Officials told The Associated Press a day earlier that discovery of the unexploded bomb represented an intelligence prize resulting from a covert CIA operation in Yemen, saying that the intercept thwarted a suicide mission around the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Liberal Actor John Cusack on GOP-Led Filibuster Over Drones: ‘For God’s Sake, Where Are Democrats?’
March 7, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Music/Book/Film/Art
This is just one of the results from the brilliant power play by Sen Rand Paul and Crew. They outed MSNBC-GE-Comcast, Democrats, OBOMBA Koolaid drinkers, AND the McCain / Graham RINO’s!!!!! Gotta love it!
TRUE Progressives are starting to get it! (I now forgive you for the fight we had in the 1980′s JC) lol
Actor John Cusack describes himself as a progressive, but he has been a critic of the federal government’s drone program regardless of who has been is in office. Frankly, he has also be a pretty harsh critic of President Barack Obama as well.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other GOP senators on Wednesday conducted an old-school filibuster on the Senate floor to block John Brennan’s nomination and bring attention to the potential for drone strikes on U.S. soil. As the hours went by, Cusack was curious to know: “where are Democrats?”
Here are a series of Cusack’s tweets compiled by Twitchy.com:
For gods sake where are democrats ?? “@democracynow: Rand Paul: Obama Admin Response Drones “More Than Frightening” http://owl.li/itdHI ”
Good question“@cenkuygur: Up to 8 Senators now joining the Rand Paul #filibuster. Where are the so-called progressive Democratic senators?”
dems ? Do U have any thoughts on Obama’s transition from a progressive academic humanist 2 a regressive corporate warlord?
when ukill innocent people without trial – i mprison them with no trial what would u call it?-used bush powers & exanded them @Lisellecae
Cusack had one tweet that was longer than 140 characters, but here’s what he wrote:
AG say its ok to kill us citizens–and other bad guys- but trust us we’re the good guys..
how’d that play out through history mr holder…
pay no attention to the man behind that curtain
the great and powerful O has spoken…
The filibuster lasted almost 13 hours.
Rand Paul conducts filibuster in opposition to John Brennan, Obama’s drone policy
One of the oldest and most storied traditions of the Senate made a sudden return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday when a junior senator seized control of the chamber with an hours-long filibuster involving rambling speeches aimed at blocking a vote on President Obama’s choice to lead the CIA.
Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) with help from other junior senators, the filibuster was aimed at drawing attention to deep concern on both sides of the aisle about the administration’s use of unmanned aerial drones in its fight against terrorists and whether the government would ever use them in the United States.
Shortly before noon, Paul — the scion of a political family at the heart of the libertarian movement — came to the Senate floor and declared his opposition to the nomination of John O. Brennan, Obama’s choice to lead the spy agency, who has overseen the drone program.
“I will speak until I can no longer speak,” Paul said as he began. “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”
BRENNAN HEARINGS; ‘Legal Analysis’ On Drone Targeted Killings Of Americans ‘CLASSIFIED’, It’s So Secret, Even The Senator’s Legal Counsel Can’t Read It!!
“It’s taking the Bush argument, that we’re fighting a Global War On Terror, and it’s confirming that…” – Michael Ratner
This is simply bizarre…
During John Brennan’s confirmation hearings to become CIA Director (DCI) some interesting legal questions have come up concerning the legal justification behind “Drone Targeted Killings” of American citizens, which Brennan advocates and has been involved in carrying out, not to mention his connections to torture.
The “Legal Analysis” was dumped onto the Senate Intelligence Committee members the night before the hearing… this analysis, supposedly showing that killing Americans indiscriminately with drones is legal (an obvious impossibility), is “CLASSIFIED”, therefore, the Senators themselves are the only individuals allowed to read the “Legal Analysis” and therefore cannot even get assistance from their legal counsels (ie, legal experts) to interpret the legalese in order to form a proper legal opinion.
Or as I would say…. “it’s so secret, even your lawyer can’t read it, so trust us that it’s legal”.
Consider a real world example… would anyone sign a contract presented to them by someone who said “your lawyer cannot read the contract”????
Good info in the following videos…
2013.2.8 Brennan Hearings; What Is The Legal Basis For Drone Targeted Killings? (Interviews Michael Ratner) (TheRealNews, youtube.com):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPwML7NevnI&w=560&h=315]
Michael Ratner: There’s no reason why the legal argument defending targeted killing should not be made public.
2013.2.7 Brennan Hearings; Who’s Overseeing Who? (Interviews Ray McGovern) (TheRealNews, youtube.com):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElslwND1QGU&w=560&h=315]
Ray McGovern: Hearing exposes how little oversight the Senate Intelligence Committee exercises over the CIA.
Obama taps Hagel for Pentagon, Brennan for CIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Monday will nominate Chuck Hagel as his next defense secretary and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, two potentially controversial picks for his second-term national security team.
Hagel, even before being nominated, has faced tough criticism from congressional Republicans who say the former GOP senator is anti-Israel and soft on Iran. And Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran, withdrew from consideration for the spy agency’s top job in 2008 amid questions about his connection to enhanced interrogation techniques during the George W. Bush administration.
Don’t Cry Wolf! FBI studies ‘undetectable’ device after CIA thwarts new al-Qaida underwear bomb plot
May 8, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under World
Yeah the last “Underpants Plot” was a set up. Intel gave the would be bomber the devise, then drugged him and put him on the plane. No passport, no clue. So are we now to believe this fable? We guess some O’bomba supporters will. Election Terror? You can bet that this is all the O’bomba admin needs to turn up the heat on Yemen.
(Susan Walsh, File/ Associated Press ) – FILE – In this Sept. 7, 2011 file photo, John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, speaks in Washington. U.S. bomb experts are picking apart a sophisticated new al-Qaida improvised explosive device, Brennan said Tuesday.
By Associated Press, | Updated: Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The Associated Press has learned the CIA thwarted a plot by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned.
John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said Tuesday the discovery shows al-Qaida remains a threat to U.S. security a year after bin Laden’s assassination. And he attributed the breakthrough to “very close cooperation with our international partners.”
“We’re continuing to investigate who might have been associated with the construction of it as well as plans to carry out an attack,” Brennan said. “And so we’re confident that this device and any individual that might have been designed to use it are no longer a threat to the American people.”
On the question of whether the device could have been gone undetected through airport security, Brennan said, “It was a threat from a standpoint of the design.” He also said there was no intelligence indicating it was going to be used in an attack to coincide with the May 2 anniversary of bin Laden’s death. (hasn’t stopped the media from inferring it though)
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday that “a number of countries” provided information and cooperation that helped foil the plot. He said he had no information on the would-be bomber, but that White House officials had told him “He is no longer of concern,” meaning no longer any threat to the U.S.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday night that she had been briefed Monday about an “undetectable” device that was “going to be on a U.S.-bound airliner.”
There were no “immediate” plans to change security procedures at U.S. airports.
U.S. officials declined to say where the CIA seized the bomb. The would-be suicide bomber, based in Yemen, had not yet picked a target or purchased plane tickets when the CIA seized the bomb, officials said. It was not immediately clear what happened to the would-be bomber. (OR if this event even occurred at all?)
President Barack Obama had been monitoring the operation since last month, the White House said Monday evening. White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the president was assured the device posed no threat to the public.
“The president thanks all intelligence and counterterrorism professionals involved for their outstanding work and for serving with the extraordinary skill and commitment that their enormous responsibilities demand,” Hayden said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: “The device did not appear to pose a threat to the public air service, but the plot itself indicates that these terrorist keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people. (and you don’t?) And it a reminder of how we have to keep vigilant.” Clinton spoke during a news conference Tuesday in New Delhi with Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna.
The operation unfolded even as the White House and Homeland Security Department assured the public that they knew of no al-Qaida plots against the U.S. around the anniversary of bin Laden’s death.
On May 1, the Homeland Security Department said, “We have no indication of any specific, credible threats or plots against the U.S. tied to the one-year anniversary of bin Laden’s death.”
The AP learned about the thwarted plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish a story immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way. Once officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.
The FBI and Homeland Security acknowledged the existence of the bomb late Monday. Other officials, who were briefed on the operation, insisted on anonymity to discuss details of the plot, many of which the U.S. has not officially acknowledged.
It’s not clear who built the bomb, but because of its sophistication and its similarity to the Christmas Day bomb, authorities suspected it was the work of master bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. Al-Asiri constructed the first underwear bomb and two others that al-Qaida built into printer cartridges and shipped to the U.S. on cargo planes in 2010.
Both of those bombs used a powerful industrial explosive. Both were nearly successful.
WAR PROPAGANDA!
The new underwear bomb operation is a reminder of al-Qaida’s ambitions, despite the death of bin Laden and other senior leaders. Because of instability in the Yemeni government, the terrorist group’s branch there has gained territory and strength. It has set up terrorist camps and, in some areas, even operates as a de facto government.
On Monday, al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing at least 25. The militants managed to reach the base both from the sea and by land, gunning down troops and making away with weapons and other military hardware after the blitz, Yemeni military officials said.
But the group has also suffered significant setbacks as the CIA and the U.S. military focus more on Yemen. On Sunday, Fahd al-Quso, a senior al-Qaida leader, was hit by a missile as he stepped out of his vehicle along with another operative in the southern Shabwa province of Yemen.
Al-Quso, 37, was on the FBI’s most wanted list, with a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. He was indicted in the U.S. for his role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, in which 17 American sailors were killed and 39 injured.
Al-Quso was believed to have replaced Anwar al-Awlaki as the group’s head of external operations. Al-Awlaki was killed in a U.S. airstrike last year.
The new Yemeni president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, has promised improved cooperation with the U.S. to combat the militants. On Saturday, he said the fight against al-Qaida was in its early stages. Hadi took over in February from longtime authoritarian leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Brennan appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the “CBS This Morning” show and NBC’s “Today” show. King was interviewed on CNN.
“Al Qaida” considers Orwellian name Change – New Tim Osman letters threaten O’Bomba
May 3, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under World
In some dialects.. Al Qaeda mean Toilet. Isn’t that what YOU would name your crusading terror org?
In the horrifying aftermath of a spectacular terrorist attack, a bearded jihadist appears on a grainy video message to claim credit on behalf of … “The Rescue and Revitalization of the Nation Group”? According to a letter seized at Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound one year ago and made public Thursday, that was one of the possible options if his al-Qaida network changed its name.
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which published the letter among 17 documents seized in the May 2011 raid, said the author of the letter was unclear. But President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser at the White House, John Brennan, said in a speech Monday that it was bin Laden himself who pondered a name change away from al-Qaida, the Arabic term for “The Base.”
“This name reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them, and allows the enemies to claim deceptively that they are not at war with Islam and Muslims, but they are at war with the organization of al- Qa‟ida, which is an outside entity from the teachings of Islam and this is what was raised repeatedly in the past as indicated by Obama, that our war is not on Islam or on the Muslim people but rather our war is on the al-Qa‟ida organization, so if the word al-Qa‟ida was derived from or had strong ties to the word Islam or Muslims; or if it had the name Islamic party, it would be difficult for Obama to say that,” the letter’s author writes.
“It is clear from the past also that they (the enemies) have largely stopped using the phrase ‘the war on terror’ in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims, because they felt that saying the war on terror could appear to most people to be a war on Islam, especially after they unjustly spilled the blood of innocent Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the author says.
The writer then proposes a few alternative names:- Monotheism and Jihad Group
- Monotheism and Defending Islam Group
- Restoration of the Caliphate Group
- Support of Islam and al-Aqsa Group
- Muslim Unity Group
- Jihad Organization for Unification and Rescue of the Nation
- Jihad Organization to Liberate al-Aqsa and Unify the Nation
- Islamic Nation Unification Party
- Al-Aqsa Liberation Group
- Rescue and Revitalization of the Nation Group
———
Tweedle D and Tweedle Dumber – President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Feb. 21, 2012. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Osama bin Laden aimed to assassinate President Barack Obama but directed fellow al-Qaida fighters to leave Vice President Joe Biden alone, describing him as “totally unprepared” to take over and predicting a “crisis” in America if that happened, according to a newly declassified letter from the terrorist mastermind.
In the missive, part of a trove of documents seized by Navy SEALs in the raid that killed bin Laden one year ago, bin Laden asks for an update on a plan to kill Obama or Gen. David Petraeus either in Pakistan or at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. (Obama made a televised speech from Bagram during his surprise visit to the war-torn country this week.)
Bin Laden detailed how he ordered one loyal follower to “prepare two groups—one in Pakistan and the other in the Bagram area of Afghanistan—with the mission of anticipating and spotting the visits of Obama or Petraeus to Afghanistan or Pakistan to target the aircraft of either one of them.”
“They are not to target visits by US Vice President Biden, Secretary of Defense Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff (Chairman) Mullen, or the Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Holbrook (sic). The groups will remain on the lookout for Obama or Petraeus,” the Saudi-born extremist wrote.
“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there. Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour in this last year of the war, and killing him would alter the war’s path. So please ask brother Ilyas to send to me the steps he has taken into that work,” bin Laden continued.
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point published a report analyzing the documents—as well as the documents themselves, in the original Arabic and in English translations—on its official website. In a note accompanying the letter, labeled “SOCOM-2012-0000019,” the center’s analysts described it as “a long letter authored by Usama bin Ladin after the death of Sheikh Sa’id (Mustafa Abu’l-Yazid) in late May 2010 and it is addressed to “Shaykh Mahmud” (`Atiyya) who he designates as Sa’id’s successor.”
The 17 declassified documents include letters or draft letters, running 175 pages in Arabic and 197 in English. The CTC notes that getting a full picture of bin Laden’s plans, or of al-Qaida’s relationships, strategies and operations, is impossible to do from such a limited sample. The documents, carefully declassified by the Obama administration, reenforce some of the president’s key messages, notably that al-Qaida has been struggling as American and allied forces kill key operatives, and as Muslims criticize the group for killing co-religionists.
