As previously stated, there is no ideological distance between President Obama and Recep Erdogan.  Absent of plummeting polling numbers, which handcuff his ability to continue domestic agenda items, President Obama would NOT be fighting ISIS.
For seven years we have watched the relationship between Erdogan and Obama as it flourished into a bromance of Sunni favoritism.  As expected Turkey will not participate in attacks against it’s ideological compatriots, ISIS.
Makes you wonder why Secretary John Kerry is even bothering with the trip.

TURKEY – Turkey will refuse to allow a U.S.-led coalition to attack jihadists in neighboring Iraq and Syria from its air bases, nor will it take part in combat operations against militants, a government official told AFP Thursday.
“Turkey will not be involved in any armed operation but will entirely concentrate on humanitarian operations,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The decision echoes the country’s refusal to allow the U.S. to station 60,000 troops in Turkey in 2003 to invade Iraq from the north, which triggered a crisis between the two allies. (more…)

Turkey wants to see Syrian Head Bashir Assad removed from power. Turkey made the decision in 2012 to put it’s full support behind the Syrian Rebels who evolved into what is now ISIS. These facts will not easily disappear just because they are uncomfortable admissions for the current U.S. administration.
Turkey, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not a free western secular nation, nor do they draw distinct seperation from ISIS objectives in that regard. The same Turkey who would not participate in the rescue of the Yazidi people in the Northern Iraq mountains, is the same Turkey who will not commit to the elimination of ISIS.
Western media attempt to obfuscate the NATO country of responsibility under the auspices of their reluctance being attached to Turkish prisoners being held captive by ISIS fighters. But honest reviews of the behavior of Turkey in relationship to Syria would evidence a greater alignment with ISIS than any moderate Islamic entity. It was Turkey who coordinated the arming of the ISIS jihadists in 2012/2013 and coordinated the flow of U.S. weapons in that regard.
This ideological alignment is why Turkey refused to join a communique with Arab nations to distance themselves from ISIS and the Sunni extremists, and it is not without notice that Erdogan and President Obama hold similar views and internal dispositions.
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — Arab nations vowed on Thursday to “do their share” to confront and ultimately destroy the Sunni extremist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The promise came after the nations’ foreign ministers met here behind closed doors with Secretary of State John Kerry.
A joint communiqué issued by the United States and 10 Arab states endorsed a broad strategy to stop the flow of volunteers to ISIS, curtail its financing and provide aid to communities that had been “brutalized” by the militants. (more…)

Tonight at 9:00pm Eastern President Obama will deliver a speech to the nation outlining his strategy to defeat a rising Islamic terror threat known as ISIS. Oddly some of the speech has already been leaked by the White House:
UPDATE – FULL SPEECH VIDEO:

FULL WH TRANSCRIPTION OF SPEECH HERE

“With a new Iraqi government in place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat. Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.

I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.

Rather, it is a “counter-terrorism campaign” that “will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground,” he will say. It’s a strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, and is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years”.

It was only a few weeks ago, August 9th, when President Obama told the New York Times it was/is “a fantasy” to support “moderates” within Syria and expect them to be able to defeat radical Sunni Islamists.  Now, it appears, he is reversing course and saying the previous “fantasy” will be his specific approach. (more…)

We first discovered it on June 28th 2014 as an outcome of another research project we were working on. We have tried to draw as much attention to it as we can. Thankfully the Daily Caller is closing in, The Wall Street Journal is stumbling in that direction, and The American Center for Law and Justice’s Jay Sekulow has finally connected the dots.

How can the DOJ conduct an investigation into unlawful aspects of the IRS targeting of specific 501(c)(4) groups, when the DOJ is the initiating body for the illegality they are seeking to investigate ?

The IRS scandal is NOT about the IRS. Yes, the IRS did indeed target conservative groups; however, they were NOT the originating entity in the overall plan to create a list of targets.
The U.S. Department of Justice was the originating governmental agency who constructed the plan to make a target list and then weaponize various government agencies against those on the list.

As said, we stumbled onto the DOJ trail of evidence back in June when we reviewed one of very few disclosures given by Lois Lerner’s attorney William Taylor III. In a moment of clarity, which was not caught by the interviewer, William Taylor responded to questioning by stating that his client, Lois Lerner, was merely responding to a request from the Department of Justice, when she sent confidential tax files to the DOJ.

Taylor said Lerner didn’t know and sent them because Justice requested the documents: “She [understood] the donor information on Schedule B had been removed. In some cases, we later learned, it may not have been.” (link)

Lois Lerner sent the DOJ 1.1 million pages of 501(c)(4) tax filing data. Including a very specific set of “33 Schedule B attachment files”. The Schedule B’s were specific to Large Conservative 501(c)(4) groups operating and organized to oppose the agenda of President Obama. The Schedule B’s include the donor lists of specific people and sub-groups attached to the 501(c)(4).
In essence the donor group or names of every person who supported the larger conservative group. (more…)

As we have been saying for months, if you peel back the concentric layers that make up the IRS scheme you will find the DOJ was the entity compiling an illegal targeting list, not the IRS.   We outlined the initial discovery trail HERE, and why it matters HERE.

That’s why the Eric Holder DOJ is working diligently to cover-up their own verifiable attachment to the entire process. In this latest mistake the DOJ was asking congress to intentionally leak material given to the House Oversight Committee so they could produce a media response and get out ahead of the story.

How can the DOJ conduct an investigation into unlawful aspects of the IRS targeting of specific 501(c)(4) groups, when the DOJ is the initiating body for the illegality they are seeking to investigate ?

WASHINGTON DC – A lead House Republican is accusing the Justice Department Office of Public Affairs of improperly trying to coordinate with House Democrats on the release of subpoenaed documents in the IRS investigation.

Justice Department Director of Public Affairs Brian Fallon (pictured left) called the House Oversight Committee Friday evening and mistakenly spoke to Republican staff thinking he was speaking to Democrats, according to a spokesman for Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

In that call, Fallon said his agency was about to turn over some IRS documents. He stated that he was not being allowed to release the material directly to the media, but that he wanted to get it into the hands of certain reporters “before the [Republican] Majority” had the chance to share it. That’s according to a letter Issa sent yesterday to Attorney General Eric Holder.

“The [Justice Department’s Fallon] then asked the [Republican] Committee employee if the Committee would agree to release the material to selected reporters and thereby allow the [Justice] Department to comment publicly on it.”–Issa to Holder (more…)

CNN Pundit Paul Callan points out the problems with Eric Holder rushing in his civil rights division to Ferguson, Missouri.

(CNN) — If the United States Department of Justice has any real interest in obtaining justice in the tragic shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of a new civil rights investigation in Ferguson, Missouri, (population 21,000) was a step in the wrong direction.

The department’s ham-handed effort to improve the political “optics” of active federal involvement may, ironically, create the reasonable doubt that will ultimately clear the shooter, Officer Darren Wilson.
The Department of Justice is likely to be impeding justice by proceeding prematurely with a federal investigation while local law enforcement authorities struggle with the facts of the complex and controversial case.
The DOJ investigations (there now appear to be two that have been officially announced) are highly prejudicial to the local prosecutor’s presentation of the case to the grand jury. The non-sequestered grand jurors who return home every night after scrutinizing evidence in the case are almost certain to hear of the existence of the new federal investigation.
After all, the investigation was personally announced by the attorney general himself after the President publicly commented on the case. The grand jurors might reasonably wonder why the federal government would open a civil rights investigation at the very same time they are hearing evidence about Ferguson’s most famous homicide. (more…)

We pointed this out last night and apparently it was so brutally obvious even Andrea Mitchell had to admit it:

The bigger story is actually who is not present. Within the list of the absent you can identify President Obama’s approach. (more…)

Do you remember when President Obama was debating Mitt Romney and he said this:

Well check out the list of advisors attending tonights’ Think Tank dinner:
We are doomed. RT @Bridget_PJM: The let’s-strategize-on-ISIS dinner list tonight, via the White House pic.twitter.com/kJI02cdBhI
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 9, 2014
(more…)

If you wanted to find a copy of the CNN/ORC Poll that Jake Tapper referenced during his Monday evening “The Lead” TV show, good luck.
Young Tapper stated the results of a CNN poll released today were “devastating to [president] Obama“. Apparently Tapper is correct because you won’t find the poll data on any CNN website.
And you won’t find any high visibility mention of it either.
If you dig far enough you’ll find an article on Syria / ISIS that references it, but that’s as far as it goes.  And if you read all the way down the article you find:

[…] Obama’s upcoming speech comes as two Americans were murdered and grisly images and stories of the terrorist group needlessly killing enemies have emerged from Iraq and Syria. So far, Americans are not happy with how Obama has addressed the ISIS situation. The CNN/ORC poll shows that only 30% of Americans think that he has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS.
Overall, the President’s approval rating is 43%, while 55% disapprove how he is handling his role as commander in chief. (link)

BINGO – Now we know why the actual poll data is missing. Candy Crowley must have it under her office cushion.
Nothing to see here folks, move along… move along.

The key issue is not that ISIS is using U.S. made weapons.  Given ISIS geographic conquests it would be expected, vis-à-vis Iraq, they were able to capture weapons and armament.     No, it’s the *type* of weapons, specifically boxed M16’s, which identifies the covert shipments to Syria we outlined within the Benghazi Brief.   

In 2012 those small arms were shipped to Syria as a result of President Obama’s authorization.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing the financing, Turkey provided an initial storage base near Adana where the nerve center for supporting what became ISIS was set up.   The UN peacekeeper Kofi Annan was pulled out of Syria, and U.S. weapons were poured in.

On September 5th 2012 a Libyan flag ship called Al Entisar docked in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, it carried small arms and rockets from the U.S. originally destined for the Free Syrian Army.  However, by that point the FSA had collapsed and most of the leaders defected to join what is now ISIS.

(Via Raw Story) Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia, according to a report published on Monday.

The study by the London-based small-arms research organisation Conflict Armament Research documented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from militants in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July.

The report said the jihadists disposed of “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt”. (more…)