Clinton said her close relationship with the financial sector grew out of her work to help them rebuild after 9/11. “It was good for the economy,” she said. “And it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”
Invoking 9/11 is something that ought to be done only when relevant, which Clinton’s was not, and only when facing oblivion. In that case, Clinton was right. Her exposure on the issue of banker nuzzling is much higher in the Democratic primary than the issue of Islamist terrorism.
Republicans today can talk of little else than national security, Paris, refugees and ISIS. But Democrats, even a day after the attacks, were seemingly eager to get off the subjects. The campaign of also-ran Sen.Bernie Sanders was proud to have fought to have limited the amount of the discussion that would involve national security.
Woof.
But Sanders is probably right. There’s not a lot of sense in debating the issue among Democrats since they are in substantial agreement with President nObama. While both Sanders and former Maryland Gov.Martin O’Malley tried to look for ways to draw decorous differences with nObama, they are in tune with his larger strategy of containing ISIS and waiting for the aspiring caliphate to die of asphyxiation or, perhaps, boredom.
Clinton has some differences of opinion with nObama, but she isn’t free to discuss them. Not only would she risk backlash from liberals and raise nObama’s ire, but, as moderator John Dickerson ably pointed out, the last foreign intervention Clinton encouraged, the regime change plan for Libya, is a thoroughgoing disaster.
So even as Clinton should be moving beyond nObama’s reach and into a no-contest Democratic nomination, he holds this power over her: If she gets too squirmy on his foreign policy, he will leave her to the foreign policy wolves on the right and left.
And on the issue that will dominate the coming week or more of the campaign – how many, if any Syrian refugees the U.S. should accept – Clinton will not be able to pioneer a position that might be attractive to voters. She will have to stand by nObama and say that she also thinks accepting tens of thousands of refugees from Syria is the right thing to do.
And you know the refugee issue is key to nObama. The only emotion beyond annoyance that he displayed in his first press conference after Paris was anger at Sen. Ted Cruz, who has suggested a religious test for the refugees in order to screen out Muslims, and Sen. Marco Rubio, who simply wants to stop the flow altogether. -Fox News
{ca.news.yahoo.com} ~ Islamic State warned in a new video on Monday that countries taking part in air strikes against Syria would suffer the same fate as France, and threatened to attack in Washington... The video, which appeared on a website used by Islamic State to post its messages, begins with news footage of the aftermath of Friday's Paris shootings in which at least 129 people were killed. The message to countries involved in what it called the "crusader campaign" was delivered by a man dressed in fatigues and a turban, and identified in subtitles as Al Ghareeb the Algerian. "We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France's and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington," the man said. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-threatens-attack-washington-other-countries-122051922.html?AID=7236
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{Bob Adelmann} ~ Just seven — trained, armed with illegal fully-automatic Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles and explosives — managed, in less than 30 minutes, to kill or wound nearly 500 citizens on Friday night. That’s a ratio of nearly 70 victims for each shooter... How is that possible? How could that have happened? Paris has been on high alert since the Charlie Hebdo and restaurant shootings in January. France and its capital city have strict gun control laws — so strict that even the police are unarmed. Islamist refugees have been flooding into France: poor, hungry, hardly threats to the community. Julien Pearce, a French radio reporter, was inside the Bataclan concert hall Friday and watched, horrified, as the attack commenced and the bodies piled up: http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/21956-did-france-s-strict-gun-control-contribute-to-the-paris-bloodbathutm_content=Rudy%20Tirre&utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Did%20France%26%2339%3Bs%20Strict%20Gun%20Control%20Contribute%20to%20the%20Paris%20Bloodbath%3F&utm_campaign=Did%20France%27s%20Gun%20Control%20Contribute%20to%20the%20Paris%20Attack%3Fcontent
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{Alex Newman} ~ The nObama administration is showering U.S. military support on Kurdish forces across Syria and Iraq, including backing for militant communist factions officially designated as terrorist organizations and their close allies... All of it is taking place under the guise of battling the Islamic State, a savage terror group that top U.S. officials and declassified documents have revealed was largely created by nObama's supposed “anti-ISIS” coalition. One major problem for the administration is that, like its well-documented support for self-declared al-Qaeda forces in Syria and Libya, it is a serious crime under U.S. law to provide aid to organizations designated by the U.S. government as terrorists. But it is hardly the first time Washington, D.C., has been caught supporting both Islamist and communist terror groups in the region in recent years.
• Shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who was born in Samarra in 1971 and whose real name is Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Al-Badri, helps set up an insurgent group to fight coalition troops- February 2004: Baghdadi is arrested and sent to Camp Bucca, where he meets former Baathist military commanders and religious extremists
• In 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and harbors ambitions to establish an Islamic state, creates an umbrella organization of Sunni insurgent groups led by his al-Qaida in Iraq group. Baghdadi's cell is among the first to join. Zarqawi dies in a U.S. airstrike and is succeeded by Abu Ayoub al-Masri, an Egyptian who announces the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq. Baghdadi becomes its head of religious affairs
• May 2010: Baghdadi becomes the group's leader following the death of Masri a month earlier in a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid, marking a shift in power within the organization from foreign fighters to Iraqi members
• September 2012: A suicide car bombing in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit is the first major assault in a campaign to free jailed fighters unveiled by Baghdadi, who seeks to position himself as defender of Iraq's disenfranchised Sunni minority. More than a year later, the group takes the western city of Fallujah.
• April 2013: The Islamic State in Iraq changes its name to The Islamic State of Iraq and The Levant, and becomes known as ISIL or ISIS. It advances through parts of eastern Syria, seizing oil wells and collecting taxes to fund its war chest
• January 2014: Baghdadi's militants take full control of the Syrian city of Raqqah, which becomes their de facto capital. Led by Baathist commanders, its fighters move across northern Iraq as the Iraqi army collapses, capturing Mosul and other cities to set up its territory on land straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border.
• February 2014: Al-Qaida formally ends its affiliation with the group, having become increasingly frustrated with its brutality and independence. Reports emerge detailing Baghdadi's harsh form of rule.
• June 29, 2014: The group declares itself a caliphate. Baghdadi soon after appears in a video delivering a sermon, proclaiming himself caliph and calling on Muslims to help build an empire. He wears black, evoking the Abbasids in the 8th century, who also came to power vowing to return to what they called a pure form of Islam. The group shortens its name to Islamic State.
• Aug. 8, 2014: In response, the U.S. launches airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq.
• Aug. 19, 2014: British-born fighter Mohamed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, appears in a video beheading American journalist James Foley in retaliation for the U.S. air raids. The group's slick propaganda campaign aimed at inspiring both fear and admiration is in full swing.
• Sept. 5, 2014: Days after the beheading of U.S. hostage Steven Sotloff, the nObama administration announces the formation of a coalition to bomb Islamic State in Iraq that includes the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey and Italy.
• Sept. 13, 2014: Islamic State launches an offensive on the northern Kurdish Syrian city of Kobani, near the Turkish border, that ends in January with its defeat by Kurdish fighters backed by coalition air raids.
• Sept. 23, 2014: The coalition begins airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria. Partner nations now include Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
• November 2014: Baghdadi accepts a pledge allegiance by Libyan groups and announces the creation of three Islamic State franchises. He addresses a growing number of Saudi followers in an audiotape and setting out a list of targets, starting with the country's minority Shiite in the oil-rich Eastern Province.
• Jan. 7, 2015: Attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Kosher grocery store in Paris leave 17 dead. Al-Qaida in Yemen claims responsibility for the magazine assault, while the militant who attacked the store appears in a posthumous video declaring allegiance to Islamic State, signaling a cooperation between the groups at a grassroots level despite rifts between their leaders.
• Feb. 3, 2015: Islamic State broadcast video of Lieutenant Muath Safi Al-Kaseasbeh, a Jordanian pilot captured in late December near Raqqa being burnt alive in a cage, an escalation of its public brutality.
• March 12, 2015: Nigerian militant group Boko Haram pledges allegiance to Baghdadi
• March 31, 2015: Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led warplanes retake Tikrit, their first major battlefield success. About two months later, Ramadi, capital of Iraq's western Anbar province falls to Islamic State, highlighting the war's ebb and flow.
• May 20, 2015: Islamic State captures Palmyra, home to Syrian army installations and near a highway linking Damascus with Syria's eastern provinces. It tries to capitalize on the city's symbolism, destroying ancient monuments and filming mass executions in its Roman amphitheater. Days later, militants tear down the last border posts between Iraq and Syria as part of their goal of destroying the 1919 Sykes-Picot agreement.
• June 26, 2015: Several months after a deadly attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, the group claims responsibility for the killing of 38 people at Tunisian beach resort that devastates Tunisia's crucial tourism sector.
• September, 2015: As Islamic State seeks to profit from chaos in Yemen, its fighters carry out one of its biggest suicide bombings in the country, striking a Shiite mosque in Sana'a during Eid prayers and killing 30 people.
• Sept. 30, 2015: Russia enters the Syrian civil war to back President Bashar Assad against rebel groups supported by Western powers as well as Islamic State.
• Oct. 11, 2015: Two suicide bombers kill more than 100 people attending a rally of pro-Kurdish activists and civic groups in Ankara. The government blames Islamic State for the worst attack of its kind on Turkish soil.
• Oct. 31, 2015: Russian passenger jet crashes in the Sinai desert in Egypt killing all 224 people on board in an attack claimed by Islamic State's affiliate in Egypt.
• Nov. 12, 2015: Islamic State claims twin bombs that killed at least 44 people in its first attack in Beirut, targeting a stronghold of the militant Hezbollah group that has been supporting Assad.
• Nov. 13, 2015: Kurdish forces drive Islamic State fighters from the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, a significant advance in a campaign to regain territory seized by the militant group. The U.S. says it's "reasonably certain" it killed Jihadi John in an airstrike in Syria.
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