Brandeis faculty emails reveal anti-Israel bias

Emails within a tight circle of academics at an exclusive university just outside Boston founded by American Jews reveal a long-standing and vehement anti-Israel bias and anger at Fox News and a human rights advocate who renounced her Muslim faith.
Thousands of messages on a Brandeis University ListServ obtained by conservative students and reviewed by FoxNews.com were hyperbolic in their condemnation of Israel, regarding the recent fighting in Gaza and prior conflicts with the Palestinians. Accusations that Israel has committed war crimes and "holocaustic ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians appear in the messages from academics at the school. 
In one message, Brandeis Professor of Sociology Gordon Fellman urged Israeli academics to sign an “open letter” to “end the illegal occupation in Palestine.” The letter states that “the government of Israel, having provoked the firing of rockets by its rampage through the West Bank, is now using that response as the pretext for an aerial assault on Gaza which has already cost scores of lives.”

“Zionist olive trees grow wondrously on Palestinian corpses.”- Email from Brandeis Professor Donald Hindley

It goes on to note that “an atmosphere of hysteria is being deliberately provoked in Israel, and whole communities are being subject to collective punishment, a war crime.” Fellman later encourages participants to read an work titled, “S. African Nobel Laureate Tutu likens Mideast crisis to apartheid.”
The one-sided view of the Middle East is not new at the school, founded in 1948, the same year Israel was established, with funding from the American Jewish community.
“Zionist olive trees grow wondrously on Palestinian corpses,” Political Science Professor Donald Hindley wrote in 2007. “In that way, we combine great trees with our own holocaustic ethnic cleansing.”
Robert Lange, a physics professor at the Waltham, Mass., school, wrote in an email that “settlements on the West Bank are armed robbery.”
Some 8,500 emails were uncovered by Brandeis student Daniel Mael and passed on to Joshua Nass, founder and chairman of the Voices of Conservative Youth. Nass said they were given access to the server after some subscribers were “troubled by the path the list was taking and lent access to a few students” so it could be made public.  A ListServ is a mailing list software that sends one message to all the group’s subscribers. This particular ListServ, titled “Concerned,” was started by faculty members in 2002 “out of concern about possible war with Iraq.” It has more than 90 subscribers, some of which are professors from other universities, and is used to correspond about current news, Israel, Jewish people, America and world affairs in general.
In addition to expressing hatred for Israel, several professors rage among themselves about conservative values, Fox News and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a human rights activist who survived genital mutilation as a child in Somalia, renounced her Muslim faith and now crusades against radical Islam. Ali was slated to receive an honorary doctorate at Brandeis in April before the ceremony was canceled amid campus protests. Emails reveal where at least some of the faculty stood on the matter.
In March, Brandeis Professor of English Mary Baine Campbell wrote that Ali is “an ignorant, ultra-right-wing extremist, abusively, shockingly vocal in her hatred for Muslim culture and Muslims, a purveyor of the dangerous and imaginary concept, born of European distaste for the influx of immigrants from its former colonies… To call her a ‘woman’s rights activist’ is like calling Squeaky Fromm an environmentalist.’”
Campbell’s hate is also directed at Fox News. In one email, she imagines organizing a crippling boycott of the top-rated cable news network, urging participants to join a “new campaign to weaken the power of FOX” and “write to companies who advertise” on the “poisonous” network.
An email from Fellman urges others to help prevent the cable news network from being awarded Helen Thomas’ former front-row center seat in the White House briefing room because it is “not a legitimate news organization” and insists the “real, public news organization” NPR should be given the spot.
But given Brandeis' roots and tradition, the vitriol directed at Israel is perhaps most shocking. According to its website, Brandeis was founded as a nonsectarian university under the sponsorship of the American Jewish community to “embody its highest ethical and cultural values and to express its gratitude to the United States through the traditional Jewish commitment to education.”
“To see that kind of sentiment, disgusting as it is, is a double-standard (toward) America’s only allies in the Middle East. These sentiments are being sponsored and paid for… imagine how this hurts the Jewish donors to Brandeis University,” noted Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which focuses on racism in America and a history of the Holocaust. “Of course the very academic feel particularly free to let it all hang out because it’s all covered under rubric of freedom of expression when they’re not held accountable.”
However, the university’s president, Frederick Lawrence, has been quick to distance himself from the controversial mailing list. When approached for comment, Brandeis spokesperson Ellen de Graffenreid sent FoxNews.com a letter Lawrence sent to all faculty staff regarding the issue.
“While we maintain our staunch support of freedom of expression and academic inquiry, some remarks by an extremely small cohort of Brandeis faculty members are abhorrent. Such statements, which include anti-Semitic epithets, personal attacks, denigration of the Catholic faith and the use of crude and vulgar terms in discussions about Israel, do not represent the Brandeis community,” he wrote. “I condemn these statements under no uncertain terms.”
At least one professor who found himself on the ListServ appeared to see through the Israel-bashing, and called his ivory tower colleagues on it.
“Let’s not be disingenuous. You guys hate Israel. That’s what unites the group. That’s why it was founded,” Doron Ben-Atar – a professor of history at the New York-based Fordham University – wrote in a post earlier this year. “You support BDS and circulate their petitions – a movement led by Omar Barghouti who not only declared that Israel has no right to exist, but has told a group in San Diego a few months back that Israeli soldiers use Palestinian children for spot target practice and that they use their body parts… I think when progressives lose their center and align with bizarre Islamist groups we are all worse off.”

Obama authorizes military strikes against ISIS leadership

President Obama has authorized the Pentagon to target and kill leaders of the Islamic State militant group, with the organization’s head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi being at the top of the administration’s list.
U.S. military officials confirmed to Fox News Thursday that Obama had approved the strikes against individual targets for the first time. The authorization was first reported by the Washington Post.
Obama had previously not permitted the military to target individuals from the terrorist organization, also known as ISIS or ISIL, even if intelligence showed where they were located.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a press briefing Thursday that the president is “actively engaged” in selecting possible Islamic State targets that are “available.”
“The president has gotten guidance about targets that are available and would be critical to denying ISIL a safe-haven both in Iraq and in Syria,” Earnest said.
Earnest said the administration has identified the targets through ramped up "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets” in the region.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby also told reporters Thursday that destroying a group like the Islamic State requires an “aggressive” approach, which includes “disrupting their ability to command and control and to lead their own forces.”
Obama announced on Wednesday he is sharply escalating the U.S. military campaign against militants, authorizing U.S. airstrikes in Syria along with expanded airstrikes in Iraq.
Obama outlined a “comprehensive” strategy for targeting the organization in Iraq and Syria, including by potentially aiding moderate factions of the Syrian opposition.
Also Thursday, the CIA said that new intelligence assessments of the Islamic State have found that the number of fighters the group is able to muster has grown to as many as three times previous estimates. 
A CIA spokesperson told Fox News that a review of intelligence reports from May to August found that the Islamic State can muster 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria. This new figure is a significant jump from the agency's previous assessment that the group could muster at least 10,000 fighters. 
"This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity, and additional intelligence," the spokesman said.

PROPHETIC WORDS: Bush predicted terror, death and chaos of Iraq pullout

A PROPHETIC WARNING from then-President George W. Bush on July 12, 2007, about what would happen if the U.S. withdrew troops from Iraq too soon is getting new attention in light of the Islamic State's gains, as each of his predictions appears to be coming true.

September 11 anniversary to be marked in much-changed lower Manhattan

NEW YORK –  A solemn reading of the names. Moments of silence to mark the precise times of tragedy. Stifled sobs of those still mourning.
As the nation pauses Thursday to mark the thirteenth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack, little about the annual ceremony at ground zero has changed. But so much around it has.
For the first time, the National September 11 Museum — which includes gut-wrenching artifacts and graphic photos of the attacks — will be open on the anniversary. Fences around the memorial plaza have come down, integrating the sacred site more fully with the streets of Manhattan while completely opening it up to the public and camera-wielding tourists.
A new mayor is in office, Bill de Blasio, one far less linked to the attacks and their aftermath than his immediate predecessors. And finally, a nearly completed One World Trade Center has risen 1,776 feet above ground zero and will be filled with office workers by this date in 2015, another sign that a page in the city's history may be turning.
For some who lost loved ones in the attacks, the increasing feel of a return to normalcy in the area threatens to obscure the tragedy that took place there and interfere with their grief.
"Instead of a quiet place of reflection, it's where kids are running around," said Nancy Nee, whose firefighter brother, George Cain, was killed in the attacks. "Some people forget this is a cemetery. I would never go to the Holocaust museum and take a selfie."
But for others, the charges are an important part of the healing process.
"When I first saw (One World Trade Center), it really made my heart sing," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. "It does every time I see it because it's so symbolic of what the country went through."
"I want to see it bustling," she said. "I want to see more housing down there, I want to see it alive and bursting with businesses."
As happens annually, family members of those killed in the attacks will gather Thursday morning to read the names of the deceased, pausing the sad roll call only four times: when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, when the second plane struck, when the first tower fell and when the second tower fell.
The memorial plaza will be closed to the public for most of the day and only available to family members. It will reopen at 6 p.m., at which point thousands of New Yorkers are expected to mark the anniversary at the twin reflecting pools where the towers once stood.
On the same day in May when the museum opened in a ceremony attended by President Barack Obama, the fences that had surrounded the plaza for years disappeared, as did the need for visitors to obtain a timed ticket. Now, thousands of people freely visit every day, from cellphone-toting travelers to workers on a lunch break, and those crowds will only swell further this year when One World Trade Center finally opens.
"The memorial and museum is extremely important to those impacted on 9/11," said Mary Fetchet, whose son, died in the attacks. "And surrounding that memorial, lower Manhattan has been revitalized."
The first ceremony at the site was held six months after the Twin Towers fell and was organized by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his aides. Bloomberg, who took office just three months after the attacks, remained in charge, acting as the master of ceremonies for the next decade.
After other elected officials attempted to gain a larger role at the solemn event, in 2012, all politicians — including Bloomberg — were prohibited from speaking at the event. That remains the case now, as de Blasio, who took office in January, agreed to let the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation organize the commemoration ceremony. Bloomberg is the foundation's chairman.

Syria strategy 2.0: Obama to hit reset to counter growing ISIS threat

One year to the day since addressing the American people about possible strikes against the Assad regime in Syria over its chemical weapons attack, President Obama is coming back to the American people with a drastically different -- and strategically complex -- plan to combat a drastically different enemy. 
The president, when he speaks from the White House Wednesday night, is expected to on one hand seek Congress' support in arming and aiding the moderate Syrian opposition. But he is also keeping the door open for possible airstrikes in Syria, something that might require tacit cooperation from the Assad regime. 
The target this time is not the Assad government, but the Islamic State, which has in the year since Obama's last address evolved into Assad's most formidable enemy -- as well as a threat to the Iraq government and the West. 
The result could be Obama's trickiest task yet in the Middle East. 
Going after the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria would be a boost for Assad's efforts to retain power. Yet the administration is trying to counteract that by aligning with moderate opposition groups. 
According to one White House aide, the president is seeking more aid for the rebels so they could be the ground troops in place to support potential U.S. airstrikes against ISIS. The Obama administration already is pursuing a similar strategy in Iraq, where U.S. airstrikes are backed by Iraqi security forces on the ground -- as opposed to U.S. ground troops. 
A White House aide told Fox News the president has already asked congressional leaders, with whom he met late Tuesday, to quickly pass a bill giving him the power to ramp up support to Syrian rebels. 
The president, based on what he has told congressional leaders behind closed doors, appears unlikely to actually announce airstrikes in Syria during his address. But officials are expecting the president to give his strongest signals yet that he is moving closer to authorizing them. 
A senior official also told The New York Times Obama is willing to order airstrikes inside Syrian territory, despite warnings from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government not to do so without their permission. 
Administration officials said Obama will press forward with other elements of his plan without formal authorization from U.S. lawmakers. That could include wide-ranging airstrikes. Other elements of Obama's plan included increased support for Iraqi security forces, as well as military and diplomatic commitments from partner nations. 
As for aid to rebels, the White House aide told Fox News the administration has existing funds that could be used to escalate support to the Syrian rebels -- including heavy arms -- and then they would come back to Congress for more money down the road. 
The U.S. already has been running a small CIA program to train the rebels, but Obama is seeking approval for a more overt military effort that could involve staging training locations in countries near Syria. Administration officials told the Associated Press Obama also sees a congressional authorization for a Syrian train-and-equip mission as sending a strong signal to allies who are considering similar efforts. 
Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, traveled to the Middle East on Wednesday for discussions in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. 
The Times reported that Obama will send a delegation to brief senators prior to his speech Wednesday. 
The president huddled for nearly two hours Tuesday with the top four Congressional leaders at the White House -- House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- to build support for his planned campaign. A White House statement released after the session made it clear the president would not be asking for a congressional vote to authorize military force. 
"The president told the leaders that he has the authority he needs to take action against ISIL in accordance with the mission he will lay out in his address tomorrow night," the statement said in part. It added that Obama would "welcome" congressional support. 
Some lawmakers say the president, under the War Powers Resolution, must seek congressional authorization within 60 days for such military action. But U.S. presidents have traditionally challenged that measure, and Obama advisers indicate they already have the authority they need. 
A Boehner aide said that the speaker told Obama that he would he would support the president if he chose to deploy the military to help train and play an advisory role for the Iraqi Security Forces and assist with lethal targeting of ISIS leadership. 
With Obama ruling out sending U.S. ground troops into combat in Iraq or Syria, bolstering the capacity of the Iraqi security forces and Syrian opposition will be crucial to efforts to root out the Islamic State militant group, which has moved freely across the blurred border between the two countries. U.S. airstrikes could help give the forces in both countries the space to make gains against the extremists. 
The U.S. has already launched approximately 150 airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, a mission undertaken at the invitation of the Iraqi government and without formal authorization from Congress. But the scope of the mission has been relatively limited to strikes that help protect American interests in the region and prevent humanitarian crises. U.S. officials said Obama was expected to loosen those limitations in his speech Wednesday. 
At a private dinner Monday with foreign policy experts, Obama emphasized the importance of viewing the Islamic State as one organization, not two groups separated by a border.
Obama would still have to contend with the notion that American airstrikes against the Islamic State militants were actually helping Assad, who has overseen Syria's bloody civil war. 
The U.S. has long called for Assad to leave power, and the Islamic State group is one of the groups inside Syria that is seeking to oust him. 
However, Jane Harman of the Woodrow Wilson Center, who attended Monday night's dinner, told The New York Times that the president that he could order action in Syria without necessarily helping Assad, since ISIS currently holds ungoverned territory in the northeast of Syria that Assad's forces are unlikely to recover.   

California city mandates free medical marijuana for low-income residents

Weed welfare? 
That’s what the Berkeley City Council in California has unanimously approved, ordering medical marijuana dispensaries to donate 2 percent of their stash to patients making less than $32,000 a year. 
The new welfare program in the liberal-leaning city is set to launch in August 2015. 
The ordinance, which passed in August and is the first of its kind in the country, comes at a time when several states are debating how to handle a growing movement to legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use. 
But Berkeley's decision to effectively order weed redistribution is prompting a vocal backlash. 
Bishop Ron Allen, a former addict and head of the International Faith Based Coalition, told Fox News he doesn’t understand why the California city would want to dump pot on the impoverished.  
“It’s ludicrous, over-the-top madness,” Allen said. “Why would Berkeley City Council want to keep their poverty-stricken under-served high, in poverty and lethargic?”
John Lovell, a lobbyist for the California Narcotic Officers’ Association, agrees. 
“Instead of taking steps to help the most economically vulnerable residents get out of that state, the city has said, ‘Let’s just get everybody high,’” Lovell told The New York Times.
But others, like Mason Tvert, director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, say it’s a community program. 
Tvert told Fox News that the decision to provide the drug to some of its low-income residents is up to the community.
“So it’s a matter of the democratic process, people following the state’s laws, and this law appears to accommodate both of those,” he said.
California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana nearly 20 years ago.
California dispensaries are prohibited by law from turning a profit. But some places have been giving pot away to patients who couldn't pay for years.
One of Berkeley’s largest dispensaries, Berkeley Patients Group, has been doing it for a decade, The New York Times reports. One recipient, Arnie Passman, a poet and activist, said he’s couldn't remember exactly how long he had been given medical marijuana or why.
“It could be for my allergies, or my arthritis -- you know what happens to us folks: We forget,” Passman, 78, told the newspaper.

Rice

DOJ spokesman caught trying to work with Dems on IRS probe coverage, Issa says

A Justice Department spokesman apparently accidentally called the office of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa last week and, according to Issa, asked to release documents about the IRS targeting scandal to “interested reporters” before Issa had the chance to share them.
Then the “audibly shaken” spokesman seemed to realize what he had done and tried to back off his request, the California Republican congressman said.  
Issa detailed the staffer’s awkward mistake in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, saying he had “serious concerns” about the incident. The letter was first reported by Breitbart News. 
Issa, whose committee is investigating the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, said it was clear the spokesman was attempting to reach the office of Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the committee. Issa said he believes this sort of collaboration happens regularly.
“This effort to preemptively release incomplete and selectively chosen information undermines the (DOJ’s) claims that it is responding in good faith,” he said.
The spokesman in question, Brian Fallon, confirmed to Fox News that he had called Issa’s office, but said he could not confirm “characterizations of the call contained in the letter or the motive they attribute to me.”
“There is nothing inappropriate about department staff having conversations with both the majority and minority staff as they prepare responses to formal inquiries,” Fallon said in a statement. “That includes conversations between the spokespeople for the Department and the committee.”
According to Issa, Fallon, who is not named in the letter, called his office on Friday and asked to speak with a member of the committee’s communications team.
Fallon then said the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs would not let him release the documents in question to the media directly, but that he wanted to make sure “interested reporters” got their hands on it before “the Majority,” meaning Issa, could share it.
Fallon said he wished to do that so the DOJ could have the “opportunity” to comment on the documents before they were shared by Issa’s office.
After this, Fallon seemed to realize his mistake, according to Issa, and changed his tune. He said there had been a “change of plans,” that the DOJ would not plan on releasing the documents early and the DOJ would “defer to the Chairman,” again meaning Issa.
Issa called the phone call “confirmation” that Cummings, D-Md., was collaborating with the Obama administration to “prejudice” the committee’s work on the IRS probe.
An Oversight Committee Democratic staffer told Fox News it is clear Fallon “doesn’t know our staff that well” and they never received a call regarding the documents.
“Had he called us, we would have told him the same thing we tell every agency: that our policy is to make our own independent decisions based on serving the best interests of the public,” the staffer said.

Breitbart News says IRS targeted company for audit

Your Tax Dollars at Work!

The company that runs the conservative Breitbart.com news site says the IRS has selected the network for an audit, in a move company executives suggest is politically motivated.
Breitbart News Network, a California-based company which runs several conservative websites, says the IRS recently audited its 2012 financial information.
"The Obama administration's timing on this is exquisite, but try as they might through various methods to silence us, we will only get more emboldened,” Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, said in a written statement.
The audit comes as the agency faces sustained complaints that it targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny as they sought nonprofit status, before the agency ended the practice last year.
Since the practice was made public – by the IRS itself and the inspector general’s office – other conservative groups have come forward claiming they were subjected to unwarranted scrutiny by the agency.
In this case, it remains unclear whether the apparent audit of Breitbart News is anything out of the ordinary. The IRS conducts audits of tens of thousands of businesses every year.
The agency said in a statement: "Federal privacy laws prohibit the IRS from commenting on specific taxpayer situations. The IRS stresses that audits are based on the information related to tax returns and the underlying tax law -- nothing else. Audits are handled by career, non-partisan civil servants, and the IRS has safeguards in place to protect the exam process."
A copy of the IRS notice to Breitbart News, obtained by FoxNews.com, asked about the company’s financial information for calendar year 2012.
The IRS asked for a litany of documents, including logs of its receipts and expenses, but also its partnership agreement and a “written narrative” of the business.
Larry Solov, president and CEO of Breitbart News Network said: "We stand ready to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service on its audit of our company, but this will not deter us in the least from continuing our aggressive coverage of this president or his administration.” 
The company was founded by the late media entrepreneur and conservative activist Andrew Breitbart.
The main website, Breitbart.com, houses a number of offshoot sites including Big Hollywood and Big Journalism. The website played a key role in breaking the scandal over former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner sharing sexually explicit photos on Twitter.

Obama reportedly willing to authorize airstrikes against ISIS in Syria

President Obama reportedly is prepared to expand airstrikes against the Islamic State into Syria and broaden the campaign against the group in Iraq, according to published reports ahead of a prime-time address to the nation in which the president will be expected to lay out an expanded military and political strategy to confront the militants who seized large swathes of territory over the summer.
The New York Times, citing a senior administration official, reported that the president was willing to order airstrikes against the militants, also known as ISIS, inside Syrian territory. The Associated Press also reported that it was likely that Obama would order the expanded airstrikes, in apparent defiance of a warning from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government not to do so without their permission. 
Obama had pushed for airstrikes against the Damascus government last year over the apparent use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces, but opposition in Congress forced him to drop the idea.
Obama is also expected to seek authorization from Congress to arm more moderate elements of the Syrian opposition that has been fighting Assad in a bloody civil war since 2011. The president asked lawmakers earlier this year for a $500 million train-and-equip program, but the plan stalled on Capitol Hill. The U.S. already has been running a smaller CIA program to train the rebels, but Obama is seeking approval for a more overt military effort that could involve staging training locations in countries near Syria.
Administration officials told the Associated Press Obama also sees a congressional authorization for a Syrian train-and-equip message as sending a strong signal to allies who are considering similar efforts. Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to the Middle East on Wednesday for discussions in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The Times reported that Obama will send a delegation to brief senators prior to his speech Wednesday. The group will be led by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and include National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen and Deputy National Security Adviser Anthony Blinken. 
The president huddled for nearly two hours Tuesday with the top four Congressional leaders at the White House -- House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- to build support for his planned campaign. A White House statement released after the session made it clear the president would not be asking for a congressional vote to authorize military force. 
"The president told the leaders that he has the authority he needs to take action against ISIL in accordance with the mission he will lay out in his address tomorrow night," the statement said in part. It added that Obama would "welcome" congressional support.
A Boehner aide said that the Speaker told Obama that he would he would support the president if he chose to deploy the military to help train and play an advisory role for the Iraqi Security Forces and assist with lethal targeting of ISIS leadership.
With Obama ruling out sending U.S. ground troops into combat in Iraq or Syria, bolstering the capacity of the Iraqi security forces and Syrian opposition will be crucial to efforts to root out the Islamic State militant group, which has moved freely across the blurred border between the two countries. U.S. airstrikes could help give the forces in both countries the space to make gains against the extremists.
The U.S. has already launched approximately 150 airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, a mission undertaken at the invitation of the Iraqi government and without formal authorization from Congress. But the scope of the mission has been relatively limited to strikes that help protect American interests in the region and prevent humanitarian crises. U.S. officials said Obama was expected to loosen those limitations in his speech Wednesday. 
At a private dinner Monday with foreign policy experts, Obama emphasized the importance of viewing the Islamic State as one organization, not two groups separated by a border. 
Obama would still have to contend with the notion that American airstrikes against the Islamic State militants were actually helping Assad, who has overseen Syria's bloody civil war. The U.S. has long called for Assad to leave power, and the Islamic State group is one of the groups inside Syria that is seeking to oust him.
However, Jane Harman of the Woodrow Wilson Center, who attended Monday night's dinner, told The New York Times that the president that he could order action in Syria without necessarily helping Assad, since ISIS currently holds ungoverned territory in the northeast of Syria that Assad's forces are unlikely to recover. 

Weiner Cartoon

Dems throw millions behind Clinton ally in search of House win

In a midterm cycle where the best Democrats can hope for is Republicans not taking complete control of Congress, the party has found something to lift its spirits: a race for a House seat in Colorado that could actually flip to blue in November. 
The race between incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Coffman and former Democratic state House speaker Andrew Romanoff is competitive in large part because the once-solidly Republican district was redrawn after the 2010 Census -- it's now evenly split among Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters. 
Coffman, who easily won in 2008 with more than 60 percent of the vote, now finds himself in a scramble to hold onto his seat, as an unprecedented amount of money pours in for his Democratic opponent. 
Romanoff, a well-known Colorado politician and longtime Clinton family ally, has attracted a flood of donations as Democrats see the 6th District race as perhaps their best chance of picking up a House seat this fall from Republicans. According to the latest financial filings, Romanoff had raised $3.4 million as of the end of June, with nearly $2.7 million on hand (similar to Coffman's numbers). 
The figure reportedly is more than any House challenger has raised this year. 
The circumstances have Coffman fighting for his seat, and rewriting his playbook -- as he noticeably softens his tone on immigration. 
The 2010 redistricting changed the makeup of his district from 8 percent Hispanic to 20 percent Hispanic overnight. Coffman had been seen as especially vulnerable on border issues because of his past votes against comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act. 
"His opponent is hitting him really hard on that issue," Colorado-based political analyst Abraham Morales said. "Immigration has become the issue where Romanoff hopes to set himself apart from Coffman." 
In a debate last month, Coffman explained his immigration stance as a "step-by-step" approach, with the first step being security. "We've got to secure our border and enforce our laws. But I think we also need to be compassionate in keeping families together." 
Romanoff wasted no time zeroing in on the congressman's comments. "The congressman has mentioned a step-by-step approach," he said. "That would be fine if Congress were willing to take a single step." 
Coffman is even learning to speak Spanish so he can talk directly to Hispanic voters. 
"Last week he was at a popular Latino supermarket in Aurora talking to Latino voters," said Morales, adding: "If he is able to connect [on a personal level] he may be able to get Latino voters to see him as more than just this one issue." 
As Morales points out, in a district so evenly divided in terms of party affiliation, "The Hispanic vote becomes more important than ever. It will probably win the district." 
Coffman told Fox31 KDVR that the competition and changes in the district have made him a "better congressman," but downplayed the notion that he's modified his positions. 
"It wasn't so much I had to change, it was listening to people," he said, discussing the re-drawing of the district. 
The demographics in the re-drawn district now closely mirror the state as a whole, which itself has become a battleground in presidential elections. This has drastically changed the dynamic in the district where Coffman originally took over for anti-illegal immigration firebrand Tom Tancredo in 2009. 
"You just don't survive in Colorado politics if you can't find the middle ground," Colorado pollster and political analyst Floyd Ciruli said. 
Coffman already faced a tough re-election in 2012, winning by a mere 7,000 votes. Romanoff, though, is a formidable opponent. 
In 2010, Romanoff scared the daylights out of the national Democratic establishment by offering incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet a far stiffer primary challenge than expected. In that race, Bill Clinton endorsed Romanoff over the incumbent; Romanoff had backed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primaries. 
Bennet went on to squeak out a victory against Republican challenger Ken Buck in the general election, winning by fewer than 30,000 votes. He did so in part by portraying Buck as an anti-woman, anti-immigration extremist. 
Ciruli says Romanoff's campaign has not hesitated to adopt the same formula. "They are using the playbook of focusing on women's issues and Hispanic issues." 
The new voter breakdown -- mirroring that of the nation -- has also turned the race into somewhat of a bellwether, and national parties and political pundits everywhere are watching it closely. 
"It's a metaphor for the Republicans," Ciruli said. "If they can't win here, that says a lot about their ability to win these kinds of close competitive races in other parts of the country."

How Obama spun the press on immigration delay — and sort of got away with it

The White House engaged in some truly masterful spinning of the decision to delay action on immigration, and the press half-bought it.
President Obama, for his part, was half-candid.
The upshot was coverage that was about half as tough as it should have been.
Obama was, after all, breaking a fairly recent promise. It was a few short months ago, when immigration reform died yet again in John Boehner’s House, that the president said he would get recommendations on acting unilaterally by the end of the summer and would act without delay.
And now he’s delayed.
This was duly noted in news accounts, of course—Politico called it a “sudden reversal”—but it wasn’t rendered as a “Read My Lips” moment. Think of all the times that Mitt Romney was depicted in the press as a flip-flopper. But I didn’t see anyone use the F-word in describing what Obama did. (Yes, he says he’ll act on immigration after the election, but he still broke his word.)
The dilemma for the administration was that any mealy-mouthed explanation—we need more time to study the issue, blah blah blah—would be immediately dismissed by the press. So the strategy was to leak the decision and admit it was political--but with an unnamed source that allowed journalists to write insidery reports. Rather than contest the obvious, that this was raw politics, the message mavens abetted the natural media instinct to depict such decisions as politically driven, but with the administration’s preferred spin.
Usually these things are done with a top official whispering to journalists for a couple of key print and television outlets. But the anonymous White House official actually put out a statement, on background, so everyone could quote the spin.
So when the story was leaked Saturday, Mr. Unnamed Official was quoted everywhere as saying: “Because of the Republicans’ extreme politicization of this issue, the president believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to announce administrative action before the elections.”
Get that? It was the Republicans’ fault! And acting now would be “harmful to the policy.”
Now most reporters were savvy enough to point out that what Obama was doing was trying to protect red-state Democratic senators who could lose their seats if they had to defend a sweeping executive order on immigration. And the angry reaction of immigration advocates, who felt betrayed, also made clear that the president was in retreat.
But since journalists also had to quote Boehner and other Republicans as ripping the decision, the stories devolved into spin and counterspin—taking the focus off the president doing a 180 off the high board.
The second phase of the strategy was Obama’s “Meet the Press” interview. The president didn’t deny to Chuck Todd that politics was involved, but only went so far--and like his unnamed aide, used the word “sustainable”:
“But here's the other thing, Chuck, and I'm being honest now, about the politics of it. This problem with unaccompanied children that we saw a couple weeks ago, where you had from Central America a surge of kids who are showing up at the border, got a lot of attention. And a lot of Americans started thinking, 'We've got this immigration crisis on our hands.' And what I want to do is when I take executive action, I want to make sure that it's sustainable.”
Obama followed that with “I'm going to act because it's the right thing for the country.”
Todd, to his credit, said it still sounded like election-year politics.
Obama basically copped to needing more time to sell the executive order because public support has been undermined by the border crisis. And that is true.
But he didn’t admit the other part, that he is trying to save the likes of Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu from losing their Senate seats and guaranteeing a GOP takeover.
Obama and his team knew they would take a hit and managed the media about as well as could be expected. The press got the gist of the story right but allowed the impact to be blunted. Now the question is whether immigration will fade as an issue in the midterms, since Obama still insists he’ll act once Election Day is safely behind him.

US efforts to track Islamic extremists reportedly hampered by disputes with Europe

Efforts by U.S. intelligence officials to track American and European-born fighters who travel to the Middle East to join Islamic extremist groups like ISIS have been complicated by different approaches to sharing information and homeland security from their European counterparts, according to a published report. 
The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. officials are struggling to ascertain the movements of suspected extremists once they enter certain European countries. The gaps are occurring despite the fact that the U.S. and several European security services have developed close intelligence links, with intelligence from both sides of the Atlantic buttressing terror watch lists kept by U.S. officials, such as the no-fly list. 
According to the Journal, a particular cause for concern among U.S. intelligence officials is a series of anti-terror proposals made last week by British Prime Minister David Cameron, most notably to revoke the passports of British nationals who have traveled to fight for ISIS. The British proposal reportedly has been greeted warily by U.S. counter-terrorism officials, who say that any move to confiscate passports could prevent people who have traveled to Syria and Iraq from speaking to authorities and providing intelligence about what is happening there. 
Apparently buttressing the U.S. officials' concerns, a report in The Times of London last week suggested that up to 30 British-born ISIS fighters have been disgusted by the militants' brutal tactics and wish to return home, but are fearful of doing so due to the punitive measures advocated by Cameron. 
Meanwhile, President Obama is scheduled to meet with congressional leaders Tuesday afternoon to discuss his plan to combat the ISIS threat. Few details of Obama's plan have been revealed ahead of a scheduled Wednesday address to the nation, though the New York Times reported Monday that the White House was in the process of planning a three-phase campaign that some Pentagon officials believe would take at least three years to fully execute. 
The U.S. has already launched close to 150 airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, and The Times reported that the final phase of the campaign would call for the extension of airstrikes into Syria, where ISIS has its home base. 
The Obama administration is also bringing pressure on allies to swing firmly behind action against ISIS. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to travel to to Saudi Arabia and Jordan to meet with Mideast leaders and gauge their level of commitment to a growing worldwide coalition. The Associated Press reported that Kerry pressed a core group of 10 countries  to form a loose coalition to go after last week's NATO summit. Along with the United States, the coalition comprises the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark.
As he weighs his next move, Obama was soliciting advice Monday from prominent foreign policy experts from across the political spectrum over dinner at the White House. Among the guests invited to join Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were former national security advisers from the Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton and Carter administrations, as well as Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and former Acting CIA Director Michael Morrell.
In a call Monday evening, Obama congratulated new Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for the approval of a new government. The White House said al-Abadi "expressed his commitment to work with all communities in Iraq as well as regional and international partners to strengthen Iraq's capabilities" to fight the Islamic State militants.
Obama also spoke with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on the need to keep addressing the ongoing threat from the Islamic State and to thank Australia for its contributions to humanitarian air drops in northern Iraq, the White House said.

Obama says he has the authority, and US will 'go on offensive’ against Islamic State

President Obama said Sunday that the United States will “go on the offensive” against Islamic State militants in the Middle East and that he will further outline his plans Wednesday in a speech.
“The next phase is us going on the offensive,” Obama said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The president said that on Wednesday he will not announce the use of U.S. ground troops or a campaign equal to the war in Iraq, and that his goal is to make clear the mission is to deal with terror threats like those over the past several years. A senior Obama administration official told Fox News imminent, new military action in either Iraq or Syria was not expected to be announced in the speech.
Obama said he has the “authority he needs” to increase attacks on Islamic State targets without congressional approval, but he did not answer repeated questions about whether he will order air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria.
A senior White House official told Fox News that Obama's primary aim in the Wednesday speech will be to update the American public on what the strategy is to deal with the militant group, saying the administration wants "people to understand how he's approaching this." 
When Congress was on summer break, the president ordered strikes on the group’s military targets in Iraq, saying they were to protect U.S. personnel and requested by the Iraq government as part of a humanitarian effort to preserve infrastructure and save Iraqi minorities.
Obama said Sunday the upcoming effort is part of three-step plan that started with intelligence gathering and will include helping install a new Iraqi government.
“I’m confident we can get this done,” he said.
Obama acknowledged on "Meet the Press" that the Islamic State is unique because of its “territorial ambitions” in the Middle East.
"Over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of ISIL," he said, using an alternate name for the group. "We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we're going to defeat them."
Reps. Peter King, D-N.Y., and Adam Smith, D-Wash., each told ABC’s “This Week” that the president should take swift action instead of trying to get congressional approval and getting bogged down in a prolonged debate.
“Getting the exact language through Congress would be extremely difficult,” Smith said, “though I think that’s what we ought to do.”
Obama will outline his plan after meeting Tuesday in the Oval Office with Capitol Hill leaders -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“What I'm going to ask the American people to understand is that this is a serious threat,” Obama told NBC. “We have the capacity to deal with it, and here's how we'll deal with it. This will require some resources above what's already in there.”
Obama also said that he has not seen any immediate intelligence of threats to the U.S. homeland.
The interview was conducted Saturday at the White House shortly after Obama returned from a NATO summit in Wales, where the Islamic State threat was a key topic of discussion. The speech will come one day before the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Obama restated his opposition to sending U.S. ground troops to engage in direct combat with the militants, who have laid claim to large swaths of territory in Iraq, targeted religious and ethnic minority groups, and threatened U.S. personnel and interests in the region.
At Obama's direction, the U.S. military has conducted more than 130 air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq in the past month. In retaliation, the group recently beheaded two American journalists it had been holding hostage in Syria, where the organization also operates.
Lawmakers have pressed Obama to expand the air strikes into Syria. He has resisted so far, but said he has asked his military advisers for options for pursuing the group there.
In the interview, Obama said the U.S. would not go after the Islamic State group alone, but would operate as part of an international coalition and continue air strikes to support ground efforts that would be carried out by Iraqi and Kurdish troops.
At the NATO summit, the U.S. and nine allies agreed to take on the militants because of the threat they pose to member countries.
Obama's emerging strategy depends on cooperation and contributions from regional partners, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, in addition to the formation of a new government in Iraq.
Obama said he expected the Iraqi government to be formed this week.
Last month, while vacationing on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard, Obama was criticized for heading to the golf course minutes after he appeared in public to angrily denounce the Islamic State militants for the videotaped killing of American journalist James Foley.
 Asked whether he wanted a do-over by new "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, Obama said that, while there will always be tough news somewhere, he "should've anticipated the optics" of immediately going to play golf after delivering that statement in which he said he had just gotten off the phone with Foley's parents.
But Obama said the more important question is whether he is getting the policies right and whether he is protecting the American people and, on that score, he said, "I think I've done a very good job during the course of these last, close to six years."

White House reportedly planning years-long campaign to destroy ISIS

The Obama administration is reportedly preparing a campaign to destroy the Islamic State militant group that could outlast the president's remaining time in office, according to a published report. 
The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reported late Sunday that the White House plan involves three phases that some Pentagon officials believe will require at least three years of sustained effort.
The first phase, airstrikes against Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is already underway in Iraq, where U.S. aircraft have launched 143 attacks since August 8. The second phase involves an intensified effort to train, advise, and equip the Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and any Sunni tribesmen willing to fight their ISIS co-religionists. The Times reports that this second phase will begin sometime after Iraq forms a new government, which could happen sometime this week. 
The third, and most politically fraught phase of the campaign, according to The Times, would require airstrikes against ISIS inside Syria. Last month, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus warned the Obama administration not to launch airstrikes against ISIS in Syria without its permission. 
Obama was scheduled to outline his plan in a meeting Tuesday with House and Senate leaders before addressing the nation in a speech Wednesday, the eve of the 13th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. A senior Obama administration official told Fox News imminent, new military action in either Iraq or Syria was not expected to be announced in Wednesday's speech. A senior White House official told Fox News that Obama's primary aim will be to update the American public on what the strategy is to deal with the militant group, saying the administration wants "people to understand how he's approaching this."
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press," Obama vowed that the United States would go "on the offensive" against the militants, who have seized broad swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq over the summer. 
The interview was conducted over the weekend after the president returned from a two-day NATO summit in Wales, where the U.S. and nine of its European allies agreed to take on the militants due to the terror threat they pose. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to travel to the Middle East later this month in an effort to secure the backing of Arab states for an anti-ISIS campaign, while Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was due to arrive in Turkey on Monday to press that country's leadership for support. Among the issues discussed will be the possibility of closing the country's border with Syria, which has been a popular route for Western-born fighters looking to join ISIS. 
On Sunday, the head of the 22-member Arab League urged the group's members to make a "clear and firm decision for a comprehensive confrontation" with "cancerous and terrorist" groups. Nabil Elaraby called ISIS a threat to the existence of Iraq and its neighbors and "one of the examples of the challenges that are violently shaking the Arab world, and one the Arab League, regrettably, has not been able to confront."
It wasn't immediately clear what steps the Arab League would take in supporting the West's campaign against ISIS, and reaching a consensus on how to move could be complicated by Arab world rivalries and member countries' different spheres of influence. A draft resolution obtained by The Associated Press offered only routine condemnation of terrorist groups operating in the region. It also called on its member states, which include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to improve information-sharing and legal expertise in combating terrorism, and to prevent the paying of ransom to militants.
The Times reported that White House officials acknowledge that even if European and Arab countries offer their support for operations in Iraq, getting them to assent to possible operations in Syria would be much more difficult. U.S. officials have said repeatedly that the Obama administration is weighing all options for pursuing ISIS in that country.

British Cartoon

Missouri police search for suspects in brutal beating caught on tape

 Black on White crime will definitely make Holder and the Justice Department want to investigate this matter??

A disturbing video released to the public in Springfield, Mo., this week shows a young couple being assaulted by a group of men who attacked them from behind in an alley.
Springfield Police posted the video on YouTube. They are asking for help in identifying the suspects and witnesses.
The violent attack took place Aug. 22 near the Outland Ballroom after a rap concert. News reports said the victims were Meredith Cole and her boyfriend Alex Vessey, who was working at the club as a DJ.
"They just turned around and attacked Alex," Cole told Fox 2 Now in St. Louis Friday.
Vessey also described the attack. "As soon as we started walking that way about halfway down they jumped on top of me," he told the station. "She tried to get them off me and they assaulted her too."
Cole said she wants justice. "Hopefully they will get arrest and they're not going to do that to anybody else," she said.
The Springfield Police Department police told the Springfield News-Leader that Vessey was upset with a group of males for allegedly "disrespecting his girlfriend." The department said the couple sustained serious injuries in the attack.

Obama's delay on immigration action brings storm of criticism from Hispanics, liberal supporters

Immigration-reform advocates expressed their objections Saturday to President Obama’s delaying executive action to fix U.S. immigration policy, including cries of  bitter disappointment and accusations that the president has caved to election-year politics.
“We are bitterly disappointed in the president,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the group America’s Voice. “The president and Senate Democrats have chosen politics over people.”
In an interview taped for NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama rejected the charge that the delay was meant to protect Democratic candidates worried that his actions would hurt their prospects in tough Senate races.
However, Obama did concede that politics played a role, claiming that a partisan fight in July over how to address an influx of unaccompanied minors at the border had created the impression that there was an immigration crisis and thus a volatile climate for taking the measures he had promised to take.
"The truth of the matter is -- is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem," he said. "I want to spend some time, even as we're getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we're doing this, why it's the right thing for the American people, why it's the right thing for the American economy."
However, the delay resulted in widespread reaction from across the country and the political spectrum.
Obama said June 30 that he would take matters into his own hands before the end of summer, amid the GOP-led House stalling reform legislation and thousands of unaccompanied Central American youths trying to illegally cross the southern U.S. border.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Arturo Rodriguez, United Farm Workers president. “He broke his promise to the millions of immigrants and Latinos who are looking for him to lead on this issue in the wake of Republicans’ dysfunction and obstruction.”
Rodriguez vowed that his group would continue to “keep fighting and organizing” for reform. But Sherry expressed little optimism that Obama would indeed take action after the November elections, in which Democrats must fend against a strong Republican effort to win a net total of six Senate seats to take control of the chamber.
“It is hard to believe this litany of high expectations and broken promises will be mended by the end of the year,” Sherry said.
Reform advocates want the federal government to change U.S. immigration policy in large part to provide a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million people who have either entered the United States illegally or have overstayed their visas.
The Democrat-controlled Senate passed comprehensive, bipartisan reform legislation in 2013, but such efforts have stalled in the House over the primary concerns of border security and a path to citizenship essentially equaling amnesty.
“There is a never a ‘right’ time for the president to declare amnesty by executive action, but the decision to simply delay this deeply-controversial and possibly unconstitutional unilateral action until after the election -- instead of abandoning the idea altogether -- smacks of raw politics,” House Speaker John Boehner said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, fighting to keep his Senate seat, suggested Obama is simply saying “he'll go around the law once it's too late for Americans to hold his party accountable in the November elections.”
Democrat National Committee spokesman Michael Czin said the Boehner response and a similar one by the Republican National Committee is “manufactured outrage” and “callous political rhetoric.”
“They can put an end to this whole debate by joining us in passing real immigration reform,” Czin said. 
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rushed to Obama’s defense Saturday afternoon.
“I know that the president is determined to act, and when he does I support a broad use of his authority to fix as much of our broken immigration system as he can through executive action,” the Nevada Democrat said.
The PICO National Network’s Campaign for Citizenship, one of the country’s largest grassroots, faith-based organizing network, also expressed disappointment in Obama’s reported decision.
“The odds of us being let down by President Obama were high,” said Eddie Carmona, the group’s campaign manager. “The president and the Senate Democrats have made it very clear that undocumented immigrants and Latinos are simply viewed as political pawns.”
Still, Carmona vowed that his group also would continue to push for change, despite the “unacceptable delay.”

US launches new airstrikes against ISIS in western Iraq

The U.S. has launched fresh airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group in an effort to keep the Haditha Dam in western Iraq in the hands of that country's army. 
U.S. Central Command confirmed the airstrikes in a statement issued early Sunday, saying that five Humvees, an armed vehicle, and a checkpoint were destroyed. The strikes also damaged a militant bunker. The U.S. carried out one additional airstrike that destroyed a humvee at the crucial Mosul Dam in northern Iraq. 
Sunday's strikes bring the total number conducted by CentCom to 138 since operations began August 8. The latest strikes represented a broadening of the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, moving the military operations closer to the border of Syria, where the group also has been operating.
"We conducted these strikes to prevent terrorists from further threatening the security of the dam, which remains under control of Iraqi Security Forces, with support from Sunni tribes," said Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby, who was traveling with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in the former Soviet republic of Georgia Sunday. 
Hagel called the Hadith Dam "a critically important facility" to Iraqis, adding that the U.S. is continuing to explore all options for expanding the battle against the Islamic State into Syria.
Last month Islamic State fighters were battling to capture the Haditha Dam, which has six power generators located alongside Iraq's second-largest reservoir. But, despite their attacks, Iraqi forces there backed up by local Sunni tribes have been able to hold them off.
The group was able to take control of the Mosul Dam in northern Iraq last month, but persistent U.S. airstrikes dislodged the militants. And while fighters have been trying to take it back, the U.S. has continued to use strikes to keep them at bay.
"We will continue to conduct operations as needed in support of the Iraqi Security Forces and the Sunni tribes, working with those forces securing Haditha Dam," Kirby said.
U.S. officials have expressed concerns that militants could flood Baghdad and other large swaths of the country if they control the dams.  It also would give the group control over electricity, which they could use to strengthen their control over residents.
Earlier this year, the group gained control of the Fallujah Dam on the Euphrates River and the militants used it as a weapon, opening it to flood downriver when government forces moved in on the city.
Water is a precious commodity in Iraq, a largely desert country of 32.5 million people. The decline of water levels in the Euphrates over recent years has led to electricity shortages in towns south of Baghdad, where steam-powered generators depend entirely on water levels.
On Friday and Saturday, the U.S. used a mix of attack aircraft, fighter jets and drones to conduct two airstrikes around Irbil. The strikes hit trucks and armored vehicles. 
The airstrikes are aimed at protecting U.S. personnel and facilities, as well protecting critical infrastructure and aiding refugees fleeing the militants.

Top CIA officer in Benghazi delayed response to terrorist attack, US security team members claim

A U.S. security team in Benghazi was held back from immediately responding to the attack on the American diplomatic mission on orders of the top CIA officer there, three of those involved told Fox News’ Bret Baier.
Their account gives a dramatic new turn to what the Obama administration and its allies would like to dismiss as an “old story” – the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Speaking out publicly for the first time, the three were security operators at the secret CIA annex in Benghazi – in effect, the first-responders to any attack on the diplomatic compound. Their first-hand account will be told in a Fox News special, airing Friday night at 10 p.m. (EDT).
Based on the new book "13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi" by Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team, the special sets aside the political spin that has freighted the Benghazi issue for the last two years, presenting a vivid, compelling narrative of events from the perspective of the men who wore the “boots on the ground.” 
The security contractors -- Kris (“Tanto”) Paronto,  Mark (“Oz”) Geist, and John (“Tig”) Tiegen -- spoke exclusively, and at length, to Fox News about what they saw and did that night. Baier, Fox News’ Chief Political Anchor, asked them about one of the most controversial questions arising from the events in Benghazi: Was help delayed?
Word of the attack on the diplomatic compound reached the CIA annex just after 9:30 p.m. Within five minutes, the security team at the annex was geared up for battle, and ready to move to the compound, a mile away.
“Five minutes, we're ready,” said Paronto, a former Army Ranger. “It was thumbs up, thumbs up, we're ready to go.”
But the team was held back. According to the security operators, they were delayed from responding to the attack by the top CIA officer in Benghazi, whom they refer to only as “Bob.”
“It had probably been 15 minutes I think, and … I just said, ‘Hey, you know, we gotta-- we need to get over there, we're losing the initiative,’” said Tiegen. “And Bob just looks straight at me and said, ‘Stand down, you need to wait.’”
“We're starting to get calls from the State Department guys saying, ‘Hey, we're taking fire, we need you guys here, we need help,’” said Paronto.
After a delay of nearly 30 minutes, the security team headed to the besieged consulate without orders. They asked their CIA superiors to call for armed air support, which never came.
Now, looking back, the security team said they believed that if they had not been delayed for nearly half an hour, or if the air support had come, things might have turned out differently.
“Ambassador Stevens and Sean [Smith], yeah, they would still be alive, my gut is yes,” Paronto said. Tiegen concurred.
“I strongly believe if we'd left immediately, they'd still be alive today,” he added.
In a statement to Fox News, a senior intelligence official insisted that,  “There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support.”
Baier put that assertion directly to the operators.
“You use the words ‘stand down,’” Baier noted. “A number of people now, including the House Intelligence Committee  insist no one was hindered from responding to the situation at the compound…so what do you say to that?”
“No, it happened,” said Tiegen.
“It happened on the ground-- all I can talk about is what happened on that ground that night,” added Paronto. “To us. To myself, twice, and to-- to Tig, once. It happened that night. We were told to wait, stand-- and stand down.  We were delayed three times.”
In a statement to Fox News, a senior intelligence official did allow that the security team was delayed from responding while the CIA’s top officer in Benghazi tried to rally local support.
In the special, Baier also asks about the infamous YouTube video that was blamed for the violence in Benghazi.
Paronto laughed at the suggestion that the video played any role in the events of that night, saying he did not even know of the video until he was out of Libya and on his way home. “I didn't know about the video ‘till I got to Germany,” he said. “(I had) no idea about any video, no. No, sir.”
The full, first-hand account of what really happened in Benghazi can be seen when Fox News airs 13 hours at Benghazi: The Inside Story Friday night 10 p.m. (EDT), Saturday at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. (EDT), and Sunday at 8 p.m. (EDT)

Lebanese army says Israel detonated spying device, killing 1

BEIRUT –  The Lebanese army says Israel remotely detonated a spying device planted in south Lebanon, killing one civilian.
A Lebanese security official, however, says the dead man was a member of the militant Hezbollah group. The official says Hussein Ali Haidar was dismantling the device planted on the group's telecommunications network in Adloun village on Friday when it exploded. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.
The army says Israel detonated the device "from a distance" through aircraft flying overhead.
The Israeli military declined to comment.
Lebanese and U.N. officials have accused Israel in the past of detonating similar surveillance devices planted in south Lebanon, where Hezbollah guerrillas operate. Hezbollah and Israel, bitter enemies, fought a fierce monthlong war in 2006.

Spying cell towers may be spread across US

There are at least 19 bogus cellphone towers operating across the United States that could be used to spy upon, and even hijack, passing mobile phones.
So says Les Goldsmith, head of ESD America, a company that imports and sells tightly secured mobile phones that can detect "baseband" hacking attempts. Goldsmith calls fake cell towers "interceptors."
"Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated," Goldsmith told Popular Science in a piece posted online last week. "One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina, and he found eight different interceptors on that trip."
MORE: Best Android Antivirus Software 2014
The better to spy on you with
Cellphones communicate with cellular-service towers using the baseband processor, a chip that controls some or all of the radio signals sent to and from the device. Baseband processors run their own operating systems and are made by a handful of companies that zealously protect their trade secrets; not even phone makers know exactly how the baseband processors work.
Mobile phones seek out and establish contact with the nearest compatible cell tower, or at least the one with the strongest signal, jumping from one "cell" to another as they move around. However, while each phone has to prove its authenticity to each tower (to verify that the cellular service has been paid for), towers are under no obligation to verify their own identities to phones.
That's where bogus towers come into play. Also known as "IMSI catchers," they're used by law enforcement in many countries, including the U.S., to collect the IMSI identification numbers of the SIM cards on GSM and LTE phones. Even without any phone calls or texts sent or received, a phone's IMSI will be logged by every nearby cell tower, real or fake.
Most cellular communications between a phone and a tower are encrypted, but the encryption standard has to be agreed upon during initial contact. A tower can demand that weak encryption, or no encryption at all, be used. Signal protocols — various iterations of 4G, 3G or 2G — are also negotiated.
An ordinary cellphone indicates when it moves from 4G to 3G, but it won't display which form of encryption is being used. The user will have no idea if calls, texts or data are being transmitted "in the clear" for anyone to hear or see.
MORE: How to Secure Your iPhone Now
In this way, a bogus tower with a signal stronger than other nearby towers can force decryption upon targeted devices. High-end bogus towers can relay outgoing communications to genuine cellular networks, and thereby stage man-in-the-middle attacks; the targeted user can place calls and send texts, usually with no indication that he or she is being monitored.
Bogus towers can even be used to deliver malware by attacking the baseband processor, as several proof-of-concept hacks demonstrated at security conferences have shown. It's possible that the much-rumored, but never proven, ability of the National Security Agency to use a phone that's been "turned off" as a microphone depends on baseband malware.
Catching the catchers
The CryptoPhone 500 sold by Goldsmith's company can tell when an IMSI catcher is in operation. A Samsung Galaxy S3 running a heavily modified version of Android licensed from the German company GSMK, the phone has a "baseband firewall" that monitors everything going in and out of the baseband processor.
If GSM encryption is downgraded or deactivated, or the baseband sees a lot of traffic without corresponding activity in the "userland" operating system (in this case, Android), the screen alerts the user that an IMSI catcher may be in operation.
Using data provided from clients who use CryptoPhone 500s, Goldsmith's company has created a map of the U.S. showing locations of 19 IMSI catchers. Most are in California and the Southwest, but Chicago and New York have one each.
"A lot of these interceptors are right on top of U.S. military bases," Goldsmith told Popular Science. "So we begin to wonder — are some of them U.S. government interceptors? Or are some of them Chinese interceptors?"
It's possible that they're neither. One unnamed American expert who spoke to the British tech-news site The Register put forward a less thrilling explanation.
"It is most probable that these sites are to allow coverage to groups of people that are not in a conventional coverage area (such as paying customers in a casino, or military groups)," the source said. "I would suggest that university campus areas may do the same."
Do it yourself
If you want the ability to detect IMSI catchers with your own phone, you're in luck, because it's gotten a bit easier. Goldsmith won't disclose how much the CryptoPhone 500 costs, but media reports have put the U.S. retail price at about $3,500.
If you already have your own Samsung Galaxy S3 and know how to root it, however, you can install the recently released IMSI-catching app Darshak, available for free in the Google Play store.

State vs. Bill O'Reilly: Spokeswoman attacks Fox News host as ISIS threat grows

Marie Harf, whose career has alternated between government jobs and campaign jobs, is the deputy spokesman for the State Department, and if her recent communications are any indication, the face of the most acute foreign-policy crisis facing these United States is Bill O’Reilly’s — an admittedly self-satisfied visage, to be sure, out of which pours a stream of apparently inexhaustible glibness. But he’s never beheaded anybody, so far as I know.
Mr. O’Reilly became an enemy of State when he conducted an interview with Fox News reporter James Rosen, who had some mildly unflattering things to say about Ms. Harf’s superior, Jen Psaki, the witless off-brand Pippi Longstocking who is the current media face of the American diplomatic project. The Obama administration is, to be charitable, currently unsure of how to go about dealing with the Islamic State, and Ms. Psaki was something less than convincing in trying to explain what exactly the administration has been up to between that group’s beheadings. Ms. Harf proclaimed (here I’ll translate from the Twitterese): “Jen Psaki explains foreign policy with intelligence and class. Too bad we can’t say the same about Bill O’Reilly.”
This is not a new thing for the Obama administration, for Democrats, and for the Left. White House communications director Anita Dunn denounced Fox News in the early days of the Obama administration, and Megyn Kelly has recently been elevated to the status of sacred hate totem for Democrats.
To begin with the specific case of Ms. Harf, it is unseemly for an official of the State Department to publicly denounce Bill O’Reilly or any other critic in the media. The State Department has more important things on its agenda, its business is foreign rather than domestic, and there should be at least some decent pretense of separation between the functioning of the American diplomatic apparatus and the Democratic campaign apparatus. That is sometimes difficult to do: Ms. Psaki is literally in bed with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, being married to its deputy finance director. (You can read all about it in Greenwich magazine — because of course she’s a Greenwich girl.) The State Department is not the high-school-prom decorating committee, and Ms. Psaki is, despite her demeanor, a grown woman who works in a media-oriented job. She can take her lumps, having signed up for them.
No doubt the queen-bee tweener impersonation is putting absolute mortal terror into the Islamic State, whose members surely are checking her Twitter feed as they whet their blades.