The slow motion U.S. response to the crisis on Mount Sinjar is not only understandable it’s actually quite predictable.

President Obama’s entire ideological outlook and world view is born amid the kitchens, coffee tables, and social organizations of his life.   Together with his compadre’s they view the Gaza conflict through the prism of righteous protests against U.S. engagements in Vietnam.

Bill Ayers famously views armed opposition to the U.S. government as a patriotic and loyal endeavor – what’s a few local bombs intended to do if not to prove a point.   The rockets from Gaza are no more radical in the mind of the radical left than Ayers pentagon bombing of another similarly oppressive entity, the United States.

But something happens at that very specific juncture where the presentation of Hope and Fundamental Change meets the more brutal reality of consequence.  (more…)

Go figure.   Turkey claims they refuse to support U.S. attacks against ISIL because some of their people are “hostages” to ISIL.  

Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that Turkey coordinated the 2012 arms shipments for ISIL, and provided the training base for the Jihadist goals in Syria.  Nah, couldn’t be.  

TURKEY – Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz has ruled out any support from Turkey for the US military airstrike that began on Friday targeting artillery belonging to the al-Qaeda splinter group, the terrorist “Islamic State” (IS), near Arbil, in Iraq.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday in the province of Sivas, Yılmaz said: “We are not providing any kind of support [to the US military strikes on the IS in Iraq]. The US, using its own means, with its military aircraft launched from warships [in the Gulf area], is bombing IS positions that the US sees as a threat.”
Turkey is sensitive about becoming involved in the US military hitting IS targets in Iraq due to a hostage crisis. (more…)

President Obama gave Thomas Friedman an hour long interview before heading off on vacation to Martha’s Vineyard.    Within the interview the failure of a cohesive Obama foreign policy shines through despite the attempted cover from liberal reporters.
There’s actually two parts to this interview – the interview as reported – and the opinion piece from Friedman about the interview itself.
Within the Times Article you find the footprints of a dejected President staring boldly into the face of his own failure and shortcomings:

[…]  “We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq,” the president said in an hourlong interview with Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times columnist, as American planes and drones began dropping bombs in Iraq. “But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void.”

[…]  Mr. Obama offered his justifications for his latest use of military force in Iraq while lamenting the outcome of a similar decision he made to intervene militarily in Libya in 2011. He defended the desire to help oust the Libyan dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, with American air power, but he acknowledged that he had “underestimated” the chaos that would follow after American forces left.

“So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene militarily?’ ” Mr. Obama said. “Do we have an answer the day after?”

Oh that’s nice, as long as he readily admits his failure in Libya now.   Readers will note he’s essentially reaffirming the Bush policy in Iraq by saying the failure in Libya was a failure to stick around and nation build.

This, despite the fact Obama himself worsened the collapse in Iraq by pulling U.S. forces out ahead of structural governance in place which would insure their own security.

So failing to have a plan to stick around in Libya was a mistake, but pulling out from a plan to stick around in Iraq was, well, what exactly ? (more…)

The current situation in Northern Iraq gives us an opportunity to once again check the litmus test of Obama’s R2P intervention.

March 2011 approximately 100,000 al-Qaeda radical Islamists were fighting in Benghazi Libya – President Gaddaffi’s military was en route to eliminate them – when Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and President Obama announced the Responsibility To Protect (R2P) Doctrine:

 …“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and -more profoundly- our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. 

Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries.  The United States of America is different.  And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”… 

~President Obama

The R2P goal was to “save the Libyan rebels”.   The “rebels” -as you are aware- were al-Qaeda affiliates, Ansar al-Sharia, or essentially, the Muslim Brotherhood. (more…)

Prediction. If Turkey requests our engagement, due to their border interests being compromised, within 10 Days the U.S. will begin offensive mititary engagements in Iraq against ISIS forces. (more…)

As with all complex stories the valuable discoveries come with time.

We now have a pretty good understanding of who, what, where, and why surrounding the 9/11/12 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi Libya. We are also better positioned to understand why, or perhaps more importantly why not, certain actions were taken before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the attack itself.

We know from the Bret Baier interview with Hillary Clinton that she was physically located at her 7th floor office in Washington DC on the night of the attack. Unfortunately we also know during the November 2012 Thanksgiving holiday a mysterious fire took place in that building. Well, actually directly above her exact office – cause undetermined.
A “fire” which preceded an unfortunate slip and fall for the Secretary, resulting in a concussion, which led to the discovery of a blood clot, that ultimately delayed her congressional testimony before a Senate Hearing into the events of the night in question.
We know the Libyan uprising began on February 10th of 2011, and we also know that sometime around the end of February 2011 President Obama signed a presidential directive authorizing the State Dept and CIA to begin a covert operation to arm the Libyan “rebels”.
We know the “rebels” were positioned in two strategic places. Benghazi, and the port city of Darnah, both located in Eastern Libya.
We know this covert operation came to be known as “Operation Zero Footprint“, and fell under the military command authority of NATO not (important to repeat), NOT, the U.S. Military. (more…)

As with all complex stories the valuable discoveries come with time.

We now have a pretty good understanding of who, what, where, and why surrounding the 9/11/12 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi Libya. We are also better positioned to understand why, or perhaps more importantly why not, certain actions were taken before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the attack itself.

We know from the Bret Baier interview with Hillary Clinton that she was physically located at her 7th floor office in Washington DC on the night of the attack. Unfortunately we also know during the November 2012 Thanksgiving holiday a mysterious fire took place in that building. Well, actually directly above her exact office – cause undetermined.
A “fire” which preceded an unfortunate slip and fall for the Secretary, resulting in a concussion, which led to the discovery of a blood clot, that ultimately delayed her congressional testimony before a Senate Hearing into the events of the night in question.
We know the Libyan uprising began on February 10th of 2011, and we also know that sometime around the end of February 2011 President Obama signed a presidential directive authorizing the State Dept and CIA to begin a covert operation to arm the Libyan “rebels”.
We know the “rebels” were positioned in two strategic places. Benghazi, and the port city of Darnah, both located in Eastern Libya.
We know this covert operation came to be known as “Operation Zero Footprint“, and fell under the military command authority of NATO not (important to repeat), NOT, the U.S. Military. (more…)

….Or they correctly identified the Brotherhood risks and chose to engage with them because of it;  it depends on how you look at these discoveries.

To contextualize this information, and understand why it’s all important, remember – you can replace the label “Libyan Muslim Brotherhood” (LMB) with the familiar term from Obama/Clinton talking points in 2011, “rebels”.

Remember, back in 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was continually saying “we’re not sure who these rebels are“.  She said they were continuing to try and identify their ideology.   What these FOIA Documents reveal is that both President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton knew *EXACTLY* who the “rebels” were when they chose to support them.
(more…)

There is a lot more to this story surrounding the capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala, A LOT MORE.

Hopefully by now you’ve been able to digest the revelations within “Operation Zero Footprint“.  If not, you might want to read this first before continuing.
The substantive issues with Khattala surround known associations in the lead up to September 11th 2012, and the almost simultaneous issues in Egypt around President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The explosive events in Egypt and Libya, leading up to the night of the Benghazi attack, cannot be detached from each other because the Islamist participants in the events are inherently linked.
Where the real story forks is how the Libyan crisis evolves immediately after the Benghazi attack on 9/11/12.  That’s where the arms shipment(s) to Syria via Turkey become the primary problem for the administration.
While Ahmed Abu Khattala carried out his role in the operation in Libya, he is of Egyptian origin and speaks with an Egyptian dialect.  His ideology and associations spring from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Top Row: Muhammed al-Zawahiri, Abu Khattala, The Blind Sheik
Middle Row: Cairo Protest 9/11/12 for Blind Sheik release, Egyptian President Morsi
Bottom Row: Morsi with Kerry, Morsi with Hillary, Morsi with Bill Clinton

I’m working on tying it all together so people can have a greater understanding of what role Khattala played not only in the Benghazi attacks, and why he was such a central figure to the Benghazi State Dept./CIA operatives, but how he was such a central figure in the years previous to carrying out the Ansar Al Sharia operation. (more…)

If Eli Lake leaves the Daily Beast you will see this level of exposition stop immediately.  Despite his leftist leanings on the subject of Libya and Islamic extremism Mr. Lake is perhaps the most accurate of all reporters on the specifics.  We  give him props for swimming against the tide of his colleges and outlining the falsehoods present in the Obama ‘head-in-the-sand’ hypocrisy around Islam.  -SD

(Via Eli Lake – Daily Beast) In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run.

But some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought hard against that assessment, which amounted to an official pronouncement of the American intelligence community’s collected wisdom. Flynn and his faction won a partial victory, striking the judgment that the terrorist group no longer posed a threat to the homeland. “Flynn and others at the time made it clear they would not go along with that kind of assessment,” one U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the al Qaeda file told The Daily Beast. “It was basically: ‘Over my dead body.’” (more…)