The Sinai border tunnels were being used by Hamas to transport weapons into Gaza.
CAIRO, Aug 8 (Aswat Masriya) – Eleven “extremists” were killed on Friday in a wide-scale security crackdown on Sinai, state-run MENA agency reported.
Three tunnels were also demolished and one SUV vehicle was confiscated in the security campaign to “clear” areas of Al-Arish and Sheikh Zuweid of terrorists, the source added.
Army and police forces have been cracking down on extremists and militants that have been targeting security elements and installations in Sinai since the ouster of former President Mohamed Mursi in July 2013.  (read more)
Meanwhile – […] Deadly hostilities engulfed Gaza on Friday once again where a 10-year-old boy was killed and Israeli warplanes struck targets in retaliation for dozens of Palestinian cross-border rockets attacks. (more…)

In 2011 President Obama stated -to much controversy- he did not need to notify congress, or the American people, of his military engagements in Libya (which eventually he called R2P, Responsibility To Protect).   His own White House attorneys were perplexed.

However, since then, and perhaps because the political risk (ie. polling disapproval) in year 6 is too great, he appears to have found his notification pen. (more…)

Let’s get the McCain story out of the way first….

Back in May 2013 Republican Senator John McCain made a secret trip to Syria to talk to the forces fighting against Assad.

ANALYSIS – The uprising against the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad was still young when moderate rebels made their plea to Washington: Provide us with arms so we might fight the dictator — and prevent the rise of more extremist groups.
But President Barack Obama, who had come into office on the promise of drawing down American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, was reluctant. He was not getting into another Middle East mess.
Now, however, those same extremist groups feared by the moderates have gone on a murderous rampage through Iraq and Syria, slaying security forces and civilians and openly bragging about it on Twitter. After the fighters captured a strategic dam and sent tens of thousands of people on the run in northern Iraq, creating a humanitarian crisis, Washington was finally forced to respond. On Friday, U.S. forces bombed Islamic State positions near the Kurdish city of Erbil.
If the previous administration was too eager to get into Iraq; the current administration was all too hesitant.
(more…)

Press pool given just seconds to shoot photo of POTUS on phone through Oval Office door. (Photo by @Jduckham) pic.twitter.com/thpgmjEXcR

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 8, 2014

BAGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by Sunni militants with “vicious plans,” an Iraqi official said Friday, further underscoring the dire plight of Iraq’s minorities at the hands of the Islamic State group.

Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, said hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35 are being held in schools in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of the captives from their families.
“We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them,” Amin told The Associated Press. “We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values.” (more…)

Today’s forecast:  Clear Skies With A Chance For Freedom !!  

BREAKING NEWS: US launches second round of airstrikes on targets in northern Iraq, official says http://t.co/b9JgqwAznv

— Fox News Alert (@foxnewsalert) August 8, 2014

(Via NBC News )  The United States launched another round of airstrikes against an ISIS target in Iraq on Friday, U.S. officials told NBC News. According to officials, the strikes occurred on a target northwest of Erbil. The strikes came a day after they were threatened by President Barack Obama.

Earlier Friday, two 500 pound bombs were dropped by two Navy F-18 fighter jets near Erbil, the strategically important city that serves as the Kurdish capital, and where the United States has a consulate. ISIS was using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil, the Pentagon said. (more…)

Love Bill Whittle’s historical perspective.  As Bill points out, the KGB is NOT just another organization like our CIA.  It’s much, much, more dark and evil.

Ya don’t say…  It’s as if the Obama cabinet departments have something to hide, or, well, something….

(Via The Blaze) The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services admitted in a Wednesday letter to the National Archives and Records Administration that one its senior executives, Marilyn Tavenner, likely deleted some of the emails subpoenaed by Congress ten months ago regarding the botched Healthcare.gov rollout.

The admission resulted in a scathing response from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who called the destroying of government emails a “violation of federal law.”

“Today’s news that a senior HHS executive destroyed emails relevant to a congressional investigation means that the Obama Administration has lost or destroyed emails for more than 20 witnesses, and in each case, the loss wasn’t disclosed to the National Archives or Congress for months or years, in violation of federal law,” Issa said in a statement. “It defies logic that so many senior Administration officials were found to have ignored federal record keeping requirements only after Congress asked to see their emails.”

(more…)