Susan Rice Inspires Obama to be Anti-Israel

Posted on October 8, 2015October 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Proof in this video, begin at the 11:00 mark for the nuggets.

WaPo: Jeffrey Goldberg has quoted an anonymous Obama Administration official as calling Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a “chickenshit” because Bibi refuses to make bold moves for peace that might endanger his electoral prospects. Putting aside the incorrect use of the word chickenshit (which is not synonymous with “a chicken”), and the fact that it’s foolish to base a diplomatic strategy on assuming politicians won’t act like politicians, I think the underlying dynamic here reflects not just the general antipathy the Obama and Netanyahu administrations have for each other, but the continuing fallout from the Obama Administration’s initial gross misreading of the Israeli political scene.

Very succinctly, the Obama Administration came in to office thinking it could either force Netanyahu to make concessions, or force his government to fall. Both the Shamir and the first Netanyahu governments made concessions and ultimately got tossed out by the voters after tensions rose with the U.S., so this was not a completely unreasonable assumption.

However, Obama and his advisors missed several contrary factors. The Israeli public never liked Obama, never trusted him due to his well-known associations with various anti-Israel leftists such as Rashid Khalidi.

Ex-Adviser to Obama Says Susan Rice Accused Israeli Leader of Racism

NYT: WASHINGTON — Dennis B. Ross, the former Middle East adviser to President Obama, faults Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, for exacerbating tensions with Israel during the talks that led up to the recent nuclear accord with Iran and quotes her accusing Israel’s prime minister of racism.

In a new book on Israeli-American relations, Mr. Ross — who has worked on Middle East diplomacy for presidents of both parties — concludes that Ms. Rice’s “combative mind-set” worsened an already troubled relationship with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who feared that negotiations would leave Iran a threshold nuclear state.

Written Sword by Trey Gowdy to Elijah Cummings

Posted on October 8, 2015October 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Full letter is found here.

The Blaze: Trey Gowdy Calls Out Ranking Dem on Benghazi Committee in Scathing 13-Page Letter: ‘This Information Could Have Only From Democrat Members’

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Benghazi Committee, sent a scathing 13-page letter to Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) on Wednesday, urging him to “rise above the political pressure” being put on him by Democrats and keep the “promises” made to the families of the American heroes who died in Libya.

Gowdy scolded Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi Committee, for putting on a “public posture” that is “quite the opposite” from the one he has taken during private discussions.

“Not once in any of these conversations have you ever questioned the motivations of the Committee’s work or questioned our mission to uncover the facts surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attacks,” Gowdy wrote. “Your Democrat colleagues and you have contributed nothing substantively to the Committee’s investigation over the past seventeen months—you have not requested a single new witness interview nor have you made one single document request to any Executive Branch Agency.”

The fiery South Carolina congressman then accused Cummings and Democrats of “selectively” leaking information about the Benghazi Committee’s probe “to promote your own false narrative.”

Cummings and other Democrats wrote their own letter on Monday accusing the Republicans of using Benghazi as a political weapon and revealed they plan to release the transcript of an interview with Cheryl Mills to “correct the public record.”

“This is glaringly obvious—no testimony has been disclosed from people interviewed who were on the ground or from national security professionals,” he added .”Instead, the only leaks have been regarding Democrat political figures, and the initial stories have all selectively disclosed testimony to fit with Democrat political narratives.”

He provided a specific instance where information appeared to be intentionally leaked:

Gowdy concluded his letter by vowing to finish the Benghazi Committee’s investigation.

“While it is unfortunate that for over seven months the State Department withheld nearly 1,900 pages of Secretary Clinton’s emails responsive to this Committee’s request, our work must go on,” he wrote. “Simply because you have chosen to play politics with this Committee and the State Department has chosen to play politics by shielding its former Secretary at the expense of the truth does not mean that this Committee was founded on politics, is based on politics, or will veer off course due to the political actions and allegations of others.”

Read the last things he had to say before he signed his name:

The full letter can be found here.

Breaking: Paris Train Hero STABBED

Posted on October 8, 2015October 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone stabbed in chest

Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone, who helped take down a gunman on a train in Belgium, was stabbed four times in the chest in Sacramento early Thursday morning, Air Force Times has learned.

“A1C Spencer Stone has been transported to a local hospital, and is currently being treated for injury,” Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Karns said in an email in Air Force Times. “The incident is currently under investigation by local law enforcement. He is currently in stable condition.”

A Sacramento TV station reported on the stabbing but did not include the victim’s name. The stabbing happened about 12:45 a.m. on Thursday on a Sacramento street corner.

The victim suffered “multiple stab wounds to the torso,” KCRA‑TV reported. Police initially did not think the stabbing victim would survive and began treating the incident as a homicide investigation, but it now appears that the victim will pull through.

Although the Air Force has identified Stone as the stabbing victim, Sacramento police have not officially named the person who was stabbed.

Could be a homicide investigation and he is in stable condition.

Pentagon: USA is Now ‘Putin’s Prison Bitch’

Posted on October 8, 2015October 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

When Barack Obama surrenders diplomacy and military power in full retreat, others are invited to step in. The Pentagon is keen on the conditions and the attitude is, America is now a lil’ bitch of Putin. this blogger would add Iran and China to that conclusion.

Some argue this began with Barack Obama’s shallow red-line on Syrian use of chemical weapons and deferring action to Russia to solve, perhaps the real opening for Iran and Russia was the failed operation and fallout on Libya, coupled with abandoning the Kurds and Yazidis in Iraq.

From TheHill in part: The ferocity of Russia’s air campaign will all but certainly exacerbate the crisis, fuel additional support for ISIS and further cleanse Syria of Sunni Muslims, improving the demographic balance for the nominally Shiite Assad regime.

Whether the administration was, as The Washington Post reported, “blindsided” by Russian military operations, or whether it quietly welcomed the bombing as some kind of macabre burden-sharing, Moscow’s Syrian initiative makes matters worse. As Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast recently tweeted that she “overheard” at the Pentagon, “Right now, we are Putin’s prison bitch.”

Russia’s military deployment in Syria is a strategic boon for the Shiite “Axis of Resistance” and its new partner, Russia. This resurgent axis was in part made possible by the absence of a credible U.S. Syria policy, but it will only be bolstered should Washington embrace Russia and Iran as its regional security partners. Already in the Middle East, there is a widely held perception that the U.S. has made this decision. No doubt, the administration will continue to insist that the Iran nuclear deal doesn’t signal a broader regional realignment. Should the U.S. tilt toward Russia and Iran persist, President Obama might find himself alongside Assad, Khamenei, Nasrallah and Putin on the next run of posters. More here.

At real odds, Obama administration vs. Putin:

NYT in part:

The Obama administration, by contrast, says its own airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria can succeed only with a political transition that ends with Mr. Assad’s removal.

The administration’s position was ridiculed Monday by Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, who said the American airstrikes, which began more than a year ago, had done little militarily. In comments carried by Russia’s official Tass news agency, Mr. Lavrov said that even the Americans had acknowledged their faltering efforts to create a force of so-called moderate insurgents in Syria.

While Barack Obama talks about gun control and pushes a Strong Cities initiative through the United Nations”

From Politico in part: In 2014, Vian Dakhil’s stirring plea for international intervention helped inspire President Barack Obama to order airstrikes and launch a humanitarian effort to rescue thousands of Yazidi Iraqis who were trapped on a mountainside under assault by Islamic State.

A year later, Dakhil, one of two Yazidi members of the Iraqi parliament, says her people have been abandoned by Washington and the international community.

In an emotional, at times tearful, on-stage interview at POLITICO’s “Women Rule” event Wednesday morning in Washington, Dakhil described a full-blown humanitarian crisis — 420,000 Yazidis living in refugee camps in tents with mud floors, women and girls continuing to be kidnapped, 2,200 girls in captivity as sexual slaves, and survivors returning from the horror of ISIL captivity with no resources for psychological support. Thousands of orphans have no homes.

Dakhil, who is credited with saving many Yazidi women and girls from ISIL captivity, said she was not contacted by U.S. officials after the initial announcement. A letter to Michelle Obama received no response, she said.

Could it be that Bashir al Assad is now terrified of his long relationship with Iran and Vladimir Putin’s ride into Syria on his white steed to save Syria will turn into a wider conflict later between the Shiites and Sunnis in the region?

In part from DerSpiegel: Fear of his enemies was the primary reason for Bashar Assad’s call for help to Moscow. “But right after that came the fear of his friends,” says a Russian official who long worked in his country’s embassy in Damascus. The friend he refers to is Iran, the Syrian regime’s most important protector. “Assad and those around him are afraid of the Iranians,” the Russian says. Anger over the arrogance of the Iranians, who treat Syria like a colony, is also part of it, the Russian continues. Most of all, though, the Syrians “mistrust Tehran’s goals, for which Assad’s position of power may no longer be decisive. That is why the Syrians absolutely want us in the country.”

What the Russian diplomat, who wants to remain anonymous, has to say is a bit jarring at first. Without the Shiite auxiliaries from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon — whose recruitment and transfer is organized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard — Assad’s rule would long since have come to an end. Yet his comments are complemented by a number of additional details that add up to an image of a behind-the-scenes power struggle — one which casts a new, scary light on the condition of the Syrian regime and on the country’s prospects as a whole.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has long planned and carried out the most important missions and operations of the Syrian regime. They were responsible, right down to the details, for the sporadically successful offensives in Aleppo in the north and Daraa in the south, which began in 2013. In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard is one of those groups intent on continuing the “Islamic Revolution” — the victory of Shiites over the Sunnis. They are a state within a state, one which owns several companies and is answerable only to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. President Hassan Rohani has no power over the Revolutionary Guard whatsoever.

Their goals go far beyond merely reestablishing the status quo in Syria. In early 2013, Hojatoleslam Mehdi Taeb, one of the planners behind Iran’s engagement in Syria, said: “Syria is the 35th province of Iran and it is a strategic province for us.” For several decades, the alliance between the Assads and Iran was a profitable one, particularly in opposition to the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, which long had the upper hand in the region. But today, Assad depends on Iran to remain in power, and Tehran is taking advantage of the situation. To read more from the Russian perspective, click here.

Hillary, Write a Fat Check to the FBI/Benghazi Cmte.

Posted on October 7, 2015October 7, 2015 by Denise Simon

Taxpayers are on the hook for this malfeasance and dereliction of duty and reckless behavior, so the entire bill as it accumulates needs to be paid by Hillary. Ever wonder why she did this? My bet is to keep from responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and to keep information from the White House…cant prove but she has a history of being cunning.

It is time for a special prosecutor, voters…DEMAND IT

Employees at company working with Clinton email server expressed concerns

Washington (CNN)Employees at the company that maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email server expressed concern among themselves about the way the former secretary of state’s team directed them to manage data backups after the FBI started looking into the arrangements, according to emails obtained by a senator.

In a letter obtained by CNN, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, asks Datto, Inc, the makers of Clinton’s server back-up system, for information on how her emails were preserved and protected. The FBI has also sought information from the company, according to sources.

Johnson indicates that a “Clinton family company,” Clinton Executive Service Corp., paid for the back-up services, operated through a device called the Datto SIRIS S2000, and that the purchase was made by Platte River Networks when the server was moved from her private residence to a New Jersey-based data center in 2013.

7 photos: Hillary Clinton email controversy

In the letter, Johnson quotes from emails sent by and to employees at Platte River Networks, which indicate there was discussion about how the duration of data backups could be reduced, apparently at the direction of the Clinton Executive Service Corp.

Clinton on emails: ‘It is a drip-drip-drip’

Then this past August, a Platte River Networks employee wrote to a coworker that he was, “Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy (sic) s**t.”

“I just think if we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups, and that we can go public with our statement saying we have backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30days (sic), it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” the unnamed employee continued.

The email was sent shortly after news emerged that the FBI was looking into the security of the server, and several months after it was revealed that Clinton exclusively used the private account to conduct State Department business.

The employee indicates in the email that Clinton’s team asked them to change the back-up duration between October and February, presumably of 2014/2015, though that isn’t explicitly stated in the portion of the email included in Johnson’s letter.

Clinton’s email controversy explained

In a statement Wednesday morning, the Clinton campaign accused Johnson of “ripping a page from the House Benghazi Committee’s playbook and mounting his own, taxpayer-funded sham of an investigation with the sole purpose of attacking Hillary Clinton politically.”

“The Justice Department’s independent review is led by nonpolitical, career professionals, and Ron Johnson has no business interfering with it for his own partisan ends,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in the statement.

The committee did not share any of the emails with CNN, but excerpts and descriptions from them are printed in Johnson’s letter.

Emails sent between Datto and Platte River Networks during that time indicate there was confusion about where the backed-up data would be stored, and for a while it was backed-up to an off-site Datto server, apparently against the wishes of Clinton staff.

When Platte River Networks became aware of the off-site syncing issue, they contacted Datto and discussed how they could retrieve that data for storage on-site, according to Johnson’s letter.

“Despite these communications, it is unclear whether or not this course of action was followed,” Johnson said. “Additionally,questions still remain as to whether Datto actually transferred the data from its off-site datacenter to the on-site server, what data was backed up and whether Datto wiped the data after it was transferred.”

Johnson wrote to Datto seeking more information about their dealings with Platte River Networks and Clinton Executive Service Corp.

Johnson also asked the company to say whether Datto is authorized to store classified information, and whether any employees at the company have security clearances that would allow them to view classified information.

FBI seizes four State Department servers in Clinton email probe

The FBI has seized four State Department computer servers as part of its probe into how classified information was compromised on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email system, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The four servers, which were located at the State Department’s headquarters building, were seized by the FBI several weeks ago. They are being checked by technical forensic analysts charged with determining how Top Secret material was sent to Clinton’s private email by State Department aides during her tenure as secretary from 2009 to 2013, said two people familiar with the probe. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing investigation.

State Department spokesman John Kirby referred questions about the computer servers to the FBI. An FBI spokeswoman, Carol Cratty, declined to comment.

No other details about the servers, including whether they are part of the department’s classified system, or used for unclassified information networks, could be learned.

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not respond to an email request for comment.

Clinton has offered varying explanations for her use of a private email server, initially claiming she had done nothing wrong. Then, under pressure from critics, she said she was sorry people were confused by the practice, later admitting in early September that her use of a private email system had been a mistake.

The State Department uses two separate networks, one for classified information and one for unclassified information. The two networks are kept separate for security reasons. Most classified networks are equipped with audit systems that allow security managers to check who has accessed intelligence or foreign policy secrets.

The FBI is trying to determine the origin of the highly classified information that was found in Clinton emails.

However, the task is said to be complicated because those with authority to create classified information have broad authority to label information in one of three categories: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret.

The FBI is primarily concerned with trying to determine how Top Secret information made its way on to the private server.

Chris Farrell, an investigator with the public interest legal group Judicial Watch, said the State Department has been reluctant to describe the nature of its computer networks as some of the 16 Freedom of Information Act lawsuits the group has filed make their way through the courts.

Farrell said in an interview that the department also has been unwilling to say whether the private email system, used by Clinton and close aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, should be considered an official State Department network covered by FOIA laws.

Farrell said the seizure of the four State Department servers is likely part of the forensic investigation underway by the FBI into hardware used by Clinton and her aides to send email to the private server.

“In the midst of what I believe to be a forensic examination of the hardware that [Clinton lawyer David] Kendall surrendered on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, any serious national security investigation would seek to track all emails inbound and outbound,” Farrell said. “If they are doing that tracking of email since she was secretary of state, then they would be looking at any email that could have crossed into a State server.”

The servers were part of the State Department bureau of information resource management.

The bureau helps the department “to successfully carry out its foreign policy mission by applying modern IT tools, approaches, systems, and information products.”

In addition to improving efforts of “transparent, interconnected diplomacy,” the bureau is “focused on enhancing security for the department’s computer and communications systems.”

The FBI probe of State Department servers is the latest disclosure on the criminal investigation into the private Clinton email server that has embroiled the leading Democratic presidential candidate for several months.

The FBI took possession of Clinton’s private email server last summer after classified information was found in some of the more than 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department.

The investigation began after I. Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, reported to Congress Aug. 11 that Clinton’s private emails included some highly classified information labeled “Top Secret//SI/TK//Noforn.” Information classified at that level is deemed by the government to be very sensitive, requiring strong security protections because its compromise would cause grave damage to U.S. national security.

The politics surrounding the probe prompted FBI Director James Comey to tell reporters last week that the bureau will not be influenced by politics.

“One of the main reasons I have a 10-year term is to make sure that this organization stays outside of politics, and if you know my folks, you know that they don’t give a whit about politics,” Comey said, adding that the FBI has devoted sufficient resources and personnel so that the Clinton email probe can be completed in a timely way.

Those remarks were the first official confirmation of the investigation.

The State Department contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David E. Kendall, seeking additional emails that were not part of the more than 30,000 emails provided to the department earlier, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday.

The private email server was discovered by the legal public interest group Judicial Watch in late 2014 after the State Department informed the group that it had discovered a new tranche of records. Judicial Watch currently has at least 16 lawsuits related to State Department and other government records.

The email server material then became the focus of House investigators looking into Clinton’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi in 2012.

The House investigation of the Benghazi attack was attacked by Clinton this week after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), the frontrunner to be the next House speaker, said the Benghazi probe was part of a political effort to diminish Clinton’s presidential prospects.

Clinton seized on the comments in a New Hampshire town hall meeting this week.

Asked if she would have investigated a member of a Republican administration amid charges of improperly using a personal email account and server, Clinton said, “I would never have done that.”

“Look at the situation they chose to exploit to go after me for political reasons, the death of four Americans in Benghazi,” she continued.

In a sign of increasing worries about the probe at the Clinton campaign, the New York Post reported that an unidentified legal aide to Clinton has advised her to hire a criminal defense lawyer.

The number of communications regarded as classified is about 400, according to the latest State Department release of emails. Three of the new emails released last month were marked secret, including emails relating to Iranian nuclear talks.

Security analysts have voiced concerns that foreign hackers may have breached the private email server.

One theory is that Clinton aides who were cleared for access to national security secrets first read classified reports on State Department information system and then “gisted” the material into private emails for Clinton.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told the New York Times that none of the candidate’s aides had mishandled classified information.

“She and her team took the handling of classified information very seriously, and at home and abroad she communicated with others via secure phone, cable, and in meetings in secure settings,” Merrill said.

The State Department has confirmed to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) in a related development that Clinton currently holds a security clearance for Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information, the highest-level security clearance.

The department said Clinton’s clearance was “revalidated” after she left office in 2013 and was done so as part of a standard practice allowing former high-ranking officials to be granted access to secrets.

Critics in Congress have called for Clinton’s clearance to be revoked based on the compromises involved in her use of the private email system.