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“The Chinese have penetrated every major corporation of any consequence in the United States and taken information,” he said. “We’ve never, ever not found Chinese malware.”
He said the malware lets Chinese spies extract information whenever they want. McConnell, who also led the NSA from 1992 until 1996, continues to investigate hacks as a high-ranking adviser to Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH).
He listed victims he has come across during his investigations: U.S. Congress, Department of Defense, State Department (which is currently dealing with Russian hackers) and major corporations.
The U.S. government has said it has caught Chinese spies stealing blueprints and business plans. Last year, federal prosecutors took the unprecedented step of filing formal criminal charges against five Chinese government spies for breaking into Alcoa (AA), U.S. Steel Corp. (X), Westinghouse and others.
A secret NSA map obtained exclusively by NBC News shows the Chinese government‘s massive cyber assault on all sectors of the U.S economy, including major firms like Google and Lockheed Martin, as well as the U.S. government and military.
The map uses red dots to mark more than 600 corporate, private or government “Victims of Chinese Cyber Espionage” that were attacked over a five-year period, with clusters in America’s industrial centers. The entire Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston is blanketed in red, as is California’s Silicon Valley, with other concentrations in Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, L.A. and Detroit. The highest number of attacks was in California, which had almost 50.
Each dot represents a successful Chinese attempt to steal corporate and military secrets and data about America’s critical infrastructure, particularly the electrical power and telecommunications and internet backbone. And the prizes that China pilfered during its “intrusions” included everything from specifications for hybrid cars to formulas for pharmaceutical products to details about U.S. military and civilian air traffic control systems, according to intelligence sources.
The map was part of an NSA briefing prepared by the NSA Threat Operations Center (NTOC) in February 2014, an intelligence source told NBC News. The briefing highlighted China’s interest in Google and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, and in air traffic control systems. It catalogued the documents and data Chinese government hackers have “exfiltrated” — stolen — from U.S. corporate, government and military networks, and also listed the number and origin of China’s “exploitations and attacks.”
The map suggests that NSA has been able to monitor and assess the Chinese cyber espionage operations, and knows which specific companies, government agencies and computer networks are being targeted.
The NSA did not immediately respond to repeated requests for comment.
Maybe we should be checking Hillary’s emails for several other items.
Ann Richards was the 45th Governor of Texas and the one who famously said at the 1988 Democratic Convention ” Poor George, he cant help it, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Well, Ann has a daughter, Cecile Richards who is the president of Planned Parenthood, which at the very moment I type this, the Planned Parenthood website is down for maintenance. Riiiiiight.
There is more:
A crisis management company called SKDKnickerbocker has been hired to begin the Planned Parenthood damage control mission. The managing director of SKDKnickerbocker is none other than Anita Dunn, of Mao Tse Tung fame.
Yes, there is more. Anita Dunn is married to Robert Bauer, Obama’s inside and personal White House lawyer.
So, for a summary fro Politico, but Politico DID leave out a few details, yet they are provided above. But hat-tip to Politico, they did include a few others.
The fetal-tissue scandal presents questions and opportunities for the Democratic front-runner.
Hillary Clinton is friends with Planned Parenthood’s president and took a rare pause from her duties as secretary of state to keynote a Planned Parenthood gala, while her family foundation has worked with the group to promote birth control.
So when Planned Parenthood found itself in the middle of a major scandal last week when anti-abortion activists released graphic undercover videos of executives discussing the alleged sale of aborted fetal tissue, Clinton’s support for the group was not so much a choice as a foregone conclusion — Planned Parenthood’s problem was Clinton’s problem, too.
Story Continued Below
“I have seen pictures from them and obviously find them disturbing,” Clinton said in an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader Tuesday, distancing herself from the content in the videos. But she was quick to reiterate her support for Planned Parenthood as an organization, saying, “Planned Parenthood for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services.”
And while Republicans seized on the scandal to attack Clinton — demanding that she return the group’s campaign contributions — some Democrats were quick to see some silver linings. A full-throated defense of Planned Parenthood helps shore up Clinton’s support among wavering liberals, while the GOP’s efforts to defund the family-planning group allow Clinton to make the case that her election would be a bulwark against efforts to roll back women’s rights.
“The first job is to become the nominee, and the best route is to speak to the ideological base,” explained Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “Their basic language is protecting choice and that is what Planned Parenthood symbolizes. Those who don’t agree are likely not voting for her anyway, and if she is the Democratic Party nominee, will not be voting for her in the fall of 2016.”
Indeed, when the scandal began to spread last week, Clinton was quick to put it in the context of years of attacks on an organization synonymous with support for abortion rights.
Planned Parenthood has been “the object of such a concerted attack for so many years, and it’s really an attack against a woman’s right to choose, to make the most personal difficult decisions that any woman would face,” Clinton said at a campaign appearance in South Carolina.
But Clinton’s relationship with Planned Parenthood goes beyond a shared belief in a woman’s right to choose. The group is interwoven with a network of women’s organizations that are among her strongest backers, and Planned Parenthood leaders and activists are among her personal friends, including President Cecile Richards.
When Clinton announced her candidacy for President last April, Richards tweeted that “there has never been a presidential candidate with as strong a commitment to women’s health & rights” and called the moment #Historic. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund noted in a news release at the time that Clinton had a 100 percent congressional scorecard every year she served in the Senate, during which the fund tracked 16 votes.
In an added sign of bonhomie between Clinton and the top Planned Parenthood executive, Richards’ daughter, former Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Lily Adams, signed up last spring with the Clinton campaign as Iowa press secretary, a high-profile portfolio for a campaign eager to shore up support in the important early state that rejected Clinton in 2008.
Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the group’s federal political action committee, gave $8,000 to Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, and $1,837 to her presidential committee in the 2008 cycle, records show. Many of Planned Parenthood’s PAC biggest donors are also longtime Clinton donors, some of whom supported the Ready For Hillary PAC as early as 2013, and have maxed out with $2,700 contributions to her primary campaign this year.
Longtime Democratic donor and proponent of women candidates Barbara Lee, for example, was one of the top 20 Planned Parenthood Action Committee donors in the 2012 cycle. She also donated $7,000 to Ready For Hillary in 2013. And other major Planned Parenthood donors like Susan Mandel, Democratic bundler Naomi Aberly and major Democratic donor Amber Mostyn, have all maxed-out for Clinton with $2,700 donations.
Clinton’s relationship with Planned Parenthood also extends to the Clinton Global Initiative. For the past two years Planned Parenthood has been a member of CGI and in 2012 committed to train “youth peer providers” in Latin America, Africa and the U.S. on ways to promote birth control.
Additionally, Planned Parenthood will sponsor two global youth fellowship programs and create a national youth organizing strategy to help push for increased investment in access to reproductive health care, according to CGI’s website. Planned Parenthood does not contribute money to CGI, according to sources familiar with the organizations.
Clinton and Planned Parenthood also share consultants and allies.
Planned Parenthood has enlisted Democratic consultant SKDKnickerbocker’s Hilary Rosen, another close Clinton ally, to help with the current public relations crisis. And Planned Parenthood Action Fund hired Democratic pollster Geoff Garin — who is also the pollster on the Clinton super PAC Priorities USA and served as a chief strategist of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign — to conduct a poll about attitudes toward the organization.
Emily’s List, which has been leading the movement to stand with Planned Parenthood, raising money off the most recent defunding threats while collecting 22,000 signatures from its members standing with Planned Parenthood, is a major backer of Clinton’s campaign. It’s president, Stephanie Schriock, was a short-lister for Clinton’s campaign manager.
“Planned Parenthood is something that women and families rely on all over the country,” said Emily’s List spokeswoman Jess McIntosh. “Hillary has such a strong record of understanding the realities of women that of course she understands that, too.”
Some of Clinton’s Republican rivals are eager to tar her with the most recent scandal.
“Hillary Clinton in particular should be made to answer if she is proud to have received such enthusiastic support from Planned Parenthood while they are under investigation for multiple felonies,” Sen. Ted Cruz told POLITICO Wednesday in the Capitol. “I think Hillary Clinton should be made to answer if she supports an organization that buys and sells the body parts of unborn children in direct violation of federal law. [She] ought to be asked: Do you share those values? Does that reflect the core values of your campaign?”
At an anti-abortion rally earlier in the week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another 2016 GOP hopeful, called on Clinton to refund Planned Parenthood contributions.
“Hillary Clinton’s hands are stained by accepting this money,” Paul said. “She needs to immediately return every red cent she has received from Planned Parenthood employees.”
Cruz and Paul’s attacks on Clinton may be aimed at rallying support among the Republican base, but they are also what many Democratic strategists said they are hoping for — that Republicans will get mired in fighting Clinton on social issues, rather than fiscal or economic issues.
“Both Democrats and independents overwhelmingly support continued support for Planned Parenthood, and women voters in particular look at Planned Parenthood as a trusted source of health care,” said Garin, who conducted a recent poll on the issue for Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “In political terms, it’s very clear that Hillary Clinton is on the right side of public opinion. The Republicans who have a mania against Planned Parenthood are digging a deep hole for themselves with general election voters.”
A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment. <— Maybe they are too busy working on their broken/downed website.
Data in Clinton’s ‘secret’ emails came from 5 intelligence agencies
WASHINGTON
The classified emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contained information from five U.S. intelligence agencies and included material related to the fatal 2012 Benghazi attacks, McClatchy has learned.
Of the five classified emails, the one known to be connected to Benghazi was among 296 emails made public in May by the State Department. Intelligence community officials have determined it was improperly released.
Revelations about the emails have put Clinton in the crosshairs of a broadening inquiry into whether she or her aides mishandled classified information when she used a private server set up at her New York home to conduct official State Department business.
While campaigning for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has repeatedly denied she ever sent or received classified information. Two inspectors general have indicated that five emails they have reviewed were not marked classified at the time they were stored on her private server but that the contents were in fact “secret.”
The email issue, however, has distracted from Clinton’s campaign for days and already has hurt her in public opinion polls. Besieged with questions, she has found herself caught in a murky dispute between State Department and intelligence officials over whether emails on her server were classified.
“Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails . . . is not supposed to be allowed,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters. “Both she and her team made a serious management mistake that no one should ever repeat.”
The facts are pretty clear. I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time. Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop Saturday in Iowa
McClatchy also has determined some details of the five emails that the intelligence community’s inspector general has described as classified and improperly handled.
Intelligence officials who reviewed the five classified emails determined that they included information from five separate intelligence agencies, said a congressional official with knowledge of the matter.
The intelligence community inspector general only looked at a sample of 40 emails, even though a total of 30,000 emails were turned over to the State Department by Clinton.
Failure to observe any of the requirements for marking or safeguarding (classified information) would be in a category known as a security violation. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives
Clinton’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Clinton has maintained she used a personal email account as a “matter of convenience” and has denied she emailed any classified material.
“The facts are pretty clear,” Clinton said at a campaign stop Saturday in Iowa. “I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time.”
Clinton said she had “no idea” which emails the inspector general had singled out.
The State Department so far has refused to grant the intelligence community inspector general access to the entire batch of emails on jurisdictional grounds. The inspector general has authority to audit and investigate matters related to 17 intelligence community agencies, including a State Department intelligence unit.
On June 25, McCullough notified members of Congress that he understood that Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, possessed the more than 30,000 Clinton emails on a computer thumb drive.
In a July 24 letter to FBI Director James Comey, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa expressed concern about “a compromise of national security information” because of Kendall’s possession of the thumb drive. He called on Comey to explain what steps the FBI had taken to secure the information.
Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails . . . is not supposed to be allowed. Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters
“This raises very serious questions and concerns if a private citizen is somehow retaining classified information,” wrote Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Kendall did not respond to phone and email messages. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to say whether security officials had recovered the device or had arranged for its secure storage.
EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE
John Fitzpatrick, the official responsible for overseeing the government’s security classification system, told McClatchy that during the review of four years of Clinton’s State Department emails it became clear that intelligence agencies were concerned State Department officials were not appropriately protecting classified information in screening documents for public release.
State Department officials routinely gather and report diplomatic information that “in an intelligence context could be read very differently,” said Fitzpatrick, the director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives.
Government employees with access to classified information are trained to identify classified information, Fitzpatrick said.
“The requirement to mark is so that you know it when you see it,” he said. “Failure to observe any of the requirements for marking or safeguarding would be in a category known as a security violation.”
Failing to properly mark information as classified would not necessarily result in criminal charges, he said.
“But there can be consequences for holders of security clearances,” Fitzpatrick said. “If they fail to safeguard the information, once or as part of a pattern, they can be administratively reprimanded” or retrained.
EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE
According to a congressional official, the classified emails contained information from the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA.
Secretary of State John Kerry and State Department Inspector General Steve Linick will meet this week to talk about the issue, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Wednesday.
“Secretary Kerry wants to get to the bottom of this, hear what the concerns are and then figure out if they need to take any action,” Schultz said. “So, I think that’s the right step and we support him doing so.”
The White House has not said that Clinton did not follow rules, but it has repeatedly said that “very specific guidance has been given to agencies all across the government, which is specifically that employees in the Obama administration should use their official email accounts when they’re conducting official government business.”
The House Select Committee on Benghazi subpoenaed the emails while asking Clinton to voluntarily turn over her personal email server to a “neutral, detached and independent” third party for “immediate inspection and review,” perhaps the State Department’s inspector general.
Clinton’s attorney told the committee that Clinton permanently deleted all the emails from the server – apparently after she was asked by the State Department to turn them over. Clinton has refused to hand over the server.
The State Department has begun to release her emails in response to a public records lawsuit, though four of the emails containing classified information were among those that have not yet been released. The next batch is due to be released Friday. Clinton has agreed to testify about her email arrangements on Oct. 22 before the committee investigating Benghazi.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article29519419.html#storylink=cpy
While Texas Governor, Greg Abbott has issued 3 subpoenas to abortion facilities in his home state, the Attorney General for California, Kamala Harris has sought a restraining order to keep further videos from being released.
The depravity and evil has been revealed that festers inside Planned Parenthood.
FNC: Call it ‘research,’ not ‘business,’ Planned Parenthood doc says in latest sting video
A Colorado Planned Parenthood doctor stresses calling the harvesting of fetal tissue “research” and not “business” — and casually pokes around in a petri dish of aborted remains as a colleague exclaims, “Another boy!” — in the latest video released Thursday by an activist group whose hidden camera stings have imperiled the embattled nonprofit’s taxpayer funding.
The video’s release by the Center for Medical Progress comes a day after CMP was issued a restraining order preventing it from issuing any new footage of a group that worked with Planned Parenthood, StemExpress. But Thursday’s material focuses almost entirely on a woman identified as Dr. Savita Ginde, the vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
“A lot of times, especially with the second [trimester fetuses], we won’t even put water, because it’s so big you can put your hand in there and pick out the parts.”
Ginde is shown for the majority of the edited video having a discussion about whether to frame tissue procurement as research or business with the undercover activists, whom she believes to be from a procurement company. It is against federal law to sell fetal body parts for profit.
“Putting it under the research gives us a little bit of a, a little sort of overhang over the whole thing,” Ginde said. “Yeah, and in public I think it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein than I’d say the business vein.”
Ginde says in the video that it’s important for all Planned Parenthood affiliates to be on the same page about the issue, particularly those affiliates who may be in states where prevailing public opinion goes against abortion.
“Because if you have someone in a really anti-state that’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught,” she said.
During the conversation, Ginde is asked if she ever gets intact specimens.
“Sometimes, if we get, if someone delivers before we get to see them for a procedure, then we are intact,” she said.
CMP alleges that, since this particular Planned Parenthood affiliate does not use feticides in its second-trimester procedures, any intact deliveries prior to an abortion “are potentially born-alive infants under federal law.”
Near the end of the more than 11-minute video, Ginde digs through the remains of an 11-week-old fetus in a petri dish, showing different body parts to the undercover activist.
At one point, a sound identified as a skull cracking is heard. Later, someone in the room asks questions such as “Do they want brain?” and “Do people do stuff with eyeballs?” The activist laments that using water in the petri dish has caused some of the tissue to come apart.
“Well you know, a lot of times, especially with the second [trimester fetuses], we won’t even put water, because it’s so big you can put your hand in there and pick out the parts,” Ginde says. “So I don’t think it would be as war-torn.”
As Ginde looks over the fetal tissue she says, “It’s a baby.”
The last quote in the video comes from a medical assistant, joyfully proclaiming “And another boy!” when she realizes the sex of the fetus they are dissecting.
The video is the fourth to be released by CMP. Like the first three, it contains undercover video of Planned Parenthood officials and associates.
Previous videos show Dr. Mary Gatter, a Planned Parenthood medical director in Southern California, meeting with people posing as buyers of fetal specimens. The conversation focuses on how much money the buyers should pay, although Planned Parenthood insists that it only sought to cover its expenses. The videos have brought investigations of Planned Parenthood’s policies on aborted fetuses by three Republican-led congressional committees and three states.
Federal law prohibits the commercial sale of fetal tissue, but it allows the not-for-profit donation of tissue if the women who underwent abortions give their consent. Planned Parenthood says the payments discussed in the videos pertain to reimbursement for the costs of procuring the tissue — which is legal.
The lobby group behind this social media promotion that the White House and the State Department is Global Zero. Enlisting in the propaganda army are Jack Black, Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas among others. Further if Thomas Pickering and Valerie Plame are also public relations soldiers, you know it is a bad deal as Pickering is the master of the Iran lobby. What would anyone in Hollywood know about the facts of the deal? It is suggested, nothing and worse they should be challenged if they even read the 160 pages of the JPOA.
Several dozen people gathered around a giant inflatable missile on the White House lawn Saturday morning to protest anticipated spending of $1 trillion to upgrade the U’S. nuclear arsenal. Matt Brown, co-founder of the organizer, Global Zero, spoke to RCP reporter James Arkin. The White House lawn video is here.
MATT BROWN, GLOBAL ZERO: Six years ago President Obama promised to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, and now he is about to launch a major overhaul of our nuclear arsenal that will cost us, the American taxpayers over one trillion dollars over the next three decades. And we’re saying, you’ve got to drop this plan, get back to the work of eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide. We can’t afford this, it is unnecessary, and these weapons don’t even address the threats we face today.
I interviewed Clare Lopez on June 24th about the recently signed #IranDeal. That podcast is here.
Across the Atlantic, the “special relationship” meant the American-British alliance, the core of the alliance that defeated Hitler in a hot war and the Soviet Union in a cold one.
But now the “special relationship” is between Iran and North Korea, the two nations which prove daily that the “axis of evil” idea wasn’t just another poor choice of words by George W. Bush.
In late July, a cargo ship carrying North Korean weapons bound for Iran was seized by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The seizure was the first since the United Nations Security Council stiffened a tough arms embargo against North Korea in the wake of its second nuclear test in May. The UNSC sanctions authorize ship searches on the high seas and complement sanctions already in place against Iran that are intended to curb its nuclear weapons development program.
There are a number of things wrong with this picture. The most obvious problem is the open working arrangement between Iran and North Korea to develop deliverable nuclear weapons. Both countries have made it abundantly clear that they hold Iran’s obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and UNSC resolutions aimed at curbing North Korea’s proliferation activities in about the same regard as they do the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
North Korea was caught building a nuclear reactor in Syria (destroyed by the Israelis in September 2007) and defector reports recently made public allege Pyongyang is also helping Myanmar to build a nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction plant. It was specifically to authorize interdiction of North Korean shipments of nuclear-related material to this rogues gallery of global pariah states that the UNSC passed Resolution 1874 on June 12, banning all arms exports from North Korea. Likely not the first or the last North Korean ship to challenge the new measures, the Australian-owned, Bahamian-flagged cargo ship, the ANL Australia, that was seized in the UAE was nevertheless the one that made headlines.
The 10 containers of rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition, and other prohibited items disguised as oil equipment found on board had been ordered by the Tehran-based Tadbir Sanaat Sharif Technology Development Center (TSS). TSS is a subsidiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and both of them plus the South African company, Icarus Marine (Pty) Ltd., were named in a U.S. Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security Temporary Denial Order (TDO) on 14 April 2009.
At that time, the TDO was imposed because IRISL and TSS were about to take delivery of a Bladerunner S1 powerboat, the “Bradstone Challenger,” for intended use by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The Bradstone Challenger caught the Commerce Department’s attention not only because it features U.S.-origin engines and other components, but because it is a highly-capable fast attack craft that the IRGC arms with torpedoes, rocket launchers, and anti-ship missiles and sends out in swarms to harass U.S. ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz.
The original TDO carried an expiration date of 22 July 2009. The ANL Australia reportedly was seized at the end of July. Even though the entire IRGC, IRISL and its naval fleets are listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as Specially Designated Nationals to which unlicensed export or re-export of prohibited items is a violation of U.S. Export Administration Regulations, somehow it doesn’t come as any real shock that regimes evil enough to rape young girls before execution and use political prisoner populations to test biological weapons agents just might choose to disregard such niceties — or wait for their expiration date.
This is where the picture really begins to not make much sense. The UAE, and especially Dubai, is a known hub for the transshipment of all manner of goods, legitimate and not, including weapons and Afghan heroin, into and out of Iran. The large Iranian expatriate community in the UAE supports the tight economic relationship with the IRGC-dominated mullahs’ regime in Tehran. But at a time when the international spotlight is focused more than ever on North Korean ships heading for the Middle East, it seems odd that Iran would be giving a green light to a weapons cargo like this. It also begs the question why the weapons discovered on the one ship to have been turned in by the UAE (thus far) are so mundane. Kudos to the UAE for this demonstration of support for the UNSC sanctions, but is a batch of RPGs really the worst cargo putting in to Abu Dhabi these days?
It gets worse. On August 19, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson played host to two North Korean diplomats from Pyongyang’s U.N. mission. Gurgling happily about a possible “thaw” in relations, Gov. Richardson told reporters afterward that North Korea is ready to engage in a dialogue with the U.S. (again).
This upbeat announcement comes shortly on the heels of former President Bill Clinton’s 4 August visit to North Korea, where he obtained the release of two American journalists held by Kim Jong Il’s regime after they had ‘strayed’ into North Korean territory. Gov. Richardson hinted helpfully that the North Koreans obviously feel entitled to some kind of reward for having let the two reporters go free. Myanmar’s military junta might be looking for some quid pro quo of its own after permitting yet another wayward American to leave that country on August 16 in the company of visiting U.S. Senator Jim Webb, who’d negotiated his release.
John William Yetlaw is the swimmer who violated the house arrest restrictions on Myanmar’s most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi. Webb, too, burbled cheerily to reporters, telling them about the atmosphere of goodwill and trust that is building with the genocidal generals of Rangoon.
The capstone episode of the summer was the 21 August release of Pakistan’s father of the Islamic bomb, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, from all restrictions on his movement. The nuclear scientist whose black market proliferation activities spanned the globe and gave Iran and Libya the foundations of their nuclear weapons programs, A.Q. Khan will now be free to resume his busy career on behalf of a country beset with a jihadist threat both from within and without.
The Obama administration must surely have known about the seized North Korean ship and its weapons cargo before granting the special approvals required for the North Korean diplomats to travel from New York to Santa Fe. It probably knew about it even before President Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang. Whether the White House or Intelligence Community had any advance knowledge about AQ Khan’s impending release is not publicly known.
If there is any connection between these various events, it is not immediately apparent what it is. But what is both obvious and worrisome is that this administration lacks a strategic framework of principles and objectives for dealing with a very real and very active axis of evil that means harm to U.S. national security.
As the renowned Purdue University law professor, Louis Rene Beres, likes to say, “International law is not a suicide pact.” If North Korea and Pakistan are permitted to continue aiding and abetting Iran, Myanmar, Syria, and who knows who else to “go nuclear,” American strategic doctrine will have to scramble to persuade anyone that the U.S. retains truly persuasive military power and the will to use it.
Given the events of August 2009 and the alliances both obvious and concealed (such as Iran’s long-standing relationship with al-Qa’eda) that are moving inexorably to acquisition of catastrophic offensive power, a U.S. policy that incapacitates our intelligence capabilities, abandons our missile defense shield, makes nuclear Global Zero a national priority, and pleads piteously for reciprocity from the thugs of the world, exposes us all to Armageddon.
