Category Archives: Veterans

Notice the VA is Running Silent on Failures?

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Leaked Document: 35,000 Combat Vets Denied VA Health Care Enrollment Due To Computer Error

Nearly all are Iraq or Afghanistan War vets.

White House and congressional reporter, The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — More than 35,000 combat veterans are being denied health care enrollment by the Department of Veterans Affairs because of a computer system error, according to an internal document obtained by The Huffington Post.

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Page 2 and 3 here.

Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA’s Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta and a past whistleblower on VA mismanagement, provided HuffPost with a recent VA analysis of the number of combat vets, by city, who are listed as “pending” for health care enrollment because they didn’t complete a so-called means test, which assesses their household income. Many vets have to submit a means test to be enrolled, but it’s not required for combat vets, who are automatically eligible for five years of free care. The policy is spelled out on the VA’s website.

The document shows that 35,093 combat vets who applied for health care aren’t getting it because the VA system has erroneously flagged them as needing to submit a means test. However, there are places that try their best to help combat vets who require help with healthcare as well as finances through va debt management, despite their problems.

“The VA has created an illegal, artificial barrier for people to access care,” Davis said. “We’re not talking about people who didn’t get care because they didn’t want it. We’re talking about people who turned in applications and VA said, ‘No, go into a backlog because you didn’t give us financial information.'”

Combat Change Request document is here.

VA spokeswoman Walinda West confirmed that combat vets aren’t required to provide financial information to be enrolled in health care.

“VA is actively taking action to enroll and further reach out to these Veterans (by telephone and letters) due to the length of time some of these applications have been pending,” West said.

The vast majority of these combat vets served in Iraq or Afghanistan. About 16,000 of them have been pending for more than five years, while about 19,000 have been pending from between one month and five years. Combat vets lose their eligibility for free health care after five years.

The document comes on the heels of another leaked VA document from April showing that nearly one-third of 847,000 vets with pending applications for health care had already died.

Davis contacted the House and Senate veterans affairs committees about the glitch. The House committee reached out to VA officials on Aug. 3 asking for details, but hasn’t heard back yet. A spokeswoman for the Senate committee said committee staff are scheduled to meet with VA officials at the Health Eligibility Center this week and plan to press for information on this issue.

VA management has known about the problem since at least April. Last month, they issued a “change request” directing their systems management staff to create a computer script to “automatically complete a means test” for all pending combat vets.

VA staffers also started working overtime last month to call all 35,000 combat vets to let them know of their pending health care status.

The problem, though, is that nothing has happened since the change request was issued. On top of that, VA staffers are telling combat vets they have to fill out another form agreeing to co-pays before they can be enrolled — even though they already agreed to co-pays in their original application. That’s creating another barrier to enrollment for a group of vets who should never have been listed as pending in the first place.

Here’s the phone script staffers have been using at the Health Eligibility Center:

Davis said there’s a simple solution: go into the computer system, gather the Social Security numbers of combat vets listed as pending, and tell the system they are enrolled immediately. He said VA Secretary Bob McDonald has the authority to direct that change, and arguably a duty to do so since combat vets have been legally entitled to special health care eligibility status since January 2008.

Asked why McDonald hasn’t taken this action, West said the secretary “does not have the legal authority” to automatically enroll vets in health care. But she didn’t clarify whether, specifically, he has the authority to override the VA computer system error that says combat vets need to fill out a means test, which is keeping them from being enrolled.

“We are taking steps to contact and/or enroll these applicants as quickly as possible to ensure all appropriate action is taken and resolved to the satisfaction of those Veterans for whom we are honored to serve,” West said. “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused our Veterans. We are working to get this right.”

HuffPost asked McDonald himself about the problem on Thursday, via a tweet read aloud at a Politico event, but he didn’t address it. Instead, he announced his phone number and said to call him directly.

“I’d be happy to check out their particular instance,” McDonald said to Politico’s Mike Allen, in response to the tweet. “I like to deal with specifics and not generalities. Customer service is about one-on-one care. … You have my phone number.”

HuffPost called and left a message. He didn’t return the call.

This story has been updated with comments from a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee spokeswoman.

SHE is the ISIS Recruiter Deployed by Russia?

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Isis launches Russian-language propaganda channel

Islamic State’s social media and video efforts have stepped up, part of a region-wide effort to sign up youths to fight take up the black flag. RFE/RL reports

The Guardian: The militant group Islamic State has stepped up its Russian-language propaganda efforts, another sign it is becoming more powerful in the post-Soviet countries.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said recently that 2,000 Russian nationals are currently fighting in Syria or Iraq. In June, the country’s security council chief, Nikolai Patrushev, said that there was “no possibility” of stemming the tide of fighters.

Though Russian-speaking Islamic State (Isis) militants have put out their own messages for some time, in recent weeks a new Russian-language wing, Furat Media, has emerged, with Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts broadcasting under a river-themed logo.

It was through Furat that the militant group declared the establishment of a province in the North Caucasus, inside the Russian Federation itself. The propaganda wing also issued a professionally produced video, Unity Of The Mujahideen Of The Caucasus, which included interviews with Russian-speaking militants in Iraq and Syria. Dozens more are available for download from the site.  Read more here.

 

Main Russian IS Recruiter ‘Identified In Turkey,’ But Who Is One-Legged Akhmet?

Radio Free Europe: Russia’s security services claim to have established the identity of the main recruiter of Russian nationals to the Islamic State (IS) militant group, according to the Russian tabloid Life News, which has close ties to the country’s security services.

The man in question is a 30-year-old Chechen nicknamed One-Legged Akhmet, Life News reported on August 4.

Among those purportedly recruited by One-Legged Akhmet and his
Among those purportedly recruited by One-Legged Akhmet and his “team” are Russian student Varvara Karaulova (above) and Maryam Ismailova. Karaulova was detained in Turkey and returned to Russia, where prosecutors did not press charges; Ismailova remains at large.

However, details in the Life News report and in a subsequent August 7 report by the Caucasian Knot blog suggest that the individual in question could be an ethnic Chechen who has previously appeared alongside Russian-speaking IS militants in a video shot in IS-controlled territory.

According to the Life News report, two of One-Legged Akhmet’s subordinates — Yakub Ibragimov, 23, from Chechnya and Abdulla Abdulayev from Makhachkala in Daghestan (aka The Uzbek) — have already been detained in Turkey.

But One-Legged Akhmet remains at large.

The report did not give a name for One-Legged Akhmet or say where in Chechyna he is from, saying that his name has not been released because security forces from Russia and Turkey are seeking him.

However, the report did provide information about his alleged activities.

One-Legged Akhmet was responsible for recruiting Russian citizens from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the North Caucasus and facilitating their travel from Turkey into Syria, according to Life News.

Among those purportedly recruited by One-Legged Akhmet and his “team” are Russian student Varvara Karaulova and Maryam Ismailova. Karaulova was detained in Turkey and returned to Russia, where prosecutors did not press charges; Ismailova remains at large.

Life News quoted an anonymous member of Russia’s law-enforcement authorities who said that Turkish and Russian police had “established IS recruitment and delivery channels for Russians.”

“Under their scheme, people are first recruited over the Internet, after which they are met in Istanbul. Then, One-Legged Akhmet and his subordinates produced fake documents in a few days and transported [the recruits] across the Turkey-Syria border,” the source was quoted as saying.

Discrepancies?

On July 28, Turkish and Azerbaijani media reported that the authorities in Turkey had arrested three men who were accused of being members of IS. According to these reports, one of the men was named Abdullah Abdulayev and had introduced himself as IS’s Emir of Istanbul.

It is not clear whether the Abdulla Abdulayev, referred to as an Azerbaijani in the Turkish media reports, is the same individual that Life News has identified as being from Daghestan.

One-Armed Akhmed

While details of One-Legged Akhmet remain murky, the alleged suspect’s name is very reminiscent of that of another notorious IS militant from Chechnya.

Akhmed Chatayev, also known as Akhmed Shishani or One-Armed Akhmed, emerged in Syria in late 2014 or early 2015 alongside leading figures in IS’s North Caucasian contingent.

Chatayev was previously granted refugee status in Austria. He was arrested by Georgian forces in 2012 in connection with the Lopota Gorge incident, in which an armed group clashed with Georgian special forces. Chatayev was later released after a court found him innocent. (His lawyers say he lost his arm as a result of torture by Russian security forces, while Russia says he was disabled while fighting in Chechnya.)

An anonymous member of the Caucasian diaspora in Turkey told the Caucasian Knot news website on August 7 that the leader of the Istanbul cell was a Chechen who had been involved in the 2012 Lopota Gorge incident and had lost a leg. However, the source also said that the armed group had been attempting to travel to Syria, which is a theory that has not been advanced previously.

There has also been no official notification from the Turkish government about the detention of a Russian citizen, a Russian consular representative in Ankara told the Caucasian Knot.

Regardless of whether Chatayev is the shadowy individual suggested by Life News, given his links in Europe and the North Caucasus and his associations with senior Russian-speaking IS figures in Syria and Iraq, it is likely that he is involved in recruitment for IS. Certainly, Abu Jihad, the ethnic Karachai with whom Chatayev appears in a video shared by IS earlier this year, is involved in IS recruitment via his work heading IS’s Russian-language propaganda outlet, Furat Media.

It is unknown whether Chatayev is still in Syria — he has not appeared in IS videos for some months — or whether he is in Turkey.

Benghazi Attacker Pleads to Go Home, Will Obama Approve?

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The Benghazi suspect and leader of Ansar al Sharia, the group that attacked the two U.S. posts in Benghazi pleaded not guilty in October of 2014. Abu Khatallah’s lawyer, Michelle Peterson is a public defender located in Washington DC whose client list appears to be full of illegals and foreigners.

Khatallah filed his 24 page motion to the U.S. District Court on August 3, 2015 to return to Libya.

Benghazi defendant asks U.S. judge to send him back to Libya

HamptonRoads: The accused ringleader of the 2012 attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA base in Benghazi, Libya, has asked a federal judge to dismiss terrorism charges against him and send him home.

In court papers filed Monday, lawyers for militia leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah claim U.S. military and Justice Department officials came up with an illegal ruse to secretly interrogate him for days on a Navy warship after he was captured by U.S. special forces in Libya in June 2014.

The lawyers contend Khatallah should have been flown to Washington, normally a 13-hour plane ride, to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Instead, they say, he was held aboard the New York, an amphibious transport dock, for 13 days where he was interrogated by CIA and counterterrorism officials before he was advised of his legal rights and turned over to a separate team of FBI agents investigating the Benghazi attack.

The court papers say President Barack Obama and other administration officials approved the lengthy sea transfer from Libya, even though it “deliberately and outrageously” violated federal law.

Libyan and U.S. officials have described Khatallah as the Benghazi leader of Ansar al-Sharia, which the State Department considers a terrorist organization. In an 18-count indictment, authorities say he devised and helped carry out armed attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi during the night of Sept. 11, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty.

The U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and a foreign service officer, Sean Smith, died during the raid on the U.S. diplomatic compound. Two contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed in a subsequent armed attack on a CIA facility about a mile away.

In the court filings, defense lawyers urged U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper to return Khatallah to Libya, which they said opposed his transfer to the United States. They said he was charged in a sealed criminal complaint on July 15, 2013, but not seized by U.S. authorities until a year later.

“In the interim,” they said, “the government conceived and executed a deliberate plan to capture Mr. Abu Khatallah and transport him to the United States in a manner intended to facilitate the government’s prosecution while violating not only Mr. Abu Khatallah’s fundamental rights, but also domestic and international law.”

Defense lawyers said U.S. government agencies, including Justice, Defense and the CIA, had developed the arrest and transfer plan. “Thus, the violations of law at issue here were not committed by a few rogue agents of the government, but by the executive branch as a whole,” they wrote.

They said Khatallah was transferred by ship “in order to allow investigators the maximum amount of time to question him.”

They said the New York sailed “at the slowest possible speed in order to extend the time within which the investigators could interrogate him without a lawyer.”

And they said he was not turned over to the FBI and read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination until five days after he was put aboard.

Government prosecutors have not yet responded to the defense allegations.

Inside the Iran Deal, Killers Go Free

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Breitbart: The Iranian regime has filed a complaint with the International Atomic Energy Agency, alleging that the United States has already broken the Iran deal.

The complaint cites remarks by White House press secretary Josh Earnest about the possible use of military force in the long run, and the use of nuclear inspections to gain intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities in the meantime. These are frequent talking points that the White House uses to reassure legislators like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Iran calls them a “material breach” of the nuclear deal itself.

According to the text of the Iran deal itself (page 20), any of the parties can treat “significant nonperformance” of the agreement “as grounds
to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA.” More here.

Then, the Washington Times notes that Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has come out early in full support of the Iran deal. One wonders if she has read the whole document much less the annex agreements.

The real terrifying part of the agreement

Forgotten flaw in Iran nuclear deal: It lets killers go free

Reuters: President Barack Obama has in good faith negotiated an agreement with Iran that would end a broad range of economic sanctions on Iran, in return for Iran’s promise to scale back its efforts to build a nuclear bomb. I believe that Congress’s support of the agreement would be a very serious mistake.

I find persuasive the arguments of many analysts that the proposal fails because it lifts sanctions before Iran has over time proven that it is committed to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

Perhaps even more importantly, I oppose the agreement because it does not require Iran to stop its funding of Hezbollah and other extremist hoodlums around the world.

But more fundamentally, I oppose the proposal because, while addressing strategic issues, the deal ignores a moral issue, among the most profound of our time.

Put simply: Iran sponsors terrorism. I am convinced I could prove that proposition in a court of law, and indeed some Americans have done so. Survivors of terrorist attacks have sued the Iranian government in American courts, and won significant judgments.

But the Iranian government has refused to pay those judgments, and the proposed agreement does nothing to challenge that intransigence. In fact, the agreement would release up to 150 billion dollars of frozen assets to Iran, without requiring that a dime go to paying off the survivors of Iran-sponsored terror.

I understand that sometimes strategic interests require us to negotiate with enemies; and I do not underestimate the imminence of Iran’s development of a nuclear bomb capability. And as a veteran of war, I favor peace, when peaceful means can be found to deter aggression.

But the world has within its grasp those peaceful means, in international sanctions, and those sanctions should be strengthened, not abandoned, so long as Iran sponsors terror against civilian populations and foments unrest among its neighbors. Some of those individuals and entities who will be removed from the sanctions list are associated with terrorism in addition to nuclear proliferation.

I have had the good fortune to have lived through a good deal of history, enough to know that history most often favors principled actions over short-term pragmatism.

One of the most significant regimens of international sanctions ever imposed was the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. In response to a humanitarian crisis in South Africa, that law imposed economic sanctions against South Africa, sanctions would not be lifted until South Africa met specified conditions, granting basic human rights to its own people.

When President Ronald Reagan vetoed that bill, Nobel Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu predicted that the veto would be “judged harshly by history.” Congress overrode the President’s veto, kept the sanctions in place – and five years later, minority white rule ended.

Historians still debate the role that those sanctions played in ending apartheid. But I don’t think anyone can doubt that Congress would be “judged harshly by history” had it given up, or had it agreed to end sanctions in return for a mere temporary suspension of apartheid rule. Congress met the most important moral issue of its time the way moral issues must be met – with principle.

And so must Congress act today in the face of Iranian terror and aggression.

The proposed agreement contains a very long list of individuals and institutions – previously identified as supporting attacks against the West or Iran’s nuclear bomb project – whose names are on international sanctions lists but who, should the agreement be approved, will soon be off. The roll call should make anyone shudder.

For example, among those who would be freed from European sanctions is Ahmad Vahidi, the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard and a suspect in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people died in that bombing, and hundreds were injured, making it the deadliest bombing in the history of Argentina.

No one has ever been held accountable for those murdered, a denial of justice that led human rights leaders, among them Pope Francis, to sign a petition in protest. Justice moved slowly, but in 2007, the Argentine judicial authorities identified Ahmad Vahidi as one of those responsible for the bombing, INTERPOL listed him as wanted for “aggravated murder.” Incredibly, part of the deal with Iran would remove him from Europe’s sanctions list, before he ever faces the bar of justice.

Peruse the agreement some more, and you will find the name of Javad Al Yasin, the head of something called the “Research Centre for Explosion and Impact.” Al Yasin was on the sanctions list for his work in developing Iran’s nuclear bomb. Not only does the Iranian agreement take Al Yasin off the sanctions list, it even removes sanctions from the Research Centre for Explosion and Impact.

International sanctions against Iran were effective because they created an economic incentive for Iran to come to the bargaining table. But they were effective as well because they prevented funds from reaching named militants and organizations sponsoring attacks against the West. It would be a mistake of historic proportions to remove the sanctions without evidence that Iran has ceased its sponsorship of such attacks, and without a permanent end to their ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

And so, our negotiators must insist on an agreement in which Tehran agrees to permanent, not temporary, limitations on its abilities to prepare weapons-grade fissionable materials and ballistic missiles.

The sanctions must remain in place until Tehran renounces terrorism, stops funding Hezbollah, and honors judgments awarding compensation to those whose loved ones have been killed in past attacks.

Can we get such a deal? In urging the nation to support the end of sanctions, the president has said that the deal he presented to Congress is the best one that could be negotiated. Others disagree. But whoever is right, one thing is certain: no agreement is worth supporting if it undermines the most basic principles that must govern relations among civilized nations.

Shortly before his death, President John Kennedy delivered a speech in which he told Americans of the peace he hoped to bring to the world. He called it “genuine peace … not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time.”

The proposed Iran agreement does just the opposite: faced with an international crisis, it just kicks the can down the road. It provides for temporary restrictions on nuclear aggression, while largely ignoring the broader threats of militant attacks and proxy war.

It asks the next generation to solve a problem that this generation refused to address squarely.

We owe it to our progeny to leave a record not of avoidance but of principled action. Congress should reject the proposed agreement.

 

Details on Obama Closing Gitmo

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In the matter of closing Guantanamo and normalizing relations, 18 months of covert meetings and confabs took place and the White House even included the Vatican.

FSM: There are currently 116 detainees at the facility, and under the new plan some of them would be moved to the U.S.

Monaco said the plan was to transport the 52 detainees deemed eligible for transfer to countries with appropriate security arrangements.

According to Monaco, those who are deemed “too dangerous to release” would be subject to periodic review boards for transfer eligibility. In 10 instances, 13 review boards have already resulted in individuals being moved to the so-called “transfer bucket.”

“So we are going to whittle down this group to what I refer to as the ‘irreducible minimum’ who would have to be brought here,” Monaco said.

“That group, who either can’t be prosecuted, or are too dangerous to release, we are going to continue to evaluate their status.”

Under the law of war, Monaco said, those remaining after review would be transferred to U.S. military prisons or supermax security prisons, and be subjected either to prosecution in military commissions or Article III courts.

Given that Obama and the Department of Justice can exploit law and influence judges, the White House has discretion on who gets released…..

In part from DefenseOne: Standing before a Cuban flag newly returned to official Washington, Rodriguez thanked the Obama administration but repeated the Cuban government’s list of unresolved grievances. “The lifting of the blockade, return of the illegally occupied territory of Guantanamo, full respect for Cuban sovereignty and compensation of our people … are crucial to being able to move forward,” he said.

But Kerry said later, “At this time there is no discussion and intention on our part at this moment to alter the existing lease treaty or other arrangements with respect to the naval station in Cuba.”

“We understand Cuba has strong feelings about it,” he said, continuing, “I can’t tell you what the future will bring.”

Cuban President Raul Castro has demanded the U.S. return Guantanamo Naval Station, a sparse strip of land that the U.S. has held since 1903. Since 2002, the base has also housed prisoners seized during American global counterterrorism operations. In January, a few weeks after Castro and President Obama announced that they’d work to restore ties, the Cuban leader argued that relations cannot be normalized until U.S. officials “give back the territory illegally occupied by the Guantanamo naval base…If these problems aren’t resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense.”

What Obama doesn’t want us to know on Gitmo closure

By J.D. Gordon
The Hill:

President Obama’s top counter-terrorism aide, Deputy National Security Advisor Lisa Monaca, said this past weekend at the Aspen Security Conference that the White House is preparing for another push to close Guantanamo, including a plan to move detainees into the U.S. mainland.

While she cited grossly exaggerated costs per detainee, here’s an actual fact that Team Obama isn’t telling us, far more important than just dollars and cents:

If and when the detainees are stateside, judges could release them onto Main Street, USA.

Our courts will have the final say on whether they remain locked up, not the administration.  And if other countries won’t take them, they could just walk out of jail.  Detainees don’t have to escape from Supermax if judges let them out.

And since nearly half of the current 116 detainees have been held under indefinite detention status, activist judges would line up for jurisdiction.

“Try them or release them,” has been the rallying cry for Al Qaeda’s defense lawyers for over a dozen years.  Makes sense, right?  Maybe so during peacetime, before mass casualty terrorist attacks like those on 9/11.

But America remains at war.  Since there weren’t battlefield detectives collecting evidence from global jihadists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, military or civilian trials might not obtain convictions.  Which doesn’t make those men any less dangerous, just less prosecutable.

Obama and his legal advisers know the courts routinely pummeled the Bush administration on detainee cases, including multiple losses at the Supreme Court.  They ought to know, since 9 lawyers who represented Al Qaeda were rewarded with senior political posts in the Obama administration.

When I served as a Pentagon spokesman from 2005-2009, our DoD General Counsel’s office, working in tandem with the Justice Department, reminded me of a piñata.  But instead of kids bashing away to free candy, it was judges hammering to free detainees.

One case that has direct applications to today’s prospect of Gitmo closure is Al Marri v. Bush.

Ali Al Marri was a Qatari national with a U.S. green card, believed to be an Al Qaeda sleeper cell agent, trained in advanced poisons for use against water reservoirs.  Captured in Peoria, Illinois, and then held indefinitely at the Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, Al Marri assembled a team of lawyers who argued that President Bush didn’t have the authority to hold him without trial.

Well, Al Marri won.  While terrorism charges didn’t stand up in court, he was convicted of credit card fraud and served a short sentence in a civilian prison.  It was like busting Al Capone for tax evasion.  Al Marri is now a free man in Qatar.

If Al Marri could beat the federal government in court, dozens of Gitmo terrorists with less evidence against them will too.  But what if other countries won’t take them?  Then what?

The White House is also misleading about Gitmo’s cost, claiming $3 million per detainee, per year.  Yet they don’t mention the primary expense is 2,000 troops guarding them, providing legal services and medical care.  That’s the same number deployed to handle the total of 780 detainees, so it’s deliberate overkill.  Taken together with 4 catered halal meals a day, Ramadan feasts with roasted meats and imported dates, expensive exercise equipment, Wii-fits, satellite TV, etc. Obama deliberately keeps that cost high to score political talking points.

Shouldn’t Americans ask Obama why he would risk freeing them into our country, when nearly 1/3 are already confirmed or suspected of returning to terrorism?

In my view, he sees Guantanamo as a symbol of the America he’s determined to transform.  To him, Gitmo equals U.S. overreach, the “empire” acting through brute force.  Above the law, as they say. And that’s not just holding radical Islam-inspired terrorists.  That also extends to “occupying” 45-square miles of Cuba against the will of Havana’s leaders.

Obama is desperate to empty Gitmo, let the chips fall where they may, because he wants to return the Naval Base to Cuba.  Even though it’s been a strategically important military base for Americans, leased since 1903, complete with a deep water port and airfield, he views it as the left in Latin America does – a sign of Yankee imperialism.

Though the White House says they won’t cave to Raul Castro’s demands for the base, they have zero credibility on the issue.  That’s because Ben Rhodes of the National Security Council went behind the backs of Congress and the American people to conduct the normalization of relations agreement last year in secret, in Canada.  Rhodes and this same NSC also blamed the Benghazi terrorist attack on a video.  Can we trust anything they say?

Bottom line, closing Gitmo and giving it back to Cuba is all part of Obama’s legacy.  He extends olive branches to terrorists and appeases dictators for little to nothing in return, designed to usher in a new, post-U.S. superpower status era.  As America gets weaker with $1 trillion in defense cuts, our enemies get stronger.  Is that what he meant by hope and change?

Gordon is a retired Navy commander and former Pentagon spokesman who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-2009, during which time he visited Guantanamo Bay Naval Base over 30 times.