• Iran’s supreme leader responds to threats of Israeli attack
• 200 people reported killed in Homs Syria on eve of U.N. vote
• Debka: West, Turkey, Arabs infiltrate Syria to topple Assad
• Monday euro meeting cancelled as Greece bailout talks fail

Iran’s supreme leader responds to threats of Israeli attack

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Thursday’s statement by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that he believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June has drawn a sharp reaction from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:

“You see every now and then in this way they say that all options are on the table. That means even the option of war. This is how they make these threats against us.

“Well, these kinds of threats are detrimental to the U.S. The war itself will be 10 times as detrimental to the U.S.

The Zionist regime is really the cancerous tumor of this region and it needs to be removed and will be removed.”

There have been several cycles of escalating rhetoric between Iran on the one hand and Israel and the U.S. on the other. Whether this leads to war remains to be seen. CNN

200 people reported killed in Homs Syria on eve of U.N. vote

More than 200 people were reported kills in Homs, Syria, on Thursday, as the United Nations Security Council, tries to reach agreement on a resolution condemning the violence in Syria. Russia, which sells arms to Syria and has a naval base in Syria, has indicated that it will veto any proposed resolution that actually says anything. Guardian

Debka: West, Turkey, Arabs infiltrate Syria to topple Assad

According to Debka’s subscriber-only newsletter (sent to me by a subscriber), the U.S., Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar are currently in the midst of a clandestine operation to topple president Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Their intelligence agencies are pitching different groups of generals in Syria’s army, many of whom are reached through their ethnic, tribal, religious, clan or class affiliations.

” The pitch is simple: It is past time to stop the cruel butchery devastating Syria before the country slides into civil war or breaks up into warring cantons. The only way to halt the bloodbath is for the army to march on Damascus, evict the Assad family regime and install a military government to hold the reins for the transition to civilian rule and national elections They are reached through diverse channels: Targeted officers are surprised by calls to their unlisted private phone numbers or their command centers through military communications networks. Some are reached by email; others find undercover couriers turning up on their doorsteps at home.”

The objective is to spearhead a military coup.

“This stratagem is seen by our military and intelligence sources as more analogous to the American covert tactic for toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 than the anti-Qaddafi operation five months ago. The CIA prepared the way for the US invasion of Iraq by subverting the Iraqi generals and colonels responsible for the defense of Baghdad to make sure they abstained from resisting the invasion. American agents worked through those officers’ expatriate relatives living in the US and Iraqi officers recruited before the war.”

According to the report, both Syria and Iran are fully aware of this plan, and are preparing for military action. Debka

Soooooo, let’s keep score: A covert attack on Syria, a possible Israeli attack on Iran, utter chaos in Egypt and Yemen. What does that add up to?

Monday euro meeting cancelled as Greece bailout talks fail

I’ve been getting a headache listening to various European officials these last two weeks saying that a final deal on the next Greek bailout was “nearly complete” or “one step away” or “a couple of days away” or “almost in hand.” These same statements were repeated day after day, and now over two weeks have slipped by, and there’s no deal. A major stumbling block is the recent realization that the old €130 billion bailout amount is too little, and at least €15 billion more are needed. The Netherlands and Germany don’t want to pay any more, the investors don’t want to lose any more, and the European Central Bank (ECB) still doesn’t want to lose anything. Meanwhile, Greece’s unions don’t want any layoffs or salary reductions or even a reduction in the minimum wage. So all these negotiators have apparently been in a room this past two weeks arguing about the same things over and over. The meetings are continuing into the weekend, but the EU has scrapped a planned Monday meeting of the eurozone finance ministers, to give the negotiators “a few more days” to come up with a deal. Irish Times

Military District of Washington commander Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington referred all charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning to a general court-martial, the Army said in a statement.

The referral means Manning will stand trial for allegedly giving more than 700,000 secret U.S. documents and classified combat video to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks for publication.

The 24-year-old Crescent, Okla., native faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy. He could be imprisoned for life if convicted of that charge.

A judge who is yet to be appointed will set the trial date.

Manning’s lead defense counsel, civilian attorney David Coombs, didn’t immediately return a call Friday evening seeking comment on the decision.

Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to classified material while he was stationed there from late 2009 to mid-2010.

At a preliminary hearing in December, military prosecutors produced evidence that Manning downloaded and electronically transferred to WikiLeaks nearly half a million sensitive battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, and video of a deadly 2007 Army helicopter attack that WikiLeaks shared with the world and dubbed “Collateral Murder.”

Manning’s lawyers countered that others had access to Manning’s workplace computers. They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces. The defense also claims Manning’s apparent disregard for security rules during stateside training and his increasingly violent outbursts after deployment were red flags that should have prevented him from having access to classified material. Manning’s lawyers also contend that the material WikiLeaks published did little or no harm to national security.

In the December hearing at Fort Meade, Md., prosecutors also presented excerpts of online chats found on Manning’s personal computer that allegedly document collaboration between him and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Federal prosecutors in northern Virginia are investigating Assange and others for allegedly facilitating the disclosures.

The Bradley Manning Support Group, which contends Manning heroically exposed war crimes, issued a statement calling his prosecution “fundamentally unjust.”

“This administration owes all Americans an honest explanation for their extraordinary retaliation against Bradley Manning,” said Jeff Paterson, one of the group’s lead organizers.

More than half of the personnel cuts, and much of the aircraft and other equipment moves, will be borne by the Air Guard, triggering criticism from the National Guard Association.

The Air Force said the service cannot absorb any further cuts in active duty forces because that would limit their ability to respond to multiple crises.

Overall, about 3,900 active duty, 5,100 Air Guard and 900 Air Force reserves would be cut in the next year.

Noting that senior defense leaders have said the planned $487 billion in budget cuts over the next 10 years will mean more reliance on the reserves, Guard association president, Retired Maj. Gen. Gus Hargett Jr. said this plan “reduces the Air Force’s ability to quickly respond to unforeseen contingencies in the future.”

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz also laid out details of how the cuts will affect units and bases all across the country, including plans to get rid of dozens of aircraft and, in many cases, shift others in to take their place.

___

Air Force decisions: PDF

Such an atmosphere pervades “Heinrich Himmler: A Life” by Peter Longerich, despite the author’s attempts to demystify Himmler.

Longerich shows a childhood warped early on. Born in turn-of-the-century Munich, a repository of macho anti-semitism, Himmler was put on his secret police path by his principal father, who authorized this “born criminal” to spy on other students.

An unathletic stamp collector, Himmler nevertheless craved the military life that was beyond his physical abilities. Despite, or maybe because of, the reports of horrific trench life that nevertheless filtered back home, Himmler begged his father to pull strings and get him into the conflict. But the war ended, and Himmler was denied his longed-for carnage.

This series of missed-opportunities for soldierly glory continued after the war. In 1920, his rescue attempt with paramilitary groups to free a comrade named Count Arco from the hangman was thwarted when the condemned man’s sentence was commuted. Membership in a Freikorp Rifle Club provided no head-breaking as well.

But then came Adolf Hitler, who, courtesy of his Beer Hall Putsch, finally gave Himmler his longed-for combat.

Achieving leadership of the SS, which Longerich attributes to Himmler’s canny ability as a political animal, Himmler had to satisfy his taste for death-dealing by remote control. But his other enthusiasm, racial breeding, would find a ready outlet. What the others dreamed, Himmler did. Hitler and company would speak of eradicating the Jewish menace, but Himmler ordered them into the showers and crematoriums, and Longerich implies it was on his own initiative.

Hitler dreamed of a “master race.” Himmler sought to breed one by not only eradicating “lesser elements” but by reducing the number of abortions, punishing homosexuality (both of which he named as the potential destroyers of the motherland; 100,000 children rescued from abortion, he argued, meant more adults for Hitler’s army), and turning his Knights-of-The-Round-Table castle into a wartime breeding ground between SS officers and imported blond maidens.

Longerich tries to reduce Himmler down in scale from supervillain to a comic opera one. He shows a heterosexual who had a child out of wedlock and cared for her and built insect rooms for SS officers to be bitten in for not taking pest control seriously.

Longerich also shows how big government can be wielded to exorcise personal demons. A repressed homosexual who clung to all-male groups, Himmler overcompensated by using his whole secret police force to hunt down what he called “the diseased.”
But even with all of Himmler’s life placed under the microscope (his fears, his sexuality, his loves, his patriotism, his racial obsessions), the reptile behind the pince nez remains. Evil can be so palpable that it can drift out of this scholarly treatment and cause the reader to vomit.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations condemned the attack.

Pictures obtained by The Associated Press on Friday showed that two stone school buildings were demolished in the attack. No one was hurt or killed despite the fact school was in session.

Ryan Boyette, a former aid worker who lives in Sudan and is now leading a team of 15 citizen journalists, spoke to a teacher at the site of Wednesday’s attack in the Nuba Mountains. The teacher, Zachariah Boulus, told Boyette that he couldn’t find his wife and children after the attack because everyone ran into the mountains for safety.

Boyette said that two of eight bombs dropped hit the school.

The Heiban Bible College was built by Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based aid group. Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham said the attack was carried out by the Sudanese Air Force.

“Please pray for the safety of believers, and that God would intervene,” Graham said.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said she was outraged by what she called a “heinous” bombing.

“It was the first day of school, and the campus was full of students, teachers and families,” Rice said in a statement. “While miraculously no one was killed, this attack-involving eight bombs dropped from the air-underscores the viciousness of Sudan’s ongoing military campaign in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states.”

The Nuba Mountains have been an area of conflict between Sudan’s military and a rebel group formerly aligned with South Sudan for months. Tens of thousands of people have fled the violence. Rice said the conflict is affecting more than 500,000 people.

If the conflict continues, it could precipitate a famine, Rice said. Sudan is preventing aid groups from accessing parts of Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.

Image credit: Reuters

Writers from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law have posted op-ed pieces in the New York Times criticizing NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly for appearing in “The Third Jihad” and authorizing its screening in NYPD training courses.

The critically-acclaimed documentary is narrated by devout American Muslim and Navy veteran, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser (President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy), and presents a factual look at the published mission of Muslim Brotherhood front groups and affiliates “in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

For those who have actually watched “The Third Jihad,” it is clear that the film is not about all Muslims or even all American Muslims. It is about that minority of Muslims who are actively engaged in subversion to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law (shariah). The Brennan Center is actually providing a living case study of exactly what The Third Jihad is all about.

Under Islamic law, speaking criticism of Islam or Islamic law is expressly forbidden. Such criticism—especially by non-Muslims—provides the justification for attack.

In their latest NYT hit piece, published January 29, 2012, Brennan Center affiliates Faiza Patel and Elizabeth Goitein attack against the NYPD and Commissioner Kelly.  And in their mission to censor the tools used by New York’s finest to deal effectively with Islamic terrorism, they actually call for the appointment of a presumably Muslim-sensitive Inspector General (IG) to oversee the NYPD.

What the Times fails to mention is that the Brennan Center in 2009 received the “Safe While Free Award” from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).  CAIR was named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case. CAIR was founded by Hamas members and operates in the U.S. as a support group for the Muslim Brotherhood.

In other words, groups with ties to Hamas are now telling the NYPD how to manage its counterterrorism training.  Worse, they shamefully call for the Commissioner’s resignation and the appointment of an inspector to investigate how the NYPD has been so successful at keeping New York safe from terror attacks since 9/11.

The only thing more shameful is NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly capitulating. Kelly and his police force are champions in the war to keep America safe. Their showing of The Third Jihad should be praised as an important element of their success in uncovering and defeating numerous terrorist plots.

In The Third Jihad, Ray Kelly joins former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, and others to explain the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in conducting homegrown jihad and threatening our Constitutional liberties and the American way of life. Aside from apologizing for defending New Yorkers, Kelly has nothing to be ashamed of and neither does the NYPD.

The Muslim Brotherhood has no business dictating counterterrorism policy to the NYPD—and the NYPD has no business taking its training directives from a group whose motto remains:

Allah is our objective

The Prophet is our guide

The Qur’an is our law

Jihad is our way

And dying in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration.

The Brennan Center offensive against the NYPD is a real-time demonstration of The Third Jihad’s key theme: how Muslim Brotherhood supporters work assiduously to undermine America’s counterterrorism defenses through infiltration, intimidation, and subversion of this country’s most important law enforcement and national security organizations.

Clare M. Lopez is a Senior Fellow at The Clarion Fund and a distinguished member of Team B II, which produced the “Shariah: The Threat to America” study in 2010. She is interviewed in The Third Jihad, which may be viewed for free at www.thethirdjihad.com.

The United Nations says hundreds of children have been killed in the crackdown over the past 10 months, and the rights group highlighted cases of children shot in their homes or on the street, or grabbed from schools.

It documented 12 cases of children tortured in detention centres and said many more may have suffered similar treatment.

“In many cases, security forces have targeted children just as they have targeted adults,” said Lois Whitman, children?s rights director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The group’s report said more than 100 people who had been held by security forces “described rampant use of torture in detention centres against even the youngest detainees, even beyond the 12 cases specifically documented.”

“Children, some as young as 13, reported to Human Rights Watch that officers kept them in solitary confinement, severely beat and electrocuted them, burned them with cigarettes, and left them to dangle from metal handcuffs for hours at a time, centimetres above the floor,” the report said.

The parents of one 13-year-old boy from Latakia said he was detained for nine days in December after being accused of burning photos of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, inciting protests and vandalizing security forces? cars.

Security officers burned the boy with cigarettes on his neck and hands and threw boiling water on him, the parents were quoted as saying.

Another 13-year-old told Human Rights Watch that security forces tortured him for three days at a military security branch after he was detained in May.

He said he fell unconscious after being electrocuted on the stomach.

“When they interrogated me the second time, they beat me and electrocuted me again. The third time they had some pliers, and they pulled out my toenail,” the boy was quoted as saying.

Most Syrian schools are now closed because of the unrest, in which thousands have been killed since last March. Many of the schools have been turned into detention centres with snipers prowling the rooftops.

Parents told Human Rights Watch that it was too dangerous to let their children out onto the streets.

One man from Homs said he stopped letting his 10-year-old son go to school because of snipers targeting Brazil Street, the main road leading to the school in one of the cities that has borne the brunt of the deadly crackdown.

“We called it ?the street of death?,” he was quoted as saying.

Teenagers told Human Rights Watch how mass arrests were carried out.

One 17-year-old girl said that in May of last year, security forces entered her school in Latakia and arrested all the boys in her class, after questioning them about the anti-regime slogans painted on the school walls.

She did not know if they were ever released.

Human Rights Watch called on the UN Security Council to demand that the Syrian government end all human rights violations and cooperate with a UN Human Rights Council investigation and Arab League monitors.

The Security Council is negotiating a draft resolution condemning the bloody Syria crackdown. The proposed resolution has been softened by Western and Arab nations in a bid to overcome Russian-led opposition.

• Suspicions grow of planned massacre at soccer game in Egypt
• Panetta’s Afghanistan announcement stirs confusion and fears
• Panetta says Israel may strike Iran in April, May or June

Suspicions grow of planned massacre at soccer game in Egypt

Thousands of Egyptians march in a protest from the Al-Ahly club to the headquarters of the ministry of interior in Cairo. (AFP)

Some people thought that Egypt was finally beginning to calm down, a year after the start of the Egyptian Revolution, but the deaths of 74 young people on Wednesday at a football (soccer) match in Port Said, with over 1,000 injured, has enraged tens of thousands of Egyptians, especially in Cairo. There were plenty of riot police present at the game, but video shows that they allowed the violence to continue without interference, and they may even have aided the violence by blocking the escape route of the victims. The victims were fans of the visiting team, Cairo’s Al-Ahly football club, a group that had actively taken part in the Tahrir Square protests during the past year, and the suspicion is widespread that police were responsible for the violence, in order to get revenge against the Al-Ahly team. On Thursday, thousands of protesters marched from the Al-Ahly club in Cairo to the headquarters of the ministry of interior, chanting “This was not a sports accident, this was a military massacre.” Black-clad riot police fired tear gas at them, resulting in hundreds of new injuries. Much larger protests are expected on Friday, when people come pouring out of mosques after midday prayers. The National (UAE)

Panetta’s Afghanistan announcement stirs confusion and fears

Wednesday’s surprise announcement by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that U.S. forces would end combat operations a year earlier, in 2013 instead of 2014, has caused some confusion. In Kabul, a senior Afghan security official said his government had not been informed of Panetta’s announcement and said it “throws out the whole transition plan.” He said, “Transition has been planned against a timetable and this makes us rush all our preparations. If the Americans withdraw from combat, it will certainly have an effect on our readiness and training, and on equipping the police force.” Reuters

Panetta says Israel may strike Iran in April, May or June

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday that he believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June. Israel believes that that’s the time frame just before Iran enters a “zone of immunity,” when it will no longer be possible militarily to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, because there will be enough enriched uranium stored in deep underground facilities. Panetta’s statement was startling and exceptionally specific, giving rise to speculation about a hidden message that Israel is on its own with an attack on Iran. Washington Post

The Italian government will pass labor market reforms even if trade unions do not give their consent to the measures, Labour Minister Elsa Fornero told union leaders on Thursday, according to an official close to the discussions.

Fornero is holding talks with unions and employers to change a rigid system blamed for chronically low employment rates, especially among young people and women, which in turn stifle economic growth.

Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government has moved quickly to pass new budget measures and present economic reforms since being appointed last year as Italy risked being sucked into an uncontrollable financial crisis.

“There is a dialogue but the government will not miss the opportunity; if we do it together, then we’ll be happy but if not, the government will still seek to do it,” Fornero told the meeting, according to the official.

Attention has largely focused on Article 18, a section in the labor law which obliges companies with more than 15 workers to re-hire workers judged by the courts to have been unjustly laid off.

The provision has become symbolic of the battle for the future of a system unions say offers much-needed protection for workers but critics say shields only some privileged categories while condemning growing numbers to precarious, short-term jobs with few benefits.

Read the rest of the story here.

The New York Times shouldn’t fret, however, for it is just a matter of time before the appropriate Federal Department makes the case that in order for the training effort to be successful, we will have to continue to financially support the effort. It is important for the Times to reconsider it’s perception of Afghan businesses as entrepreneurial genius and see them for what they truly are — the pragmatic exploitation of funding from Islam’s spiritual enemies in the west. It is also worth their while to consider the appearance of transformation within that society for what it is: Islamic pragmatism.

It should not be lost on the reader that this story was released on the same day that it was reported that another Afghan Soldier turned his weapon on a NATO Soldier, killing him. And this on the very same day that the Obama administration announced its intentions to end “combat operations” in Afghanistan (such as they are), in 2013. ISAF will then turn its attention entirely to training and support operations, the very type of operation that has bred the kind of contempt and danger-close proximity that has made our forces such inviting targets.

We are now approaching 70 US and NATO Soldiers and Marines who have been killed in the past four years at the hands of their “Afghan Partners”. And these murders have taken place during a time when the overall force numbers have been at their highest and when there was at least a perception that the United States and ISAF was interested in bringing the fight to the “enemy”. What is truly remarkable is that the entire government chooses to define these murderous attacks as ‘aberrations’ in an otherwise normal environment.

If 70 people were sickened in this country of 311 million by a new virus, in the same period of time, everyone from the CDC to Homeland Security and the White House would be declaring an epidemic if not a pandemic. Instead, they continue to violate their collective conscience by perpetuating the lie.

On an encouraging note, Lawmakers heard from military sources closer to the problem and the perception of those sources is worth noting. While they admitted that stopping these kinds of attacks was unlikely, they displayed an incredible naiveté by declaring; “…most attacks have come from members of the Afghan forces “acting intentionally yet independently.” While I agree with that assessment, they naively — or deceptively — offered it up as a defense for their incredibly poor insight into the psyche of a people whose vision of their place in the world is diametrically opposed to ours. They insist that these attacks are an aberration in an otherwise sane world and therefore no serious threat to the men and women compelled to live in such close proximity to their Afghan students, practically inviting such attacks.

The fact that these attacks are largely by individuals and not part of a known militant element makes them more dangerous than an organized militant force. It is a glaring indication of a level of personal corruption that cannot be predicted or corralled. It also provides a view of the Afghan our blinded leadership still hasn’t come to grips with. In a land where one religious ideology rules the minds, lives and perceptions of an entire population and where certain doctrines within that religion call for the killing of those who have not submitted to that religion, it is not only plausible but likely that these kinds of attacks will continue to increase in direct proportion to the draw down and our unwillingness to address them with violent retribution.

This story also states that 75 percent of the 45 incidences which have occurred since 2007 have occurred in the past 2 years! I am sure our sworn government will have a logical explanation for the increase that does not also suggest an increase in the level of inspiration to exploit our ever weakening posture there.

The fact is, declaring these murders, which are increasing in regularity, as anything but an aberration just doesn’t support the narrative, and as any politician will tell you, the narrative is more important than reality when the perception of reality governs the minds of voters. The lives of Warriors have been determined to be nothing more than materiel for the political machine which all candidates and this sitting President have proven by the almost total lack of foreign policy discussion thus far. At a time when this country is embroiled in a war that has claimed thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of wounded, it is not just unconscionable that foreign policy has not been discussed at length, it is astoundingly unethical and immoral!

The candidates and this President, by their silence, have proven themselves to be callous and uncaring about our Warriors of whom so much has been asked. This is not only a disgraceful way to treat this current generation of Warriors, it has also had the effect of jeopardizing the future security of this nation by causing this next generation to reconsider the ramifications of serving a government that holds its Warriors in such low esteem!

How this primary season turns out is almost marginalized by the continual disregard shown to those who sacrifice so much for so little. If the only concern expressed in this election cycle is for money, jobs and more money, will it really make any difference in the end who takes the reigns in 2014? If the American people are so shallow as to not demand more from their candidates than what they have shown so far, do they have any right to hope for a better four years than what they have experienced in these last three?

For those who are not getting it, I will break it down for you. As long as there are men and women in uniform thrust into harm’s way, the first and last thing discussed by these candidates, by the news outlets and even in discussions over morning coffee, should be the state of that war and the well-being of those who have been compelled to sacrifice their lives. Lives are at stake; money is just money!

If you know those who think differently, it is most likely because they have never sacrificed of themselves and have never been asked to sacrifice those they loved.

Do I really expect more from the New York Times? No; they are a business looking at the bottom line. Truth is not a line on the balance sheet! The American people however, would do well to look into their souls and take account because someone is outside the wire insuring your right to self-examination in relative safety!

God protect the Warrior!

www.letthemfight.blogspot.com

Semper Fidelis;

John Bernard