In March of this year, during his Mideast charm offensive, Barack Obama declared that Israel has “no greater friend” than America. Maybe he meant “fiend.”
On Tuesday, a report presented to Congress by Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor showed that several NGOs (“non-government organizations”) in the region that receive U.S. tax dollars are hostile toward Israel and the peace process.
With each passing day, the United Nations becomes more irrelevant to anyone outside the progressive movement and/or the Obama Administration. The latest example of the failure of this institution is the news that Iran will chair the United Nations’ most important disarmament negotiating forum during the panel’s May session, which opened today, sparking calls by an independent monitoring group for the U.S., the EU, and UN chief Ban Ki-moon to protest.
If you’ve been worrying about our vulnerability to overseas cyber attacks, then you need to read this article from the Economic Warfare Institute blog by Stewart Baker.
A senior official in the Bush administration’s Department of Homeland Security, Baker shows how experts can identify hackers. It turns out it’s easier than you think:
Apology Tour 2013…?
While on a state visit to Mexico this week, Barack Obama placed the blame on Mexico’s woes directly at the American people, as reported by Cybercast News Network.
Speaking before an audience in Mexico City, Obama commented on the American link to both illegal drugs and illegal weapons in the Mexican nation, telling those assembled:
IAF F-16I in professional pose
The latest report that the Israeli Air Force has conducted an attack in Syria comes not from the Syrian rebels but from U.S. officials. Why our officials might be talking to the media about this is a separate topic. More on it in a moment.
The attack
The information disclosed to the media is sketchy; it’s not even clear that the target was actually in Syria, as opposed to Lebanon. Continue reading
IAF F-16I in professional pose
Several websites have picked up on a UPI report that the Israeli Air Force attacked a chemical weapons site in the Damascus area on Saturday. The report is unconfirmed by any official source, but it is credible. There are caveats, however.
The site in question, if it was struck, was probably the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), long known to be a key facility in Assad’s chemical and biological weapons program. (See here as well.) Continue reading
They won’t be doing much for now (three carriers pierside at NAS Coronado in San Diego, April 2013. US Navy photo)
After U.S. officials agreed last week that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on its people, politicians and pundits resumed making the case for a U.S. intervention in Syria. And they speak as if the budget cuts affecting the Air Force and Navy won’t affect our ability to launch operations overseas. Their heads apparently aren’t around that reality yet. Continue reading
Bush, 9/11, Obama, Boston and the Axis of Evil
It’s easy to forget the fear that gripped America in the aftermath of al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. soil. It’s even easier to take for granted the homeland peace that followed until the Islamist-inspired Tsarnaev Brothers & Co. bombings in Boston on the Ides of April, 2013.
Worlds apart
It is understandable that the Boston Marathon bombings inflamed passions, as did yesterday’s revelation that the bombers were Muslims from a remote country. But confusion over the name of that country resulted in some infelicitous comments by users of social media who confused Chechnya — the terrorists’ homeland — with the Czech Republic.
Not shooting blanks yet, but…
My colleague Timothy Whiteman highlighted last Thursday the number of Air Force squadrons that will have to cease training later this year because the Air Force doesn’t have funds for the flying hours. This is real, and it is astounding. It will mean that, at a certain point in the near future – as early as this fall, if no additional funds become available – the cost of mounting an operation big enough to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons-related installations is likely to be too high. Continue reading