Is Fast and Furious the Next Watergate?

Source Article Link: FamilySecurityMatters

by Alan Caruba

When suspects in a crime are interrogated, they often develop memory loss. When the crime is running guns to drug cartels on both sides of the border, the crime involves the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol officer, Brian Terry, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Jaime Zapata, and countless Mexican citizens.

Katie Pavlich has written an extraordinary expose, “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-Up” (Regnery Publishing).  Pavlich, a reporter with extensive contacts within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), has meticulously documented a story  that should result in contempt of Congress action against Attorney General Eric Holder and possibly Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano as well.

It is an appalling story of arrogance, stupidity, and the intimidation of ATF agents who dared to question and expose the operation. It is a story of deception at the highest levels of our government. Both Holder and Napolitano exhibited memory lapses before a congressional committee. Both knew about a federal government authorized gun-running operation to Mexico called “Fast and Furious.”

Pavlich reports that “Fast and Furious was closely followed by Department of Justice officials. On multiple occasions, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke met with Phoenix ATF Director Bill Newell to discuss the progress of the Fast and Furious operation. ‘There were DOJ attorneys and prosecutors who were involved in this since the beginning, giving advice,” testified ATF Special Agent Peter Forcelli.

As Pavlich details it, “Operation Fast and Furious wasn’t a ‘botched’ program. It was a calculated and lethal decision to purposely place thousands of guns in the hands of ruthless criminals.”

The operation was designed to attack the Second Amendment right of Americans to purchase and bear arms, a right considered so essential to the nation that it followed directly after the First Amendment rights of free speech, freedom of the press, the prohibition of the establishment of a nationally sanctioned religion, and the right of Americans to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We are in the grip of an administration that would restrain and erase those rights, and which engaged in a reckless and ruthless operation to achieve that goal. It is an administration that is moving toward the confirmation of a United Nations treaty that would override and eliminate the right to own and bear arms.

The facts regarding Holder’s and Napolitano’s testimony are clear:

“Eric Holder was sent five memos, personally addressed to him, in the summer of 2010 that detailed Operation Fast and Furious.” Holder claimed he first knew about the program in February 2011.

“Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has feigned ignorance when questioned about Fast and Furious. She claims she only found out about the program after Brian Terry was murdered.”

“She visited the White House with Eric Holder to visit President Obama just a day before Holder testified on Capitol Hill about Fast and Furious, leaving the reason for her visit blank.”

Pavlich writes, “These are the facts: There are still 1,400 Fast and Furious guns missing and ATF agents are not actively trying to track them down. Ten thousand round of ammunition were sold to cartel-linked straw buyers under the watch of the ATF. Eight hundred of the original 2,500 weapons sold through Fast and Furious have already been linked to criminal activity.”

The program, observers believer, was the deliberate effort to blame the violence in Mexico and in some cases in America on the gun shops, but those shops were intimidated into participating in Fast and Furious out of fear that ATF would take away their licenses.

After questioning ATF and Justice Department witnesses, Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa, R), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a January 31 letter to ATF officials saying, “As you may be aware, obstructing a Congressional investigation is a crime. Additionally, denying or interfering with employee’s rights to furnish information to Congress is also against the law.”
Read the rest of the article at FamilySecurityMatters

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, and he blogs at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. His book, “Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy“, is published by Merrill Press.

The Genocide that Obama Refuses to Prevent

Source Article Link: FrontPageMag

By Daniel Greenfield

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Obama unveiled an “Atrocities Prevention Board” to, in his own words, “prevent and respond to mass atrocities”.  The “Atrocities Prevention Board” is notable mainly for what it is not and his speech was notable for the topic that it avoided. Genocide.

While Obama mentioned ‘atrocities’ twelve times in his speech, he only mentioned ‘genocide’ three times and one of those times he was quoting from the mission statement of the Holocaust Museum. The list of examples from his own policies contained only one example of genocide, the mass murder program carried out by the Sudanese government.

Tellingly Obama described this actual genocide as a ‘conflict’ rather than an atrocity and urged both sides to negotiate, a sharp contrast with his next three examples, in Cote D’Ivorie, in Libya and in Uganda, where he clearly placed the blame on three leaders and described military and pseudo-military actions that he had taken to end the violence.

President Omar al-Bashir, whom he urged in his speech to have the “courage” to negotiate and make peace, is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. There is no comparison between the actions of Gaddafi or Gbago and those of Bashir. Yet Obama ignored actual genocide, and defiled the Holocaust Memorial Museum by using it as a stage for whitewashing one of the world’s worst ruling mass murderers.

Obama was equally unwilling to call out Iran’s mass murdering thugs, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, by name. He briefly mentioned that his administration would continue to apply diplomatic pressure on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but refused to make the connection to the events of the day.

“The uniform shout of the Iranian nation is forever ‘Death to Israel,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said that, “The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor on this region that should be cut off. And it definitely will be cut off.”

Mohammad Hassan Rahimian, the personal representative of the Supreme Leader, appeared on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television to boast that, “We have manufactured missiles that allow us, when necessary, to replace (sic) Israel in its entirety with a big holocaust.”

Israel holds the largest Jewish population in the world. The threat to destroy it is an open threat of genocide. But while Obama repeated his false claim that the entire population of the Libyan city of Benghazi had been at risk, motivating him to act, there was no acknowledgement that Israel does actually a face a threat of genocide.

At an event commemorating the attempted extermination the Jewish people, Obama spoke at length about the plight of the Syrian rebels, who are dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose spiritual leader has praised Hitler for carrying out the Holocaust and called for the extermination of the Jews.

“The last punishment was carried out by Hitler…” Yusuf al-Qaradawi had said of the Holocaust. “This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.”  And at the Holocaust Museum, all Obama could think of was how to put Qaradawi’s cronies into power in Syria, as he had already put them into power in Egypt.

There is no genocide in Syria. At best there are “atrocities”, a vague word that can mean just about anything. Nor is there any actual threat of genocide. Not in Syria or Libya or Egypt, or any of the other places that Obama intervened. The only place in the Middle East that lies under the shadow of genocide is the Jewish State.

There is no serious prospect that the majority of Arabs will be wiped off the face of the earth. Nor the majority of Persians or Turks. There is only one group in the Middle East whose extermination is called for in every Muslim capital, whose murder is preached in mosques, whose massacre is written in blood on the pages of Islamic scripture.

Mohammed began his rise to power with the persecution of the Jews. He ended it with the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians and his successors have perpetuated his crimes, generation after generation, teaching their children to hate and kill, grooming them with cartoons and songs to make genocide seem virtuous.

Today there are more Jews living in Germany than there are in the Muslim nations of the Middle East. There are more Jews living in Poland, where over 90 percent of the Jewish population was exterminated during the Holocaust, than there are in Iran. Within a generation the Muslim world was emptied of Jews more comprehensively than even Poland and the Ukraine had been after the Holocaust.

Not satisfied with an ethnic cleansing that Hitler could only envy, the Muslim world dreams of a final orgy of death, the genocidal vision so often quoted by its Imams and incorporated into the Hamas charter, “The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him said, ‘The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!’”

You can read the rest of the article at FrontPageMag

All Emphasis added

Excruciating Beginning to Trial of 9/11 Plotters

The majority of those who have been following Gitmo detainees coming to trial of the 9/11 plotters knew it would become a circus, especially since Eric Holder has close ties to some of the detainees at Gitmo, Holder was a senior partner with Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represented 17 of the Gitmo Terrorists.

Also, we must never forget who killed Wall Street Journalist Daniel Pearl, a Center for Public Integrity’s report noted:

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told FBI agents in Guantanamo that he personally slit Pearl’s throat and severed his head to make certain he’d get the death penalty and to exploit the murder for propaganda,”.

How can we forget that Barack Hussein Obama and Eric PHimpton Holder, Jr wanted a civilian court for the 9’11 terrorists in a New York City Federal Courthouse. W

Source Link: FrontPageMag

By Rick Moran

It was supposed to be a routine arraignment — a reading of the charges and entering of pleas by the defendants.

But the hearing before the military commission charged with trying the 5 major 9/11 plotters for crimes ranging from nearly 3,000 counts of murder to terrorism quickly bogged down and became a circus. A legal proceeding that was expected to last about 2 hours became a 13 hour marathon when defense attorneys used a variety of delaying tactics that bordered on the surreal at times, while the defendants ignored the presiding judge, Col. James Pohl, and refused to enter pleas as a protest against what they believe is an “unfair” system. Their pleas were deferred until a later date.

The arraignment, broadcast on closed circuit TV to 4 other military bases, was witnessed by members of the press, military officials, human rights advocates, and six family members who lost loved ones on 9/11. Some family members who spoke to the press after the arraignment were outraged at the cavalier attitude toward the hearing by the terrorists. The untried system of military commissions will no doubt slow the legal process down even more, as defense attorneys explore the limits of their client’s rights. President Obama and Congress amended the system in 2009 and gave the defendants more legal rights while denying some evidence from being presented that was obtained from the prisoners via “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Human rights groups still say the proceedings are unfair and wish the trials to take place in civilian court.

The five accused included the boastful mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Ramzi Binalshibh, who allegedly scouted flights schools; Waleed bin Attash, who allegedly ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and researched flight simulators; Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, who allegedly supplied Western clothing and credit cards, as well as acting as a conduit for money to the hijackers; and Mohammed’s nephew, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, who also helped with financing the operation. The crimes committed by the 5 are outlined in an 87-page indictment that includes charges such as “conspiracy, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, murder in violation of the law of war, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking or hazarding a vessel or aircraft, and terrorism.”

It became clear that one of the tactics of defense lawyers — both civilian and military — was to put the entire concept of military commissions on trial. In pursuit of this goal, they have filed hundreds of motions challenging every conceivable aspect of the proceedings, leading Col. Pohl to put back the start of the trial until May, 2013.

The cloak of secrecy — necessary to protect counterterrorism methods and confidential informants — is one of the major bones of contention about the commissions pointed to by human rights groups. While evidence obtained from defendants at CIA black sites has been made inadmissible by congressional reforms, some testimony from witnesses who may have been “renditioned” will be accepted. And there will be no mention of alleged mistreatment of the prisoners by their attorneys, although Col. Pohl allowed he will hear motions challenging that matter. Also, as a matter of secrecy, attorneys will not be able to discuss the government’s treatment of their clients while in custody.

Commission critics say that secrecy could still be maintained at a civilian trial — a questionable supposition given the opportunity for the terrorists and their lawyers to wreak havoc under the far more generous protections granted by the Constitution in such a trial. The outrage expressed by both Republicans and Democrats to the Obama administration’s announcement two years ago that Mohammed and his 4 co-conspirators would be tried in New York City caused the Justice Department to beat a hasty retreat and the idea of a civilian trial was dropped.

Prisoners now have access to civilian defense attorneys who specialize in complex death sentence cases — at taxpayer expense. And it was from civilians that most of the posturing and courtroom antics came from. For instance, attorneys for two of the plotters asked that the entire 87-page indictment be read word for word — a right that is granted defendants but is rarely exercised. It took 2 1/2 hours and 6 prosecutors to plow their way through the mind-numbing legalese. At one point, it was thought that all 2,976 names of the 9/11 victims would be read aloud, but prosecutors only mentioned the number of dead without objection.

But that was a small blessing. There were constant interruptions and trivial objections. Binalshibh’s attorney, James Harrington, interrupted the hearing to inform the judge, “My client would prefer to have his name pronounced Bin-al-shib-ah.” Pohl acceded to the request while Binalshibh laid a rug on the floor and began to pray. No attempt was made to stop him.

One female attorney for Mr. bin Attash, Cheryl Bormann, came dressed to the hearing in an abaya, covered head to toe with only her face showing. She suggested that females on the prosection side do likewise, “so that our clients are not forced to not look at the prosecution for fear of committing a sin under their faith,” she said.

The defendants themselves were alternately defiant and disinterested. Mr. Bin Attash had to be brought into the courtroom chained to a wheelchair because he refused to enter voluntarily. They all refused to put on headphones to listen for the simultaneous translation in Arabic, so Col. Pohl ordered the loudspeakers in the courtroom to carry the translation. This slowed the pace of the hearing down even more as the defendant’s lawyers would often speak over the Arabic translation, causing confusion and forcing the translator to repeat. The Guardian referred to the “near-farcical scenes in which the defendants prayed, read the Economist, talked among each other and ignored the judicial events around them.”

At one point during the reading of the charges, Judge Pohl asked Mr. bin Attash’s attorney Capt. Michael Schwartz, who was the attorney who demanded that the charges be read in their entirety, why he wasn’t paying attention. “You are the one who wanted it to be read,” Pohl said. “Your honor, it’s not my right. It is my client’s right,” the lawyer replied.

All of these antics angered many of the family members of 9/11 victims who were granted access to the proceedings at Guantanamo after winning a lottery. Prominent spokesperson for the families, Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was a pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, said, “They’re engaging in jihad in a courtroom.” An emotional statement issued by Eddie Bracken, whose sister died in the World Trade Center, echoed the thoughts of many family members:

“I came a long way to see you, eye to eye. … If you would have this in another country, it would be a different story. They would have given you your wish to meet your maker quicker than you would realize. But this is America, and you deserve a fair and just trial, according to our Constitution, not yours. That’s what separates us Americans from you and your ideology,” he said.

The hearing will continue next month as Judge Pohl will entertain the first of several hundred motions filed by attorneys for the defendants.

New video of US aid worker kidnapped in Pakistan

Please keep Warren Weinstein and his family in your prayers for a save return..W

Source link  TownHall

A 70-year-old American aid worker kidnapped nine months ago in Pakistan said in a video released by al-Qaida that he will be killed unless President Barack Obama agrees to the militant group’s demands.

The video posted on militant websites Sunday followed one issued in December in which al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri said Warren Weinstein would be released if the U.S. stopped airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. He also demanded the release of all al-Qaida and Taliban suspects around the world.

“My life is in your hands, Mr. President,” Weinstein said in the new video. “If you accept the demands, I live; if you don’t accept the demands, then I die.”

It was unclear when the video was recorded.

The White House had no comment Monday on al-Qaida’s demands or Weinstein’s plea.

A woman who answered the phone Monday at a number listed for Weinstein in Rockville, Md., said she had no comment when an Associated Press reporter identified herself. Phone messages left for Weinstein’s relatives were not immediately returned.

Weinstein was abducted in August in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore after gunmen tricked his guards and broke into his home. He was the country director in Pakistan for J.E. Austin Associates, a U.S.-based firm that advises a range of Pakistani business and government sectors.

“It’s important you accept the demands and act quickly and don’t delay,” Weinstein said in the video, addressing Obama. “There’ll be no benefit in delaying. It will just make things more difficult for me.”

Weinstein spoke while sitting down in front of a white background. He wore a white shalwar kameez, the loose-fitting clothing common in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Several books and what appeared to be a plate of food were set in front of him. Weinstein took several bites of food as he spoke.

He appealed to Obama as a father. If the president responds to the militants’ demands, Weinstein said, “then I will live and hopefully rejoin my family and also enjoy my children, my two daughters, like you enjoy your two daughters.”

The video was released by Al-Sahab, al-Qaida’s media arm. It was first reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant messages.

After his kidnapping, Weinstein’s company said he was in poor health and provided a detailed list of medications, many of them for heart problems, that it implored the kidnappers to give him.

In the video released Sunday, Weinstein said he would like his wife, Elaine, to know “I’m fine, I’m well, I’m getting all my medications, I’m being taken care of.”

Mike Redwood, a friend of Weinstein’s from Somerset, England, said he watched the video Monday morning and said he had mixed feelings. He said he was grateful that Weinstein is alive _ or at least was alive when the undated video was shot _ but remains dismayed to see his friend in such dire circumstances.

“He’s more capable of withstanding these circumstances than anybody else I know,” Redwood said, “But it doesn’t take away from feeling really depressed at seeing him there.”

He said he thought Weinstein’s neutral delivery was appropriate under the circumstances.

“I think he said it in measured tones that indicate that while he’s under duress and in captivity, he knows what he’s doing and in control and capable of managing himself, which was always what you would expect of Warren,” Redwood said.

Redwood said he hoped he could take Weinstein at his word that he was getting his medications and being treated well. He said the poor image quality of the video made it difficult to gauge his health.

Redwood, a leather industry consultant, met Weinstein when they worked together on a plan to enhance the Pakistani leather industry. He has not spoken to Weinstein’s family.

____

Associated Press writers Ben Nuckols and Karen Mahabir contributed to this report from Washington.