Ketchup Boy thinking:   ‘D’oh,..  I’m not gonna end up with this Sudan thing hung around my neck the way Hilary ended up with Libya; yeah, it makes a difference’…. 
(South Sudan) Nonessential U.S. Embassy personnel were evacuated Friday from South Sudan aboard two KC-130 aircraft assigned to a Marine crisis response team positioned in nearby Uganda.
The State Department said it ordered a reduction in staffing at the embassy in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, citing the deteriorating security situation there.
“We are taking this step out of an abundance of caution to ensure the safety and security of our diplomatic personnel,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement. “As a result of this drawdown, the U.S. Embassy in Juba will not be able to provide consular services to U.S. citizens in South Sudan.” (more…)

Rotten week to be advance deployed……  Grrrrr….  and some leftist idiots say our fine MAGTF guys are paid too much – or afforded more regard than they deserve.  {spit}   Keep them all in your prayers.

WASHINGTON DC – About 150 Marines arrived in Djibouti on Monday to be ready to quickly protect U.S. interests amid the growing South Sudan violence.
U.S. Africa Command said the Marines were deployed from Morón Air Base in Spain to the U.S. base in Djibouti, Camp Lemonnier, so they could better guard against potential threats to U.S. personnel and facilities in South Sudan. (more…)

For followers of the Libyan fiasco, and we are not talking about Benghazi, the irony behind Dear Leader and Susan Rice’s recent statements on South Sudan is, well, beyond rich.

[…]  In a letter to Congress, Obama said that about 46 U.S. troops were deployed Saturday to help evacuate Americans. That’s in addition to another 45 troops deployed to reinforce the U.S. Embassy in Juba.

[…]  Earlier Sunday, Obama was briefed by advisers on events in South Sudan following a meeting that his national security adviser, Susan Rice, held with national security aides and U.S. personnel still in South Sudan.

[…]  “I may take further action to support the security of U.S. citizens, personnel, and property, including our Embassy, in South Sudan,” Obama wrote. (link)

I’m just going to cut this down to brass tacks.
The latest international storylines seem to be revolving around chaos reigning supreme in South Sudan.    Over the weekend four members of the U.S. military were shot by machine gun fire as they attempted to evacuate the R2P crowd of U.S. do-gooders.

Fair enough.    But why is the media avoiding the brutally obvious?    Oh yeah, wouldn’t want to actually connect dots and seem all conspiracy minded.
Then again, failure to talk about the 20,000+ missing Libyan missiles, and massive stockpiles of missing WMD (gas et al), does not protect you from the reality of it. (more…)

Muammar Gaddafi was paid €5 Billion per year by European leaders to keep the North African gates closed;  that is, until European global-leftists demanded the payments stop.   So the payments were stopped, border travel restrictions compromised and mass migration began.   Subsequently the petri-dish experiment of multiculturalism exploded.
The citizens within the EU have many regrets and are paying dearly for the prior short-sighted position.
SWEDEN – A 34 year old immigrant from Somalia was arrested for savagely attacking a woman in the parking garage of a Sheraton hotel in Sweden. The woman died while being raped. Police say the perpetrator continued to rape the woman’s corpse well after she had died.

The Somalian was apprehended by police while still in the act of raping the murdered woman.
Sweden and Norway are in the middle of a massive epidemic of violent rapes. Crime statistics show that rapes in both countries are overwhelmingly perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. (more…)

A structurally subtle sentence set into a presser given by U.S. Secretary John Kerry to the press in the Middle East, yes.   But ask yourself this:  when was the last time a Secretary of State needed to tell the world, his boss, The President of The United States, was honest?
The irony is, and what the media will not report, this Kerry statement was given at the exact same time a series of Russian ships are docking in Egypt; as discussions begin between the Egyptian and Russian government’s for a Russian military base to be located in Egypt.    Egypt is looking for a “DEPENDABLE” ally.
Abu Dhabi: US Secretary of State John Kerry says no deal with Iran is better than a bad deal. And any deal with Iran would not allow them to own a nuclear weapon.
He was addressing a joint press conference with Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister.

“US President Obama is a man of his word,” Kerry said. “He said in his speech before the UN that the US will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon and this is our policy to which we are committed.”

Kerry said the US has a strategic partnership with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other partners in the region.  (read more)

You have probably seen multiple written accounts, stories and publish articles, recently about a growing international backlash.   This stems from revelations that under the specific direction of President Obama  the NSA (National Security Agency) has been spying upon a growing contingent of international leaders. 
Our allies are furious with the NSA for spying on them and their respective leaders.   Consequently U.S. credibility and trust has been deconstructed.
Indeed, by recent count the list of Allied Western nations rising in open opposition to President Obama, and his administration, stands around 35.  That’s THIRTY FIVE.
It is against that bold and visible backdrop we wish to draw back your attention.

In July of 2012, during his Term-two presidential bid, President Obama gave a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nevada. His speech was specifically constructed to outline his accomplishments:

“Because we’re leading around the world, people have a new attitude toward America.” “There’s more confidence in our leadership. We see it everywhere we go.”
– Barack Obama July 2012

At the time many of us just about fell out of our seats. With quick dispatch, and working purely from immediate memory, we outlined the following:

[2012]  There are many administration claims that I shake my head when I hear, but this one is perhaps the worst. It is a complete and utter fallacy to proclaim President Obama’s foreign policy has been even remotely successful. This is just freestyle off the top of my head, but consider: (more…)

President Obama is ridiculously shrinking himself in front of an entire nation.  Do you think this is serendipity, or strategy?   Yeah, me too....

U.S. special forces raids, one successful – one not. 

Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’I (Anas al-Libi for short)  has been on the “kill or capture” list for 15 years.   He was a middle level al-Qaeda guy in the 90’s and thought to have been behind the cell that carried out the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings in 1998.
Both CNN and NBC are reporting he was captured in Libya (Tripoli maybe?)  […]

Al Libi has been a member of al Qaeda since at least 1994 and was a confidante of Osama bin Laden.  He also is a computer expert for the group and is believed to be one of the masterminds of the 1998 U.S. Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 12 Americans and more than 220 Kenyans. He has been indicted in New York in connection with the attacks and could ultimately be brought to the U.S. to stand trial.

The unsuccessful raid was in Somalia […]  (more…)

Via Weasel Zippers – who shares: So knowing she’s a liar, knowing that she’s in bed with the “rebels”, that she put out conflicting accounts, that she whitewashed the “rebels” into a more “moderate” force, this woman is worthy, according to John McCain, of being hired to his staff.   This is so unbelievable, it makes one think that there is some greater personal underlying reason operating here.

WASHINGTON DC – Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain hired the Syria analyst in favor of U.S. intervention who was fired for fabricating her Ph.D., Foreign Policy reported.
Elizabeth O’Bagy, formerly of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), will start Monday as a legislative assistant in Sen. McCain’s office.
McCain told Foreign Policy that “Elizabeth is a talented researcher, and I have been very impressed by her knowledge and analysis in multiple briefings over the last year.” The senator’s office said they would not make any further comment on O’Bagy’s employment. (more…)

A few things become concerning with the information coming out.   At the top of that list comes the fact most of the terrorists *travelled to* the country to carry out the attack passing through multiple security levels.
New York Times […]  The building’s blueprints were studied, down to the ventilation ducts. The attack was rehearsed and the team dispatched, slipping undetected through Kenya’s porous borders, often patrolled by underpaid — and deeply corrupt — border guards.

A day or two before the attack, powerful belt-fed machine guns were secretly stashed in a shop in the mall with the help of a colluding employee, officials say. At least one militant had even packed a change of clothes so he could slip out with fleeing civilians after the killings were done. (more…)

NEWSBUSTERS – Dare a top newspaper journalist to play connect-the-dots and chances are he’ll fail miserably – at least with drawing the line between Islam and terrorism.

In Nairobi, Kenya last weekend, Islamist militants took over a high-end shopping mall and began executing non-Muslims. In Pakistan, Islamist suicide bombers detonated at a Christian Church on Sunday.

Yet on Monday, September 23, 90 percent of the top ten (via circulation numbers) daily newspapers’ headlines in the United States censored the words “Islam” and Muslim” from Nairobi and Pakistan reports. One – the New York Daily News – didn’t even have a headline for the latest Islamic terrorist attacks. That’s journalism at its finest. (more…)