Category Archives: Terror

Obama: ‘No Boots in Iraq, er…Just Kidding’

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One keynote: There will be a selected coalition meeting on troop operations and most stupid and weird and perhaps expected, the White House is including Russia, who was never in the coalition but worse, the White House is including Iran…..WTH…right?

September of 2014, Islamic State taunted Barack Obama about fighting them on the ground in Iraq. The recommendation for troops was recommended today and the White House is likely to accept the request.

This will not be an easy procedure as there is only a 2 page thinly crafted AUMF, Authorization for Use of Military Force. Congress has not approved this since it was dispatched for countless reasons such as the timeline, the funding and the strategy. Another AUMF is in order to advance any operation barely defined by Secretary of Defense Carter.

The chief spokesman for the self-named “Islamic State” (IS), also known as Isis, has given the clearest indication yet that his fighters would actually welcome a ground war in Iraq and Syria against US troops.

In a 42-minute audio message uploaded to the internet the group’s Syrian-born spokesman, who has taken the adopted name of Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, mocks recent US air strikes and the moves to build an international coalition against Islamic State.

Addressing President Obama, the spokesman says: “Is this all you are capable of doing in this campaign of yours? Are America and all its allies… unable to come down to the ground?”

Statement on the U.S. Military Strategy in the Middle East and the Counter-ISIL Campaign before the Senate Armed Services Committee

10/27/2015 10:37 AM CDT

Statement on the U.S. Military Strategy in the Middle East and the Counter-ISIL Campaign before the Senate Armed Services Committee

Testimony as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Washington, D.C., October 27, 2015
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Reed, Members of the Committee: thanks for inviting us to come here before you to discuss our counter-ISIL campaign in Iraq and Syria, and along the way to address some of the concerns, Mr. Chairman, that you raised and to share with you, Senator Reed, some of the plans and initiatives that the Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and I are formulating for our campaign in both Iraq and Syria. This is the first time for me appearing before this Committee alongside Chairman Joe Dunford, who was just in the region last week, as was noted. I’m grateful to Joe for answering my and the President’s call to step down from what every Marine knows is a higher position – namely Commandant to the Marine Corps to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – and to this Committee for confirming Joe. Thank you. I’m glad to have you here with me today. Before I turn to the subject of today’s hearing, I want to reiterate – as I’ve said consistently since March and continue to believe – that Washington needs to come together behind a multi-year budget deal that supports our defense strategy, the troops and their families, and all elements of America’s national security and strength. I understand significant progress was made on this overnight and I am looking forward to reviewing the details, but I welcome this major positive development and applaud the members of this Committee for what you’re doing to help us get there. The Middle East presents a kaleidoscope of challenges, but there, as everywhere, our actions and strong military posture are guided by what’s in America’s interests. That’s our North Star. And amid this region’s complexity and uncertainty, those interests are to deter aggression; to bolster the security of our friends and allies, especially Israel; to ensure freedom of navigation in the Gulf; to check Iran’s malign influence even as we monitor the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action; and, to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL. This last one, ISIL, poses a threat to our people and to friendly countries not only in the Middle East but around the world. Today, I will first outline the changes in the execution of our strategy that we have considered, and are now pursuing militarily, to gather battlefield momentum in the fight against ISIL. Then I will address what Russia is doing in Syria, and why we won’t let it interfere with our campaign against ISIL. When I last spoke to this committee about our counter-ISIL campaign and its nine lines of essential military and non-military effort, I made three things clear about the military aspects – first, that we will deliver ISIL a lasting defeat; second, that truly lasting success would require enabling capable, motivated local forces on the ground, recognizing that this will take time and new diplomatic energy; and, third, that our strategy’s execution can and must and will be strengthened. All of that is still true. Our determination is unchanged, even as the situation continues to evolve, and we continue to adapt to execute our campaign more effectively. And today I’d like to elaborate on the third point and explain how we’re adapting our campaign to do more – reinforcing what we know works. The changes we’re pursuing can be described by what I call the “three R’s” – Raqqa, Ramadi, and Raids. Before I explain what they mean, let me also note that I took actions to streamline command-and-control of the counter-ISIL military campaign by assigning the entire effort to a single general officer, Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, where in the urgency of the early phase of the campaign last year several layers were added to the general officer already present in Iraq. The first “R” is Raqqa, ISIL’s stronghold and administrative capital. We have been clear for some time that we need to keep up pressure on Raqqa, and that to that end we will support moderate Syrian forces fighting ISIL that have made territorial gains near Raqqa – indeed, some of them are within 30 miles of Raqqa today. The Syrian Arab Coalition, which we plan to strengthen through our new equipping approach – more on that in a moment – will work over time with other Syrian anti-ISIL forces to push towards Raqqa. To the south, we plan to further strengthen our partner, Jordan. And from the skies above, we expect to intensify our air campaign, including with additional U.S. and coalition aircraft, to target ISIL with a higher and heavier rate of strikes. This will include more strikes against ISIL high-value targets as our intelligence improves; also its oil enterprise, which is a critical pillar of ISIL’s financial infrastructure. As I said last Friday, we’ve already begun to ramp up these deliberate strikes. Part of this pressure includes our new approach to the Syria train-and-equip program. I, like President Obama and members of this committee, was disappointed with that program’s results. We accordingly examined the program this summer, and have since changed it. I use the word change – not end – change the program. While the old approach was to train and equip completely new forces outside of Syria before sending them into the fight, the new approach is to work with vetted leaders of groups that are already fighting ISIL, and provide equipment and some training to them and support their operations with airpower. This approach builds on successes that local Syrian Arab and Syrian Kurdish forces have made along Syria’s northern border to retake and hold ground from ISIL with the help of U.S. airstrikes and equipment resupplies. If done in concert as we intend, all these actions on the ground and from the air should help shrink ISIL’s territory into a smaller and smaller area and create new opportunities for targeting ISIL – ultimately denying this evil movement any safe haven in its supposed heartland. The second “R” is Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, which serves as a critical example of the Abadi government’s commitment to work with local Sunni communities with our help to retake and hold ground from ISIL and in turn to build momentum to eventually go northward to Mosul. Under Prime Minister Abadi’s leadership, the Iraqis have begun to use American-made F-16s to support counter-ISIL operations, and have empowered capable battlefield commanders to step forward. As we see more progress towards assembling capable and motivated Iraqi forces under Baghdad’s control and including Sunni elements, we are willing to continue to provide more enabling capabilities and fire support to help them succeed. However, the Iraqi government and security forces will have to take certain steps militarily to make sure our progress sticks. We need to see more in the direction of multi-sectarian governance and defense leadership. For example, we’ve given the Iraqi government two battalions’ worth of equipment for mobilizing Sunni tribal forces; as we continue to provide this support, the Iraqi government must ensure it is distributed effectively. If local Sunni forces aren’t sufficiently equipped, regularly paid, and empowered as co-equal members of the Iraqi Security Forces, ISIL’s defeats in Anbar will only be temporary. The third and final “R” is raids, signaling that we won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground. Last week’s rescue operation was led by Iraqi Kurdish forces, with U.S. advisers in support. One of those accompanying advisors, Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler, heroically acted to ensure the overall success of the mission and lost his life in the process. The death of any service member is a tragedy, and as I told his family and teammates this weekend, we offer our condolences to Master Sergeant Wheeler’s loved ones for their loss. While our mission in Iraq is to train, advise, and assist our Iraqi partners, in situations such as that operation – where we have actionable intelligence and a capable partner force – we want to support our partners and we will. At the same time, the raid on Abu Sayyaf’s home, and strikes against Junaid Hussain and most recently Sanafi al-Nasr, should all serve notice to ISIL and other terrorist leaders that once we locate them, no target is beyond our reach As we’ve looked at how to gather momentum and adapt to the changing battlefield, some have discussed putting a buffer zone, humanitarian zone, or no-fly zone in Syria. We have analyzed various options and the political and military requirements of each. These options are complex and raise some challenges, which I am prepared to discuss in answer to your questions. Let me now turn to Russia’s involvement in Syria. To be clear, we are not cooperating with Russia, and we’re not letting Russia impact the pace or scope of our campaign against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. While we negotiated a document on safety of flight with the Russian Ministry of Defense, we do not align ourselves more broadly with their military actions, because instead of singularly attacking ISIL, as they said they were going to do, they are primarily attacking the Syrian opposition, as the Chairman has noted, which further fuels the tragic civil war there. Their actions suggest a doubling-down on their longstanding relationship with Assad – sending advisers, artillery, and aviation to enable and support the Assad regime and Iranian forces in attacking moderates who oppose the regime and are essential to Syria’s political transition. And it appears the vast majority of their strikes – by some estimates as high as 85 to 90 percent – use dumb bombs, which obviously increases the possibility of civilian casualties. So, as Russia acts in a coalition of two with Iran at its side, the United States will continue to strengthen our 65-nation global coalition. Even as we’ve reached an understanding with the Russians on safety protocols for coalition pilots over Syria, we will keep prosecuting our counter-ISIL campaign unabated. We will keep supporting the moderate Syrian opposition, along with our other commitments to friends and allies in the region. And, consistent with our strong and balanced approach towards Russian aggression elsewhere in the world, including NATO and Ukraine, we will keep the door open for Russia to contribute to efforts toward a political solution, in which – which in the final answer – analysis – is the only answer to the Syrian conflict. I have discussed the military strategy and accompanying campaign, but before I conclude, I remind the Committee that defeating ISIL and protecting America requires coordinated efforts across all of the so-called nine lines of effort – to include supporting effective governance in Iraq, enhancing intelligence collection, disrupting ISIL’s financing, countering ISIL’s messaging, stopping the flow of foreign fighters, providing humanitarian support, and protecting our homeland – where other departments and agencies of our government have the lead. Thank you.

U.S. Spy vs. Israeli Spy on Iran

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Some back story events leading up to the broken relationship between the Obama White House and Israel.

Spy vs. Spy, the Fraying U.S Israel Ties

WSJ: The U.S. closely monitored Israel’s military bases and eavesdropped on secret communications in 2012, fearing its longtime ally might try to carry out a strike on Fordow, Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility.

Nerves frayed at the White House after senior officials learned Israeli aircraft had flown in and out of Iran in what some believed was a dry run for a commando raid on the site. Worried that Israel might ignite a regional war, the White House sent a second aircraft carrier to the region and readied attack aircraft, a senior U.S. official said, “in case all hell broke loose.”

The two countries, nursing a mutual distrust, each had something to hide. U.S. officials hoped to restrain Israel long enough to advance negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran that the U.S. had launched in secret. U.S. officials saw Israel’s strike preparations as an attempt to usurp American foreign policy.

Instead of talking to each other, the allies kept their intentions secret. To figure out what they weren’t being told, they turned to their spy agencies to fill gaps. They employed deception, not only against Iran, but against each other. After working in concert for nearly a decade to keep Iran from an atomic bomb, the U.S. and Israel split over the best means: diplomacy, covert action or military strikes.

Personal strains between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu erupted at their first Oval Office meeting in 2009, and an accumulation of grievances in the years since plunged relations between the two countries into crisis.

This Wall Street Journal account of the souring of U.S.-Israel relations over Iran is based on interviews with nearly two dozen current and former senior U.S. and Israeli officials.

U.S. and Israeli officials say they want to rebuild trust but acknowledge it won’t be easy. Mr. Netanyahu reserves the right to continue covert action against Iran’s nuclear program, said current and former Israeli officials, which could put the spy services of the U.S. and Israel on a collision course.

A shaky start

Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu shared common ground on Iran when they first met in 2007. Mr. Netanyahu, then the leader of Israel’s opposition party, the right-wing Likud, discussed with Mr. Obama, a Democratic senator, how to discourage international investment in Iran’s energy sector. Afterward, Mr. Obama introduced legislation to that end.

Suspicions grew during the 2008 presidential race after Mr. Netanyahu spoke with some congressional Republicans who described Mr. Obama as pro-Arab, Israeli officials said. The content of the conversations later found its way back to the White House, senior Obama administration officials said.

Soon after taking office in January 2009, Mr. Obama took steps to allay Israeli concerns, including instructing the Pentagon to develop military options against Iran’s Fordow facility, which was built into a mountain. The president also embraced an existing campaign of covert action against Iran, expanding cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.

Mossad leaders compared the covert campaign to a 10-floor building: The higher the floor, they said, the more invasive the operation. CIA and Mossad worked together on operations on the lower floors. But the Americans made clear they had no interest in moving higher—Israeli proposals to bring down Iran’s financial system, for example, or even its regime.

Some covert operations were run unilaterally by Mossad, such as the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, according to U.S. officials.

The first Oval Office meeting between Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu, in May 2009—weeks after Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister—was difficult for both sides. After the meeting, Mr. Obama’s aides called Ron Dermer, Mr. Netanyahu’s adviser, to coordinate their statements. Mr. Dermer told them it was too late; Mr. Netanyahu was already briefing reporters. “We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘I guess we’re not coordinating our messages,’ ” said Tommy Vietor, a former administration official who was there.

In 2010, the risk of covert action became clear. A computer virus dubbed Stuxnet, deployed jointly by the U.S. and Israel to destroy Iranian centrifuges used to process uranium, had inadvertently spread across the Internet. The Israelis wanted to launch cyberattacks against a range of Iranian institutions, according to U.S. officials. But the breach made Mr. Obama more cautious, officials said, for fear of triggering Iranian retaliation, or damaging the global economy if a virus spread uncontrollably.

Israel questioned whether its covert operations were enough, said aides to Mr. Netanyahu. Stuxnet had only temporarily slowed Tehran’s progress. “Cyber and other covert operations had their inherent limitations,” a senior Israeli official said, “and we reached those limitations.”

Mr. Netanyahu pivoted toward a military strike, raising anxiety levels in the White House.

The U.S. Air Force analyzed the arms and aircraft needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and concluded Israel didn’t have the right equipment. The U.S. shared the findings, in part, to steer the Israelis from a military strike.

The Israelis weren’t persuaded and briefed the U.S. on an attack plan: Cargo planes would land in Iran with Israeli commandos on board who would “blow the doors, and go in through the porch entrance” of Fordow, a senior U.S. official said. The Israelis planned to sabotage the nuclear facility from inside.

Pentagon officials thought it was a suicide mission. They pressed the Israelis to give the U.S. advance warning. The Israelis were noncommittal.

“Whether this was all an effort to try to pressure Obama, or whether Israel was really getting close to a decision, I don’t know,” said Michéle Flournoy, who at the time was undersecretary of defense for policy.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, was moving toward diplomacy. In December 2011, the White House secretly used then-Sen. John Kerry to sound out Omani leaders about opening a back channel to the Iranians.

At the same time, the White House pressed the Israelis to scale back their assassination campaign and turned down their requests for more aggressive covert measures, U.S. officials said.

The president spoke publicly about his willingness to use force as a last resort to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon—“I don’t bluff,” Mr. Obama said in March 2012—but some of Mr. Netanyahu’s advisers weren’t convinced.

In early 2012, U.S. spy agencies told the White House about a flurry of meetings that Mr. Netanyahu convened with top security advisers. The meetings covered everything from mission logistics to the political implications of a military strike, Israeli officials said.

Warning signs

U.S. spy agencies stepped up satellite surveillance of Israeli aircraft movements. They detected when Israeli pilots were put on alert and identified moonless nights, which would give the Israelis better cover for an attack. They watched the Israelis practice strike missions and learned they were probing Iran’s air defenses, looking for ways to fly in undetected, U.S. officials said.

New intelligence poured in every day, much of it fragmentary or so highly classified that few U.S. officials had a complete picture. Officials now say many jumped to the mistaken conclusion that the Israelis had made a dry run.

At the time, concern and confusion over Israel’s intentions added to the sense of urgency inside the White House for a diplomatic solution.

The White House decided to keep Mr. Netanyahu in the dark about the secret Iran talks, believing he would leak word to sabotage them. There was little goodwill for Mr. Netanyahu among Mr. Obama’s aides who perceived the prime minister as supportive of Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign.

Mr. Netanyahu would get briefed on the talks, White House officials concluded, only if it looked like a deal could be reached.

The first secret meeting between U.S. and Iranian negotiators, held in July 2012, was a bust. But “nobody was willing to throw it overboard by greenlighting Israeli strikes just when the process was getting started,” a former senior Obama administration official said.

Israeli officials approached their U.S. counterparts over the summer about obtaining military hardware useful for a strike, U.S. officials said.

At the top of the list were V-22 Ospreys, aircraft that take off and land like helicopters but fly like fixed-wing planes. Ospreys don’t need runways, making them ideal for dropping commandos behind enemy lines.

The Israelis also sounded out officials about obtaining the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the U.S. military’s 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb, which was designed to destroy Fordow.

Mr. Netanyahu wanted “somebody in the administration to show acquiescence, if not approval” for a military strike, said Gary Samore, who served for four years as Mr. Obama’s White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction. “The message from the Obama administration was: ‘We think this is a big mistake.’ ”

White House officials decided not to provide the equipment.

Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu spoke in September 2012, and Mr. Obama emerged convinced Israel wouldn’t strike on the eve of the U.S. presidential election.

By the following spring, senior U.S. officials concluded the Israelis weren’t serious about a commando raid on Fordow and may have been bluffing. When the U.S. offered to sell the Ospreys, Israel said it didn’t have the money.

Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who championed a strike, said Mr. Netanyahu had come close to approving a military operation against Iran. But Israel’s military chiefs and cabinet members were reluctant, according to Israeli officials.

While keeping the Omani talks secret, U.S. officials briefed the Israelis on the parallel international negotiations between Iran and major world powers under way in early 2013. Those talks, which made little headway, were led on the U.S. side by State Department diplomat Wendy Sherman.

Robert Einhorn, at the time an arms control adviser at the State Department, said that during the briefings, Mr. Netanyahu’s advisers wouldn’t say what concessions they could live with. “It made us feel like nothing was going to be good enough for them,” Mr. Einhorn said.

U.S. spy agencies were monitoring Israeli communications to see if the Israelis had caught wind of the secret talks. In September 2013, the U.S. learned the answer.

Yaakov Amidror, Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser at the time, had come to Washington in advance of a Sept. 30 meeting between Messrs. Netanyahu and Obama.

On Sept. 27, Mr. Amidror huddled with White House national security adviser Susan Rice in her office when she told him that Mr. Obama was on the phone in a groundbreaking call with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani.

Mr. Amidror had his own surprise. During a separate meeting in the Roosevelt Room, he told several of Mr. Obama’s top advisers that Israel had identified the tail numbers of the unmarked U.S. government planes that ferried negotiators to Muscat, Oman, the site of the secret talks, U.S. officials said.

Mr. Amidror, who declined to comment on the White House discussions, said that it was insulting for Obama administration officials to think “they could go to Oman without taking our intelligence capabilities into account.” He called the decision to hide the Iran talks from Israel a big mistake.

U.S. officials said they were getting ready to tell the Israelis about the talks, which advanced only after Mr. Rouhani came to office. During the Sept. 30 meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, the president acknowledged the secret negotiations. The secrecy cemented Israel’s distrust of Mr. Obama’s intentions, Israeli officials said.

Mr. Samore, the former White House official, said he believed it was a mistake to keep Israel in the dark for so long. Mr. Einhorn said: “The lack of early transparency reinforced Israel’s suspicions and had an outsize negative impact on Israeli thinking about the talks.”

Israel pushed for the U.S. to be more open about the Iran negotiations. Ms. Rice, however, pulled back on consultations with her new Israeli counterpart, Yossi Cohen, who took over as Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
In exchanges with the White House, U.S. officials said, Mr. Cohen wouldn’t budge from demanding Iran give up its centrifuges and uranium-enrichment program. Israeli officials said they feared any deviation would be taken by the U.S. as a green light for more concessions.

In one meeting, Mr. Cohen indicated Mr. Netanyahu could accept a deal allowing Iran to keep thousands of centrifuges, U.S. officials said. Soon after, Mr. Cohen called to say he had misspoken. Neither side was prepared to divulge their bottom line.

In November 2013, when the interim agreement was announced, Mr. Samore was in Israel, where, he said, the Israelis “felt blindsided” by the terms. U.S. officials said the details came together so quickly that Ms. Sherman and her team didn’t have enough time to convey them all. Israeli officials said the Americans intentionally withheld information to prevent them from influencing the outcome.

Listening in

As talks began in 2014 on a final accord, U.S. intelligence agencies alerted White House officials that Israelis were spying on the negotiations. Israel denied any espionage against the U.S. Israeli officials said they could learn details, in part, by spying on Iran, an explanation U.S. officials didn’t believe.

Earlier this year, U.S. officials clamped down on what they shared with Israel about the talks after, they allege, Mr. Netanyahu’s aides leaked confidential information about the emerging deal.

When U.S. officials confronted the Israelis over the matter in a meeting, Israel’s then-minister of intelligence said he didn’t disclose anything from Washington’s briefings. The information, the minister said, came from “other means,” according to meeting participants.

Ms. Sherman told Mr. Cohen, Israel’s national security adviser: “You’re putting us in a very difficult position. We understand that you will find out what you can find out by your own means. But how can we tell you every single last thing when we know you’re going to use it against us?” according to U.S. officials who were there.

Mr. Netanyahu turned to congressional Republicans, one of his remaining allies with the power to affect the deal, Israeli officials said, but he couldn’t muster enough votes to block it.

U.S. officials now pledge to work closely with their Israeli counterparts to monitor Iran’s compliance with the international agreement.

But it is unclear how the White House will respond to any covert Israeli actions against Iran’s nuclear program, which current and former Israeli officials said were imperative to safeguard their country.

One clause in the agreement says the major powers will help the Iranians secure their facilities against sabotage. State Department officials said the clause wouldn’t protect Iranian nuclear sites from Israel.

Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, said the U.S. and Israel could nonetheless end up at odds.

“If we become aware of any Israeli efforts, do we have a duty to warn Iran?” Mr. Hayden said. “Given the intimacy of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, it’s going to be more complicated than ever.”

FBI Director Comey: The Ferguson Effect

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FBI Director James Comey has visited several law enforcement agencies across the country to determine the ‘chill’ by law enforcement. The White House pushed back hard as did Amnesty International. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former White House Chief of Staff even declared his police force in Chicago is in the fetal position.

The FBI keeps the statistics….

FBI chief again says Ferguson having chilling effect on law enforcement

WaPo: CHICAGO — Twice in recent days, FBI Director James B. Comey has stepped to a podium here and asserted that police across the nation are reluctant to aggressively enforce the law in the post-Ferguson era of smartphones and YouTube.

And twice his comments have drawn disagreement and derision from a host of sources, including civil rights activists, law enforcement officials and, on Monday, the White House.

“The available evidence at this point does not support the notion that law enforcement officers around the country are shying away from fulfilling their responsibilities,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday during a news briefing in Washington. “The evidence that we’ve seen so far doesn’t support the contention that law enforcement officials are somehow shirking their responsibility.”

Comey, nonetheless, stayed the course, telling thousands of police officials gathered here for a conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police that a violent crime wave is gripping the nation’s major cities. And he suggested that police officers themselves are in part to blame, made gun shy by the prospect of getting caught on the next video of alleged police brutality.

The “age of viral videos” has fundamentally altered U.S. policing, Comey said Monday in a speech virtually identical to one he delivered last week at the University of Chicago Law School.

His comments have been interpreted as giving credence to the notion of a “Ferguson effect” — the theory that riots and racial unrest in places such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, where police were accused of killing civilians, has prompted police officers to become more restrained. That, in turn, has theoretically resulted in an uptick in violent crime, as criminals become emboldened.

Comey acknowledged Monday that he has little evidence to support the theory.

“The question is, are these kinds of things changing police behavior around the country? The honest answer is: I don’t know for sure whether that’s the case,” he said, adding that “I do have a strong sense” that it’s true.

It’s “the one theory that to my mind and to my common sense, does explain” rising rates of urban violence in 2015.

Coming from the nation’s top law enforcement official, the remarks have landed like a bombshell in criminal justice circles, offending people across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and activists have taken deep exception to the idea that crime rates might be linked to protests against police brutality.

Amnesty International USA executive director Steven Hawkins called Comey’s comments “outrageous” and “unsubstantiated.”

Policing groups, meanwhile, have been equally infuriated by the assertion that their officers have been somehow derelict in their duties, frightened by teenagers with cellphone cameras.

“Time and time again [Comey] generalizes about a segment of the population that he knows nothing about,” said James O. Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “He has never been a police officer.”

Comey is “like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz,” Pasco said. “He wanders around pretending to be smart and then at the end they give him a diploma and he thinks he’s a genius. They swear him in as the director of the FBI and all of a sudden he’s an expert on what police officers are thinking.”

The speeches have also put Comey at odds with the White House, as President Obama is eager to take credit for lowering the crime rate.

As Comey was preparing to deliver his address Friday, Obama was hosting a criminal-justice forum at the White House, where he celebrated “incredible, historic reductions in crime over the last 20 years.”

“I know that there’s been some talk in the press about spikes that are happening this year relative to last year. I’ve asked my team to look very carefully at it — Attorney General Lynch has pulled together a task force — and it does look like there are a handful of cities where we’re seeing higher-than-normal spikes,” Obama said at the time. However, he added, “across the 93 or 95 top cities, it’s very hard to distinguish anything statistically meaningful.”

In his speech Monday, Comey also urged law enforcement leaders to stop engaging in an us-vs.- them tug of war with protesters from Black Lives Matter, the group that sprung up in the wake of the August 2014 shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

Instead, Comey said, police chiefs should use the budding protest movement as a window into the minds of those they are charged with protecting.

“There is a line of law enforcement and a line of communities we serve, especially communities of color,” Comey said. “Each time somebody interprets ‘hashtag Black Lives Matter’ as anti-law enforcement, one line moves away. And each time someone interprets ‘hashtag police lives matter’ as anti-black, the other line moves away.”

Comey’s comments come weeks after he held a closed-door session with 100 city leaders and law enforcement officials from across the nation. At that meeting, many — including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) — reported that police morale was sinking in their towns amid ongoing scrutiny.

“We have allowed our police department to get fetal, and it is having a direct consequence,” Emanuel declared during the meeting. “They have pulled back from the ability to interdict . . . they don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early, and it’s having an impact.”

Comey said such feedback has served as inspiration for his recent speeches, in which he declared that violent crime rates are being inflated by a “a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year.”

“That wind is surely changing behavior,” Comey said, later adding: “We need to figure out what’s happening and deal with it now. I refuse to wait . . . these aren’t data points, these are lives.”

Those 2 Defense Contractors and Manpads in Benghazi

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In part from CBSNews: The U.S. has been unable to secure thousands of potentially dangerous shoulder-fired missiles known as “MANPADS” that were leftover from the Qaddafi regime in Libya, CBS News has learned.

MANPADS stands for “Man-portable air-defense systems.” According to a well-placed source, hundreds of the missiles have been tracked as having gone to Al Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algeria-based Sunni Muslim terrorist group fighting for control in Mali.

“I would imagine they’re trying to get their hands on as many weapons such as MANPADS as they can,” says CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate. “It’s a danger both to the military conflict underway in Mali and a real threat to civilian aircraft if, in fact, terrorists have their hands on these MANPADS.”

Before his overthrow and death in the fall of 2011, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was believed to have purchased 15,000-20,000 Soviet MANPADS. Concern over the whereabouts of the missiles – and the possibility that terrorists could buy them on the black market and even use them to shoot down American passenger jets – drove a U.S. effort to recover as many as possible. But only about 2,000 were accounted for prior to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on Benghazi, Libya, according to the source. He describes those working to locate the missiles as “beside themselves” and “frustrated.”

The program to recover MANPADS in Libya was funded by the U.S. and said to have been run by South African contractors. The contractors attempted to appeal to Libyans, many of them ex-Gaddafi loyalists, to turn over or destroy the MANPADS as a matter of patriotism and pride.

“We told them that ‘if planes start dropping out of the sky, it will trace back to you and you’ll have the international reputation for terrorism,'” says the source. “We offered them money, we tried talking them out of it … The only successes they had were in western Libya, the Tripoli area. In the eastern half toward Benghazi, they were getting nowhere.”

The full emails are here from Judicial Watch regarding the 2 Defense contractors hired by the State Department to collect weapons in Benghazi, specifically manpads.

In part, 2 pages are below, the interaction between the State Dept. OpsCenter and Benghazi

Sent:

To:

Subject:

Classification:

SensitivityCode:

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 7:27 PM

DSCC_Watch Team; DSCC_Management_ Team

Benghazi Contractors

UNCLASSIFIED

Sensitive

Further regarding Contractors on the ground in Benghazi

SBU

This email is UNCLASSIFIED.

From: Operations Center

Sent: Tuesday. Seotember 11. 2012 7;26 P:

To:l.__ __________ _,j

Cc: SES-0

Subject: RE: proposed teleconference call – PM/WRA– Libya Thursday

‘c:!llo gentlemen,

~—–~ RELEASE IN PART

B7(C),B6

~-i (..• .. \ ‘”‘ ;1 J

86

B7(C)

rhe Operations Center spoke with! ~arlier this evening ~nd has noted that he and [ [are in the

hotel in Benghazi. Please let us know if there are any further updates, and do not hesitate to call the Operations Center

if you need anything at all.

Take care,

Esther

Esther Pan Sloane

From:I

To

Subject: proposed teleconference call – PM/WRA- Libya Thursday

Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:35 :06 +0000

Hello All,

PM/WRA, led by Jim Lawrence, would like to host a conference call to discuss our current and future work on the ground

in Easf and West Libya, as well as other relevant issues regarding the coordination with our Libyan and UN partners.

I liave scheduled the call for 1000 EST (Washington) on Thursday, September 13. I am waiting for details to ·pass on to

the participants to .call in. I should have those shortly. –

I just wanted to give you a heads up and we hope you can participate. For participants in our o~ce CC’d on this mail,

this call will be held in WRA’s Conference Room. ·

Thanks,

D

SBU

This email is UNCLASSIFIED.

***  Taken in part from page 7 of the journal marking the retirement of Jim Lawrence.

His quiet brand of leadership has been as effective in waging peace as his father’s efforts were in waging war; consequently, PM/WRA and the Department of State are prepared as never before to face the evolving challenges in the fields of humanitarian demining and the destruction/disposition of MANPADS [man-portable air-defense systems] and other conventional weapons.

 

Captagon, the Drug of Choice by Iran/Hezbollah

Posted on by

 

Syria is now the number one exporter and producer of the stimulant drug Fenethylline, marketed under the brand name Captagon. Drug experts say the Middle Eastern country has overtaken production from regional players such as Lebanon – who has encountered a 90 per cent drop in production from 2011. The stimulant drug, created in the 1960s and once used to treat ADHD, is cheap to manufacture and has allegedly been used by government and anti-government forces to fund weapons for the civil war.

Lebanon busts 2 tons of amphetamine on Saudi private jet

BEIRUT (AP) — A Lebanese official says Beirut airport authorities have foiled one of the country’s largest drug smuggling attempts, seizing two tons of amphetamine Captagon pills before they were loaded onto the private plane of a Saudi prince.

The official said the prince and four others have been detained Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was authorized to give official statements.

Captagon manufacturing thrives in Lebanon and war-torn Syria, which have become a gateway for the drug to the Middle East and particularly the Gulf.

The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said in a 2014 report that the amphetamine market is on the rise in the Middle East, with busts mostly in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria accounting for more than 55 percent of amphetamines seized worldwide.

*** In our 2013 study we revealed that Hezbollah operatives were trafficking in counterfeit medications, and in particular manufacturing and selling fake Captagon tablets, with Iranian assistance and guidance. It appears that sales of this counterfeit drug in the Middle East have only expanded since then, as Hezbollah has strengthened its cooperation with Syrian, Lebanese, Saudi and Palestinian drug dealers.

Hezbollah’s takeover of extensive territories in Lebanon, especially along the Syrian border in the Beka’a Valley region in the east of the country, has created pseudo-autonomous regions for the organization. The local population has effectively been subjugated to the terrorist group, with its norms and enforcement measures, and the Lebanese government kept away from these areas.

Hezbollah’s transformation into a major player in Lebanese politics, its participation in the coalition government and its control over key senior positions in the country’s government and apparatuses have only served to strengthen its freedom of action in the territories under its control.

Deeper dive:

Prior to the events in Syria, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda fighters had never met face to face. They clashed for the first time in the Syrian arena. For the Islamist fighters, Hezbollah is fighting under the influence of Captagon. Hezbollah fighters, on the other hand, believe their adversaries are “crazy, carrying spoons in their pockets in preparation for a meal with the prophet.”

“Hezbollah members are takfiris,” according to al-Qaeda fighters, and so are the members of the “international jihad” as perceived by their arch-enemy and many others. The two organizations had never fought each other before Syria. When the opportunity came, they clashed on several fronts in that country, in Ghouta, Aleppo, and Qalamoun. Both sides lost men and the upper hand went to Hezbollah. However, al-Qaeda’s fighters believe that “losing a battle does not mean losing the war…for we are the victorious sect.” The limited confrontation was a chance for both sides to create an image of the other.

Hezbollah’s fighters do not underestimate their opponents from al-Qaeda and vice versa. They both give their adversaries their dues, without ignoring the generally negative landscape. Speaking to Al-Akhbar, a Lebanese al-Nusra Front fighter, who used to be stationed at al-Sahl front and Rima Farms in Qalamoun said, “some Hezbollah fighters looked like they were possessed.”

“I was with a brother during the fighting,” he explained. “Hezbollah fighters were facing us within our line of fire. We would shoot at them but they would not back down. We hit three of them but they continued to descend. Only a crazy person would do that. Their courage is not normal. I admit that.” However, his companion interjected and said “it is certain that they are using drugs, Captagon.” But how about accusations of drug use by his side? “Pills are forbidden by our Sharia,” he declared. The reply came from the original interviewee: “Their side also forbids pills. Even if they were your enemies do not underestimate them. I saw them with my two eyes.”

News of the recent confrontations in Qalamoun is the talk of the town in a Bekaa village, which became a refuge for a good number of fighters fleeing the confrontations. What is constant, by everyone’s account, is that most fighters fled from the battles with the Syrian army and Hezbollah, with the exception of al-Nusra and the [Salafist] Green Brigade. Fighters from the two al-Qaeda related organizations lasted a few days, before withdrawing from one village to another. Despite this, there are many who boast about “individual heroism,” which did not impact the course of the battle.

A fighter who was injured in al-Sahl battle and transferred to a hospital in Ersal explained that Hezbollah used “heavy firepower, which made the sky rain fire. They also depended on traitors among us.”

“There are many differences between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda members,” explained a young man from West Bekaa who fought inside Syria. “They are also more numerous and their weapons are more modern and more powerful. They have warplanes, tanks, Burkan rockets, and other types of rockets, which we know nothing about. They also have their uniforms and meals, which cost thousands of [US] dollars. On the other hand, al-Qaeda fighters need to borrow money and pay for their weapons and ammunition from their own pockets.”

The Syrian army is also in possession of advanced weaponry. Why is the situation different with Hezbollah? “The party’s creed is corrupt, of course. But the blind faith of its soldiers makes them bolder during the battles,” he answered quickly. Does he know anything about the party? “The party is takfiri and will not hesitate to slaughter every one of us.” But you are the ones doing the butchering “to get closer to God.” He replied: “We butcher to terrorise our enemy and they also butcher.”

The picture does not look different in the other camp. “Al-Qaeda is a paper monster, magnified by the media,” a Hezbollah fighter told Al-Akhbar. The thirtysomething fighter, who participated in the battles of al-Qusayr and Qalamoun against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Salafis, explained: “FSA members were amateurs. The Salafis were more vicious because of their ideology.” However, “they are unorganized and none of their fighters could withstand heavy fire, even if their hearts were made of stone.”

Another [Hezbollah] fighter in Qalamoun spoke about the “madness” of al-Qaeda fighters. “They attack by the dozens and get killed by the dozens, without interrupting their flow, until your finger gets tired from pulling the trigger,” he explained. But how did he recognize them as Islamists belonging to al-Qaeda? “From their long beards, shaved moustaches, and banner,” he replied. “They are only superior in their security operations, car bombs, and suicide bombers.”

A third member of Hezbollah spoke about “al-Qaeda’s mastery and its superiority in killing and brutality only in the areas they control. They have no chance in a direct confrontation with us.”

Some Hezbollah fighters do not see a difference between al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/Levant (ISIS). They believe “they are all takfiris and our battle with them is existential.” One fighter described “the unprecedented courage of some al-Qaeda fighters. They refused to surrender in a clash inside a hospital in Deir Atiya after we surrounded them…They kept fighting until they were all killed after one of them blew himself up on one of the hospital floors.”

Other Hezbollah fighters spoke about “individual acts of heroism by Islamist fighters. But ultimately, they do not fight as one.” Another explained: “There is no distribution of tasks or plans of attack or defense…Fighting for them is ‘hit-and-miss,’ although many are excellent in individual combat, due to the fighting experience they accumulated from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Chechnya.”

The clash between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda is a war that both sides are certain is a necessary evil. Despite acknowledging the adversary’s qualities, negative and positive, this will not change the fact they are both fighting an existential war. Each side is doing what it can to eliminate the other, but it is certain that al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are opposites and will never join each other.