Author Archives: Denise Simon

Ooops, Now Failed Policy on Venezuela

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When the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez died, Barack Obama dispatched a delegation to the funeral as his representatives. 22 heads of state from 54 countries attended the funeral in Caracas. Yet there was more going on before the death of Chavez.

In March, before the death of Chavez:  The administration tried last year to cultivate Chavez’s designated heir, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, holding several phone calls and meetings with him and other top Venezuelans. But at a time when Chavez’s illness was paralyzing the government in Caracas, the Americans stopped getting any response to their inquiries, the U.S. official said.

“We had not gotten very far and were not sure that the government of Venezuela wanted to continue down that road, when [Chavez’s death] occurred,” the official said.

Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, said he believed Maduro — considered by many to be the front-runner in the coming presidential election — may be open to a limited thaw in the relationship.

Maduro may, for example, agree to establishing regular communication between the two governments and exchanging ambassadors, Shifter said. He also may be open to cooperation on energy, because Venezuela’s oil industry, which is the source of most of its national income, needs technical help and new investment.

But Shifter noted that the next leader would not want to go too far in a thaw because “if he’s seen as embracing the U.S., it would be fatal with some sectors of Chavism.”]

Things did not work out well for the White House and their outreach plan with Venezuela. Seems Venezuela has turned their loyalty to China.

China has been generously co-signing financial transactions with the Venezuelan government including the borrowing of billions of dollars in exchange for future trade advantages. Since 2007, China has loaned Venezuela a total of $48 billion USD. But China’s help does not stop there. China’s generosity has reinforced the movement towards Latin America integration, fortified regional promotion of a multi-polar world, and it also has diminished somewhat the economic leverage of the United States in the region.

In January 2015, after a trip to Beijing and a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that Venezuela will receive $20 billion USD in Chinese investments. Maduro also announced that this investment will be used on housing, technology, energy, and infrastructure projects. However the President did not provide further details on whether or not Venezuela will use this investment to import goods or pay old debts.2 Beijing’s financial help has been arousing controversies in the United States and the European Union, since Venezuela has been routinely accused of wanton human rights violations by corporation-funded but heavily biased western media.

The questions raised by western media have mainly focused on the alleged irrationality behind China’s loans to Venezuela. At times they expressed concern that Venezuela will not be able to pay back the nearly $50 billion USD due to falling global oil prices. The reality is that Venezuela already has paid back $24 billion USD, making the Chinese government confident that Caracas will pay back its debt. Due to the country’s heavy dependence on its oil production, when international oil prices plunged last summer, Venezuela’s economy suffered a serious setback. According to OPEC’s statistics, last September’s oil basket prices first dropped below $100, and then continued on a downward slope. As of January, 2015 oil WTI prices have plunged to $44.38. It was not until February, 2015 that oil basket prices first saw a minor recovery.3Real wages in Venezuela also are dropping along with oil production, while inflation rates skyrocket across the country. To add on to Venezuela’s economic misery, its oil production rate is also losing ground. Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.(PDVSA), state-owned oil company of Venezuela, is now pumping 2.7 million barrels of crude oil per day, 4 compared to 2006 when Venezuela was producing 3.2 million barrels per day.5

Statement by the Press Secretary on Venezuela

Today President Obama issued a new Executive Order to implement and expand upon the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014.  Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here, and we now have the tools to block their assets and their use of U.S. financial systems.

We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents.  Venezuela’s problems cannot be solved by criminalizing dissent.  We have consistently called on the Venezuelan government to release those it has unjustly jailed as well as to improve the climate of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, such as the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.  These are essential to a functioning democracy, and the Venezuelan government has an obligation to protect these fundamental freedoms.  The Venezuelan government should release all political prisoners, including dozens of students, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez and Mayors Daniel Ceballos and Antonio Ledezma.

The only way to solve Venezuela’s problems is through real dialogue – not detaining opponents and attempting to silence critics.  The Venezuelan people deserve a government that lives up to its commitment to democracy, as articulated in the OAS Charter, the Inter American Democratic Charter, and other fundamental instruments related to democracy and human rights.

We’ve seen many times that the Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela.  These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan government to deal with the grave situation it faces.

It is unfortunate that during a time when we have opened up engagement with every nation in the Americas, Venezuela has opted to go in the opposite direction.  Despite the difficulties in our official relationship, the United States remains committed to maintaining our strong and lasting ties with the people of Venezuela and is open to improving our relationship with the Venezuelan government.

Move Turkey to a State Sponsor of Terror

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Turkey is a NATO country, which then begs the question at this point….why?

As noted here:

Article 5 of the Washington Treaty:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

Hamas, the terrorist group perpetually at odds with Israel, has found a willing patron in Turkey, say critics, who allege the NATO member has rolled out the red carpet for the Jewish state’s longtime nemesis, whose official headquarters are now in Istanbul.

Kicked out of Damascus in Syria amid deteriorating relations with the Assad regime, Hamas’ top leadership has established a new office in Istanbul called the ‘West Bank and Jerusalem Headquarters.” With the approval of the Turkish authorities, Salah Al-Arouri, one of the founders of the Al Qassam Brigade (Hamas’ military wing), and who served 15 years in jail in Israel for terrorist offenses, has been directing Hamas’ efforts in the West Bank to overthrow the Palestinian Authority and attack Israel at the same time.

“Turkey has become a Hamas hotbed, and members of the organization’s military wing are undergoing military training on Turkish soil, with the knowledge, support, and assistance of the local authorities,” leading Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported last week. “The U.S. administration has appealed in recent months to the Turkish government to prevent Hamas military activity in its territory, arguing that Turkey is a member of NATO and that Hamas is viewed by most NATO members as a terrorist organization. The appeals have gone unanswered.”  ***

2 senior Hamas figures operating from Turkey are notable:
1) Musa al-Akari, the brother of Ibrahim al-Akari, carried out the vehicular attack at the light railway station in Jerusalem on November 5, 2014. He belonged to the terrorist squad that abducted and murdered Israeli Border Policeman Nissim Toledano on December 13, 1992. He was captured and sentenced to three terms of life imprisonment, released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal and deported to Turkey.
2) Hussam Badran (Abu Imad), a Hamas terrorist also released in the Gilad Shalit exchange deal, often visits Turkey. In 2004 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for involvement in a suicide bombing attack during the second intifada. Upon release (October 2011) he was deported from Israel. He relocated in Doha, Qatar, but also spends time in Turkey. In December 2013 he was appointed Hamas’ official external spokesman (Wafa.ps, December 25, 2013). In effect, his role of also directing Hamas’ terrorist network in the Hebron region (March- February 2013) was exposed.Information from the Israel Security Agency about the terrorist networks exposed (November 27, 2014):
1) Recruiting operatives – Most of the operatives recruited are Palestinians studying at the universities in Jordan. The students were approached on the basis of personal acquaintance. Those found suitable, both personally and ideologically, were recruited and became the responsibility of operatives in headquarters who arranged for their training
2) Military training – Military training: The recruits’ training was carried out in coordination with and under the supervision of Hamas military-terrorist operatives at locations in the Gaza Strip and abroad, including Jordan, Turkey and Syria. To reach the Gaza Strip the recruits went to the Sinai Peninsula and were smuggled in through the tunnels. In the Gaza Strip Hamas military-terrorist operatives trained them in using explosives, operating weapons, terrain analysis and navigation. They also learned about securing information. In Turkey they were briefed on planning military activity, including how to attack targets in Israeli, Judea and Samaria and abroad. In Jordan they were trained in the use of weapons, in sabotage and covert activity, and were given security briefings. After training they were assigned various missions by senior Hamas figures in Turkey and Jordan.
3) Military activity – After completing their training they were sent back to their homes in Judea and Samaria. When they had settled they were given various missions, such as attacking Israeli targets, coordinating and transporting weapons and funds, training local squads, and locating sites suitable for creating home laboratories and operational houses
4) Objectives of the terrorist attacks – The recruits were instructed to carry out a number of terrorist attacks, the most prominent of which were attacks on the Teddy [soccer] Stadium and the light railway, both in Jerusalem. They were also instructed to carry out shooting attacks and to place IEDs along the roads in Judea and Samaria, prepare car bombs, infiltrate Jewish towns and villages, and abduct Israelis in Judea and Samaria and abroad. In effect, on 196-14 11
August 31, 2014, one of the squads placed IEDs at the Rehalim and Jat junctions in Samaria.

Forces Against Netanyahu, Demanding Surrender

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There was a moment in Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister that he was boxed in by several global powerful leaders, including Barack Obama to negotiate a peace deal using the 1967 border lines for a deal.

Only today was there a published item illustrating Netanyahu sent an affiliate to the table with the Palestinians with the 67′ lines as part of the debate. Since that time, the 67′ lines have been removed from the talks, or have they? Who are the people working against Israel and demanding more Netanyahu concessions? Sadly, they are Israelis. Now the question is why?

If for nothing else watch this short video that fully explains Mr. Sherman’s position as written below.

Into the Fray: My saddest column ever – Selling surrender as strategy

By Martin Sherman

I find myself compelled to take strong public issue with a man I have known, respected, even admired, for almost four decades: Shabtai Shavit, the former director of the Mossad. No previous column of mine has ever been preceded by such searing soul-searching, or written with such a heavy sense of melancholy. It is a column that I would have preferred not to write – yet I feel I have little option.

A (rare) personal moment

I find myself compelled to take strong public issue with a man I have known, respected, even admired, for almost four decades: Shabtai Shavit, the former director of the Mossad.

Shavit has been not only a trusted commander, and later, a friend – but was in many ways almost a father figure for me. More than once, he sent me into what could be described as harm’s way. But every time he did, I had implicit trust in his operational judgment and believed, unequivocally, that the risks I was expected to take were unavoidable and worthwhile.

In the years following my service I had the privilege of traveling with Shavit to numerous countries, some of which included meetings with the prime minister of India, the former heads of the KGB and RAW (the Indian secret service), and a candidate for the presidency of (pre-Islamist) Turkey.

For years Shavit cooperated closely with me in many of my public and academic activities. He did me the honor of providing a complimentary forward to a book I wrote, co-authored with me a critique of the role of the media in Israeli politics, and frequently appeared as a speaker at events I organized.

More than once, he stood by my side where others had turned away from me – even against me. For all of this I owe him a great debt of gratitude of which I am keenly aware.

Perilous prescription

Recently, however, Shavit has chosen to affiliate himself with a newly formed group of around 200 high-ranking former security officials (brigadier-generals and above in the IDF and their equivalents in the Mossad, Shin Bet and Police), which calls itself “Commanders for Israeli Security.”

CIS has taken upon itself to promote a “vision” for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, based on the Saudi Peace Plan – a.k.a. the Arab Peace Initiative (API), and a regional arrangement with the “moderate” Arab states.

The API in effect calls for the return to the indefensible pre-1967 lines (with “comparable and mutually agreed minor land swaps” – whatever that might mean).

In exchange for this the Arab states would, allegedly, consider the Arab–Israeli conflict over, sign a peace treaty with Israel and establish normal relations, within the framework of a comprehensive peace.

According to CIS’s prescription, the durability of this unlikely arrangement will be underwritten by the goodwill and credibility of some of the most decadent, corrupt and unstable regimes on the planet, all located in the world’s most tumultuous region, in which uncertainty is the only certainty.

To my dismay, Shavit has not only thrown his considerable public prestige behind this patently perilous and preposterous proposition, he has become one of its principal promoters – appearing prominently on CIS’s website and Facebook page, and publishing two detailed articles endorsing it.

Oslo on steroids

Shavit, by his own admission, was always critical of the Oslo process. Yet astonishingly, he now embraces a proposal that can only be described as Oslo on steroids – far more concessionary than ever envisaged by Yitzhak Rabin as the permanent settlement with the Palestinians.

As I pointed out last week, the API contravenes every precept laid out by Rabin shortly before his assassination, in his last Knesset address, detailing what he saw as the parameters of such a settlement.

Moreover, it should be underscored that CIS’s paradigm for dramatic political concessions and drastic territorial withdrawal is in no way universally accepted by former senior security personnel. Indeed, in recent years an impressive team of ex-generals together with former high-ranking diplomats, intimately familiar with the political milieu in the US and Europe, produced a detailed analysis of what Israel’s minimal security requirements were.

The team was composed of Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya’alon, former IDF chief of staff and current minister of defense; Maj-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, former IDF deputy chief of staff and national security adviser; Maj-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, former national security adviser; Brig.- Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel, former head of the IDF Strategic Planning Division; Dr. Meir Rosenne, former ambassador to the US and France; Dore Gold, former ambassador to the UN.

Military assessment vs political speculation

In contrast to the glib sound-bites of what is essentially a political wish list of the CIS, this team produced a detailed document, over 100-pages, stipulating Israel’s minimal security requirements, which totally obviate the need for implementation of the API.

Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, CIS has detailed no security blueprint for how Israel would function, should the core elements of API be adopted, apart from assuring the public that CIS’s supporters have accumulated thousands of hours of security experience in the field. But then so did Ariel Sharon and Rabin when they assured the public that the disengagement and Oslo would enhance security and stability.

Moreover, as time passes, CIS is, by its own admission, emerging as part of the political lobby to replace Netanyahu, without detailing how, if its recommendations were accepted, the country would function with its only international airport within mortar range and the Trans-Israel Highway within tunnel reach of a Palestinian state.

In fact, apart from expressing deep dissatisfaction with the prevailing situation, CIS offers little by way of substance.

Its focus is on articulating largely unsubstantiated speculation as to the plausibility of possible political scenarios – a field in which it members have no special advantage of experience or expertise. They eschew, however, any sound appraisal of the security/military situation that would arise were its political prescriptions to be implemented – the field in which they can claim such advantage.

Right diagnosis; wrong prescription

In an opinion piece published in Haaretz (November 24, 2014), Shavit expressed fears for the future of Zionism: “… for the first time… I am truly concerned about the future of the Zionist project… about the critical mass of the threats against us on the one hand, and the government’s blindness and political and strategic paralysis on the other.”

In a column “On the cusp of carnage,” one week previously, I expressed similar concerns: “A perfect storm is brewing for Israel. On virtually every front, ominous clouds are gathering, and should the menacing maelstroms they portend hit together, it is far from certain that the Jewish state will survive the destructiveness of their combined impact.”

I, too, pointed to political and strategic dysfunction on the part of the government: “By adopting a policy of continually trying to avoid confrontations in which it can prevail, Israel may eventually find itself forced to engage in a confrontation in which it cannot.”

Shavit correctly observes: “Anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel have reached dimensions unknown since before World War II. Our public diplomacy and public relations have failed dismally… University campuses in the West, particularly in the US, are hothouses for the future leadership of their countries. We are losing the fight for support for Israel in the academic world…”

All very true. But, while I fully concur with Shavit’s diagnosis of the gravity of the situation, I strongly disagree with his prescription for remedying it.

Selling surrender as strategy

Although I am certain he will hotly dispute my characterization of his proposal, what Shavit is suggesting is surrender in the guise of strategy.

The API is for all intents and purposes a document of capitulation – acquiescence to virtually all Arab demands that successive governments have rejected as unacceptably hazardous. It forgoes virtually all the gains of the 1967 Six Day War, and imperils some of those of the 1948 War of Independence. Willingness to agree to it, even as a basis for negotiations, is a clear signal that every Israeli “No,” however emphatic initially, is in effect a “maybe” and a potential “Yes” in the future.

While I share Shavit’s views on the abysmal performance of Israel’s public diplomacy and its grave ramifications, the appropriate response to this is hardly to accede to maximalist Arab demands, thereby implicitly conceding we were wrong, and they were right, all along.

Rather, it should be to qualitatively enhance Israel’s public diplomacy endeavor, to radically increase the current miserly budget, to allot the resources it needs to rebut the mendacious recriminations Israel is subjected to, and present Israel’s just case assertively and robustly to the world.

Readers may recall I have repeatedly called to set up a billion dollar (1 percent of the state budget) diplomatic “Iron Dome,” rather than raise the white flag of surrender.

Thus, when Shavit bemoans the fact that Israel is losing the battle for hearts and minds across university campuses in the West, he should be aware that Israel has not lost the campuses – it has abandoned them to pro-Palestinian activism.

Again, the appropriate Israeli response is to mount a resolute public diplomacy offensive to retake them, not to acquiesce to Arab fabrications.

Window of opportunity or deceptive black hole?

In his second article (Hebrew) titled “Time to Initiate: Passive Policy Won’t Work” (February 8), he remarks that in his contacts with Arab leaders, he got the distinct impression that the Palestinian issue has, for many, become an annoying headache.

He goes on to contend that the unfolding developments in the Mideast – particularly the Iranian nuclear drive and the emergence of Islamic State – have created a convergence of interests between Israel and certain allegedly “moderate” states, notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He also includes Gulf states but, significantly, excludes arguably the most influential, Qatar. His conclusion is that Israel should “adopt the Saudi initiative as an anchor for renewing the negotiations to resolve the conflict.”

This argument is so flawed that it would take an entire column for an exhaustive rebuttal. But in a brutally condensed nutshell: The entire region is in meltdown. There is absolutely no guarantee that the current regimes will be in power for long. It would be foolhardy in the extreme to bet the farm on their durability.

Who would be responsible for imposing law and order in the nascent Palestinian state, established across the pre-1967 frontiers? Would Arab armies be allowed west of the Jordan River – a long standing taboo with all Israeli governments? If so, what would happen if a not totally unforeseen regime change took place in the home country of an army deployed? Would the IDF be expected to defend beleaguered Arab regimes that have “joint interests” with Israel if they were challenged by inimical rivals? If not, what interest would those regimes have in the deal? Would the prospective Palestinian state be demilitarized? If so, who would be responsible for its external defense? If not, how could Israel’s minimum security requirements be met?

Black hole  (Cont.)

Thus, it is even money that Israel could end up making hazardous concessions under the assumption that benign, relatively like-minded regimes will safeguard purported “joint-interests” only to find that very soon they have been replaced by totally different regimes, with totally different perception of interests. Indeed, Qatar is a case in point, once one of the most amenable Gulf states, now a prime funder of jihadist terrorism.

But an even more fundamental question arises from Shavit’s proposition.

If, as he claims, the Palestinian issue is not of central importance to many Arab states, why should Israel have to make dramatic and dangerous concessions on it, just so that these states would deign to cooperate with Israel – to further other, far more vital, interests of their own? One might well ask why Israel should have to make any concessions to induce Arab states to cooperate in advancing their own national interests.

Worshiping the Golden Calf?

Disappointingly, Shavit also appears to fall prey to the El Dorado promise of untold prosperity should some unlikely regional arrangement come about. He cites a study promising dramatic increases in standards of living and reduction of defense spending.

Again, it would take an entire column to exhaustively disprove this claim, which one might have thought would have been permanently discredited with the demise of the Peres delusion of a “New Middle East.”

Suffice it to say that if the API were adopted, and a Palestinian state established on the fringes of Greater Tel Aviv, an equally – if not a more – plausible scenario could be advanced for economic collapse, disruption of air traffic, cessation of tourism , and spiraling defense expenditures.

After all, imagine the effect of Sderot-like realties being visited on the Coastal Plain from the commanding heights of a newly established “Palestine”…

Postscript

I have raised these criticisms of Shavit’s proposals in good faith – for I believe, with deep conviction, that they imperil all that Shavit has spent most of his adult life defending. I hope he will relate to them as such and take up my invitation to respond to them in the spirit they were made.

As for CIS, I will continue to relate to its activities in future columns – on the assumption, of course that, it will not be disbanded soon after the election.

Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

(www.strategicisrael.org)

 

Hillary was Hacked, Data Virgin Islands/Ukraine

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EmailGate courtesy of Hillary Clinton’s home server has taken on a life of its own.

From the Blaze:

Clinton Email Domain Hosted by a Company That Was Hacked in 2010 and Had Data Redirected to Ukraine — and IP Address Reveals Link to British Virgin Islands

As news of Hillary Clinton using a private email during her tenure as Secretary of State continues to emerge, TheBlaze has learned that the email domain was hosted by a “consumer grade” company whose data was hacked in 2010, with information being sent to Ukraine. Additionally, data reveals that the domain was hosted at one point in the British Virgin Islands. This, experts say, is a big security no-no.

Domain history data reveals Clintonemail.com was registered in 2009 with Network Solutions, shortly after Clinton was appointed as the nation’s top diplomat. But the decision to host the domain for such a high-profile person on a consumer registrar like Network Solutions is questionable to security experts.

Bill Sweetman, a domain registration expert based in Canada who describes himself as part of the “left-leaning camp,” told TheBlaze Friday that the whole Clinton email controversy has struck him as “naive on the part of the players.”

Image source: DomainTools.com
.

“If you’re someone that is concerned about security of your data, you don’t go and register your domain name with a consumer-oriented registrar like Network Solutions or GoDaddy,” Sweetman said.

Image source: DomainTools.com

“You would work either with a corporate domain registrar like MarkMonitor or CVSC, or you would talk to your employer – in this case the government – about their internal solutions that would protect the domain name and would protect the data associated with it.”

Sweetman isn’t alone in thinking this.

Rod Rasmussen, a leading expert on the abuse of domain name systems, wrote in a 2013 column for the trade publication Security Week, that any domain managers using a consumer-grade registrar for a “major enterprise” should lose their jobs. Rasmussen wrote the piece after Network Solutions was hacked in 2010, resulting in thousands of domains being transferred to Confluence Networks, a domain registrar traced to the British Virgin Islands.

“When it comes to Internet security, there is absolutely no way major corporations would use consumer grade anti-malware and anti-phishing solutions as a one-stop security solution. So why would major organizations – we’re talking major Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, financial services and critical infrastructure organizations – put their domains in the hands of consumer grade registrars?” Rasmussen wrote.

Among the companies whose domains were moved offshore at the time of Rasmussen’s column were organizations like LinkedIn, Fidelity, Craigslist, Yelp and the U.S. Postal Service

“We have received reports that Network Solutions customers are seeing malicious code added to their websites, and we are really sorry for this experience,” company spokesman Shashi Bellamkonda wrote in a company blog post at the time. Aside from that admission, Rasmussen wrote that Network Solutions has been “tight-lipped” about the details, only adding that the websites of a “small number” of customers were “inadvertently affected for up to several hours.”

Computer World reported in 2010 that throughout the course of the attack, users of up to 50 domains hosted by Network Solutions were redirected to a Ukrainian attack server.  Historical domain data associated with Clintonemail.com reveals the last recorded change to a Clintonemail.com IP address occurred Dec. 22, 2011. A simple lookup of that particular IP address shows it is hosted in Road Town, British Virgin Islands, although its unclear whether the offshore IP address is a direct result of the Network Solutions hack.

What’s also unclear is whether Clintonemail.com was one of the domains directly involved in the same attack that redirected to a Ukrainian attack server. What is evident, however, is that the security threat posed by Hillary Clinton using a “consumer-grade registrar” for her private email domain, potentially containing classified information, was greater than the threat that could have been posed had she decided to use the State.gov domain.

Since the New York Times broke the story, questions surrounding Clinton’s use of private email have circulated throughout the media and even some members of her own party. Republicans, especially those who are expected to be considering a 2016 presidential run, have also pounced on the issue. After days of silence, Clinton finally tweeted a response to the controversy Thursday.

Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, told the press during a visit to Saudi Arabia that the review would be conducted “as rapidly as possible,” Reuters reported.

But the review of the nearly 55,000 emails Clinton sent from her private email could take some time, as one State Department official acknowledged: ”The review is likely to take several months given the sheer volume of the document set.”   ***    SIX YEARS

Hillary Clinton was in violation of State Department rules governing the use of non-governmental email accounts during her entire tenure as secretary of state and for nearly two years after she left the job, ABC News has learned.

A senior State Department official tells ABC News that under rules in place while Clinton was secretary of state, employees could only use private email accounts for official business if they turned those emails over to be entered into government computers. They were also forbidden from including sensitive but unclassified information on private email, except under some very narrow exceptions.

This policy is still in place, according to the Department. Until any private emails are entered into government computers, the official says, an employee is in violation of the rules.

Clinton used a private email account for her entire tenure as secretary — and did not even have a government-issued email. She only turned over some 55,000 pages of emails to be entered into government computer systems late last year, nearly two years after she stepped down from the State Department.

 

 

2006, GW Bush Spoke About the Coming Caliphate

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Before the Military Officers Association, President GW Bush introduced the word ‘caliphate’ in reference to Osama bin Ladin’s terror plans. It was a clarion call to the immediate future. Already war weary and due to the cost of war and unpredictable conditions with a growing enemy, opponents of the Bush Doctrine on the war on terror were fiercely removing support for continued military aggressions.

In the five years since our nation was attacked, we’ve also learned a great deal about the enemy we face in this war. We’ve learned about them through videos and audio recordings and letters and statements they’ve posted on Web sites. We’ve learned about them from captured enemy documents that the terrorists have never meant for us to see.

Together, these documents and statements have given us clear insight into the mind of our enemies, their ideology, their ambitions and their strategy to defeat us.

BUSH: We know what the terrorists intend to do because they’ve told us. And we need to take their words seriously. So today I’m going to describe in the terrorist’s own words what they believe, what they hope to accomplish, and how they intend to accomplish it.

I’ll discuss how the enemy has adapted in the wake of our sustained offensive against them and the threat posed by different strains of violent Islamic radicalism.

Bush had it right yet who is carrying the baton now as that militant future is here upon the Middle East and the West. I’ll explain the strategy we’re pursuing to protect America by defeating the terrorists on the battlefield and defeating their hateful ideology in the battle of ideas.

The terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, are men without conscience, but they’re not madmen. They kill in the name of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil but not insane.

These Al Qaida terrorists and those who share their ideology are violent Sunni extremists. They are driven by a radical and perverted vision of Islam that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women and children in the pursuit of political power.

They hope to establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call caliphate, where all would be ruled according to their hateful ideology.

Osama bin Laden has called the 9/11 attacks, in his words, “a great step towards the unity of Muslims and establishing the righteous caliphate.”

BUSH: This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

We know this because Al Qaida has told us.

About two months ago, the terrorist Zawahiri — he’s Al Qaida’s second in command — declared that Al Qaida intends to impose its rule in every land that was a home for Islam, from Spain to Iraq. He went on to say, “The whole world is an open field for us.”

We know what this radical empire would look like in practice, because we saw how the radicals imposed their ideology on the people of Afghanistan.

Under the rule of the Taliban and Al Qaida, Afghanistan was a totalitarian nightmare, a land where women were imprisoned in their homes, men were beaten for missing prayer meetings, girls could not go to school, and children were forbidden the smallest pleasures, like flying kites.

Religious police roamed the streets, beating and detaining civilians for perceived offenses. Women were publicly whipped. Summary executions were held in Kabul’s soccer stadium in front of cheering mobs. And Afghanistan was turned into a launching pad for horrific attacks against America and other parts of the civilized world, including many Muslim nations.

BUSH: The goal of these Sunni extremists is to remake the entire Muslim world in their radical image. In pursuit of their imperial aims these extremists say there can be no compromise or dialogue with those they call infidels, a category that includes America, the world’s free nations, Jews, and all Muslims who reject their extreme vision of Islam. They reject the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the free world.

Again, here are the words of Osama bin Laden earlier this year: “Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us.”

So, going forward to May of 2011, the raid and killing of Osama bin Ladin at his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan, over 1 million documents were seized speaking to exactly the continued terror plans of al Qaeda. Only 17 documents have been released publically, which begs the question why? Barack Obama took the war on terror to a new lie, al Qaeda has been decimated and is on the run. Just in recent weeks, this has proven to be false. Obama’s tame war strategy has led to leaders falling from power, countries being seized by al Qaeda and other sympathetic factions and death and destruction of epic proportions. Not to be ignored either at this time, Iran had and still does major operations in Afghanistan and continues to have the same in Iraq.
Barack Obama and his inner circle was and is so bent on terminating military actions globally, his team chose to keep bin Ladin’s cache of operations from the very teams that needed and demanded it. An example is this: One of bin Ladin’s top commanders, al Rahman, wrote a letter to bin Ladin asking for permission to order the Libya Islamic Fighting Group whose members had just been released from prison to take advantage of the Arab Spring and being terror operations in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Permission was granted by Osama bin Ladin.
The Weekly Standard below spells it out.

The United States had gotten its hands on al Qaeda’s playbook—its recent history, its current operations, its future plans. An interagency team led by the Central Intelligence Agency got the first look at the cache. They performed a hasty scrub—a “triage”—on a small sliver of the document collection, looking for actionable intelligence. According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the team produced more than 400 separate reports based on information in the documents.

But it is what happened next that is truly stunning: nothing. The analysis of the materials—the “document exploitation,” in the parlance of intelligence professionals—came to an abrupt stop. According to five senior U.S. intelligence officials, the documents sat largely untouched for months—perhaps as long as a year.

In spring 2012, a year after the raid that killed bin Laden and six months before the 2012 presidential election, the Obama administration launched a concerted campaign to persuade the American people that the long war with al Qaeda was ending. In a speech commemorating the anniversary of the raid, John Brennan , Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and later his CIA director, predicted the imminent demise of al Qaeda. The next day, on May 1, 2012, Mr. Obama made a bold claim: “The goal that I set—to defeat al Qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild—is now within our reach.”

The White House provided 17 handpicked documents to the Combatting Terror Center at the West Point military academy, where a team of analysts reached the conclusion the Obama administration wanted. Bin Laden, they found, had been isolated and relatively powerless, a sad and lonely man sitting atop a crumbling terror network.

It was a reassuring portrayal. It was also wrong. And those responsible for winning the war—as opposed to an election—couldn’t afford to engage in such dangerous self-delusion.

“The leadership down at Central Command wanted to know what were we learning from these documents,” says Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the transcript of an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for a coming Fox News Reporting special. “We were still facing a growing al Qaeda threat. And it was not just Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq. But we saw it growing in Yemen. We clearly saw it growing still in East Africa.” The threat “wasn’t going away,” he adds, “and we wanted to know: What can we learn from these documents?”

After a pitched bureaucratic battle, a small team of analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency and Centcom was given time-limited, read-only access to the documents. The DIA team began producing analyses reflecting what they were seeing in the documents.

At precisely the time Mr. Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al Qaeda, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in bin Laden’s own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about—I’d say close to doubling by that time. And we knew that.”

This wasn’t what the Obama White House wanted to hear. So the administration cut off DIA access to the documents and instructed DIA officials to stop producing analyses based on them.

Even this limited glimpse into the broader set of documents revealed the problems with the administration’s claims about al Qaeda. Bin Laden had clear control of al Qaeda and was intimately involved in day-to-day management. More important, given the dramatic growth of the terror threat in the years since, the documents showed that bin Laden had expansion plans. Lt. Gen. Flynn says bin Laden was giving direction to “members of the wider al Qaeda leadership team, if you will, that went all the way to places like West Africa where we see a problem today with Boko Haram and [al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], all the way back into the things that were going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Bin Laden advised them on everything from specific operations in Europe to the types of crops his minions should plant in East Africa.

To date, the public has seen only two dozen of the 1.5 million documents captured in Abbottabad. “It’s a thimble-full,” says Derek Harvey, a senior intelligence official who helped lead the DIA analysis of the bin Laden collection.

And while it is impossible to paint a complete picture of al Qaeda based on the small set of documents available to the public, documents we are able to read, including those released last week in a Brooklyn terror trial, reveal stunning new details.

According to one letter, dated July 2010, the brother of Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s current prime minister, sought to strike a peace deal with the jihadists. Bin Laden was informed that Shahbaz Sharif, who was then the chief minister of Punjab, wanted to cut a deal with the Pakistani Taliban, whose leadership was close to bin Laden. The government “was ready to reestablish normal relations as long as [the Pakistani Taliban] do not conduct operations in Punjab,” according to the letter from Atiyah Abd al Rahman, one of bin Laden’s top deputies. Attacks elsewhere in Pakistan were apparently acceptable under the terms of the alleged proposal. Al Qaeda intended to guide the Pakistani Taliban throughout the negotiations. The same letter reveals how al Qaeda and its allies used the threat of terrorist attacks as a negotiating tactic in its talks with the Pakistani military.

The letter also shows that Pakistani intelligence was willing to negotiate with al Qaeda. Al Qaeda “leaked” word to the press that “big, earth shaking operations” were planned in Pakistan, the letter says, but bin Laden’s men and their allies would back off if the Pakistani army eased up on its offensive against the jihadists in the north: “In the aftermath” of the al Qaeda leak, “the intelligence people . . . started reaching out to us through some of the Pakistani ‘jihadist’ groups, the ones they approve of.” One of the Pakistani intelligence service’s emissaries was Fazl-ur-Rahman Khalil, a longtime bin Laden ally who leads the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen. Khalil was an early booster of bin Laden’s war against the West, having signed the al Qaeda master’s infamous 1998 fatwa declaring jihad “against the Jews and the Crusaders.” Another government intermediary was Hamid Gul, the one-time head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Al Qaeda’s network in Iran is also described in bin Laden’s letters. The Iranian regime held some senior al Qaeda leaders, eventually releasing them. This led to disagreements between the two sides. But the mullahs have also allowed al Qaeda to use Iranian soil as a key transit hub, shuttling fighters and cash to and from South Asia. One letter recounts a plan, devised by Yunis al Mauritani, one of bin Laden’s senior lieutenants, to relocate to Iran. Once there, Mauritani would dispatch terrorists to take part in operations around the world.

Mauritani was tasked by bin Laden with planning Mumbai-style shootings in Europe in 2010. The plot was fortunately thwarted. But all of the terrorists selected to take part transited Iran, according to court proceedings in Germany, taking advantage of the Iranian regime’s agreement with al Qaeda.

During the Arab uprisings in 2011, Obama administration officials argued that al Qaeda had been “sidelined” by the peaceful protests. Just weeks before he was killed, however, bin Laden’s men dispatched operatives to Libya and elsewhere to take advantage of the upheaval. “There has been an active Jihadist Islamic renaissance under way in Eastern Libya (Benghazi, Derna, Bayda and that area) for some time, just waiting for this kind of opportunity,” Atiyah Abd al Rahman wrote in early April 2011. Rahman thought there was much “good” in the so-called Arab Spring. And bin Laden believed that the upheaval presented al Qaeda with “unprecedented opportunities” to spread its radical ideology.

The fight over the bin Laden documents continues. Mr. Harvey, the senior DIA official, believes that the documents should be declassified and released to the public as soon as possible, after taking precautions to avoid compromising sources or methods. Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, inserted language in the 2014 intelligence authorization bill requiring just that.

Making the documents public is long overdue. The information in them is directly relevant to many of the challenges we face today—from a nuclear deal with an Iranian regime that supports al Qaeda to the rise of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; from confidence-building measures meant to please the Afghan Taliban to the trustworthiness of senior Pakistani officials.

Choosing ignorance shouldn’t be an option.