At the Altar of Treason

Posted on June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 by Denise Simon

All dedicated patriots across America have questioned the loyalty of Barack Obama and those past and present in his administration. Much has been written challenging his allegiance to what really is America and what she stands for.

Perhaps it would be a good time for reference purposes to list some profound work by others that have worked diligently to teach the undisputed facts.

Frank Gaffney offers a course that requires you to enroll.

Clare Lopez spells out the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. government.

Robert Spencer and David Horowitz published a short book providing tangible evidence of Barack Obama’s outside loyalties.

Andrew McCarthy accomplished prosecutor and author spells out Barack Obama’s Sharia agenda.

While America has listed proven enemies that include al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, it is important to pull back the curtains now on the recent Taliban 5 release from Gitmo and what role Qatar played. Below are the reasons why we cannot trust Barack Obama, his inner circle but most especially Qatar to control the Taliban 5.

Of particular note is an organization called the Union of Good. The deep relationship that has ties inside the United States and spreads to other global destinations that includes Qatar. There are countless members of the Obama administration that were/are involved with Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas and the back-channels of al Qaeda, including previous Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. She willingly agreed to Barack Obama’s edict to cooperate with Qatar.

This is chilling and a warning for Americans located anywhere in the world, with particular attention to our soldiers that proudly display the American flag on their shoulders.

Qatar, at the core of Barack Obama’s hidden loyalty.

Following joint military operations during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Qatar and the United States concluded a Defense Cooperation Agreement that has been subsequently expanded. In April 2003, the U.S. Combat Air Operations Center for the Middle East moved from Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia to Qatar’s Al Udeid airbase south of Doha, the Qatari capital. Al Udeid and other facilities in Qatar serve as logistics, command, and basing hubs for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operations, including Iraq and Afghanistan. In spite of serving as the host to a large U.S. military presence and supporting U.S. regional initiatives, Qatar has remained mostly secure from terrorist attacks. Terrorist statements indicate that energy

infrastructure and U.S. military facilities in Qatar remain potential targets. U.S. officials have described Qatar’s counterterrorism cooperation since 9/11 as significant; however, some observers have raised questions about possible support for Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups by some Qatari citizens, including members of Qatar’s large ruling family.

Qatari officials have taken an increasingly active diplomatic role in recent years, seeking to position themselves as mediators and interlocutors in a number of regional conflicts. Qatar’s deployment of fighter jets and transport planes to support NATO-led military operations in Libya signaled a new assertiveness, as have Qatari leaders’ calls for providing weapons to the Syrian opposition. Qatar’s willingness to embrace Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Taliban as part of its mediation and outreach initiatives has drawn scrutiny from some U.S. observers. Unrest in Syria and Hamas-Fatah reconciliation attempts have created challenging choices for Qatar, and Qatari leaders now host Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal following his split with the Asad regime. The Obama Administration has not voiced public concern about Qatar’s multidirectional foreign policy and has sought to preserve and expand military and counterterrorism cooperation with the ambitious leaders of this wealthy, strategically located country.

The emir visited Washington, DC, in April 2011 for consultations with President Obama and congressional leaders. In the wake of the visit, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Joseph LeBaron referred to “a deepening of the relationship in political terms” and stated his belief that President Obama’s consultation with Shaykh Hamad moved the U.S.-Qatari relationship “in a direction that is qualitatively different from the past 10 years.”2 The Administration has not elaborated on what new political arrangements or agreements, if any, were concluded during the emir’s visit. In the months since, Qatar has continued its bold responses to unrest in various Arab countries by backing opposition movements in Libya and Syria and offering sanctuary to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal after his departure from Damascus.

Multilateral diplomacy aimed at ending the insurgency in Afghanistan entered a new phase in late 2011, culminating in an announcement by the Afghan Taliban that the movement is ready to open a political office in the Qatari capital, Doha, to engage with third parties.3 The announcement signaled a formal return to the international diplomatic stage by the Taliban, which operated embassies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates prior to its ouster by U.S.-backed Afghan militias in 2001. Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr Al Thani has said, “A solution in Afghanistan requires the participation of the Taliban in a way that must be decided by the Afghans. That requires talking to them.”4 The Doha office was part of a package of U.S. proposals for confidence building measures with the Taliban; Afghan authorities reportedly had preferred Saudi Arabia or Turkey as a proposed site for the office, presumably out of concern that Qatar might not adequately monitor or limit the activities of senior Taliban personnel.

Afghanistan withdrew its ambassador from Doha for consultations in mid-December 2011, in apparent protest of what it implied were Qatari efforts to circumvent Afghan government participation in discussions concerning the proposed office and a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The Afghan ambassador returned to Doha in early 2012, in line with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s acceptance of the Doha office concept. Still, Karzai has insisted that his government remain fully involved in all aspects of any negotiations, in Doha or elsewhere.

Afghan Foreign Minister Dr. Zalmai Rassoul visited Doha in early April 2012 and said that Qatar and the United States can help Afghans negotiate peace by “providing the appropriate environment for success,” but such peace talks should be “between Afghans.” Rassoul told the April 22 NATO Foreign and Defense Ministers Meeting in Brussels that, “we’re today closer to the opening of an address in Qatar for the purpose of facilitating direct negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban and other armed opposition groups than at any other point in the past. We hope to finalize an understanding on this in Kabul soon.

Qatar has supported the Arab League position backing internationally supported negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.6 In April 2011, Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa said during a visit to the White House that “the most important issue for us in the region is that Palestine-Israeli conflict and how to find a way to establish a Palestinian state.” He signaled his support for President Obama’s goal of “supporting the existence of two states peacefully living side by side.” Qatari leaders also have criticized recent Israeli decisions on settlements and Jerusalem that they feel undermine prospects for a two-state solution. Qatar has been in the forefront of Arab-Israeli talks on expanding economic ties during periods of progress in the peace process. However, Qatar’s position regarding the Arab boycott of Israel is governed by the September 1994 decision by the GCC to terminate enforcement of the indirect boycotts, while maintaining, at least in theory, the primary boycott. An Israeli trade office in Doha was shuttered by the Qatari government in response to the January 2009 Gaza war and has not been reopened.

Qatar offered $50 million in financial support to the then-Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government and has hosted Hamas officials for numerous talks and consultations since January 2006. Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declined a Qatari invitation to participate in an October 2006 democracy conference in Doha because of the presence of Hamas representatives, but an Israeli delegation participated in the conference, led by lower-ranking Foreign Ministry officials.8 Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres visited Qatar in February 2007 and declined the emir’s reported suggestion that Israel negotiate directly with Hamas.

Some observers speculate that Qatar may be encouraging Libyan militia groups to provide weaponry or volunteers to support counterparts in the Syrian opposition. Qatari leaders have called for Syrian rebels to be armed, but no public confirmation of any connection to Libya has been established.

Qatar has pursued a policy of engagement with Iran in recent years, probably based on the countries’ shared energy reserves and Qatar’s calculation that engagement may help deter Iranian reprisal attacks on U.S. and Qatari targets in the event of any regional conflict involving Iran.

Qatari and Iranian officials signed a defense and security cooperation agreement in February 2010, and, in April 2010, Qatari military officers reportedly were invited to observe Iranian military drills in the Persian Gulf. In February 2010, Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr Al Thani reportedly encouraged the United States to engage directly with Iran in order to resolve the ongoing dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

In early 2011, Qatar attempted to resolve a government crisis in Lebanon and was rebuffed by Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian supporters. This precipitated the fall of the government of then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri and paved the way for a more confrontational Qatari approach to its relations with the government of President Bashar al Asad in Damascus. During the Syrian uprising, Qatar has taken an increasingly direct approach to insisting on a halt to violence against protestors, organizing multilateral Arab sanctions on Syria while quietly lending political support to opponents of Asad’s regime.

A U.S. embassy opened in Doha in 1973, but U.S. relations with Qatar did not blossom until after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. In the late 1980s, the United States and Qatar engaged in a prolonged diplomatic dispute regarding Qatar’s black market procurement of U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

The United States has provided limited counterterrorism assistance to Qatar to support the development of its domestic security forces (see Table 2 below), and the Export-Import Bank has provided over $2 billion in loan guarantees to support various natural gas development projects in Qatar since 1996. The Obama Administration has phased out limited U.S. foreign assistance and in recent years has requested military construction funds for facilities in Qatar. Since September 2005, Qatar has donated $100 million to victims of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. Gulf states.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report and former U.S. government officials, royal family member and current Qatari Interior Minister Shaykh Abdullah bin Khalid Al Thani during the 1990s provided safe harbor and assistance to Al Qaeda leaders, including the suspected mastermind of the September 11 hijacking plot, Khalid Shaykh Mohammed.39 Several former U.S. officials and leaked U.S. government reports state that the late Osama Bin Laden also visited Doha twice during the mid-1990s as a guest of Shaykh Abdullah bin Khalid, who served then as Qatar’s minister for religious endowments and Islamic affairs, and later as minister of state for internal affairs.40 According to other accounts, Shaykh Abdullah bin Khalid welcomed dozens of so-called “Afghan Arab” veterans of the anti-Soviet conflict in Afghanistan to Qatar in the early 1990s and operated a farm where some of those individuals lived and worked over a period of several years.41

In January 1996, FBI officials narrowly missed an opportunity to capture Khalid Shaykh Mohammed in Qatar, where he held a government job at Qatar’s Ministry of Electricity and Water. Mohammed had been targeted for arrest in connection with an investigation of his nephew—1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef.42 The FBI dispatched team to arrest Mohammed, but he fled Qatar before he could be detained. Some former U.S. officials have since stated their belief that a high-ranking member of the Qatari government alerted Mohammed to the impending raid, allowing him to flee the country.

During the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and 2008-2009 Israel-Hamas war, Qaradawi publicly argued that Muslims should support the activities of Hezbollah and Hamas as legitimate resistance activities, based on Quranic injunctions to defend Muslim territory invaded by outsiders.55 Qaradawi hosts a popular weekly call-in television show on Al Jazeera and frequently delivers sermons in Qatari mosques.

Qaradawi has worked with a charitable umbrella organization, known as the Union of Good, that coordinates the delivery of relief and assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In November 2008, the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated the Union of Good as a financial supporter of terrorism pursuant to Executive Order 13224. According to the Treasury, “The Union of Good acts as a broker for Hamas by facilitating financial transfers between a web of charitable organizations—including several organizations previously designated under E.O. 13224 for providing support to Hamas—and Hamas-controlled organizations in the West Bank and Gaza.”56 Qaradawi has appeared at public events in Doha with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal since Meshaal’s relocation to Doha in early 2012.

Full text of this Congressional report with the citations is found here.

The core of the Barack Obama foreign policy carried out by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry with the help of Susa Rice, Samantha Power, along with foreign investments, donated monies and actions by USAID is now fully explained.

Clearly, this explains how the Taliban 5 are enjoying their new country-club setting and the revolving door of nefarious visitors and cards and letters of joy are now being exchanged.

National Security has been sacrificed at the hands of Barack Obama, who told us he is un-apologetic. The Altar of Treason, explained.

The Taliban’s Version

Posted on June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 by Denise Simon

UNCREDITED — AP

This is a transcript of the Pashto narration of a video released June 4, 2014, by the Taliban showing the release to American special forces of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

[RELIGIOUS SINGING]

[CREDITS] This video is presented by the cultural department of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Broadcasting this video with instrumental music is not permitted.

ANNOUNCER: Under the instructions of the Afghan leadership and with the initiative of the Islamic Emirate’s delegation in Qatar, negotiations have been going on for the past few months with officials of the United States of America on the exchange of prisoners detained by both sides for the last several years.

Due to those negotiations, on May 31, 2014, Bowe Berghdal, a U.S. soldier who was arrested a few years ago in Paktika province, was handed over to American soldiers during a special ceremony in the Bati area of Alisher district in Khost province.

On the same day, five heroic holy fighters of Islamic Emirate were released after having spent nearly 13 years in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo and reunited with the Islamic Emirate’s representatives in Qatar. They were: Mullah Fazl Mazloom, the army chief of staff in the Islamic Emirate’s government, Mullah Noorullah Noori, in charge of the northern regions of Afghanistan and governor of Balkh province, Mullah Khirullah Khairkhwa, interior minister and later governor of Herat province who was in charge of the southwestern region, Mullah Abdul Haq Wasiq, deputy of the National Directorate, and Mullah Mohammad Nabi Omari, who was a border brigade commander.

The release of the five heroes was received as good news throughout the world and brought tears of joy to the eyes of most Muslims.

Mullah Mohammad Omar Mujahid, the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, sent a message of congratulations: “Thanks to Allah thanks to Allah, that because of the sacrifices of the mujahideen and best efforts of the our political office in Qatar, five senior officials of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan were released safely from Guantanamo with the help of God. This great victory requires a prayer of thanksgiving to God that with the sacrifice of our fighting nation that our holy fighters were rescued from the claws of the enemy.”

“I want to thank the fighters, the Islamic Emirate’s leadership council, the men who arrested Bowe Berghdal, the men who guarded him, and everyone who contributed in this great work. I pray to God for their further success.”

Dear viewers: in this documentary you will see the handing over of the U.S. soldier and hear the commentary of a holy warrior who witnessed the event.

WITNESS: First of all, congratulations to all fighters and leaders of the Islamic Emirate. I was present in this process. We arrived at the Bati area at 4 p.m. We’d been asked where we were willing to come for the meeting. We’d also brought few tribal elders so that if they (Americans) did not trust us, we could send these elders to them. These tribal elders were there to get the trust of other side. We said that we have units near the Bati district military base and we could be there within a half an hour.

They asked where we could be and we said wherever you want _ the base or someplace else, it’s all the same. The mujahedeen control the Bati area. We gave them security guarantees. They said, “We’ll come by helicopters to the Bati area, just tell us where.” We said, “We’ll come to the base. They said no, they said “Come to the the area near the house of Naim Kuchai, a famous tribal elder, 500 meters from his house.”

[Video shows fighters chanting: “God is great! Long live Afghanistan! Long live Mullah Omar!”]

WITNESS: They said, “We’ll come by helicopter.” Big airplanes were in the air also. When we arrived to the site there were three helicopters _ two were in the air and one landed about 14-15 meters away.

The detained soldier and two of our friends were with me. They said, when you arrive at the site three persons from your vehicle should come toward us. One should be the detained soldier and two others. They said, three persons from our side would get of the helicopter. When we arrived to the site we waited 10 minutes. The helicopter approached and another bigger plane flew overhead. The helicopter landed. Eighteen armed fighters were with us in the area, and they were on the top of the hill.

We had told them that we would have armed fighters with us, and they’d said that was ok. They told us to carry a green flag, but we said we don’t have a green flag, we’ll have a white flag. I carried the white flag. I thought that they (Americans) would sit with us and we would talk, but they were in such a big hurry that they didn’t event greet us properly. We shook hands with two and the third one presented his left hand. They were in such a rush they told us not to come any closer. There were two persons, and an interpreter named Sher Khan, and we handed over their man.

They were in such a big hurry, they did not hesitate, but before they departed they asked me to tell them if his health was not good. I replied that he is in good health. They asked about his shaved head and face. I said yes, he does not have hair on his face and head.

Before he was scared, but when he saw his U.S. helicopters, he wanted to run from excitement. He became restless. I told him that they are coming down, and the helicopter landed. I wanted to speak with them via the interpreter and deliver some messages to them, but as I said they were in too much of a hurry and after the handshake, when they saw armed mujahideen with the weapons in the area, they became in an even bigger hurry. They did not even let the soldier to have a good-bye handshake with us. They did a strange thing. It was a hard scene for them. Our leaders had offered assurances, but still we could not trust the enemy.

The armed fighters were with us only for self-protection. We were all armed. When we entered there we had told ourselves that either we would all be killed or we would have brought an end to the episode in accordance with our orders. But then we heard about the released leaders, thanks be to God.

[Taliban song of praise continues as video shows the five former detainees being greeted by other Taliban officials.]

Hashim Shukoor is a McClatchy special correspondent.

Who Said Yes, Who Said No, Taliban 5

Posted on June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 by Denise Simon

All of the Taliban 5 that Barack Obama freely gave away were killers, killers of thousands. Barack Obama restored the power and the inspiration of al Qaeda and the Taliban, there is no dispute.

Gitmo has been classified as the best run detention center in the world such that there is a soccer field, air-conditioning, selected menus of food items, video games, recliners and more, so these detainees have actually been rewarded for killing.

Frankly, it was Barack Obama that was the deserter, he abandoned American national security and that of our allies. This single gift to the enemies of all Western culture can be classified as the darkest day in U.S. history and it has completely altered the war fighting an enemy and terror factions globally, virtually eliminating the any progress or success in the last 14 years.

Yet what remains in defiance of logic, even Barack Obama just a few years ago, sought in court himself to keep one of the Taliban at Gitmo

Barack Obama is now branded with the scarlet letter of ‘S’, surrender. Who said yes to the surrender and who said no is also significant. There are key overlords in the Obama administration that have worked against America in protecting the innocent wherever they are worldwide.

For years, CIA Director John Brennan and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough were part of a small group of Obama administration officials who believed that five relatively high-ranking Taliban commanders could be released under certain conditions with manageable risk of harm to American interests. For years, senior defense and intelligence officials disagreed—and were poised to block a potential trade for the Taliban five and American hostage Bowe Bergdahl.

By 2014, many of the skeptics had left the Obama administration; Brennan, McDonough, and their allies assumed new roles at the very top of the Obama administration; and the White House and its allies at State were able to convince their replacements to sign off on the deal.

“All of us on the National Security team were unanimous in supporting and recommending that we take this opportunity,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice told CNN Friday. But for years, that was not the case and Brennan and McDonough were opposed to other senior officials.

Inside the administration, some officials working on the swap of the five Taliban commanders for captured U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl did not see the prisoners as the “worst of the worst,” as many GOP senators have said this week. As far back as 2009, when the original idea of a swap was floated, some officials held the position these five prisoners were essentially Afghans dedicated to fighting other Afghans, not international terrorists.

“Look, these were not good guys. I am in no way defending these men,” State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Thursday. “But being mid- to high-level officials in a regime that’s grotesque and horrific also doesn’t mean they themselves directly pose a threat to the United States.”

In late 2011 and early 2012, administration officials who thought the risk of releasing the Taliban five was manageable included Brennan—then the White House counterterrorism czar—State Department official Marc Grossman, and then-Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, who led the interagency process that ultimately decided to make an initial prisoner swap offer to the Taliban in the fall of 2011.

McDonough first became close to the President in 2007, when he was still a Senator. And Brennan’s voice carried particular weight. A former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, Brennan in 2009 became Obama’s tutor on the classified side of the war on terror and his envoy to the spies, special operators and analysts fighting that war. Brennan, McDonough, and the others were in favor of offering a prisoner swap to the Taliban only if they agreed to strict conditions on monitoring in Qatar and as part of a sequence of events aimed at getting the Taliban into a reconciliation process.

(The CIA declined to comment for this story. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

After a vigorous internal debate, the White House decided to offer the Taliban the deal in 2011, But the terms and circumstances were different than the agreement later struck between the U.S. and the Taliban in 2014.

Back in 2011, the idea these five prisoners could be released safely was opposed by Leon Panetta, who served in Obama’s first term as secretary of defense and director of the CIA. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, was also opposed. But Brennan and others argued that the Taliban five were primarily focused on fighting against other Afghans and never had a record of attacking Americans outside of their own country. They had extensive ties to al Qaeda, but were focused on their own civil war, not international jihad.

“Yes they had ties to al Qaeda, but there’s no evidence at all that any of them knew of or supported 9-11 or did anything to support al Qaeda’s international agenda,” a former Obama administration official who supported that view told The Daily Beast.

All five Taliban leaders were captured in the weeks just after America attacked Afghanistan, and according to the Wikileaked classified intelligence dosiers compiled by their Guantanamo jailers, at least two of them were trying to surrender when they were detained and shipped off to Cuba. Another one may have been working with the CIA. None were in Afghanistan during the bulk of the fighting between the Taliban and U.S. forces.

“None of them actually participated in the resistance,” this official said.

Nonetheless, these arguments for years fell on deaf ears in the intelligence community. Speaking in Pittsburgh this week Panetta said of the trade for Bergdahl: “I don’t fault the administration for wanting to get him back. I do question whether the conditions are in place to make sure these terrorists don’t go back into battle.”

Also, as recently as 2013, the U.S. military’s assessment of the risks posed by the Taliban five if released still assessed it was likely they would return to the fight against Americans, at least in Afghanistan.

There are some indications these warnings might someday be proven true. NBC reported Friday that one of the detainees, Noorullah Noori pledged to return to Afghanistan to kill Americans, according to a second-hand account from an unnamed Taliban commander who claimed to have spoken with him.

Those inside the administration who supported releasing the prisoners noted that the Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were lobbying for their release. Karzai did interfere with the negotiations at several points, in order to protect his own interests. But he repeatedly told the Obama administration that the Taliban five should be released back to Afghanistan with no restrictions at all, according to multiple senior U.S. and Afghan officials.

“The Taliban wanted them released to Afghanistan. Karzai also wanted us to release them to Afghanistan. He objected to the transfer because of all the conditions. He said this was Afghans being transferred from one prison to another prison,” the former Obama administration official said.

The secret dossiers on the Taliban five prepared by Joint Task Force, Guantanamo Bay, judge that all five are a “high risk” to return to the fight in Afghanistan, the long-held military judgment. But they also detail the unique circumstances of the capture and transfer of these five men to Cuba.

Mohammad A Fazl, former Chief of Staff of the Taliban Army and his deputy Noori were almost surely responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Northern Afghanistan during the Taliban’s war with the Northern Alliance. They fought against U.S. and coalition forces who attacked in October, 2001, but then attempted to surrender to a Northern Alliance Commander General Dostum with many of their men only a few weeks later, according to the U.S. military documents.

“Taliban military commanders were informed if they surrendered their weapons to General Dostum, they would be allowed to return home,” the document said.

The Taliban even paid Dostum $500,000 to secure Fazl’s safe passage after his surrender. But following Fazl and Noori’s refusal to help quell a Taliban prisoner resistance at the facility were Dostum was holding them, in December 2001, Dostum handed over Fazl and Noori to U.S. forces, who sent them to Guantanamo.

Fazl and Noori both had extensive connections to al Qaeda, according to the U.S. military documents.

Khair Ulla Said Wali Khairkhwa was a notorious heroin trafficker. He was also at different times The Taliban Interior Minister, the official Taliban spokesman and the governor of Herat Province under Taliban rule. He also may have tried to defect from the Taliban after they lost the war and join up with the Afghan government. He claimed he was in the process of switching sides when he was arrested and sent to Guantanamo.

“Detainee is a friend of current Afghan President, Hamid Karzai,” his secret military file shows. “When the Taliban lost control, detainee contacted Karzai to discuss a position with the new government and detainee’s personal safety. Several Karzai associates met with detainee in the time between the Taliban’s fall and his arrest.”

Kairkhwa also tried to broker a peace in 2001 between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance with Iranian help, but that failed. Because of his ties to all sides, Karzai’s government believes he can be a helpful in achieving Afghan reconciliation.

Mohammed Nabi Omari is the only member of the Taliban five with strong connections to the Haqqani network, the Pakistan-based military group that actually held and guarded Bergdahl for his five years of imprisonment. Just prior to his arrest, he met several times with a CIA operative named “Mark,” who gave him money and tasked him to find the location of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Omari didn’t produce Mullah Omar’s location and according to him, upon arriving at a scheduled meeting with “Mark,” he was detained and sent to Cuba. He also had extensive al Qaeda ties.

Abdul Haq Wasiq was the former Taliban deputy minister of intelligence and had also been in contact with U.S. intelligence officials claiming to want to help them fund Mullah Omar. He requested a GPS device from the Americans and radio frequencies to transmit information back to the U.S. forces. He was arrested shortly thereafter. His file shows that he was crucial in joining Taliban and al Qaeda intelligence capabilities in the years before the U.S. invasion.

By 2014, when the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap deal was finally struck, the circumstances surrounding the deal had completely changed. Brennan was in charge of the CIA and McDonough was the chief of staff at a White House now firmly in control of the deal-making process. Obama’s team was planning to announce the end of U.S. combat operations in 2014 and the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by 2017.

The prisoner swap was no longer part of a sequence toward a peace process; that would now be the Afghan government’s responsibility alone. And without U.S. forces in combat, some inside the administration believed the legal justification for holding Taliban leaders as “enemy combatants” was sure to come into question.

“When 2014 ends, the White House will have to formulate a legal doctrine under which we can detain law of war detainees. They have not yet formulated that document,” the former administration official said.

The struggle over who to release from Guantanamo will rage on inside the administration between those defense and military leaders who want to keep the prisoners there and those in the White House and State Department who want to see the Guantanamo prison closed.

As for the military and intelligence officials who warned that the Taliban five were a “high risk” to Americans if they were released, the official said: “We’ll find out now that they are released if that was overstated it or not.”

Related from The Daily Beast

West Point Speech and Why

Posted on June 6, 2014June 6, 2014 by Denise Simon

Barack Obama has hidden his concern for terror threats and most often he has re-labeled it as an ‘overseas contingency operation’.

Then only recently did he give a speech at West Point explaining his foreign policy which he was forced to do for at least two reasons, the recent kidnappings and deaths at the hands of Boko Harem and the immediate release only a few days after the speech of the Taliban 5 from Guantanamo.

Okay, so where does that leave America for the next several years as Barack Obama has forced the shrinking of the United States footprint globally? Well, Barack Obama’s lack of policy and leadership with allies point to the very real possibility of NATO crumbling itself. This leaves China and Russia and especially the entire Shiite and Sunni world in a race for the top slots of globally power rankings.

In context, the lack of will and the aversion to colonialism at the hands of Barack Obama, simply removed the United States from the short list of the keepers of peace globally in six short years, something that experts predict will take at least fifteen years to ever begin to reverse, others predict as much as forty years and that is only if there is a collection of Reagan prodigies on the horizon. Not much hope so far.

One of the topic intelligence analyst with a real and candid background for saying what must be said is Michael Vickers. Here he is in his own assessment. Take it for your deep consideration.

WASHINGTON: If you want to understand why President Obama spoke so much about terrorism in his widely panned West Point speech, the head of Pentagon intelligence explained it pretty well today.

Click here to see the video of Vicker’s message.

Terrorism is and remains the top threat to the United States, Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Mike Vickers said this morning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The most interesting, and some would say anomalous, threat assessment he offered: China comes in at number seven after Al Qaeda and its affiliates, the Syrian civil war, Russian “revanchism,” Iran, North Korea and what he called the “persistent volatility” across South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa.

That’s right, China appears to come seventh when the Intelligence Community is planning and advising President Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. It makes sense when you consider the long-range goals China appears to have set itself and the absence of a direct confrontation — so far — between the two powers.

Now folks in the Intelligence Community may well tut tut and profess that they examine each situation as it occurs, but budgeting requires prioritization and here it is.

What does all this mean in aggregate to the Intelligence Community and the Pentagon? Vickers said, “[as] senior intelligence officials, we haven’t seen this range of challenges on an administration’s plate in our careers.” Not only is the range of threats geographically enormous and conceptually varied, they are, as Vickers noted, “these are highly asymmetric challenges.” In Pentagon parlance that means the United States military isn’t necessarily well prepared to cope with them. And there are a lot of them.

Is Mike Vickers arguing that the Intelligence Community needs to remain very well financed, even in this age of declining defense budgets? Sounds like!

Normandy, Teach Your Children

Posted on June 6, 2014June 6, 2014 by Denise Simon

From the Desk of Richard Thompson

Full reprint from: http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=adf1a83154acea60d091b413c&id=1de81a1e4c&e=1bca66219c

Thomas More Law Center

Today – June 6, 2014 – is the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy.

On that day soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen braved the horrendous shelling of German shore batteries to storm the beaches at Normandy and bring down Hitler and Nazi Germany. On the eve of the invasion, General Eisenhower distributed the order to the expeditionary force of 175,000 men which closed by beseeching “the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” (Complete 1:45 audio below)

More than 2,500 American troops died on the beaches that day.

Also, in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcast that day (Complete 6:30 audio below), “in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home – fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas – whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them – help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too – strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.”God Bless America