According to some African officials, Obama Administration assertions that al-Qaeda is being diminished are bogus.

From The Washington Guardian

Key Mali lawmaker challenges Obama on al-Qaida threat

Haidara Aissata insists Africa has become to al-Qaida what Afghanistan was a decade ago, challenging U.S. assessments that the terror group has been diminished

Haidara Aissata, the only female Parliament member representing northern Mali, picked up the phone earlier this month to the anguished cries of a young mother who just learned her husband had sold the couple’s 9-year-old son to al-Qaida fighters for $40.

The boy was taken to a training camp, where he would be indoctrinated into Sharia law and fight against French troops seeking to repel al-Qaida’s grip on the African nation.

Aissata, who stands out in Mali’s male-dominated politics as much for her beauty-queen looks as her impassioned oratory, tells the story as she travels the globe these days trying to dispel the notion _ fanned by some U.S. officials _ that al-Qaida is weakened and on the decline.

To the contrary, the terror network has inspired and trained al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, along with its Western Mali off-shoot, Ansar al-Dine, and both spinoffs are gaining strength and “infecting the continent like a cancer,” Aissata tells the Washington Guardian.

Well!

“Al-Qaida is still a threat to the national security of the United States, just as it was when Osama bin Laden trained young fighters in Afghanistan — this is what is happening in Mali and other parts of Africa,” she said in an interview where she sounded alarm about the growing number of al-Qaida training camps sprouting across Africa.

“In those training camps future terror leaders are born,” she said. “Terrorism is spreading, al-Qaida is becoming stronger. The extremists don’t stay in Africa they travel to Europe and the U.S.”

Aissata just finished a tour of Europe to call attention to the rise of al-Qaida in Africa, and plans on making a similar trip to the United States next month.

Given the paucity of real veracity that has come from the left wing agenda driven “partisan politics all the time” Obama Administration, I would not discount Haidara Aissata’s assertion even one little bit.

It’s difficult to know where to begin here, perhaps the following should comprise more than one post, but we’ll put it all together since it basically sums out to the relationship between “our” president, the Muslim Brotherhood and their associates and the threat so-called “radical” Islam poses to both the United States and the rest of the civilized world.

From the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a brief interview with Steven Emerson:

From the lips of Barack Obama to YouTube video:

From Freedom Outpost:

As world leaders gather at the United Nations building in New York, one can expect the… expected. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a turn at the podium on Monday and wasted no time blasting Israel and saying the country would be “eliminated.” Israeli representatives walked out of the speech, but what about the Americans?

As reported by Reuters, “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be ‘eliminated,’ ignoring a U.N. warning to avoid incendiary rhetoric ahead of the annual General Assembly session.”

Ahmadinejad also said he did not take seriously the threat that Israel could launch a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, denied sending arms to Syria, and alluded to Iran’s threats to the life of British author Salman Rushdie.

The United States quickly dismissed the Iranian president’s comments as “disgusting, offensive and outrageous.”

Isn’t that what Barack Obama and his administration said about the Internet video that they blamed for initially causing the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens while doing little else to protect him?

Just how outraged were U.S. representatives? Not enough to walk out of the speech in protest. As reported by Breitbart.com, as Israeli envoy Ron Prosor left Ahmadinejad’s speech in protest, the U.S. delegation hung around to listen.

Emphasis mine.

Of course the U.S. Delegation, part of Obama’s State Department
hung around to listen. After all, they have to be polite to kindred spirits.

too bad Barack Obama thought it was more important to be on The View than to be in New York with other world leaders. There are real issues going on around the world, Mr. President. Maybe you should be involved.

Of course he should.

Also of course, there’s this…

It seems that even if there were no other reason Barack Hussein Obama is so pro-Islamist, his indebtedness to one Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal might have tipped the scales, though we doubt it: Being as he is so anti-U.S. Constitution, he might also have sought out Islam because, even more than communism, it is the direct antithesis to the freedoms made available through the tenets of that great document.

The boost from the weed Al-Waleed bin Talal was probably just icing on the cake.

I suppose Obama & Co. believe that dhimmi dollars are tax money well spent.

Obama Pays For Apology Ads In Pakistan With Taxpayer Dollars

The Obama administration is now running “apology” ads in Pakistan. The ads include both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama apologizing for an obscure YouTube video that is blocked in Pakistan.

Fox News reports,

The television ads in Pakistan feature clips of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during press appearances in Washington in which they condemned the video. Their words were subtitled in Urdu.

“We absolutely reject its content and message,” said Clinton in the advertisement.

A caption on the ad reads: “Paid Content.”

The advertisements end with the seal of the American Embassy in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Knowing as we do that all this plays right into the hands of the Islamists who seek to dim down non-Muslim aawareness of their goals for a global caliphate, complete with the death or subjugation of all us infidels, we have to wonder how it is that the president and his merry lefties, all of whom are supposedly intelligent people who are well briefed on goings-on in the world, can be so ignorant.

There’s no other explanation than ignorance, at least none that could define their actions as anything other than wilful treason.

At our expense, even…

Yes, taxpayers pick up the bill for an otherwise useless waste of money.

.Read the rest of the article

Nothing like having a President who is completely unqualified to protect and defend us against our enemies. No, nothing like it.

…Bargisi isn’t sure yet what, if any, relationship the revolutionary toughs have with the Islamists. “It was organized by the jihadis, like Zawahiri’s brother. But that’s not who’s dominating the crowd right now. This Salafi guy I know comes over to fix stuff in my house. He’s a carpenter. He says, ‘Why care about this movie anyway? Have these people watched every movie ever made? I am quite sure this happens often. What’s new? America sucks, nothing new.’”

But to hear the media talk, it’s all Romney’s fault for talking out of turn. Melanie Phillips though, has another idea: what people are witnessing is a policy failure.

The Arab Winter has not brought forth democracy but unleashed anarchy and religious fanaticism, with Islamic mobs hitherto kept under control by Gaddafi and Mubarak now empowered, strengthened and rampaging out of control throughout the region.

We know who are the real guilty men here. Even now, Obama is stroking the enemies of the west while kicking its allies in the crutch. “Too busy” to see Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu when he comes to Washington later this month to beg for American help in preventing Iran from obtaining the nuclear weapons which it will use to achieve its declared aim of wiping Israel from the face of the earth, Obama will nevertheless meet Morsi, who has so far issued only qualified regret for the storming of the US embassy in Cairo, demanded that the US government take action against the maker of the anti-Islamic film — and who last spring released from an Egyptian prison Mohammed Zawahiri, brother of al Qaeda’s current leader and who led the mob who stormed the Cairo embassy this week.

SNIP!

…But even NBC’s foreign correspondent in Egypt is scratching his head over an Obama pronouncement that Egypt is “not an ally or an enemy.”

I almost had to sit down when I heard that. For the last forty years, the United States has had two main allies in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the other ally in the Middle East being Israel. For the President to come out and say, well, he’s not exactly sure if Egypt is an ally any more but it’s not an enemy, that is a significant change in the perspective of Washington toward this country, the biggest country in the Arab world. It makes one wonder, well, was it worth it? Was it worth supporting the Arab Spring, supporting the demonstrations here in Tahrir Square, when now in Tahrir Square there are clashes going on behind me right in front of the US embassy?

That’s because Romney “shoots first and asks questions later.” But the NBC correspondent left out the best part. President Obama may not know who his allies are in the region at all. He’s pulled out of Iraq and refused to stand up to Iran. And the way things are going, it is increasingly unclear whether he’s sure that Israel — that other main ally in the region — is an “ally or enemy” either. The president has achieved the remarkable (possibly the historic) attainment of getting both the Islamic world and Israel mad at his policies. James Lewis at American Thinker tries to make sense of it.

In Egypt, Coptic Christian churches have been burned, and priests killed. Egyptian tanks — US-made main battle tanks — have been sent into the Sinai Desert near the Israeli border. Turkey is now run by a neo-Ottoman gang of thugs. Insanity is running amok again, and the New York Times can’t see anything wrong. But that’s the New York Times for you.

Obama has just publicly refused to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu while he is in our country attending the UN General Assembly. Too busy, says our hero. It’s too hard to schedule.

The Democratic Convention surrendered to American Muslims with an elaborate prayer meeting, while dropping God and Jerusalem from their official platform. American Jews are fast losing power and influence, and radical Muslims are bringing Shari’a to America. You can see it happening.

Most American Jews are still brain-locked, because they are liberals. Half of American Jews will still vote for Obama rather than admit they were wrong — disastrously wrong — about liberalism ever since the radicals took over in 1968.

Obama’s surrender signals are understood all over the world, except at home.

“Obama’s surrender signals are understood all over the world, except at home.” That is where Lewis gets it wrong. The surrender signals aren’t understood abroad either because the president is surrendering to everybody so indiscriminately that he’s got everyone confused. The very same chief executive who sends letters of condolence to the families of deceased SEALs with a form letter and an electric pen is engaged in the same promiscuous white-flag waving everywhere he goes. The message is: “To whom it may concern: I give up. I confess to Romney’s guilt and express regret for everything he has done in advance. Yours, the once-in-a-generation president.”

It’s not like such a “brilliant” scholar as himself, our president, isn’t aware that we’ve been at war with Islam since Jefferson’s time.

In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). Upon inquiring “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.

On the other hand, President Barack Hussein doesn’t seem to care much, one way or the other, if his lack of attendance at those pesky intelligence briefings POTUSes are expected to have daily is any indication.

How long had it been since President Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya? After all, our adversaries are known to use the anniversary of 9/11 to target the United States. According to the public schedule of the president, the last time the Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting was Sept. 5 — a week before Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Tripoli. The president was scheduled to hold the intelligence meeting at 10:50 a.m. Wednesday, the day after the attacks, but it was canceled so that he could comfort grieving employees at the State Department — as well he should. But instead of rescheduling the intelligence briefing for later in the day, Obama apparently chose to skip it altogether and attend a Las Vegas fundraiser for his re-election campaign. One day after a terrorist attack.

Oh, wait a minute, that’s right! Campaigning to get reelected is definitely more important than some piddling duty like keeping the country and Americans abroad, including those serving U.S. (we, the people’s) interests overseas safe?

This is not to say, of course, that Misseur Obama doesn’t have his priorities straight in some areas.

The filmmaker of the anti-Islam film lives in the United States. If this is true, then why is our government tracking down any filmmaker for any reason? Let’s rehearse the First Amendment for our government officials:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In addition to protecting “the free exercise of religion,” even if it’s one religion criticizing another religion, the First Amendment also prohibits our national government from interfering with speech and the press.

Every day in America people attack worldviews they don’t agree with. Some do it with factual statements and reasoned argumentation, and others try to make their case with satire and ridicule. The First Amendment was put into place to protect people from tyrants who would use their power to prohibit speech that was critical of the way the governed.

SNIP!

There is nothing criminal in producing a film critical of Islam. The real criminals are the ones who killed four United States citizens on United States soil. Our embassies are an extension of the United States. If people attack an embassy, they attack the United States.

Not only has our government attacked the filmmaker but the media, who are protected by the First Amendment have also gotten into the act. For example,

“ABC journalist Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday compared the rioting and murder that followed Middle Eastern anger over an anti-Islamic movie to yelling ‘fire in a crowded theater.’ Regarding filmmaker Sam Bacile and the killing of U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya, Amanpour derided, ‘So, now, one has to, really, try to figure out the extremists in this country and the extremists out there who are using this and whipping up hatred.’”

Crying “fire” in a crowded theater is not about inciting people to violence and rioting. No one’s going to shoot up the place if someone shouts “fire.” It’s the trampling that might take place as people race for the exits. The analogy is false.

Moving on, what about a general rehashment of the incumbent administration’s Middle East policy in general?

Obama’s Mideast Policy? What policy?

From Heritage’s The Foundry:

The breaking news keeps breaking when it comes to revelations surrounding the attacks and protests aimed at U.S. embassies going on throughout the Islamic world. Protests have spread to at least eight countries. Reports indicate that four people have been arrested relating to the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff there. That offers at least the promise of getting more information about the deliberate attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., government authorities identified the man behind the controversial film purported as the cause for the protests as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Californian with a shadowy past including many aliases and a criminal record.

Unlike a Brad Thor novel, however, we can’t just jump to the end of the story to find out what this all means for American policy in this troubled part of the world.

But (again, unlike a Brad Thor novel) without cheating we can predict how the story is going to end—because the result of the President’s Middle East policies was predictable from the start.

Obama’s strategy for this part of the world started out much the way Jimmy Carter’s did—with acts of conciliation and accommodation. The President narrowly focused his priorities on three objectives: 1) withdrawing from Iraq as quickly as possible; 2) engaging with Syria and Iran; and 3) transforming the U.S. into a neutral party—to negotiate peace between Palestine and Israel.

For starters, we know that all three of those objectives have met with abject failure.

Iraq was not only left a shaky state; it has become a shaky friend—defying U.S. requests to block Iranian flights that are rearming the Syrian military so they can kill more Syrian civilians.

After wasting three years of trying to find common ground with the totalitarian regimes in Syria and Iran, even the White House has acknowledged failure, calling for the government in Damascus to step down and asking for more sanctions on Tehran.

Finally, the peace process has collapsed—a blessing in disguise, because if Obama succeeded in creating a Palestinian state today, it would look an awful lot like the Syrian regime the rest of the region is trying to bring down—a corrupt state that oppresses its own people, a state sponsor of terrorism, and a tool of Iran.

The President’s policy, however, has been more than unsuccessful—the “Obama doctrine” has taken the cause of protecting U.S. interests in the region backward—because it relied on a self-imposed agenda of self-weakening. It included distancing the U.S. from Israel and playing politics with the U.S. defense budget—where even his own officials acknowledge that if the automatic cuts required under the Budget Control Act of 2011 go into effect, they will undermine the readiness and reduce the capabilities of the armed forces.

SNIP!

The breaking news keeps breaking when it comes to revelations surrounding the attacks and protests aimed at U.S. embassies going on throughout the Islamic world. Protests have spread to at least eight countries. Reports indicate that four people have been arrested relating to the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff there. That offers at least the promise of getting more information about the deliberate attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., government authorities identified the man behind the controversial film purported as the cause for the protests as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Californian with a shadowy past including many aliases and a criminal record.

Unlike a Brad Thor novel, however, we can’t just jump to the end of the story to find out what this all means for American policy in this troubled part of the world.

But (again, unlike a Brad Thor novel) without cheating we can predict how the story is going to end—because the result of the President’s Middle East policies was predictable from the start.

Obama’s strategy for this part of the world started out much the way Jimmy Carter’s did—with acts of conciliation and accommodation. The President narrowly focused his priorities on three objectives: 1) withdrawing from Iraq as quickly as possible; 2) engaging with Syria and Iran; and 3) transforming the U.S. into a neutral party—to negotiate peace between Palestine and Israel.

For starters, we know that all three of those objectives have met with abject failure.

Iraq was not only left a shaky state; it has become a shaky friend—defying U.S. requests to block Iranian flights that are rearming the Syrian military so they can kill more Syrian civilians.

After wasting three years of trying to find common ground with the totalitarian regimes in Syria and Iran, even the White House has acknowledged failure, calling for the government in Damascus to step down and asking for more sanctions on Tehran.

Finally, the peace process has collapsed—a blessing in disguise, because if Obama succeeded in creating a Palestinian state today, it would look an awful lot like the Syrian regime the rest of the region is trying to bring down—a corrupt state that oppresses its own people, a state sponsor of terrorism, and a tool of Iran.

The President’s policy, however, has been more than unsuccessful—the “Obama doctrine” has taken the cause of protecting U.S. interests in the region backward—because it relied on a self-imposed agenda of self-weakening. It included distancing the U.S. from Israel and playing politics with the U.S. defense budget—where even his own officials acknowledge that if the automatic cuts required under the Budget Control Act of 2011 go into effect, they will undermine the readiness and reduce the capabilities of the armed forces.

It’s time for a different course.

Read On…

Obama, our enemies’ best friend…

*********UPDATE***********

In the “Chickens Coming Home To Roost” Department, Obama’s Chamberlainian policies toward the Islamofascists seem to getting him/us exactly where such kow-towing always gets one when done with such people, as the Muslims show their true colors.

When, if ever, will this president learn?

From Conservative Byte

Here at Hard Astarboard, we consider this one a “must watch” video!

It’s really something the way “progressive” ways of doing things, even after they’ve been proven wrong, dumb, suicidal, bone-headed, complete failures leading unerringly, ultimately to future disaster, always seem, rather than teaching a “what not to do, let’s learn from past mistakes” lesson, merely set a precedent for “what to do next time, and the time after that”.

The United States has for several years been secretly releasing high-level detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups, a bold effort to quell violence but one that U.S. officials acknowledge poses substantial risks.

As the United States has unsuccessfully pursued a peace deal with the Taliban, the “strategic release” program has quietly served as a live diplomatic channel, allowing American officials to use prisoners as bargaining chips in restive provinces where military power has reached its limits.

But the releases are an inherent gamble: The freed detainees are often notorious fighters who would not be released under the traditional legal system for military prisoners in Afghanistan. They must promise to give up violence — and U.S. officials warn them that if they are caught attacking American troops, they will be detained once again.

See what I mean?

Look at all the terrorists the Israelis have released as elements of “peace” agreements with the Palestinians, who have launched thermselves right back into terrorism.

Look at the significant percentage of GITMO detainees released who have later been found to be back in Afghanistan killing U.S. troops.

In this case,

There are no absolute guarantees, however, and officials would not say whether those who have been released under the program have later returned to attack U.S. and Afghan forces once again.

“Everyone agrees they are guilty of what they have done and should remain in detention. Everyone agrees that these are bad guys. But the benefits outweigh the risks,” said one U.S. official who, like others, discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the program.

Despite the above, however, we must remember that President Obama epitomises the idiocy “wisdom” of liberal reasoning.

The releases have come amid broader efforts to end the decade-long war through negotiation, which is a central feature of the Obama administration’s strategy for leaving Afghanistan. Those efforts, however, have yielded little to no progress in recent years….

(my italicising, there)

…which of course doesn’t seem to matter, since while Obama’s idea of negotiating with the Republicans is “my way or the highway”, his approach to negotiating with terrorists is somewhere on the cusp of “your wish is my command….”

…. In part, they have been stymied by the unwillingness of the United States to release five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay — a gesture that insurgent leaders have said they see as a precondition for peace talks.

How a president can place our people unnecessarily in danger as our side of “peace” talks by freeing murderous terrorists committed unto their version of God to kill Americans is as far beyond me as is Obama’s war on U.S. energy independence, but that’s another story entirely.

The entire WaPo article is here. Even a “progreesive” publication like the Washington Post can’t make the administration’s policies regarding releasing these terrorists sound any kind of sane.

At least that’s what they seem to be thinking at that big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue these days.

From Conservative Byte (above link) and Breitbart:

Today, the National Journal reported that a senior State Department official has announced, “The war on terror is over.”

“Now that we have killed most of al Qaida,” the source said, “now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

The article itself describes the Obama administration’s new vision of foreign policy, which admits no enemies. Everyone, in this view, is a friend. Islamism, says the Obama administration, is just fine, so long as it does not openly support terrorism.

This, of course, is utter foolishness. Islamism is a religious ideological movement that brooks no real alternatives – so while the State Department proclaims “a legitimate Islamism,” it fails to acknowledge that Islamism, “legitimate” or not, is deeply intolerant of any other modes of expression. Not only that, but Islamism works hand-in-glove with terror groups around the world. Simply because a regime does not openly house al Qaida does not mean that the regime doesn’t support al Qaida; just because a regime pretends at democracy doesn’t mean that it has real democratic values.

Obama has created the brave new Middle East – a Middle East that assumes that every human heart has the desire to vote, but not to be truly free; a Middle East that oppresses women and gays and minorities, but pretends at liberalism; a Middle East that despises America but hides that hate behind a façade of multiculturalism, even as it disposes of its internal dissenters.

In truth, Obama isn’t declaring an end to the war on terror – terrorism continues unabated each day in Egypt and the Palestinian territories and Iraq and Afghanistan and Sudan and Yemen and Syria and Lebanon and a dozen other hotspots around the globe. Obama is truly declaring an end to the war on Islamism. He has made his peace; he has surrendered. In doing so, he has condemned broad swaths of the world to darkness, and more immediately, he has condemned America to a defensive position in the world. Now there is no proactive America shaping the world to her own ends. Now there is only an atomistic world, a series of billiard balls, in which America waits to be struck before bouncing back.

To Obama, the war on Islamism may be over. For Islamists, the war on America is far from over.

Ah, the deceptively peaceful aromas and gentle breezes of the Arab Spring…

All of which goes rather hand in glove with a column by Frank Gaffney.

Have you ever asked yourself why, despite more than 10 years of effort - involving, among other things, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well over $1 trillion spent, countless man-years wasted waiting in airport security lines and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given to seemingly permanently aggrieved Muslim activists - we are no closer to victory in the “war on terrorism” than we were on Sept. 11, 2001?

Thankfully, we have been able to kill some dangerous bad guys. The sad truth is that by almost any other measure, the prospect of victory is becoming more remote by the day. No one seems able to explain the reason.

In an effort to provide the missing answer, on Tuesday , the Center for Security Policy is making available via the Internet a new, free 10-part video course titled “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within” (MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com). This course connects the proverbial dots, drawing on a wealth of publicly available data and firsthand accounts to present a picture that has, for more than a decade, been obscured, denied and suppressed.

In addition to the threat of violent jihad, America faces another, even more toxic danger - a stealthy and pre-violent form of warfare aimed at destroying our constitutional form of democratic government and free society. The Muslim Brotherhood is the prime mover behind this seditious campaign, which it calls “civilization jihad.”

The Muslim Brotherhood? Yes, that would be the same organization to which President Obama recently transferred $1.5 billion of our tax dollars in a lump-sum payment. For him to do so, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had to waive congressionally imposed restrictions born of fully justified concerns about the nature and direction of the Shariah-adherent government the Brotherhood is birthing in Egypt.

Mrs. Clinton’s presidentially directed waiver came despite the following: the Brotherhood-dominated government’s hostage-taking of American democracy activists; murderous Islamist rampages against Coptic Christians and other religious minorities; the toleration and abetting of escalating violence against Israel in and from the Sinai; and official threats to jettison the 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state. Matters have only gotten worse since the president’s largesse was made available in an unusual upfront lump-sum payment.

Read all of Mr. Gaffney’s piece here.

Whose side, one has to wonder, is Barack Hussein Obama on, anyway?

From Caroline Glick:

In recent months, a curious argument has surfaced in favor of US President Barack Obama. His supporters argue that Obama’s foreign policy has been a massive success. If he had as much freedom of action on domestic affairs as he has on foreign affairs, they argue, his achievements in all areas would be without peer.

Expressing this view, Karen Finney a former Democratic spokeswoman who often defends the party in the US media told the Huffington Post, “Look at the progress the president can make when he doesn’t have Republicans obstructing him.”

Yeah, sure…

{SNIP!}

The failure of Obama’s foreign policies to date has been nowhere more evident than in the Middle East.

Take Iraq for instance. Obama and his supporters claim that the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq is one of his great accomplishments. By pulling out, Obama kept his promise to voters to end the war in “a responsible manner.” And as the polling data indicate, most Americans are willing to give him credit for the move.

But the situation on the ground is dangerous and getting worse every day. Earlier this month, just ahead of the departure of the last US forces from Iraq, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited with Obama at the White House. Immediately after he returned home, the Shiite premier began a ruthless campaign against his Sunni coalition partners in a no-holds barred bid to transform the Iraqi government and armed forces into partisan institutions controlled by his Dawa Party.

Forces commanded by Maliki’s son arrested and allegedly tortured several of the Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashimi’s bodyguards. They forced the guards to implicate Hashimi in terror plots. Maliki subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Hashimi. So too, he issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq and fired him without permission from the Iraqi parliament.

Hashimi and Mutlaq are now in hiding in Erbil. Maliki is demanding that the Kurdish regional government extradite them to Baghdad for trial.

Maliki’s actions have driven Sunni leaders in the Sunni provinces of Diyala, Anbar and Salahadin to demand autonomy under Iraq’s federal system. He has responded by deploying loyal forces to the provinces to fight the local militias.

The situation is so explosive that three prominent Sunni leaders, former prime minister Ayad Allawi, who heads the Iraqiya party, Parliament Speaker Osama Nujaifi, and Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi published an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday begging Obama to rein in Maliki in order to prevent Iraq from plunging into civil war.

No doubt these “pleas” will fall on deaf ears as Obama continues to define our troops’ withdrawal from Iraq a master stroke or whatever on his part.

Then there is Egypt. Obama’s decision in February to abandon then president Hosni Mubarak, the US’s most dependable ally in the Arab world in favor of the protesters in Tahrir Square was hailed by his supporters as a victory for democracy and freedom against tyranny. By supporting the protesters against the US ally, Obama argued that he was advancing US interests by showing the Muslim world the US favored the people over their leaders.

Ten months later, the Egyptian people have responded to this populist policy by giving jihadist parties a two-thirds majority in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. For the first time in thirty years, the strategic anchor of US power in the Arab world — the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty — is in danger. Indeed, there is no reason to believe it will survive.

Continuing,

As to Iran, Obama’s policies have brought about a situation where the regime in Teheran does not fear a US military strike on its nuclear installations. Obama’s open opposition to the prospect of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear installations has similarly convinced the regime that it can proceed without fear in its nuclear project.

Iran’s threat this week to close the Straits of Hormuz in the event that the US imposes an embargo on Iranian oil exports is being widely characterized by the US media as a sign of desperation on the part of the regime. But it is hard to see how this characterization aligns with reality. It is far more appropriate to view Iran’s easy threats as a sign of contempt for Obama and for US power projection under his leadership.

If Iran’s ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons are thwarted, it will be despite Obama, not because of him.

Then there is the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Due to Obama’s unbridled hostility towards Israel, there is no chance whatsoever that Israel and the PLO will reach a peace deal for the foreseeable future. Instead, Fatah and Hamas have agreed to unify their forces. The only thing standing in the way of a Hamas takeover of the PLO is the US Congress’s threat to cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority. For his part, Obama has gone out of his way to discredit the Congressional threat by serving as an indefatigable lobbyist for maintaining US financial support for the PA.

Still more…

Of course, the Middle East is not the only region where the deleterious consequences of Obama’s foreign policy are being felt. From Europe, to Africa, to Asia, to Latin America, Obama’s determination to embrace US adversaries like Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez has weakened pro-US forces and strengthened US foes.

Barack Hussein Obama, chimpion of foreign policy.

Read the rest of the column.

No, they really don’t, these members of the current majority festering in Congress. Anytime any opportunity arises where they have the chance to sabotage our economy, our freedom of speech or our security in the name of liberal quagmirism, they’re wide awake and on it with a vengeance.

The Senate rejected a move Thursday to block the Obama administration from using ordinary federal courts to prosecute those alleged to have plotted the Sept. 11 attacks.

On a 54-45 vote, the Senate tabled an amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would have left military commissions as the only option for prosecuting Sept. 11 suspects.

All 40 Republicans supported the amendment, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and four Democrats: Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)

Graham said the measure, offered as an amendment to the annual appropriations bill for the Commerce and Justice Departments, was needed to head off what he said were plans by the Obama administration to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others allegedly involved in the Sept. 11 plot to trials before civilian courts in the U.S.

Of course, we were expecting something like that, the left having discussed it for a long time, often with comparisons of the gulag and Nazi death camps when referring to the Camp Delta incarceration facility at Guantanamo Bay, the feeble argument that these Butchers For Allah are mere felons, not captured prisoners in a war between civilizations we did not start, but to now see that they’ve actually done it, well, is nevertheless disconcerting.

The more sensible among our leaders, mostly Republicans, were, rightly, completely for the bill.

“These people are not criminals. They’re warriors — and they need to be dealt with in a legal system that recognizes that,” Graham said. “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, did not rob a liquor store.”

“The attacks of 9/11 were not a crime. They were a war crime,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said.

Some Democrats flatly disagreed, arguing that military trials could play into the Al Qaeda operatives’ claims that they are fighters in a holy war against America.

“They are criminals. They committed murder,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said. “These are not holy warriors. They are criminals.”

Here, here!

Jim Webb, one of the few smart Democrats present:

“I have consistently argued that the appropriate venue for trying perpetrators of international terrorism who are in fact enemy combatants is a military tribunal,” Webb said. He said federal court procedures for turning over evidence to defense lawyers and for calling military and intelligence agency witnesses “could lead to the exposure of classified materials.”

My emphasis, there, and the man said a mouthful.

Regular court procedures would require the prosecution to produce evidence that might consist of disclosure of methods, means and personnel we can’t afford to have the enemy read about in the New York Times.

Then again, that precedent was already set back when the NYT was printing the details of Bush terrorist surveillance strategies, so I don’t suppose it would be anything new.

Webb also indicated he was concerned that a terror suspect sent to federal court could be released in the U.S. if he was found not guilty.

Fancy that!

The whole story is here.

…from today’s Washington Times Online. I’m somewhat pressed for time this morning, I have some people to meet, but figured I’d share them.

Here we have a fine example of the term, “haste makes waste” in action, in this case mongers of political agendas in such a hurry to blow our hard earned tax money that they misinformed the public, largely through failure to do their homework and largely to get their itinerary pushed through in a hurry, in an un-thought-out, unconstitutional, just plain stupid act, part of the idiotic and ill advised TARP program.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating “unrealistic expectations” about the companies and damaging the program’s credibility, according to a report by the program’s independent watchdog.

The federal government last October loaned Bank of America and eight other “healthy” financial institutions a total of $125 billion - the initial payout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP - in an attempt to avoid a series of major bank collapses that would push the sputtering economy into a free fall or depression.

The rationale for giving money to stable banks and not failing ones, regulators said, was that such institutions would be better able to lend money and thus unfreeze tight credit markets - a major factor in last year’s Wall Street losses.

Right. Now the American taxpayer gets to pay the price for the blatant miscalculations due to political agendas and faulty thinking of a number of general purpose assholes.

Moving right along, we have the messiah Barack Hussein, whose military expertise evidently outshines that of his generals, coming up with excuses as to why he’d rather allow U.S. servicemen and woman to die than to commit more troops where General McChrystal says they are needed. What does McChrystal know, anyway, right? He’s just a general, whereas Obama, the guy who once, for campaign reasons, said the war in Afghanistan is justified in order to compare it to Iraq (according to his excellency, unjustified) is so much more knowledgeable about warfare that, well,

One day after an attack in Afghanistan killed eight American soldiers, President Obama’s national security adviser downplayed both the importance of U.S. troop levels and the possibility of a Taliban return to power.

National security adviser James L. Jones suggested that Gen. McChrystal’s call for more troops must be tempered by diplomatic considerations as the president weighs how to deal with the 8-year-old war.

“Well, I think the end is much more complex than just about adding ‘X’ number of troops. Afghanistan is a country that’s quite large and that swallows up a lot of people,” the retired Marine general said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Right, let’s here more, Jones. What else did Obama instruct you to say, and being an ex-military man yourself, how does it feel to be a party to it?

The rest of the story can be found here.