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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Indonesia foils plot to attack US missions
Today's Headlines
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Page 4: Opinion
1 13:59 Bill Clinton [336095] 
2 22:29 Old Patriot [336123] 
3 11:59 Procopius2k [336075] 
5 22:24 Old Patriot [336102] 
4 17:33 Bill Clinton [336080] 
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1 20:24 Sherry [336115]
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4 16:58 Glenmore [336080]
1 16:09 Bright Pebbles [336090]
6 23:19 Old Patriot [336099]
8 17:21 Besoeker [336088]
2 10:58 Scooter McGruder [336070]
7 20:45 Dopey Schwarzeneggar2960 [336086]
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1 10:53 swksvolFF [336084]
3 11:32 Secret Asian Man [336092]
1 14:39 tu3031 [336075]
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25 18:46 Charles [336075]
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4 11:01 Solomon Protector of the Texans5923 [336074]
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1 22:06 JosephMendiola [336098]
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Page 6: Politix
7 21:10 newc [336098]
2 15:02 Frank G [336077]
4 22:10 JosephMendiola [336120]
24 23:16 Barbara [336109]
4 18:18 Pappy [336068]
15 16:26 Bright Pebbles [336078]
6 16:49 tu3031 [336074]
9 11:41 Jack Salami [336081]
4 14:03 Bill Clinton [336076]
3 15:38 Glenmore [336079]
Africa North
Limbaugh discussion with caller about Benghazi
You may have heard about the conversation Rush Limbaugh had yesterday with a caller who explained how the quick-reaction, 'In-Extremis' force would have worked to save our people in Benghazi. The source link takes you to that transcript; if you're a Rush 24/7 member you can hear the audio.

Worth the read.
Posted by: Steve White || 10/27/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336102 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Caller Doug provided excellent backgound data on standard NEO (Non-Combatant Evacuation) Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTP). Necessary intelligence and firepower was available.

Pure speculation, but it appears POTUS pulled the plug on enemy engagement once the bulk of the mission had been evacuated on the OGA bird. If a Laser Target Designator was used, it was probably borrowed from SOF in Tripoli and brought to Benghazi by folks on the OGA extraction bird from Tripoli. Not an item that would be found lying around a remote mission.

More speculation: Woods and Doherty may have been instructed to "stand-by to paint Specter or Pred targets on order" then E&E (Escape and Evade) via leather Cadillacs to a third site. In any event, the NO FIRE order was given and the clock ran out on Woods and Doherty.

The order to engage ground targets would have been given by POTUS.
Posted by: Besoeker || 10/27/2012 6:15 Comments || Top||

#2  Right Scoop has the video available. Looks like Rush released it. You can watch Rush here. His body expressions are interesting to watch as he gets into the subject.
Posted by: Sherry || 10/27/2012 11:38 Comments || Top||

#3  O was proud of taking credit for Binny--and it was said he personally approved of the drone zap list at the time. Narcissistic control freaks are consistent....
Posted by: Gomez Ulearong9872 || 10/27/2012 11:44 Comments || Top||

#4  Narcissistic control freaks are consistent....

Yes - but the common denominator is that anything goes, so long as they can't be blamed if anything goes wrong, and get all the credit and the glory when things go right. Few leadership decisions are that clear-cut, which is why Champ is such an indecisive, ineffectual twit. It's also why he surrounds himself with advisors whose jobs boil down to blame/credit risk assessment, masquerading as responsible, adult advice.

Consistent, yes - and as pathological and destructive as it gets.
Posted by: RandomJD || 10/27/2012 21:33 Comments || Top||

#5  Valerie Jarret is the go/no-go decision-maker for the Obumble Administration. She's Barrack's handler, strictly speaking. Why else would she demand (and get) Secret Service protection? When this farce breaks down, there's going to have to be a million sanitation people employed in DC just to get rid of the stench.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 10/27/2012 22:24 Comments || Top||


Economy
Another CEO Warns Employees of 'Personal Consequences' If Obama Reelected
CEO has warned employees about the downside of Barack Obama being reelected.

Mike White, the owner of Milwaukee-based loading dock equipment manufacturer Rite-Hite, sent an email message to all 1,500 of his workers Tuesday apprising them of the "personal consequences" of the higher tax rates the President is proposing.

"Every Rite-­Hite employee in America should understand the personal consequences to them of having our tax rates increase dramatically if President Obama is re-elected, forcing taxpayers to fund President Obama's future deficits and social programs (including Obamacare), which require bigger government," wrote White.
Posted by: Au Auric || 10/27/2012 01:38 || Comments || Link || [336075 views] Top|| File under:

#1  RACIST!!!
Posted by: AlanC || 10/27/2012 11:15 Comments || Top||

#2  Other Fortune 500 firms announced layoffs this morning. I sense the gears may be grinding to a halt.
Posted by: Besoeker || 10/27/2012 11:56 Comments || Top||

#3  ...on the other hand threatening letters from the union shop are just reminders of the fines levied for not showing up for the rally for Obama.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 10/27/2012 11:59 Comments || Top||


Europe
A German Victory for Free Speech
Posted by: tipper || 10/27/2012 13:45 || Comments || Link || [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Herr Dokter Geus is on to something about the Prophet.

It is amazing that a book so full of hate, perversion, and advocating wanton murder can be the basis of a religion is amazing...well until you study the Aztecs, Mayans, Philistines, and Assyrians...
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 10/27/2012 13:59 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
The Islamist Threat Isn't Going Away
by Michael J. Totten

My latest column appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It's behind the pay wall and is reprinted here with permission.

First, it's simply not true that attitudes toward Americans have changed in the region. I've spent a lot of time in Tunisia and Egypt, both before and after the revolutions, and have yet to meet or interview a single person whose opinion of Americans has changed an iota.

Second, pace Mr. Romney, promoting better education, the rule of law and gender equality won't reduce the appeal of radical Islam. Egyptians voted for Islamist parties by a two-to-one margin. Two-thirds of those votes went to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the other third went to the totalitarian Salafists, the ideological brethren of Osama bin Laden. These people are not even remotely interested in the rule of law, better education or gender equality. They want Islamic law, Islamic education and gender apartheid. They will resist Mr. Romney's pressure for a more liberal alternative and denounce him as a meddling imperialist just for bringing it up.

Anti-Americanism has been a default political position in the Arab world for decades. Radical Islam is the principal vehicle through which it's expressed at the moment, but anti-Americanism specifically, and anti-Western "imperialism" generally, likewise lie at the molten core of secular Arab nationalism of every variety. The Islamists hate the U.S. because it's liberal and decadent. (The riots in September over a ludicrous Internet video ought to make that abundantly clear.) And both Islamists and secularists hate the U.S. because it's a superpower.

Everything the United States does is viewed with suspicion across the political spectrum. Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, the director of Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, admitted as much to me in Cairo last summer when I asked him about NATO's war against Gadhafi in Libya. "There is a general sympathy with the Libyan people," he said, "but also concern about the NATO intervention. The fact that the rebels in Libya are supported by NATO is why many people here are somewhat restrained from voicing support for the rebels." When I asked him what Egyptians would think if the U.S. sat the war out, he said, "They would criticize NATO for not helping. It's a lose-lose situation for you."

So we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. And not just on Libya. An enormous swath of the Arab world supported the Iraqi insurgency after an American-led coalition overthrew Saddam Hussein. Thousands of non-Iraqi Arabs even showed up to fight. Yet today the U.S. is roundly criticized all over the region for not taking Assad out in Syria.
Posted by: Beavis || 10/27/2012 10:02 || Comments || Link || [336123 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Islamic-Muslim dominance, not just parity or superiority vee the non-Islamic world.

The Islamist Jihad has always been GLOBAL.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 10/27/2012 21:52 Comments || Top||

#2  These people are not even remotely interested in the rule of law, better education or gender equality. They want Islamic law, Islamic education and gender apartheid. They will resist Mr. Romney's pressure for a more liberal alternative and denounce him as a meddling imperialist just for bringing it up.

That's fine. So is our nuking them back to the Proterozoic if they don't quit attacking the United States, its people, or its partners. They have a choice. Whatever choice they make is theirs, and theirs alone. So is our response.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 10/27/2012 22:29 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Seeds of terror
ALTHOUGH the turban threat is cause for immense alarm, none of us should be surprised there is so much confusion in the country on how to deal with it.

Critical security decisions in the country’s history have been made mostly by military rulers. They were either so arrogant that they didn’t think it necessary to seek popular approval or thought their decisions were so appalling that they would never get public endorsement so didn’t bother.

There is no point in going back to Ayub Khan’s Seato and Cento agreements, where Pakistain allowed itself to be drawn and locked into a Cold War camp, even as our democratic neighbour India, while maintaining its non-aligned status, was able to enjoy both the worlds.

With the left fragmented, hunted and hounded and the right-wing religious parties firmly behind the US-GHQ alliance, there was no more than token resistance to the decision. Ayub Khan saw himself as a saviour so sharing any rationale for his decisions with the people wouldn’t even occur to him.

The less said the better about the decisions made by Ayub’s successor. Gen Yahya Khan’s regime used the media to keep the West Paks in the dark about events in the eastern wing and perpetuated myths and lies till the truth went kaboom! to the fore in the country’s break-up.

A brief democratic interlude followed. Then Gen Zia ul Haq
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
overthrew the elected government after a general election some of whose results were disputed by the opposition. A coup was staged as the two were nearing agreement on by-elections to the disputed seats.

This was 1977. Two years later Zia refused to stay the execution of the man he had tossed, after a sham trial on murder charges. The dictator’s luck was endless. As international opprobrium at Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent...
’s judicial murder gathered pace, the Soviet Red Army marched into Afghanistan.

The man who was fast heading to the top of the international pariahs’ list suddenly became the darling of the ‘free world’.

Recruited and rewarded to lead the most decisive fight of the Cold War history, Zia did his patrons proud.

I have often detected hostility from some bright and well-meaning members of the post-Zia generation who rubbish all criticism of the dictator by saying that it is pointless to blame him as so very little has been done since he perished in that 1988 air crash.

That may be true but the seeds of the disaster we reap today were planted unquestionably by Zia and hence the biggest blame shall remain his. And then the CIA’s. Both decided along with their Saudi allies that the ‘godless, communist’ Soviets could only be countered via jihad.

Its ideological inspiration and part funding was to come from Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face...
. The rest was funded by the US with the CIA providing the special warfare technical expertise and weaponry. Pakistain’s ISI was the conduit for most of the funds and weapons and the CIA’s training partner.

You must be wondering what’s the point here of recalling this history that everyone probably knows anyway. Well everyone may well know all these facts but they aren’t recalled often enough to explain where we are today.

This jihad proved so effective that the Red Army didn’t only have to leave Afghanistan after failing to secure its objectives.

Many believe that the setback was so severe that it pushed the Soviet Union over the edge and it started to unravel.

After the exit of the Soviet Union, Zia and his military commanders were so inspired by this low-cost war, where a conglomerate of international jihadis had been used to bleed the Soviets to near-death, that they developed other ambitions.

What could humble the mighty Soviets would also enable the GHQ to finally force to its knees the eternal and numerically superior enemy which somehow managed to get the upper hand in each of the mutual conflagrations despite not having the ‘right faith’ on its side.

And bleed the enemy they did. Look at Indian-held Kashmire’s history since those rigged elections in the early 1980s led to an indigenous uprising. This was soon to be overtaken by foreign jihadis of every description taking the violence to hitherto unknown levels.

What if in the process Bulleh Shah and Shah Latif’s Pakistain ceased to be? What if Kashmire valley’s cherished faith espoused by the Sufis was obliterated? A violent, repressive, misogynistic, intolerant, often sectarian state-backed ideology was ready to supplant all shades. And it did.

The cost to Pak society notwithstanding, this course was pursued. The post-Soviet Afghanistan was riven with chaos and led to the birth of the Taliban. The ISI, which had grown in influence and power enormously through the Afghan war, gleefully went into partnership with the group.

Arab, Uzbek, Chechens — you name them and jihadis of every description were present in Afghanistan. The Arabs provided the ideological rallying cry and money for the jihad while instructors of different origins taught the zealots guerrilla warfare and terror tactics.

Pakistain was using some of these Arabs for its own purposes so missed their agenda as they planned and carried out 9/11. This was around the time Gen Musharraf received that famous phone call from Washington seeking his support and warning of consequences in the event of a refusal.

Given how close Pakistain was to some of the international jihadis and more so with their Afghan protectors, the attack on the US mainland targets instilled fear in the heart of the military ruler who openly went from garrison to garrison explaining his rationale for agreeing to back Washington.

Similar vigour was needed to explain the decision to the people of Pakistain but this didn’t happen. Instead, the Musharraf regime deployed lies and deception to placate them and this policy backfired badly.

Columnists and opinion-writers are often slammed for focusing endlessly on the state of play but offering little in terms of solutions. Let’s reflect this week. Next week perhaps we’ll try and think if there is a way out of the mess we are in.
Posted by: Fred || 10/27/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336080 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  Muslims and self rule. What's the technical term?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/27/2012 5:34 Comments || Top||

#2  The technical term is anarchy
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 10/27/2012 14:07 Comments || Top||

#3  Actually, I was aiming at "oxymoron".
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/27/2012 15:24 Comments || Top||

#4  Grom,

Oxymoron works too....
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 10/27/2012 17:33 Comments || Top||



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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Two weeks of WOT
Sat 2012-10-27
  Indonesia foils plot to attack US missions
Fri 2012-10-26
  Afghanistan mosque suicide bomb attack kills at least 41
Thu 2012-10-25
  Israel says 79 rockets fired at it from Gaza
Wed 2012-10-24
  Libya fighters seize Bani Walid
Tue 2012-10-23
  Foreign jihadists pour into northern Mali
Mon 2012-10-22
  Men 'planned mass suicide attack'
Sun 2012-10-21
  Nigeria military nabs Bokoboy at senator's home
Sat 2012-10-20
  Leb: Wissam al-Hasan Assassinated in Beirut Bomb Blast
Fri 2012-10-19
  144 Dead as Syria Jets Blast Maaret al-Numan and Suicide Bomber Hits near Interior Ministry
Thu 2012-10-18
  Iranian-American Pleads Guilty to Plot to Kill Saudi Envoy to U.S.
Wed 2012-10-17
  ROPer arrested for attempting to blow up Federal Reserve Bank in NYC
Tue 2012-10-16
  Pak President Admits Creating Terrorist Groups
Mon 2012-10-15
  Gunmen kill 20 at mosque in northern Nigeria
Sun 2012-10-14
  Israel AF kills head of Al-Q affiliate in Gaza
Sat 2012-10-13
  96 Dead, Including 41 Troops

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