Obama Releases Dangerous Jihadists – Then Misleads Country About It
Posted: December 18, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Politics, Terrorism, White House | Tags: al Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Barack Obama, Bowe Bergdahl, Director of National Intelligence, Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Ibrahim al Qosi, Joint Task Force Guantanamo, United States, Yahoo News 1 Comment
Guantanamo rarely appears in jihadist propaganda, whether ISIS or al Qaeda, and reviews of recent propaganda materials from ISIS and al Qaeda – online videos and audio recordings, glossy magazines, etc. – found very few mentions of the facility.
Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Jocelyn write: President Barack Obama says his administration will continue releasing terrorists from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so long as those released are less dangerous than the jihadists currently fighting against the U.S. and its interests.
“I am absolutely persuaded, as are my top intelligence and military advisers, that Guantanamo is used as a recruitment tool for organizations like ISIS. And if we want to fight ’em, then we can’t give ’em these kinds of excuses.”
The bizarre argument comes in a new interview with Olivier Knox of Yahoo! News and is one of several comments in their discussion that reinforces the president’s stubborn nonchalance on issues related to jihad. Obama also shrugs off concerns about recidivism of former Guantanamo detainees, suggesting that only a “handful” of former detainees have returned to the fight and claiming that only “low-level” terrorists have been released from the detention facility. Both claims are demonstrably false.
“Virtually everything Obama said in his Yahoo interview about Guantanamo is false. Guantanamo is not a leading recruitment tool for jihadists. From the earliest days of the facility, many of those detained there were deemed more than the “low-level” fighters the president would have us believe. And far more than a “handful” of released detainees – nearly 200 suspected or confirmed – have returned to the fight.”
In the interview, Knox asked Obama about Ibrahim al Qosi, a Guantanamo detainee transferred by the Obama administration to Sudan in July 2012, who recently resurfaced as a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, often described as the most dangerous al Qaeda branch.
[Read the full story here, at The Weekly Standard]
Al Qosi appeared in a propaganda video disseminated by the group last week. Knox asked Obama whether having someone return to the fight “in a big way,” like Qosi, has caused the administration to revisit its vetting procedures.
“There is no reason that Obama would need to be ‘persuaded’ of something that can be easily demonstrated. Either Guantanamo is a major recruitment tool or it’s not. Administration officials have been making this claim for years and it’s not true.”
“I am absolutely persuaded, as are my top intelligence and military advisers, that Guantanamo is used as a recruitment tool for organizations like ISIS,” Obama began. “And if we want to fight ’em, then we can’t give ’em these kinds of excuses.” Read the rest of this entry »
The New Euro-Realists: Swiss Reject Switch from Private to State Health Insurance
Posted: September 28, 2014 Filed under: Global, Health and Social Issues | Tags: Agence France-Presse, Barack Obama, EUROPE, Geneva, Insurance, Switzerland, Voting, Yahoo News Leave a comment
Geneva (AFP) – Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a plan for a seismic shift from the country’s all-private health insurance system to a state-run scheme.
Referendum results showed that almost 62 percent of voters had shot down a reform pushed by left-leaning parties which say the current private system is busting the budgets of ordinary residents.
“The Swiss population does not want a single national scheme.”
The results also underlined the national divisions over the hotly-contested issue as the country’s German-speaking regions voted against the plan, while their French-speaking counterparts were in favour.
“Our health system is among the top performers in the world. Competition between health insurers and freedom of choice for clients play a major role in this.”
— Swiss Insurance Association
Switzerland’s private insurance lobby hailed the vote.
Going public would have been a major shift for a country whose health system is often hailed abroad as a paragon of efficiency, but is a growing source of frustration at home because of soaring costs.
“Over the past 20 years in Switzerland, health costs have grown 80 percent and insurance premiums 125 percent,” ophthalmologist Michel Matter told AFP. Read the rest of this entry »
Number of People Listed as Missing in Washington State Landslide Rises to 176
Posted: March 25, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, U.S. News | Tags: Arlington, Arlington Washington, Pennington, Reuters, Seattle, Snohomish County Washington, Washington, Yahoo News 3 Comments
(Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
ARLINGTON, Washington (Reuters) – The number of people listed as missing from a devastating Washington state landslide that has killed at least 14 people rose on Monday to 176 from 108, Snohomish County emergency management director John Pennington said.
“The 176 I believe very strongly is not going to be a number that we’re going to see in fatalities, I think it’s going to drop dramatically,” Pennington said, adding that there appear to be duplicates in some of those people reported missing.
Russian Spy Ship Docked in Havana
Posted: February 27, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Diplomacy, War Room | Tags: Agence France-Presse, Black Sea, Boris Yeltsin, Cuba, Havana, Media of Russia, Russian Orthodox Church, Yahoo News 2 Comments
A Soviet-made Lada limousine passes by Russian Vishnya (also known as Meridian) class warship CCB-175 Viktor Leonov, docked, on February 26, 2014, at Havana harbor (AFP Photo/Adalberto Roque)
Havana (AFP) – A Russian warship was docked in Havana Wednesday, without explanation from Communist Cuba or its state media.
Obama’s weakness invites aggression
The Viktor Leonov CCB-175 boat, measuring 91.5 meters (300 feet) long and 14.5 meters wide, was docked at the port of Havana’s cruise ship area, near the Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
The Vishnya, or Meridian-class intelligence ship, which has a crew of around 200, went into service in the Black Sea in 1988 before it was transferred seven years later to the northern fleet, Russian media sources said.
Neither Cuban authorities nor state media have mentioned the ship’s visit, unlike on previous tours by Russian warships.
Everyday Heroes: Dairy Queen employee’s honorable actions praised online
Posted: September 19, 2013 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Entertainment | Tags: Customer, Daily Mail, Dairy Queen, Hopkins, Minnesota, Prusak, Reddit, Yahoo News Leave a comment
Joey Prusak (photo: Joey Prusak)
When a visually impaired customer accidentally dropped a $20 bill at a Hopkins, Minn., Dairy Queen, employee Joey Prusak said he was shocked by what happened next.
“The lady behind him just picked it up and put it in her purse,” he told Yahoo News. “As if no one saw it.”
What Prusak did inspired another customer to write an email to the store manager praising the 19-year-old for his calm and kindness. The email went to Reddit, was picked up by the Daily Mail and quickly turned Prusak into a nominee for the Nice Guy Hall of Fame (if only such a place existed).
Prusak, who has been working at Dairy Queen since he was 14, told Yahoo News that he recognized the visually impaired customer. “He’s a regular and he always pays with a debit card,” he said. “He doesn’t use a wallet, so when he pulled out his card, the cash fell to the ground.” Read the rest of this entry »
TOOTHLESS: U.S.-Russia deal says nothing about use of force
Posted: September 14, 2013 Filed under: Global, War Room | Tags: Geneva, John Kerry, Reuters, Sergey Lavrov, Syria, United Nations Security Council, United States, Yahoo News 1 Comment
GENEVA (Reuters) – A U.S.-Russian deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal contains nothing about the potential use of force if Syria fails to comply, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »
How Oberlin Created the Hate Crime of the Year
Posted: August 23, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Associated Press, Ku Klux Klan, Marvin Krislov, Michelle Malkin, New York Times, Oberlin, Oberlin College, Yahoo News 1 CommentThe spate of hate that beset a liberal-arts college was, as usual, a hoax.
By Michelle Malkin
Busted. Stone-cold busted. Just as I suspected, “progressive” pranksters at Oberlin College have been definitively unmasked as the perpetrators of phony campus “hate crimes” that scored international headlines in March. The blabbermouth academic administrators who helped fuel the hysteria are now running for cover.
The Associated Press, the New York Times, MSNBC, Yahoo News, and the Huffington Post were among the media outlets that trumpeted the story of supposed racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism run amok at my alma mater. Throughout the winter, anti-black and anti-gay graffiti, swastikas, and a shadowy figure in a “KKK hood” surfaced on the tiny campus outside Cleveland, Ohio. Black Entertainment Television News decried the hate outbreaks and a “KKK sighting.”
Because of my firsthand knowledge of Oberlin’s long history of self-manufactured hate-crime incidents, the fake-hate-crime alarm bells went off immediately for me when I read the reports. Back in the 1990s, race-obsessed nutballs at Oberlin College cooked up a horrid hate-crime hoax. Asian-American students claimed that a phantom racist had spray-painted anti-Asian racial epithets on a campus landmark rock. It turned out that it was a warped Asian-American student who perpetrated the dirty deed.
