From the Armed Forces Journal:

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

Source: CBS
Egyptian officials announced they plan to prosecute 19 Americans for their involvement in the funding of pro-democracy groups, one of whom is the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Norah O’Donnell reports.

This article titled “Iranian attack on America and allies increasingly likely – intelligence chief” was written by Julian Borger, diplomatic editor, for The Guardian on Tuesday 31st January 2012 20.08 UTC

The head of US intelligence has warned that there is an increasing likelihood that Iran could carry out attacks in America or against US and allied targets around the world.

The warning from the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, reflects rapidly rising tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme after the US and EU announced embargoes on the Iranian oil trade in the past few weeks, Israel leaked details of its preparation for a possible conflict and both the west and Iran boosted their military readiness in the Gulf.

The US plans to send a third aircraft carrier to the region in March, while Iran’s military has threatened to block the entrance to the Gulf in the strait of Hormuz and is planning to hold naval exercises there in the next few weeks involving a host of new weapons.

Presenting his annual “worldwide threat assessment” to Congress, Clapper said an alleged plot to blow up the Saudi ambassador in Washington last year, which the US blamed on the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, “shows that some Iranian officials – probably including the supreme leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime.”

Clapper added: “Iran’s willingness to sponsor future attacks in the US or against our interests abroad probably will be shaped by Tehran’s evaluation of the costs it bears for the plot against the ambassador as well as Iranian leaders’ perceptions of US threats against the regime.”

Western officials say that in the past year there has been a notable increase in activity around the world by suspected members of Iran’s Quds force, the external operations arm of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which they say could reflect positioning of units capable of carrying out reprisal attacks against western and Israeli targets if Iran was itself attacked. “There have been a lot of reports recently of IRGC activity abroad,” one western official said. “There is a great deal of worry about the IRGC carrying out covert and deniable actions. But they may be overestimating how much they can hide their role. The US and others are very concerned about this.

“In this situation, there is a risk of miscalculation,” the official added, “or of rogue elements operating independently.”

US officials say that the alleged Washington bomb plot showed a new recklessness by an increasingly embattled Iranian regime. An Iranian-American was charged last October with planning to blow up the Saudi ambassador to the US while he ate at his favourite Washington restaurant, potentially killing many Americans at the same time.

The US has claimed authorisation for the attack came from the highest levels of the regime, but Clapper’s remarks marked the first time Washington has openly blamed the supreme leader.

However, a western official cautioned that there was no evidence a final decision had been taken to go ahead with the attack. “Our understanding is that this was at the stage of operational planning. The order was for everything to be put in place. There was not, as far as I know, a green light,” the official said.

In recent days, both the Thai and Azeri governments made a number of arrests of suspects allegedly linked to Iranian intelligence who are accused of planning to kill Israel diplomats and a rabbi. One possibility, western governments believe, is that the plots were intended as reprisals for a string of murders in Tehran of Iranian scientists linked to the country’s nuclear programme. Iran has blamed Mossad for the killings, an accusation that many western officials think is plausible.

After an Iranian threat last month to close the strait of Hormuz in response to oil sanctions, the US has deployed two aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Carl Vinson, in the region. A thirdis scheduled to head to the Gulf in March.

John Pike, a military analyst and the head of the GlobalSecurity.org thinktank said: “That almost never happens. They seldom even have two.”

He added that a fourth carrier, the USS John Stennis, was sailing away from the area but at a slow pace and could be back within a few days.

Tensions have been stoked further by leaked details of Israeli military preparations and cabinet deliberations on whether to strike Iran in the next few months, in an effort to set back its nuclear programme by a few years. Western officials confess they are unsure to what extent such reports represent an Israeli bluff to force urgent action by the US and its European allies, but say they do take the Israeli threats seriously.

One possibility is that Israel could launch air strikes at the height of the US presidential election campaign, on the grounds that the Obama administration would have to mute any politically risky criticism of a longstanding US ally.

Some observers believe the planned European and US oil embargoes, due to come into effect five months from now with potentially severe implications for the Iranian economy, along with a military build-up in the region, could themselves raise the risk of miscalculation on all sides.

“I don’t think they are playing Iran anything like as well as they think they are,” said Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran. “The oil embargo tends to give those elements in Iran who want to have maximal defences, including nuclear defences, added weight to their arguments. Also they are poking Iran with a sharp stick but this is not accompanied by a new negotiating incentives.”

In a strikingly critical report, an influential Israeli thinktank, the Institute for National Security Studies, warned that the Israeli leadership could be rushing into a decision to attack without properly thinking of the implications. The authors said that Israeli society should “not assume that decision makers will automatically make correct choices based on a rational of an attack’s cost effectiveness”.

“Past experience has proven that such an in-depth discussion does not always take place,” the report said. It questioned whether a nuclear Iran was really an existential threat to Israel and warned that unilateral action would alienate the US and other Israeli allies.

“The image – not the first of its kind – will be of an Israel unilaterally violating the rules of the international game and launching a military campaign without legitimacy from the security council. This might increase Israel’s isolation as well contribute to its delegitimisation.”

Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes. The west and Israel allege it is intended to give Iran at least the capacity to make a bomb, but Clapper conceded in his remarks : “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Somali Islamists ban Red Cross” was written by Clar Ni Chonghaile in Nairobi, for The Guardian on Tuesday 31st January 2012 21.49 UTC

Hundreds of thousands of Somalis could be deprived of critical food aid after Islamist rebels banned the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from areas under their control.

The move severes a critical lifeline in the south of the country where famine still threatens 250,000 people.

Rebel group al-Shabaab, which professes allegiance to al-Qaida and is hostile to foreign intervention of any kind, said it had decided to “fully terminate” the Red Cross contract, accusing the group of delivering out-of-date food.

A Red Cross spokeswoman in Nairobi had no immediate comment. The aid group had suspended food distribution to 1.1 million people in southern and central Somalia on 12 January, saying militants were blocking deliveries.

The new ban could deal a major blow to aid operations in the dangerous south of the country as the Red Cross was one of only a few international agencies still able to operate there after al-Shabaab banned 16 other groups last November.

One official, who did not wish to be named, said the ban was serious because it affected the Somali Red Crescent Society, a well-respected local organisation working with the ICRC.

He attributed the ICRC’s expulsion partly to a breakdown of communication linked to increased militariastion in the zone, where Kenyan troops are also fighting al-Shabaab.

Given the scale of the Red Cross operation, it will be difficult for local organisations or other groups still operating in the south and centre to pick up the slack if the ban is upheld. Several Islamic relief agencies still have access to southern Somalia.

Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, said the ICRC ban risked rolling back gains made after international relief began to flow into Somalia last summer, following a declaration of famine in six regions.

“Leaving so many vulnerable Somalis without food will endanger their lives and could also result in pushing a large number of people back into famine, reversing any gains made,” he said. “We appeal to all factions in Somalia to allow humanitarian actors to reach people most in need, wherever they are.”

Six months after famine was declared in six regions, Somalia remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis although three areas have been lifted out of famine. The UN says 4 million people still need aid, and 1.4 million have been displaced inside the country.

Delivering food and other essential relief is complicated by al-Shabaab’s hostility to foreigners and the demands they make of aid groups. Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries for aid workers, al-Shabaab, pirates and bandits have all targeted aid workers in recent months with kidnappings and shootings.

The UN has appealed for $1.5bn (£952m) to fund relief programmes this year, and officials have warned that any delay could be catastrophic. One British estimate says between 50,000 and 100,000 people died across the Horn of Africa because of last year’s drought and famine.

In a statement from its Office for Supervising the Affairs of Foreign Agencies, al-Shabab said it had inspected Red Cross warehouses and food depots and found that up to 70% of the food was “unfit for human consumption.” It said it had publicly burned around 2,000 metric tonnes of food.

“Despite being offered unrivalled access to all the regions governed by the Mujahideen in south and central Somalia, the International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly betrayed the trust conferred on it by the local population,” the statement said.

Al-Shabaab posted a picture on its Twitter account of burning sacks of food. It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the photograph.

The rebel group, which numbers Britons and Americans among its ranks, is fighting Somalia’s weak, western-backed Transitional Federal Government and the African Union peacekeepers that support it. It is also battling Kenyan troops in the south and Ethiopian troops in the west of the country.

Once lauded by some Somalis for restoring order in a country that has not had a functioning government in more than 20 years, al-Shabaab lost a lot of popular support during the famine amid reports that it stopped hungry people from leaving villages, diverted resources and imposed taxes on residents.

Somalia’s descent into anarchy has raised fears among its neighbours, such as Kenya, but also further afield. David Cameron is to host a conference in February on a country he described as “a failed state that threatens British interests.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

“60 Minutes” sat down for a wide ranging interview with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta:

The only thing I found irritating about this interview is how they portray the hunt for Osama bin Laden. They make it seem as if Panetta rode into town on a white horse and got Bin Laden. Panetta was the beneficiary of years of intelligence work, much of which took place under Bush. Panetta was just the guy who saw it to the finish line. That said, Panetta seems like a competent guy. A real straight shooter. He’s perhaps the best hire of Obama’s presidency.

Source: Associated Press
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she will attend a U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday to lend her support to Syrians seeking democratic change.

This article titled “US commando team that killed Bin Laden swoop on Somali pirates” was written by Karen McVeigh in New York, for The Guardian on Wednesday 25th January 2012 19.39 UTC

The special forces commandos who swept into Somalia under cover of darkness to rescue two hostages, an American woman and a Danish man, were part of Seal team six, the same navy unit that killed Osama bin Laden, it has emerged.

The Seals killed nine pirates on Tuesday night before rescuing Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Poul Hagen Thisted, 60. They had been held hostage for three months after their kidnap from Galkayo, in the Galmudug region of Somalia, last October.

President Barack Obama, who authorised the mission two days ago, made no mention of it in his state of the union address to Congress on Tuesday. But he was overheard congratulating the defence secretary, Leon Panetta, on a “good job tonight” as he entered the House of Representatives chamber to give his address.

Minutes after he had finished his speech, the president was on the phone to Buchanan’s father, John, to tell him that his daughter was safe.

Obama said in a predawn statement released by the White House on Wednesday: “Thanks to the extraordinary courage and capabilities of our special operations forces, yesterday Jessica Buchanan was rescued and she is on her way home.

“As commander-in-chief, I could not be prouder of the troops who carried out this mission, and the dedicated professionals who supported their efforts. The US will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice,” he said.

The pair were working for the DGG, a land mine clearance unit of the Danish Refugee Council, which confirmed the hostages were unharmed and “on their way to be reunited with their families”.

A senior administration official who was not authorised to speak publicly told AP that new intelligence over the “deteriorating health” of Buchanan had prompted Obama to direct his security team to develop a rescue plan.

Mary Ann Olsen of the refugee council said Buchanan was “not that ill” and did not have to be hospitalised but did require medicine.

Olsen informed Thisted’s family of the successful military operation and said “they were very happy and incredibly relieved that it is over”. She said the freed hostages were in Djibouti and would soon be moved to a “safe haven”.

Pentagon officials have refused to discuss the details of the raid, which took place near the Somali town of Adado. But according to officials who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, the rescue team, part of the naval special warfare development group, parachuted into the area before moving in on foot.

They arrived when the guards were asleep. A pirate who gave his name as Bile Hussein told AP the guards had been sleeping off the effects of the stimulant leaf khat, popular in Somalia, which they had been chewing for most of the evening. Hussein said he was not present, but had spoken to others who said that nine people had been killed and three were “taken away”. Officials said that the Seals had intended to capture the kidnappers, but, for reasons that have not been explained, nine were killed.

Following the operation, the rescue team and hostages flew by helicopter to Camp Lemonnier, a US base in Djibouti.

While the commandos were drawn from Seal team six, it is understood they were not the same personnel as those in the Bin Laden operation, and officials stressed that members of the other armed forces were also involved in the rescue.

When the pair were kidnapped, hundreds of Somalis demonstrated against the act in the streets.

“We are really happy with the successful release of the innocents kidnapped by evildoers,” Muhammad Sahal, an elder in Galkayo town, told AP. “They were guests who were treated brutally. That was against Islam and our culture … These men have spoiled our good customs and culture, so Somalis should fight back.”

Several hostages are still being held in Somalia, including a British tourist, two Spanish doctors seized from neighbouring Kenya, and an American journalist who was kidnapped on Saturday.

Negotiations with Somali pirates are notoriously tricky and they typically only release hostages for multimillion-pound ransoms. A British couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, who were kidnapped from their yacht by Somali pirates in 2009 and held captive for 13 months, were finally freed in November 2010 after an undisclosed sum was paid.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “America warns Iran that blocking oil route will ‘not be tolerated’” was written by Paul Harris in New York, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 28th December 2011 18.35 UTC

Tensions between the United States and Iran have dangerously ratcheted up as naval officials with America’s Fifth Fleet warned any attempt by Iran to close a strategically vital oil route through the Strait of Hormuz would “not be tolerated”.

The news heightens a sense of growing crisis in the Persian Gulf after two days of threats by senior Iranian figures that they might shut down the important trade route in response to any future international sanctions against the country’s oil exports.

“Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations: any disruption will not be tolerated,” US Fifth Fleet spokeswoman Lt Rebecca Rebarich told the Associated Press. She added that the US Navy was “…always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation.”

The Fifth Fleet is based in the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain and commands a huge flotilla of American naval might, including air craft carriers.

That US response came shortly after the head of the Iranian Navy warned that the country could easily close the Strait of Hormuz if it desired to do so.

“Closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces… it will be easier than drinking a glass of water,” Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told the state-run Press TV channel. However, he did add that Iran currently had no plans to carry out the act.

But the war of words theoretically raises the prospect of a naval conflict in the Gulf between Iran and the United States. Sayyari’s statement came just a day after Iran’s vice president, Mohamed Reza Rahimi, also threatened to use force to shut the waterway and cut off a flow of oil that many see as vital for the world economy.

They also come as Iran is conducting large naval exercises in the region in what many analysts see as a show of force. The war games stretch over a large area of the Gulf, including the Strait of Hormuz, and could easily bring Iranian ships and submarines into close proximity with US forces.

Iran is reacting to what it says is an unfair campaign to punish it for its domestic nuclear programme, which it claims is peaceful but which many believe is actually aimed at creating a weapon.

The US Congress has passed a bill banning dealings with the Iran Central Bank which President Barack Obama has said he will sign. If that happens the new US law could hit foreign companies that deal with Iran’s central bank in order to buy oil, striking a blow at a commodity that makes up about 80% of its foreign revenues and is vital for the functioning of the Iranian economy.

The oil markets are already jittery about the latest developments. As the oil price ticked up in the face of the bellicose comments Saudi officials said that they would release more oil in the event of any crisis to make up for a loss of Iranian crude. That effort seemed to help calm oil traders’ fears.

The current rising tensions are also merely the latest in a series of serious spats between Iran and Western nations. Earlier this month Iran captured an unmanned US spy drone, broadcasting pictures of the downed craft that created headlines around the world and represented a major intelligence coup. In November violent crowds in Tehran stormed the British embassy and ransacked offices and residences. That led to the closure of the embassy and the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from Britain.

Iranian media has carried detailed reports of how it might act to close the Strait, deploying a mix of ships, submarines, missiles and torpedoes. Few experts believe that any Iranian force could stand up to the US military but any form of armed conflict would likely trigger a global diplomatic and economic crisis.

It would also play out against a backdrop of concerted Israeli efforts to warn against Iran’s nuclear programme, which the nation believes represents a threat to its existence. Isreali military and political figures have
consistently threatened that armed strikes against Iran might be needed to stop the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Stasi files row as Britain refuses to return documents to Germany” was written by Helen Pidd in Berlin, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 28th December 2011 22.04 UTC

Britain has been accused of “sheltering communists” after refusing to hand over a cache of Stasi files revealing the names of British spies who worked for the East German secret intelligence agency during the cold war.

The cache belongs to a set of mysterious microfilm images, known as the Rosenholz (Rosewood) records, that contain 280,000 files giving basic information on employees of the foreign intelligence arm of the former GDR.

The records were obtained by the CIA in murky circumstances shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. American agents analysed the data before distributing relevant portions to countries in which the Stasi were active.

A swath of files relating to Stasi activity in the UK were given to MI5 by the Americans in the 1990s. Now Germany wants the files back, to add to its extensive archives on the GDR’s ministry for state security, commonly known as the Stasi.

If the files are returned to Germany, they will be made available, unredacted, to scholars and historians. That means that British Stasi sympathisers and spies could be outed for the first time.

Today, Germany only has those sections of the Rosenholz discs pertaining to activity in former West Germany – though the governments of Norway, Denmark and Sweden recently indicated they were ready to hand over the Rosenholz files they were given by the CIA more than 10 years ago.

Since the return to Berlin of the West German portion of the Rosenholz files in 2003, a number of public figures have been outed as Stasi collaborators, most recently a priest who allegedly spied on Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI .

“We need access to these British files in order to understand the cold war, which was a war fought by secret intelligence operatives all over the world,” said Helmut Müller-Enbergs, one of the world’s leading scholars on the Stasi.

With fellow academics, he is demanding that Britain return the Rosenholz files to the Stasi archives in Berlin. “Given that the Brits have long been considered world class in intelligence gathering, it is especially important for us to understand how the Stasi was able to operate in the UK.”

“The UK is not a country known for sheltering communists, so why then will they not reveal to us who in Great Britain was working for a communist regime?” said Müller-Enbergs, a researcher at the Stasi archives in Berlin (BStU) and visiting professor at Gotland University, Sweden.

Roland Jahn, the federal commissioner for the Stasi archive, said: “These records could offer an important complement to those Stasi files we already have, and thus make an important contribution to the reappraisal of the role of East German state security in Europe.”

The Stasi archives already encompass 69 miles (111km) of files, including 39m index cards, 1.4m photos and 34,000 video and audio recordings. But the Rosenholz files are key because of the systematic and deliberate destruction of most of the records relating to a Stasi division known as the Hauptverwaltung A (HVA), which was responsible for running an extensive network of spies in the west.

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, a high level committee agreed (with the blessing of the West German chancellor Helmut Kohl) that the HVA archives should be destroyed – a decision described by Die Zeit recently as one of the worst mistakes made during reunification .

The microfilmed files obtained by the CIA – in what the Americans described as a “clandestine operation” which may have included a pay-off to a rogue KGB agent – are the key because they contain copies of the card indexes of the HVA, listing the real names of all the agents, informers and targets of the Stasi’s foreign operations.

Put together with files already in the BStU’s possession, they allow scholars to build up a picture of who the spies were, who they were spying on and how the Stasi carried out missions abroad.

Herbert Ziehm, deputy head of the disclosure/information division of the BStU, said it would be “lovely” for Britain to return their portion of the Rosenholz files. “Then we would be able to see exactly who was spying for the Stasi in Britain – from other sources we already know what information they were delivering, but this would enable us to work out who they were,” he said.

Ziehm was part of the negotiating team which persuaded the US to hand over the Rosenholz discs to Germany’s Stasi archives in 2003.

Even just getting those Rosenholz files pertaining to east and west was a drawn-out process, he said: “The negotiations took a number of years. “The Americans were reluctant to co-operate for some time.One CIA agent put it like this: when you get some loot from a mission, you don’t share it.” Ziehm believes the CIA obtained the files in 1992 “at the very latest”.

Ziehm said the files are important in puzzling how the Stasi operated abroad. “We already had three-quarters of the information – Rosenholz gives us the opportunity to gain the missing quarter,” he said.

Thomas Wegener Friis, an associate professor at the Centre for Cold War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, said the return of the files was about transparency rather than naming and shaming.

“It’s not just a question of outing people – though we should not be shy to name those who worked for the Stasi abroad,” he said. “More important is being able to understand how intelligence agencies worked on an operational level during the Cold War. It will allow us to learn lessons for the future.”Asked by the Guardian why Britain refused to hand over the Rosenholz files, the Foreign Office, which handles press requests for MI5 and MI6, said: “We don’t comment on intelligence matters.”

No Briton has ever been prosecuted in the UK for spying for East Germany, according to Anthony Glees, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies.

In 1999, the then home secretary, Jack Straw, told MPs that MI5 was investigating more than 100 Britons suspected of having been Stasi agents.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

The hypocrisy of the liberal media is once again on full display. The WaPo’s Greg Miller has a lengthy piece about the substantial body count Obama has racked up using top secret drone strikes. Let me be clear, I have no problem with the drone strikes. I think it’s great. It’s about the only thing Obama has done right.

What I hate is the hypocrisy of the media. There would be shrill condemnation eminating from the WaPo, NY Times, and every other media organ were Bush still president. They would be decrying the illegal targeted killings and calling for him to be tried at the Hague. But since it’s Obama doing the killing, you get very calm and analytical pieces about the fascinating drone program and Obama’s willingness to use it.

Obama has also overseen the unprecedented blurring of the Pentagon’s JSOC with the CIA. Another issue the media would be hysterical about were the Messiah not president.

Even Greg Miller felt the need to mention this obvious double standard:

Senior Democrats barely blink at the idea that a president from their party has assembled such a highly efficient machine for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists. It is a measure of the extent to which the drone campaign has become an awkward open secret in Washington that even those inclined to express misgivings can only allude to a program that, officially, they are not allowed to discuss.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, described the program with a mixture of awe and concern. Its expansion under Obama was almost inevitable, she said, because of the technology’s growing sophistication. But the pace of its development, she said, makes it hard to predict how it might come to be used.

“What this does is it takes a lot of Americans out of harm’s way . . . without having to send in a special ops team or drop a 500-pound bomb,” Feinstein said in an interview in which she was careful to avoid explicit confirmation that the programs exist. “But I worry about how this develops. I’m worried because of what increased technology will make it capable of doing.”

I can assure you that any “concern” Feinstein has with the program would be expressed at a much louder volume and in front of TV cameras were it not Obama doing it. Think about how ridiculous this actually is. The media was absolutely foaming at the mouth over the secret CIA prisons. You would think Bush had recreated the Soviet gulags. The worst he did was dunk 3 terrorists in water a few times to make them talk. The media was hysterical about the horrific and gruesome “torture” taking place.

Obama and his corrupt Attorney General ,Eric Holder, came into office prepared to prosecute CIA agents involved in the enhanced interrogation program. Obama loves to brag about ending the interrogation program and closing the CIA prisons. That alone makes him a hero in the eyes of the media. I guess they prefer killing to talking.

Rather than capture and interrogate people in secret prisons, Obama chooses to kill. Making a terrorist uncomfortable to get information is a “war crime.” But being the judge, jury, and executioner of not only foreign terrorists but American citizens is perfectly fine. Bush held one American citizen in jail on a Navy ship without trial and the media was apoplectic. Obama has executed 3 American citizens via drone strike since becoming president and no one seems to mind.

You would think Nancy “Stretch” Pelosi would be condemning the “murders” and calling for hearings and impeachment. Not so much.

Where is Eric Holder? Where is our fearsome warrior for “social justice” when we need him? I realize he’s busy ginning up phony voter disenfranchisement cases in the South, but Americans are dying at the hands of a rogue president!

The truth is I can’t stand Obama, but I think he’s done a fair job of prosecuting the War on Terror. He’s been much more aggressive than I anticipated he would be. I just wish the media had treated George W. Bush’s less than lethal tactics the same way they are treating Obama’s killing spree. Obama is doing what is necessary to keep the country safe just as Bush did. It’s outrageous the way Bush and Cheney were and continue to be demonized by the same assholes who condone Obama’s tactics.