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The cardinal is traveling with CNEWA board member Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre; CNEWA President Msgr. John Kozar; and executive director of Catholic Charities for the New York archdiocese, Msgr. Kevin Sullivan.
According to the press release, the purpose of this pastor visit is fourfold:
Demonstrate solidarity with the families — many of whom are Christian — displaced when ISIS swept through northern Iraq in summer 2014. The delegation will visit displaced families taking refuge in camps and villages; stop at schools, nurseries and clinics serving their needs; and pray together in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy.
Show gratitude and solidarity with the caregivers — the priests, sisters and laity who, although displaced as well, have responded in meeting the needs of those expelled by ISIS. The pastoral visit will highlight the efforts of the religious sisters and parish priests who have partnered with CNEWA in setting up schools, nurseries and clinics.
Demonstrate solidarity with and support for the leadership of the local church. The delegation will spend time with the patriarchs and bishops of the Chaldean and Syriac Catholic churches, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.
Assert the Christian commitment to support all those wounded by ISIS: Christian, Muslim and Yazidi.
BBC: A group of Christians in Iraq have formed their own militia to protect people from the so-called Islamic State group. The leader of the Babylon Brigade says they were left with no choice but to take up arms when IS fighters targeted Christians.
There’s a striking picture on the wall. It shows an untarmacked road, scorched by sunlight, leading to a small village with a mountain range behind it. And all along the side of the road there are crosses every 100m – taller even than lamp posts.
“Christian village,” a guard mumbles. “Near Mosul.”
We are in the Baghdad headquarters of the Iraq Christian Resistance, Babylon Brigade. They are a militia, although they prefer the phrase popular mobilisation unit. Whatever the language, about 30 of these outfits have sprung up in the past couple of years and between them they have 100,000 armed volunteers. They were formed to block the advance of the so-called Islamic State group when it swept through north and west Iraq in 2014, even threatening Baghdad. When the Iraqi national army collapsed the militias stood firm.
Getty: Shia fighters from a popular mobilisation unit hold a position north of Baghdad, June 2015
Most are Shia Muslim. A handful are Sunni Muslim, one is Christian – the Babylon Brigade.
The other pictures on the wall are photographs, all depicting the Babylon Brigade’s leader and the man I have come to meet, Rayan Al-Kildani. Kildani in military fatigues, Kildani with shades, Kildani meeting some important people, Kildani looking contemplative, Kildani looking determined.
And then the man himself arrives with a small entourage, most of them in suits but one young man with a wispy beard is in military clothing.
I’m not sure how seriously to take Kildani. The militias have persuaded the central government to cover their expenses and as a result they are, taken altogether, receiving about $1.4bn (£1bn) a year. For a militia leader like Kildani it’s more than $600 (£450) per man per month. Good money. There are stories about people renting a house in Baghdad, gathering a few people together, announcing they have formed a militia and going to the government to apply for the funds.
“How many men have you got?” I ask.
“That’s a military secret,” he says.
Really? I saw another man from the militias the day before and he was quite open about numbers. I’d been a little surprised when that militiaman apologised for his English saying it should have been better given that he was from Wembley in North London.
“Really, Wembley? By the football ground?” I had said.
“Yes, my wife and children are still there.”
Anyway he’d seemed happy to talk numbers. So I press Kildani again.
“Hundreds of men or thousands?”
“Many.”
“Weapons?”
“Rockets,” he says. “Medium ones. This is war. You can’t fight a war with rifles.”
“So, a Christian militia,” I remark.
“What Islamic State was doing to the Christians is terrible,” he says. “They are the devil.”
“Your militia has fought?”
“We fight side by side with the Muslim militias,” he says, claiming: “We are the first Christian power in Iraqi history.”
And then: “I know the Bible says that if you get hit on one cheek you should offer the other. But we have really good defence forces now. No-one is going to do anything bad to the Christians. Some Christians had their homes taken over. I have personally been to those houses to tell the new people living there to get out. Christian suffering is over.”
One of his four phones rings. He glances at the incoming number, grunts and gives it to someone to answer.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption A Christian militiaman patrols through the abandoned streets of Telskuf, November, 2015
“What about the commandment: Thou shalt not kill?” I ask.
“You are a Christian?” Kildani asks, somewhat doubtfully.
“Church of England,” I offer.
Kildani nods as if that explains it.
“He’s a Protestant,” someone says with a note of disapproval. “Sectarianism runs deep in Iraq,” I think. But of course I don’t say that.
Kildani turns to me again: “We have to fight. We have to defend ourselves.”
And then, to my surprise, he adds: “Jesus himself told us that if you don’t have a sword you should go out and buy one.”
I cast my mind back to my schooldays of Bible study but can’t remember Jesus telling people to arm themselves.
“Did he really say that?”
“It’s in the Bible,” Kildani insists.
“Matthew,” one man says. “Luke,” says another. “Matthew and Luke,” they both say. I looked doubtful.
Kildani glances over to one of his assistants who is playing a game on his phone.
“Find it!” he orders.
The young man with the phone walks over to me. He has the verse on his screen in Arabic.
It is Luke chapter 22, verse 36: “If you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”
Turns out theologians have been arguing about the verse for centuries. Is that a real sword? Or a metaphorical one? Kildani is in no doubt. He says he and his men are out on patrol. And they’re armed.
Duane R. Clarridge, a pugnacious American spy who helped found the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, was indicted and later pardoned for his role in the Iran-contra scandal, and resumed his intelligence career in his late 70s as the head of a private espionage operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on Saturday in Leesburg, Va. He was 83.
His lawyer, Raymond Granger, said the cause was complications of laryngeal and esophageal cancer.
Mr. Clarridge was an unflinching champion of a brawny American foreign policy and of the particular role played by the C.I.A.’s clandestine service — a cadre he likened to a secret army that “marches for the president” and ought to be subjected to as little outside scrutiny as possible.
Mr. Clarridge, widely known by his nickname Dewey, delighted in the role of rogue. He often arrived at work in white Italian suits or safari jackets and bragged to other C.I.A. officers about the brilliant ideas he had conceived while drinking the previous night.
“If you have a tough, dangerous job, critical to national security, Dewey’s your man,” Robert M. Gates, the former director of central intelligence and later defense secretary, was quoted as saying in “Casey,” a 1990 biography of William J. Casey, the Central Intelligence Agency’s chief during the Reagan administration, by Joseph E. Persico. “Just make sure you have a good lawyer at his elbow — Dewey’s not easy to control.”
He spent years overseas as an undercover officer, but perhaps his most consequential effort at the spy agency was the creation of the Counterterrorism Center (then called the Counterterrorist Center) in 1986 after a string of attacks the previous year, including the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the massacres at El Al ticket counters in Rome and Vienna carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization.
Up to that point, the C.I.A. had devoted little effort to understanding international terrorism, and Mr. Clarridge persuaded Mr. Casey to create the center with an unusual arrangement: having undercover spies and intelligence analysts working together to try to dismantle terrorist networks. Within a year, C.I.A. operations had significantly weakened the Abu Nidal organization.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Counterterrorism Center has grown into a behemoth, the heart of a spy agency transformed by years of terrorist hunting.
Mr. Clarridge’s efforts against international terrorism came as he was becoming ensnared by investigations into the Reagan administration’s efforts to use proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran to arm the contras, a Nicaraguan rebel group battling troops of the country’s socialist government, known as the Sandinistas.
Mr. Clarridge had been in charge of the C.I.A.’s covert war in Nicaragua in the early 1980s (he told his colleagues that his idea to mine the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983 came while he was drinking gin at home) and had developed a close relationship with Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was running the Iran-contra operation from his perch at the National Security Council.
According to the final report by Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel investigating the Iran-contra affair, Mr. Clarridge testified that he had no knowledge that cargo ships sent to Iran to help secure the release of American hostages contained any weapons. He also denied trying to solicit money from foreign countries to circumvent a congressional prohibition against financing the contras.
“In both instances,” the report said, “there was strong evidence that Clarridge’s testimony was false.”
He was indicted on a charge of perjury in 1991, three years after he had retired from the agency. President George Bush pardoned him on Christmas Eve 1992, along with five other Iran-contra figures. He had the pardon framed, and he eventually hung it in the front hallway of his home near San Diego so it would be the first thing visitors saw upon entering his house.
But the scandal embittered him, and he used his 1997 memoir, “A Spy for All Seasons,” to settle some old scores. He lamented in the book that the C.I.A. had lost its swagger since the end of the Cold War, becoming a risk-averse organization that was beholden to lawyers and was degenerating “into something resembling the style, work ethic and morale of the post office.”
Duane Ramsdell Clarridge was born in Nashua, N.H., on April 16, 1932. Both of his parents (his father was a dentist and his mother a homemaker) were active in local Republican politics, and the nickname he carried through life had Republican origins. According to his memoir, a neighbor in Nashua began calling him Dewey in 1944 in honor of Thomas E. Dewey, the New York governor who that year ran for president against Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He joined the C.I.A. in 1955, after getting degrees from Brown and Columbia, and served undercover in Nepal, India and Italy before being promoted to run the Latin America division in 1981.
He is survived by a daughter, Cassandra; two sons, Ian and Tarik; and five grandchildren. His first marriage ended in divorce; his second wife, Helga, died before him.
More than two decades after his retirement from the C.I.A., Mr. Clarridge began working as a government contractor when military officials in Kabul hired him and a small team to gather information about militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Using sources in the region — he identified them only by cover names, such as Waco and Willi — he would turn their field dispatches into reports he sent to the military command by encrypted email.
Mr. Clarridge worked for a security firm hired by The New York Times in December 2008 to assist in seeking the release of a reporter, David Rohde, who had been kidnapped by the Taliban. Mr. Rohde escaped on his own seven months later, but Mr. Clarridge used his role in the episode to promote his spy network to military officials.
The Pentagon canceled the contract in 2010 after the private spying operation was revealed.
But two years later, after Mr. Clarridge had moved into a retirement home in Northern Virginia, he told a reporter that he still had his “network” intact for the future.
In November 2015, Mr. Clarridge was back in the news when The Times identified him as an adviser to Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and Republican candidate for president, who had come under criticism for statements he made about foreign affairs during debates. Asked about the candidate’s foreign policy acumen, Mr. Clarridge was typically impolitic.
“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” he said.
BusinessInsider: Notorious terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was bullish on gold, telling Al Qaeda leaders in a 2010 letter to invest in the precious metal while “overall price trend is upward,” The New York Times reported this week.
The letter was part of a trove of documents released by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence last month. In it, bin Laden implores Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, Al Qaeda’s general manager, to earmark $1.7 million of a $5 million ransom for gold bars and coins.
Bin Laden also advocated buying euros, Kuwaiti dinars, and Chinese yuan. He outlined specific instructions on how to spend the money.
“As for the money you received in local currency, it should be gotten rid of, because its value has been declining and it continues to go down,” bin Laden wrote. He then detailed how much of the ransom money should go to various currencies and said al-Rahman should “use the euros first, then the dinars, the yuan and then the gold.”
He then goes on to analyze the outlook on gold.
“The overall price trend is upward,” bin Laden wrote. “Even with occasional drops, in the next few years the price of gold will reach $3,000 an ounce. Right now it is at $1,390 an ounce, but before the events in New York and Washington it was $280 an ounce.”
The Times noted that this would have been a “bad bet,” because on the day the letter was dated, December 3, 2010, gold closed at $1,414.08 an ounce. Today gold is at about $1,230 an ounce.
It’s unclear whether al-Rahman followed bin Laden’s instructions in this case, according to The Times.
Bin Laden wasn’t alone in his assessment of gold’s potential. The Times said:
Bin Laden may have lacked investing acumen — gold peaked at $1,900 an ounce five months after his death in 2011 — but he seems to have had a keen sense of the financial zeitgeist. His belief in gold’s bright future was shared at the time by many Americans and a number of financial luminaries, including George Soros and John Paulson, both of whom were investing heavily in the precious metal. Demand was so high that in 2010, JPMorgan Chase reopened a long-closed vault used to store gold under the streets of downtown Manhattan.
Chris Wallace asked Obama about Hillary’s email and server. In Obama’s answer he made the guarantee twice there would be no political cover for Hillary. He went on to describe that the White House never got involved in cases where there were ongoing investigations. What???
Barack Obama also defended his decisions to play golf….and his timing was not in question. Too bad Chris could not ask him about not joining other leaders in Paris and instead sent John Kerry later accompanied with James Taylor to perform ‘You’ve Got a Friend’. Sheesh really?
EXCLUSIVE: Obama vows no influence in Clinton email probe, defends terror fight
FNC: President Obama repeatedly vowed there would be no political influence over the Justice Department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state — in a wide-ranging interview with “Fox News Sunday” in which he also ardently defended his efforts to defeat the Islamic State and other terror groups amid criticism about his perceived indifference.
“I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI, not just in this case, but in any case,” Obama told “Fox News Sunday.” “Nobody is above the law. How many times do I have to say it?”
His remarks came less than three months after White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest publicly downplayed a possible indictment for Clinton.
Obama praised Clinton’s tenure running the State Department from 2009 to 2013 and said he still doesn’t think the emails to and from her private server breached national security.
However, he acknowledged, as Clinton has done, that her using the private server was not a good idea, in part after revelations that roughly 2,000 of the emails included classified information.
“There’s carelessness in terms of managing emails, that she has owned, and she recognizes,” Obama told Fox News’ Chris Wallace, in his first interview with the cable network since 2008.
Obama defended efforts to stop the growing international terror threat and his response to terrorists.
“My No. 1 job is to protect the American people,” Obama said, in an interview taped Friday at the Unversity of Chicago, where he was a professor. “My No. 1 priority right now is defeating ISIL (the Islamic State.) … I’m the guy who calls the families, or meets with them, or hugs them, or tries to comfort a mom, or a dad, or a husband, or a kid, after a terrorist attack. So let’s be very clear about how much I prioritize this: This is my No. 1 job.”
Obama also defended his actions after several deadly attacks, including playing a round of golf after American James Foley was beheaded and going to a baseball game in Cuba after the Brussels terror bombings last month, for which the Islamic State has claimed responsibility.
“In the wake of terrorist attacks, it has been my view consistently that the job of the terrorists, in their minds, is to induce panic, induce fear, get societies to change who they are. And what I’ve tried to communicate is, “You can’t change us. You can kill some of us, but we will hunt you down, and we will get you.
“And in the meantime, just as we did in Boston, after the marathon bombing, we’re going to go to a ballgame. And do all the other things that make our life worthwhile. … That’s the message of resilience. That we don’t panic, that we don’t fear, we will hunt you down and we will get you.”
The president also dug in on his position that the GOP-controlled Senate should vote on whether to confirm his nomination to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland.
He argued lawmakers have a constitutional responsibility and suggested that Garland would pass the confirmation process.
“I think that if they go through the process, they won’t have a rationale to defeat him,” Obama said.
The president nevertheless acknowledged that congressional Republicans are in a tough election-year position, considering he’s out of office in about nine months, with the possibility the next president could be a Republican who will make his own nomination.
Ever wonder how the real political machinery works? While everyone is focused on Cleveland, the delegate count and accusations of lies, there is much more. Have you thought about those who have dropped out of the race? What is Jeb Bush or Rick Santorum or Bobby Jindal doing for this race? Everyone is fretting over a brokered convention and Paul Ryan but there is more going on.
Has anyone thought about the ‘why’ against Trump and affects to the Senate? What about that person who is the fresh face or a VP in the mix?
Mak/DailyBeast: An anonymous group of conservative billionaires is ready to place their bets on a man dubbed “Mad Dog,” hoping to draft him into the presidential race to confront Donald Trump.
Think of it as a Plan B should Trump be nominated by the Republican Party in Cleveland: swing behind retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and press him into service yet again as a third-party candidate.
Mattis is the former commander of Central Command, which includes the strife-afflicted conflict zones of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, and has developed a reputation among troops as a general officer who cares about the little guy. This reputation blossomed into the political realm during the 2012 presidential contest, when a Marine Corps veteran started an online campaign to write-in Mattis on presidential ballots—it ultimately lacked the backing to take off.
But this situation involves far bigger players: Close to a dozen influential donors—involving politically-involved billionaires with deep pockets and conservative leanings—are ready to put their resources behind Mattis. At their request, a small group of political operatives have taken the first steps in the strategic legwork needed for a bid: a package of six strategic memos outlining how Mattis could win the race, in hopes of coaxing him in.
The general has received the package of memos, according to two individuals involved with the project.
Mattis, who is also nicknamed the “warrior monk” for his contemplative devotion to the military arts, would be a fallback option for anti-Trump forces. But since the next series of GOP nomination contests heavily favor Trump, this is not exactly a fantasy scenario.
“Everyone is hoping that Ted Cruz pulls it out, but I think a great deal of Republicans would rally behind an American hero if the choice is between Mattis and Trump,” said John Noonan, a former Jeb Bush aide now involved in the project to draft Mattis.
“He’s a man of character and integrity. He’s given his life to his country. How do you ask someone like that to leap headfirst into this toxic mud-puddle of a race? It’s damn hard. But Trump is a fascist lunatic and Hillary has one foot in a jail cell. That means the lunatic can win. I’d be first in line to plead with the general to come save America,” Noonan added.
The strategy would not be for Mattis to win, at least at first—the operatives behind this potential bid would only be seeking to deny Trump and Clinton the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the general election outright. And there is also the incredible logistical challenge of getting Mattis on the ballot in a large number of states.
“The process is actually quite simple, but it’s difficult,” one of the strategists concedes in a memo, and the chances of Mattis winning the White House outright as a third-party candidate are “very low.” But if the retired military officer could win several states won by President Obama in 2012, they might be able to block Clinton, thus forcing the incoming House of Representatives to make a decision on the next president of the United States.
With the House split, the strategists reason, Mattis could be the consensus choice.
“The theme of 2016 is ‘all bets are off’ and this is a cycle where the unexpected has become the defining characteristic of this election,” said strategist Rick Wilson, who is also involved in the project. “In a moment when American politics on the left and right has been upended, and where the frontrunners of both parties are compromised, the time may be upon us where a uniquely qualified, and uniquely credible third-party alternative like General Mattis can take the stage.”
Another limiting factor is Mattis himself, who is disinclined to run. These strategists hope he could change his mind if he were to feel compelled to serve his country.
Those close to him are skeptical that his mind could be changed.
“It is difficult—if not impossible—to see him accepting being drafted,” said a source close to Mattis.
Still, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol poured fuel onto the fire Feb. 22, after Trump victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Speaking at a fundraiser for the Hoover Institute, where Mattis is a visiting fellow, Kristol suggested—perhaps jokingly—that the former four-star general might be conscripted into the race.
“No way!” shouted back a jocular Mattis, from the audience.
Mattis, who declined to speak with The Daily Beast, has previously suggested that he could not endure the political correctness required to be a contender for the White House. But given Trump’s myriad controversies, this may not be a problem this year.
“I’ve lived a very colorful life and I’ve said some things,” Mattis told an audience last year, according to theMarine Corps Times. “But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them—and I won’t. I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.”
The pro-Mattis donors, who want to stay anonymous for the time being, have assembled a core group of seven political operatives, led by Joel Searby, a Republican consultant based in Florida. The group of strategists also includes lead attorney Mohammad Jazil; ballot access specialist Matthew Sawyer; and former George W. Bush pollster Jan Lohuizen, along with a finance team and a “top firm” that has been secured to lead the ballot access petition gathering, members of the team tell The Daily Beast.
Wilson and Noonan co-authored a memo on how Mattis might capitalize on the current media environment, arguing that Trump’s “fake-macho act falls apart” before a bona fide American hero like Mattis. The general’s overall bearing “immediately blows a hole into the central narrative of Trump: his toughness,” they argue in a memo obtained by The Daily Beast. “[A]nd the drama of watching it fall apart under fire would be amazing television.”
Comparing him to President Dwight Eisenhower, the memo concludes that Mattis has “all the iconoclastic, authentic style of non-politician Trump—and all the serious government service credibility of Hillary Clinton.”
Some conservatives, disgusted with Trump’s candidacy, have already warmed to the idea of a run by Mattis—including conservative commentators Erick Erickson and Kristol.
Kristol told The Daily Beast that he had “huge respect and admiration” for Mattis—and Gen. John Kelly, another high-ranking general.
“I don’t know whether they’re ideally suited for the presidency,” he said. “But I do know they’re a hell of a lot more suited for it than Donald Trump.”
TWS: The rise of Donald Trump and the general “polarization” of politics have pushed six Senate seats toward the Democrats, according to Larry Sabato and his “Crystal Ball” forecast.
Sabato’s updated forecast bodes particularly ill for Sens. Rob Portman and Pat Toomey, Republicans who are defending their turf in major purple states. Because there is a strong correlation between the success of a presidential candidate and Senate hopefuls of the same party, Sabato argues that the GOP could endanger itself if it nominates a general election candidate unpalatable to the general public.
“Considering the rise of Donald Trump, the polarization in U.S. politics, and a higher rate of straight-ticket voting, this could be bad news for the GOP,” Sabato writes.
“Assuming the GOP nominee for the White House is either Trump or Ted Cruz, we think the Democrats will fare reasonably well down-ballot (more so with Trump than Cruz, though Cruz will also have a difficult time carrying many swing states).”
Portman and Toomey’s seats are now rated as “toss-ups”, a move from “leans Republican”. Sens. Roy Blunt and Richard Burr are now just slight favorites. And even Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa institution and chairman of the committee that oversees judicial nominations, is no longer a sure bet to win a seventh term, though his shift from “safe” to “likely” reelection was made “mostly out of an abundance of caution”, Sabato writes. Grassley has won more than 60 percent of the vote in his five reelection campaigns.
The only seat currently held by Democrats that was reevaluated belongs to Coloradan Michael Bennet. That race moves from “leans Democratic” to “likely Democratic”.
Republicans currently hold the Senate with 54 seats. However, of the 34 Senate races being contested in 2016, Republicans are playing defense in 24 of them.
Image copyright Getty Images
