[Dawn] PERHAPS of all the bizarre and grim developments in Afghanistan over the last few days the one that takes the cake is President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... 's presser on Saturday.
After holding Pakistain responsible for the border festivities on the Mohmand Agency
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
So, when's Karzai opening a kebab restaurant in Paris?
Vintage Morris. He points out that Champ is stuck by Benghazi the way Clinton was stuck by Monica, Nixon by Watergate and Reagan by Iran-Contra. There's no way to contravene events, and so presidents get 'tied down' by events, and more importantly by untruths initially told in an attempt to explain away unpalatable events.
The shorter version: it's not the lie, it's the cover-up that gets you every time.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/09/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Yet this above many administration is quite cold to the Troops and their Families. What was said today is there is an air of Coercion around the whole thing.
Not a fun way to live.., at all. That makes me more un-easy. But again, Bill Clinton's Lawyer....
#2
The Clinton's entire professional life has been beset with scandal, yet they enjoy the adoration of a fawning public. Certainly says a great deal about the public. A pox on both their houses and anyone closely associated.
#3
It's like a cat , scraping and scraping on a tile bathroom floor, no matter how hard you scrape, the mess is still there, cover ups, don't work.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/09/2013 8:06 Comments ||
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#4
Bill Clinton may have been impeached over his scandal but it didn't seem to hurt him as much as it did the House. Reagan wasn't hurt much by Iran-Contra - perhaps because North so faithfully fell on his sword. Nothing would save Nixon, though his offenses were less than either Reagan's or Obama-Clinton's. In the end nothing will happen over Benghazi.
#5
You would be hard pressed to find any mention of it over at ABC News - I've tried. Equivalent of 'half column - Page F-47'.
I expect all the other main news media (save FOX) are giving it the same treatment. CNN does mention it in a minor story.
In contrast - look at the Daily coverage for 18 full months a non-story like Abu Graibe received from the networks.
#6
ABC News? I got stuck watching them last night. Their lead story was that girl who murdered her boyfriend and they went on and on with that for 10 or 15 minutes. Then they did a minute or even less on Benghazi. They did one more store and then they finished up with Vanessa and Serena Williams, tennis players, and their dad who's such a great guy. You talk about your squirrels...
While I loathe the MSM running air cover for the regime, that isn't even the real problem.
You see, Mr Morris, the MSM could run this like they did Abu Graib and it wouldn't make any difference.
Those of us with center/right political sensibilities who are in the private sector or active military don't need to be told that this president and his political party are bereft of honesty, honor, competence, and a legitimate foreign policy.
However, the left, the LIV's, and anyone receiving a magic government check (to include not only welfare recipients but essentially all nonmilitary government employees, nearly all public pensioners, and many if not most SS recipients as well) DO NOT care and never will, WILL NOT change their political views despite anything they see on TV or in print, nor is there anything that can change that.
Have you all forgotten the last election so quickly? The Obama coalition will vote for whomever will have the greatest chance of defending the uninterrupted delivery of the magic government checks. That is and will be for the foreseeable future the Democrata, so that is how they will vote regardless of what happens in the world..
There is literally NO limit to the evils that Obama could do, no level of lying or malfeasance - even if the MSM reported it 24/7 for a year - that would get them to vote for ANY Republican at ANY level of government, because the fear of losing the guaranteed government funding trumps all.
I mean that literally. No event will change their voting habits. Obama or Hillary could be caught on video burning a bus full of third graders, laughing and saying they were going to do it once a week for the next four years, and MSNBC, NPR, PBS, CNN, and the rest of the alphabet networks could broadcast it every hour on the hour, and these people will still pull the "D" lever in 2016. Every professor, every bureaucrat or office worker or administrator, every public school teacher, every public works employees, every regulator, every rent-seeker, the whole lot of them. They are beyond convincing and beyond redemption. They would rather see the atrocities and watch the country go into ruin than give up one cent of government income,
While you are all concentrating on the partisan shilling by the MSM - something which I freely admit is a problem - you are missing a much greater and more deadly issue. The demand side, if you will. There are two reasons the MSM does the partisan thing. One is, of course, that they are true believers and propagandists instead of journalists. The other is that they are meeting a fervently willing market demand. More than 20% of the work force is now nonmilitary public sector and outside of a couple of percent of them they will NEVER vote of or anyone who has even the remotest chance of jeopardizing their precious, precious magic government income stream. I should be no surprise that they will choose information streams which edit out anything that might challenge the party of the paycheck from staying in power.
If NPR started to report on all the failures of this regime with the same fervor they applied to Bush, the bulk of their audience would simply turn NPR off, like a kid sticking fingers in his ear and shouting "La, la, la, I can't hear you!" You cannot reach these people, period. Stop wishing it will happen.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
05/09/2013 16:09 Comments ||
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#8
Thanks, no mo, I needed cheering up.
So we just grin and bear it? Or move to Texas? North Dakota has a lot of oil...
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/09/2013 17:18 Comments ||
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#10
I fear no mo uro is correct. It will only change when the money runs out, and likely with much violence - from one side or the other. Keep yer powder dry...
#11
If you're a liberal, Democrat or a progressive (but I repeat myself) YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE! Keep moving.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
05/09/2013 20:02 Comments ||
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#12
I think no mo uro is only partly correct. They will all stand by him at election time but if blood is in the water and they think it might cost them the next election they'll turn on him. I suspect a bloodbath in 2014 will start that ball rolling Until then its all battlefield prep for both sides.
All I'm saying is that whatever path that may exist out of the straits we are in is not going to include turning those parts of the population I mentioned.
Doesn't mean there's no way out.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
05/09/2013 21:44 Comments ||
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One question left mainly unaddressed by yesterdays hearing on Benghazi and by others, as well is the lack of preparation by the Obama administration and the US military for the potential for attack in Benghazi. After all, terrorist attacks had been increasing steadily since the fall of the Qaddafi regime in 2011. Other Western nations had already withdrawn from Benghazi due to the security risks in the region, specifically from the radical Islamist terror networks able to operate freely in eastern Libya because of the removal of Qaddafi. Our own State Department personnel in Libya repeatedly warned Washington about the threat.
Put all of that together with the approach of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and lights should have been flashing red across the board regarding our outpost in Benghazi. Instead, the White House, State Department, and Pentagon have repeatedly claimed for months that the US had no assets in place to respond quickly to an attack, even though anyone with a calendar could have pointed out the risk. One might wonder why the Pentagon didnt connect those dots on its own, and that seems like a good question for the two Congressional committees overseeing the Department of Defense.
House Armed Services Chair Buck McKeon agrees. The Pentagon apparently does not, not even to the limited extent of its response to the actual attack:
Pentagon officials have denied a request from a House Republican chairman for access to documents on last years terrorist attack in Benghazi.
I am deeply disappointed in the Departments response and am committed to continuing the Armed Services Committees oversight into the tragedy at Benghazi, House Armed Services Committee chief Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said in a statement Wednesday.
In April, McKeon asked for all classified information that went into the Department of Defense (DOD) assessment of its response to the attack, which resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
The department has made every effort to provide the committee a comprehensive understanding of [its] actions in Benghazi, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King said in a May 1 letter to McKeon and Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
Lets not put too fine a point on context or even the event itself. Congress oversees executive-branch agencies. The House Armed Services Committee is not just entitled to that information, they are required to provide oversight of DoD operations. The DoD is not required to produce just a comprehensive understanding of their actions, but the actual information, especially in the aftermath of such a spectacular failure.
#1
I just want the one key question asked, and followed to the end (Think the 5-Why theory of root cause analysis): Who told the various armed forces to stand down?
all the rest is window dressing. Who gave the order to stand down?
[Dawn] ALL had of late been unaccountably quiet on the Rehman Malik Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship. front, but it would now seem that the senator and former interior minister has been unable to resist a golden opportunity for a public brouhaha. On Monday, at a news conference in Lahore, he announced that he had proof of money laundering by the Sharif brothers to the tune of billions of rupees. Displaying lists and what he called a confessional statement from PML-N leader Ishaq Dar, Mr Malik indulged in high histrionics: "If I fail to prove charges against them, I will quit politics," he declaimed, only to paradoxically end more circumspectly by asking the Sharifs to apologise for their "bad behaviour".
The wrongdoing Mr Malik has alleged is serious, and it should be a matter for the courts and investigation teams to establish the truth, or otherwise, of his claims: the senator has said that he has written to the registrar of the Supreme Court in this regard. But where did all this 'evidence' suddenly and so fortuitously come from? Where was it, particularly, over the past five years when the PPP was in power? To ask this question may appear too nitpicky when there is such high drama to relish, but then the worrying thought of the elections arises. The campaigns of many parties have constituted a barrage of accusations against competitors rather than meaningful notes on future policy. The PPP is no exception. Mr Malik may not be contesting the elections, but he has never been shy of coming to his party's aid. It is for Sherlocks to decide whether there is a legal case to be made here or whether this was merely a reason to be king for a day on the media.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] WHILE more liberal parties have borne the brunt of election-related bad turban violence, as events over the past few days have shown the faceless myrmidons are just as capable of wreaking havoc upon even those political elements that share their ideological moorings. On Tuesday a blast occurred near a JUI-F candidate's corner meeting in Hangu, killing several people. Militants had earlier warned locals against attending political gatherings. Only a day before a JUI-F rally was bombed in Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... killing over 20. Yet what is shocking is that former politician and current candidate Munir Khan Orakzai, who addressed the Kurram rally, denied that the Pak Taliban could be involved in the attack. This is mind-boggling. The TTP had very clearly stated that Mr Orakzai was indeed the target and justified the strike by saying that the former MNA was allied to the last government which had launched military operations against the bad turbans.
It appears as if practically the whole religious right is suffering from a state of denial. JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] EVEN though there is still no "irrefutable proof" that chemical weapons have been used in Syria, the UN's rights investigator says she has "very strong suspicions" that it is the rebels and not government troops who have used sarin nerve gas. Carla del Ponte was careful in the interview with a Swiss Italian broadcaster and said her organization had not yet "excluded" the use of the deadly sarin gas by the Syrian government. But, based on evidence from doctors and victims, Ms Del Ponte said she had "strong" and "concrete" suspicions that it was rebel militias which had used chemical weapons against their opponents. America and, most surprisingly, her own organization -- represented by the four-member UN commission of inquiry for Syria -- tried to pooh-pooh her findings. A State Department front man rebutted Ms Del Ponte's claim and said there was no "information" that suggested that the rebel forces had either the "capability or the intent" to use the nerve gas. The chief of the four-man UN committee also said his organization had not reached "conclusive findings" that either side had used the banned weapons.
Ms Del Ponte's findings are very embarrassing for the B.O. regime, the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... and some Middle Eastern regimes which have backed the rebels, even though the character of the Syrian conflict has undergone a major change. Supposed originally to be part of the 'Arab Spring' that began in Tunisia, the armed struggle against the government of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Horror of Homs... for democratic reforms has acquired a sectarian character and fallen victim to geopolitics. While 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 the Soddy national face... , Qatar and Turkey are supplying arms to the rebels, Hezbollah has entered the conflict on the regime's side. More menacingly, Iraqi and Syrian chapters of Al Qaeda have joined hands. Western powers must realise the harm they are doing to the region by arming the Free Syrian Army, which now has a strong fundamentalist component. An Al Qaeda victory could turn Syria into an Afghanistan in the heart of oil-rich Middle East.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
You say Christians may dissappear, like it's harmfull, it's NOT?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/09/2013 21:09 Comments ||
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#2
"Islam Expert Warns Christians May Completely Disappear From Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt"
To them, that's a feature, not a bug. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
05/09/2013 21:11 Comments ||
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#3
Same thing in Syria. At the most Christians are 10% of the population. As Islam takes over the rebel freedom fighters Christians will be killed or driven out. Wealth will be taken first. Anything of value. Turn in your guns first please.
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] PERHAPS of all the bizarre and grim developments in Afghanistan over the last few days the one that takes the cake is President 
Mohmand Agency
[Dawn] ALL had of late been unaccountably quiet on the 
Maulana Fazlur Rehman
[Dawn] EVEN though there is still no "irrefutable proof" that chemical weapons have been used in Syria, the UN's rights investigator says she has "very strong suspicions" that it is the rebels and not government troops who have used sarin nerve gas. Carla del Ponte was careful in the interview with a Swiss Italian broadcaster and said her organization had not yet "excluded" the use of the deadly sarin gas by the Syrian government. But, based on evidence from doctors and victims, Ms Del Ponte said she had "strong" and "concrete" suspicions that it was rebel militias which had used chemical weapons against their opponents. America and, most surprisingly, her own organization -- represented by the four-member UN commission of inquiry for Syria -- tried to pooh-pooh her findings. A State Department 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
