Saturday PM ~ The Front Page Cover

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"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
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Featuring:
America's pathological denial of reality
Caroline B. Glick
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"Rise up together as one voice"
"Be careful where you stand"
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 Leading From Behind Has Predicted Result  
Seems like no nation wants to take the lead to fight the Islamic State. So much for Barack nObama's "international community" and "leading from behind." Each one of them has a 1-2-3-not-it approach to summoning enough initiative for ending the Islamic State once and for all. Oh sure, Syrian rebels, the Peshmerga and the Iraqi army are all battling corners of the group on their turf, and the West is content to lob a few bombs in Islamic State territory every day, but no one has set a vision for the endgame. Now, the general secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, announced the organization won't be leading the effort to end the caliphate and ensure security for its partner nations.
          "Muslims are on the front line in this war," Stoltenberg said. "Most victims are Muslims, and most of those who fight against the [Islamic State] are Muslims. We can not carry on this struggle for them. The United States has a limited number of special forces. In the foreground, however, is strengthening local forces. This is not easy, but it's the only option." Despite the attack on America's homeland in San Bernardino, nObama is content — using National Review's Arthur Herman's analogy — to huddle behind the Maginot Line while Nazi Germany perfects its Blitzkrieg tactics. Instead, he addressed the nation Sunday to say he was doubling down on his strategy of "inherent resolve" and oh, to make firearms more difficult to acquire, because that would disrupt the jihadists who by the way are waging a "knife intifada" in Israel. It's time nObama adopted a winning strategy -The Patriot Post
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 The Syrian Refugee Religious Test  
If the Syrian refugees the nObama administration is accepting into the United States really are the most needy — the ones most at risk at being caught in the crossfire of the Syrian civil war — then why has the U.S. government only accepted one Christian refugee? A total of 237 Syrian refugees entered the country since Nov. 13, the day the Islamic State struck Paris. But only one Greek Orthodox individual landed on our shores, despite U.S. law requiring that asylum seekers be asked about the role religion played in persecution. Remember: Christians are fleeing the Middle East after their churches are targeted and razed — and it's not just the Islamic State carrying out the atrocities. The nObama administration, however, continues to refuse to consider religion with any of its Middle East dealings. In August, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was preparing to deport 27 Christians who were seeking asylum after fleeing the Islamic State.
          As a result of the Syrian refugee question, Congress is stepping up its involvement with immigration policy. The House passed, with a 407-19 vote Tuesday, a measure reforming the nation's Visa Waiver Program. The bill would require travelers holding passports for Western Europe who also traveled to Iraq, Iran, Syria or Sudan in the last five years to get a visa and undergo more scrutiny before entering the states. But there is only so much reform that Congress is willing to do. While there is bipartisan support to reform visas, the very program that accepted a single Christian will probably fall to Barack nObama's veto pen. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) believes  Democrats have enough votes to sustain the nObama administration's Trojan horse refugee program for Syrians. 
  -The Patriot Post
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 French Raid Mosques, Democrats Visit Them  
The attack in Paris was a hard lesson and wake-up call, but the French are showing signs of learning. During a state of emergency crackdown, "French authorities announced [last week] they shut down three mosques for an alleged 'pattern of radicalization,'" reports USA Today. French authorities found Islamic State propaganda, as well as weapons and ammo, and they made scores of arrests.
          Of course, USA Today also notes the flip side: "but terrorism analysts said such tactics are unlikely to be repeated in the USA." Thanks to Barack nObama's blinding Islamophilia, he would never allow such a thing. And Democrats follow his lead. That's why several Democrat lawmakers attended a prayer service at a radical mosque and nObama's DHS secretary held a press conference at a mosque tied to the Muslim Brotherhood — both after the San Bernardino attack.    -The Patriot Post
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 Denying Rights to Combat Terrorism?  
In a Sunday speech he clearly had no interest in giving, Barack nObama spoke to the nation from the Oval Office in an attempt to address the fears of many Americans following attacks in Paris (130 dead, almost 400 wounded) and San Bernardino (14 dead, 21 wounded) by Islamic jihadists. He failed to assuage those fears, primarily because he once again proved that he is clueless as to the real threat and the real enemy.
           To no one’s surprise, nObama used these recent tragedies to renew his push for more gun control in what was actually pretty savvy political theater.
          Under the guise of combatting terrorism, nObama declared, “To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon? ... We also need to make it harder for people to buy powerful assault weapons like the ones that were used in San Bernardino." Then he mocked, "I know there are some who reject any gun safety measures.”
          This is craven theatrics, but it will work on some Americans. All the public is going to hear is "no-fly list" and "guns," and then they're going to think, "Why do Republicans want to put guns in the hands of terrorists?" Mission accomplished for nObama.
          But there are three glaring problems with nObama’s proposed “solutions” — one practical, one political, and the other constitutional.  
 -The Patriot Post
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 NSA's needle in a haystack  
NVTg0J5JrpcrCzzniOSPZoIAqlql3dPfM2xyJVqGIeoOtkFyBbQ5ZL43Q2DVry2YRiDfEmR1t_Hqmm4AEutNqn-IFxduF5ju-dVjDz13uyA0cPs=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href= {Judge Andrew Napolitano} ~ If you were looking for a needle in a haystack, simple logic would tell you that the smaller the haystack the likelier you are to find the needle. Except for the government... Since Edward Snowden revealed the federal government’s unlawful and unconstitutional use of federal statutes to justify spying on all in America all the time, including the members of Congress who unwittingly wrote and passed the statutes, I have been arguing that the Fourth Amendment prohibits all domestic spying, except that which has been authorized by a search warrant issued by a judge. The same amendment also requires that warrants be issued only based on a serious level of individualized suspicion backed up by evidence – called probable cause – and the warrants must specifically identify the place and person to be spied upon. Because these requirements are in the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, Congress and the president and the courts are bound by them. There is no emergency or public safety or wartime exception to them. These requirements cannot be changed by legislation; only a constitutional amendment, ratified by the legislatures of 37 states, can do so.       http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/nsas-needle-in-a-haystack/
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 Making women front-line targets  
{Retired Adm. James A. Lyons} ~ If you want to take a country down, the first thing you do is weaken its military. That’s why sequestration was the perfect storm for the nObama administration... It provided the legal basis for the unilateral disarmament of the most feared and capable military force in the world. However, unilateral disarmament was insufficient to kill the “warrior mentality” of our military forces. It took the social engineering that were forced on our military to undercut unit integrity, cohesiveness, moral fiber, and most importantly, “the will to win,” with apparently no objection by our military leadership. Stunning was the announcement by Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter that he, personally, overruled the U.S. Marine Corps on whether it should be exempt from his directive that all combat positions be open to women. Nothing is excluded. This includes all front-line combat positions — U.S. Special Forces, Delta Force, Navy SEALs and Army Rangers.        http://www.aim.org/guest-column/making-women-front-line-targets/?utm_source=AIM+-
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 One Lie after another  
 Hilly denies she blamed the video when meeting with family  
{Debra Heine} ~ On ABC News' This Week Sunday, Hilly Clinton was asked by host George Stephanopoulos if she had told family members of the victims of the Benghazi terrorist attacks that a YouTube video was responsible for their loved ones' deaths... It was an important question to ask because a) we now know thanks to recently released emails that on the night of the attacks Clinton understood perfectly well that it was a terrorist attack; b) several family members have publicly claimed that she blamed the video in meetings with them three days later; and c) Clinton invoked the video during her public remarks that same day. Although President nObama, then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, and then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice also peddled the false YouTube video narrative publicly for weeks, Hilly is the only one who pushed the lie directly to the families. She  answered the question by saying "no" in direct contradiction to the family members' explicit claims.        https://pjmedia.com/trending/2015/12/10/hillary-clinton-denies-she-blamed-the-video-when-meeting-with-benghazi-families
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 nObama Violated Federal Law with Bergdahl Exchange  
{Stephen Kruiser} ~ The nObama administration hits just keep on coming... A House Armed Services Committee report set to be released Thursday accuses the nObama administration of misleading Congress and violating federal law during a controversial prisoner exchange. The report compiled by the GOP majority charges that the administration did so when it bypassed Congress in negotiating the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was being held in Afghanistan. They suggested that the White House had put politics and expediency ahead of proper procedure in making the deal. This is the same administration that put politics and expediency ahead of common sense when "ending" the war in Iraq, so this is really no surprise. This president puts politics ahead of everything. If the Republicans are against it, national security be damned. The quickest way to get rid of nObamacare may be to have every Republican in Congress embrace it.
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 Shut The Govt Down Rather Than Fund Obama’s Invasion  
{constitutionrising.com} ~ The US Senate has passed by a voice vote a short-term spending bill to fund the government until Wednesday, providing House leaders seeking to slip the Paul Ryan “Holiday” gift [he wouldn’t accept a Christmas gift] to Hussein nObama... with the time they need to get the dirty deed done. Ryan’s gift, which fund’s the nObama agenda for two years and rewards his own cash dispensing masters at the same time, will also include full funding for the nObama Islamic Invasion. At a minimum, the army of ten thousand “Syrian refugees” will be funded, but there will also be Islamists from other terrorist nations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan, that will be imported to fill the recruitment needs of the nObama/Ryan caliphate. Speaking specifically to that issue, Senator Jeff Sessions said on December 1st, “Not only will the President be allowed to bring in the 85,000 refugees he has announced on top of current record immigration levels, but this will include at least 10,000 refugees from Syria who will subsequently be able to bring in their foreign relatives.”       http://constitutionrising.com/archives/23463
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 China Flight Tests Multi-Warhead Missile  
{Bill Gertz} ~ China conducted a flight test of a new multi-warhead ballistic missile capable of reaching targets throughout the United States, Pentagon officials said... The test of the new DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, took place Dec. 4. The latest flight test demonstrated the use of two multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles. The missile launch and dummy warheads were tracked by satellites to an impact range in western China. It was the second flight test this year of the new missile and the fifth since 2012. U.S. intelligence assessments suggest that the missile will be capable of carrying between three and 10 warheads. The two most recent missile flight tests took place Aug. 6, also with two dummy warheads, and on Dec. 13, 2014.
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 nObama, Johnson and Clinton Shut Down Investigation...  
{constitutionrising.com} ~ Philip Haney is a whistleblower and former DHS employee who says he was pulled off of an investigation into terrorists in the interest of political correctness and to avoid offending Muslims, with what were very deadly consequences... Haney’s work included the developing information and the monitoring and tracking of terrorists and their affiliated mosques and groups inside the United States. That included cases and information related to the two terrorists who killed fourteen innocent people in San Bernardino. Haney details that, after noticing a trend of people with suspected ties to radicalization coming into the United States, he began looking into a collection of global networks which were attempting to infiltrate Islamic terrorists into America.
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 Gowdy Versus Control Freak DHS No-Nothing, Grabbing Guns...  
{constitutionrising.com} ~ While she might not be as dumb as a box of federal rocks and may in fact be qualified according to the criteria established by the criminals in DHS management to hold her position... Beyond simply being a lockstep open borders liberal, it is clear that she provides the appearance of being a know-nothing bimbo. As we know, in many cases the perception does have a way of intruding upon the reality. The witness, who admits to being capable of providing only limited information, Ms Burriesci, works at DHS, the open borders people who, along with the State Department, brought terrorism and a flood of illegals to our soil. She doesn’t seem concerned by that fact and is quite comfortable defending gun-grabbing the gun-grabbing of the despotic nObama regime she represents. Rep Trey Gowdy has a few questions for the little girl who wants to control us. He asks, as a base point of reference, how many visa over-stayers there are in the United States. She reminds the Congressman she’s already not answered that question, that she doesn’t have that statistics with her.         http://constitutionrising.com/archives/23478
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 The Muslim Brotherhood Has Taken Over the White House  
{Dave Hodges} ~ It is one thing for people of Islamic faith to serve the American government out of a sense of duty, honor and patriotism... It is quite another for people of any faith with ties to known terrorist organizations to be allowed to serve in highly secure and sensitive positions involving people with clear ties to a major terrorist organization. In this context, I am speaking about people holding key positions, many of them inside of the Department of Homeland Security, who are tied to the extremist terrorist group known as the Muslim Brotherhood. And when the Commander-In-Chief is one of these individuals, America has a duty to speak out and take steps to force the government to remove these individuals, with very questionable loyalties, from office.        http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2015/12/07/the-muslim-brotherhood-has-taken-over-the-white-house/
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 Islamic State Manifesto Details Paris Attacks, Expansion Plans  
{John Rossomando} ~ Terrorists behind last month's Paris attacks modeled their assault on tactics developed by Al-Qaida in Iraq, now the Islamic State (ISIS), during the Iraq War, according to a new Islamic State manifesto... "Black Flags From the Islamic State. "Originally disclosed last week by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), the 130-page ebook details the extensive planning that went into the Paris attacks and describes how plotters evaded detection by Western intelligence. Other aspects of the manifesto detail the history of the Islamic State's emergence from Al-Qaida, its plans for the future, and how it operates. The Paris attacks, which left 130 people dead, were enabled by at least 200 operatives in undisclosed locations who worked for two months, the ebook claims. Some lived near the Belgian-German border and in other European countries. Salah Abdel Salam, the surviving attacker, escaped by using a route through Eastern Europe and Turkey to Islamic State territory that was established in advance in case the plot was thwarted, "Black Flags From the Islamic State" says.       http://www.investigativeproject.org/5093/islamic-state-manifesto-details-paris-attacks
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America's pathological denial of reality
Caroline B. Glick
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{jewishworldreview.com} ~ How much lower will America sink before it regains its senses? Wednesday, two Muslims walked into a Christmas party at a community service center in San Bernardino, California where one worked. They were wearing body armor and video cameras and carrying automatic rifles, pipe bombs and pistols. They opened fire, killed 14, and wounded 21.
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The murderers, Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik were killed by police.
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Speaking to the Daily News, Farook’s father said his son, “was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.”
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Farook’s neighbor told the paper that over the past two years, Farook exchanged his Western dress for Islamic gowns and grew a beard.
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These data points lead naturally to the conclusion that Farook and his wife were jihadists who killed in order to kill in the name of Islam.
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But in America of December 2015, natural conclusions are considered irresponsible, at best.
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In an interview with CNN following the shooting, US President Barack nObama said the massacre demonstrates that the US needs stricter gun laws. As for the motives of the shooters, nObama shrugged. “We don’t yet know the motives of the shooters,” he insisted.
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In other words, while ignoring what in all likelihood drove Farooq and his wife to murder innocent people, nObama laid responsibility for the carnage at the feet of his political opponents who reject his demands for stricter limitations on gun ownership.
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Here is the place to note that California has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the US.
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According to the victims, Farook and his partners were able to reload their weapons and shoot without interruption for several minutes until the police arrived because there was no one to stop them.
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nObama wasn’t alone in deflecting attention away from the likely motivations of the murderers.
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Wednesday evening, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), held a press conference at the Islamic Center of Orange County. Farook’s brother in law, Farhan Khan was carted out before the cameras to tell the world that he for one had no idea why his brother in law opened fire.
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Two other speakers at the event were Hussam Auyloush, CAIR’s regional executive director and Muzammil Siddiqi, the director of the Islamic Society of Orange County.
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Auyloush insisted that he had no idea would could have possibly prompted Farook and his wife to murder those gathered at the center. Auyloush raised the prospect that they could have been mentally ill, or perhaps they just didn’t like the victims, or maybe they were garden-variety extremists.
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For his part, Siddiqi insisted that Islam had nothing to do with the shooters’ decision to murder innocent people, (how he could be so certain, is unknown).
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Siddiqi added that he hopes law enforcement bodies will conduct a full investigation into the “people and motives,” behind the attack.
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To a degree, the very fact that Siddiqi had no compunction about stepping in front of the cameras just hours after the attack is proof that the US has lost its way.
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If American elites were even semi-competent, Siddiqi would have faded into the shadows, never to emerge again 15 years ago.
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Siddiqi is a known jihadist sympathizer. His close ties to jihadists have been a matter of public record since 2000.
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In October 2000, Siddiqi spoke at an anti-Israel rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC. There he warned the American people that they must abandon their support for Israel lest “the wrath of G0D ” be unleashed against them.
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According to a profile of Siddiqi compiled by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, (IPT) in the late 1990s Siddiqi gave a speech extolling jihad and foreseeing Israel’s replacement with an Islamic state.
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Among other things, Siddiqi said, “In order to gain the honor, jihad is the path, jihad is the way to receive the honor.”
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Siddiqi converted Osama bin Laden’s senior aide, American jihadist Adam Gadahn. Gadahn converted to Islam at the Islamic Center of Orange County in 1995. According to a 2007 New Yorker profile, Siddiqi employed Gadahn at the Center in the years following his conversion. It was during this period that Gadahn was radicalized. He then went to Pakistan and joined al Qaida.
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In 1992 Siddiqi hosted a blind sheikh named Omar Abdel Rahman at the Islamic Center. He stood beside Rahman and simultaneously translated his lecture about jihad to the audience of worshipers.
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The next year, Rahman masterminded the first jihadist attack on the World Trade Center.
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During the 1990s, Siddiqi served as the president of the Islamic Society of North America, a known Muslim Brotherhood front group. In 2007, ISNA was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holyland terror financing trial.
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Despite all of his connections to jihadists, US authorities insist that Siddiqi is a legitimate voice. In 2007 Stephen Tidwell, then assistant director of the FBI division in Los Angeles upheld Siddiqi as a moderate.
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Speaking to the IPT, Tidwell said, “We have a very strong relationship with Dr. Siddiqi.”
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Hours before nObama responded to the San Bernadino massacre by lashing out at gun control opponents, Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for US Operation Inherent Resolve – the US campaign against Islamic State – rejected Russian claims that the Turkish government is collaborating with the terror state.
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Warren praised the Turks as “great partners to us.”
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“We flatly reject any notion that the Turks are somehow working with Islamic State. That is preposterous,” he insisted, adding, “Any thought” the Turkish government would deal or collaborate with Islamic State is “completely untrue.”
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Unfortunately, a wealth of evidence indicates that it is Warren’s statement that is preposterous and completely untrue.
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For nearly five years, it has been an open secret that Turkey serves as Islamic State’s logistical base. Almost all the foreigners traveling to Syria to join IS transit through Turkey.
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For nearly two years, we have known that Turkey is Islamic State’s major arms supplier. And for six months we have known that they are their partners in oil exports.
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In an article published this past summer in Middle East Quarterly, Burak Bekdil reported in January 2014, Turkish prosecutors acting independently from the government, dispatched forces to a border province with Syria to intercept a convoy of trucks laden with missiles, rockets and ammunition making its way to Syria. One of the truck drivers testified at the time that he and his colleagues had “carried similar loads several times before.”
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The forces charged with seizing the cargo were shocked to discover the trucks were being escorted by Turkish intelligence officers.
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According to Bekdil, “all hell broke loose,” after the prosecutors ordered the men arrested and the cargo seized.
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The provincial governor swooped in and insisted that the convoy was traveling on direct orders from Turkish leader Recep Tayip Erdogan. Months later, the military took over the case. And today, the men who executed the arrests and cargo seizure are on trial for “international espionage.”
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Bekdil reported that two months after the cargo was intercepted, a meeting took place between then foreign minister and current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, his deputy, Feridun Sinirlioglu, the head of Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan and deputy chief of the Turkish general staff, Gen. Yasar Guler.
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A recording of the meeting was leaked to social media. In the recording, Fidan is heard saying that “he had successfully sent two thousand trucks into Syria before.”
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As to Islamic State oil sales to Turkey, this past May, US special forces executed their first known raid inside Syria. The commandos descended on the home of Islamic State’s financial chief Abu Sayyaf. US forces killed Sayyaf and seized his computers and hard drives.
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Sayyaf directed Islamic State’s oil, gas and financial operations.
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Last July the Guardian reported that the computer data revealed close, direct dealings between Turkish officials and Islamic State members. According to one senior Western official familiar with the contents of the documents, just from what had been uncovered in the initial study of the material, “the links between Islamic State and the Turkish government are already so clear that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara.”
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Yet Wednesday, in the face of an overwhelming mountain of evidence, the Americans rejected out-of-hand Russians allegations that Turkey is the main consumer of oil exports from Islamic State.
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This past July, two senior Defense Intelligence Agency analysts assigned to US Central Command submitted a formal complaint to the Defense Department’s inspector general. The two claimed that their intelligence reports on Islamic State were doctored and distorted as they made their way up the feeding chain to nObama. Fifty intelligence analysts have stated their agreement with the allegations in the complaint.
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The doctored reports systematically rendered portraits of the US campaign against Islamic State as successful and Islamic State as a nearly spent force, along the lines of the narrative presented by nObama and his advisors. According to the analysts, the picture painted by the doctored reports bore little resemblance to their far more negative conclusions.
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According to the Daily Beast’s report, intelligence analysts began complaining to their superiors about the distortion of their reports in October 2014. Some of those analysts were urged to retire early, and some did.
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According to the publication, “one person who knows the contents of the written complaint… said it used the word ‘Stalinist’ to describe the tone set by officials overseeing CENTCOM analysis.”
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Following the jihadist attacks on Paris on November 13, nObama maintained his insistence that climate change is a graver threat to US national security than terrorism. It could be that this prioritization of concerns is playing a role in the administration’s apparent determination not to seriously fight Islamic State.
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In an interview with Charlie Rose last month, former CIA director Michael Morell explained that the administration decided not to bomb Islamic State’s oil infrastructure “because we didn’t want to do environmental damage.”
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According to the Guardian, Islamic State makes between one to four million dollars per day from oil sales.
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Perhaps the shooters in San Bernadino were just mad at their boss. Maybe Farooq suffered from clinical depression or ADD, or PTSD, or something.
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And maybe Islamic State, with its new colony Sirte in “liberated” Libya, just 400 miles from Italy, is on the run. Maybe as well, Turkey is just a patsy and Russia is really Islamic State’s largest trading partner, or maybe Israel is, or Ireland.
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But if facts are to be taken seriously, then the fact is that in December 2015, the US is acting with pathological devotion to ideological narratives that bear no relationship to reality.
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