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Much has been written about Israel and her standing in the world. Under the Barack Obama administration, a movement has gained traction to isolate Israel and to reduce this democracy to rubble. Countless times the White House has snubbed Israeli leaderships in their respective visits to the United States. The disdain from the Obama administration has filtered through the ranks of the United Nations, most recently during the conflict(s) against Hamas in Gaza. Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote a scathing piece against Benjamin Netanyahu in the Atlantic magazine that has blown the relationship apart, as tolerance is forced to prevail. Yet how does Israel endure for the remainder of the Obama term in the White House?
Nothing matters more to the National Security Council, to the White House, to progressive think tanks and to the State Department but to gain an historic nuclear agreement with Iran. Libya, North Korea, Russia, Iraq Afghanistan or Syria are all of no real consequence when it comes to a signature by Iran on suspending, only suspending their nuclear program, the single focused objective of foreign policy. Lost in the brouhaha over an unnamed Obama official insulting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was a shocking admission by the Obama Administration – that it is “too late” for Israel to do anything about Iranian nuclear capabilities.
A striking and truthful rebuttal is found here and the text is below. In an article published in The Atlantic, an unnamed “senior Obama official” is quoted as saying the Obama Administration thinks that Netanyahu will not launch a preemptive strike on Iran over its nuclear program. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”It remains unknown who this unnamed official was, and what their role is in the White House.The quote “reflects the Obama Administration’s policy, which has been engagement with Iran and not military preemption,” said Yoram Ettinger, retired Minister for Congressional Affairs in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. with the rank of Ambassador. “ANY [diplomatic] deal with Iran, in Obama’s mind, is better than military preemption.”Ettinger also believes that failing to remove the threat of a nuclear Iran is a policy mistake for Obama, more so than a threat to Israel, as the United States is Iran’s chief target. “Israel is only a tertiary, or even 4th rate target for Iran. The United States is their number one target, followed by US-friendly oil producing Gulf states, and then perhaps NATO.”However, Ettinger concludes, “Israel will err historically and dramatically” if it fails to remove the Iranian threat, should the United States fail to do so.
So what is Israel future and how does Israel deliver a policy outside of internal concentration? I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Martin Sherman from Israel on radio who took the time to telegraph the truth and future of his home country. Dr. Sherman has been broadcasting and forecasting the years ahead for Israel.
Please listen to the interview with Dr. Martin Sherman:
Come with us America, join in the full pledge and support of Israel, the only democratic ally in the Middle East. Force the United Nations, the White House, the National Security Council and most especially John Kerry at the State Department to apologize but especially to back down and isolate Iran rather than legitimize Iran on the world stage.
Bowe Bergdahl was a proven risk in Afghanistan going back as far as 2009, when more than once he left his post telling some in his unit he no longer believed in the American mission and wanted to do something else. A full (AR-15-6) investigation began then and remains classified. Bergdahl has a charge sheet and there is indisputable evidence that he willingly and with purpose left his base. It must be noted and remembered that at least 6 fellow soldiers died looking for Bergdahl and an unknown number to date were injured due to IED’s.
So, it is important to put some historical facts in this summary that may put some other perspective into the discussion.
Richard Holbrooke, a longtime diplomat, died in 2010. During his career, Holbrooke had many foreign policy roles and could have eventually been Secretary of State, given his work for John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Prior to Holbrooke’s death, he was the special envoy to AFPAK (Afganistan/Pakistan), which was closely guarded and managed by the White House. Holbrooke was assigned negotiate with the Taliban and Haqqani but the White House devised the mission and (June 2011) announced the withdraw of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and this changed the trump cards Holbrooke had previously established and was later turned over t0 Marc Grossman for his resumption of talks with the enemy. The best deals with the Taliban/Haqqani were when America and ISAF had the most forces in country.
In the quest for a deal with the Taliban, they were removed from the list and given amnesty for war crimes. It should be noted that in 2001 directly after the U.S. defeated in a matter of a few months, the Taliban tried to deal with the Bush Administration and was profoundly rejected.
Early in the Obama administration, the White House staff and the State Department under Hillary Clinton sought a pragmatic approach with enemies of America such that ‘isolating’ them was the sole objective, same as it is today with Putin, Bashir al Assad and ISIS in Iraq. Barack Obama’s team approached the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, collaborating on the concept of negotiating with the Taliban. Mechanisms for these talks and use of sanctions included such times as:
Easing U.S., European and United Nations sanctions
Removing the Taliban from any black listings
Establishing a political mainstream headquarter location in Doha, Qatar
Installing the Taliban into the power structure of the whole governmental process in Afghanistan
To work with financial powerbrokers globally to establish an economic platform for the Taliban
Continued and scheduled release of Taliban prisoners in worldwide locations beginning in Bagram and later Guantanamo. Specifically, the Taliban wanted Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a direct lieutenant of Mullah Omar. Baradar ran the Taliban operations and is/was the leader of the Quetta Shura based in Pakistan.
In several versions of the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) between the United States and Afghanistan, text remained on negotiations and conditions for inclusion of the Taliban. As the BSA process continued to be delayed over many disagreements and secret machinations, the United States chose another course for Taliban talks and that included the use of Qatar. Particular sticking points of the Taliban were their demands of releasing of guerilla commanders, including 5 located in Guantanamo and Helman Abdul Bari, Nuruddin Turabi, Allah Daad Tabib, Duad Jan and Mir Ahmed Gul all from detention facilities held by the United States.
Marc Grossman has moved on from the assignment of AfPak and is now at The Cohen Group, a strategic foreign investment think tank with interesting connections to central Asia, south Asia that includes Afghanistan Pakistan, India, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. This is important and worth a mention for several reasons, most of which, nothing needs to impede private equity and investment when it comes to the region being a transit state for a pipeline connecting central Asia to south Asia which has the Asian Development Bank as the financial advisor. The pipeline includes all transit routes for oil, natural gas and power grids.
As the Brits and the United States took down the flag the last time today in Helmand Province of Camp Bastion and Camp Leatherneck, no future conflicts can be tolerated by al Qaeda and the Taliban. As the West leaves Afghanistan, so goes the money as well which will not only impact economics in Afghanistan but in Pakistan as well. There will be likely a rise in drug productions, kidnapping, transit taxes and ransoms on businesses. These are all factored into the negotiations with Haqqani, Taliban and global business interests.
So today, the Taliban 5 (having their passports terminate and provided provisional citizenship of Qatar) released from Guantanamo are enjoying life in Doha only being under house arrest, due to the secretive deal between the White House, Taliban and Qatar that included Beau Bergdahl. The Taliban are receiving guests and old friends at their Qatari funded safehouse. One set of visitors included 2 senior members of Haqqani named Qari Abdul Rasheed Omari and Anas Haqqani. When the headquarters office for the Taliban closed after a short term, many of the Taliban leadership stayed in Doha under the protections of Qatari security that also includes protections for Muslim Brotherhood leadership, Hamas and top players of the Shiite regime of Iran.
In summary, the dealing with Haqqani/Taliban goes back to 2009 and had underlying objectives such that many players worked the deal(s) extending sweet honey to Haqqani/Taliban masked in a trade for Bergdahl. Those involved are located globally and there is still the unknown of the Bergdahl investigation the AR 15-6.
Nothing is ever as it seems, there is always much more, a multi-track agenda where money and fame are all realized….Hillary knows, Grossman knows, Kerry knows, Susan Rice knows, and the list goes on, but we will not know more about Bergdahl…you can bet he gets a pass and he deserted.
We know that Islamic terror groups have been using chemical weapons to kill. We know they have been using prison tactics of the Holocaust to kill. We know they have been shooting with weapons to kill and we know they have been torturing and beheading without hesitation.
We need to know beyond the use of sophistication of global social media by al Nusra, al Qaeda and Daesh (ISIS), we must also come to understand the wide range of their knowledge and use of all internet applications against their enemies.
1. The terror networks know what countries pay ransom, how much they pay and who specifically to reach for negotiations.
2. The terror networks know how to match photos with dates and locations using Google features.
3. The terror networks know how to use LinkedIn, PowerPoint, Bots, thumb-drives.
4. The terror networks use an all cash financial system to avoid global banking tracing and tracking.
5. The terror networks know how to build address books, alter usernames and passwords on the fly and hide IP addresses.
6. The terror networks have members, fighters, technicians, tech geeks, bomb-makers, engineers, pilots, software programmers, tactical war-planners and smuggling access to anything.
7. The terror networks are effective at kidnapping, theft, buying and selling, investments, pysops, torture and have a tremendous knowledge of history.
8. The terror networks are smarter than you and smarter than you give them credit for being. They are adaptive, flexible, mobile, crafty and patient.
When it comes to kidnapping, torture, prison, waterboarding and beheading, this is a must read.
ISIS Hostages Endured Torture and Dashed Hopes, Freed Cellmates Say
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
The hostages were taken out of their cell one by one.
In a private room, their captors asked each of them three intimate questions, a standard technique used to obtain proof that a prisoner is still alive in a kidnapping negotiation.
James Foley returned to the cell he shared with nearly two dozen other Western hostages and collapsed in tears of joy. The questions his kidnappers had asked were so personal (“Who cried at your brother’s wedding?” “Who was the captain of your high school soccer team?”) that he knew they were finally in touch with his family.
It was December 2013, and more than a year had passed since Mr. Foley vanished on a road in northern Syria. Finally, his worried parents would know he was alive, he told his fellow captives. His government, he believed, would soon negotiate his release.
What appeared to be a turning point was in fact the start of a downward spiral for Mr. Foley, a 40-year-old journalist, that ended in August when he was forced to his knees somewhere in the bald hills of Syria and beheaded as a camera rolled.
His videotaped death was a very public end to a hidden ordeal.
The story of what happened in the Islamic State’s underground network of prisons in Syria is one of excruciating suffering. Mr. Foley and his fellow hostages were routinely beaten and subjected to waterboarding. For months, they were starved and threatened with execution by one group of fighters, only to be handed off to another group that brought them sweets and contemplated freeing them. The prisoners banded together, playing games to pass the endless hours, but as conditions grew more desperate, they turned on one another. Some, including Mr. Foley, sought comfort in the faith of their captors, embracing Islam and taking Muslim names.
Their captivity coincided with the rise of the group that came to be known as the Islamic State out of the chaos of the Syrian civil war. It did not exist on the day Mr. Foley was abducted, but it slowly grew to become the most powerful and feared rebel movement in the region. By the second year of Mr. Foley’s imprisonment, the group had amassed close to two dozen hostages and devised a strategy to trade them for cash.
It was at that point that the hostages’ journeys, which had been largely similar up to then, diverged based on actions taken thousands of miles away: in Washington and Paris, in Madrid, Rome and beyond. Mr. Foley was one of at least 23 Western hostages from 12 countries, a majority of them citizens of European nations whose governments have a history of paying ransoms.
Their struggle for survival, which is being told now for the first time, was pieced together through interviews with five former hostages, locals who witnessed their treatment, relatives and colleagues of the captives, and a tight circle of advisers who made trips to the region to try to win their release. Crucial details were confirmed by a former member of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, who was initially stationed in the prison where Mr. Foley was held, and who provided previously unknown details of his captivity.
The ordeal has remained largely secret because the militants warned the hostages’ families not to go to the news media, threatening to kill their loved ones if they did. The New York Times is naming only those already identified publicly by the Islamic State, which began naming them in August.
Officials in the United States say they did everything in their power to save Mr. Foley and the others, including carrying out a failed rescue operation. They argue that the United States’ policy of not paying ransoms saves Americans’ lives in the long run by making them less attractive targets.
Inside their concrete box, the hostages did not know what their families or governments were doing on their behalf. They slowly pieced it together using the only information they had: their interactions with their guards and with one another. Mostly they suffered, waiting for any sign that they might escape with their lives.
The Grab
It was only a 40-minute drive to the Turkish border, but Mr. Foley decided to make one last stop.
In Binesh, Syria, two years ago, Mr. Foley and his traveling companion, the British photojournalist John Cantlie, pulled into an Internet cafe to file their work. The two were no strangers to the perils of reporting in Syria. Only a few months earlier, Mr. Cantlie had been kidnapped a few dozen miles from Binesh. He had tried to escape, barefoot and handcuffed, running for his life as bullets kicked up the dirt, only to be caught again. He was released a week later after moderate rebels intervened.
They were uploading their images when a man walked in.
“He had a big beard,” said Mustafa Ali, their Syrian translator, who was with them and recounted their final hours together. “He didn’t smile or say anything. And he looked at us with evil eyes.”
The man “went to the computer and sat for one minute only, and then left directly,” Mr. Ali said. “He wasn’t Syrian. He looked like he was from the Gulf.”
Mr. Foley, an American freelance journalist filing for GlobalPost and Agence France-Presse, and Mr. Cantlie, a photographer for British newspapers, continued transmitting their footage, according to Mr. Ali, whose account was confirmed by emails the journalists sent from the cafe to a colleague waiting for them in Turkey.
More than an hour later, they flagged a taxi for the 25-mile drive to Turkey. They never reached the border.
The gunmen who sped up behind their taxi did not call themselves the Islamic State because the group did not yet exist on Nov. 22, 2012, the day the two men were grabbed.
But the danger of Islamic extremism was already palpable in Syria’s rebel-held territories, and some news organizations were starting to pull back. Among the red flags was the growing number of foreign fighters flooding into Syria, dreaming of establishing a “caliphate.” These jihadists, many of them veterans of Al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, looked and behaved differently from the moderate rebels. They wore their beards long. And they spoke with foreign accents, coming from the Persian Gulf, North Africa, Europe and beyond.
A van sped up on the left side of the taxi and cut it off. Masked fighters jumped out. They screamed in foreign-accented Arabic, telling the journalists to lie on the pavement. They handcuffed them and threw them into the van.
They left Mr. Ali on the side of the road. “If you follow us, we’ll kill you,” they told him.
Over the next 14 months, at least 23 foreigners, most of them freelance journalists and aid workers, would fall into a similar trap. The attackers identified the locals whom journalists hired to help them, like Mr. Ali and Yosef Abobaker, a Syrian translator. It was Mr. Abobaker who drove Steven J. Sotloff, an American freelance journalist, into Syria on Aug. 4, 2013.
“We were driving for only 20 minutes when I saw three cars stopped on the road ahead,” he said. “They must have had a spy on the border that saw my car and told them I was coming.”
The kidnappings, which were carried out by different groups of fighters jousting for influence and territory in Syria, became more frequent. In June 2013, four French journalists were abducted. In September, the militants grabbed three Spanish journalists.
Checkpoints became human nets, and last October, insurgents waited at one for Peter Kassig, 25, an emergency medical technician from Indianapolis who was delivering medical supplies. In December, Alan Henning, a British taxi driver, disappeared at another. Mr. Henning had cashed in his savings to buy a used ambulance, hoping to join an aid caravan to Syria. He was kidnapped 30 minutes after crossing into the country.
The last to vanish were five aid workers from Doctors Without Borders, who were plucked in January from the field hospital in rural Syria where they had been working.
The Interrogation
At gunpoint, Mr. Sotloff and Mr. Abobaker were driven to a textile factory in a village outside Aleppo, Syria, where they were placed in separate cells. Mr. Abobaker, who was freed two weeks later, heard their captors take Mr. Sotloff into an adjoining room.
Then he heard the Arabic-speaking interrogator say in English: “Password.”
It was a process to be repeated with several other hostages. The kidnappers seized their laptops, cellphones and cameras and demanded the passwords to their accounts. They scanned their Facebook timelines, their Skype chats, their image archives and their emails, looking for evidence of collusion with Western spy agencies and militaries.
“They took me to a building that was specifically for the interrogation,” said Marcin Suder, a 37-year-old Polish photojournalist kidnapped in July 2013 in Saraqib, Syria, where the jihadists were known to be operating. He was passed among several groups before managing to escape four months later.
“They checked my camera,” Mr. Suder said. “They checked my tablet. Then they undressed me completely. I was naked. They looked to see if there was a GPS chip under my skin or in my clothes. Then they started beating me. They Googled ‘Marcin Suder and C.I.A.,’ ‘Marcin Suder and K.G.B.’ They accused me of being a spy.”
Mr. Suder — who was never told the name of the group holding him, and who never met the other hostages because he escaped before they were transferred to the same location — remarked on the typically English vocabulary his interrogators had used.
During one session, they kept telling him he had been “naughty” — a word that hostages who were held with Mr. Foley also recalled their guards’ using during the most brutal torture.
It was in the course of these interrogations that the jihadists found images of American military personnel on Mr. Foley’s laptop, taken during his assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“In the archive of photographs he had personally taken, there were images glorifying the American crusaders,” they wrote in an article published after Mr. Foley’s death. “Alas for James, this archive was with him at the time of his arrest.”
A British hostage, David Cawthorne Haines, was forced to acknowledge his military background: It was listed on his LinkedIn profile.
The militants also discovered that Mr. Kassig, the aid worker from Indiana, was a former Army Ranger and a veteran of the Iraq war. Both facts are easy to find online, because CNN featured Mr. Kassig’s humanitarian work prominently before his capture.
The punishment for any perceived offense was torture.
“You could see the scars on his ankles,” Jejoen Bontinck, 19, of Belgium, a teenage convert to Islam who spent three weeks in the summer of 2013 in the same cell as Mr. Foley, said of him. “He told me how they had chained his feet to a bar and then hung the bar so that he was upside down from the ceiling. Then they left him there.”
Mr. Bontinck, who was released late last year, spoke about his experiences for the first time for this article in his hometown, Antwerp, where he is one of 46 Belgian youths on trial on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization.
At first, the abuse did not appear to have a larger purpose. Nor did the jihadists seem to have a plan for their growing number of hostages.
Mr. Bontinck said Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie had first been held by the Nusra Front, a Qaeda affiliate. Their guards, an English-speaking trio whom they nicknamed “the Beatles,” seemed to take pleasure in brutalizing them.
Later, they were handed over to a group called the Mujahedeen Shura Council, led by French speakers.
Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie were moved at least three times before being transferred to a prison underneath the Children’s Hospital of Aleppo.
It was in this building that Mr. Bontinck, then only 18, met Mr. Foley. At first, Mr. Bontinck was a fighter, one of thousands of young Europeans drawn to the promise of jihad. He later ran afoul of the group when he received a text message from his worried father back in Belgium and his commander accused him of being a spy.
The militants dragged him into a basement room with pale brown walls. Inside were two very thin, bearded foreigners: Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie.
For the next three weeks, when the call to prayer sounded, all three stood.
Mr. Foley converted to Islam soon after his capture and adopted the name Abu Hamza, Mr. Bontinck said. (His conversion was confirmed by three other recently released hostages, as well as by his former employer.)
“I recited the Quran with him,” Mr. Bontinck said. “Most people would say, ‘Let’s convert so that we can get better treatment.’ But in his case, I think it was sincere.”
Former hostages said that a majority of the Western prisoners had converted during their difficult captivity. Among them was Mr. Kassig, who adopted the name Abdul-Rahman, according to his family, who learned of his conversion in a letter smuggled out of the prison.
Only a handful of the hostages stayed true to their own faiths, including Mr. Sotloff, then 30, a practicing Jew. On Yom Kippur, he told his guards he was not feeling well and refused his food so he could secretly observe the traditional fast, a witness said.
Those recently released said that most of the foreigners had converted under duress, but that Mr. Foley had been captivated by Islam. When the guards brought an English version of the Quran, those who were just pretending to be Muslims paged through it, one former hostage said. Mr. Foley spent hours engrossed in the text.
His first set of guards, from the Nusra Front, viewed his professed Islamic faith with suspicion. But the second group holding him seemed moved by it. For an extended period, the abuse stopped. Unlike the Syrian prisoners, who were chained to radiators, Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie were able to move freely inside their cell.
Mr. Bontinck had a chance to ask the prison’s emir, a Dutch citizen, whether the militants had asked for a ransom for the foreigners. He said they had not.
“He explained there was a Plan A and a Plan B,” Mr. Bontinck said. The journalists would be put under house arrest, or they would be conscripted into a jihadist training camp. Both possibilities suggested that the group was planning to release them.
One day, their guards brought them a gift of chocolates.
When Mr. Bontinck was released, he jotted down the phone number of Mr. Foley’s parents and promised to call them. They made plans to meet again.
He left thinking that the journalists, like him, would soon be freed.
A Terrorist State
The Syrian civil war, previously dominated by secular rebels and a handful of rival jihadist groups, was shifting decisively, and the new extremist group had taken a dominant position. Sometime last year, the battalion in the Aleppo hospital pledged allegiance to what was then called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Other factions of fighters joined forces with the group, whose tactics were so extreme that even Al Qaeda expelled it from its terror network. Its ambitions went far beyond toppling Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president.
Late last year, the jihadists began pooling their prisoners, bringing them to the same location underneath the hospital. By January, there were at least 19 men in one 20-square-meter cell (about 215 square feet) and four women in an adjoining one. All but one of them were European or North American. The relative freedom that Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie had enjoyed came to an abrupt end. Each prisoner was now handcuffed to another.
More worrying was the fact that their French-speaking guards were replaced by English-speaking ones. Mr. Foley recognized them with dread.
Nothing else matters to the White House or to John Kerry than that of coming away with a nuclear deal with Iran as summarized here.
As November 24, the deal expiration dates gets closer, Iran continues to enjoy more red-carpet treatment rolled out by John Kerry and his hand-selected team.
Meanwhile, it is important to know what Iran is really doing while all these talks go on and get extended.
Iran began installing two cascades of advanced centrifuges at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz. As of August 28, 2011, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran had installed 136 IR-2m centrifuges in cascade 5 and 27 IR-4 centrifuges in cascade 4. Iran started feeding 54 of the 136 IR-2m centrifuges with natural uranium hexafluoride.1 Each of these cascades is designed to contain 164 centrifuges. Iran first told the IAEA in January 2011 that it intended to install these two cascades, and it is unclear why Iran waited nearly eight months before starting to install them.
Installation of the IR-2m centrifuges is now complete. Installation of the IR-4 centrifuges could finish anytime.
The IR-2m and the IR-4 centrifuges have the same length and diameter. They are derived from the Pakistani P2 centrifuge design that A.Q. Khan sold Iran in the 1990s. Iran subsequently modified this design (see figures 1 and 2). The IR-2m rotor is made of two carbon fiber rotor sections or tubes and a maraging steel bellows. The IR-4 has two carbon fiber tubes connected by a carbon fiber bellows, an unusual choice likely reflecting a shortage of maraging steel. Both centrifuge designs use a top and bottom bearing and a motor taken from the P2 design.
Khan found that the P2 design worked considerably better than the P1 centrifuge, suffering far fewer failures. Similarly, the IR-2m and IR-4 centrifuges are expected to have fewer breakdowns than the IR-1 centrifuges currently at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant that are copies of the P1 centrifuge. However, as is discussed below, these centrifuges may not perform as expected.
It must also be understood, however that the talks with Iran should such an agreement be reach, will not be under the title of treaty or agreement such that it would go to Congress to be approved and members of Congress already know this. They are worried to the point that several have introduced legislation to prevent advancement of the Iranian nuclear program and are poised to re-install many sanctions that the Obama administration has suspended. The White House and the State Department are looking for methods to completely excluded allies but most of all our own Congress from the comprehensive details of the nuclear deal and from subsequently voting on accepting or opposing the deal completely. This speaks to the Obama administration having its own exclusive authority. In fact it is so disturbing, even the New York Times spells it out with concerns.
WASHINGTON — No one knows if the Obama administration will manage in the next five weeks to strike what many in the White House consider the most important foreign policy deal of his presidency: an accord with Iran that would forestall its ability to make a nuclear weapon. But the White House has made one significant decision: If agreement is reached, President Obama will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it.
But Mr. Obama cannot permanently terminate those sanctions. Only Congress can take that step. And even if Democrats held on to the Senate next month, Mr. Obama’s advisers have concluded they would probably lose such a vote.
“We wouldn’t seek congressional legislation in any comprehensive agreement for years,” one senior official said.
White House officials say Congress should not be surprised by this plan. They point to testimony earlier this year when top negotiators argued that the best way to assure that Iran complies with its obligations is a step-by-step suspension of sanctions — with the implicit understanding that the president could turn them back on as fast as he turned them off.
Nothing on the other side of the horizon is more dangerous than Kerry and his army right now leading the charge to get a pen in the hands of Iran.
Barack Obama is not going to either slow or stop the air traffic from at least three countries in a Dante’s Inferno of the epidemic Ebola outbreak. So a sensible plan would be for control of people and passengers leaving African nations affected by Ebola to be done so only on chartered aircraft medically designed to assess signs of illness with experts from the Center for Disease Control as part of the medical crew on board. Then all passengers with any type of indications we transported to a single isolation facility in the United States where again Center for Disease Control personnel and virus experts are in control rather than spreading patients around the United States terrifying the country.
Now, the genesis of the Ebola outbreak, there are two articles of due importance for consideration and understanding.
Professor Peter Piot, who discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, conducted an extensive interview with the London newspaper, The Guardian, over the weekend whereby he discussed his initial discovery of the virus; and, what may lie ahead. The Guardians’ Rafela von Bredow, and Veronika Hackenbroch write that Professor Piot “still remembers that day in September 1976, when a pilot from Sabena Airlines brought us a shinny blue Thermos; and, a letter from a doctor in Kinshasa — in what was then Zaire.” At the time, Professor Piot was a researcher at a lab in Antwerp, Belgium. The letter stated that the blood sample contained in the Thermos came from a Belgian nun who had recently fallen ill from a mysterious illness in Yambuku. a remote village in the northern part of the country. The doctor who sent the sample, asked Professor Piot’s lab to test the sample for yellow fever.”
When asked by the two Guardian reporters how he protected himself back then from such a dangerous pathogen?, Professor Piot said “we had no idea how dangerous the virus was; and, there were no high-security labs in Belgium.” Tests for yellow and Lassa fever, as well as typhoid were all negative. What then, could it be?” Professor Piot said they all asked themselves. In order to get at least some idea of what they might be dealing with, Professor Piot and his lab colleagues decided to inject some of the blood sample into mice and other lab animals. At first, nothing happened,” Professor Piot said, and the researchers “thought that perhaps the pathogen had been damaged from insufficient refrigeration in the Thermos. But then, one animal after the next began to die. We began to realize the sample contained something very deadly.”
As they began to analyze additional samples that had just been received; the World Health Organization (WHO) “instructed us to send all of our samples to a high-security lab in England.” But, says Professor Piot, his boss at the time “wanted to bring our work to a conclusion, no matter what.” “He grabbed a vial containing the virus to examine it, but his hand was shaking and he dropped it on a colleagues foot. The vial shattered, My only thought was: “Oh shit!” “We immediately disinfected everything; and luckily, our colleague was wearing thick leather shoes. Nothing happened to any of us.”
Eventually, The Guardian reports, Professor Piot and his colleagues were able to create an image of the virus using an electron microscope. “What the hell is that?” they asked themselves. “The virus we had been searching for was very big, very long, and worm-like. It had no similarities with yellow fever. Rather, it looked like an extremely dangerous Marburg virus which, like Ebola, causes hemorrhagic fever. In the 1960s, the virus killed several laboratory workers in Marburg, Germany.”
Soon after it was confirmed that this was a new, previously unknown virus, Professor Piot “became one of the first scientists to fly to Zaire,” The Guardian noted. Although thrilled at being one of the first doctors to be tracking down and studying this new, deadly virus, there was genuine fear among these scientists as “we had no idea that it was transmitted by bodily fluids.”
When deciding what to name the new virus, Professor Piot and his colleagues “definitely didn’t want to name the new pathogen “Yambuku Virus,” since that name would stigmatize the place of origin forever. “There was a map hanging on the wall; and, our American team leader suggested looking for the nearest river — ultimately giving the virus its name. It was the Ebola River. But, the map on the wall was small and inexact. We only learned later that the nearest river was actually a different one; but, Ebola is a nice name isn’t it?” Professor Piot said, and the name stuck.”
Professor Piot and his colleagues eventually discovered that the infected Belgian nuns had also unwittingly spread the new virus called Ebola. “In their hospital, they regularly gave pregnant women vitamin injections using unsterilized needles. By doing so, they infected many young women in Yambuku with the virus.” “Clinics that failed to observe [proper hygiene] this and other rules of hygiene functioned as catalysts in all additional Ebola outbreaks.” Their mistakes, “drastically sped up the spread of the virus, or made the spread possible in the first place. Even in the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, hospitals unfortunately played this ignominious role in the beginning,” the Guardian journalists noted; and, no doubt feed the suspicion and distrust of the medical profession in these remote places in the world — a suspicion that probably still lingers today.
The Guardian journalist’s postulated that “there is actually a well-established procedure for curtailing Ebola outbreaks: isolating those infected and closely monitoring those who had contact with them. How could such a catastrophe as the one we’re seeing now — ever happen?” Professor Piot responded that “I think it is what people call a Perfect Storm: when every individual circumstance is a bit worse than normal; and, they combine to create a disaster. And with this outbreak, there were many factors that were disadvantageous from the very beginning. Some of the countries involved were just emerging from terrible civil wars, many of their doctors had fled, and their healthcare system [such as it was] had collapsed. In all of Liberia for example,” Professor Piot said, there were only 51 doctors in 2010, and many of them since then — have died of Ebola.” “The fact that the outbreak began in the densely populated border region between Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia…also contributed to the catastrophe,” Professor Piot added.
“For the first time in its history, the virus also reached metropolises such as Monrovia and Freetown. Is that the worst that can happen?” The Guardian journalists asked Professor Piot. “In large cities — particularly in chaotic slums — it is virtually impossible to find those who had contact with patients, no matter how great the effort. That is why I am so worried about Nigeria as well. The country is home to mega-cities like Lagos and Port Harcourt; and, if the Ebola virus lodges there…and begins to spread….it would be an unimaginable catastrophe,” Professor Piot warned.
When asked “if we’ve lost complete control of the epidemic?,” Professor Piot responded that “I have always been an optimist; and, I think we have no other choice than to try everything, really everything. It’s good the United States and some other countries are finally beginning to help. But, Germany, or even Belgium, for example, must do a lot more. And, it should be clear to all of us: This isn’t just an epidemic any more. This is a humanitarian catastrophe. We don’t just need care personnel, but also logistics experts, trucks, jeeps, and foodstuffs. Such an epidemic can destabilize entire regions. I can only hope that we will be able to get it under control. I never really thought that it could get this bad.” Professor Piot said.
When asked if he thought “we might be facing the beginnings of a pandemic?” Professor Piot said, “there will certainly be Ebola patients from West Africa who will come to us in the hopes of receiving treatment. But, an outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be brought under control. I am more worried about the many people from India who work in trade or industry in West Africa. It would only take one of them to become infected; and, travel to India to visit relatives during the virus’s incubation period, and once he/she becomes sick, go to a public hospital there. Doctors and nurses in India, too often, don’t wear protective gloves. They would immediately become infected and spread the virus.”
The Guardian journalists postulated that the “virus is constantly changing its genetic makeup; and, the more people who become infected, the greater [the] chance the virus will mutate.,” to a more virulent and transmissible form — “which might speed its spread.” Professor Piot said, “yes, that really is the apocalyptic scenario. Humans are actually just an accidental host for the virus, and not a good one. From the perspective of a virus, it isn’t desirable for its host, within which the pathogen hopes to multiply, to die so quickly. It would be much better for the virus to allow us to stay alive longer.”
When asked “if the virus could suddenly change itself…so, it could spread via the air/respiratory route?,” Professor Piot responded that “luckily, that is extremely unlikely. But, a mutation that would allow Ebola patients to live a couple of weeks longer is certainly possible; and, would be disadvantageous for the virus. But, that would allow Ebola patients to infect many more people than is currently the case.” “But that is speculation isn’t it?” The Guardian journalists asked. “Certainly,” Professor Piot responded. “But, it is just one of many possible ways the virus could change to spread more easily. And, it is clear that this virus is mutating.”
When asked about his views with respect to experimental drugs, Professor Piot said “patients could probably be treated more quickly with blood serum from Ebola survivors, even if that would likely be extremely difficult — given the chaotic local conditions. We need to find out now, if these methods, or if experimental drugs like ZMapp, really help. For most people, they will come [experimental drugs] too late in this epidemic. But, if they help, they should be made available for the next outbreak.”
In concluding the interview, The Guardian journalists observed that “in Zaire, during the first outbreak, a hospital with poor hygiene was responsible for spreading the illness. Today, almost the same thing is happening. Was Louis Pasteur right when he said: “It is the microbes who will have the last word?” Professor Piot said, “Of course we are a long way from declaring victory over bacteria and viruses. HIV is still here; in London alone, five gaymen become infected daily. An increasing number of bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. And, I can still see Ebola patients in Yambuku, how they died in their shacks; and, we couldn’t do anything except let them die. In principal, it’s still the same today. That is very depressing. But, it also provides me with a strong motivation to do something. I love life. That is why I am doing everything I can to convince the powerful in this world to finally send sufficient help to West Africa. Now! Enough said.
While this is long, please continue reading to understand the scope and reason of the Ebola threats. Now let us move on to the World Health Organization (WHO) and why that is yet another very big problem.
