Tag Archives: defense policy

National Security and Terrorists

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More than a dozen Islamic State fighters from Iraq and Syria—some with direct ties to the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—are now in Libya, according to US and European sources.

And the US has no authority to take them out.

And

The nation’s most senior intelligence officer, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, recently testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Libya is not only a safe haven for ISIS but at least six other terror groups, including Ansar al-Sharia, which paraded police vehicles through Benghazi last month.

State’s Deputy Spokeswoman Marie Harf repeated State’s (and so President Barack Obama’s) position on the matter, insisting that this is not the fault of our foreign policy.

Are we happy with the situation in Libya from a governance and security perspective? No. Absolutely not. At the end of the day, though, this is not just a line, it’s true. This is ultimately up to the Libyan people, leaders in Libya to take the security of their country into their own hands and try to move it in a better direction with our help, the UN and others’ help as well.

This is a misreading of the situation. These Daesh members (and with direct ties to…Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they’re Daesh leaders themselves) also are threats to our own national security, as are those other terrorist groups present—and not only to us, but to our friends and allies, also. From that, two consequences result directly.

The first is that, most assuredly, the situation in Libya is Libya’s to answer first, and we should do all we can to help Libya in that regard if they ask.

The second consequence, and from our national safety perspective the more important one, is that if Libya is unable or unwilling to handle the situation to our satisfaction—that is to the satisfaction of our own national security interest—then we have an obligation to ourselves, to American security, to enter and to handle the situation ourselves.

A foreign policy that is in the way of that, whether actively so or passively, very definitely is at fault, and it’s at odds with our national security.

State’s Cynical Distortion

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The State Department accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of taking congressional testimony by Secretary of State John Kerry out of context in Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of Congress Tuesday.

What Kerry said in Congressional testimony:

[I]f you have a civilian power plant that’s producing power legitimately and not a threat to proliferation, you could have as many as 190,000 or more centrifuges[.]

What Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:

He [Iran’s Supreme Leader] says, Iran plans to have 190,000 centrifuges, not 6,000 or even the 19,000 that Iran has today, but 10 times that amount—190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium. With this massive capacity, Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal and this in a matter of weeks, once it makes that decision.
My long-time friend, John Kerry, Secretary of State, confirmed last week that Iran could legitimately possess that massive centrifuge capacity when the deal expires.
Now I want you to think about that. The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons and this with full international legitimacy.

Out of context? Not so much, FactCheck.org notwithstanding (their statement, Kerry wasn’t saying that “Iran could legitimately possess” 190,000 centrifuges. He was saying that “a civilian power plant that’s producing power legitimately” could have 190,000 or more centrifuges, simply restates what Netanyahu said Kerry said—that Iran could possess as many as 190,000 centrifuges under the Kerry/Obama deal). The Obama/Kerry deal on offer to Iran would allow Iran to have “peaceful,” “civilian” nuclear power plants “producing power legitimately.”

What’s key here is this. Those centrifuges, busily spinning away to produce fuel-grade uranium for peaceful nuclear power plants, could just as easily be spinning away through additional purification cycles to produce weapons-grade uranium. Netanyahu understands that.

John Kerry and Barack Obama just as clearly understand that; their cynicism and crocodile ire over Netanyahu’s speech aside.

See the centrifuges spin. Spin, Centrifuges, spin.

The Mosul Campaign

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A couple of things.

Regarding the well-publicized upcoming Mosul, Iraq, campaign (remember the ability of WWI allied general staffs to predict German army movements by reading Berlin newspaper society pages? President Barack Obama plainly does not), a carefully unnamed “military official” had this to say:

When we feel that the Iraqi forces are ready to go and win decisively, we will go and advise the Iraqis to begin the operation.

Hmm….

Keep some things in mind for a broader context of this official’s remark. These are the same Iraqi forces that failed so miserably against the Iranian army. These are the same Iraqi forces that failed so miserably against the American military, twice. These are the same Iraqi forces that failed so miserably when the Daesh ran all over them just a few months ago. These are Iraqi forces.

Update: As prelude to the upcoming Mosul campaign (and from which all the publicity may have been intended to distract as well as to show “initiative”) a 30,000-strong mixed Iraqi, Kurdish, militia, and Iranian force began an assault on Tikrit, which some 1,500-2,000 Daesh terrorists are holding, over last weekend.

This force is made up of Peshmerga, Sunni and Shia militia units, and units from Iran’s Quds forces.  Some Iraqi army units are along, too, to lend a government imprimatur to the operation.

As happened the last time the Iraqi army tried to take Tikrit, the offensive has stalled short of the city’s suburbs, having run into mines on the roads and other key approaches: Daesh emplaced IEDs.  The move now is to attempt to surround the city; Quds leadership is guiding the eastern part of the operation.

Mulling Things Over

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The US military is considering a months-long campaign of airstrikes to squeeze Islamic State fighters in Mosul before inserting Iraqi ground forces to retake the city, officials said Friday.

The on-the-ground fight to retake Mosul isn’t likely to start until the fall at the earliest, after an intensified air campaign to target Islamic State leaders and cut off supply lines in and around the city, the officials said.

The emerging plan is at odds with a briefing by a US military’s Central Command official in February in which he said the US and Iraq were looking at starting a campaign to liberate Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, by April or May.

Why is the Obama administration kicking such things around in public, particularly in front of the Daesh terrorists? What does Obama think he’s accomplishing with this?

Why?

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…is this man still on the payroll?

Robert McDonald, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, wrongly claimed in a videotaped comment earlier this year that he served in the Army’s elite special forces, when his military service of five years was in fact spent almost entirely with the 82nd Airborne Division during the late 1970s.

Haven’t had done, yet, with these problems of stolen valor, now that it’s reaching into the upper echelons of our Federal government?

US special operations forces (SOF) are composed of exhaustively trained and highly capable troops from each military service, including the Army Rangers, Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and Army Special Forces (also known as the Green Berets)—but not the 82nd Airborne. They [SOF] are certified to undertake the most dangerous and delicate missions….

To be sure, after having been found out, McDonald has issued an apology for his lie:

While I was in Los Angeles, engaging a homeless individual to determine his Veteran status, I asked the man where he had served in the military. He responded that he had served in special forces. I incorrectly stated that I had been in special forces. That was inaccurate and I apologize to anyone that was offended by my misstatement.

This was no little white lie, though, nor a politician’s…exaggeration for effect. On something of this magnitude, I get a little stiff-necked, and I ask: if McDonald had any integrity, he never would have made the claim in the first place; how, then, can we take his apology at face value? How, too, can we trust his apology when it didn’t come spontaneously, but only after he’d been caught out in his lie?