US military officials ID officer killed in Afghanistan as Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene

This goes back to the old saying about the Dog that bites the hand that feeds it.

U.S. officials identified the general killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday as Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, who became the highest-ranking U.S. military officer killed in combat since 1970.
Greene, who was on his first deployment to a war zone, was involved in preparing Afghan forces for the time when U.S.-coalition troops leave at the end of this year. An engineer by training, he was the deputy commanding general, Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said earlier that the assailant fired into a group of international soldiers at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University at Camp Qargha, a base west of Kabul, and was subsequently killed.
Another 15 people, roughly half of them Americans, were wounded. Among the wounded were a German brigadier general, two Afghan generals and an Afghan officer, whose rank the Afghan Defense Ministry did not provide.
The attack occurred during a site visit to the university by coalition members.
Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said a "terrorist in an army uniform" opened fire on both local and international troops.
The Qargha shooting comes as so-called "insider attacks" --  incidents in which Afghan security turn on their NATO partners -- largely dropped last year. In 2013, there were 16 deaths in 10 separate attacks. In 2012, such attacks killed 53 coalition troops in 38 separate attacks.
The Army's top soldier, Gen. Ray Odierno, issued a statement Tuesday evening saying the Army's thoughts and prayers were with Greene's family as well as the families of those injured in the attack.
In a 34-year career that began at Fort Polk, La., Greene, a native of upstate New York, earned a reputation as an inspiring leader with a sense of humility. He had been in Afghanistan since January.
At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks Greene was serving at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and when the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003 he was a student at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Greene flourished in the less glamorous side of the Army that develops, tests, builds and supplies soldiers with equipment and technology. That is a particularly difficult job during wartime, since unconventional or unanticipated battlefield challenges like roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, call for urgent improvements in equipment.
In 2009-2011, for example, he served as deputy commanding general of the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command and senior commander of the Natick Soldier System Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland. During that tour of duty he gained the rank of brigadier general, and at his promotion ceremony in December 2009 he was lauded for his leadership skills and ability to inspire those around him.
Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes applauded Greene for a "sense of self, a sense of humility" and an exemplary work ethic, according to an account of the promotion ceremony published by the Times Union of Albany, N.Y., which called Greene an Albany native.
"In every job I had we got things done that I think made our Army better, and it was done by other people," Greene was quoted as saying. "All I did was try to pull people in the right direction and they went out and did great things."
Greene earned a bachelor of science degree in materials engineering and a master's degree in industrial engineering, both from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. He later studied at the University of Southern California and also attended the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Leavenworth, Kansas.
In 2010, he spoke at the opening of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center, a research facility at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with the mission of improving the Army's understanding of social, information and communication networks, according to the Army's account of the event.
"We're in a fight now with an enemy that's a little bit different and uses different techniques ... and networks are a key part of that," Greene said.
He said finding patterns in the tactics of insurgents was difficult because of the way networks evolve and otherwise change. So the goal was to bring to light the patterns and determine how to anticipate and influence the actions of insurgents.
"The enemy is every bit as good as we are at using that network to our detriment so this is essential work, this is about defending our country," Greene said. "You must know that there is a direct application on the battlefield and we're using it today, but we don't really understand it yet so this is a critical element."
His awards include the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Service Medal, a Meritorious Service Award and an Army Commendation Medal.

Suspects in murder of Border Patrol agent arrested and deported numerous times

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas -- Two illegal immigrants from Mexico who were charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent in front of his family in Texas have been arrested and deported numerous times, police sources told FoxNews.com.
One suspect has been arrested no fewer than four times for entering the U.S. illegally, according to federal court records. The other has been deported twice after entering the U.S. illegally, sources said.
Gustavo Tijerina, 30, and Ismael Hernandez, 40, were arraigned Tuesday afternoon inside the Willacy County jail library. They were ordered held without bail after being charged with capital murder of a peace officer, attempted murder, and a variety of lesser charges.
The pair, who have been living in Texas illegally, confessed after being interviewed multiple times Monday to killing Border Patrol agent Javier Vega Jr. in front of his wife and two kids and his parents Sunday night while they were fishing in Santa Monica, Sheriff Larry Spence told FoxNews.com.
They finally confessed to the robbery and indicated they knew they had killed someone, but did not know it was an off-duty Border Patrol agent, Spence said in an interview in his office Tuesday morning.
"They do now," he said.
When asked how the suspects reacted when they learned the victim was a Border Patrol agent, Spence said, "shock and concern."
The sheriff said the two suspects were likely connected to cartels or other criminal gangs.
"They claim to have been involved in other incidents, this means you've got stolen vehicles going into Mexico," he said.
"Everything is going to be cartel-related, there's a connection somehow.
"This is not the first episode of border violence in Willacy County but it's the first time someone's been killed," he said.
Tijerina, who according to records was arrested at least four times between 2007 and 2010 for entering the U.S. illegally, and Hernandez allegedly approached Vega and his family and tried to rob them on Sunday night. When Vega pulled out his weapon, the suspects allegedly shot him in the chest, killing him.Vega's father was shot in the hip and is recovering at a nearby hospital.
Both Tijerina and Hernandez were arraigned on seven charges: capital murder of a peace officer, attempted murder, four counts each of aggravated robbery and one count of tampering with evidence. When asked by the judge if they wanted to notify the Mexican Consulate and if they wanted attorneys, both said yes. Each also wanted to be allowed to call family members.
At 12:45pm, the first suspect, Tijerina, appeared before Judge George Solis. He wore an orange short-sleeve shirt and pants and black flip flops with silver chains around his ankles. His blood-shot eyes bulged in apparent surprise when the judge told him he faced seven different counts.
Tijerina at several points during his arraignment looked around the room and stared at each person, including this reporter and two others, and the county sheriff.
When the charges were being read, Tejerina interrupted to say there was no robbery. Sources told FoxNews.com Tejerina is the one believed to allegedly have fired the shots that killed Vega.
As he was being walked out, he asked if he could have a Bible from the library shelf. He was told he would be brought one later in his cell.
After Tijerina had been escorted out of the small room, Hernandez, thin and lanky and wearing dark green prison garb, was brought in about 1:10pm. He was more vocal than the first suspect. When told of the seven charges he was facing, Hernandez exclaimed "seven charges?" in Spanish.
"I don't understand why I'm being accused of so many things," he told the judge.
Hernandez said he tested negative for gunshot powder. Sources said this suspect’s job in the robbery-turned-murder was to drive the car they planned to steal.
Hernandez said he wanted to tell his wife and his brothers "who live here" what had happened.
"I wish I could let my wife know and my brothers, the ones who are here," he said.
When he was told a lawyer would be provided if he couldn't afford one, Hernandez said, "Yo no tengo deniro. No tengo nada." ("I don't have money, I don't have anything.")
According to court records, Tijerina, who also goes by the name Tijerina-Sandoval, pleaded guilty to entering the U.S. illegally on July 9, 2007. He was given a 30-day sentence with credit for time served and charged a $10 fee.  
Three months later, on Oct. 4, he was again found guilty of entering the country illegally and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and $10 fee. In a criminal complaint, he said he entered the U.S. on Sept. 1 and was encountered by border patrol agents near Weslaco, Texas, on Oct. 3. He had waded across the Rio Grande River near Progreso, Mexico, court records show.
A year later, on Oct. 25, 2008, he again crossed into the U.S. by wading across the river. On Nov. 18, 2008, he was given 90 days in jail and another $10 special assessment fee.
On Dec. 15, 2009, Tijerina was indicted by a grand jury on charges of entering the U.S. illegally yet again. The indictment says he "had previously been denied admission, excluded, deported and removed, knowing and unlawfully was present in the United States having been found near Edinburg, Texas." Court records say he had not obtained consent from the U.S. attorney general and the secretary of homeland security to reapply for admission into the U.S.
A warrant issued for his arrest said he faced up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
He was held without bond on Jan. 26, 2010. He was given nine months in jail and fined $100.
Sources confirmed that these court cases involved the same Tijerina in custody for killing the Border Patrol agent. They said Hernandez, the other suspect, has been deported twice for entering the U.S. illegally.

Kerry calls for fresh Middle East peace talks as Cairo mediations get underway

Where's Obama in this matter?

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to use the ongoing 72-hour truce that halted fighting in the Gaza Strip as a stepping-stone to restart more far-reaching negotiations. 
Speaking to the BBC, Kerry said that both sides needed to make a "bigger, broader approach to the underlying solution of two states," adding "I believe that the situation now that has evolved will concentrate people's minds on the need to get back to the negotiations and try and resolve the issues."
Kerry spoke on the second day of the truce, which came into effect Tuesday morning and was precipitated by Israel's withdrawal of all ground forces from Gaza. Israeli troops had begun their ground offensive July 17, nine days after the commencement of airstrikes against Hamas rocket sites as part of Operation Protective Edge. Israel said it had destroyed 32 cross-border tunnels used by Hamas to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians. 
In the BBC interview, Kerry said that Israel had a right to defend itself against rocket attacks from Gaza, saying ""No country can live with that condition and the United States stands squarely behind Israel's right to defend itself in those circumstances. Period."
Kerry added that Hamas had "behaved in an unbelievably shocking manner engaging in this activity and, yes, there has been horrible collateral damage as a result." 
Delegations from Israel and the Palestinians were in Cairo Wednesday for the scheduled start of talks on a longer-term cease-fire. As part of the format of the indirect talks, Egyptian mediators planned to shuttle between them to try to work out a deal.
The Palestinian delegation is led by a confidant of Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and includes members of Hamas and other factions. The delegation has presented a list of demands, including a lifting of a joint Israel-Egypt blockade of Gaza and a release of Palestinian prisoners arrested by Israel in a recent West Bank sweep
Israel has refused to do lift the blockade in the past, claiming that such an action would lead to Hamas importing more weapons into the territory, and has countered with demands that Hamas be made to disarm. 
"The extent to which we are going to be ready to cooperate with the efforts to have better access and movement in Gaza will deeply depend on the kind of arrangements that would secure our peace and security," Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior official in Israel's Strategic Affairs Ministry, told the Associated Press.
That demand, in turn, has been rejected by senior Hamas officials, with one telling the AP "We'd take the life of anyone who tries to take the weapons of resistance."
The AP also reported that the outlines of a proposed solution would call for Abbas would oversee rebuilding in Gaza and reassert his authority in the territory that his Fatah faction lost to Hamas in 2007.
Forces loyal to Abbas would be deployed at Gaza's crossings to encourage Israel and Egypt to lift the blockade they imposed after the Hamas takeover.
Kuperwasser, the Israeli official, told reporters earlier Tuesday that having forces loyal to Abbas deployed at the Gaza crossings would likely not be enough to allow restrictions to be eased, and that there should also be international supervision.
"Yes, they (Abbas' forces) can have a role in the crossings, but we can't say we can fully trust just Abu Mazen," he said, referring to Abbas. "It's got to be something more robust. International and Egyptian elements should be involved in it. And other means of supervision should be involved as well."
One key sticking point will be the import of construction materials, including cement and steel. Israel says that such materials, meant for civilian use, were diverted in the past by Hamas to build the cross-border attack tunnels
Mohammed Mustafa, a deputy prime minister in the Abbas-led government, said he has already started preparing a Gaza reconstruction plan that would be presented at an international pledging conference in Norway tentatively scheduled for early September. He said the usual lineup of donors — the United States, European Union, Japan, Arab states and international organizations like the World Bank are likely to be there.
The Islamic militant group's fortunes changed dramatically last year after the Egyptian military deposed a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo and began closing hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.
The closures deprived Hamas of a key source of revenue — the taxation of goods brought through the tunnels — and prevented weapons and cash destined for Hamas from flowing into Gaza.

Obama As The World Burns Cartoon

Democratic strategist erases Twitter account after remarks about McConnell's wife

WASHINGTON –  A Democratic operative deleted her Twitter account Monday following a series of what some called racist remarks about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao.
Chao, former U.S. Labor Secretary under President George W. Bush, is Asian.
Kathy Groob, who describes herself as an “advocate for women in politics,” sent a series of tweets related to Chao at a political event Saturday.
According to WKMS, Groob sent the tweets in response to comments McConnell made at the event, in which he referred to his wife as "the only Kentucky woman who served in a president’s cabinet."
In one tweet Groob wrote, “Hey Mitch, nothing against you wife and spouses should be off limits; since you mentioned, she isn’t from KY, she is Asian.”
Groob followed that tweet with another: “Google Elaine Chao, #MitchMcConnell’s wife. No mention of Kentucky, she is Asian” Groop wrote.
Her racially-charged comments drew a firestorm on Twitter from people who questioned why Groob was pushing a narrative that someone who is Asian could not also be from Kentucky.
In Chao's case, she and her family came to the U.S. from Taiwan when she was a child. She has been married to McConnell for more than two decades.
The state chapter for the Democratic Party condemned Groop’s tweets, calling her comments “abhorrent” and saying they “have no place in Kentucky politics.”
They added, “We strongly denounce them.”
Following widespread criticism from her own party, Groob later apologized for her “poor choice of words” and deleted her Twitter account.
Kentucky’s Senate race is one of the highest-profile races during this year’s midterm elections. It pits McConnell against Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Both candidates were at the Fancy Farm Picnic – a colorful political festival in Kentucky – over the weekend.
The event -- which drew a record crowd of 5,000 this year -- invites both Democratic and Republican candidates on stage to deliver short speeches while being heckled by the crowd.
Calls for comment to the offices of McConnell and Grimes were not immediately returned.

Israel says ground troops out of Gaza as cease-fire takes effect

The Israeli military has said that all of its ground forces have been removed from Gaza as a 72-hour cease-fire went into effect Tuesday. 
The truce, agreed upon Monday by Israel and Hamas, took effect at 8 a.m. local time Tuesday (1 a.m. Eastern Time). The Times of Israel reported that a barrage of rockets were fired from Gaza minutes before the cease-fire was due to take effect. The paper also reported that Israeli's Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted two rockets over central Israel, while two other rockets fell into open areas in southern Israel near the Gaza border, causing no damage or injuries. 
There were also signs of tensions created by the Gaza fighting spreading to Jerusalem and the West Bank, including two attacks police say were carried out by Palestinian militants.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told The Associated Press that the withdrawal would go forward after forces completed the destruction of the last of the 32 known tunnels used by Hamas militants to cross between Gaza and Israel to carry out attacks on soldiers and civilians. 
Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza on July 17, nine days after beginning airstrikes targeting Hamas militants and weapons caches. The Times of Israel, citing an Israel Defense Forces source, reported that approximately 900 Hamas operatives have been killed during the fighting. By contrast, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has repeatedly claimed that 1,900 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians. The war has also claimed the lives of 67 Israelis, all but three of whom were soldiers. 
Lerner said that some some 3,500 rockets had been fired at Israel by the time the cease-fire came into effect.He estimated that Israeli forces destroyed another 3,000 rockets on the ground -- but that Hamas has an equal number for future use. Lerner also declined to say how many ground forces had been involved in the Israeli operation, though the military acknowledged calling up 86,000 reservists, including rotations, during the course of its Gaza operation. 
Israel and Hamas were scheduled to hold indirect talks in Cairo during the cease-fire period in an attempt to broker a more durable settlement. However, the gaps between the sides are vast. Hamas wants Israel and Egypt to lift their seven-year-old Gaza border blockade, which Israel says would lead the militant group to import more weapons with which to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians. For its part, Israel has insisted that Hamas be disarmed. 
Previous attempts by diplomats to broker an end to the fighting have failed, and ending the conflict without a sustainable truce a sustainable truce raises the probability of more cross-border fighting in the future.

Rep. King reignites impeachment debate, White House unconvinced House has dropped the issue

Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King reignited the debate Sunday about the Republican-led House considering impeachment proceedings for President Obama, just days after party leaders furiously tried to extinguish such talk.
King suggested on “Fox News Sunday” that the impeachment issue could be reconsidered if Obama again uses his executive powers to delay or defer deportation for illegal immigrants beyond those brought illegally to the United States in past years by their parents.
“I think then we have to start, sit down and take a look at that,” King said.
Political observers have suggested Obama will expand his 2012 executive memo on deportation to include the surge of illegal Central American youths because Congress on Friday went on a five-week summer recess without passing legislation to help fix the crisis.
The GOP-led House passed legislation, but the Democrat-led Senate did not.
On Sunday, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer told ABC’s “This Week” that it would be “foolish to discredit the possibility” that House Republicans would try impeachment.
King, a member of a House subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, told Fox: “None of us want to do the thing that's left for us as an alternative.
“But if the president has decided that he simply is not going to enforce any immigration law or at least not against anybody except the felons, which he has done already … I think Congress has to sit down and have a serious look at the rest of this Constitution and that includes that "I" word we don't want to say.” 
On Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner said his chamber has no intentions of trying to impeach the president and that such a notion is merely a Democratic fundraising “scam.”
“Talk about impeachment is coming from the president’s own staff and coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill,” he said.
Democrats have used the impeachment issue, raised by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, and others to fundraise a reported $3.1 million over roughly the past two weeks and to give Democratic incumbents an issue to run on in November.
Pfeiffer also said Sunday that talk about the president taking more executive action without getting the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security input he has requested is “uninformed speculation.”
“Let’s wait and see,” he said.

Gaza cease-fire window opens hours after Israeli strike kills militant leader

A seven-hour humanitarian cease-fire period began in the Gaza Strip Monday, hours after an Israeli airstrike killed a leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group. 
The group said that its commander in the northern part of the strip, Daniel Mansour, died when the Israeli strike hit his home just before dawn Monday. The Islamic Jihad group is an ally of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. However, The Wall Street Journal reported that Islamic Jihad may be using the present fighting to increase its clout in the region.
U.S. and Israeli officials told the paper that Islamic Jihad has closer ties to Iran than Hamas, and said the group might have been pressured by Iran to continue fighting in defiance of any truce. 
The Israeli military said the cease-fire, which began at 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. Eastern Time), would not apply to areas where troops were still operating and where they would respond to any attacks.
Israel has been drawing down its ground operation since the weekend but has kept up heavy aerial, offshore and artillery bombardments of the strip. The Gaza war, now in its fourth week, has left more than 1,800 Palestinians and more than 60 Israelis dead. However, it is unclear how many of the Palestinian dead are civilians. 
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the group was skeptical about the Israeli truce announcement. "We do not trust such a calm and call on our people to take caution," Zuhri said.
The Journal reported Monday that U.S. officials are concerned that divisions between the political and military wings of Hamas have contributed to difficulties in securing a lasting cease-fire. Since most of the militant group's political leaders -- who are more likely to support a truce -- live outside of Gaza, officials and analysts say that it is possible that their messages are not being transmitted quickly enough to fighters on the ground.
Israel launched its military operation in Gaza on July 8 in response to weeks of heavy rocket fire and has since carried out more than 4,600 airstrikes across the crowded seaside territory. It sent in ground forces on July 17 in what it said was a mission to destroy the tunnels used by Hamas to carry out attacks inside Israel.
Since the fighting erupted, Hamas has fired more than 3,200 rockets into Israel, many of them intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome defense system.
Overnight, Israeli forces carried out new airstrikes while Israeli tanks and navy gunboats fired dozens of artillery shells, targeting houses, agricultural plots and open areas, Gaza police said. They said Israeli jet fighters destroyed three mosques, nine houses, five seaside chalets and a warehouse for construction material.
The Gaza police said Israeli navy boats also approached the northern coast of the strip and soldiers tried to land in the area. On the ground, there were clashes in the southern town of Rafah and southeast of Gaza City, they said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
U.N. officials claim more than three-quarters of the dead in the war have been civilians, including the 10 people killed Sunday at a U.N. school that has been converted into a shelter in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attack a "moral outrage and a criminal act" and demanded a quick investigation, while the U.S. State Department condemned the strike in unusually strong language.
According to witnesses, Israeli strikes hit just outside the main gates of the school on Sunday. The Red Crescent, a charity, said the attack occurred while people were in line to get food from aid workers. Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said in addition to the dead, 35 people were wounded.
Robert Turner, director of operations for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said the building had been providing shelter for some 3,000 people. He said the strike killed at least one U.N. staffer.
"The locations of all these installations have been passed to the Israeli military multiple times," Turner said. "They know where these shelters are. How this continues to happen, I have no idea."
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said Sunday that Israel had detected some 30 tunnels that were dug along the border and had substantially minimized "this huge threat."
But he warned the operation was not over and that Israel would continue to target Hamas' rocket-firing capabilities and its ability to infiltrate Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under international pressure to halt the fighting due to the heavy reported civilian death toll.
U.N. shelters in Gaza have been struck by fire seven times in the latest Israeli-Hamas round of fighting. UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees, says Israel has been the source of fire in all instances. But it also has said it found caches of rockets in vacant UNRWA schools three times.
Israel accuses Hamas of using civilian areas for cover and says the Islamic militant group is responsible for the heavy death toll because it has been using civilians as "human shields."
Israeli artillery shells slammed into two high-rise office buildings Sunday in downtown Gaza City, police and witnesses said. Al-Kidra said more than 50 Palestinians were killed, including 10 members of one family in a single strike in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel said that it attacked 63 sites on Sunday and that nearly 100 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel.