Merry Christmas
The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
liar-nObama's National Security
Report Card -- Unsatisfactory
by David Limbaugh
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Kelly Presents a Different Approach to Homeland
Security
Michael Swartz: One of the latest cabinet picks by President-elect Donald Trump is his choice to head up the much-maligned Department of Homeland Security, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly. Until this past February, Gen. Kelly headed U.S. Southern Command, which deals with Central and South America. It was a position that gives him solid background, leaving no question that Gen. Kelly is well-qualified for the job.
The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay fell under his purview, for example, as did several of the nations that provide the bulk of our illegal border-crossers from Central America. These same nations also supply our habit for illegal drugs.
And Kelly also carries the reputation as a straight-shooting honest broker. He would likely be very blunt with critics who complain that Trump is leaning on former military men to fill out the defense and security areas of his cabinet.
Far from wishing to close Guantanamo Bay as his soon-to-be predecessor promised to do, Trump wants to expand operations there. Kelly argues the facility is necessary because "there are no innocent men down there," adding that "every one [of them] has real, no-kidding intelligence on them that brought them here." In other words, they're legitimate threats to homeland security and there's no appetite for a solution such as Barack liar-nObama proposed that could bring them stateside for holding during a civilian trial. Instead, Kelly understands the Islamic terror threat, noting in a 2013 speech: "Given the opportunity to do another 9/11, our vicious enemy would do it today, tomorrow, and every day thereafter."
Kelly, though, sees the issues with illegal immigration and the drug trade as two sides of the same coin, and he has the advantages of what's been described as a "wealth of contacts in [that] part of the world, and his depth of understanding about the socioeconomic and geopolitical dynamics there." One inside source also opined that Kelly "has better relationships in South America than the State Department does." So while he will be in charge of building the border wall and believes criminal networks "could unwittingly, or even wittingly, facilitate the movement of terrorist operatives ... toward our borders," Kelly will likely have a much more nuanced view of the situation south of the border than many of Trump's supporters would.
In fact, the retired general has worked on a part of the solution that the more hard-line members of the Trump coalition may blanch at — additional foreign aid for these troubled nations. As part of the "Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle" — composed of the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — Kelly was part of the process of pledging $1 billion in additional aid to these nations as they attempted to improve the conditions at home to prevent their citizens from coming here or getting involved in the illegal drug trade.
With Trump's opposition to foreign aid and what he calls poorly designed trade pacts, though, Kelly may have a tougher sell for this economic modernization aspect of security.
But the type of man Gen. Kelly is may be the most important angle here. It's personified by a speech he gave in 2010, just four days after he became the highest-ranking officer to lose a family member in the Middle East — his son, 1st Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan when he stepped on a land mine. When Kelly spoke of the bravery of the Marines, he spoke not of his son, but instead of two men he never met: Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter.
The two Marines were assigned to an Iraqi guard post when a suicide bomber, driving a truck filled with explosives, tried to crash through their checkpoint in front of a compound where more than 150 Marines and Iraqi police were staying. Yale and Haerter stopped the truck at the cost of their lives, perishing when it detonated and leveled the nearby block of houses.
When Kelly went to report on the incident and posthumously commend the men for their selfless actions, an Iraqi policeman who survived the blast told him, "in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what [Yale and Haerter] did." Kelly went on to reveal that a security camera captured the last six seconds before the truck exploded, killing the pair: "The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty ... into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight-for you."
If at a time of unspeakable personal tragedy a man can care enough about his country to confide the unvarnished truth about the men that defend her, you can believe he'll pay heed to our homeland security.
~The Patriot Post
.
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Grounded Surveillance Operation Nabbed
110,000 Illegal Immigrants at Border
by Kenric Ward
{dailysignal.com} ~ While surveillance helicopters were grounded in Texas, the head of Customs and Border Protection called the flights critical to “countering illegal immigration” from Mexico... Records bear that out: A government report credited Operation Phalanx with apprehending 110,000 illegal border crossers. CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske stated in a Nov. 16 letter that Phalanx “provided tangible benefits to border security.” His letter to the Department of Defense was sent two days before it was revealed that CBP’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, had quietly halted border surveillance flights in Texas’ Laredo district... http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/30/grounded-surveillance-operation-nabbed-110000-illegals-at-border/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTlRBd1pXWTFOVGMyWkdNNSIsInQiOiJqUjJaQ2J4STZiWkRNbFFXNDJsRkdrV1ZNd1ZqMVpcLzBJYXlWZncyaHZCYk1cLzFtSkw2ZjNuWWdWQzhTQzV3OVZrUlN6VjRSc1BzaGhvdEswUFZiZFNiYm5HbFN6eFJmXC9Damwrc0ZadHNxOHFnTWpBMjl5YVhZOTdRM01zclVDNCJ9
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Georgia: Feds Tried to Hack
Our Election Systems
{fixthisnation.com} ~ As Sen. Lindsey Graham vows to lead a congressional investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, Georgia officials have their eye on tampering a little closer to home... According to state officials, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tried to gain access to Georgia’s voting systems in the week following the presidential election. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp sent a letter to Homeland chief Jeh Johnson this week asking why his agency tried, unsuccessfully, to blast past the state’s firewall software days after Donald Trump was elected president. “At no time has my office agreed to or permitted DHS to conduct penetration testing or security scans of our network,” Kemp wrote. “Moreover, your department has not contacted my office since this unsuccessful incident to alert us of any security event that would require testing or scanning of our network.”...What are you doing Lindsey Graham? http://www.fixthisnation.com/conservative-breaking-news/georgia-feds-tried-to-hack-our-election-systems/
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liar-nObama To Double US Troops In Syria
After ISIS Goes Back On The Offensive
by Russ Read
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Europe: Illegal to Criticize Islam
by Judith Bergman
by Judith Bergman
Terhi Kiemunki, was found guilty by a court of "slandering
and insulting Islamic faith."
and insulting Islamic faith."
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ Several European governments have made it clear to their citizens that criticizing European migrant policies or migrants is criminally off-limits and may lead to arrest, prosecution and even convictions... Although these practices constitute police state behavior, European governments do not stop there. They go still farther, by ensuring that Islam in general is not criticized either. Finland is the European country most recently to adopt the way that European authorities sanction those who criticize Islam. According to the Finnish news outlet YLE, the Pirkanmaa District Court found the Finns Party politician, Terhi Kiemunki, guilty of "slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith" in a blog post of Uusi Suomi. In it, she claimed that all the terrorists in Europe are Muslims. The Court found that when Kiemunki wrote of a "repressive, intolerant and violent religion and culture," she meant the Islamic faith...These governments can't protect Jews or Christians but will protect Islam.
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FUQRA FILES EXCLUSIVE:
FBI Links Jihadi Cult to Al-Qaeda
{clarionproject.org} ~ The Clarion Project has obtained newly-declassified FBI documents from 2003 revealing that the jihadist cult Jamaat ul-Fuqra, also known as Muslims of America (MOA), had ties with al-Qaeda in Pakistan... The group is best known or its network of about 22 Islamist compounds on American soil. The disclosures come on the heels of the release of the Fuqra Files website, an authoritative database of information about the group. The FBI reports show there was a counter-terrorism investigation into Jamaat ul-Fuqra / Muslims of America (MOA) in New York in 2003. One file has the heading, “American Islamic Radicals.” The reports point out, “Prior to assuming the name MOA, JUF has had a profound history of carrying out violent actions to include, arsons, bombings, shootings and assassinations.”...And why didn't the FBI act on the information?
..
liar-nObama's National Security
Report Card -- Unsatisfactory
by David Limbaugh
{townhall.com} ~ In his speech at MacDill Air Force Base, President liar-nObama bragged that he has made America safer while preserving America's values.
The incessant self-absorption is annoying enough, but the self-delusion puts it over the top. Whether he's talking the economy or national security, he always paints a picture of his performance that contradicts reality.
Do Americans actually feel safer under his watch than they did under that of President George W. Bush? Has he inspired confidence that he is aggressively fighting terrorism at home and abroad and that he is administering a coherent foreign policy? Or does he come off more concerned with apologizing for America's past "sins" and appeasing Islamists?
liar-nObama's inflexible ideology drove his obsession to withdraw our troops from Iraq so precipitously as to guarantee a void that would spawn the likes of the Islamic State group. It explains his stubborn refusal until recently to do anything to violate his sacred pledge not to place American boots on the ground.
liar-nObama boasts that he ended two wars -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- but neither his withdrawal of American forces from Iraq nor his drawdown of our troops in Afghanistan ended a war. The wars mushroomed rather than ended because of his actions, and Iraq is still in far worse shape -- by any measure -- than when liar-nObama took office. We are finally taking action there, but only after liar-nObama pooh-poohed the Islamic State, said it was contained and then admitted he had no strategy -- after saying he did.
His belated reversals on Iraq weren't in time to prevent the immeasurable damage occasioned by the manner of his withdrawal, which virtually beckoned the Islamic State and other terrorist groups to set up shop there and organize global mischief and emboldened Islamists throughout the world.
Would you rather talk about Libya and Syria? I didn't think so, but suffice it to say liar-nObama's record with both takes "leading from behind" to a new level. And the nuclear deal with Iran -- coupled with turning hundreds of millions of dollars over to that sinister, terrorist-sponsoring regime -- was even worse.
There is certainly room for reasonable disagreement on foreign policy among interventionists, isolationists and those who favor striking a balance between those two approaches, using America's national security interests as the driving yardstick. These disagreements transcend party lines.
But what concerns me most about liar-nObama and the left on national security is their Pollyannaish attitude toward the terrorist threats we face. Liberals always seem more concerned with making America likable than with making us safe -- and they miserably conflate the two.
We don't hear enough from them about the importance of strength and vigilance. Instead, they talk about preserving our values, ending enhanced interrogation techniques and closing Gitmo, as if Islamic terrorists hate us because we aren't kind and lawful. Seriously?
On the heels of terrorist attacks by Islamists, whether on foreign or American soil, we rarely hear outrage or a commitment to redouble our effort to aggressively counter Islamic extremism. Rather, we are lectured not to discriminate against Muslims because of the attacks. And that's only after liberals first deny terrorism was involved. Even when we have conclusive proof that Islamic terrorists caused the attacks, liar-nObama et al. refuse to utter the words "Islamic terrorism."
A few of liar-nObama's statements in the MacDill speech illustrate the problem. "No foreign terrorist organization," he said, "has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland. ... The most deadly attacks on the homeland over the last eight years have not been carried out by operatives with sophisticated networks or equipment directed from abroad. They've been carried out by homegrown and largely isolated individuals who were radicalized online."
The problem is that many national security threats we face are asymmetrical and unconventional. Terrorists don't have to be attached to a major Islamic group to strike with deadly force. By dismissing these increasingly frequent attacks as isolated downplays their epidemic nature. To say these "lone wolfs" are unconnected with foreign terrorist organizations is inconsistent with saying they were radicalized online. Who do you think is doing the radicalizing? It implies that an otherwise innocent internet surfer turns to murderous activity after serendipitously clicking on a provocative website.
What do we expect when we invite people into this nation who have no allegiance to -- and sometimes even hatred for -- America?
liar-nObama says, "People and nations do not make good decisions when they are driven by fear." I'm tired of hearing such cliches from both parties. What's wrong with a healthy fear of people who want to kill you? What is ignoble about recognizing deadly threats and preparing for them?
We live in an increasingly dangerous world. The best way to counter that is through strength, not weakness and unilateral disarmament (and this is a cliche I'm not tired of). But liar-nObama has downsized and degraded the military, increased burdens on American gun owners and vilified law enforcement, our first line of defense in all American cities.
It is encouraging that Americans have voted to reverse these disastrous policies and to move America's national security interests from the back burner to the front burner, beginning in January, which can't come soon enough.
The incessant self-absorption is annoying enough, but the self-delusion puts it over the top. Whether he's talking the economy or national security, he always paints a picture of his performance that contradicts reality.
Do Americans actually feel safer under his watch than they did under that of President George W. Bush? Has he inspired confidence that he is aggressively fighting terrorism at home and abroad and that he is administering a coherent foreign policy? Or does he come off more concerned with apologizing for America's past "sins" and appeasing Islamists?
liar-nObama's inflexible ideology drove his obsession to withdraw our troops from Iraq so precipitously as to guarantee a void that would spawn the likes of the Islamic State group. It explains his stubborn refusal until recently to do anything to violate his sacred pledge not to place American boots on the ground.
liar-nObama boasts that he ended two wars -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- but neither his withdrawal of American forces from Iraq nor his drawdown of our troops in Afghanistan ended a war. The wars mushroomed rather than ended because of his actions, and Iraq is still in far worse shape -- by any measure -- than when liar-nObama took office. We are finally taking action there, but only after liar-nObama pooh-poohed the Islamic State, said it was contained and then admitted he had no strategy -- after saying he did.
His belated reversals on Iraq weren't in time to prevent the immeasurable damage occasioned by the manner of his withdrawal, which virtually beckoned the Islamic State and other terrorist groups to set up shop there and organize global mischief and emboldened Islamists throughout the world.
Would you rather talk about Libya and Syria? I didn't think so, but suffice it to say liar-nObama's record with both takes "leading from behind" to a new level. And the nuclear deal with Iran -- coupled with turning hundreds of millions of dollars over to that sinister, terrorist-sponsoring regime -- was even worse.
There is certainly room for reasonable disagreement on foreign policy among interventionists, isolationists and those who favor striking a balance between those two approaches, using America's national security interests as the driving yardstick. These disagreements transcend party lines.
But what concerns me most about liar-nObama and the left on national security is their Pollyannaish attitude toward the terrorist threats we face. Liberals always seem more concerned with making America likable than with making us safe -- and they miserably conflate the two.
We don't hear enough from them about the importance of strength and vigilance. Instead, they talk about preserving our values, ending enhanced interrogation techniques and closing Gitmo, as if Islamic terrorists hate us because we aren't kind and lawful. Seriously?
On the heels of terrorist attacks by Islamists, whether on foreign or American soil, we rarely hear outrage or a commitment to redouble our effort to aggressively counter Islamic extremism. Rather, we are lectured not to discriminate against Muslims because of the attacks. And that's only after liberals first deny terrorism was involved. Even when we have conclusive proof that Islamic terrorists caused the attacks, liar-nObama et al. refuse to utter the words "Islamic terrorism."
A few of liar-nObama's statements in the MacDill speech illustrate the problem. "No foreign terrorist organization," he said, "has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland. ... The most deadly attacks on the homeland over the last eight years have not been carried out by operatives with sophisticated networks or equipment directed from abroad. They've been carried out by homegrown and largely isolated individuals who were radicalized online."
The problem is that many national security threats we face are asymmetrical and unconventional. Terrorists don't have to be attached to a major Islamic group to strike with deadly force. By dismissing these increasingly frequent attacks as isolated downplays their epidemic nature. To say these "lone wolfs" are unconnected with foreign terrorist organizations is inconsistent with saying they were radicalized online. Who do you think is doing the radicalizing? It implies that an otherwise innocent internet surfer turns to murderous activity after serendipitously clicking on a provocative website.
What do we expect when we invite people into this nation who have no allegiance to -- and sometimes even hatred for -- America?
liar-nObama says, "People and nations do not make good decisions when they are driven by fear." I'm tired of hearing such cliches from both parties. What's wrong with a healthy fear of people who want to kill you? What is ignoble about recognizing deadly threats and preparing for them?
We live in an increasingly dangerous world. The best way to counter that is through strength, not weakness and unilateral disarmament (and this is a cliche I'm not tired of). But liar-nObama has downsized and degraded the military, increased burdens on American gun owners and vilified law enforcement, our first line of defense in all American cities.
It is encouraging that Americans have voted to reverse these disastrous policies and to move America's national security interests from the back burner to the front burner, beginning in January, which can't come soon enough.
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