How David Greenglass Helped Break Up a Soviet Spy Ring That Was Plotting New Perfidy

By Ronald Radosh

http://www.nysun.com/

October 15, 2014

The death July 1 of David Greenglass, one of the last survivors among those who played a role in the Rosenberg case, was only made public yesterday. Greenglass's testimony was the most important part of the prosecution's case, and led to the Rosenberg's conviction for giving the Soviets atomic secrets. His passing has produced lengthy obituaries in major newspapers — all either incomplete, misleading, or sometimes just wrong.

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SPY AND COUNTER-SPY: David Greenglass, who died July 1, did not kill his sister and pleaded for her life; he helped crack a Soviet spy ring that was planning new perfidy at the outset of the Cold War.

In a ghastly development, moreover, Greenglass’s death is providing an occasion for the Rosenberg’s two sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, to renew their proclamations of their parents’ innocence. In the past years, both have acknowledged that their father (but not their mother) was working for the Soviets. Now, they have evidently gone back to their claim that the Rosenbergs were not guilty at all.

David and Ruth Greenglass, the Meeropols are quoted in the obituaryin the Guardian as saying, were “the only ones who passed atomic secrets on to the Soviets, then ‘pinned what they did on our parents — a calculated ploy to save themselves by fingering our parents as the scapegoats the government demanded.’”

The brothers know well that most people respond to them with sympathy, and are not aware of the overwhelming amount of material proving the Rosenbergs’ guilt that appeared in the Venona decrypts as well as in KGB files provided in Britain by Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB agent who defected and had smuggled in to Britain all the files he had meticulously copied over the years. It is no wonder that they regularly ignore real hard evidence and neglect to inform their audiences about its existence.

As for Greenglass himself, he not only provided the famous sketch of the bomb’s lens mold, but as KGB reports indicate, he gave them a “report on a scientific experimentation center for preparing a uranium bomb, with a general floor plan and sketches of individual buildings attached.” KGB agent Leonid Kvasnikov described a 33 page letter he received from Greenglass on “the preparation of a uranium bomb,” the structural solutions for building one, and methods for obtaining Uranium-235, which Kvasnikov called “highly valuable.” Finally, not only did he give them the sketch that was displayed at the trial, but he provided the KGB, as their reports indicate, with “a physical sample of material used in the detonator.” The claim in Robert McFadden’s obituary in The New York Times “that the Greenglass-Rosenberg atomic bomb details were of little value to the Soviets” is inaccurate. Mr. McFadden is also wrong in writing that Ethel Rosenberg “played no active role in the conspiracy.”

Greenglass was recruited for espionage at Los Alamos by Julius and his wife Ethel, who was not only guilty as charged. Steve Usdin, who wrote wrote Engineering Communism, a book about two members of Rosenberg’s spy ring, has said in an e-mail to me, that Ethel Rosenberg “was fully aware of and was an accessory to her husband’s espionage activities. She helped recruit her brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass, to spy for the Soviet Union. Ethel knew that at least two of her husband’s friends were members of his espionage ring, and she met at least two of Julius’s Soviet case officers. She served as a lookout for a critical meeting Julius had with one of these case officers. In 1949 Soviet intelligence operatives discussed plans to have Ethel serve as a courier, and as the FBI was closing in on David Greenglass, Soviet intelligence sent instructions for Ethel to retrieve money from his apartment.”

Rosenberg not only recruited Greenglass and another atomic spy, Russell McNutt, but he gave the Soviets a diagram of and an actual proximity fuse, which if war had broken out between the Soviet Union and the United States, would have had an enormous impact and given the Soviets a deadly weapon. Rosenberg also stole major industrial secrets, radar for use in warfare, the first American designed jet engine, and the P-80 Shooting Star, the first American jet manufactured in quantity and used in the Korean War. At the time of his arrest, moreover, Greenglass was planning to give the Soviets new anti-tank technology, which they then would have used against American troops in Korea.

By cooperating with the government prosecutors, David Greenglass thereby saved his own life, and his wife was free to remain at home and raise her children. The Rosenbergs, on the other hand, were willing to orphan their children to protect the spies they had recruited and to serve as a propaganda tool for the Soviet Union, which needed them portrayed as innocent to deflect the world’s attention from the purge trials in Czechoslovakia, in which truly innocent, largely Jewish Communists were arrested as Western spies.

If one is looking for villains in this story, they are Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and all the spies they recruited for the Soviet Union. Yet, in popular culture, the Rosenbergs have been always portrayed as innocent martyrs to McCarthyism, while David Greenglass has been portrayed as a vile betrayer of his own sister. He may not have been any kind of hero, but as soon as he realized that the government had proof of espionage, he owned up and told the truth. He testified against his sister to both save his own life and to allow his children to lead a normal one. The deal he got — a 15 year sentence and no arrest for his equally guilty wife Ruth — is the type of plea bargain always used to entice guilty parties to cooperate with the prosecution. Greenglass did not kill his sister. He, like the Rosenbergs, never expected anyone found guilty to receive the death penalty. When Judge Irving Kaufman issued it, Greenglass wrote a letter to the court pleading for her life.

There were many injustices that took place during the Cold War years, and often dissenters were viewed as Soviet agents. Real Soviet agents, knowing the fear of McCarthyism on the part of decent well-meaning liberals, hid their actual espionage for the Soviets by proclaiming themselves “victims of a McCarthyite witch-hunt.” The arrest of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and the conviction of them by a New York City jury, was not an injustice. David Greenglass helped to break up an existing Soviet spy ring that was intact and planning to spy for the Soviets during the Cold War’s early days. For that we should be thankful.

The Strong Horse

By Mark Steyn

http://www.steynonline.com/

October 15, 2014

The statue of Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Maude, KCB, CMG, DSO that stood in Baghdad until the Iraqi revolution in 1958

On March 11th 1917, General Maude's British Indian army marched into Baghdad and took as prisoners almost 10,000 Ottoman troops. If you had to locate the birth of the modern, post-caliphate Arab world in a single event, that would be it. Over the next few years, London and Paris drew lines in the sand and invented the western Middle East, and the states we treat with today - Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. The British certainly understand the significance of March 1917: When they returned to Baghdad to topple Saddam a decade ago, they named their new military headquarters in the Green Zone "Maude House".

Likewise, if one were to pick a single, decisive event that would mark the end of the modern, western Middle East and the dawn of the post-western pre-modern Middle East, it would be the fall of Baghdad to ISIS or ISIL or, as they prefer to be known, "the Islamic State".

Is that likely? According to General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking on ABC News at the weekend, the head hackers were within 15 miles with "a straight shot to the airport". As I write, they're apparently within eight miles. The Iraqi Army do not seem minded to put up much of a fight - unlike, say, the Kurds in Kobani. And naturally, heady on its usual cocktail of treachery and delusion, Washington has chosen to stiff the Kurds but prop up the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Desertion.

Can American air support delay the inevitable? Or will the jihad boys soon be poking around not only the abandoned Maude House but also the largest and most expensive US embassy on the planet, laughing it up for the cameras in front of askew portraits of Joe Biden? One assumes the Administration is at least rehearsing some spin for this eventuality, although with the Obama crowd nothing can be taken for granted. Still, no doubt Susan Rice will be sent out on the Sunday talk-shows to declare that Baghdad is of no strategic significance, and the court eunuchs of the American media will helpfully explain how this shows Obama's commitment to fulfilling his election promise of decisively ending Bush's Iraq war - or, alternatively, that Obama is too sophisticated to be trapped by outmoded paradigms such as victory and defeat.

But out in the real world the meaning of the event will be well understood. "The Islamic State" will be the Islamic State, the one that finally redrew the infidel lines on the Arab map imposed by Anglo-French colonial administrators in 1922. The neo-caliphate will have taken Baghdad, the capital of the old caliphate for half-a-millennium, from its designation in 762 by the caliph al-Mansur as the seat of his empire. Wannabe caliph al-Baghdadi will have an historic Muslim metropolis, most of Iraq, much of Syria, and - who knows? - maybe a nibble or two of Jordan and a few other bits and pieces. John Kerry, who isn't an Islamic scholar but plays one on TV news, will continue huffin' an' a-puffin':

ISIL now proudly takes credit for the abduction, enslavement, rape, forced marriage, and sale of several thousand Yezidi and other minority women and girls—some as young as 12 years old. Just as despicably, ISIL rationalizes its abhorrent treatment of these women and girls by claiming it is somehow sanctioned by religion. Wrong. Dead wrong.

ISIL does not represent Islam and Islam does not condone or honor such depravity. In fact, these actions are a reminder that ISIL is an enemy of Islam.

Yeah, right. If you didn't think Kerry and Obama and Cameron's no-Islam-to-see-here protestations could sound any more risible, wait till al-Baghdadi's proclaiming the restoration of the caliphate from the CIA safe room in the Baghdad embassy. In Patrick Poole's analysis of an ISIS victory, this section is hard to argue with:

Much of the Obama administration's anti-ISIS efforts have been trying to leverage other "vetted moderate" groups in Syria against ISIS, with some "smart set" thinkers even advocating engaging "moderate Al-Qaeda" to that end. We are already seeing jihadist groups gravitating towards ISIS, such as the announcement this week by Pakistani Taliban leaders pledging their allegiance to the Islamic State. Other groups of younger jihadis arebreaking away from Al-Qaeda franchises in North Africa and defecting to ISIS. Despite bitter rivalries between ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria, namely Al-Qaeda's official Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, these other groups will be hard-pressed to deny ISIS' caliphate claims if they do take Baghdad. In that part of the world, nothing succeeds like success.

Or, as Osama used to put, when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they go with the strong horse. The Islamic State will have land, money, oil, and a ton of great infrastructure and weaponry courtesy of American taxpayers. All the "moderate" groups we've been trying to woo from Libya to Syria and beyond will side with the strong horse. Our remaining allies, such as Jordan, reeling under the social strains of a vast swollen refugee tide from across its borders, will get with the program - or be the next to fall. Nothing exists in isolation: Syria was unimportant to the Obama Administration, so it sat by as the opposition to Assad mutated and evolved, and then spilled over into Iraq. And maybe Iraq is unimportant, too, but, bigger and stronger, ISIS will move on from there, too. Is the Kurdish north unimportant? Lebanon? Jordan? Israel?

Maybe it's all unimportant, at least when compared to "social justice" and transgendered bathrooms. But, to modify Trotsky, you may not be interested in the world but the world is interested in you. And, indeed, not being interested in the world would be a more credible position if you hadn't let the world move into the rental apartment above your garage. For those thousands of disaffected young Muslim men cruising jihadist websites from their drab housing projects in Antwerp and Hamburg and Minneapolis, the restored caliphate will not be a pipe dream but a new reality. And they will act accordingly.

~Mark writes about a resurgent Islam from Afghanistan to Alexandria in his new book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, which comes out on Monday October 20th in North America. It's available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble,Books-A-Million, and other retailers in the US, and in Canada from Indigo-Chapters, Amazon, McNally-Robinsonand all good bookstores.

Purple Penguins and the Radical Gender Agenda

Posted By Mark Tapson On October 15, 2014 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

Just when you think you’ve heard the most outrageous example of progressive irrationality in our public schools – usually something to do with anti-gun hysteria – along comes word that a school district in Nebraska is training teachers to abandon “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls” in favor of “gender inclusive” euphemisms like “purple penguins” instead. You read that right.
“Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention,” instructs a training document given out by a staffer on a “district equity team” to middle-school teachers at Lincoln public schools. Instead, say “hey campers” or “create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet on the rug,” it advises.

“When I read about this,” said a friend of mine, “I was sure it was satire.” Well, we inhabit a satirical world now, and our children inhabit an educational culture perverted and dumbed-down over the last several decades by political correctness and social justice progressives. Our schools are no longer focused on educational standards that will make us competitive in the real world; instead, they are obsessed with pushing social justice – and that includes a radical agenda to indoctrinate kids as early as kindergarten about sex. Its ultimate goal is the promotion of promiscuity and the dissolution of the very concept of gender, thereby destroying “patriarchal” culture, delegitimizing parental authority, and dismantling the family unit.

The instructions distributed to Lincoln teachers are part of a list called “12 steps on the way to gender inclusiveness” developed by Gender Spectrum, an organization that “provides education, training and support to help create a gender sensitive and inclusive environment for children of all ages.” All ages. The document warns against asking students to “line up as boys or girls,” and suggests organizing them instead by whether they prefer “skateboards or bikes/milk or juice/dogs or cats/summer or winter/talking or listening… Always ask yourself,” the document says, “‘Will this configuration create a gendered space?’” Actually, what teachers should always be asking themselves is, “Are my students learning?”

Also on the list? Decorating the classroom with “all genders welcome” door hangers and asking all students about their preferred pronouns – because the gender spectrum is apparently so broad now that our current set of pronouns is insufficient. If teachers absolutely have to mention that genders exist at all, the document advises that they be listed as “boy, girl, both or neither.” Both? Neither?

“Avoid using ‘normal’ to define any behaviors,” the document urges. By all means, children should be taught to tolerate others who are different; but eradicating the very notion that normal behavior even exists is not tolerance – it is a denial of reality and an irrational reorienting of children’s understanding of themselves and the natural order.

Speaking of tolerance, the training materials instruct teachers to be intolerant of anyone who references gender “in a binary manner… Provide counter-narratives that challenge students to think more expansively about their notions of gender.” It’s unclear how teachers are supposed to find so much time to discuss gender with students without cutting back on their readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic.

The teachers were also given a handout created by the ironically-named Center for Gender Sanity which explains to them that “gender identity… can’t be observed or measured, only reported by the individual.” And they received an infographic called “The Genderbread Person” produced by Sam Killermann, who describes himself as “a social justice comedian” and is the author of The Social Justice Advocate’s Handbook: A Guide to Gender.

Al Riskowski, executive director of the Nebraska Family Alliance, said his group has supported legislation to combat bullying, but that these training materials go “way beyond trying to teach someone how to respect another individual” to a “whole new idea of boy-girl.” The idea that “your biology at birth doesn’t designate who you are” is at odds with the beliefs of “almost everyone in the community.” He said that the school district shouldn’t have to re-educate the 99% who aren’t transgender. Clearly Riskowski must be re-educated to understand that there is no such thing as normal behavior.

He noted correctly that the materials seemed geared to children younger than those in middle school. A sister organization that works on such issues nationwide told Riskowski that it’s “some of the most radical material we’ve ever seen.”

Lincoln Superintendent Steve Joel noted that the training documents are not intended as hard-and-fast rules, only recommendations, and he has declared that he is “happy” and “pleased” with them. As for the controversy those documents have engendered (pun intended), he explains that “We don’t get involved with politics… We don’t get involved with gender preferences. We’re educating all kids… and we can’t be judgmental,” he said.

But by sitting back and letting these gender radicals insert their indoctrinating materials into the classroom, Mr. Joel is caving in to people who are consumed with politics and gender preferences. That’s the problem with not being “judgmental” – moral neutrality equals moral impotence.

These are our schools now. Our educational system, in the grip of social justice missionaries, is hopelessly broken. Homeschooling is increasingly becoming the best option for raising educated, free children with actual critical thinking skills instead of progressive brainwashing. So of course, the progressives are beginning to target homeschooling – as in Connecticut, where the state intends to increase its oversight of homeschooled children, purportedly because they are considered to be potential Adam Lanzas.

The truth is that they are a threat not to other students but to the state’s authority. As National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson put it in his forceful article, “They Are Coming for Your Children”:

Home-schooling isn’t for everyone, but every home-school student, like every firearm in private hands, is a quiet little declaration of independence. It’s no accident that the people who want to seize your guns are also the ones who want to seize your children.

It’s also no accident that the people who want to indoctrinate your children about sex want them too.

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The Centers for Everything But Disease Control

By Michelle Malkin  •  October 14, 2014 09:33 PM

http://michellemalkin.com/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Tom Frieden testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, before the House subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations hearing on "Combating the Ebola Threat." (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

So now the federal health bureaucrats in charge of controlling diseases and pandemics want more money to do their jobs. Hmph. Maybe if they hadn’t been so busy squandering their massive government subsidies on everything but their core mission, we taxpayers might actually feel a twinge of sympathy.

At $7 billion, the Centers for Disease Control 2014 budget is nearly 200 percent bigger now than it was in 2000. Those evil, stingy Republicans actually approved CDC funding increases in January larger than what President Obama requested.

What are we getting for this ever-increasing amount of money? Answer: A power-hungry busybody brigade of politicized blame-mongers.

Money, money, it’s always the money. Yet, while Ebola and enterovirus D68 wreak havoc on our health system, the CDC has been busying itself with an ever-widening array of non-disease control campaigns, like these recent crusades:

Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws. CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden appoints a 15-member “Community Preventive Services Task Force” to promote pet Nanny State projects. An obscure Obamacare rule–Section 4003(b)(1)–stealthily increased the task force’s authority to study “any policies, programs, processes or activities designed to affect or otherwise affecting health at the population level.” Last year, the meddling panel extended the agency’s reach into transportation safety with a call to impose a federal universal motorcycle helmet law on the country. Is riding a Harley a disease? Why is this the CDC’s business?

Video games and TV violence. At Obama’s behest, in the wake of high-profile school shootings, the CDC scored $10 million last year to study violent video games and media images, as well as to assess “existing strategies for preventing gun violence and identifying the most pressing research questions, with the greatest potential public health impact.” Whatever that means. Why is this the CDC’s business?

Playground equipment. The CDC’s “Injury Centers” (Did you know there are 13 of them?) have crafted a “national action plan” and funded countless studies to prevent boo-boos and accidents on the nation’s playgrounds. Apparently, there aren’t enough teachers, parents, local school districts, and county and state regulators to police the slides and seesaws. Why is this the CDC’s business?

“Social norming” in the schools. The CDC has funded studies and campaigns “promoting positive community norms” and “safe, stable, nurturing relationships (SSNRs)” in homes and schools. It’s the mother of all government values clarifications programs. So bad attitudes are now a disease. Again, I ask: Why is this the CDC’s business?

After every public health disaster, CDC bureaucrats play the money card while expanding their regulatory and research reach into anti-gun screeds, anti-smoking propaganda, anti-bullying lessons, gender inequity studies and unlimited behavior modification programs that treat individual vices–personal lifestyle choices–as germs to be eradicated.

Here’s a reminder of what the CDC does with money that’s supposed to go to real disease control. In 2000, the agency essentially lied to Congress about how it spent up to $7.5 million earmarked each year since 1993 for research on the deadly hantavirus. “Instead, apparently without asking Congress, the CDC spent much of the money on other programs that the agency thought needed the funds more,” The Washington Post found. The diversions were impossible to trace because of shoddy CDC bookkeeping practices. The CDC also misspent $22.7 million appropriated for chronic fatigue syndrome and was investigated in 2001 for squandering $13 million on hepatitis C research.

As I pointed out years ago, the CDC has its own private funding pipeline in the form of “Friends of CDC,” an Atlanta-based group of deep-pocketed corporations, now including ATT, Costco, General Motors, Google, IBM and Microsoft. To date, the entity has raised some $400 million to support the CDC’s work.

Too bad some of those big bucks can’t be earmarked to find a cure for bureaucratic obesity and a vaccine for mission creep.

The FBI’s bogus report on mass shootings

By John R. Lott Jr.

http://nypost.com/

October 12, 2014

It’s disheartening to see the FBI used to promote a political agenda, but that’s what we got with the bureau’s release last month of a study claiming to show a sharp rise in mass shootings, a la Newtown, Conn.

The FBI counted 160 “mass” or “active” shootings in public places from 2000 to 2013. Worse, it said these attacks rose from just one in 2000 to 17 in 2013. Media outlets worldwide gave the “news” extensive coverage.

Too bad the study is remarkably shoddy — slicing the evidence to distort the results. In fact, mass public shootings have only risen ever so slightly over the last four decades.

While the FBI study discusses “mass shootings or killings,” its graphs were filled with cases that had nothing to do with mass killings. Of the 160 cases it counted, 32 involved a gun being fired without anyone being killed. Another 35 cases involved a single murder.

It’s hard to see how the FBI can count these incidents, which make up 42 percent of its 160 cases, as “mass killings.” They plainly don’t fit the FBI’s old definition, which required four or more murders, nor even its new one of at least three murders.

And these non-mass shootings, with zero or one person killed, drive much of the purported increase in the number of attacks. If you consider cases where no one or only one person was killed, 50 came in the last seven years of the period the FBI examined and only 17 during the first seven years.

For example, in 2010, the FBI reports that there were 29 of these active shooter cases, but just nine involved more than a single fatality.

The FBI study also ignored 20 out of what should have been a total of 113 cases where at least two people were killed.

For example, it missed a 2001 shooting at a Chicago bar that left two dead and 21 wounded, as well as a 2004 Columbus, Ohio, attack at a concert that left four dead.

Three-quarters of the missing cases came in the first half of the study’s time period, thus again biasing the results toward finding a larger increase over time.

Another trick was the choice of 2000 as the starting date. Everybody who has studied these attacks knows that 2000 and 2001 were unusually quiet years, with few mass shootings.

Thus, by starting with those years and padding the cases in later years with non-mass shooting attacks, the study’s authors knew perfectly well they would get the result they wanted.

The picture looks quite different if you use good data and a longer time period. Back in 2000, Bill Landes of the University of Chicago and I gathered data on mass public shootings from 1977 to 1999; I’ve now updated the database.

Our criteria were similar to what the FBI said it would follow: non-gang attacks in public places.

Shootings that were also part of some other crime, such as a robbery, were also excluded. But we counted cases where at least two people had been murdered in these public shootings.

Overall, there has been a slight increase in deaths from mass public shootings over these 38 years, but even then the upward trend largely depends on the single year 2012, when there were 91 deaths.

To be fair, the FBI study isn’t as shoddy as what Michael Bloom­berg’s Everytown has been pushing.

The group was greatly embarrassed after it first claimed that there had been 74 school shootings between the Newtown tragedy in December 2012 and the end of this past school year, but the true number of school attacks in which the shooter intended to commit mass murder turned out to be only a small fraction of that, just 10.

Similar to the FBI report, Bloom­berg’s group padded the numbers by classifying everything as a “Newtown type attack” — including when a Florida student defended himself with a gun from two attackers, a 40-year-old man committed suicide in a school parking lot at 2 a.m., and gang fights after hours.

But at least Bloom­berg is spending his own money to manufacture “evidence” to push his gun-control agenda. The politicization of the FBI and use of taxpayer dollars to scare Americans into supporting an agenda is far more disturbing.

John R. Lott Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of “More Guns, Less Crime.”

Not Destroying ISIS

Posted By Nonie Darwish On October 14, 2014 @ 12:48 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments

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Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)


Western media, President Obama, all Muslim countries, and myriad groups and individuals have been telling us that ISIS does not represent Islam. Muslims, especially in the West, insist that their beloved faith has nothing to do with the terrorists who are embarrassing the good and peaceful Muslims and who are giving Islam a bad name and dishonoring the real Islam.

It is a fact that Arab/Islamic culture highly values honor and pride and has little tolerance for those who dishonor Islam and Islamic “family values.” Because honor is so vital in Islamic culture, a whole section in Islamic law is dedicated to forgiving and not prosecuting certain murders when they are linked to honor, such as the killing of adulterers and apostates. Sharia has harsh punishment for those who dishonor Islam or deviate from its values and commandments.

Because of Muslim sensitivity to dishonor one would think that the majority of moderate Muslims, especially after 9/11, would mobilize their armies, police and legal resources to arrest, punish, imprison or execute those who kill, behead and terrorize in the name of the religion of peace.

Muslim legal systems in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and Yemen, do not hesitate to whip, amputate, stone and behead those who violate Islamic sexual taboos, but never behead, amputate or whip jihadists who terrorize in the name of Islam. Almost all Muslim governments claim to be moderate, but none have apologized for 9/11. They have no interest in rounding up terror groups except those who point their guns at Muslim governments. Why is that? Why is it that many Muslim governments allow the financial support and accommodation of terror groups as long as terrorists do their business elsewhere? Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf countries financed the radical resistance against Bashar Assad for one reason: he is not Sunni. And now when the radical resistance turned into ISIS, these same nations are asking the US to do something.

There are approximately 1.5 billion Muslims divided among 49 majority Muslim nations around the world and all claim to be peace-loving and “moderate.” Many of these Islamic nations have some of the largest and well-equipped armies in the Middle East and Africa. Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons. Egypt’s military has approximately 468,500 active personnel, in addition 1 million reservists. Turkey has 662,719 active personnel. Saudi Arabia’s military is estimated to have 150,000 active personnel and Pakistan has 550,000 active troops, 500,000 reserves.

Yet the huge armies of the above four Muslim nations are watching the ISIS slaughter and refuse to end it. Has anyone asked why? Where are the 1.5 billion moderate Muslims to save the reputation of Islam and fellow Muslims? Is there even a moderate Muslim army that will not hesitate to kill ISIS beheading their way from city to city? Will Muslim armies fight the alleged bad Muslims?

The answer is simple and I hope the West is ready for the truth. If Muslim governments go to war against ISIS, there is a good possibility that their armies will not kill ISIS but might actually join them against Arab governments. This is why:

The ultimate holy goal of Islam, both “moderate” and “radical,” is to reestablish the Islamic Khalifate and control the world. That is the goal of jihad. Historically all Islamic States were established by the sword, terror and violence. Even Mohammed himself established his first Islamic political entity in Arabia through the sword, violence and terror. Mohammed himself said in a hadith “I have been victorious through terror.” His followers took the sword, terror and beheading throughout Arabia to bring Arabs back to Islam after the death of Mohammed. Historically, Islam never created and maintained a Khalifate without the sword and the cruel punishments of Sharia. So the fact that ISIS is violent does not disqualify it in the eyes of Sharia from doing holy jihad in the name of Allah.

Thus, Muslim heads of state are caught in a quagmire. Sharia dictates that every Muslim head of state must do jihad as an obligation otherwise he is an apostate and must be removed from office — the old fashioned Islamic way like what happened to Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi. Sharia also gives the right to Muslims to wage jihad war against non-Muslim nations, but gives non-Muslim nations no right to reject Islamic jihad and fight back.

That is why Muslim leaders never want to wage serious war against the likes of Al Quaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hizbullah, etc. Muslim leaders do not want to be perceived as acting against Sharia by destroying the first budding Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Thus we see Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Gulf nations and Egypt, who are perfectly capable of destroying ISIS, refuse to move against ISIS and allow the slaughter of fellow Muslims, Christians and Kurds, rather than violate Sharia. All these Muslim governments are begging the US and Western nations to do their dirty work for them, as usual. America is the great Satan, so what more can America lose between friends?

President Obama today refuses to put troops on the ground in Syria and Iraq to destroy ISIS. I hope his refusal is because it is in the best interest of the United States and not because he too, like Arab leaders, does not want to destroy the first budding Islamic State In Iraq and the Levant.

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Panetta Book Bombshell: Challenges to Obama's Legitimacy Affected His Presidency

By Jack Cashill

http://americanthinker.com/

October 13, 2014

President Barack Obama shakes hands with then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in January 2013 (AP)

Largely lost in the hubbub over former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s new book Worthy Fights is one intriguing revelation. As reported in the New York Times, the accusations that Barack Obama was not what he appeared to be, perhaps not even a natural-born citizen, caused him to become tentative on the national stage. “Those challenges have encouraged the president’s caution and defensiveness, which in turn has emboldened further challenges,” Mr. Panetta wrote.

As the originator of one of those challenges, namely that terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers helped Obama with his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, I can confirm the validity of Panetta’s accusation. When challenged, Obama has become not only defensive but also downright dishonest. 

Obama’s insecurity has caused him to violate the promise he made to his assembled staff on his first full day in office. “I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness,” said the newly minted president. “Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.” As I document in my new book, You Lie, Obama has dishonored this promise in a hundred different ways.

In the last six years, the White House has withheld information large and small, public and private, petty and grand. A perfectly instructive and heretofore unsung incident took place at a CNN studio on September 23, 2009. The guest was bestselling celebrity journalist, Christopher Andersen. The show was CNN’s "American Morning", and the host was a young woman named Kiran Chetry.

An establishment journalist with credentials of the first order, Andersen was there to plug his twenty-eighth book and his fourth biography of a presidential couple, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage. Despite Andersen’s credentials and his apolitical background, the interview almost did not take place.

“It’s important to note,” Chetry told Andersen on air, “we reached out to the White House for a response to the book. They declined to comment but made it known they weren't happy. In fact, they pulled a previously scheduled interview we had with a senior adviser once they learned you were on the show.”

This Andersen already knew. “About as senior as you can get,” he confirmed. Andersen expressed surprise that the White House would do such a thing, “I was dismayed because the USA Today story on the book said it was a glowing portrait of a rock-solid marriage, and that is exactly what it is. It's a very positive look at what I think is a remarkable first family.”

This move must have seemed all the more puzzling to Chetry because at the time Obama’s transparency myth remained largely intact. The folks at CNN, at least those who had not read Andersen’s book, had to wonder why Obama would object to his presence, let alone which “separate authority” raised constitutional objections.

Andersen’s surprised reaction, however, was just a shade disingenuous. By this time, he knew what a poison pill he had slipped into this otherwise innocuous brew of a book. The night before his CNN guest shot he appeared on two national cable shows, "Hardball" with Chris Matthews and "Hannity."  Matthews, who likely had not read the book, interviewed Andersen in the nonconfrontational style Andersen expected. “You‘re an amazing, successful guy,” said Matthews at interview’s end. “You have a winning streak here.” 

Although equally agreeable, Sean Hannity called attention to this toxin in the brew. On air, Hannity cited Andersen’s claim that Bill Ayers had assisted Obama in the writing of Dreams from My Father. He quoted Andersen to the effect that "literary devices and themes [in Dreams] bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’s own writings.” Asked Hannity, “Bill Ayers helped him with his book?” Andersen confirmed the same and quickly changed topic. As a celebrity journalist, Andersen may not have realized initially how the Ayers bombshell would alienate his potential audience and unnerve the White House.

Nor was the Ayers revelation an incidental part of the book. Relying on two sources in Chicago’s Hyde Park, Andersen relates in six pages of detail the how, when, and why of Obama’s collaboration with Ayers on Dreams. If true, his claim revealed Obama to have been a shameless liar in his disavowal of Ayers during the campaign. His claim also made a total sham out of the literary world's anointment of Obama as "the best writer to occupy the White House since Lincoln," the understanding on which the Obama genius myth was based.

To its humble credit, CNN did not yield to White House pressure, not on the surface at least. The network allowed Andersen to appear despite the intimidation. What “The Worldwide Leader in News” failed to do, however, was explore the Ayers connection, the one newsworthy item in the book. After discussing the White House threat, Chetry moved immediately to “some of the interesting parts” of the book, starting with the ever-pressing question of how the Obamas balanced work and domestic responsibilities. Someone at CNN apparently knew what the president wanted and obliged him.

This combination of White House strong-arming and media sycophancy worked well for Obama. Very nearly every major news outlet in the English-speaking world felt compelled to review Andersen’s book. Yet not a single mainstream reviewer dared mention the book’s most explosive revelation, let alone follow up on it.

Lost in the kerfuffle was CNN’s open admission that the White House had attempted, and largely succeeded, in suppressing information, both from Andersen and from the adviser who had been scheduled to speak. This gesture had nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with Bill Ayers. “Information will not be withheld just because I say so,” said Obama on day one. Well, if he did not “say so,” someone very close to him did, and that someone would not have been anyone’s idea of a “separate authority.”

The Andersen shutdown was mere prelude to what would happen with Benghazi. “Several times when I reached out to Congress or the press without prior White House approval,” Panetta wrote, “I was chastised for it.”  As forthcoming as he appears to be, one suspects Panetta knows a lot more than he is saying.

Jack Cashill’s newest book, You Lie: The Evasions, Omissions, Fabrications, Frauds and Outright Falsehoods of Barack Obama is now available.

Why Won’t Republicans Get to the Bottom of Benghazi?

It’s not just Democrats who don't want a full public airing. 

By Andrew C. McCarthy

http://www.nationalreview.com/

October 11, 2014

Something bothers me about the first and only hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Something I haven’t been able to shake.

It was a desultory hearing. That’s not the main thing that bothers me, but it grates. Many Americans still seek real accountability for the jihadist-empowering policies and recklessly irresponsible security arrangements that preceded the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack — to say nothing of the fraud and stonewalling that followed it. We were thus cheered when the GOP-controlled House finally appointed a select investigative committee . . . although we were equally puzzled why it took so much prodding, why Republican leadership seemed so reluctant. Five months have elapsed since then, and the committee has not exactly been a bundle of energy.

The panel is chaired by Representative Trey Gowdy. We were buoyed by that, too: He is an impressive former prosecutor from South Carolina. To date, though, he has convened just the one, remarkably brief public hearing. It was on September 17, a few days after the second anniversary of the Benghazi massacre, during which terrorists killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans: Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glen Doherty.

The hearing seemed to be a futile quest for buy-in from committee Democrats, whose mission is to undermine the legitimacy of an investigation their party opposed — one that, if thorough and competent, cannot but damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. Representative Gowdy agreed to the minority’s request for a session that would explore the recommendations of the Obama State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) and the administration’s diligent implementation thereof.

The ARB probe, conducted by Washington fixtures handpicked by then–Secretary of State Clinton for damage-control purposes, was hopelessly conflicted. It failed to interview key witnesses — including, natch, Mrs. Clinton herself. Its recommendations are thus of dubious value. More to the point, they are far afield from the salient matter: accountability for the disastrous decisions, actions, and omissions before, during, and after the attack.

It was obvious why Democrats wanted a hearing focused on the ARB recommendations. It could nicely frame their contention that Benghazi has already been thoroughly investigated by bipartisan Beltway eminences who found fault (though not much, and not by anyone of significance) and proposed fixes, which fixes the Obama administration anxiously and responsibly adopted. End of story, which after all, dude, was like two years ago.

In spinning this yarn, Democrats could not have chosen a more perfect witness: Gregory Starr, assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security. Mr. Starr is a highly experienced diplomat, articulate with just the right edge of condescension, and, best of all, out of the loop on anything of consequence. He wasn’t at State when Benghazi happened. He was brought back to the Department by Mrs. Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, after a stint at the UN. He was therefore perfectly positioned to give forceful soliloquies about how crucial personnel security is to the State Department and the Obama administration, yet able to dodge any questions about the unconscionable security lapses in Benghazi under Secretary Clinton.

To their credit, committee Republicans did a fine job debunking the Democrats’ narrative. Chairman Gowdy in particular was characteristically effective in showing that the ARB recommendations were essentially the same ones proposed, and quickly forgotten, after every terrorist attack on a government facility over the past three decades. He also pointed out that security for high-threat facilities was supposed to be personally approved by the secretary of state, not a subordinate — a problem given that, under Secretary Clinton, security in Benghazi was decreased despite attacks, threats, and expert assessments that clearly signaled an intensifying threat.

Still, there was no reason for committee Republicans to put themselves in a defensive posture. Chairman Gowdy decides what the hearing topics will be. In the days before the hearing, three security contractors assigned to protect the CIA annex in Benghazi went public with allegations that they’d been obstructed by superiors when they tried to come to the aid of the Americans under attack. The delay may have cost lives. Was that not more to the point of the select committee’s mission — more appropriate fodder for its much-anticipated first hearing — than the ARB recommendations?

Of course, we conservatives are used to GOP accommodations designed to both entice Democrats into good-faith cooperation and impress the media with how bipartisan or, in Gowdy’s framing of it, how non-partisan Republicans can be. The civility and sobriety is always unrequited, yet they keep trying.

But that is not my main problem. What really bothers me is what happened toward the end of the hearing.

It was the day’s most dramatic exchange: Representative Gowdy was questioning Secretary Starr. The chairman had expertly set the stage by adducing Starr’s agreement that diplomatic security in dangerous places is a cost-benefit analysis. That is, the degree of risk tolerated depends on the government’s calculation of the benefit derived from whatever mission requires an American presence. With his witness thus cornered, Gowdy pounced: There being no more perilous place on the planet for Americans than the jihadist hornet’s nest of Benghazi, he asked Starr,

We know the risk of being in Benghazi. Can you tell us what our policy was in Libya that overcame those risks? In other words, why were we there?

Starr tried to dance away, going into a speech about how such questions “have been fundamental to the Department for over thirty years,” and that there have thus been evacuations, removal of family members, reductions of personnel, etc. Gowdy, however, would have none of it — after all, none of the measures Starr listed was taken in Benghazi. So again, the chairman demanded,

We know the risk in Benghazi. My colleagues and you and others have done a wonderful job of highlighting some of the “trip wires” — I think [that] is the diplomatic term. What policy were we pursuing in Libya that was so great that it overcame all of the trip wires?

After some hesitation, Secretary Starr meekly replied: “Not being here at the time, sir, I cannot answer that question for you.” 

Really?

Starr’s job is diplomatic security and, as he conceded, it cannot be done without knowing the administration’s policy objectives. Regardless of what his responsibilities were when the Benghazi massacre occurred, he cannot responsibly do his current job without knowing what the government’s policy was at the time. Libya has been steadily disintegrating ever since the attack — in fact, our embassy in Tripoli recently had to be evacuated just before being stormed and taken over by jihadists. It is inconceivable that Starr does not know what the Libya policy was.

But that is just half the equation. When a knowledgeable witness refuses to answer a critical question, the interrogator does not just let him off the hook. The witness gets grilled: Isn’t it a fact that the policy was X?

Gowdy did not grill Starr. And Gowdy — the chairman who has access to the intelligence the committee has been gathering for five months, the accomplished prosecutor who is not fool enough to ask a key question to which he did not know the answer — did not fill in the information gap. He abruptly ended the hearing, content to leave the policy shrouded in mystery.

In the midst of Libya’s civil war, the United States government decided to switch sides — we went from support for the Qaddafi regime that had been regarded as a key counterterrorism ally to support for “rebels” who very much included the anti-American jihadists Qaddafi had been helping us track. That was not just an Obama-administration policy preference; it had strong support from prominent senior Republicans in Congress. The toppling of Qaddafi that resulted enabled jihadists to raid the regime’s arsenal. That has greatly benefitted both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State terrorists currently rampaging in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and much of northern Africa.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration, again with significant Republican support, decided to aid and abet Syrian “rebels” who, as in Libya, very much included anti-American jihadists. There is colorable suspicion that this assistance included the gathering up of arms in Libya for shipment to Syrian “rebels.” Abdelhakim Belhadj, the al-Qaeda operative who was Ambassador Stevens’s “rebel” point-man in Benghazi, was clearly involved in at least one major shipment of weapons that went to Syrian “rebels” — including to some of the jihadist groups the United States is now bombing. That shipment was coordinated by Turkey, a country with which Ambassador Stevens, Secretary Clinton, and President Obama worked closely — a country whose ambassador was the last diplomat Stevens met with in Benghazi before being killed.

There will be no accountability for the Benghazi massacre absent a full public airing of what the United States government was doing in that most dangerous of places: Setting up shop among anti-American jihadists and staying there like sitting ducks even as other countries and international organizations pulled out. What was the benefit? Trying to limit the damage caused by switching sides in Libya? Fueling a new jihadist threat in Syria and Iraq — the very one we are now struggling to quell?

In Washington, there seem to be a lot of people resistant to a full public airing of the policy. They may not all be Democrats.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a policy fellow at the National Review Institute. His latest book is Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.