Adorned with the heads of their enemies: White House fence may get spikes
“ISIS is getting its ass kicked by the Kurds.”
A new Dispatch from Michael Totten.
7 Year Recovery Watch Remains On High Alert
During the past several months, business scribes and broadcasters have largely pretended that all is well, constructing and maintaining a Potemkin-like facade of a prosperous economy, even as the vast majority of hard-number economic indicators turned in performances ranging from middling to awful. To prop up their false image, they concentrated most of the commerce-related news they delivered to low-information voters and low-awareness news consumers on the job market, the economy’s one supposedly strong area, and positive consumer and corporate sentiment surveys.
Bin Laden Is Dead And French TV Is Dead
France’s culture minister is to call an urgent meeting of French media groups to assess their vulnerability to hacking after the public service television network TV5Monde was taken over by individuals claiming to belong to Islamic State, blacking out broadcasts as well as hacking its websites and Facebook page.
All TV5Monde broadcasts were brought down in a blackout between 10pm and 1am local time on Wednesday to Thursday by hackers claiming allegiance to Isis. They were able to seize control of the television network founded by the French government in 1984, simultaneously hacking 11 channels as well as its website and social media accounts.
Update: Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview (h/t betacamsp)
Bin Laden Is Dead And Iran Is Alive
Mr. Brennan hinted he had little expectation that the agreement would change Iran’s behavior in the region, including its sponsorship of terrorism. And he acknowledged that the increased revenue Iran would receive as sanctions are lifted could bolster those efforts.
Two sides working toward a common goal: Rouhani added “the Iranian nation has been and will be the victor in the negotiations.”
And finally, Kissinger and Shultz weigh in;
Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost 20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran. While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a concession, the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a new proposal. In the process, the Iranian program has reached a point officially described as being within two to three months of building a nuclear weapon. Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a decade, will be significantly closer.
[…]
Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard–amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites. The physical magnitude of the effort is daunting. Is the International Atomic Energy Agency technically, and in terms of human resources, up to so complex and vast an assignment?
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
If you’re confused about the Saudi Arabia-led air attacks against Islamist rebels in Yemen and can’t tell one group of head-choppers in Iraq and Syria from another, don’t despair. All you need is imagination.
Close your eyes and imagine that those countries and terrorists have nuclear weapons. Imagine their barbarism going nuclear as they blow up cities, wipe out ethnic and religious groups and turn the region into cinders.
Now open your eyes and realize you’ve seen the future, thanks to President Obama’s policies. It is a future that will be defined by Obama’s Wars. Yes, plural.
h/t Frank
Operation Empty Chair
It’s as though a pattern is forming: Obama Snubs Nato Chief as Crisis Rages
Operation Empty Chair
It was all going so swimmingly.
BREAKING: Yemeni officials say US forces in Yemen evacuating air base after al-Qaida seizes nearby city.
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 21, 2015
Flashback to February.
Operation Empty Chair
“Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president’s daily briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about ISIL have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the 2012 election,” the Obama security staffer told the Daily Mail.
He works from home.
Scratch A President
Is he motivated by spite?
It’s as horrifying as watching a train wreck. As predicted in yesterday’s post Obama’s foreign policy has nowhere to go, but he’s prepared to go there with considerable velocity. The New York Times says that Obama will go all out against the Israeli prime minister and may switch sides in the UN on the Palestinian issue.
The administration has reached the stage of pointless self destruction and even Tom Friedman knows it. In a doleful, despairing editorial he says it’s hopeless. Nothing works. Everything has failed. It’s all for nothing. “Have I ruined your morning yet? No? Give me a couple more paragraphs.”
Only partially. Read them both.
Literally making excuses for our enemies… http://t.co/U2BEBTZyns And seeking to punish our allies. http://t.co/ckTPdWvx4j
— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) March 19, 2015
(h/t Maz2)
Bill’s Wife
How’s That Hopey Changey Thing Working Out For Ya?
“before one can solve a problem, one must first seek to understand it”
… I would argue that we in the West, and indeed most who were not born and raised within the Islamic world, have struggled to meet the test of the second part of that adage. As a veteran of Special Operations and Counter-Terrorism activities against Violent Extremism, this weakness in our comprehension has been a source of constant worry for myself and my colleagues. Too often, it has hindered my own efforts to plan operations, anticipate events, predict outcomes, or evaluate risks. While I would certainly argue that we have achieved some important successes over the years, honesty requires me to acknowledge that I have never been able to achieve all that I had hoped for.
Why? Is it an absence of skill? A lack of coordination or resources? A failure of imagination (as the 9/11 Commission famously reported after the events of 2001)? Those that know me might argue that I am guilty of all of them in some measure. Yet I have watched comrades and colleagues from across the Military, Diplomatic, Civilian, and Intelligence domains, from many different countries, have the same difficulties.
I believe that we do not yet fully comprehend that which we are contesting. And, in the case of the Islamic State (or al-Dawlah al-Islamīyah fī al-ʻIrāq wa-al-Shām; which creates the Arabic Acronym- DA’ISH), we have a Violent Extremist foe that I believe is unlike any other we have contested. Whatever strengths al-Qaeda has been able to demonstrate, in all its various forms from North Africa to Pakistan, in its contest with the International Community, DA’ISH is the most effective, most inspirational, and most powerful manifestation of Violent Extremism we have ever seen.
Download the report here. (h/t Frank)
Operation Empty Chair
Libya is in crisis and could see its oil-dependent economy collapsing soon if the country’s local ISIS affiliate is not quashed. Today’s news that militants of the Libyan contingent of the Islamic State have gained control of oil-rich Sirte, a Mediterranean port city, salts the the North African country’s already inflamed wounds. Here is why: 80% of Libya’s recoverable reserves are located in the Sirte Basin, according to the US Department of Energy. The basin is also responsible for most of Libya’s oil output.
Not A Muslim
“…here are some of the views of Obama’s new Security Coordinator for the Middle East“.
Operation Empty Chair
ISIS next target: Lebanon
Operation Empty Chair
London 15 May 1944
Chancellor Adolph Hitler
Berlin
Dear Chancellor Hitler;
Please be advised the we will be landing on two beaches on the coast of France at daylight on 6 June 1944. The chosen
beaches are near St. Lo and for the next few miles to the south. Two British divisions, one Canadian division, and three
American divisions will participate. The US Navy and US Air Force will be in attendance also.
You are welcome to meet us there.
RSVP
Cordially yours
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Supreme Allied Commander
(Letter forwarded by SDA correspondent Calvin.)
How’s That Hopey Changey Thing Working Out For Ya?
The nation’s political and media elites were quite pleased with themselves when the November 2006 elections brought about that result, largely because their daily hostility to all things Republican and/or conservative contributed mightily to it. They were absolutely ecstatic when Barack Obama, Mr. Perfectly Creased Pants, won the November 2008 presidential election and took office in January 2009.
As will be seen shortly, the former event marked the beginning of the U.S. economy’s worst eight-year stretch since 1945-1952. Obama’s presence in the Oval Office until January 2017 virtually ensures that we’ll have at least two more years of the policies which brought on that miserable result.
Giuliani Unleashed
“Once again, they are looking into weak eyes…”
Part two. (h/t Rodney)
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Don’t attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice: “We have the next thing to a jihadist in the White House.”