NHL Could Reevaluate Sending Players To Sochi For Olympics, Some Players Elect To Leave Families Home

By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/

January 28, 2014

Police officers with dogs walk along a street in Sochi, Russia, on Jan. 6. The presence of security personnel has ramped up recently ahead of the Winter Olympics. (Kyoto/Landov)

DETROIT (CBS DETROIT) – As the Feb. 7 start date of the Winter Olympics draws closer, concerns about potential terrorist attacks targeting the event in Sochi, Russia, have not abated.

According to BBC, Whitehall officials (the British equivalent of White House officials) have called terrorist attacks before or during the Olympics “very likely.”

The circumstances leading up to the Olympics have provided plenty of fodder for concern. Threats from Islamic extremist groups, wanted posters in Sochi hotels of potential “black widow” suicide bombers, December suicide bombings in Volograd that killed dozens of people, Islamic insurgency and unrest in nearby regions – hardly the ingredients for a jovial Olympic atmosphere.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has guaranteed safety at Sochi, implementing a security force of more than 50,000 individuals. Putin’s so-called ”Ring of Steel” around Sochi was sealed Jan.7. In addition running visitors through various security checkpoints, Russia will also be able to monitor all phone and Internet conversations taking place in the city thanks to recently implemented surveillance technology.

While NHL players have expressed excitement about the experience of representing their country and competing against the world’s best, the league has not ruled out the possibility of keeping its players stateside.

“As of now, we do not doubt that all necessary steps are being taken by the Sochi Organizing Committee, the Russian government and the IOC to ensure the safety of the athletes and guests in Sochi,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Associated Press. “Obviously, if something significant were to transpire between now and February 9 that causes us to question that conclusion, we will re-evaluate. I don’t expect that that will become necessary.”

Indeed, U.S. athletes even received memos cautioning them to maintain a low profile outside competitions.

“If you are an American Olympic athlete, you don’t want to advertise that far outside the Olympic venues,” a senior State Department official told CNN.

While many believe that the Olympic Games themselves should be safe because of the intensive security measures, experts worry about other, less secured gathering places – train stations, hotels and security check-in lines.

While few Olympians seem concerned about their own safety, a significant number have expressed concerns about their family members, with many deciding to leave their loved ones at home.

“They’re not gonna go. It’s not worth it,” Phoenix Coyote goalie Mike Smith told FOX Sports Arizona. “For myself, it’s about thinking if [my wife is] OK when I’m not with her. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the way it is.”

Vancouver Canucks Robert Luongo and Daniel Sedin will also not bring their families, Fox News reported. Ryan Suter and Zach Parise of the Minnesota Wild will not be bringing their supporters, listing security concerns as a factor, and speed skater Tucker Fredricks also asked his family to stay home so he would not have to worry about their safety.

According to Yahoo, Ryan Getzlaf of the Anaheim Ducks and Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins made similar calls.

The father of St. Louis Blues forward T.J. Oshie put it this way:

“It’s getting to the point where our lives are on the line if we go there,” Tim Oshie told the New York Times. “They’re talking about terrorizing families. I’d rather stay in the homeland.”

Many are wondering if the NHL may feel the same way if the situation surrounding Sochi worsens.

Today's Tune: Bruce Springsteen - Just Like Fire Would

In Afghanistan, a war that has lost its purpose

By Richard Cohen, Published: January 27 E-mail the writer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Above: (L to R) Navy SEALs Matthew G. Axelson, Daniel R. Healy, James Suh, Marcus Luttrell, Eric S. Patton, and Michael P. Murphy in Afghanistan. With the exception of Luttrell, all were killed June 28, 2005, by enemy forces while supporting Operation Red Wings. Below: (L to R) Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Matt "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster) and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) in Lone Survivor.

While watching the utterly gripping movie “Lone Survivor” recently, I comforted myself by noting that the four Navy SEALs engaged in a desperate firefight with the Afghan Taliban were all volunteers. They asked for this, I told myself. They were not draftees yanked out of civilian life and compelled to fight a war they could neither understand nor win. They had asked for this, I insisted, but I knew all the time that this was a lie. They had volunteered, but certainly not to die and certainly for no purpose.

Okay, I know this is only a movie. But it is faithful to the book of the same name , which is faithful to the 2005 mission called Operation Red Wing that was intended to take out a Taliban commander. The title “Lone Survivor” pretty much says what happened, but you owe it to the SEALs and to their families to see the movie. The ending is not in doubt, but the reason for their sacrifice undoubtedly is. Afghanistan is a war searching for a reason.

All through the movie, I kept asking myself, Why? What are these men fighting for? Once, I knew the answer. After Sept. 11, 2001, I wanted to wipe out al-Qaeda and kill its Afghan hosts, the Taliban. Even before the terrorist attack, reports of the Taliban’s treatment of women — stonings, public executions in the soccer stadium, etc. — and beheadings of men convinced me that it simply had it coming: Send in the Marines.

But U.S. fighting units have been there since 2001. The initial mission — the destruction of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan — was completed long ago. The Taliban and its allies remain, but unlike al-Qaeda they are indigenous and, seemingly, undeterred. They apparently have an unlimited supply of suicide bombers (who are these people?), and they continue to inflict mayhem on Afghans and foreigners alike. This month, the Taliban struck a Kabul restaurant that draws a Western clientele and killed at least 21 people. The attack by gunmen was preceded by a suicide bombing.

Bob Gates, in his memoir “Duty,” depicted Barack Obama as a commander in chief whose policy in Afghanistan was to do as little as possible — simultaneously ordering a surge and announcing a pull-out date.Gates, then defense secretary , was appalled: “The president doesn’t . . . believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his.”

Well, the war is not Obama’s. It is George W. Bush’s — one he interrupted to mindlessly chase after Saddam Hussein. But Obama embraced the Afghanistan mission and then, apparently, never knew what to do with it. I don’t blame him. Afghanistan is an arid Vietnam, a quagmire presided over by the petulant and unpredictable Hamid Karzai. For Obama, Gates wrote, “it’s all about getting out.”

The quote is pithy, but the observation is banal. It was clear back in 2009, when Obama ordered his surge in Afghanistan, that he had no stomach for continuing the war. The war goes on and on and has now become fused with the futility of Iraq —2,307 Americans dead in Afghanistan, 4,489 dead in Iraq, an incomprehensible waste of lives.

The administration wants U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan (the Pentagon has suggested 10,000). It has its reasons. The country was once a terrorist base and could revert. The necessary pursuit of the remaining Sept. 11 terrorists is best based in the region — as are U.S. drones — and without an American spine, the Afghan army could collapse. That would permit the return to power of the Taliban and the abandonment of women and girls to frenzied misogynists. That, though, has nothing to do with realpolitik, just real life. Soon, the music will die and we will have to avert our eyes.

But as Gates insisted, Obama has failed to make these or other arguments. “He needed to say publicly why the troops’ sacrifices were necessary,” Gates said of the president. Gates made that point several times, and he is right. Maybe, though, Obama is cautioned by the experience of Lyndon Johnson. On July 28, 1965, LBJ began a news conference by addressing the question of “why we are in Vietnam.” He never supplied a satisfactory answer.

In the movie theater, I watched two films at once — “Lone Survivor” on the screen and Vietnam in my head. On the screen, as in reality, men fought and died — and, as with Vietnam, I no longer knew why. One man survived the battle. The rest were lost — as is the reason for the war itself.

Read more from Richard Cohen’s archive.

Read more on this issue:

David Ignatius: Only Obama can fix his broken foreign policy

Michael O’Hanlon: 3 reasons for optimism on Afghanistan

Stephen Hadley: An alternative to a U.S.-Afghan security pact

Charles Krauthammer: How in good conscience?

First-Class Islam: Eric Holder Puts Muslims Above Terror Suspicion

Posted By Timothy Furnish On January 28, 2014 @ 12:00 am In Homeland Security,US News | 12 Comments

http://pjmedia.com/

From 2008 to 2011, I was a guest lecturer at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (the primary DHS training facility, located in coastal Georgia) and at Joint Special Operations University (which brings foreign officers to learn of U.S. irregular warfare, located in Tampa). At both venues I was asked to lecture on the history of terrorism.

I did so in an even-handed and comprehensive manner, exploring the issue across place (Europe to East Asia), time (ancient Assyria to al-Qaeda), and ideology (religious: pagan, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim; and political: right-wing, left-wing, anarchist, environmentalist, etc.). Only 14 of the 44 PowerPoint screens in my presentation dealt with Islamic terrorism, although several of those actually mitigated against the concept.

Nonetheless, in June 2009 I was told that I could no longer lecture at FLETC, because the edict had come down from the new Obama administration that “no trainer who uses the term ‘jihad’ shall henceforth be used.” (This was over two years before the Obama administration was openly hostile to realistic training about Islam ^[1].)

JSOU continued to utilize me until late 2011, when I was told by the course instructor that Muslim student officers had complained that “I talked too much about Islamic terrorism.”

I was actually surprised that I had not been yanked the year before, when references to Islam and jihad were stricken ^[2] from Obama’s kinder, gentler National Security Strategy document. That same year, noted Islamic studies expert Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee ^[3] that foiled Islamic suicide bombers in the U.S. were motivated by “Islam that is not consistent with” that religion’s “true teachings.”

Now, the Obama administration — led by Holder — has decided that Islam is a “race,” ^[4] and therefore to examine or even to adduce a Muslim’s Islamic beliefs about jihad ^[5], beheading ^[6], violence against kuffar ^[7](“infidels”), or re-establishing a caliphate ^[8] is tantamount to racism. This administration behavior is rationalized because “federal authorities have in particular singled out Muslims in counter terrorism investigations and Latinos for immigration investigations.”

It is difficult to express just how willfully ignorant of reality these statements and accompanying policies are.

Per the immigration example: as over 80% of “undocumented aliens” are from Mexico or another Latin American country ^[9], it would be foolish, indeed delusionary, to ignore that fact. The same logic applies to directing extra scrutiny towards individuals who hold a set of beliefs that may predispose them to violence against others not of that belief system.

And that is the primary point: Islam is a belief system. Not a race.

Muslims can be of any skin, Bosnian or Turkish, Nigerian, Saudi, Chinese. If American, Muslims can perhaps be of several nationalities. This is equally if not more true of Christians, who can be white Finns, black Ethiopians, brown Lebanese, or Koreans, to name but a few examples. It is not possible to look at someone (sans distinctive clothing) and ascertain whether he or she is Muslim or Christian — or secularist, for that matter.

Advocacy groups and willing dupes in the media and Democrat Party — like Senator Dick Durbin — have foolishly yet successfully conflated race and ideology in the case of only one religion, Islam. They have made examining the latter tantamount to discrimination against the former.  No one ever argues that singling out Christians for repression because they hold politically incorrect views about gay marriage or abortion amounts to “racism.”

Beyond the obvious fact that beliefs do not constitute a race, Holder et al. are massively wrong to deny the clear link between certain Islamic beliefs and terrorism.

Currently there are 57 groups on the U.S. State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization list ^[10]; 38 of these are stridently Islamic in ideology and goals. Ten of these are secular/Leftist, six are nationalist, one is anarchist, and one each is Jewish and Christian. (The latter one — the Japanese, sarin gas-using Aum Shinrikyo — is at best only nominally Christian, and better described as generically apocalyptic.)

So: 67% of the world’s terrorist groups as recognized by the U.S. (more, actually, if State were honest and comprehensive; they should includee Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq & Syria, etc.) are Muslim.

Since 9/11, 82% of U.S. Department of Justice terrorism convictions have been of Muslims, despite the fact that Muslims comprise less than 1% of the American population. (I accessed this data some time ago; it has sincemysteriously disappeared from the DOJ website ^[11].)

The University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database ^[12] tracks terrorism incidents from 1970 to today: search for “Islam” and you find almost 5,000 entries. Search for “Christianity” and you will find a grand total of 14.

The NSA could probably save a lot of money — as well as abide by the Constitution — if it simply acknowledged the following:

A person with neither a first nor a last Muslim name stood only a 1 in 500,000 chance of being a suspected terrorist. The likelihood for a person with a first or a last Muslim name was 1 in 30,000. For a person with first and last Muslim names, however, the likelihood jumped to 1 in 2,000 (Levitt & Dubner, Super Freakonomics, 2009, p. 93).

Clearly, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, Islam is the world’s major ideological motivator of terrorism and violence. (I have neither the time, nor the patience, to yet again demonstrate the legitimate Islamic roots of violence. Ray Ibrahim’s brilliant article ^[13] should be all the proof needed for those able to handle the truth.) Yet Eric Holder and his boss would have the federal authorities most responsible for protecting the public — led by the FBI — pretend that up is down, freedom is slavery, and Islam is peaceful except when “twisted” by a “handful of extremists.”

Instead of ardent Islamic beliefs being treated as a clear marker for potential terrorism, they are now a talisman ^[14] protecting the holder not just from scrutiny, but suspicion.

Obama and Holder are transforming the U.S. into a dhimmi nation: one that cowers before Islamic law and demands that its non-Muslim citizens — especially its 240 million Christians — meekly accept their second-class status and never broach the glaringly obvious fact of Islamic violence, even if this means making all non-Muslims less safe. The question for those of us in the majority, then: just how long will we put up with such a dangerous policy?

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Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/first-class-islam-eric-holder-puts-muslims-above-terror-suspicion/

URLs in this post:

[1] Obama administration was openly hostile to realistic training about Islam: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/21/obama-administration-pulls-references-to-islam-from-terror-training-materials-official-says/

[2] when references to Islam and jihad were stricken: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/07/obama-bans-islam-jihad-national-security-strategy-document/

[3] Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOQt_mP6Pgg

[4] has decided that Islam is a “race,”: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/us/politics/us-to-expand-rules-limiting-use-of-profiling-by-federal-agents.html?_r=0

[5] jihad: http://www.meforum.org/357/what-does-jihad-mean

[6] beheading: http://www.meforum.org/713/beheading-in-the-name-of-islam

[7] violence against kuffar: http://www.meforum.org/3545/islam-hatred-non-muslim

[8] re-establishing a caliphate: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/02/gathering-clouds-here/

[9] 80% of “undocumented aliens” are from Mexico or another Latin American country: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/44.pdf

[10] U.S. State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization list: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm

[11] mysteriously disappeared from the DOJ website: http://www.justice.gov/cjs/docs/terrorism-convictions-statistics.html

[12] Global Terrorism Database: http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/about/

[13] Ray Ibrahim’s brilliant article: http://www.meforum.org/2159/are-judaism-and-christianity-as-violent-as-islam

[14] talisman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talisman

Olympics haunted by terrorism

BY LINDA ROBERTSON

LROBERTSON@MIAMIHERALD.COM

http://www.miamiherald.com/

January 27, 2014

A Russian police officer frisks a man as his vehicle also is screened at the entrance to the 2014 Olympic Winter Games park at Sochi. The Olympics begin on Feb. 7. (AP)

The notion that the Olympics promote world peace through sport is as quaint as the notion that the Miss Universe pageant promotes world peace through swimsuit modeling.

The upcoming Sochi Winter Games present a particularly ugly example of Olympics as political pawn. Terrorists have vowed to deliver their message in blood.

Accompanying the announcement of the 230-member U.S. team on Monday were more warnings of attacks and more arrivals of police and soldiers in Sochi. The Russian government expects to deploy 60,000 security personnel in the region, which means one gun-toting guard for every 100 people attending the Games. Add bomb-sniffing dogs, surveillance cameras, drones and pat-downs and it makes for a very festive atmosphere, dah? Unfortunately, for those who won’t be watching snowboarders and skaters from the safety of their sofas, nyet.

Sochi is a target illuminated by the Olympic spotlight. For a fanatic or jihadist, what better time and place to make a murderous statement?

When the International Olympic Committee chose Sochi in 2007 it was an unnecessary gamble, given the instability of the Caucasus region then and for past centuries. Now, it can only be called an act of hare-brained, irresponsible negligence.

Athletes have enough to worry about, including parasites in tap water, without carrying the burden of trepidation in their already overloaded brains. The IOC has put them in harm’s way. Some are telling relatives who sweated and sacrificed along with them to stay home. Nick Alvarez, older brother of Miami short track speedskater Eddy Alvarez and father of three young children, has decided not to go.

“It’s a tough call, but not worth the risk,” Nick said.

The dread of another Munich hangs over these Games. Terrorist threats have become part of the buildup to the Olympics. The porous borders of Greece caused concern in 2004. Plots by London’s underground cells put law enforcement on high alert in 2012. The 2002 Salt Lake City Games were held under suffocating security while the world still reeled from the grief and fear of the 9-11 airliner attacks. In 1996, a lone lunatic wreaked havoc in Atlanta.

The Olympics and events like them will always be a magnet for danger. But the IOC should not continue cozying up to repressive regimes in deluded attempts to reform them. Leave democracy building to the United Nations or Nobel Peace Prize visionaries, not to ex-fencers, skiers and yachtsmen.

The IOC couldn’t learn from Hitler’s glorification of Nazism in 1936?

Or the painful boycotts of Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984? Or from China’s abuses of dissidents and poor people in its extravagant staging of Beijing 2008?

POLITICAL COLLUSION

The IOC colluded with Russian strongman president Vladimir Putin’s ego in awarding him the Sochi Games. He has spent an Olympic record $51 billion to transform his favorite Black Sea summer resort and winter ski escape into an Olympic playground. Only time will tell whether venues keep seeing action or turn into white elephants, as they have in Beijing.

The cost of Putin’s two weeks on the Olympic platform has come in the form of massive kickbacks, environmental damage, deaths of two dozen construction workers, displacement of residents and detention of activists. Welcoming the world to the Olympics did not deter Putin’s government from enacting an anti-gay “propaganda” law.

Hosting the Olympics has allowed Putin to crack down on a simmering revolt in the North Caucasus while emboldening Islamist militants. The Games are pitting Putin, who seeks to burnish his image and consolidate power, against those who want to destroy it and secede from his new Russia.

A group in Dagestan, the region which radicalized the elder Boston Marathon bomber, says it was behind a suicide bombing in Volgograd in October 2013 that killed 34. Doku Umarov, leader of the Imarat Kavkaz insurgency, has called on followers to disrupt the Games.

Security forces are hunting for a 22-year-old suspected “Black Widow” suicide bomber who may have infiltrated Sochi’s “ring of steel.” Three other “Black Widows” — so named because their husbands have been killed in fighting that is commonplace in Chechnya and Abkhazia — are being sought. British authorities say more attacks are “very likely to occur” in Sochi, according to a report examined by the BBC.

BEING CAUTIOUS

U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” that no one should be scared away from the Olympics.

“If we do not support our team and show up, I think the terrorists are winning,” he said. “Having said that, I would say that the security threat to … this particular Olympics is the greatest I’ve ever seen.”

IOC president Thomas Bach praised Russia’s precautions on Monday while glossing over its civil rights problems.

“Fear is a bad advisor,” Bach said. “I’m sorry to tell you I’m sleeping very well.”

Let us hope the athletes can say the same.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/27/3896935/linda-robertson-olympics-haunted.html#storylink=cpy

St. Peter, Lost and Found

       

By Brad Miner

http://www.thecatholicthing.org/

27 January 2014

        It occurred to me as I began reading Thomas J. Craughwell’s new book, St. Peter’s Bones: How the Relics of the First Pope Were Lost and Found . . . and Then Lost and Found Again, that true knowledge is ever harder to acquire in the Media Age. There is so much information coming at us that it is very difficult to block out the static and cut through to what may reasonably be called the truth.

Accordingly, I find myself having to reject the study of many subjects that interest me, simply because I know I haven’t time to do them justice. What a pleasure then to have Mr. Craughwell’s succinct survey of the historical, archaeological, and spiritual stories of the post-mortem journey of Catholicism’s first leader.

The book is well timed too, in that Pope Francis decided at the end of the Year of Faith to place the relics of St. Peter on display for all of us. To venerate, we remind our non-Catholic brethren: to be more directly connected to the history of the Church: to its suffering and its triumph.

Peter, especially, it has long seemed to me, is worthy of veneration, because he was so obviously human in ways familiar to all of us, and yet, despite his many failures, he found sanctity through faith in the Master. His legacy is hope – for all of us.

We jump forward in time to the papacy of Pius XII and his decision to renovate the Vatican Grottoes, the catacombs beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. A wrinkle in the story was the pope’s declaration that while archaeological work could proceed in many areas beneath the great church, the area directly under the main altar – where the body of St. Peter was believed to rest – was to remain off-limits.

As excavations began, the archaeologists were rewarded with discovery after discovery, much of it utterly unexpected yet not surprising, given that St. Peter’s sits atop layer upon layer of ancient Roman history stretching back several millennia.

Mr. Craughwell interrupts this narrative of discovery with gems of historical background, such as a glimpse of the Big Fisherman’s death – in agonizing detail – and of the rise of anti-Christian sentiment after the great fire (64 A.D.) that destroyed so much of Rome during Nero’s imperial reign and was the efficient cause of the persecution that killed so many Christians, Peter among them. The author points out that one of the most visible landmarks in St. Peter’s Square, the pink granite obelisk imported from Egypt in 37 A.D., marks one spot in the former Circus of Gaius and Nero – a sight Peter would have seen in the arena on the last day of his life.

But back in those Vatican catacombs, the archaeologists and thesampietrini (Vatican “maintenance” workers who are rather more expert at what they do than your local church janitor) kept making discoveries, including (in 1943) the burial place of one Christian, near which was this inscription: “Peter, pray to Jesus Christ/For the holy/Christian men/Buried near your body.” (Those words, protected by soil for more than 1600 years, have since faded away.)

The pope agreed to amend his prohibition of excavations under the altar, but with the proviso that the way forward now be undertaken with the greatest secrecy. He did not want any announcement that the discovery of Peter’s final resting place was imminent, just in case nothing was subsequently found.

A part of the history that complicated the ongoing dig was the tendency of successive generations to treat of each previous site as worthy of preservation by the expedient of building over it, so that you end with an archaeological version of a Russian matryoshka doll. Opening a wall, the sampietrini would find another wall, and behind it a third, and then a fourth. Oddly, or so it seemed at the time, the closer they actually got to Peter, the fewer references to him were written on sarcophagi walls.

I’ll not dwell here much more on the process or the results, which anyway are known, but along the way there are some utterly intriguing details, almost throw away lines, as for instance when the archaeologists find lying on the floor of a crypt “a coin from the Duchy of Aquitaine in France, minted sometime before 900.”

The treasures of the Vatican are so great that priceless finds are made even in the dust – a coin likely dropped by someone who was moving relics during another renovation more than a thousand years before.

The great hero of this story is actually a heroine, Prof. Margherita Guarducci (1902-1999). Her work in deciphering epigraphy in and around Peter’s tomb provided key evidence that finally allowed the identification of remains found in the tomb as those of Peter, a tale hinted at in Mr. Craughwell’s subtitle – in the lost and found and lost and found again.

Of course, there were doubters at every step along the way: people who questioned not only the archaeology but the theology, the history, the martyrology. And in a field in which the issue of provenance is so essential, such doubts and questions are inevitable. Mr. Craughwell’s book ends with an apposite quote from George Weigel: “Archaeology isn’t algebra; it yields probabilities rather than certainties.”

In the end, all the probabilities lead us to conclude that St. Peter’s bones are exactly where you’d expect them to be.

 

Brad Miner is senior editor of The Catholic Thing, senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute, and a board member of Aid to the Church In Need USA. He is the author of six books and is a former Literary Editor of National Review. His book, The Compleat Gentleman, read by Christopher Lane, is available on audio.

 

© 2014 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to:  info@frinstitute.org

 

The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Clinton “Regrets” Benghazi

Posted By Arnold Ahlert On January 28, 2014 @ 12:34 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the 10th National Automobile Dealers Association Convention on January 27, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Clinton said during a Q&A session, she had regrets about attack on Americans in Benghazi. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

At a keynote appearance before the National Automobile Dealers Association on Monday, Hillary Clinton began laying the groundwork for how she will respond to the Benghazi scandal during her likely 2016 presidential run. “My biggest, you know, regret is what happened in Benghazi,” she answered in response to a question asking her to identify “do-overs” during her stint as Secretary of State. She then proceeded to double down. “I mean, you know, you make these choices based on imperfect information,” she contended. “And you make them to, as we say, the best of your ability. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be unforeseen consequences, unpredictable twists and turns.”

One is left to wonder what “imperfect information” Clinton was vaguely referring to in her response. The alleged “imperfect information” that led Clinton and company to lie for weeks about the nature of the attack? The “fog of war,” as Clinton previously described it? Of course, “imperfect information” had nothing to do with the Obama administration’s deceitful portrayal of the terrorist attack to the public. Declassified documents made public two weeks ago reveal that AFRICOM commander Gen. Carter Ham told members of the House Armed Services subcommittee that he learned about the “terrorist attack” on the consulate compound only 15 minutes after it commenced. ”My first call was to [Joint Chiefs of Staff General chairman] General Dempsey, General Dempsey’s office, to say, ‘Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,’” Ham testified on June 26, 2013. “I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary [of Defense] Panetta.” Ham further testified that Dempsey and Panetta “had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.”

The meeting to which Ham referred was a pre-scheduled session with President Obama at 5 p.m. EST. A Defense Department timeline reveals that this meeting occurred one hour and 18 minutes after the attack began. The meeting lasted half an hour. That means that Obama knew it was a terrorist attack on September 11, 2012, before the battle that lasted approximately eight hours was less than two hours old.

According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Obama phoned Clinton at 10 p.m. that same night, more than six hours after that attack began, but more than an hour before Navy SEALS Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty were killed. “Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national security adviser,” Carney told CNSNews.com on Tuesday. Feb. 19, 2013. “He was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the Secretary of State at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”

Carney’s statement contradicts a letter released to Congress by the White House five days earlier. It claimed Obama made no phone calls at all the night of the attack. Carney was forced to “amend” the record because Clinton had testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a month earlier that she learned of the attack on Benghazi at 4 p.m. In the ensuing hours, Clinton testified, “we were in continuous meetings and conversations, both within the department, with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally.” One of those conversations was with the president. “I spoke with President Obama later in the evening to, you know, bring him up to date, to hear his perspective,” she revealed.

Thus, unless one is willing to believe that no one, including Obama, told Clinton it was a terrorist attack, the words “imperfect information” are nothing more than an attempt to again revive the “fog of war” canard that the former Secretary of State relied on to initially explain away the administration’s false account of the attack and changing story.

As for “unforeseen consequences” and “unpredictable twists,” a scathing report released Jan. 15 by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the attack in Benghazi was preventable. Clinton’s State Department was singled out for its failure to bolster security in response to an increasing threat level. The report states that the intelligence community “produced hundreds of analytic reports” in the months preceding the attack that “militias and terrorists … had the capability and intent to strike U.S. and Western facilities and personnel in Libya.” There were “at least 20 security incidents involving the Temporary Mission Facility,” including one in which an “IED exploded near the main gate of the Mission facility in Benghazi, creating a 9×12 hole in the exterior wall.” 
Responsibility for this attack was claimed by followers of the “Blind Sheikh,” united under the banner of the “Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman Brigade.” 

Ambassador Stevens himself was seriously concerned with the rapidly deteriorating security situation and made requests for support, which were not heeded. Stevens sent numerous cables regarding the vulnerability of the mission. In late June, Stevens wrote, “that the attacks were the work of extremists who are opposed to western influence in Libya. A number of local contacts agreed, noting that Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya and that the Al-Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities in Derna.”

However, according to Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, who was privy to intimate details of the security decision process, Stevens’ ”requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security.”

“When I arrived in Tripoli on July 31, we had over 30 security personnel, from the State Department and the U.S. military, assigned to protect the diplomatic mission to Libya. All were under the ambassador’s authority. On Sept. 11, we had only nine diplomatic security agents under Chris’s authority to protect our diplomatic personnel in Tripoli and Benghazi,” Hicks wrote.

By all accounts, what happened in Benghazi was the result of extreme negligence on the part of Clinton and her cohorts. It was not “unforeseen” or “unpredictable” — precisely the opposite. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was willing to take Clinton to task for her latest remarks, contending she needs to back up her “regrets” regarding an attack for which no one has been fired, and none of the attackers has been captured. “If she was really sorry–talk is cheap, she needs to stand up and demand action,” he told Fox News. Cruz’s idea of action is a call for her to join him and other lawmakers in convening a select committee to fully investigate what happened.

With all due respect to Cruz, Clinton knows what happened. She’s known it for a long time. And it is more than likely the only regret she truly harbors at this point in time is the reality that, despite her best efforts, along with those of her fellow Democrats, and a mainstream media fully invested in her 2016 election, Benghazi is not going to be the irrelevant issue they are trying to make it. When four Americans have been killed in a preventable tragedy, “shaping the narrative” isn’t going to cut it.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/hillary-spins-benghazi/

Music Review: 'This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983'

Album Review: A fiery 'Lone Justice'

'This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983' captures a band at the start of its impressive run.

By Randall Roberts

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music

January 13, 2014, 5:20 p.m.

Twelve songs recorded straight to two-track, the adrenalized country music on "This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983" captures a fiery band at the beginning of its impressive run. The L.A. country rock band, birthed by vocalist Maria McKee and guitarist Ryan Hedgecock, is best known for its run of near-misses (despite being managed by a young Jimmy Iovine) in the mid-'80s, but before signing with Geffen Records it buzzed through town on the wings of McKee's soprano.

Recorded in the San Fernando Valley, "This Is Lone Justice" introduces McKee & Co. with a combination of covers and originals. Among the classics they tackle are Merle Haggard's "Working Man's Blues," the George Jones/Roger Miller song "Nothing Can Stop My Loving You" and the oft-recorded "Jackson." The song selection suggests a band that had internalized a heck of a lot of country ideas at a young age.

PHOTOS: Iconic rock guitars and their owners

McKee, after all, was only 18 when this stuff was recorded, and her youth is most obvious in the cut-and-paste Dust Bowl-themed lyrics that dot the originals here. Still, the virtuosity within "The Grapes of Wrath," "Dustbowl Depression Time" and "Soap, Soup and Salvation" presents a confident mix of yowling twang and a heavy backbeat (courtesy of drummer Don Heffington and bassist Marvin Etzioni) that eclipses lesser lines.

Overshadowing all, though, is McKee, whose voice sounds like that of a young Dolly Parton fueled by Exene Cervenka's passion. "Working Man's Blues" especially reveals her natural-born way around a line. It's one thing to hit the notes, another thing altogether to manifest them so completely.

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Lone Justice

"This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983"

(Omnivore Recordings)

31/2 stars

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-this-is-lone-justice-album-review-20140113,0,2008035.story#ixzz2rhG8aQ00

Book Review: 'Wounded' by Emily Mayhew

Casualties of War

Medicine as metaphor for the Western Front.

James Bowman

http://www.weeklystandard.com/

February 3, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 20

If you read only one book this year to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, let me suggest Wounded rather than one of the more conventional histories. 

The virtue of this choice is that it is likely to give you a better idea both of what the war was actually like for those who experienced it—hint: somewhere in between the great and glorious adventure we all now know it wasn’t and the unremitting horror we all now know it was—and of why it still looms so large in the culture and the moral consciousness of the Western world a century later. In some ways, it marks even more of a watershed than World War II, whose moral import in the popular mind has been reduced to something it hardly seemed at all to be at the time, namely a sort of Armageddon for cultures based on racism and ethnocentrism, and a beginning of the world anew.

Both wars now appear in hindsight through the lens of the pacifist culture of the academy and the media, who are, like President Obama, opposed in theory not to all wars but only to “dumb” ones (yet they tend to have a hard time thinking of any wars that are not dumb). It is surely not an insignificant datum that hardly anybody in the combatant nations during World War I thought that the war, now the very model of the dumb war, was dumb at all. They who actually experienced the horror of it, bar a few now well-known names, seem to have thought it less horrible than we do at a century’s distance in time. 

Not the least of the virtues of this fascinating volume is that it suggests some of the reasons why this may be so. Emily Mayhew, a research associate at Imperial College, London, only set out to tell the story of the British Royal Army Medical Corps and ancillary operations in the 1914-18 war—something not often treated in secondary material up until now. She pulls together, in one place, accounts of the wounded and those who tended to them that are not always readily available to readers, supplemented with archival research into primary sources: letters, memoirs, and journals. The results are inspiring and often deeply moving. 

Perhaps her most surprising finding is that, in a war now famous for military blunders, particularly British ones—the phrase attributed to Erich Ludendorff, “lions led by donkeys,” may be the most quoted judgment on the British effort in Britain itself, as well as the most unjust—the treatment of the wounded should be seen as a great success, at least as it compared with anything known in previous wars. This was the result of “an unconventional yet crucial medical breakthrough: the discovery that surgery could be done in a forward medical unit close to the actual place of wounding, and that by doing so survival rates would be radically improved.” Referring to the new Casualty Clearing Stations, where such surgery was performed, Mayhew writes, “By 1918 the CCS system in France had been refined into an extraordinary medical machine. During battle its doctors and surgeons did work of unprecedented complexity and effectiveness. Every medic in the country wanted to be part of it.” 

A case could be made that the postwar predisposition, lingering on into the present day, to see the war as uniquely horrifying was, in part, a product of that success, since more of the wounded survived than in any previous war to serve as living reminders of its terrible cost, often for decades after it ended. One such survivor was John Glubb—later to become Glubb Pasha, founder of the Arab Legion—whose wound to the jaw and face led to his becoming known in Jordan as abu Hunaik, or the one with the little jaw, and the treatment of his wound is described here. Glubb was particularly well-qualified to note that “the real horrors of war were to be seen in the hospitals, not on the battlefield.”

Wounded also makes clear the extent to which the Great War was a war of the middle class and of what used to be called the respectable working class—again, by comparison with previous wars. Wellington’s “scum of the earth” had been gentrified in the course of the 19th century, and, like their doctors, they knew the virtues of respectability, including cleanliness. Nurses were employed to do endless amounts of laundry, among their many other duties at the front.

There was so much laundry to do, with some men needing a change of bedclothes several times a day, that it could be disheartening. But then the nurses remembered how much their patients appreciated the luxury of clean linen—a fresh sheet, a white pillow case, fluffed blankets—so they scrubbed and pegged and folded, understanding that this too was an act of nursing and healing.

Their dedication and, indeed, heroism adds a new dimension to the more familiar story of the bravery and sacrifice of the combatants. 

Many will find the best things about this book to be its stories of courage, devotion to duty, and self-sacrifice on the part of the doctors, nurses, orderlies, stretcher-bearers, ambulance drivers, and others—most notably chaplains, who very often threw themselves into assisting with the medical tasks of hospitals and dressing stations as well as attending to spiritual tasks. One such, a Roman Catholic priest, took it upon himself to, in addition to his normal duties, go out into no-man’s-land at night to bury the dead who had fallen in the field, all while under fire himself. Those who noted the absence of God from the trenches were presumably not looking in the right places.

We also learn of the new interest of doctors in mental casualties—though these were always kept separate from the rest at the Casualty Clearing Stations and hospitals, and even on the ambulance trains, where they were kept in separate carriages for the sake of morale: “All over the front RMOs [Royal Medical Officers] were coming to find this class of patient increasingly interesting. For some of them the treatment was quite simple: when the sound of the guns drew nearer and the patients became increasingly upset, the staff went round the ward putting cotton wool in their ears to muffle the noise and restore calm.”

There were also moments of humor, as there were in the trenches. Major Alfred Hardwick of the 59th Field Ambulance unit took advantage of a two-week leave in England to bring back a couple of ferrets from his home in the West Country. They were brilliantly successful at killing trench rats, with which his section of the front had been plagued, and the men were very grateful. 

On Hardwick’s birthday they celebrated with red wine, games of poker and organized ratting, with each kill being celebrated with increasingly drunken cheers and songs about the only two creatures who really enjoyed themselves on the Western Front. What would the ferrets do, the men wondered, if the war ever ended? How could they ever go back to a Cornish farm, now that they had hunted for trench rats in France?

In the words of the old song: How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm? In the case of the men, if not the ferrets, the answer was that you wouldn’t. A new world—recognizably our world—emerged from the Great War. 

And Wounded goes a long way toward explaining why it did.

James Bowman, the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. 

How Scott Walker and the conservatives saved Wisconsin. America, take note

By Tim Stanley

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley

27 January 2014

There was a time when Wisconsin was headline news. You must remember the story? Wisconsinites elected some caveman called Scott Walker as their governor on a platform of drowning government in the bath. He wanted to reform the unions and bring spending under control – and the public sector came out onto the streets to stop him. It was a kind of velvet revolution led by teachers and social workers and the folks who shoot bears when they start eating out of trash cans. They tried to remove Walker from office, but that didn't work because he somehow won the recall vote, making him the only governor in US history to do so. And then it all went oddly quiet from the Badger state…

Which is a pity because it turns out that Scott Walker's conservative agenda has actually worked. Really, really worked. The American Spectator reports:

In 2011, Wisconsin had a whopping deficit of $3.6 billion dollars. But a corporate tax cut and collective bargaining reforms invigorated the state economy. Now, the state is boasting a $911 million surplus, credited to “good stewardship of the taxpayers’ money.”

Unemployment is down, too. It's hit 6.2 per cent, the lowest figure since 2008.

How did he do it? With a mix of conservatism and pragmatism. Walker's first moves were resolutely Republican. The controversial 2011 "budget repair bill" proposed major cuts with the goal of saving $300 million in two years, including welfare reform and changes to public sector employees' contracts. More recently, however, his fiscal policy has been cautious – a mix of targeted tax cuts and small rises in spending in the areas of workforce training and education. The fact is that Wisconsin's recovery is real but fragile, and Walker has balanced the books without trying to impose on his state the kind of pure libertarian economics that his opponents feared. It's an example of sensible conservative governance – not, as so much of the liberal media seemed to imagine, a Tea Party coup d'etat. No wonder he beat the recall effort.

Not only has he delivered the goods but (this is the best bit) Walker now wants to give those goods back to the voters in the form of a tax break. So the message to America, and the rest of the world, is this: get spending under control, cut business taxes, create a welfare system that encourages people to seek work and you will balance the budget, reduce unemployment and be able to let people keep more of their money. It turns out that conservative economics, applied with determination and care, can work.

Can Walker translate all of this into a run for the presidency? We know he probably wants to because he insists that the next commander-in-chief should be a governor and because he's written a book about how great he is – the necessary first step for someone to run. But he doesn't feature highly (if at all) in early primary polling and his national profile has dimmed since 2011-12. Nevertheless, it would be nice to think that practical people who do their job well can still be viable candidates for the presidency. So, many Republicans will be keeping their fingers crossed…

Tags: Republican party, Scott Walker, tea party, Wisconsin

Dr Tim Stanley is a historian of the United States. His biography of Pat Buchanan is out now. His personal website is www.timothystanley.co.ukand you can follow him on Twitter @timothy_stanley.