RUSSIA – A Chechen warlord who had urged his followers to attack the Olympic Games has been killed, it has been reported.

Doku Umarov, who threatened to attack the Games in Sochi, Russia, is dead according to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov who wrote the unverified claims on his Instagram account.

Kadyrov has made the claims a number of times in the past and no proof has been submitted to verify his death.  News of Umarov’s death came from intercepted communications between rebel leaders who were discussing his replacement, according to Kadyrov. (more…)

GREG HICKS – Shifting blame to our dead ambassador is wrong on the facts. I know—I was there.

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The report concluded that the attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, was “preventable.”

Some have been suggesting that the blame for this tragedy lies at least partly with Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. This is untrue: The blame lies entirely with Washington.

The report states that retired Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, twice offered to “sustain” the special forces security team in Tripoli and that Chris twice “declined.”

Since Chris cannot speak, I want to explain the reasons and timing for his responses to Gen. Ham. As the deputy chief of mission, I was kept informed by Chris or was present throughout the process. (more…)

Most people know al-Qaeda (as a terror entity) has evolved over the past 10+ years.   Recently the Obama administration has doggedly tried to parse and obfuscate around a principle that CORE al-Qaeda has been destroyed.

This claim is essential to framing any success around the Obama administration’s foreign policy and defense effort.     However, the claim is false and the success simply does not exist.

al-Qaeda is NOT on the run.

As a network of affiliated enterprises, with the same ideological goal, it has grown in influence specifically as a direct result of their own evolutionary intentions.

CORE al-Qaeda, or a centralized body from which all decision making stemmed, was never their intent.   al-Qaeda intended for terrorism to be “cellular” or operationally self-sustaining and widespread.    Bin Laden specifically intended the network to be a group of ideologically aligned but unaffiliated franchises all working on a common approach. (more…)

(Via CNN) A video surfaces threatening the Winter Olympics. Russia’s President vows the Games will be safe. Some U.S. lawmakers warn that they won’t be.   One thing was clear as debate over the situation surged on Sunday: security is a top concern, less than three weeks away from the competition…

…As a transcript of his interview with half a dozen national and international broadcasters was posted on the Kremlin website Sunday, a video that surfaced online again highlighted the security situation. (more…)

I swear something has changed.   Whoever is usually in charge is now just phoning in the instructions…..    Read this and tell me that POTUS is still trying to keep up the charade:

(MediaIte)  David Remnick’s New Yorker profile of Barack Obama’s fifth year in office, published Sunday morning, includes a lengthy section on foreign policy, during which Remnick asked Obama to square his claim that al Qaeda had been “decimated” with the al Qaeda flag currently flying over Falluja, one of the cities the U.S. struggled to capture from insurgents in the Iraq War.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said, in what Remnick himself termed “an uncharacteristically flip analogy.”  (continue reading)

I’m telling you something snapped within the Obama community over that Christmas vacation because no-way in hades would they have allowed POTUS to be so obviously unpresidential.    This is gob smackingly dismissive and reflecting a complete lack of respect for the audience…. bordering on childish.

( Hat Tip ctdar ) MOSCOW — A Chechen rebel warlord who has plagued the region for decades and most recently threatened to attack the Sochi Olympics is dead, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed strongman said Thursday, but he offered no proof and his claim couldn’t be verified.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on his Instagram that Doku Umarov, who urged his fighters to strike the Games, had died — a claim he has made repeatedly in the past. The information about Umarov’s death came from intercepted communications between other rebel leaders who were discussing his replacement, he said, but he didn’t make clear when the conversation took place or how it was heard. (more…)

(Via Breitbart) The government watchdog group that revealed that President Barack Obama failed to attend over half of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) released a devastating Benghazi timeline Wednesday.

Continue Reading

Since the initial publication of this article (2011) about Private Berghdahl – new information has come to light which reflects he actually intentionally disserted his post. Apparently his goal, according to those within his squad who knew him best, was to join the Taliban.

His unit, and the military members who knew the motives of PFC Berghdahl were sworn to secrecy about his defection to radical Islam. They were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements which would preclude the military from discussing the facts of his desertion.

It was against that unknown backdrop that most support for Bowe Bergdahl existed.

No-one should feel remorse, shame or guilt for expressing concern for a missing service member. You had no way to know the official U.S. position was to lie and be deceitful of the events in order to save the Obama administration embarrassment. Unfortunately people died trying to rescue Bergdahl, and the families of the fallen were lied to.

————————— Previously ——————————-

CNN reporting:   The U.S. military has obtained new video apparently made by those holding the lone American prisoner of war, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

A U.S. military official told CNN the clip shows the Wood Valley, Idaho, native in diminished health from the effects of close to five years in captivity.

He was seized in Afghanistan in June 2009 and is believed held by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in Pakistan, the official said.

The so-called proof-of-life video, the first of him in nearly three years, has a reference to December 14, 2013. (more…)

HAPPY DANCE – Way to go Egypt;  this is good news to see published in Reuters.    Egypt’s military commanders are all Western educated and trained, primarily in U.K and U.S.  The tunnels from Egypt into Gaza have been a continuous source of terrorists moving weapons to attack Israel.   If Egypt can squeeze Hamas, an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, from their side of the border, that could potentially be a game changer toward regional stability and security for Israel.

CAIRO (Reuters) – After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt’s military rulers plan to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighboring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials told Reuters.

The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working with Hamas’s political rivals Fatah and supporting popular anti-Hamas activities in Gaza, four security and diplomatic officials said.

Since it seized power in Egypt last summer, Egypt’s military has squeezed Gaza’s economy by destroying most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, cars and weapons to the coastal enclave, which is under an Israeli blockade.

Now Cairo is becoming even more ambitious in its drive to eradicate what it says are militant organizations that threaten its national security. (more…)

Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, (R-CA) has downloaded pdf’s of testimony from last June. They are available HERE and we are in the process of going through line by-painstaking line. Why? Because since late September 2012 we have found a litany of dots which add up to a very specific pattern – and tell a very specific story. We feel, and this current new release confirms, the thread to pull this cover shroud apart is tied to AFRICOM – General Carter Ham.

Here is James Rosen’s initial take on his review, and at the bottom we’ll expand on what we feel is going to come to light.

WASHINGTON DC (VIA JAMES ROSEN) Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

(more…)