More good news for Obama before he goes on vacation.
Arlin has it right this will bite us in the behind in a few years!
With the U.S. budget and financial issues being as dismal as they are, the Pentagon is preparing to cut billions of dollars from its budget, reducing military spending, forces and weapons program. The cuts, according to NBC will put American military forces to its lowest level prior to World War II.
The budget cuts will come at a price according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel: “As a consequence of large budget cuts, our future force will assume additional risk in certain areas,” Hagel said, citing gaps in training and maintenance and a smaller force that would be stretched thin if major conflicts broke out in several places at once.
I thought we were already stretched pretty thin. Talk about a nation that sacrifices for the well-being of other nations. We give up so much that our own security is of greater risk. This can only place…
View original post 348 more words
Jihadists declare emirate in east Libya: “Benghazi has now become an Islamic emirate”
That Islamic emirate in Benghazi? Ansar al-Sharia didn’t build that. Barack Obama built that. “Islamists declare ‘Islamic emirate’ in east Libya,” Al Arabiya, July 31, 2014:
Libya’s Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sharia has said that it seized complete control of Benghazi late on Wednesday, declaring the city an “Islamic emirate,” the group’s representative said.
Ansar al-Sharia is blacklisted by the United States over its alleged role in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, eastern Libya.
An official representative for the armed group told a local radio channel that Benghazi is now under its control.
“Benghazi has now become an Islamic emirate,” said Mohammed al-Zahawi, the spokesman, to Radio Tawhid.
However, Khalifa Haftar, a retired, renegade former army general who earlier this year launched a self-declared campaign to clear the city of Islamist militants, denied the group’s claims.
“The national Libyan army is in control of Benghazi and only withdrew from certain positions for tactical reasons,” Haftar told Al Arabiya News Channel.
“The claim that Benghazi is under the control of militias is a lie,” he said.
Ansar al-Sharia’s declaration comes following two days of fighting in which Islamist fighters and allied militiamen overran an army base in the city.
Al Arabiya’s correspondent in Libya reported that Islamist groups had seized the headquarters of the Libyan army’s Special Forces in Benghazi late on Tuesday following heavy fighting.
Turkey’s Anadolu news agency quoted Talal bin Harir, a Benghazi Shura Council member, as saying that the Islamists were in control of the army base.
Three years after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi, the OPEC nation has failed to control former rebel militias who refuse to disband and threaten the unity of the country.
The extent of recent hostilities has increased Western worries that Libya is sliding toward becoming a failed state and may once again go to war.
Several foreign states have withdrawn their citizens and diplomats from the state.
Peace is only possible after one side wins! Prolonging that only means that more die!
“The worst enemy is one whose doctrines are founded in hate and are thus beyond debate.” ~TOBSHA LEARNER, The Witch of Cologne
From its inception in 1987, the Muslim Brotherhood’s mutant offspring Hamas has been focused like a laser beam on one target: The destruction of Israel.
The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, once said, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
So it’s just the country it desires to obliterate, right? Nope…more like Jews in general…
Hamas has taken from the Hadith (sayings of the prophet):
The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O…
View original post 281 more words
The Israeli Air Force bombed 40 mosques in Gaza Tuesday night, July 30, in the most extensive operation against Hamas’ religious institutions-cum-military bases so far. In total, at least 50 mosques have been blown up along with their stockpiles of rockets and arms caches.
These concentrated air strikes on rocket arsenals are as integral to Operation Protective Edge as the ground work in destroying tunnels. They have been stepped up in advance of the preparations launched by the government on Wednesday for the possible termination of the IDF ground operation in the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of troops.
debkafile‘s sources say that the order to end the ground operation in Gaza would not mean that the war is over. There are no illusions about the Palestinian extremist groups laying down their arms. In practical terms, therefore, Israeli troops will regroup and spread out along the border as a barrier against future Hamas attempts to keep up its terror offensive by means of cross-border commando raids using undiscovered tunnels and firing rockets and mortars into Israel.
Israel’s war planners believe the IDF ranged outside the Gaza border is capable of repelling these assaults by means of tank and artillery fire and air force drones.
The confrontation with Hamas will thus morph into an ongoing war of attrition.
This past week has also seen the first deployment in action of the Air Force’s brand new Hermes 900 UAV, an unmanned aircraft also known as the Star. Never before used in wartime operations, the drone’s debut was rushed forward because of its useful properties: The aircraft can fly nonstop for 30 hours at an altitude of 30,000 feet, the while conducting surveillance, gathering intelligence and relaying communications to and from military personnel in the field.
Star carries 300 kg of attack weaponry. Its cockpit and operating systems are superior to previous models, enabling commander, operator and crew to work together seamlessly.
It has been functioning almost nonstop in the Gaza operation with great success.
Manufactured by Elbit Systems, the drone had until this week only flown test flights and was not scheduled to become operational until 2015. But Operation Protective Edge called for an upgraded version of the Air Force’s Hermes 450 – a UAV that flies similar missions — and so the 900 was fast-tracked into the fleet.
As it is relatively untested in battle, the Star is only being used for certain types of missions. When the current war ends, the air force will resume further study of its performance in emergency situations and diverse altitudes and weather conditions.
I think Hillary said, What difference does it make!”
Three Israeli soldiers killed in action in Gaza and 27 injured. Cabinet orders operation expanded
Re-Post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 30, 2014, 9:30 PM (IDT)
Three Israeli soldiers were killed and 27 injured in the Gaza Strip Wednesday, July 30, on the 23rd day of Israel’s counter-terror operation Defensive Edge against Hamas. A bomb planted in the wall of a building in Khan Younes blew up as the soldiers went in to examine a tunnel shaft.
Maj. Gen. Sami Torjeman, OC Southern Command, told reporters that the soldiers had fought “stubbornly” and “seriously impaired” Hamas’ strength. Hundreds of enemy fighters have been killed, he reported, including scores of Hamas’ elite troops and some of the commanders hunkered down in their hideouts. Dozens too had been taken captive and were providing a stream of valuable intelligence. In all their direct engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Israeli units had come out the winners, the general reported.
It was inferred from Gen. Torjeman’s replies to questions that IDF special operation forces had gone into action in the Gaza Strip for the first time. He said that Israeli units had moved into new terrain in central and southern Gaza after standing in place for five days. They entered Khan Younes and Jebalya Tuesday night.
The general referred cautiously to the terror tunnels, which had been described officially as all taken care of earlier this week. He reported that four new tunnels had been discovered over and above those so far tracked and no more than “a few days” remained for the military to finish its “tunnel mission.”
He warned, however, that no reliable estimate could be made of the underground passages which the IDF has not yet discovered and which might be located in areas outside the battle zones.
Gen. Torjeman added that the vast scale of the tunnel-building project was beyond belief. With the amount of cement poured into those tunnels in the last four years, he said, the Palestinians could have built four modern hospitals, 20 schools or 100 kindergartens.
Asked about the misfortune at the Nahal Oz outpost, where five soldiers lost their lives Tuesday, the general commented, “I would expect a different outcome from an engagement with terrorists.” All the same, he stressed the infiltrators failed in their mission to attack civilians.
Asked why the army was not functioning on two levels: clearing up the tunnels while at the same time striking Hamas control centers in Gaza City, he replied: “The army acts according to the operational directives handed down by the political level.”
Gen. Torjeman’s first-hand account of the war fought under his command was the most lucid and convincing the public has seen in the entire offensive. At the same time, he offered no pointers to the next stage and where the conflict was heading. He was very clear about these decisions being up to the heads of government who are managing the war, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
As they led a security cabinet meeting Wednesday, those leaders were under heavy foreign pressure to terminate the conflict, especially by Western powers led by Washington. Former Israeli president Shimon Peres added his voice to Israel’s detractors when, during a visit to injured soldiers in hospital, he declared: “The war has exhausted itself.”
He spoke into the empty space left when talk in the last five days of an impending ceasefire ran up against the immovable wall of Hamas’ rejection. A Palestinian delegation has sat on its luggage for four days packed ready for a trip to Cairo to take up Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisis’s proposal for resolving the Gaza crisis.
His only pre-condition was that both sides, Israel and Hamas, observe a ceasefire first. But Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal demanded that in any ceasefire, Hamas be free to attack Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Cairo’s response was crisp: So don’t come.
After sitting most of the day, the Israeli security cabinet rejected any plan to end the war or interrupt it with a unilateral truce and instead approved is expansion. Its decision read:
“The IDF is directed to continue its powerful offensive against Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip and complete the destruction of terror tunnels. This action has a significant impact on the field and smashes a strategic resource in which Hamas invested years.”
debkafile’s military sources: It remains to be seen what this decision means in practical terms. Are Israel’s armed forces instructed to expand the battle zones in earnest, or only marginally, just enough to put the squeeze on Hamas for an unconditional cessation of hostilities.
In face of truce bids, Hamas’ Deif gives Gaza war fresh impetus, makes it a religious jihad
Re-Post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis July 30, 2014, 12:12 PM (IDT)
Despite the rush of diplomats and analysts declaring that a ceasefire in the Gaza fighting is imminent, the war refuses to end. Wednesday, July 30, the commander of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif gave the conflict fresh impetus by injecting a religious dimension that cannot be ignored.
The conflict was sparked essentially by the June 12 abduction and murder of the Israeli teens Gilad She-ar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach. Forty-nine days later the crisis is evolving into the longest and toughest of Israel’s wars, with the exception of its War of Independence.
As fierce as the fighting is on the battlefield, and as arduous the diplomatic wrangling, the emerging and largely overlooked jihadist element is the most troubling.
The wars raging in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq have demonstrated that armies bigger than the IDF – like the US military and a coalition of nearly all the NATO countries – were not able to end wars against Islamist fighters. This may be that, because of political machinations and self-interest, none of the statesmen and military commanders leading those wars ever sought a decisive end. They gave up on victory on the principle that “Modern wars have no winners.”
But Islamist religious and military leaders do not subscribe to this principle: The Afghan Taliban’s Omar Mullah, the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Hamas’ Deif all seek all-out victory over the enemy.
Deif did not leave this in doubt in the pre-recorded statement he released on June 30 from his hidden Gaza bunker.
“What the planes, artillery, and warships haven’t achieved, the defeated [Israeli] forces will not achieve in the field for, thanks be to Allah, they have become prey for the guns and ambushes of our jihad fighters,” promises Deif in the tape.
“IDF soldiers are facing soldiers who are eager for death and factions that are united,” Deif goes on. “The firm resolve of the Palestinian people will bring victory on the battlefield. The enemy is sending its soldiers to a certain holocaust.”
To Israel, this war has been primarily defensive as implied in its name, Operation Protective Edge. But for Hamas and perhaps a large portion of the Palestinian people, it is Mohammed Deif’s personal accounting with the Zionist enemy.
Israel has tried to have this dangerous terrorist mastermind killed several times – and failed, earning Deif the moniker “the man with nine lives.” On August 22, 2001, Deif and his deputy Adnan al-Awal escaped a targeted assassination attempt. On September 26, 2002, an IDF Apache helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at Deif’s car as he returned home from a visit of condolence in the Sheikh Rawan district of Gaza. After hours of conflicting reports about the terrorist leader’s fate, Deif turned out to have cheated death once again, although he lost an eye and the use of one hand.
The IDF gave it another go in August 2003, bombing an apartment building where the Hamas military leadership, including al-Awal, Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, Deif and the movement’s spiritual leader Ahmad Yassin were meeting. Although intelligence had correctly pinpointed the conclave’s time and place, the men were on the building’s bottom floor and escaped with light injuries.
For some years, Deif has not shown his face in public. In a recorded communiqué some eleven years ago, he boasted: “God wanted to make the Jews mad, so He saved me. I believe that only what God wants is what will happen.”
The notorious Islamist sees the war as an opportunity to repolish his personality cult. It must therefore go on unabated wtihout the let-up of a ceasefire until all the truce brokers, including US President Obama and Egyptian President Fattah El Sisi, force Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cave in and meet his demands.
When UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Jerusalem on July 28, Netanyahu warned him about the troubling similarities between Deif’s Hamas and extremist Islamist groups like the Taliban, ISIS and Boko Haram.
Israel’s counter-terror offensive, Netanyahu explained, is part and parcel of the war on fundamentalist Islam. As self-appointed commander-in-chief, ensconced in his subterranean lair, Mohammed Deif couldn’t agree more.
And so the not-so-secret contacts between Washington, Cairo, Riyadh, Doha, Jerusalem and Ramallah are doomed to go nowhere, because they take place on one level, whereas a fanatical religious war is taking place on a completely separate one.
So long as the IDF does not breach Hamas’ main lines of defense to the east of Gaza City, and has not destroyed its underground command system and terror offshoots, Deif will cling to his belief that victory is his. And so long as that belief is not shaken, the war will go on.
Nine out of 10 Israel’s war dead Monday died on Israeli soil – a microcosm of the IDF operation
That nine of the 10 Israeli servicemen who died in the counter-terror operation against Hamas Monday, July 28, were killed on Israeli soil was a wake-up call for Israel’s war leaders. It meant that Hamas had used the 22 days of combat to carry the contest from its own home ground into Israel by grabbing the tactical advantage of surprise.
The Nahal Oz encounter was a tragic microcosm of the current face of Operation Defensive Edge.
The tunnel, from which a band of Hamas infiltrators jumped out – and about whose existence the IDF admits to have known – ran app. 150 meters from Shejaiya in Gaza to the military pillbox guarding Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Between five and seven terrorist nonetheless were allowed to reach their destination armed to the teeth with automatic and anti-tank and explosives.
This brought two facts to light: First, the battle for Shejaiya was not over, although it had slipped out of sight. According to debkafile’s military sources, the shattered town has become a no-man’s land where Hamas gangs hide out for attacks on Israeli troops.
Second, while the IDF and government officials issue upbeat communiqués claiming that the entire tunnel problem will be disposed of in a matter of days – one officer asserted that the IDF is in control of all the terror tunnels – the Nahal Oz episode told a different story.
That it was allowed to happen shows that: –
1. Although the secret passage used for attacking Nahal Oz was known to the military command, the unit charged with its defense was taken by surprise with tragic results: five Israeli combatants lost their lives. The single defender who survived opened fire on the infiltrators and put them to flight, so stopping them snatching the bodies of the fallen men as bargaining counters.
2. Even if the IDF had decided to leave the tunnel shaft open for operational use, such as a secret route for Israeli troops to steal into Gaza behind enemy lines, it must still be asked why not fit it with sensors and cameras for tracking invaders and sounding the alarm?
3. One Hamas terrorist was killed in the encounter; the rest made their escape back to Shejaiya. It ended in an appalling score of 5 to 1 dead.
4. The IDF spokesman claimed that Hamas was bent on a terrorist raid on the kibbutz. The truth was they had come to kidnap Israeli soldiers.
debkafile’s military experts outline the obstacles facing the destruction of Hamas’ underground passage system:
a) Explosions cannot reach their entire length, which often runs to a kilometer or more with a web of multiple branches which fork off in uncharted directions. So when the IDF reports that 15 or 17 of the 31 tunnels uncovered have been destroyed, this means that explosions have demolished a section that runs from a point under the Israeli surface to a point controlled by IDF troops in the Gaza Strip.
b) Explosions that run further and deeper are technically feasible, but only at the risk of setting off earth tremors strong enough to topple buildings on both the Gazan and Israeli sides of the border.
c) Israel will never be rid of Hamas’ multi-branched underground empire and its threat of surprise raids for murder and kidnaps, without first physically demolishing the war rooms hidden in the deeply buried branches forking off from the main passages. Even then, some of those passages may remain undiscovered.
A senior IDF officer commented Tuesday: “We were surprised to find an elaborate system which connected the tunnels with Hamas’ chain of command.”
d) Some officers are saying that too much focus may have been placed by official spokesmen on the tunnel problem, possibly in order to distract attention from the extent to which the heads of government have held the armed forces back from gaining any serious advantages in the war on Hamas – or even terminating its rocket blitz.
They got this one dead on and that’s no pun.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
De Oppresso Liber
A group of Americans united by our commitment to Freedom, Constitutional Governance, and Civic Duty.
Share the truth at whatever cost.
De Oppresso Liber
Uncensored updates on world events, economics, the environment and medicine
De Oppresso Liber
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Australia's Front Line | Since 2011
See what War is like and how it affects our Warriors
Nwo News, End Time, Deep State, World News, No Fake News
De Oppresso Liber
Politics | Talk | Opinion - Contact Info: stellasplace@wowway.com
Exposition and Encouragement
The Physician Wellness Movement and Illegitimate Authority: The Need for Revolt and Reconstruction
Real Estate Lending
Centinel2012 