Saturday ~ The Front Page Cover

 The Front Page Cover 
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
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Featuring:
Cooking the books
Col. Kenneth Allard US Army ret.
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"Know who you are standing with"
"Show me your friends and I'll show you your future"
~~~lll~~~
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 Just How Close Was Iran With Osama bin Laden?  
There is a connection between the terrorist group that brought down the World Trade Center towers and the world's newest endorsed-for-nuclear-power country, but the nObama administration has yet to disclose that link. We know from documents captured by SEAL Team 6 after they killed Osama bin Laden that al-Qaida was comfortable going into the country. At one point, probably sometime around 2006, the terrorist group wanted to set up an office in Iran, but rejected the idea because it was too expensive. And while Iran detained many al-Qaida members after they fled Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion of the country, The Weekly Standard suggested in February the two groups had an uneasy agreement. After all, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote Monday, "[E]arlier this summer the State Department's latest country report on terrorism said Iran had 'previously' allowed al Qaeda 'to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran,' implying this was a thing of the past. Less than a month later, President nObama announced the Iran nuclear deal. With his deal now moving ahead, the least the President could do is release the other bin Laden files dealing with Iran. And if the President doesn't release the documents, Congress ought to demand them." Before nObama gives Iran up to $150 billion in sanctions relief to go with nuclear capability, these documents might be worth a look.-The Patriot Post  
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 WITH WOMEN, HILLY’S IN THE DUST  
Hilly Clinton’s wagon train pulls into Iowa today as she looks to shore up support among women. And no wonder. While the campaign may have imagined they’d be rolling along by now with that key voter contingent, a new poll shows the wheels are wobbling badly and in danger of falling off.  
          Losing “significant ground” over the past two months as she struggles with her email scandal, the Washington Post/ABC News national poll says that while Clinton still leads the field of Democrats, “…for the first time her support has dropped below 50 percent in Post-ABC surveys, with the biggest decline coming among white women.” The news comes on the heels of another poll out this weekend that shows her falling behind rival Bernie Sanders in Iowa, as she has in New Hampshire.  -Fox News  
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 Loose Lips Biden meets big nObama bundler -   Bloomberg: “…Fewer than 12 hours after the Colbert interview aired, loose lips Biden partook in a meeting that signaled something entirely different…It was held in secret at his hotel in Midtown Manhattan and lasted for more than 90 minutes: a private, one-on-one session with one of the most prominent and powerful fundraising stars in the Democratic firmament—a mega-bundler who happens to be, at least for now, publicly committed to Hilly Clinton. The bundler in question was Robert Wolf: the former chairman and CEO of UBS Americas, a prodigious buck-raker on behalf of Barack nObama in two successive campaigns…”  -Fox News  
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 WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE  
Mermaids have fascinated human beings since the earliest voyagers set to the seas. Often illustrated in Greek mythology as a “siren,” the depiction of a mermaid combined a woman’s seductive charms with the dangers of early ships landing on foreign coastlines, often leading to shipwrecks. Sirens, or mermaids, were blamed for these disasters as they supposedly used there charms to lure men of the seas into danger. Tales spread and the image of mermaids changed from dangerous sea nymphs to Daryl Hannah washing ashore in “Splash,” but audience’s fascination with mermaids continues to create a high demand in today’s entertainment industry. As Fast Company explains, “Today, there are close to 1,000 full-time mermaids and mermen in the United States, according to the estimates of various experts I spoke with in the mer-community. These merfolk spend their days modeling in shimmering tails, performing for audiences in underwater tanks, and delighting children by making surprise appearances at their pool parties…The mermaid economy is positively booming.”  -Fox News  
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 The Great Palestinian International Aid Rip-Off  
{William A. Jacobson} ~ Palestinians are among the largest recipients of international aid, per capita, in the world... Yet all we hear about is U.S. aid to Israel, which is entirely military and most of which comes back to U.S. companies because it is required to be spent on U.S.-made equipment. International aid to Palestinians doesn’t come back to the donor countries. That includes an average U.S. annual contribution of $400 million. In fact, it doesn’t seem to go anywhere productive. Why don’t we hear more about this? Because there is no free press in any of the Palestinian controlled areas, or independent NGOs, like there are in Israel. Whereas Israel is under a microscope by dozens of NGOs and hundreds of reporters, Palestinian authorities — both the PA and Hamas — are beyond much Western scrutiny.
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 Sanctions Relief to Recognizing Israel, Releasing Americans  
{Patrick Goodenough} ~ The U.S. Senate on Tuesday failed for a second time to advance a resolution disapproving President nObama’s nuclear deal with Iran... and Majority Leader Mitch McCon-nell signaled plans for a vote on an amendment requiring Iran to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to release U.S. citizens in its custody. Until Tehran meets those two “simple benchmarks,” McCon-nell said on the Senate floor, nObama must not be allowed to lift sanctions. He characterized his proposed amendment as a way to test whether Democratic senators really care about Israel and human rights, as they claim to do even while blocking a vote that would let the American people know where their respective senators stand on the nuclear deal.       http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/mcconnell-plans-amendments-linking-iran-sanctions-relief-recognizing
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 The Arab States and the Refugees  
{Denis MacEoin} ~ While the European Union and its member states totter under an overwhelming influx of refugees from Syria and other collapsing countries in the Middle East... the vastly wealthy Arab nations of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are sitting back and watching as Europe takes the toll. In a December 2014 report from Amnesty International, various facts and figures are set out to show that what is happening with respect to (mainly) Syrian refugees is thoroughly unbalanced internationally, and notably within the Arab world itself. 95% of the (then) 3.8 million refugees fleeing Syria are located in five countries (although since then many have crossed the Mediterranean or gone to Greece from Turkey). With the exception of Turkey, those five countries are among the poorest in the region: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Here is Amnesty's breakdown of the figures:       http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6502/refugees-arab-states
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 Don’t buy the Democrats’ new tough talk on Iran  
{Danielle Pletka and Stuart Gottlieb} ~ A strange thing happened once Democrats secured enough votes in Congress to ensure survival of President nObama’s landmark Iran nuclear deal... a major escalation of aggressive war talk directed at the Islamic Republic. And not just from Dick Cheney. Or Democrats who opposed the deal. But from Democrats who formally support the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, for example, says the deal failed to compel Iran to “forego its on to develop nuclear weapons,” and that the only way to “prevent or destroy the Iranian nuclear threat” is a “credible threat of a U.S. military strike to destroy any Iranian nuclear weapons infrastructure completely.”       http://www.aei.org/publication/dont-buy-the-democrats-new-tough-talk-on-iran/?utm_source=paramouintentint&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITODAY&utm_campaign=091615 
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 Hilly's Server Guy Took 5th Because He'd End Up Like Vince  
Foster{Jeff Dunetz} ~ When appearing that before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Hilly Clinton's "server dude," Bryan Pagliano exercised his fifth amendment rights by not answering questions... While most people assumed his silence was based on not wanting to incriminate himself, Newsbusted Anchor Jodie Miller suggests there may have been something else in play. apparently the server dude was afraid he would end up like Vince Foster, Deputy White House Counsel during the first few months of President Bill Clinton's administration. Before that he was a partner at Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, and a colleague and friend of Hilly Rodham Clinton who supposedly committed suicide in 1993.
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 Presidential Debate PostMortum   Well, I cannot honestly say that my guy Ted Cruz won tonight. He had a very respectable showing, but he had no chance of winning because he was not allowed to answer enough questions... There is no doubt that CNN and Fox both tried to limit his camera time because they know what a strong debater he is and they don’t want him to win. That being said, I have to give the win to Carly Fiorina tonight. She had not only the best answer of the night (Planned Parenthood) she also had the second best answer of the night as well (her response to Donald Trump’s “face” comment).        http://chrisskates.com/presidential-debate-postmortum/
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 nObama Admin Secretly Guarantees Russia, China Protection  
{Adam Kredo} ~ The United States has provided secret assurances to Europe, China, and Russia that it will protect companies working with Iran from consequences related to the possible reimposition of sanctions... set to be lifted under the recently inked nuclear deal, according to a document provided to Congress and obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon. Secretary of State hanoi John Kerry admitted to Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) that the United States will work with foreign companies who financially engage Iran to shield them from penalties in the aftermath of Iran violating the agreement, a decision experts told the Free Beacon risked a corporate rush into Iran that will permanently bolster the Iranian economy and incentivize Iranian cheating.
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 Carly Fiorina’s Impassioned, Powerful Debate Answer...  
{rickwells.us} ~ Carly Fiorina joined two issues into one response in the second Republican debate, the Iran deal and the funding of Planned Parenthood... She characterized the first as having to do with the defense of the security of this nation and the other, Planned Parenthood, having to do with the defense of the character of this nation. After giving her stance and course of action in response to a nuclear powered Iran and negating the agreement that Hussein nObama entered into with them, Fiorina challenged nObama and Clinton and anyone else who claims not to have watched the Planned Parenthood videos to do so.
http://rickwells.us/carly-fiorinas-impassioned-powerful-debate-answer-on-planned-parenthood-defunding-barbaric-videos/
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 It’s 1992 All Over Again. A New Agenda 21 Threatens Our Way of Life  
{Tom DeWeese} ~ If you had a time machine and could travel back to 1992 as the UN’s Earth Summit was underway, and you knew what you know now about Agenda 21... imagine the actions you could take to stop it in its tracks. You wouldn’t have to wonder what the NGOs who created it had in mind. You wouldn’t have to trust the news media to tell you the details. You would know, just as the NGO’s, Nancy Pulosi and all the others openly told you, Agenda 21 is a “comprehensive blue print” for the reorganization of human society. They told you then, without hesitation, that Agenda 21 was aimed at destroying free enterprise. That is was a clarion call for humans to live on less. That the Earth could no longer sustain the United States of America. That’s what they told us, but so many weren’t listening. It took over 15 years to most to finally grasp it. And that was only after it was firmly entrenched in every government agency, every community plan, and every school curriculum. So much so than many now say it is impossible to combat. They whine that it’s a done deal.
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 nObama Slams GOP for ‘Talking Down America’  
{Debra Heine} ~ The next president – Republican or Democrat – will have the heavy burden of undoing the colossal damage nObama has done to our country... It should come as no surprise that not everyone appreciates nObama’s fundamentally transformed America. But nObama seems to be, and he sees criticism of our once great nation as a personal insult. Well, he should take it as a personal insult. As Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote at National Review, “the tragic mess of 2009–2016 is ending, and soon the cleanup will begin — accompanied by stupefaction as to just how much will have to be thrown away.”
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Cooking the books
Col. Kenneth Allard US Army ret.
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     {aim.org} ~ Here’s something to think about as we commemorate Sept. 11, 2001, an epic intelligence failure that led directly to the worst American defeat since Pearl Harbor.
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     The current Democratic front-runner in the presidential sweepstakes, described as a liar by many American voters, conceivably faces indictment for mishandling top secret intelligence, the most prized category of all our national secrets. Meanwhile the current Democratic incumbent, undaunted by his infamous description of ISIS as a “junior varsity team,” is insisting that the intelligence analysts most responsible for fighting ISIS cook their books to make it seem as if we’re winning despite inconvenient facts suggesting otherwise.
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     The Daily Beast, in Wednesday’s exclusive story, reported a breaking scandal from within the ranks of intelligence analysts at the U.S. Central Command, ordinarily a highly secretive organization. “More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials ”
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     This is hot stuff because intelligence analysts are normally an exceptionally closed-mouth bunch, believing that loose lips still sink ships and cost lives. But at Tampa’s Central Command, that responsibility is taken even more seriously since CENTCOM is the war-fighting organization most responsible for carrying the fight to ISIS. The painstaking assessments of its analysts – about enemy order of battle, areas of concentration and chains of command – are the raw material of the nation’s information-centered kill chain. When vague intelligence “indicators” are correlated with other data, intuition and shrewd comparisons can produce hard “signatures.” Only then are our pilots and Special Forces ordered into direct action, bringing firepower to destroy those often elusive targets.
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     When you do that kind of thing for a living every day, then your expert evaluation about the success of the fight will naturally command high-level attention – and possibly even controversy as well. If “keep your mouth shut,” is a common instinct among intelligence professionals, then a shared professional culture elevates “getting it right” into a core value. But on those rare occasions when those values come into direct conflict with each other – that is when history is in the making.
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     According to the Daily Beast, this is apparently the case now – and has been for months. Two central command intelligence analysts – supported by 50 of their colleagues – took the extraordinary step of signing a formal complaint to the department of defense inspector general, literally a life-or-death career move. They charge that their reports were being politicized to portray “the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are.” More specifically, “The analysts have accused senior-level leaders, including the director of intelligence and his deputy in CENTCOM, of changing their analyses to be more in line with the nObama administration’s public contention that the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda is making progress.”
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     What may be even worse is that the pattern of bureaucratic deception has persisted, what one official described as a “cancer” at the highest levels. Against a backdrop of considerably more optimistic public assessments by President nObama, Secretary of State hanoi John Kerry and a host of multi-starred commanders, the central command analysts began their confrontation back in October.
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     So what happens when a courageous analyst fulfills his highest professional duty of speaking “truth to power?” As documented by the Daily Beast, the Empire instinctively strikes back: Pessimistic reports are edited to include more happy talk while truly ominous assessments are short-stopped, contradicted or deep-sixed. An already-Darwinian personnel system with promotions slowed by budget-cuts easily reins in the odd maverick with a raised eyebrow or the chilling question, “Are you really giving the boss what he expects here?” Sometimes an emergency call to HR is made and early retirement options pointedly made clear.
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     But is any of that the fault of Barack nObama? Designated apologists like White House spokesman Josh Ernest will reflexively deny any such culpability. But any intelligence officer worth his or her salt knows that generals and presidents get precisely the kind of intelligence they deserve. Decision-making in the hierarchy of the U.S. government is a tightly closed loop that is exquisitely sensitive to every nuance, every shading of encouragement or discouragement. If the boss doesn’t demand the kind of fearless intelligence that confirms or denies his most cherished preferences, then the entire weight of the federal bureaucracy instinctively closes ranks around him.
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     Where bad news is cut off, only catastrophe can enter, either a 9/11 or a Pearl Harbor. As Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling classically observed, surprise at Pearl Harbor was “sudden, concentrated and dramatic. The failure, however, was cumulative, widespread and rather drearily familiar.” Just like today, from CENTCOM to the West Wing.
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