or in the opposition – into a corner.</p>
<p>No matter what, you have to live in the same country. Tolerance, full stop.”</p>
<p>Supporting the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009, and the protesters in Kiev today would have been no-brainers if the Obama administration had the slightest inclination to cultivate US allies and the cause of freedom more generally.</p>
<p>Both the Iranian democracy activists then and the Ukrainian protesters today demonstrated through their actions that they do not seek the mere overthrow of unrepresentative, repressive governments. They seek freedom, and are willing to work for it. All the Iranians needed then, and all the Ukrainians ask for today, is assistance from foreign powers, just as George Washington’s Continental Army required French assistance to defeat the British Empire.</p>
<p>While those are easy cases to understand, the lesson of Putin’s Russia and of post-Saddam Iraq is that freedom doesn’t sprout from thin air. The only way to plant democracy in nations unfamiliar with the habits of liberty is to cultivate them, relentlessly and unapologetically, over time.</p>
<p>If you want partners in freedom in countries where neither partners nor freedom is easily found, you have to help people who want both.</p>
<p>You have to train them, and finance them, and help them to become significant political forces.</p>
<p>Otherwise, at best you will do nothing more than replace a dictator with a dictator, and at worst, you will empower your worst enemies, as is arguably now happening in Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Terrorist-Funding Palestinians Won&#8217;t Pay Electricity Bill</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/terrorist-funding-palestinians-wont-pay-electricity-bill/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=terrorist-funding-palestinians-wont-pay-electricity-bill</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2013 04:10:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[electricity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Paying thousands to convicted murderers takes precedence over keeping the lights on in Jericho. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AP464886171016-e1376440973338-635x357.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211145" alt="AP464886171016-e1376440973338-635x357" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AP464886171016-e1376440973338-635x357-417x350.jpg" width="250" height="210" /></a>On November 18, the Palestinian propaganda outlet, Ma’an News Agency, reported that Israel had cut power to the West Bank town of Jericho due to unpaid electric bills. Palestinian officials in the affected area appealed to Palestinian Authority strongman Mahmoud Abbas to pay the arrears of nearly $200,000. Failure to do so they added, would affect irrigation systems and cause irreparable damage to agricultural lands.</p>
<p>But as the Palestinians have demonstrated time and again, their budgetary priorities lie perniciously elsewhere. While Palestinians were starved of electricity due to the malfeasance of their own government, the Palestinian Authority was busy doling out cash, care of the U.S. taxpayer, to terrorists recently freed by Israel as a result of pressure from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.</p>
<p>On November 18, the Times of Israel <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-authority-gives-freed-prisoners-50000-each/">reported</a> that 26 terrorists recently released by Israel and convicted of particularly ghoulish crimes were given lump sums of at least $50,000 a piece and cushy civil service jobs within the Palestinian Authority. Some were given lump sums of $60,000. That translates to over $1,300,000 &#8212; more than six times the amount needed to restore electricity to those without power in Jericho. To the <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/exposing-abbas-5335">Holocaust-denying</a>, fascist-admiring Abbas, critical infrastructure plays second fiddle to funding terrorism.</p>
<p>In reality, however, it is the U.S. State Department that plays a central role in facilitating Palestinian Authority terrorism.  A <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/114576818/Bernstein-vs-Clinton">lawsuit</a> by an Israeli civil rights group on behalf of Americans killed or injured by Palestinians alleges that the State Department is violating its own laws in failing to properly exercise minimal oversight over vast sums doled out to the Palestinian Authority and related Palestinian entities. As a result, money is being diverted to fund, directly and indirectly, Palestinian terrorism directed against Israelis and U.S. citizens. The clearest example of this is the way the Palestinian Authority uses foreign aid money to incentivize terrorism at the expense of basic infrastructure, the Jericho electricity crisis being the latest example.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-the-palestinian-authority-killed-eden/">excellent article</a> by Michael Dickson highlights the way the Palestinian Authority is utilizing every asset at its disposal to demonize Jews and Israel. In every sphere, from health and education to sport and the arts, the Palestinian Authority has engaged in systematic vitriol whose rhetoric is matched only by the likes of Joseph Goebbels.</p>
<p>It is unsurprising, therefore, that Palestinian terrorism continues unabated. From the <a href="http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/s-right-i-said-it/2013/nov/17/remember-18-year-old-eden-atias-murdered-palestini/">horrific stabbing</a> of a sleeping bus passenger to the <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/173768">firebombing</a> of a couple on a routine drive, the violence has stretched the bounds of depravity, even by Palestinian standards.</p>
<p>The uptick in violence can also be attributed to John Kerry, who recently <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6255">parroted</a> the Palestinian Authority’s talking points lock, stock and barrel, while ignoring continued Palestinian incitement, among other malevolent transgressions. Kerry essentially torpedoed his own peace initiative by providing the Palestinian Authority political cover to harden its already unreasonable and unrealistic demands, which include, among other things, flooding Israel with millions of hostile Arab “refugees” and placing Israel’s ancestral capital under Muslim rule. Considering past Arab <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=Q86jQX6GJKA">pronouncements</a> (<a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/the-palestinian-endgame-exposed/">in Arabic to Arab audiences</a>) it appears that these extreme positions are merely the first stage in a multi-staged approach to dealing with the hated “Zionist entity.”</p>
<p>Jericho’s electricity problems are symptomatic of a diseased and depraved Palestinian culture, one consumed by hate and a desire to obliterate another people. The sooner we come to terms with this fact and address the issue in an honest manner, unhampered by the doctrine of political correctness, the sooner a resolution to the Palestinian problem can be found.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss<strong> Jamie Glazov</strong>&#8216;s video interview with <strong>Mudar Zahran, </strong>the leader of Palestinians in Jordan who now resides in the U.K. as a political refugee. He discusses &#8220;The Palestinian Homeland in Jordan.&#8221; He also explains his support of Israel, denounces the Islamists and calls out the western media for being Israel haters and not caring about the Palestinians:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/M9kNoF2zlnA" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Gitmo Parting Gifts: Job Training &amp; Islam Classes</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/gitmo-parting-gifts-job-training-islam-classes/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gitmo-parting-gifts-job-training-islam-classes</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2013 04:36:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[detainees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gitmo]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama's conditions for releasing terrorists -- before he sends them to an al-Qaeda safe haven.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/en_0501_martin_640x480.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210373" alt="en_0501_martin_640x480" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/en_0501_martin_640x480-450x336.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>In another triumph of idiocy, the Obama administration is <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/11/07/US-Yemen-hold-talks-on-detention-facility-for-Guantanamo-inmates/UPI-46711383852089/">negotiating</a> with the Yemeni government to release Guantanamo Bay and Afghan terrorists to a &#8220;rehabilitation&#8221; facility to be constructed outside Yemen&#8217;s capital city of Sana&#8217;a. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-yemen-gitmo-20131107,0,3163913.story%23axzz2kMsdL3Os">According</a> to the <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, the detainees &#8220;would undergo counseling, instruction in a peaceful form of Islam, and job training in Yemen before any decision on freeing them,&#8221; would be made.</p>
<p>The deal is part of the president&#8217;s ongoing effort to close Guantanamo Bay. He <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/629201/closing-guantanamo-obamas-sudoku/">reiterated</a> that intention on November 4, asking Congress to once again consider lifting restrictions on detainee transfers. Speaking on behalf of the president, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney contended that Congress has “significantly limited our ability to responsibly reduce the detainee population and ultimately close the facility.”</p>
<p>Rightfully so. Unlike the Obama administration, Congress recognizes that many nations refuse to repatriate potential terrorists, as well as the reality that some released prisoners rejoin the ranks of those seeking to destroy the West. A <a href="http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/September_2013_GTMO_Reengagement_UNCLASS_Release_FINAL.pdf">report</a> released early last month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed that out of the 603 terrorists released from Gitmo, 100 have been &#8220;confirmed of reengaging&#8221; in terrorist activities, and another 74 are &#8220;suspected of reengaging.&#8221;</p>
<p>In other words, as many as 174 thugs we had already risked Americans lives to capture are now free to pursue jihad against our soldiers all over again. Not only is such a reality apparently a reasonable tradeoff for an Obama administration determined to elevate politics over the safety of Americans, it is a willful determination to ignore the threat that Yemen itself presents and has presented for quite some time.</p>
<p>In 2009, Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) joined Republicans <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/73883-senior-democrat-halt-detainee-transfers-to-yemen">calling</a> for a halt of Gitmo prisoner transfers to Yemen because it was &#8220;too unstable.&#8221; Nine days earlier, the Obama administration had released 12 detainees from Guantanamo Bay, six of whom ended up in Yemen. Four days after that, Yemen-trained &#8220;underwear bomber&#8221; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/underwear-bomber-abdulmutallab-sentenced-life-prison/story?id=15681576">blow up</a> Northwest flight 253, and a Yemen-based al Qaeda affiliate claimed credit for the attempt. Furthermore, ABC News revealed that the Christmas Day plot was abetted by two Gitmo detainees released to Saudi Arabia in 2007.</p>
<p>At the time Obama blamed it all on a “systemic failure” of Yemen&#8217;s security apparatus. He imposed a moratorium on releasing detainees to Yemen in January 2010, and promised not to release any detainee who posed a threat to the American people. Yet in spite of the ongoing terror threat emanating from that nation, Obama lifted his moratorium on May 23, 2013. He did so despite the belief of intelligence officials that the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen represents the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland and that the affiliate&#8217;s creation was abetted by several former Gitmo detainees released in 2006.</p>
<p>But it gets worse. According to al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) expert Gregory Johnsen, the formation of AQAP was the result of a merger between a &#8220;handful of former Gitmo detainees, primarily Saudi citizens&#8221; who slipped into Yemen, and al Qaeda members who staged a 2006 break from a maximum security prison in Sana&#8217;a. Regardless, the president remained defiant. “I think the lifting of the moratorium reflects a changing U.S. policy that reflects a changing Yemen,” said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney in August.</p>
<p>Thus, the president is continuing the effort to create a de facto &#8220;half way house&#8221; for the Yemeni prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Yemenis comprise more than half the facility&#8217;s remaining 164 inmates.</p>
<p>Details of the negotiations remain closely guarded, but the Yemeni government has reportedly drawn up plans for the new facility just outside Sana&#8217;a. Yet many questions remain unanswered. There are deep disagreements regarding who will fund the facility, with the Yemeni government urging U.S. and European officials to fund its construction, as well as the training of security guards and other staff. Yemen&#8217;s president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, reportedly offered to fund the project when he met with Obama in August. But that offer was rescinded due to a government budget shortfall. U.S. officials insist America will not fund the project either, because Republicans, many of whom are against closing Gitmo, will not appropriate money for a facility in Yemen. The White House has acknowledged that they are asking the United Nations and other governments for help with the project.</p>
<p>Yemeni officials have political reservations as well. They do not want to be seen as offering America an alternative to the &#8220;unpopular&#8221; Gitmo, and they worry that the new prison would be a prime target for terror attacks, requiring heavy fortification as a result.</p>
<p>As of now, the Pentagon has designated 55 Gitmo prisoners for transfer to the Yemeni government. Twenty-five are considered &#8220;low risk&#8221; and have been approved for an &#8220;immediate&#8221; transfer. The other 30 will be moved if Yemen provides satisfactory assurances that they will not return to violence.</p>
<p>Considering the <i>United States</i> failed to prevent as many as 174 Gitmo prisoners from returning to jihad, it remains impossible to see what constitutes &#8220;satisfactory assurances&#8221; of anything. Obama administration officials contend that the program based on the aforementioned counseling, instruction in peaceful Islam, and job training is modeled after a &#8220;successful&#8221; Saudi Arabian undertaking, also aimed at reintegrating former terrorists into society.</p>
<p>That would be the Saudi rehabilitation program that &#8220;graduated&#8221; deputy al Qaeda leader Said Ali al Shihri, who organized a 2008 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Sana&#8217;a, as well as additional car bombings that killed at least 16 people. In 2009, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, detailed other notable failures of the Saudi program in a <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2009/Sessions-Holder-letter-12092009.pdf">letter</a> sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Sessions revealed that of the 85 &#8220;top wanted terrorists&#8221; listed in February 2009 by Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Interior Ministry, 11 had been part of the Saudi rehabilitation program. All 11 were also former Gitmo detainees. That&#8217;s a recidivism rate of 13 percent. In 2010 the Saudis were <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Editorial-Board-Blog/2010/1102/Terrorist-rehab-in-Saudi-Arabia-A-success">boasting</a> that their recidivism rate was 20 percent. This year they are claiming that of the of 2,336 al Qaeda prisoners who have been through rehabilitation, the recidivism rate &#8220;does not exceed 10 percent,&#8221; <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4370252,00.html">according</a> to Said al Bishi, director of a <i>luxury</i> rehabilitation center in Riyadh.</p>
<p>Thus it seems the administration is OK with the idea that <i>at least</i> one-in-ten terrorists will be rejoining the fight against America.</p>
<p>Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, agreed with the move: &#8220;We believe that the establishment of a credible, sustainable program would be an important step for the Yemeni government in bolstering their counter-terrorism capabilities,&#8221; she said. Yemen&#8217;s foreign minister, Abubakr Qirbi, apparently agreed. &#8220;We are currently planning to construct this facility and taking legal steps for the return of the 55 people who the U.S. has agreed to send home, those who do not pose a threat,&#8221; he said, according to Yemen&#8217;s official news agency.</p>
<p>Human rights activists were on board as well, threatening to oppose any facility that was primarily a prison. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think [it] should exist unless it&#8217;s an actual rehabilitation program,&#8221; said Andrea Prasow, senior counter-terrorism counsel with Human Rights Watch. &#8220;There&#8217;s no way I would find it acceptable for [returned Yemeni detainees] to be held against their will.&#8221;</p>
<p>The aforementioned ODNI report reveals the fatuousness of such thinking. While noting the inevitability of recidivism in general, it spelled out the hazards associated with countries like Yemen. “Transfers [of detainees] to countries with ongoing conflicts and internal instability as well as active recruitment by insurgent and terrorist organizations pose a particular problem,” it said.</p>
<p>Yemen may be the most &#8220;particular problem&#8221; in the Middle East. Even the discussions about the prison were held in Rome due to security risks in a country &#8220;battling an insurgency by warring tribes backed by Islamist groups that has caused a sharp decline in security in recent months,&#8221; according to the <i>Times. </i></p>
<p>Despite all of it, reality takes a back seat for a president looking for another &#8220;signature achievement,&#8221; no matter how reckless the consequences. In a better world, those who believe in terrorist &#8220;rehab&#8221; would be forced to live amongst their subjects, much like the Americans troops who were quartered with their Afghan trainees. That particular rehab effort was finally abandoned, but not before <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/082012-622865-obama-exposed-troops-to-afghan-insider-attacks.htm?p=full">more than</a> 100 <i>unarmed</i> U.S. and NATO troops were killed in the effort to &#8220;build trust&#8221; with their <i>armed</i> Afghan counterparts. Any Islamist rehab program deserves the exact same fate. We&#8217;ve sacrificed more than enough American lives on the alter of political correctness.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Washington’s Will Is Done: Bloody Terrorists Freed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/washingtons-will-is-done-bloody-terrorists-freed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=washingtons-will-is-done-bloody-terrorists-freed</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Oct 2013 04:49:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The sinister consequences of forced "peace process" concessions. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/130812-feinberg-prisoners-830a.photoblog600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209133" alt="130812-feinberg-prisoners-830a.photoblog600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/130812-feinberg-prisoners-830a.photoblog600-414x350.jpg" width="290" height="245" /></a>Just after midnight on Wednesday, <i>Israel Hayom</i> <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=12941">reports</a>, 26 Palestinian security prisoners were set free by Israel. Twenty-one were sent to the West Bank, five to Gaza.</span></b></p>
<p>All of these prisoners were convicted either of murder or attempted murder. They constitute the second of four groups of 26 prisoners who are being released periodically during the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. For Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, freeing them was an iron-clad condition for entering the talks at all. Israel acceded to it under heavy U.S. pressure, spearheaded by Secretary of State John Kerry.</p>
<p>“…Palestinians in Ramallah and Gaza,” <i>Israel Hayom</i> informs us,</p>
<blockquote><p>celebrated the release of the prisoners. The 21 prisoners returning to the West Bank attended an official reception at the Mukataa in Ramallah, where…Abbas greeted them personally.</p>
<p>“We welcome our brothers the heroes coming from behind the bars to a world of freedom and liberty,” Abbas was quoted as saying.</p></blockquote>
<p>None of the American diplomatic personnel in Israel attended this reception. That may not seem worth pointing out. Wouldn’t it be a diplomatic slap to Israel? And wouldn’t it contradict American values to attend a celebratory reception for terrorist killers?</p>
<p>Indeed, it would. But why, then, did it not unacceptably contradict American values to pressure Israel to free them in the first place?</p>
<p>Indeed, these 26 are a nasty lot. Here are just a few examples from <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/173345">a partial list compiled by <i>Israel National News</i></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Awad Masalkha took part in the murder of Yigal Vaknin…and also murdered another Jew, David Reuven…, an Iraqi-born father of three who ran a mini-market…. In 1991, Awad and other terrorists entered the mini-market, attacked Reuven, tied him up and beat him to death. He was 59….</i></p>
<p><i>Ahmed Damuni murdered reservist soldier Amnon Pomerantz</i>…<i>in 1990. Pomerantz was on his way to reserve service in Gaza when he entered the Al Burej neighborhood by mistake. He was pummeled with rocks, murdered, and his body was burned inside his car. He was 46. He was survived by his wife and three children.</i></p>
<p><i>Haza Yusef and Abdullah Bani-Hassan murdered Yosef Eliyahu and Leah Elmakayes…, two teachers, in 1985. The teachers were preparing a field trip for their pupils in the Gilboa area, when they were accosted by the terrorists. Eliyahu, 35, married and a father of five, was shot at close range, and Elmakayis, 19, was strangled to death. She had been a National Service volunteer. She left behind her parents and three siblings.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The peace talks, by the way, are <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinians-make-stiff-land-demands-for-peace/">reportedly going nowhere</a>. The ordinary, humble, logical person might remark—that’s not surprising, is it, considering that one side regards such people as heroes?</p>
<p>And not only that, but well-compensated heroes. “Palestinian media,” <i>Israel Hayom</i> adds,</p>
<blockquote><p><i>reported Tuesday that every prisoner who was released will receive a special grant from the PA, according to the length of his prison sentence. The grants—some of which are expected to amount to tens of thousands of dollars—will join a monthly stipend the PA plans to allot the prisoners, ranging between 2,500 and 4,500 shekels ($710-$1,280) a month.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Whether Israel should be giving in to the Palestinian-U.S. advocacy for these terrorists is bitterly debated in Israel. On Monday Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=12921">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Ordering the Palestinian prisoners&#8217; release has been one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make as prime minister…. I am sure that any prime minister who has ever had to make a similar decision in the past has agonized over it as well, given the injustice of seeing these heinous murderers freed before they have finished serving their sentences in full….</i></p>
<p><i>My heart goes out to the bereaved families. This decision was a necessary evil, dictated by the reality we live in. We must navigate a complex international arena that presents us with multiple challenges. It mandates that we consider various factors and do what is best for the State of Israel.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>A translation might be:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>It is very difficult getting along with the current U.S. administration, but nevertheless we remain dependent on America. At present the main issue facing the State of Israel is the Iranian nuclear threat. I have had to play along with the Palestinian game in the hope of achieving maximum understanding with Washington on a matter that poses a far more strategic, indeed an existential danger.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Just how difficult it has been to get along with the Obama administration on the Iranian issue was evident this week in Kerry’s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/kerry-urges-pursuing-diplomacy-on-iran-s-nuclear-program.html">thinly veiled reference</a> to Netanyahu’s “fear tactics.”</p>
<p>It may seem like “fear tactics” to those who split their time between Washington and Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. To Israelis, the “fear” induced by batches of freed terrorists and Iranian genocidal threats is quite real. At some points in Israeli history deferring to America has turned out to be more dangerous and costly than not doing so. This may be one of them.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Livni&#8217;s Political Strategy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/livnis-political-strategy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=livnis-political-strategy</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:40:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The politics of demonization and self-aggrandizement. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tzipi-livni2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209014" alt="tzipi-livni2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tzipi-livni2.jpg" width="270" height="199" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Livnis-political-strategy-330004">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>For Justice Minister Tzipi Livi, all politics are personal.</p>
<p>She can be trusted, because she is good. Her opponents must be rejected, because they are evil.</p>
<p>In her speech at The Jerusalem Post’s Diplomatic Conference in Herzliya last Thursday, Livni insisted that the only “legitimate” basis for opposing a Palestinian state is ideological. Livni stridently rejected the notion that one can oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state – in the two-state solution framework – for security reasons.</p>
<p>As she sees it, everyone cares equally about security. And since she cares about security just as much as her political opponents do, the question of whose policy will better protect the country is illegitimate.</p>
<p>She’s nice. She cares. So she’s just as competent as the next guy.</p>
<p>There’s just one problem with Livni’s claim.</p>
<p>She has a track record.</p>
<p>ISRAEL ENACTED two major strategic initiatives that have her signature on them: the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, and UN Security Council Resolution 1701 from 2006 that set the terms for the end of the Second Lebanon War.</p>
<p>Both were massive failures. Both caused Israel’s national security to deteriorate. And in both cases, Livni’s political opponents warned that her strategies were wrong-headed, dangerous and unhinged from strategic realities.</p>
<p>Livni built her career on her support for the withdrawal of all Israeli civilians and security forces from the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>It was her decision to jump on the expulsions bandwagon, and her fervent castigation and demonization of all her former colleagues and voters, that caused then prime minister Ariel Sharon to promote her from the backwaters of the Absorption Ministry to center stage at the Justice Ministry.</p>
<p>Within months Livni became second only to Ehud Olmert in seniority in Sharon’s government.</p>
<p>As justice minister, Livni ignored the law and trounced democratic norms to repress opponents of the withdrawal.</p>
<p>Licensed buses transporting law abiding citizens to legal protests were unlawfully intercepted en route by police.</p>
<p>Protest organizers were subjected to warrantless, middle-of-the-night searches, unlawful seizure of private property and arbitrary arrests without charge.</p>
<p>13-year-old girls were arrested for participating in protests. They were jailed for four months without charges being brought against them.</p>
<p>And Livni, who since her 2003 ideological transformation from nationalist to radical leftist has presented herself as the guardian of Israeli democracy, oversaw the entire process.</p>
<p>We know what happened after Israel withdrew from Gaza. Just as all of Livni’s opponents warned, Israel was shelled by more rockets, mortars and missiles than ever before. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are now in range of Gaza’s terror armies.</p>
<p>Hamas took over Gaza, and transformed it into a hub for the global jihad, linking the jihad against Israel to the jihad against Egypt and the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Gaza, which before the withdrawal was never more than a tactical nuisance, became a regional strategic threat.</p>
<p>As the war the next year showed, Israel’s decision to cut and run from Gaza, and its willingness to forcibly expel ten thousand of its most productive citizens from their homes, was a profound expression of weakness. Just as the withdrawal opponents warned, it invited the aggression that Hezbollah visited on us.</p>
<p>As foreign minister during the war, Livni was responsible for organizing Israel’s diplomatic defense and managing relations with the US and Europe.</p>
<p>She chose a strategy of preemptive capitulation. Against the will of prime minister Ehud Olmert, Livni began negotiating the cease-fire in the early days of the war, vacuously insisting that there was no military solution to a terrorist organization’s war of aggression.</p>
<p>The result of her dubious efforts was 1701, which from Israel’s perspective is arguably the most problematic Security Council resolution ever passed. Not only did 1701 treat Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that fought an illegal war against Israel, as a legitimate party simply by ignoring it. It made Hezbollah the victor in the war by ensuring it would retake control of Lebanon’s border with Israel without any serious opposition.</p>
<p>THESE TWO strategic initiatives are Livni’s national security track record. As their failures show, whatever her intentions may be, she is totally incompetent to understand, secure or advance Israel’s national security.</p>
<p>From her egomaniacal insistence that she is The One who will bring the peace, it is apparent that Livni has never accepted responsibility for the damage she has caused the country.</p>
<p>But she does seem to recognize that she cannot defend her actions on their merits. Just as the only card she plays in her favor is egomaniacal self-aggrandizement, so the only card she plays against her opponents is aggressive demonization.</p>
<p>Sunday the cabinet approved the release of another 26 terrorist murderers from prison. The release is second of four tranches that will bring about the release of 104 terrorist murderers from prison. This is the price that Livni and US Secretary of State John Kerry convinced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to pay for the privilege of having Livni sit across a negotiating table from Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.</p>
<p>In a bid to block the cabinet decision, on Saturday night the Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi) party released a statement saying that Israel mustn’t endanger the public just so that Livni can sit at a table with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.</p>
<p>The statement attracted a lot of media attention because it was on the mark.</p>
<p>Livni’s negotiations are endangering Israel’s national security. Hundreds of Israelis have been murdered over the years by terrorists Israel released early from prison for political reasons. More will certainly be murdered by those now being released.</p>
<p>And that isn’t all. The act of releasing terrorists emboldens other terrorists to strike. When they see these murderers welcomed home as heroes after serving a fraction of their life sentences, wouldbe murderers understand that they have a free hand to kill Jews.</p>
<p>Then there are the lessons the Palestinians have learned over 20 years of negotiations. They know that Israel deals with terrorism with kid gloves when negotiations are taking place. Out of fear of angering their Palestinian “partners” Israel’s leaders have consistently failed to take effective action against terrorist attacks that occur while the PLO is supposedly talking peace with us.</p>
<p>So just by sitting down with Erekat, Livni is constraining the freedom of action of the IDF to protect the country.</p>
<p>The recent spate of terrorist attacks, and the IDF’s timid response to them, made this clear, yet again.</p>
<p>The Jewish Home party’s statement neatly encapsulated all of these incontrovertible charges. Since she has no substantive defense against them, she responded with rank demonization and criminalization.</p>
<p>Speaking to Army Radio, Livni’s surrogate, Environmental Protection Minister Amir Peretz, said, “The Jewish Home party has become a messianic and extremist home. The incitement and hatemongering is egregious&#8230;. Angry statements like this&#8230; can lead to murder.”</p>
<p>AND THERE you have it. Livni, the egomaniacal failure, is competent because she says she cares; and her opponents, who were right about the Gaza withdrawal, right about 1701 and are right about the terrorist releases and the negotiations, are murderers.</p>
<p>Livni promised the audience at the conference last Thursday that she will never quit politics again. Let’s hope her word on that score is as solid as her national security credentials.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Did ICE Director John Morton Deceive Congress?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/did-ice-director-john-morton-deceive-congress/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=did-ice-director-john-morton-deceive-congress</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/did-ice-director-john-morton-deceive-congress/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2013 04:20:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[illegal alien]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[immigrant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Morton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[testimony]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What new evidence reveals about the man who oversaw Obama's mass release of illegals. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/did-ice-director-john-morton-deceive-congress/t1larg-ice_-john_-morton-afp_-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-183487"><img class=" wp-image-183487 alignleft" title="t1larg.ice_.john_.morton.afp_" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/t1larg.ice_.john_.morton.afp_1-450x310.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="174" /></a>The claim made by the Obama administration that sequester was the reason for releasing thousands of suspected illegal aliens onto America&#8217;s streets starting mid-February 2013 has come under further scrutiny due to new revelations. Recently it has come to light that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency overseeing the release, didn’t follow proper protocols for managing their budgets after the prisoner population increased for a period during the months of October, November, and December of 2012.</p>
<p>Speaking in front of the House Judiciary Committee on March 19, 2013, ICE Director John Morton told the committee that in the months of October, November, and December of 2012, the detainee population in ICE facilities ballooned to between 35,000 and 37,000. ICE was only appropriated to hold an average of 34,000 detainees. Morton claimed that this increase in the population was the main reason, along with the sequester, that thousands of detainees were released starting on February 15, 2013.</p>
<p>According to staff on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Appropriations Committee, if this was the problem, none of the proper committees were notified at the proper time, nor were any other proper protocols followed.</p>
<p>Sara Threadgill is the press secretary for U.S. Rep John Carter (R-TX). Carter is chairman of the Homeland Security Sub-Committee of the House Appropriations Committee. As such, Carter is the point person for all funding issues for ICE, which is a part of DHS. She said that the Obama administration never claimed prisoner populations were a problem when they are now claiming this was the case. Threadgill said:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations does receive reports regarding the number of detention beds ICE is using. They are aware that operations vary based on time of year and other factors but the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations was not made aware of what was happening until the illegal criminals were released.</p></blockquote>
<p>Front Page Magazine also contacted a number of staffers on the Democrat-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee, but heard nothing back as of publication.</p>
<p>Threadgill also pointed out that the administration had other alternatives besides releasing detainees.</p>
<p>“They had other options. For example, they never sought reprogramming/transfer authority, particularly for unobligated fee balances, that would have made a difference.”</p>
<p>During the hearing, Morton admitted that he could have used the transfer authority, but declined.</p>
<p>“We can seek reprogramming requirements, that is absolutely true, Mr. Chairman, and we did not in this instance,” Morton told House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) during the hearing. “I did not want to rob Peter to pay Paul. My view is that we need to maintain the operations of the agency, I did not want to furlough people, and my view is that I need to make rational decisions across the [agency accounts].”</p>
<p>By this Morton suggested that money to pay for holding extra detainees would come at the expense of other operations: undercover assignments, border patrol, customs, etc. Numerous Republicans challenged that argument during the House Judiciary hearing. They argued that about $100-120 million was sitting in unused funds from excess user fees, and it could have been used to make up the difference.</p>
<p>Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-TX) took an especially tough stance on that issue during the hearing:</p>
<blockquote><p>It appears to me that the release of the detainees was part of a sequester campaign that included the fictional firing of teachers, the closing of the White House for student tours, the displacement of meat inspectors and now we are going to release aggravated felons—some aggravated felons onto the street.</p></blockquote>
<p>This comes as the administration’s narrative continues to be challenged on numerous fronts. For instance, while the administration claims that it was the sequester that cut these detainees, it can’t explain why they had to release almost ten thousand of the 34,000 they normally hold, when the sequester is at worst a 5% cut, or the equivalent of 1,700 detainees.</p>
<p>Congressman Bob Goodlatte is Chairman of <a href="http://judiciary.house.gov/news/2013/03192013_2.html">the House Judiciary Committee and he hammered on this point in a press release following the hearing</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The sequester mandated a 5% cut at ICE but the agency released more than 5% of detained criminal and illegal immigrants.  These facts make it appear that the decision to release more than 600 convicted criminals and others facing charges into our communities was more of a political calculation than a budgetary necessity.   This decision not only undermines ICE’s credibility but also undercuts the American people’s trust in this Administration’s ability to enforce our immigration laws.</p></blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/obama-admin-met-radical-groups-before-mass-release-of-illegals/">Front Page Magazine reported exclusively</a> last week that the Obama administration’s ICE Public Advocate met with a number of left-wing groups at several locations spread sporadically throughout the country in the months just prior to the release. These sorts of groups have argued for years that the Obama administration has been too heavy-handed in arresting and detaining suspected illegal aliens, pointing to the Obama administration’s own boasting of record deportation figures.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the administration, which once claimed it would be the most transparent in history, has yet to produce any of the career bureaucrats who were alleged to have been responsible for the decision.</p>
<p>Even though all this presents a number of conflicting stories, the administration has been short on answers. ICE officials didn’t respond to an email from Front Page Magazine to explain this latest revelation that they failed to follow proper protocols.</p>
<p>There is a bit of good news on this matter, however. <a href="http://appropriations.house.gov/uploadedfiles/03.21.13_cr_-_homeland_summary.pdf">In the continuing resolution passed by the House and Senate which funds the government until September,</a> the appropriations committee appropriated enough money so that ICE would maintain an average of 34,000 per day again.</p>
<p>“The bill also provides $138 million to complete the deployment of the Secure Communities program, and $2.8 billion for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, providing a total of 34,000 beds – maintaining the highest detention capacity in history. The bill also prohibits funds for the ICE Public Advocate, “</p>
<p>It should be noted that, while it is buried, the current budget cuts all funds to the ICE Public Advocate, the office that organized those controversial meetings in the months prior to the release of the detainees in February.</p>
<p>This story continues to unfold and it’s still not entirely clear why all these suspected illegal aliens were released, but it is clear that the administration has told a series of stories all in contradiction with each other and with other known facts.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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