Tag Archives: terrorists

national news

It surely still adds up

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I keep adding 2 plus 2 and I still come up with 4.

So, I therefore cannot stop thinking that the arrest of individuals in Michigan on charges of attempted kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had something to do with the ultra-angry rhetoric of Donald J. Trump.

These 13 individuals reportedly are associated with far-right-wing groups. They were arrested and charged with plotting a bizarre kidnapping of Whitmer, a Democrat who has been the target of nasty tweets and other remarks from Trump over the state response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Do you remember the right-wing protesters who marched on the state capitol in Lansing earlier this year? Some of them were packing firearms openly; I mean we’re talking assault rifles, the kind used on battlefields to kill enemy soldiers.

Indeed, the suspects arrested today reportedly were among those who stormed the capitol.

The FBI reports that the suspects were allegedly planning to storm the capitol again, using Molotov cocktails on the police and grabbing the governor while intending to whisk her away.

Has it come down to this? Individuals have been accused of plotting terrorist acts against American politicians. Where is the president on all of this? He has said nothing to support Gov. Whitmer.

It makes me believe that 2 plus 2 really does equal 4.

national news

What happened to bounty outrage?

It’s been clear to me for many years that yesterday’s outrage too often becomes today’s afterthought.

Such as it is with the story that got the media’s attention regarding reports that Russian intelligence officials had placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers fighting Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan.

Yep, we were filled with rage over the notion that Vladimir Putin’s goons were paying money for every soldier the Taliban killed. What’s more, we became even more outraged at Donald John Trump’s lack of outward anger at the reports.

Instead, Trump attacked the media outlets that were reporting this stunning news. He called it “fake.” He became angry at whoever it was who leaked the information to the Associated Press, to the New York Times and to CNN. His anger at the Russians? Silence, man!

I happen to be mad as hell — still! — at Donald Trump over this story. Sure, there are plenty of things Trump has done to incur my wrath: the insults, the hideous pandemic response, the incessant lying.

The idea, though, that the president of the United States would ignore briefing material that had landed on his desk that told him of bounties being paid to Taliban fighters who kill Americans is the utmost betrayal of the oath he took to become commander in chief.

However, the outrage that we heard from all across the country seems to have subsided. Granted, it has been overtaken by another huge event, one that has worsened on Donald Trump’s watch as president of the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic demands our national attention. So do the reports of bounties paid by a hostile power to our battlefield enemies who kill the men and women our president sends into harm’s way.

We cannot let up in our demand for accountability at what many of us consider a hideous dereliction of duty by a man who vowed to protect the men and women who serve under his command.

national news

An apology comes forth — and it’s a real one to boot!

How about this?

U.S. Rep. Doug Collins popped off on a cable news show this week that Democrats are “in love” with terrorists and are “mourning” the death of Iran’s leading terrorist, Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an air strike ordered by Donald Trump.

Democrats became outraged. They lambasted the Georgia Republican for his heartless comments.

Then he apologized. It was the real thing. Collins wrote on Twitter: “Let me be clear: I do not believe Democrats are in love with terrorists and I apologize for what I said earlier this week.”

I am speaking only for myself, but I accept Rep. Collins’s apology. I wish he hadn’t made that hideous statement in the first place. The apology doesn’t expunge the public domain of what he said.

However, his apology sounds to me like the real thing. I’m glad he had the guts to say he was wrong to say such a thing.

International news

So, we’re now negotiating with terrorists … correct?

I always thought the United States had a policy that prohibited it from negotiating with terrorists. I must have been mistaken. Then again, maybe not.

Donald Trump has cancelled a meeting he said was set for Camp David between our national security team and the Taliban, the monsters who once ran Afghanistan and with whom this country has been at war since 9/11.

Hold the phone! Trump said he cancelled the meeting because of the Taliban’s role in a bombing that killed a dozen people, including a U.S. serviceman. I get that the president would cancel the meeting.

However, why meet with these monsters in the first place?

I am fully aware that we’ve negotiated with the Taliban, such as the time we secured the release of that U.S. soldier who, it turns out, walked voluntarily into the Taliban’s custody many years ago. The Obama administration posited the ridiculous notion that the Taliban is not a “terrorist” organization. Of course it is and the administration was wrong to call the Taliban anything other than a terror group.

The Taliban is a cabal of monsters. They do not deserve to sit around a conference table at Camp David, the esteemed presidential hideaway retreat in the Maryland mountains.

If only we would return to what I’ve understood to be a truth about U.S. diplomatic policy: We do not negotiate with terrorists.

International news

Another bin Laden is wiped out … hooray!

Hamza bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden and a reported “heir” to the terror group al-Qaida leadership is dead.

That’s according to U.S. officials who today declined to give any details on bin Laden’s death, or whether the United States played a role in the individual’s demise.

Donald Trump said simply “I don’t want to comment on that” when asked by reporters to comment. That’s OK, Mr. President. No need to speak out just yet.

Hamza bin Laden’s death, if true, marks another milestone in the nation’s ongoing war against terror groups that have declared their mission to be to bring harm to Americans and others around the world.

On May 1, 2011, when U.S. special forces killed Hamza bin Laden’s father in that spectacular raid in Pakistan, President Obama told the world that Osama bin Laden was not a “Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.” His son, Hamza, was cut from the very same blood-stained cloth as his old man.

Now he’s dead. That’s my hope. I also hope that the United States military did kill him. May he rot in hell.

International news

Intelligence chiefs do it again: they’re contradicting Trump

Those pesky intelligence professionals are at it once more.

Donald Trump says “ISIS is defeated.” The intelligence community says “not so fast.” The Islamic State is still planning terror attacks. They’re still recruiting members. Their ranks still number in the thousands.

Yet the president would have us believe that ISIS in Syria has been dealt a mortal blow. They’re gone. Destroyed. Wiped out.

ISIS isn’t defeated

CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told members of Congress today that they are not willing to buy into the commander in chief’s seat-of-the-pants “assessment” that ISIS is done for as a national security threat.

Who do we believe? I’ll stick with the intelligence pros any day of the week. Trump, as I’ve noted before on this blog, doesn’t know what he’s doing, what he’s talking, nor does he know to whom he is talking. He thinks the nation comprises hundreds of millions of rubes who buy into every single lie that flies out of his mouth.

Haspel and Coats did say today that ISIS has been “weakened” by sustained U.S. and allied attacks. For that I am grateful. The organization isn’t defeated, they said. ISIS is still capable of inflicting serious damage, causing significant misery. ISIS keeps taking responsibility for terror attacks against Muslims, which of course belies the notion that our war against terror is in fact a war against Islam; as Presidents Bush and Obama have declared, it is no such thing, that the terrorists aren’t “religious leaders,” but merely are religious perverts.

I am now wondering how the president is going to react to this contradictory testimony. Might there be more firings in store?

International news, national news

What? Is it now ‘Low Energy’ Donald?

I know I didn’t dream this, but didn’t Donald J. Trump once accuse Republican rival Jeb Bush of being “low energy Jeb” and didn’t he say that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton lacked the “stamina” be president of the United States?

So … what happened to the president in Saudi Arabia? He blurted out the term “Islamic extremism” when he meant to say “Islamist extremism.” Muslims understand the difference between “Islamic” and “Islamist.” The former term often is used to lump all Muslims in with the monsters who terrorize innocent people.

The president’s staff blamed the slip on “exhaustion.” Trump was pretty darn tired, they said. He didn’t mean what he said, supposedly.

http://fox2now.com/2017/05/22/wh-trump-was-exhausted-when-he-said-islamic-extremism/

This is not that big of a deal. It does, however, point out the danger of the kind of rhetoric that poured out of a presidential candidate’s mouth and it brings into sharp relief his performance while holding the office he fought so hard to obtain.

I won’t stoop to calling the president any of the names he hung on so many of his political rivals.

I just thought I would remind everyone of what he said about others and how they might feel now that he’s sitting squarely in the hot seat.

Just think, too: He did this at the beginning of his first overseas venture as president. I mean, c’mon! He had all the time in the world to rest up and get ready for it.

military news

‘I know more than generals about ISIS, believe me’

Strange things occur to individuals who campaign for the presidency and then actually become president.

They boast about how smart and savvy they are on matters about which they have no experience. Then they learn that — by golly — they aren’t as smart as they proclaim themselves to be.

Donald J. Trump once boasted, “I know more the generals about ISIS, believe me.” Sure thing, candidate Trump, who had zero military experience — let alone political experience — prior to running for president.

Then he wins the election. He gets a few briefings and finds out the truth, which is that he doesn’t know squat about the Islamic State, its tactics and strategy or the best way to fight and “destroy” the terrorist organization.

The military then deployed its largest non-nuclear explosive device on an ISIS compound in Afghanistan, killing dozens of terrorists and destroying many tons of valuable equipment.

Now the president says he relied on “my military” to take care of things, that he trusts the brass implicitly to know how to fight the Islamic State.

It is baffling to me in the extreme as I try to understand how this guy got elected president after saying the things he did about the greatest military force in world history.

At least, though, he is acknowledging what he should have acknowledged all along.  Which is that he doesn’t know “more about ISIS” than the career military personnel upon whom he will depend if he has a prayer of keeping his pledge to “destroy” the Islamic State.

International news

Is this an anti-Muslim rule … or not?

Donald J. Trump swears up and down, left and right — puts his hand on a stack of Bibles and says “Scout’s honor” for all I know — that his ban against refugees is not an “anti-Muslim” initiative.

The president, though, has delivered to our enemies a prime-time, gold-and-silver-plated recruitment tool.

He calls our enemies “radical Islamic terrorists.” Yes, they are.

They also are experts at distorting people’s intentions, even their very words, twisting them into propaganda fodder.

What the president has done is create a climate for terrorists such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda to target American Muslims to join their fight against the “infidels.” He also has delivered to a much wider audience the very message that his two immediate predecessors — Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack H. Obama — fought like hell to avoid delivering. Presidents Bush and Obama said clearly: We are not at war with Islam! The enemies are the monstrous murderers who have perverted a great religion.

Now we have the potential for the precise opposite message being delivered to those who might be inclined to join a radical militant movement, to take up arms and to join the fight against the rest of the civilized world.

The president of the United States is expected to speak with absolute clarity and precision. When we’re dealing with the complexities of the current world geopolitical climate, any misstep or clumsy language can produce dire consequences.

The president’s refugee ban has roiled members of the president’s own party, created a firestorm within the legal community over its very constitutionality, and it has possibly enraged Muslims around the world — and in the United States — to the point of causing grievous harm.

International news

U.S. gives up title of ‘Beacon of Hope’

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Let’s ponder this for a moment.

This United States of America used to be seen around the world as the place where everyone wanted to go. To visit. Or … to live.

It didn’t matter from where you came. You saw the U.S. of A. as the international beacon of hope. We have that statue in New York harbor that welcomes the poor and dispossessed.

That’s all changed, according to the current president of the United States. Donald J. Trump says if you come from certain countries and perhaps adhere to a certain religion, you are no longer welcome. The welcome mat has been rolled up, the door has been slammed shut and we won’t answer the bell when you ring it.

How in the world does this happen?

International terrorists? They’re to blame? No. We’ve had them in our midst for decades, if not centuries. Terrorists reside here at home, too. The president and his team say they want to protect us from those who would do us harm.

Really? What about the crazed corn-fed American-born morons who open fire in movie theaters, or at night clubs, or — for God’s sake! — in elementary schools! Or, say, the anti-government sociopath who blew up that federal courthouse in Oklahoma City.

The Trump administration has pushed the panic button. It has elevated the fear factor to new levels by excluding refugees from several Muslim-majority nations. But the president insists he isn’t invoking an anti-Muslim policy.

Well, Mr. President, it doesn’t look that way to me.

What’s next? Will he now send crews into the NYC harbor to remove that inscription on the statue?