Oval Office Cartoon

Obama uses coffee cup to salute Marines

Real Classy ain't he.

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

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

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

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

The U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Syria put a spotlight on the shady terrorist group known as Khorasan, a small but potent Al Qaeda offshoot whose sole objective is pulling off another 9/11 terror attack.
The 50 or so fighters hardened from battle in Afghanistan and Pakistan were dispatched to Syria by Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri not to topple Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad or help the Islamic State establish a caliphate, but to recruit foreign fighters and send them home to kill. With thousands of fighters from Europe and the U.S. drawn to Syria’s bloody civil war, Khorasan’s recruiters have a surplus of passport-ready jihadists to choose from.
“Their focus is recruiting those that hold Western passports so they can attack Western airliners,” said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst and adjunct professor of homeland security at the Clarion Project. “Since Al Qaeda is looking like a bunch of has-beens, an attack on Western airliners would be a way of restoring their credibility.
“It's the jihadist equivalent of an old rock band launching a comeback tour,” he added.
The group takes its name from a Middle Eastern region that jihadists believe will be host to a final war that brings about the appearance of the Mahdi, the messianic “End Times” figure of Islam,” according to Mauro.

“Their focus is recruiting those that hold Western passports so they can attack Western airliners.”- Ryan Mauro, Clarion Project

In Syria, Khorasan is believed to have set up training camps where recruits practiced with explosives and were instructed on plots to commit terrorist attacks in the West. Intelligence experts have long warned that the greatest danger posed to the West are its own radicalized jihadists, returning home from battle in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, coalition bombers attacked around Idlib and Aleppo after intelligence showed Khorasan’s plots were ripening. Officials expressed confidence that the bombings damaged the group, but could not say the threat was eliminated.
Aligned with the jihadist group Al Nusra, also an offshoot of Al Qaeda, Khorasan has clashed with Islamic State. While they may be fighting for the allegiance of Western jihadists, their fight is mainly part of the larger rift between Islamic State and Al Qaeda. While experts say the two groups are vying for dominance in international terrorism, the organizations paint the split as spiritual.
"Al Qaeda, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Khorasan, deviated from the rightful course," Islamic State spokesman Mohammed al-Adnani recently declared. "It is not a dispute about who to kill or who to give your allegiance. It is a question of religious practices being distorted and an approach veering off the right path."
Khorasan’s leader is Muhsin al-Fadhli, a Kuwaiti well-versed in launching attacks on the Western world. Previous reports have emphasized Al Fadhli’s expertise and obsession with executing terror attacks in Western countries, targeting trains and airplanes in particular.
Reports that Al Fadhli was killed in the bombing raid could not be confirmed, but sources said his death would be a crippling blow to Khorasan. At just 33, he has long been seen as a top commander in Al Qaeda. As a 19-year-old jihadist, he is believed to have been one of the few to know in advance of the 9/11 plot. According to the UN, he went on to fight against Russian forces in Chechnya, where he trained in the use of firearms, anti-aircraft guns and explosives.
Al Fadhli is known to have headed up an Iranian Al Qaeda cell, and to have established a terrorist network in his native Kuwait, where he served jail time for helping to finance a terrorist organization.
In recent years, Al Fadhli and Khorasan have worked with the Yemeni bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, a member of Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and the explosives expert who made the underwear bomb used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in a failed airliner attack in 2009. He also designed ink cartridge bombs that were used in another failed plot to blow up UPS planes.
It’s these repeated attempts to attack the West by this shadowy group that has most alarmed U.S. officials.
“The group’s repeated efforts to conceal explosive devices to destroy aircraft demonstrate its continued pursuits of high-profile attacks against the West,” said Nicholas Rasmussen, deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, adding that Khorasan’s “increasing awareness of Western security procedures and its efforts to adapt to those procedures” make it particularly dangerous.
Just last week, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the group is a threat to people and facilities on U.S. soil.
“In terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State,” Clapper said.

Iraqi Cartoon

Climate change skeptics call out marchers’ ‘hypocrisies’

Manhattan’s flood of green protesters had climate-change skeptics seeing red Sunday.
“Their love for the Earth is so real, they couldn’t even use a trash can,” tweeted a disgusted @chelsea_elisa, along with a photo of an overflowing trash can in Manhattan, after tens of thousands of marchers invaded the city on fleets of smog-producing buses.
David Kreutzer, a research fellow at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, shared a similar photo of the marchers’ refuse trashing the city’s streets.
“Somehow this doesn’t seem too green 2me,” Kreutzer tweeted.
He and other critics of the People’s Climate March called the protesters hypocrites for wasting paper and burning fossil fuel in getting to the big event.
“The hypocrisy varies from person to person,” economist Kreutzer, 61, told The Post. “The ones that fly in on private jets are the most hypocritical.”
He was referring to celebrity A-listers who joined Sunday’s march.
Stars such as Leo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, an outspoken opponent of fracking, paraded through Midtown with people from around the country.

Number of ObamaCare enrollees appears to be dropping

President Obama’s claim last spring that 8 million people had enrolled in ObamaCare recently got a significant downgrade from the head of the agency overseeing the plan.
Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a congressional committee that "as of August 15, this year, we have 7.3 million Americans enrolled in Health Insurance Marketplace coverage and these are individuals who paid their premiums."
A key part of her statement was Tavenner's reference to those who paid, because just signing up isn't enough to be counted as enrolled.
As Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained,"it’s not enough to sign up. You have to sign up and pay on a regular basis to really be enrolled."
That is one reason both state and private insurance officials have been saying their enrollments were shrinking.
"They've deteriorated quite a bit, this was anticipated to some degree, but I think it's exceeded expectations in some cases," said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
For instance, state officials in Florida say their enrollments are now 220,000 lower than the administration's count in April, going from some 983,000 to just over 762,000, a drop of more than 20 percent.
A state official said some may have been duplicate enrollments because ofwebsite problems on healthcare.gov. The others, he said, just didn't pay their premiums and lost their coverage, a problem insurance companies are also reporting.
Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said,"I've talked to a number of insurance companies around the industry and they're indicating that they're down as low as 70 percent of the original enrollments they had."
In fact, Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna, the nation's third largest insurer, said recently that his companyhad 720,000 people sign up for exchange coverage as of May 20, but only 600,000 turned out to be paying customers.
He added he expects that number to fall to "just over 500,000" by the end of the year. That would leave Aetna's paid enrollment down some 30 percent from its original sign-up numbers.
Many analysts think enrollments across the industry will continue to erode.
"So the enrollment that the administration was touting in March and April," Capretta said, "I think you could bring that down by at least 20 percent going into the end of the year."
The Congressional Budget Office is predicting 13 million total enrollments at the end of the next open enrollment in February 2015. So the number they're starting from makes a big difference:
"If we've got closer to 6 million enrolled," Laszewski said, "they'd have to enroll more people in 2015 than they did this past year."

US, Arab allies launch first wave of strikes in Syria

The United States, joined by five Arab allies, launched an intense campaign of airstrikes, bombings and cruise-missile attacks against the Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria Monday night – marking the first U.S. military intervention in Syria since the start of that country’s civil war in 2011. 
U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement released early Tuesday that 14 Islamic State targets were hit, including the group's fighters, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance center, supply trucks and armed vehicles. The statement said that the operation involved 47 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles launched from the USS Arleigh Burke and USS Philippine Sea operating in the Red Sea and the North Arabian Gulf. Officials told Fox News that B-1 bombers, F-16 and F-18 fighters, and Predator drones were also used. The F-18s flew missions off the USS George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf.
Centcom said that U.S. aircraft also struck eight targets associated with another terrorist group called the Khorasan Group, made of up Al Qaeda veterans. Those strikes, near the northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo, targeted training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communication building and command and control facilities.
Centcom said the Khorasan Group was involved in "imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests."
U.S. officials said that said the airstrikes began around 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and were conducted by the U.S., Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The first wave of strikes finished about 90 minutes later, though the operation was expected to last several hours. Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said the military made the decision to strike early Monday. 
Syria's Foreign Ministry told the Associated Press that the U.S. informed Syria's envoy to the U.N. that "strikes will be launched against the terrorist Daesh group in Raqqa." The statement used an Arabic name to refer to the Islamic State group, which is more commonly known as ISIS or ISIL.
The military strikes come less than two weeks after President Obama, on Sept. 10, authorized U.S. airstrikes inside Syria as part of a broad campaign to root out the militants.
In a nod to his plans to go into Syria, Obama said then, “I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq."
The following day, at a conference with Secretary of State John Kerry, key Arab allies promised they would "do their share" to fight the Islamic State militants. The Obama administration, which at a NATO meeting in Wales earlier this month also got commitments from European allies as well as Canada and Australia, has insisted that the fight against the Islamic State militants could not be the United States' fight alone.
Until now, U.S. airstrikes have been limited to specific missions in northern Iraq, where 194 missions have been launched since August 8. Lawmakers and military advisers, though, had stressed for weeks that any campaign against the Islamic State would have to include action in Syria, where the militant network is based.
"To defeat ISIS, we must cut off the head of the snake, which exists in Syria," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement late Monday. "I support the administration’s move to conduct airstrikes against ISIS wherever it exists."
A senior official told Fox News that President Obama was being briefed by military officials on the operation throughout the night. Earlier in the evening, the president spoke to House Speaker John Boeher, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. A White House official also updated House Majority Leader Kevin McCarty, R-Calif., on the progress of the airstrikes.
Because the United States had stayed out of the Syria conflict for so long, the Obama administration had spent the last several weeks scrambling to gather intelligence about possible targets in Syria, launching surveillance missions over the country last month.
Syrian activists reported several airstrikes on militant targets in the northern city of Raqqa, ISIS's main base. One Raqqa-based activist, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP that the airstrikes lit the night sky over the city, and reported a power cut that lasted for two hours.
The head of the main Western-backed Syrian opposition group, Hadi Bahra, welcomed the commencement of airstrikes in Syria.
"Tonight, the international community has joined our fight against ISIS in Syria," he said in a statement.  "We have called for airstrikes such as those that commenced tonight with a heavy heart and deep concern, as these strikes begin in our own homeland. We insist that utmost care is taken to avoid civilian casualties."
Centcom said that other airstrikes hit ISIS targets near the Syrian cities of Dayr az Zawr, Al Hasakah, and Abu Kamal. Also, the U.S. carried out four airstrikes against ISIS in northern Iraq, southwest of the city of Kirkuk. 
Military leaders have said about two-thirds of the estimated 31,000 Islamic State militants were in Syria.
Some officials have expressed concern that going after Islamic State militants in Syria could inadvertently help Syrian President Bashar Assad, since the militants are fighting in part to overthrow Assad.
Urged on by the White House and U.S. defense and military officials, Congress passed legislation late last week authorizing the military to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels. Obama signed the bill into law Friday, providing $500 million for the U.S. to train about 5,000 rebels over the next year.
The militant group, meanwhile, has threatened retribution. Its spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, said in a 42-minute audio statement released Sunday that the fighters were ready to battle the U.S.-led military coalition and called for attacks at home and abroad.