Thursday, September 18, 2014

Hayes: Obama’s ISIS approach 'the wrong way to begin a concerted campaign’


Steve Hayes said Wednesday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that the mixed messages the Obama administration is sending to the public about the campaign being waged against the Islamic State militants are damaging to the administration's effort.
Hayes, a senior writer for the The Weekly Standard, said the administration's stance is sending the wrong message to the militant group, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL.
“I mean, the president gives a speech, a nationally televised, prime-time speech, in which he announces a non-war, and then we spend a week debating extensively and nationally about what we are not going to do," he said. "You have the president and his team, can’t decide whether to call it a war… They can’t agree whether there will be boots on the ground or not.”
Hayes called the messaging “exactly the wrong way to begin a concerted campaign” against a critical threat to our nation.
Moreover, he said that President Obama is sending a signal that while the Islamic State is a threat to our core interests, the U.S. is relying on other nations’ ground troops to solve the problem.
“[President Obama] is saying… ‘We’re going to get some other people to fight [ISIS],’” he said.

School tells kids to remove American flags on 9/11


Sometimes good intentions have unintended consequences. Just ask the principal of Woodruff High School in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Principal Aaron Fulmer made national headlines this week after he directed students to remove American flags from their pickup trucks on September 11.
The patriotic teenagers had mounted large American flags in their truck beds – in violation of a longstanding school policy.
American flag bumper stickers are fine. So are American flag T-shirts. But students simply cannot fly American flags in their pickup trucks.
The policy, which has been in place for more than 20 years, bans anything that creates a disturbance on campus or draws an unusual amount of attention to itself.
“A bumper sticker is not going to do that from a distance, but a pole flag is,” Superintendent Rallie Liston told me in a telephone interview. “The American flag was never an issue for us. It was never anti-American flag. It was just no pole flags – period.”
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Liston said the original rule was created to prevent students from showing up at school with Confederate flags.
“It was inflammatory,” the superintendent told me. “Finally, we reached a point where we said no more pole flags.”
American flag bumper stickers are fine. So are American flag T-shirts. But students simply cannot fly American flags in their pickup trucks. Such behavior is impermissible.  
As the superintendent explained, it prevents someone from showing up with something offensive.
“If it’s an American flag – everybody is excited about it,” he said. “But what if it’s the Nazi flag or another flag you might not be congruent with?”

As you might imagine, the school’s decision has led to lots of protests and name-calling. A group of parents even stood outside the school waving American flags.
Superintendent Liston says all the anti-American accusations are just as far from the truth as can be.
“These are the most God-fearing, flag-waving, patriotic people you will ever find,” he said. “They are God and Country.”
But he said that with the growing fears over the Islamic State as well as the 9/11 commemoration – he realized at bit of hindsight was necessary.
“We dropped the ball with 9/11,” he told me matter-of-factly. “In hindsight we apologize to any veteran or service person for this happening. That was not our intent. It was just a rule that has been consistently enforced.”
In the meantime, he said there’s a good chance that next year the school will host a special program commemorating 9/11.
“I don’t want to ever get in the position where we take the American flag down again,” Liston told me.
Superintendent Liston seems like a true Southern gentleman – and I believe his apology is sincere.
As we say in the South – you know when somebody’s cooking your grits. And Superintendent Liston was not cooking my grits.
Nevertheless, it’s deeply troubling when any public school suppresses the patriotism of American teenagers.

Jonathan Dwyer, Cardinals' running back, arrested on aggravated assault charges


NFL running back Jonathan Dwyer was arrested on aggravated assault charges Wednesday in connection to two altercations at his home in July involving a woman and an 18-month-old child.
Dwyer, who plays for the Arizona Cardinals, is the latest in a string of NFL players to be involved in domestic violence cases.
The Cardinals said they became aware of the situation on Wednesday and are cooperating with the investigation. 
"Given the serious nature of the allegations we have taken the immediate step to deactivate Jonathan from all team activities," a statement released Wednesday said.
"We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available."
The NFL said the case will be reviewed under the league's personal-conduct policy.
Police told Reuters that the incidents involved a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. One of the counts was "aggravated assault causing a fracture" to the 27-year-old victim on July 21. The victim alleged that Dwyer threw a shoe at her 18-month-old son, Fox10Phoenix.com reported. Police said Dwyer admitted to the incidents, but denied physical assaults during an interview with detectives.
Neighbors heard a fight and called police, who showed up at the residence. Police Sgt. Trent Crump said Dwyer hid in the bathroom until police left. The next day, Crump said Dwyer snatched the woman's cellphone and threw it from the second floor of their home to prevent her from calling police about another dispute.
The woman came forward last week, providing police with information about her injuries and text messages that indicated Dwyer "was going to harm himself because of what had been going on," police said.
The NFL has been rocked by domestic violence issues ever since a videotape surfaced that showed former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancee in an Atlantic City elevator. Then Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson was indicted on child-abuse charges.
Critics have been calling on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to step down after Rice only received a two-game suspension for the attack before the video emerged.
Dwyer, 25, signed with the Cardinals earlier this year and was their second-string running back after spending the last four years with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Australia raids foil reported ISIS beheading plots


Australian counterterrorism forces detained 15 people Thursday in a series of suburban raids after receiving intelligence that the Islamic State movement was planning public beheadings in two Australian cities to demonstrate its reach.
About 800 federal and state police officers raided more than a dozen properties across 12 Sydney suburbs as part of the operation -- the largest in Australian history, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Andrew Colvin told the Associated Press. Separate raids in the eastern cities of Brisbane and Logan were also conducted.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the plan involved kidnapping randomly selected members of the public off the streets in Sydney and Brisbane, beheading them on camera, and releasing the recordings through Islamic State's propaganda arm in the Middle East. 
Police allege that orders for the attacks came from Mohammad Ali Baryalei, a 33-year-old former Sydney nightclub bouncer who is believed to be the highest-ranking Australian in Islamic State, also known as ISIS. A 22-year-old Sydney man, Omarjan Azari, appeared in court Thursday and is accused of conspiring with Baryalei and others to act in preparation for or plan a terrorist act or acts. 
Prosecutor Michael Allnutt said he was involved in a "plan to commit extremely serious offenses" that was "clearly designed to shock and horrify" the public. It is not immediately clear what sentence Azari faces if convicted. The accused did not apply for bail and did not enter a plea. His next court appearance was set for November 13.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters that he had been briefed on Wednesday night about the operation and discussed the planned beheadings.
"That's the intelligence we received," he told reporters. "The exhortations -- quite direct exhortations -- were coming from an Australian who is apparently quite senior in ISIL to networks of support back in Australia to conduct demonstration killings here in this country." ISIL is another name for the militant group that has established control over large parts of Iraq and Syria. 
The planned public attacks resemble the murder of Lee Rigby, a British soldiers who was attacked and killed in May 2013 by two Nigerian-born Muslim converts near the Royal Artillery Barracks in southeast London.
"This is not just suspicion, this is intent and that's why the police and security agencies decided to act in the way they have," Abbott added.
The arrests come just days after the country raised its terror warning to the second-highest level in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of ISIS.
"Police believe that this group that we have executed this operation on today had the intention and had started to carry out planning to commit violent acts here in Australia," said Colvin, who is also the acting Federal Police Commissioner. "Those violent acts particularly related to random acts against members of the public. So what we saw today and the operation that continues was very much about police disrupting the potential for violence against the Australian community at the earliest possible opportunity."
"Right now is a time for calm," New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said. "We need to let people know that they are safe, and certainly from our perspective, we know that the work this morning will ensure that all of those plans that may have been on foot have been thwarted."
Last week, Australian police arrested two men in Brisbane for allegedly preparing to fight in Syria, recruiting jihadists and raising money for the Al Qaeda offshoot group Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the Nusra Front. Colvin said the raids conducted in Brisbane on Thursday were a follow-up to that operation. It was not yet clear how the investigations in Sydney and Brisbane were linked, he said.
However, Fairfax Media reported that the arrests of the men averted a terror attack by mere days.
The government raised its terrorism threat last week from "medium" to "high" on a four-tier scale on the advice of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. The domestic spy agency's Director-General David Irvine said the threat had been rising over the past year, mainly due to Australians joining ISIS to fight in Syria and Iraq.
When announcing the elevated threat level, Abbott stressed that there was no information suggesting a terror attack was imminent.
Police said at the time there was no terrorist threat to the Group of 20 leaders' summit to be hosted by Brisbane in November which will bring President Barack Obama and other leaders of the world's 20 biggest economies to the Queensland state capital.
Australia has estimated about 60 of its citizens are fighting for ISIS and the Nusra Front in Iraq and Syria. Another 15 Australian fighters had been killed, including two young suicide bombers.
The government has said it believes about 100 Australians are actively supporting extremist groups from within Australia, recruiting fighters and grooming suicide bomber candidates as well as providing funds and equipment.

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