U.S. special operations forces early this summer launched a secret, major rescue operation in Syria to save James Foley and a number of Americans held by the extremist group ISIS, but the mission failed because the hostages weren’t there, senior administration officials told ABC News today.
President Obama authorized the “substantial and complex” rescue operation after the officials said a “broad collection of intelligence” led the U.S. to believe the hostages were being held in a specific location in the embattled Middle Eastern nation.
When “several dozen” U.S. special operation members landed in Syria, however, they were met with gunfire and “while on site, it became apparent the hostages were not there,” one of the officials said. The special operators engaged in a firefight in which ISIS suffered “a good number” casualties, the official said, while the American forces suffered only a single minor injury.
The American forces were able to get back on helicopters and escape.
“Intelligence is not a perfect science,” the senior official said. As to how the intelligence failed and why the hostages were not there, the official said, “The truth is, we don’t know. And that’s the truth. When we got there, they weren’t there. We don’t know why that is.”
Hillary Clinton has decided not only to run away from Barack Obama, but she has joined the Republicans in blaming the Obama administration for the birth of the terrorists group ISIS and the turmoil in Iraq.
In recent interviews, Clinton is quoted as saying that Obama’s “failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events.
Will Clinton’s decision to go against the president hurt her with the die-hard Obama supporters? Time will tell…
Aljazeera is reporting that the US container ship Cape Ray has started to neutralise chemical materials that were once part of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s weapons arsenal, the US Defence Department has said.
The ship, located in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, began processing about 600 metric tonnes of chemical weapons and the raw materials that could be used in them, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said on Monday,
The US government has said the materials include mustard gas and components for the nerve agent sarin.
The materials were transferred to the Cape Ray earlier in July from a vessel that brought them out of Syria, the Reuters news agency reported.
Tunisian women have travelled to Syria to wage “sex jihad” by comforting Islamist fighters battling the regime there, Interior Minister Lotfi ben Jeddou has told MPs.
“They have sexual relations with 20, 30, 100” militants, the minister told members of the National Constituent Assembly on Thursday.
“After the sexual liaisons they have there in the name of ‘jihad al-nikah’ — (sexual holy war, in Arabic) — they come home pregnant,” Ben Jeddou told the MPs.
He did not elaborate on how many Tunisian women had returned to the country pregnant with the children of jihadist fighters.
Jihad al-nikah, permitting extramarital sexual relations with multiple partners, is considered by some hardline Sunni Muslim Salafists as a legitimate form of holy war.
The minister also did not say how many Tunisian women were thought to have gone to Syria for such a purpose, although media reports have said hundreds have done so.
Hundreds of Tunisian men have also gone to join the ranks of the jihadists fighting to bring down the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
However, Ben Jeddou also said that since he assumed office in March, “six thousand of our young people have been prevented from going there” to Syria.
Senator John McCain is sometimes considered a Maverick for breaking away from following his party and, according to Sarah Palin, going rogue. Well he done gone and done it again! This time, McCain not only drifted off from his party, he drifted off from his nation.
At a time when the world is on pins and needles waiting to see what happens in Syria, and at a time when Vladimir Putin has finally decided to do the right thing and coach Syria into giving up their chemical weapons, John McCain has decided that this will be the perfect time to attack Putin. In beginning his piece in the Russian paper, McCain explained, “I am not anti-Russian. I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today.”
President Putin claims his purpose is to restore Russia to greatness at home and among the nations of the world. But by what measure has he restored your greatness? He has given you an economy that is based almost entirely on a few natural resources that will rise and fall with those commodities. Its riches will not last. And, while they do, they will be mostly in the possession of the corrupt and powerful few. Capital is fleeing Russia, which – lacking rule of law and a broad-based economy – is considered too risky for investment and entrepreneurism. He has given you a political system that is sustained by corruption and repression and isn’t strong enough to tolerate dissent.
How has he strengthened Russia’s international stature? By allying Russia with some of the world’s most offensive and threatening tyrannies. By supporting a Syrian regime that is murdering tens of thousands of its own people to remain in power and by blocking the United Nations from even condemning its atrocities. By refusing to consider the massacre of innocents, the plight of millions of refugees, the growing prospect of a conflagration that engulfs other countries in its flames an appropriate subject for the world’s attention. He is not enhancing Russia’s global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world.
President Putin doesn’t believe in these values because he doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t believe that human nature at liberty can rise above its weaknesses and build just, peaceful, prosperous societies. Or, at least, he doesn’t believe Russians can. So he rules by using those weaknesses, by corruption, repression and violence. He rules for himself, not you.
Timing is everything. Any other time, I would agree with what McCain had to say. Putin has ruled Russia with a heavy hand. He is a ruler not at all interested in governing, so McCain is on point with much of what he had to say. But again, timing is everything.
Putin has taken a leading role in convincing Bashar Assad to take the necessary steps to end his chemical weapons program and in so doing, end the American threat of bombing Syria – a move that can further destabilize an already destabilized region and can signal the start of another world war.
John McCain on the other hand has taken the pro-war stance on Syria. McCain wants the fighting rebels to be armed by America, he wants President Obama to drop the bombs, no to drop nukes on Syria and end Assad’s reign. So imagine McCain’s frustration when Vladimir Putin and President Obama spear headed a peaceful resolution to Syria’s chemical weapons.
McCain clearly was not happy and he made his views known to the Obama administration and the American people in multiple television interviews. But the American people were tired of the wars and given the opportunity to get the same result through peace, they chose peace. McCain’s call for war was falling on deft ears. It is his contention that by not bombing Syria, Iran would walk away thinking they could go ahead with their nuclear ambitions. So McCain had to try something else. He had to do something he hadn’t done yet – attack Putin, one of the nucleus in a peaceful outcome where Syria’s weapons are concerned. And he hopes that with his attack, Putin backs away from the deal on Syria.
You think that’s a far fetched conclusion? Think again. We are talking about John McCain here, a pro war Republican senator who, when running for President in 2008 took to the podium in a town hall meeting and sang, Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran!
Timing is everything, and your timing now Senator speaks volume.
This is a big deal! Russia and Syria has not only agreed that Syria has chemical weapons, a huge deal was reached on Saturday calling for these chemical weapons to be accounted for and destroyed by the middle of 2014!
The joint announcement, on the third day of intensive talks in Geneva, also set the stage for one of the most challenging undertakings in the history of arms control.
“This situation has no precedent,” said Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “They are cramming what would probably be five or six years’ worth of work into a period of several months, and they are undertaking this in an extremely difficult security environment due to the ongoing civil war.”
Although the agreement explicitly includes the United Nations Security Council for the first time in determining possible international action in Syria, Russia has maintained its opposition to any military action.
But George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, emphasized that the possibility of unilateral American military force was still on the table. “We haven’t made any changes to our force posture to this point,” Mr. Little said. “The credible threat of military force has been key to driving diplomatic progress, and it’s important that the Assad regime lives up to its obligations under the framework agreement.”
Republicans however, are not having it. Moment after the news broke that an agreement was reached, Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying, the deal allows Syrian leader Bashar Assad”to delay and deceive” while the country’s civil war continued.
The statement said: “It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and [Russian president] Vladimir Putin.”
President Obama continued his call for action in Syria whether it be military or diplomatic, and he called on the leaders of Russia and Syria to continue talks with Sec. Kerry on securing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. “We’re making it clear that this can’t be a stalling tactic,” the president said. “We need to see concrete actions to demonstrate that Assad is serious about giving up his chemical weapons.”
The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks he has the moral compass to talk about diplomacy is in itself laughable. The fact that he sees himself capable of teaching the idea of Diplomacy to Americans is Rolling On The Floor Laughing Out Loud.
Putin and the Syrian leader Bashar Assad jumped on an off the cuff remark by Secretary of State John Kerry, where Kerry suggested a total surrender of Syria’s chemical weapons as the only way to avoid military action. The here’s our weapons ball began rolling almost immediately with Putin leading the way and here at home, the Republicans – who haven’t yet met a war they didn’t like – suddenly became peace makers, lovers of diplomacy. They began praising Putin The Savior yesterday, as if he was Christ getting ready for the second coming.
All this love going his way from the Republicans in the United States Congress and the exaltation from a right winged media blitz on all this week, must have went straight to Putin’s head, prompting him to pen an op ed in the New York Times. A Plea for Caution From Russia was written well, made some good points. But the message was totally corrupted by the messenger.
Ordinarily this part of the message I would agree with. In this passage, Putin explains how much of the world view America and our military power, and the irony of using the military to protect innocent people who sometimes end up being inadvertently killed by military action.
Putin, take it away!
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.
If that was all Putin had to say, then his message would be more acceptable, more believable in spite of the messenger. But then Putin went where he clearly had no right going.
At this point in his article, Putin was probably admiring the masculinity of his shirtless physique in the mirror, when decided to tell Americans that we are not exceptional and shouldn’t even feel like we are.
Brace yourself.
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.
And the part of Putin’s message that showed us just how broken his moral compass really is, and why the message was totally corrupted was when he talked about everyone being equally created by God… Yes, Putin really said that. Yes, the same Putin who is persecuting people in Russia because of their sexual orientation. That same Putin said this:
We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Putin, put your shirt back on. You are not muscular and you are no saint, despite what the Republicans say.
But we’re talking about Fox News here, and chances are they’ll have no idea what Stewart meant when he said;
And I get that Fox opposes a Syria peace plan because its motus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless and irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic succubus-like existence.
After all, what Stewart said was true, and truth plus a dose of Fox don’t mix.
The video below is Fox News’ Neil Cavuto discussing with evangelical writer and former political consultant Joel Rosenberg whether or not the current civil war in Syria is a harbinger of the End Times.
To be fair, both pundits were careful to say that we simply don’t know if Damascus is about to be destroyed in accordance with Old Testament prophesy, but thought it was something we should all be keeping an eye on.
Rosenberg has been conjecturing about conflict in the Middle East being a sign of the End Times since at least 2006, and has been a frequent Glenn Beck guest during the time Glenn Beck was a thing, so it appears the particulars of what is happening in the Middle East during any particular year are less important then the general theme of imminent-supernatural-maybe-perhaps-doom. All of this is likely to be quite upsetting to the Fox News audience, especially those who have forgotten to take their morning anti-apocalypse pills.
One of the criticisms of President Obama’s plan to strike Syria was that once a country unleashes weapons on another, the consequences are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
The same could be said for diplomacy.
Obama’s speech last night was certainly different from the one he planned to give when he announced his intention to speak to the nation late last week. He now confronts an offer by the Russians to mediate a deal whereby Syria would put its chemical weapons program under international control in exchange for a promise not to employ military measures. The president is doing exactly what he should be doing in response to this offer. His plan faced almost certain defeat in Congress and now he’s found a diplomatice way out.
Many news outlets are saying that the president and John Kerry have bungled this issue and seem to be lurching from one bad plan to another. I disagree. Obama has always said that his main issue is with Assad’s chemical weapons program, whose existence, by the way, the Syrians didn’t acknowledge until the past two days. That’s enough to convince me that they actually launched the attack.
So without doing much but issuing a threat, the president has won an important victory. That the Russians leapt on Kerry’s offer of international oversight is more evidence that they were concerned that American missile strikes would be devastating to their standing in the world and would unmask them as supporting Assad’s August chemical attack. The Security Council, stuck between doing the wrong thing and doing nothing, has sprung to life. And all because the American president did what American presidents are supposed to do: lead.
It’s clear to me that this diplomatic plan will bear fruit because the other option is unacceptable to most everyone else. The US, though, will not give up the right to use their military and honestly, I think the Russians know this. The best deal they can get is to forestall strikes while international monitors take control of Assad’s previously phantom chemical stockpiles.
Done well, this will be another example of American-led diplomacy. And it should put to rest any talk about America’s decline in the world. We still have the power to force other regimes to change their behavior.
President Obama will back a United Nations effort to secure Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, the White House said Tuesday.
Separately, a group of senators said they were working on a new use-of-force resolution that would only authorize military action if Syria refuses to relinquish its stockpile of chemical weapons to international control.
This development took place a day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) canceled a procedural vote scheduled for Wednesday on authorizing a limited military strike on Syria.
The outline under discussion by the nine lawmakers would require the United Nations to pass a resolution stating that Syrian President Bashar Assad gassed his own people. It would also call on the U.N. to remove all of Syria’s chemical weapons by a certain date.
The resolution would authorize U.S. military action if those goals are not met, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
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