Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Oval Office Cartoon


Obama uses coffee cup to salute Marines

Real Classy ain't he.

President Barack Obama returned a formal military salute with a one-handed coffee-cup salute Tuesday, only a few hours after he dispatched the nation’s military on their attack mission into northern Syria.
White House aides posted the sloppy salute video on Instagram.
The commander in chief offered the coffee-cup salute when he disembarked from his U.S. Marine Corps helicopter in New York, as he made his way to the United Nations General Assembly.
“President Obama just landed in New York for #UNGA2014,” says the caption.
The salute is “the most important of all military courtesies,” says a manual for Marine Corps officer candidates.
“In some situations, the salute is not appropriate,” says the manual. “In general, do not salute when… carrying articles with both hands or being otherwise so occupied as to make saluting impractical,” says the manual, titled “Customs and Courtesies.”
Some of the comments on the Instagram account were very critical of Obama’s unconventional salutation.
“Put the damn coffee down and salute correctly,” said part of a message from “gatorman1361.”

Karzai says US has not wanted peace in Afghanistan during farewell speech


Outgoing Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai took one final swipe at the U.S. Tuesday, telling a gathering of Afghan government employees that the 13-year American-led military action had failed to bring peace to his country. 
"We don't have peace because the Americans didn't want peace," said Karzai, who will officially give way to President-elect Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai when the latter is sworn in Monday.
"If America and Pakistan really want it, peace will come to Afghanistan," Karzai added, referring to his country's eastern neighbor as well as the U.S. "The war in Afghanistan is to the benefit of foreigners. But Afghans on both sides are the sacrificial lambs and victims of this war." Karzai also thanked a number of countries for their efforts in Afghanistan — India, Japan, China, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Germany — without thanking the U.S.
Karzai's words were met with a furious response by the American ambassador to Afghanistan James Cunningham, who called the comments "ungracious and ungrateful."
"It makes me kind of sad. I think his remarks, which were uncalled for, do a disservice to the American people and dishonor the huge sacrifices Americans have made here and continue to make here," Cunningham told a gathering of journalists.
Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi told The Washington Post that while the president appreciates the efforts of U.S. troops and taxpayers to rebuilt the war-torn country, he also believes that the U.S. did not do enough to confront Pakistan-backed militants in the country and that Washington and Islamabad "sabotaged" efforts to reach a peace deal with the Taliban. 
Karzai is the only president Afghanistan has known since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion removed the Taliban from power. In the intervening years, The United States has spent more than $100 billion on aid in Afghanistan since 2001 to train and equip the country's security forces, to pave crumbling dirt roads, to upgrade hospitals and to build schools. More than 2,200 U.S. forces have died in Afghanistan operations since 2001. Nearly 20,000 have been wounded.
The United Nations says that some 8,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the conflict over the last five years alone. Karzai for years has railed against U.S. military strikes for the civilian casualties that some of them cause — although the United Nations has said insurgents are to blame for the overwhelming majority of casualties.
In his final year in office Karzai refused to sign a security agreement with the U.S. that would set the legal framework to allow about 10,000 American military advisers and trainers to stay in the country next year. Ghani Ahmadzai has said he will sign it.
Samehullah Samem, a member of parliament from the western province of Farah, said as a decade-long ruler Karzai has earned respect among Afghans, but that he should be more careful with his words toward an ally. He noted that the Afghan economy is faltering.
"We are completely dependent on the international community. We need the support of the international community, especially the United States of America," Samem said.
U.S. military and intelligence operatives helped transport Karzai around the region in late 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. That U.S. connection helped pave the way to the presidency.
Ghani Ahmadzai's entrance is more conventional. A former finance minister, the new president has worked at the World Bank and earned a PhD. from New York's Colombia University. His path to the presidency follows a long election season that ended with negotiations for a national unity government and the election commission giving him 55 percent of the runoff vote.
Cunningham said the U.S. was asked to be involved in the unity negotiations and that the U.S. exerted itself to help Afghanistan succeed, an important achievement especially given the "psychic investment as well as blood and treasure" here since 2001.
The 13-year war against the Taliban has largely been turned over to Afghan security forces, a development that has seen casualties among Afghan soldiers rise significantly this year.

Al Qaeda-linked target of strikes in Syria obsessed with next 9/11


The U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Syria put a spotlight on the shady terrorist group known as Khorasan, a small but potent Al Qaeda offshoot whose sole objective is pulling off another 9/11 terror attack.
The 50 or so fighters hardened from battle in Afghanistan and Pakistan were dispatched to Syria by Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri not to topple Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad or help the Islamic State establish a caliphate, but to recruit foreign fighters and send them home to kill. With thousands of fighters from Europe and the U.S. drawn to Syria’s bloody civil war, Khorasan’s recruiters have a surplus of passport-ready jihadists to choose from.
“Their focus is recruiting those that hold Western passports so they can attack Western airliners,” said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst and adjunct professor of homeland security at the Clarion Project. “Since Al Qaeda is looking like a bunch of has-beens, an attack on Western airliners would be a way of restoring their credibility.
“It's the jihadist equivalent of an old rock band launching a comeback tour,” he added.
The group takes its name from a Middle Eastern region that jihadists believe will be host to a final war that brings about the appearance of the Mahdi, the messianic “End Times” figure of Islam,” according to Mauro.
“Their focus is recruiting those that hold Western passports so they can attack Western airliners.”- Ryan Mauro, Clarion Project
In Syria, Khorasan is believed to have set up training camps where recruits practiced with explosives and were instructed on plots to commit terrorist attacks in the West. Intelligence experts have long warned that the greatest danger posed to the West are its own radicalized jihadists, returning home from battle in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, coalition bombers attacked around Idlib and Aleppo after intelligence showed Khorasan’s plots were ripening. Officials expressed confidence that the bombings damaged the group, but could not say the threat was eliminated.
Aligned with the jihadist group Al Nusra, also an offshoot of Al Qaeda, Khorasan has clashed with Islamic State. While they may be fighting for the allegiance of Western jihadists, their fight is mainly part of the larger rift between Islamic State and Al Qaeda. While experts say the two groups are vying for dominance in international terrorism, the organizations paint the split as spiritual.
"Al Qaeda, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Khorasan, deviated from the rightful course," Islamic State spokesman Mohammed al-Adnani recently declared. "It is not a dispute about who to kill or who to give your allegiance. It is a question of religious practices being distorted and an approach veering off the right path."
Khorasan’s leader is Muhsin al-Fadhli, a Kuwaiti well-versed in launching attacks on the Western world. Previous reports have emphasized Al Fadhli’s expertise and obsession with executing terror attacks in Western countries, targeting trains and airplanes in particular.
Reports that Al Fadhli was killed in the bombing raid could not be confirmed, but sources said his death would be a crippling blow to Khorasan. At just 33, he has long been seen as a top commander in Al Qaeda. As a 19-year-old jihadist, he is believed to have been one of the few to know in advance of the 9/11 plot. According to the UN, he went on to fight against Russian forces in Chechnya, where he trained in the use of firearms, anti-aircraft guns and explosives.
Al Fadhli is known to have headed up an Iranian Al Qaeda cell, and to have established a terrorist network in his native Kuwait, where he served jail time for helping to finance a terrorist organization.
In recent years, Al Fadhli and Khorasan have worked with the Yemeni bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, a member of Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and the explosives expert who made the underwear bomb used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in a failed airliner attack in 2009. He also designed ink cartridge bombs that were used in another failed plot to blow up UPS planes.
It’s these repeated attempts to attack the West by this shadowy group that has most alarmed U.S. officials.
“The group’s repeated efforts to conceal explosive devices to destroy aircraft demonstrate its continued pursuits of high-profile attacks against the West,” said Nicholas Rasmussen, deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, adding that Khorasan’s “increasing awareness of Western security procedures and its efforts to adapt to those procedures” make it particularly dangerous.
Just last week, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the group is a threat to people and facilities on U.S. soil.
“In terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State,” Clapper said.

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