This is what happens when you politicize a public health issue. Bureaucrats have to keep the concentric circles of protectionism around the President fully supported. Contradictions then become glaringly obvious.
CBS Reports Ms. Vinson was cleared to fly with a fever by the CDC. Today the CDC says Ms. Vinson should never have flown.
You know…. well,… protocols and such. Yeah…. watch:
The siege of Kobane (Kobani) enters day #29 tomorrow. The Kurdish men, women and entire families continue to hold about two-thirds of the city.
Day #28 saw six suicide car bombs from ISIS aimed at Kobane leadership positions inside the city. Meanwhile in Turkey President Erdogan still refuses to assist the sieged city and will not permit Kurdish citizens from Turkey to cross the border to join their brothers and sisters in arms.
To the contrary today saw Erdogan actually begin to bomb the Kurds inside Turkey in clear violation of a 2 year ceasefire. Erdogan is doing just about everything he can to speed up the collapse of Kobane in Northern Syria. The longer Kobane holds out, the more politically dangerous the elements within Turkey become to the centralized power of Sunni Erdogan.
Simultaneously, pressure, or more aptly put, “optics” and “political pressure” are creating a disconcerting place for President Obama. At his core Sunni Obama wants desperately to support his ideological brother, Erdogan. However, the longer the Kurds in Kobane are able to hold on, the more pressure mounts upon Obama as more people begin to ask the question ‘why is he not helping them’?
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(Via The Federalist) […] See, in 2004, Congress passed The Project Bioshield Act. The text of that legislation authorized up to $5,593,000,000 in new spending by NIH for the purpose of purchasing vaccines that would be used in the event of a bioterrorist attack. A major part of the plan was to allow stockpiling and distribution of vaccines.
Just two years later, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which created a new assistant secretary for preparedness and response to oversee medical efforts and called for a National Health Security Strategy. The Act established Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as the focal point within HHS for medical efforts to protect the American civilian population against naturally occurring threats to public health. It specifically says this authority was established to give “an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.”
The Kurdish forces fighting ISIS in Kobane (Kobani) would beg to differ.
Despite the obvious, and well documented, non-support for the Kurds fighting in Kobane, Susan Rice goes on Meet the Press and proclaims the administration strategy is to support them.
“This is very early days of the strategy. The strategy is very clear. We’ll do what we can from the air. We will support the Iraqi security forces, the Kurds, and ultimately over time, the moderate opposition in Syria to be able to control territory and take the fight to ISIL.”
(Full Story Via WFB) On Sunday, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said the United States would not reevaluate the strategy to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL), despite its recent territorial advances, and said that the Obama administration is still not considering boots on the ground. (more…)
Back in July of 2014 we outlined how the “surprise influx” of Unaccompanied Alien Children from Central America was not in actuality “a surprise”. We knew it was not a surprise because the Obama Administration was specifically pre-planning for an influx a full seven months before the story began to reach the headlines:
On January 29th of this year, the federal government posted an advertisement seeking bids for a vendor contract to handle “Unaccompanied Alien Children“.
Not just any contract mind you, but a very specific contract – for a very specific number of unaccompanied minors: 65,000.
Obviously the key take-away was: How could DHS and HHS claim a surprise when they were specifically looking for contractors to handle a very specific number of UAC’s seven month earlier?
Immediately we knew a few things. First, we knew it wasn’t a surprise. Second, we know this administration never lets a crisis go to waste. The UAC crisis was soon framed as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ to position a more favorable outcome for comprehensive immigration reform. It almost worked.
Almost. (more…)
…. and that is Syrian forces on the ground who can fight ISIS !
What the heck are Syrian Kurds if not “Syrian forces on the ground who can fight ISIS” ?
This makes absolutely no sense.
By their own statements – The White House is willing to watch 10,000 Syrian Kurds die fighting ISIS in Kobane as the Pentagon works to train 5,000 Syrians to hopefully fight in April 2015.
Can the broad electorate see that Obama’s actual objective is to allow ISIS to win Syria?
If you listen to the answers given by Leon Panetta in this interview regarding the CIA talking points you will note his discomfort at O’Reilly attaching General Petraeus to the Benghazi talking points.
Meanwhile Team Obama actually says: ‘meh, no biggie if 10,000 or so Syrian moderates are killed fighting ISIS, we’ve got a great plan to train and arm 5,000 over the next year’.
U.S. officials: Key Syrian border city of Kobani will fall to ISIS, but that's not a major U.S. concern. http://t.co/f67CIzD3yT
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) October 8, 2014
U.S. officials: “ISIS will capture Kobani, but it’s not a big concern to us“
TURKEY – […] The likely fall of Kobani may mark an irrevocable breach between Turks and Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Many of the 30 million Kurds in the region believe that, if Kobani falls, it will be because Turkey refused to help its defenders as they faced repeated Isis assaults and cut them off from reinforcements and fresh supplies of weapons and ammunition. “We are besieged by Turkey, it is not something new,” said Ismet Sheikh Hassan, the Kurdish Defence Chief for the Kobani region. (more…)
As expected the Syrian Kurdish controlled city of Kobane (Kobani) -located near the border with Turkey- is about to fall into the hands of Sunni ISIS extremists, and Recep Erdogan is doing everything he can to insure it happens.
[…] Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the coalition air campaign launched last month would not be enough to halt the Islamic State advance and called for greater cooperation with the Syrian opposition, which is fighting both the Islamic State and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Kobani is about to fall,” he told Syrian refugees in the Turkish town of Gaziantep, near the border.
“We asked for three things: one, for a no-fly zone to be created; two, for a secure zone parallel to the region to be declared; and for the moderate opposition in Syria and Iraq to be trained and equipped.”
Turkish tanks and other ground forces have been stationed along the border within a few hundred meters of the fighting in Kobani — also known as Ayn Arab — but have not intervened. (link)
For two weeks we have watched Erdogan do everything he can to facilitate the falling of Kobane into the hands of his Sunni compatriots, ISIS. Erdogan’s request for a “no-fly” zone insures that Kobane, once lost, will remain a safe haven for the ISIS extremists. (more…)