Category Archives: Veterans

FBI Alert: Middle-Eastern Males Approaching Family Members of US #Military

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The instruction ebook for the hijrah.

(U//FOUO) FBI Alert: Middle-Eastern Males Approaching Family Members of US Military Personnel

The following alert related to “Middle-Eastern males” approaching military family members was obtained from the website of a veterans advocacy organization.  A force protection advisory that was released by the Washington National Guard & Military Department days later describes a similar incident that occurred in Washington.

(U//FOUO) In May 2015, the wife of a US military member was approached in front of her home by two Middle-Eastern males. The men stated that she was the wife of a US interrogator. When she denied their claims, the men laughed. The two men left the area in a dark-colored, four-door sedan with two other Middle-Eastern males in the vehicle. The woman had observed the vehicle in the neighborhood on previous occasions.

(U//FOUO) Similar incidents in Wyoming have been reported to the FBI throughout June 2015. On numerous occasions, family members of military personnel were confronted by Middle-Eastern males in front of their homes. The males have attempted to obtain personal information about the military member and family members through intimidation. The family members have reported feeling scared.

(U//FOUO) To date, the men have not been identified and it is not known if all the incidents involve the same Middle-Eastern males. If you have any information that may assist the FBI in identifying these individuals, or reporting concerning additional incidents; in Colorado please contact the FBI Fort Collins Resident Agency at 970-663-1028970-663-1028, in Wyoming please contact the FBI Cheyenne Resident Agency at 307-632-6224307-632-6224.

(U) This report has been prepared by the DENVER Division of the FBI. Comments and queries may be addressed to the DENVER Division at 303-629-7171303-629-7171.

The .pdf of the official document is here.

What the Obama Admin is not Telling you About Iran

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In 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department which is responsible for maintaining the global terror list, placed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Crops Qods Force in the terror database for violations of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act for trafficking Afghan narcotics in exchange for weapons to the Taliban.

On July 14, 2015, the U.S. Treasury posted the sanctions relief document on their website as a result of the signed agreement known as the JPOA.

From the Daily Beast in part: The bigger, more complicated story, though, is how the deal will go down with the organization that now plays a huge role in running Iran, albeit behind the country’s clerical façade: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the Pasdaran, some of whose internationally infamous leaders showed up on the lists in the nuclear agreement annexes as people who will have sanctions against them lifted.

Whether this was an oversight, a sleight-of-hand, or an attempt to win Pasdaran support, it has to be understood that ever since Rafsanjani (ironically, of all people) let the IRGC into the Iranian economy, allowing it to invest in the country’s leading industries, the group has grown to become Iran’s most important financial power.

The IRGC is now the biggest player in Iran’s biggest industries: energy, construction, car manufacturing and telecommunications. A Western diplomat recently told Reuters that the IRGC’s annual turnover from all of its business activities is around $10 billion to $12 billion, which, if accurate, would be around a sixth of Iranian GDP.

From the United Nations 106 page report in part:

Northern Route

There are various supply chain structures in Central Asia. Trafficking through Turkmenistan appears to feed the Balkan route through the Islamic Republic of Iran rather than the Northern route. Turkmenistan is also unique in Central Asia as a destination country for Balkan route opiates.

 Traffickers increasingly utilize Central Asian railways to transport opiates to the Russian Federation and beyond. The size of some loads detected in 2010 suggests that traffickers are operating with a heightened confidence level. Massive seizures of hashish in containers destined to North America are a confirmation that railroad trafficking is also linked to transcontinental trafficking.

 The Customs union agreement between Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Belarus can be misused, as traffickers may opt to re-route opiate deliveries to Europe through the Northern route, as opposed to the traditional Balkan route. There are plans to extend the Customs union agreement to other states such as Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, and possibly Tajikistan.

 Countering the flow of drugs is complicated by difficulties in co-ordinating efforts between national agencies within Central Asia and between this region and Afghanistan. This is reflected in limited intelligence sharing along lines of supply.

 Drug trafficking and organized crime are sources of conflict in Kyrgyzstan and potentially in the region as a whole. The inter-ethnic clashes that occurred in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 have been used by ethnic Kyrgyz criminal groups to assume predominance over ethnic Uzbek criminal groups and to control the drug routes through this part of Kyrgyzstan.

 Rising militancy has been reported across Central Asia, but there are no observed direct connections between extremist groups and drug trafficking. The preoccupation with combating insurgents in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan does, however, hinder counternarcotics efforts by, at least partly, shifting the focus of law enforcement away from drug control.

From the United Nations report in part:

Southern Route

 

Afghan heroin is trafficked to every region of the world except Latin America. The Balkan route (trafficking route through the Islamic Republic of Iran and Turkey) has traditionally been the primary route for trafficking heroin out of Afghanistan. However, there are signs of a changing trend, with the Southern route (a collection of trafficking routes and organized criminal groups that facilitate southerly flow of heroin out of Afghanistan) encroaching, including to supply some European markets.

Unlike the northern or Balkan routes that are mostly dedicated to supplying single destinations markets, the Russian Federation and Europe respectively, the southern route serves a number of diverse destinations, including Asian, Africa and Western and Central Europe. It is therefore perhaps more accurate to talk about a vast network of rouhtes than one general flow with the same direction.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan face a tremendous challenge in dealing with the large flows of opiates originating from Afghanistan to feed their domestic heroin markets and to supply demand in many other regions of the world. The geographic location of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan makes them a major transit point for the trafficking of Afghan opiates along the southern route.

Iran will propagandize a narcotics problem but in truth, it feeds their economy, criminal activity, weapons smuggling and terrorism.

The opium trade and smuggling routes are so successful due to the criminal network and money, females are also trafficked for slave labor and sex.

Officials of the regime in Iran are involved in the “sex trafficking of women and girls”, the U.S. State Department said in an annual report on human trafficking released this week.

“Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor,” the State Department said in its annual ‘Trafficking in Persons Report 2015.’

“Organized groups reportedly subject Iranian women, boys, and girls to sex trafficking in Iran, as well as in the United Arab Emirates and Europe,” the TIP report said.

“In 2013, traffickers forced Iranian women and girls into prostitution in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. From 2009-2015, there was a reported increase in the transport of girls from and through Iran en route to the Gulf where organized groups sexually exploited or forced them into marriages. In Tehran, Tabriz, and Astara, the number of teenage girls in prostitution continues to increase.”

“Organized criminal groups force Iranian and immigrant children to work as beggars and in street vendor rings in cities, including Tehran. Physical and sexual abuse and drug addiction are the primary means of coercion. Some children are also forced to work in domestic workshops. Traffickers subject Afghan migrants, including boys, to forced labor in construction and agricultural sectors in Iran. Afghan boys are at high risk of experiencing sexual abuse by their employers and harassment or blackmailing by the Iranian security service and other government officials.”

So, back to the question, what is the real reason for the Obama administration aggressive relationship with Iran? With the sanctions lifted, the forecast of future terror activity coupled with smuggling and trafficking women, weapons, slaves and narcotics, the Obama administration has legitimized Iran as a world power forced to be equal on the global stage.

World Leaders and the UN Allows Sex Slaves

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There is not a world leader or any member of the United Nations much anyone in the National Security Council, the State Department or the White House that is not current on the plight of Christians and Yzidis in the Middle East.

We are in an era when each diplomatic communication or meeting by anyone in the Obama administration with Middle Eastern country governments, the topic of human rights is not discussed and pressure taken to cure, however, the words and threats are shallow at best.

We witnessing a modern day holocaust and no one has a strategy or a war plan to stop the death, the human trafficking or the slavery.

The Islamic State’s Christian and Yizidi Sex Slaves
by Nina Shea:

Unlike Muslims, who can conform and wait out ISIS until the day it is defeated, Christians, along with “polytheist” Yizidis, can don veils and give up cigarettes and alcohol, but, as non-Muslims, their very presence is an intolerable offense to the year-old “caliphate.” These minority religious groups in Iraq and Syria, lacking protecting armies or militias of their own, find themselves in unique peril. During his Bolivian trip this month, Pope Francis called it “genocide.”

ISIS demands nothing less than the conversion of all Christians and Yizidis to Islam under penalty of death for men and enslavement for women and children. (Another frequently cited option for Christian “People of the Book”, the payment of jizya, is a ruse, for the tax is raised until it becomes unpayable and property and lives are taken after all. Hence, last summer, Mosul’s bishops chose exile for their communities, rather than attend an ISIS meeting to learn of its jizya terms.)

The beheadings, crucifixions, and other means ISIS uses to slaughter unarmed Christian and Yizidi men—from priests and bishops to destitute migrant workers—have been proudly displayed by the ultra violent group on social media and have drawn condemnations worldwide. But the Islamic State’s “revival” of the institution of chattel slavery—sex slavery of Christian and Yizidi women and girls no less—has faded from public attention.

Over the past decade, thousands of Iraqi and Syrian Christians—including, in 2013, an entire convent of Syrian Orthodox nuns—have been taken captive for ransom. Last August, shortly after ISIS established its caliphate, it began something new. After capturing non-Sunni women and girls, ISIS began awarding and selling them as sex slaves. The vast majority were Yizidis but some, according to UN reports, were Christians.

On August 5, 2014, two days after ISIS invaded Sinjar, Yizidi MP Vian Dakhil made a riveting emotional speech about the genocide facing Yizidis on the floor of the Iraqi Parliament. She choked out before collapsing, “Our women are taken as slaves and sold in a slave market.””Our women are taken as slaves and sold in a slave market.” A week later, two prominent UN experts expressed grave concern about “sexual violence against women and teenage girls and boys belonging to Iraqi minorities.” Their report stated that “some 1,500 Yazidi and Christian persons may have been forced into sexual slavery,” which they condemned as “barbaric.”

Throughout the fall, lurid reports emerged of the enslaved Yizidis, up to 4,000 in all. As ISIS boasted in its propaganda magazine Dabiq: “This large-scale enslavement of polytheist families is probably the first since the abandonment of Sharia law.”

The Fatwa Department of the Islamic State made clear that the females of the “People of the Book,” including Christians, can be enslaved for sex as well, though Muslim “apostates” cannot. The number of Christian sex slaves is unknown. Three—Rana, Rita, and Christina—are publicly known. In March, 135 women and children were among those taken captive, from 35 Christian villages along Syria’s Khabour River. Their families, unable to afford the $23 million ransom demand, were told by ISIS, “They belong to us now.” The older women were released; the younger ones may be enslaved, though this has not been confirmed.

Cell phone calls from still enslaved girls last September and October disclosed the shocking details of their captivity. A young Yizidi woman in a phone call with activists from Compassion4Kurdistan pleaded: “I’ve been raped thirty times and it’s not even lunchtime. I can’t go to the toilet. Please bomb us.”

On September 7, a 17 year-old, with the pseudonym Mayat, told a journalist that she was being held with forty others females and that everyone, including a 12 year-old and other young girls, some of whom had stopped talking, were sexually abused daily. She told Italy’s La Republica:

They treat us as if we are their slaves. The men hit us and threaten us when we try to resist…. We’ve asked our jailers to shoot us dead, to kill us, but we are too valuable for them. They keep telling us that we are unbelievers because we are non-Muslims and that we are their property, like war booty. They say we are like goats bought at a market.

A 14-year-old Yizidi girl who had escaped said that she and her close friend Shayma were beaten and kicked after being given away as gifts: “Shayma was awarded to Abu Hussein, who was a cleric. I was given to an overweight, dark-bearded man about fifty years-old who seemed to have some high rank. He went by the nickname Abu Ahmed.”

In May 2015, a Yizidi girl was found enslaved by ISIS financier Abu Sayyaf and freed when the U.S. Delta Force invaded his Syrian home and killed him. Nothing further has been reported on her.

After their initial capture by jihadis, the women and girls are held in detention centers. Mosul’s Badoush prison is one “makeshift prison” for “the sexual enslavement of children,” according to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. A Yazidi teenager Du’a told former Congressman Frank Wolf, who interviewed refugees in Kurdistan last January, that she was held in Mosul with 700 other Yizidi girls. She related that the girls were separated by eye color, and members of ISIS were allowed to choose for themselves among the young women.She related that the girls were separated by eye color, and members of ISIS were allowed to choose for themselves among the young women. The rest, she said, were then separated into “pretty” and “ugly” groups, with the most beautiful given away to high ranking ISIS members.

This month, an ISIS flyer was discovered on Twitter by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremists’ online postings. It announced that girls captured in battle were to be the top three prizes in Quran recitation contests held in two Syrian mosques during the month of Ramadan. Accounts that the flyers said these were Yizidi slaves were erroneous; the girls’ religion was not specified and could have included Christians. Coverage of this was limited to Internet postings.

Sex slaves are also sold. Under rules for “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour [of Judgment],” Dabiq gives a theological justification for selling women as war booty: “The enslaved Yizidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as the polytheists were sold by the [Prophet’s] companions.” It also cites more recent precedents: namely, the “enslavement of Christian women and children in the Philippines and Nigeria by the Mujahidin there.”

The article argues that sex slavery benefits both the Muslim community, by enlarging it, and the slave by “making heaven accessible.” The formerly enslaved girls report being consistently pressured, including by beatings, to convert to Islam. (Rules for proper beatings are included.) If they become Muslim, they can then be sold as brides to jihadis.

On October 15, ISIS published pricing guidelines for slaves based on age. Under the heading “Merchandise,” the listing starts with “200,000 dinars for a woman aged 1-9 / Yizidi/Christian” and ends with “75,000 dinars for a woman aged 30-40 / Yizidi/Christian.”

In practice, the pricing appears to be market driven. An Australian jihadist for the Islamic State, Mohamed Elomar, tweeted that he was selling seven Yizidi sex slaves for $2,500 each and posted a photo of one. In June 2015, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS militants were selling slaves for $500 to $2,000.In June 2015, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS militants were selling slaves for $500 to $2,000. The UN representative Bangura said that captured women and girls are often forced to strip naked and are judged by ISIS militants who gauge how much they are to be sold for in a slave auction.

A father listened helplessly as his distraught enslaved daughter told him in a cell phone call that she was being sold for $10 that same afternoon. Du’a told Wolf she was sold for $2 after being put in the “ugly” group.
Theology aside, Bangura reported that in order for ISIS to recruit more foreign fighters to join its military ranks, the caliphate continues to capture more girls and women in each newly conquered territory and then sells them for “as little as a pack of cigarettes.” The Islamic State’s goal is to make them affordable to men of all means, especially the young jihadis on whom the caliphate depends for its military success. Bangura observes, “This is a war that is being fought on the bodies of women.”

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reports that, in the Mosul markets where ISIS sells abducted children and women, “attaching price tags to them,” it found that the buyers were local youths who were being recruited as jihadis. Amnesty International’s December report confirms that buyers are largely local Iraqi and Syrian men. The involvement of their former neighbors is a factor driving many Iraqi Christians and Yizidis to emigrate from the region.

No female is considered too young; only women over forty are let go or released for ransom. Amnesty reported that some slaves were “just babies.” Du’a said one of the girls penned up with her was seven months-old. Another 21-year-old escaped slave said that, while detained for sale, a guard took another younger captive into the bathroom and raped her; she was nine years-old. ISIS guidelines price Christian and Yizidi 9 year-olds at $172.ISIS guidelines price Christian and Yizidi 9 year-olds at $172.

A toddler brings equal value. A Christian woman, whose family could not flee Qaraqosh when ISIS invaded because her husband is blind, told Wolf that they came to her house, shouting, “Convert or we will kill you.” An ISIS militant snatched from her lap Christina, her three-year-old daughter. The mother later learned during a furtive cell phone call from Rana, an enslaved Christian woman, that she had cared for Christiana while they were detained with other enslaved women until the baby was taken away.

A Dabiq article asserts that from Sinjar in Iraq “one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority.” ISIS uses the slaves in caliphate bordellos run by British women—members of the al Khanssaa Brigade, an all-women religious police. Farah Ispahani, a Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy and a former Member of Parliament in Pakistan, studies ISIS women volunteers. One of the few of these to mention the sex slavery is “Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirah,” who argues that taking slaves through war is a “great prophetic Sunnah containing many divine wisdoms and religious benefits.” Dabiq identifies one such benefit: it saves men “who cannot afford marriage to a free woman [who] finds himself surrounded by temptation towards sin.” It explains that “the desertion of slavery had led to an increase in adultery/fornication because the sharia alternative to marriage is not available.”

Over 600 Yizidi girls, one by one, have been redeemed by private efforts with KRG help, according to a July 7 interview with Vian Dakhil. Two more Yizidi girls were freed from enslavement in Mosul, on July 14. Conspicuously absent in the rescue operation, Dakhil notes, was the Iraqi government.

After a spate of reporting on the Yizidis last fall, the Islamic State’s slave practice has received scant attention. The Wilson Center’s Middle East director Halleh Isfandiari observes that “Arab and Muslim governments, though loud in their condemnation of ISIS as a terrorist organization, have been silent on its treatment of women.” The reaction of the White House and Congress has been muted as well. The State Department’s 2015 Sex Trafficking report, released on July 27, devotes barely two paragraphs out of 380 pages to the Islamic State’s institutionalization of sex slavery in the past year.

Uncharacteristically, ISIS, too, seems a bit self-restrained about broadcasting this particular abomination, which may account for some of the world’s silence. ISIS issued rules last December regulating—though not banning—sexual relations with another’s slaves, with slaves who are sisters, and with pre-pubescent slave girls. It hasn’t produced any slick videos of its slave auctions or bordellos. After YouTube showed jihadis joking about trading their Glocks for sex slaves, and of a British schoolboy-turned-ISIS-militant leering about the hundreds of women slaves in Syria, ISIS ordered a stop to tweeting slave photos.

Once legal, chattel slavery has been abolished worldwide as a matter of law. To the extent that it exists in the world’s darkest corners, it does so as a criminal activity and, as such, is condemned by society at large. As the tribute vice pays to virtue, that remains true even where governments allow slavery to continue with impunity. The Islamic State’s revival of what it purports to be state-institutionalized slavery against Yizidi and Christian women needs to be vigorously condemned, both as a component of religious genocide every bit as horrifying as beheadings, and in its own right.

Obama’s Conference Call Gathering his Armies for Iran Deal

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Several names and organizations you may know, but Barack Obama and his anti-Israel pro-Iran keeps them close and calls on them often.

Some key items first however.

In part from IranWatch: While Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities were not considered a core issue in the nuclear talks, the language of the new U.N. resolution and the terms of the JCPOA have consequences for the future of Iran’s ballistic missile program:

  • The U.N. resolution removes the existing ban on Iranian activity related to nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, including launches.
  • The U.N. restrictions on sales of missile technology to Iran are extended for up-to eight years, but missile imports will be less strictly controlled than nuclear imports, relying primarily on reporting from Iran and due diligence by its suppliers.
  • The agreement does not appear to allow the “snapback” of sanctions in response to illicit missile procurement.
  • Sanctions will be lifted early next year on several banks that have facilitated illicit missile-related transactions in the past.

Iran’s efforts to advance its nuclear-capable ballistic missile program – through test launches, production, and illicit procurement – will be made easier, while attempts to punish or deter Iran’s ballistic missile activity and illicit procurement will be made more difficult.

***

That IAEA side deal discovered by 2 members of Congress that flew to Vienna to meet with the IAEA membership of which Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Council Advisor Susan Rice both say they have not read but have been briefed on, is found here.

During a hearing of which I personally watched, John Kerry was questioned about going beyond the law to over-ride a Congressional vote, Kerry deferred and replied, you need to ask the President. What??? Well a Democrat from California took notice to the Kerry response.

***

From TWS: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who has been one of the more skeptical Democrats on the agreement, said that Obama appeared ready to ignore Congress, even if lawmakers vote to kill the deal and then marshal the two-thirds majorities to override a White House veto.

“The main meat of what he said is, ‘If Congress overrides my veto, you do not get a U.S. foreign policy that reflects that vote. What you get is you pass this law and I, as president, will do everything possible to go in the other direction,’” Sherman told reporters off the House floor after the meeting.

“He’s with the deal — he’s not with Congress,” Sherman added. “At least to the fullest extent allowed by law, and possibly beyond what’s allowed by law.”

Sherman suggested that Obama could refuse to enforce the law and could actively seek to undermine congressional action in other countries, if Capitol Hill insists on stymieing the plan.  

***

So, the entire Obama regime wants this deal as much or if not more than he did on Obamacare, so a conference call was place today.

Some of the names you know like MoveOn.org, happily and earnestly funded by the spooky dude, George Soros. In a previous post on this blog site, we already know about Global Zero enlisting Hollywood.

But we cannot overlook yet another outfit close to the White House, one known as The Truman Project. Here such elitists include:

Madeleine Albright, General James Cartwright, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, now running for U.S. Senate from Illinois, Michele Flournoy, who was on the short list to replace Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel until she turned it down, Leslie Gelb the president of the Council of Foreign Relations, Janet Napolitano, the President of the California University system and former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and last but certainly not least, Kamala Harris, Attorney General for California who just gained the temporary restraining order on the group filming those Planned Parenthood videos.

Obama in call to arms: Stop big money from quashing nuke deal

President tells supporters of accord the agreement with Tehran is not ‘the best of bad alternatives but actually a very good deal’

TimesofIsrael:  President Barack Obama rallied supporters of the Iran nuclear deal in a conference call Thursday evening, urging them to make their voices heard in the effort to convince Congress to ratify the agreement.

According to participants in the call, the president warned listeners, which included members of a number of progressive and anti-proliferation organizations, that they were battling $20 million in ads intended to sway Congress against the deal.

White House organizers listed a number of groups whose supporters participated in the conference call, including Americans United for Change and MoveOn.org, and the Truman Project, although there were a number of other organizations participating, including J Street.

In the conversation, Obama repeatedly drew parallels between the current Congressional review of the Iran deal and the run-up to the highly unpopular US involvement in Iraq, saying “some of the same forces that got us into Iraq” were now actively campaigning to quash the controversial deal. Obama told listeners that one of his key goals as president, alongside non-proliferation, was to “end the war in Iraq but also to end the mindset that got us into the war.”

The president talked up the deal itself, arguing that “I am absolutely convinced that this is not just the best in a series of bad alternatives but actually a very good deal that we should be proud of and that achieves critical security objectives not just for the US but for our allies and the world, including Israel.”

But while Obama devoted time to the administration’s talking points, explaining why the deal was effective — and reinforcing his commitment to Israel’s security — his final message was more of a call to arms.

The president told activists to challenge those who oppose the deal by asking what they would have done better or differently, while casting doubt on the motivations of those leading the opposition to his landmark foreign policy initiative.

“Every argument that has been put forth with this deal is inaccurate or presupposes that what we should be doing if we were to negotiate is to get a deal in which Iran forgoes any peaceful ability to get nuclear power,” Obama stated, saying that such a deal only existed “in dreams.”

“There is no expert who suggests that Iran would have agreed to that,” he argued. “In the real world, this is a deal that gets the job done.”

“What you have to say is that Iran would not do that, and the only way to do that effectively is if we were to go to war,” he added.

Obama warned that Congress might be swayed by the “$20 million dollars of advertising paid for by lobbyists” — a monetary figure he repeated throughout the conversation. The figure is identical to the amount that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was believed to be prepared to devote to its effort to oppose the deal during the period of Congressional review.

J Street recently said that it would up its budget in support of the deal, but the total amount represents less than 20% of AIPAC’s reported budget for opposing it.

Congress is expected to vote in September on either a resolution of approval or disapproval of the nuclear deal. Obama has vowed to veto any disapproval, and the White House must ensure that at least a third of the members of one of the two Houses vote in favor of the deal in order to sustain a presidential veto.

Obama criticized “columnists and former administration officials that were responsible for us getting in the Iraq war and were making these same claims in 2002-2003 with respect to Iraq.”

The same theme was used repeatedly to rally listeners to action.

“You are going to see the same forces that got us into the Iraq war leading us away from an opportunity for a diplomatic solution,” Obama warned again.

He urged the participants to call members of Congress and make their support for the deal known, implying that right now the loudest voices being heard were those who oppose the deal. “One of the frustrations I’ve always had about the Iraq war is everybody got really loud and really active after it was too late,” he said.

Obama noted that unlike in the run-up to the Iraq war, “the advantage is that now we have a president in the oval office who is on your side,” but added a warning: “As big as a bully pulpit as I have, it’s not enough.”

“When you have a bunch of folks who are big check writers to political campaigns, and billionaires who give to super PACS…this opportunity could slip away.”

#IranDeal, Lobbyists and Hollywood

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The White House has gathered the army to sell to Congress and the American people the misguided and frankly dangerous Iran deal.

Just the Facts

Israel’s intelligence wing has been tracking the Iran talks from the beginning and recently allowed certain key facts to be revealed, the behind the scenes activities that demonstrate the collusion between Secretary of State,, John Kerry, the White House and Iran.

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.

The Global Zero Washington DC network with associated lobby groups run deep.

Former Senator from Georgia Sam Nunn is a co-founder of Global Zero and it was his daughter, Michelle who recently ran for a U.S. senate seat in Georgia when it was discovered she was very connected to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Former Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel was also a Board member of Global Zero.

From Real Clear Politics:

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.

From my friend and former CIA analyst, Clare Lopez in 2009:

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.