KHAMENEI'S NEW BOOK PREACHES HATRED AND ANNIHILATION OF AMERICA

The chilling rhetoric from Iran Obama doesn't want you to know about.

Ironically, as the financial rewards and the improved legitimacy that have resulted from Obama’s nuclear deal continue to benefit the Iranian ruling clerics, the Iranian political establishment’s hatred towards the United States is reaching its peak.

This week, the highest authority in the Islamic Republic, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned and forbade any further talks and negotiations between his country and the United States: “Negotiation with US is forbidden."

In addition, he recently made his new e-book available for download in English. The Ayatollah points out: “The regional nations truly hate America and its European branch, England. This hatred is not limited to our people: all regional nations hate them ... Why do they complain about being hated? Yes, we hate you.” The book advocates for annihilating America and Israel. It rants about how the Muslim world hates the US and Israel.

As a result, how can President Obama stand behind his promise that the nuclear deal is going to make the ruling clerics of the Islamic Republic more rational, less hostile to the United States and Israel, more civilized and a more constructive player in the region?

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the theocratic leader has not even officially endorsed the nuclear deal, although the sanctions on the country are being gradually lifted. His strategy is to pull out of the nuclear deal after all economic sanctions have been lifted and Iran has obtained full nuclear capabilities.

The timing of the Supreme Leader’s announcement and other recent equally inflammatory statements is important since they come after the Islamic Republic has ensured that the nuclear deal is sealed and Tehran will be receiving over $150 billion in the short term and other additional financial rewards when the economic sanctions are fully lifted.

In addition, the Supreme Leader has heightened his anti-American and anti-Semitic views and speeches after getting indirect assurance from the Obama administration that the US will not impose any kind of sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Even in the future, no sanctions will be imposed on Iran’s human rights abuses, support for terrorism, or any other outlandish inhumane actions.

As the Secretary of State John Kerry pointed out to US senators, Congress won't be able to impose new sanction on the Islamic Republic. The administration’s rule of not imposing sanctions applies to anything, whether related to nuclear issues or not, because as Mr. Kerry pointed out, he does not desire to show the Islamic Republic that the US is projecting "bad faith."

This suggests that the administration will support the Iranian leaders in any way possible in order to show good faith, while Iran’s paramount leader is calling for the complete annihilation of the US and Israel, and increasing his military interventions in the region by dominating Baghdad, Damascus, Lebanon, and Sana’a. He has demonstrated clear support for terrorists groups, is determined to scuttle US national, economic and security interests, and has consistently increased his anti-American and anti-Semitic speeches and foreign policies.

Speaking to the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- who spread terrorism, militarism and Islamist ideologies in the region -- Ayatollah Khamenei pointed out that "[w]e are in a critical situation now as the enemies are trying to change the mentality of our officials and our people on the revolution and our national interests." In addition, with all the advantages that President Obama has given to the Supreme Leader through the nuclear deal, Khamenei stated, "Negotiations with the United States open gates to their economic, cultural, political and security influence. Even during the nuclear negotiations they tried to harm our national interests."

The Obama administration, on the other hand, insists in not imposing any kind of new sanction because it does not want the Iranian government to get discontent and breach the nuclear deal, as recently made clear by Secretary Kerry.

So, can we consider this policy an informed one when the US is compelled to continue to please and spoil the Islamic Republic -- by turning a blind eye on its egregious human rights abuses, imprisonment of American citizens without fair and due process, support of  terrorist groups, sabotage of US foreign policy, national, and security interests in the region -- all so that Iranian leaders will stick to the nuclear deal?

In other words, what Secretary Kerry is saying is that any time the Iranian leaders feel discontent, the Obama administration's policy is to give further bonuses to the ruling clerics and implore them not to back out of the nuclear deal. This coddling has created precisely a situation in which the Iranian ruling clerics have the opportunity to take complete advantage of the American government by exploiting the administration's weak stance. It seems that when it comes to Iran, President Obama has switched the “carrot and stick” approach to a policy anchored in lavishing rewards on the Iranian leaders.

It is also important not to forget that Iranian leaders were the ones who were desperate for the nuclear deal: they are receiving billions of dollars, global legitimacy, and ensuring their hold on power and pursuit of nuclear objectives, as well as enhancing their regional hegemonic ambitions due to this deal. But since they have smelled the weakness of President Obama, they are more than happy to capitalize on it and exploit it.

As long as the theocratic Islamist political establishment is in power in the Islamic Republic, the Iranian leaders will continue their hatred and anti-American policies towards the US even if the US provides Tehran with its every whim and desire.

More Al Qaeda pre-US election attacks forecast: Americans quietly lifted out

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Just five weeks before America’s presidential election, US intelligence reports signs that al Qaeda leader Ayman Zuwahiri is preparing a string of terrorist attacks as the sequel to the murders of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US officials in Benghazi on Sept. 11, according to evidence collected across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

His twin goals are to influence the poll’s results and to build up his reputation as a master of spectacular terrorist operations. Eager to impress Al Qaeda’s franchise chiefs, Zuwahiri is reported to be celebrating his “Benghazi feat” – his first as Al Qaeda leader - and boasting of the harm to the Obama campaign caused by his administration’s stammering denials that it was an act of terror. The new terrorist chief claims his tactics had an instant, devastating impact on Washington and they were therefore superior to those of his predecessor, Osama bin Laden.

The Al Qaeda leader is now seen - not only by US intelligence experts, but by most experts in the West, the Middle East and Israel - to be impatient to capitalize on this success and so dramatically expose to the Muslim world America’s perceived weakness and his own worth as commander of the jihadist movement.

His planning for a new offensive has taken advantage of the Arab Spring upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa and turned them around to strike at the heart of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy objectives. The Arab revolutions have let Islamist extremist and fundamentalist Salafi groups off the leash in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, while Lebanon Jordan, Iraq and Syria teeter on the brink of chaos. The extremists now enjoy free rein to organize for political action while also gaining access to vast stocks of modern arms.

In the view of Western counterterrorism experts, Salafi groups have long maintained clandestine relations with al Qaeda, especially Ayman Zuwahiri, who joined al Qaeda in the first place as head of the violent Egyptian Islamic Jihad and stayed in close touch with its secret cells.

Al Qaeda planning also took advantage of the US counterterrorism focus in the last couple of years on the Arabian Peninsula franchise (AQAP) based in Yemen. Less US attention was devoted to the Islamist extremism simmering in North African and other Middle East arenas. It was there that Zuwahiri went to work to fashion new terrorist networks alongside Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) from the Salafi groups now rampant across a broad geographical area encompassing Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Mali and thrusting into the Middle East through Egyptian Sinai.

America is therefore confronted with a broad new al Qaeda front, armed with scanty intelligence.

Worst of all, Washington can’t trust the new regimes and local military and intelligence organizations, thrown into power in the post-“Arab revolt” countries, for cooperation in fighting terror.

Instead of confrontation, the Obama administration has opted for retreat.

debkafile’s exclusive sources report that an administration team has hurriedly put together a list of 20 endangered countries where US diplomatic, military and economic may be targeted for al Qaeda attack.

The list is prioritized according to the level of risk and US security capability for protection.

The highest-risk locations have been quietly evacuated – either to the US or West European countries - leaving only a skeleton staff behind for emergencies. A senior American source told DEBKAfle Tuesday that Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria and Egypt have been virtually denuded of a US presence.

Middle East intelligence observers have told debkafile that they don’t recall US diplomatic military and intelligence personnel, businessmen and technical staff with their families being withdrawn from the region on this scale or at comparable speed.

President Obama made American retreat his order of the day after refusing to heed calls for a US military operation against AQIM and its head, Abdelmalek Droukdel. It was Droukdel, according to accumulating intelligence who, acting on behalf of Zuwahiri, orchestrated the Libyan Ansar al-Shariah militia’s murderous attack on the US Benghazi consulate.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday, Oct. 1, that Obama also decided against a punitive attack against al Qaeda’s stronghold in Mali.

Netanyahu draws Israel’s red line for Iran amid secret discussion with US on a spring attack

DEBKAfile Special Report

Addressing the UN General Assembly Thursday, Sept. 27  Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu graphically depicted Israel’s red line for Iran. He held up a simple diagram showing that Iran had covered 70 percent of the distance to a nuclear bomb and must be stopped before it reached the critical stage next spring or early summer.

He stressed that it is getting late, very late to stop a nuclear Iran.

The best way, he said, is to lay down a clear red line on the most vulnerable element of its nuclear program: uranium enrichment. “I believe that if faced with a clear and credible red line, Iran will back down and may even disband its nuclear program,” he said.  Red lines prevent wars, don’t start them and in fact deterred Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel and the US are in discussion over this issue, said Netanyahu. “I’m sure we can forge a way forward together.

He went on to accuse Iran of spreading terrorist networks in two dozen countries and turning Lebanon and Gaza into terror strongholds. Hoping a nuclear-armed Iran will bring stability is like hoping a nuclear al Qaeda will bring peace, the prime minister remarked.

debkafile quotes some Washington sources as disclosing that the White House and Israel emissaries have come to an understanding that Israel will hold back from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites before the US election in November, while a special team led set up by President Barack Obama completes a new paper setting out the end game for Iran.

He put the team to work after concluding that negotiations with Iran had exhausted their usefulness and placed at its head Gary Samore, top presidential adviser on nuclear proliferation.

Netanyahu’s citing of late spring, early summer 2013, as the critical point on Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb appears to confirm that he has agreed to delay military action against Iran in negotiations with the White House. Our sources report that the prime minister was represented in those talks by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and National Security Adviser Yakov Amidror.

According to another view, which is current in Washington’s intelligence community, Israel was finally persuaded by fresh intelligence presented by the Obama administration which showed that Israeli estimates were overly pessimistic in judging the timeline for Iran’s nuclear facilities to be buried in “immunity zones.” That time line extended to spring 2013, leaving Israel five to six months up to April-May for ordering a military operation against those sites.

However, we have learned, Israeli intelligence circles dispute their American colleagues’ estimate as “interesting” but inaccurate.  Netanyahu in his speech confirmed that Washington and Jerusalem were constantly exchanging views and evaluations on the state of Iran’s nuclear program.

He also made the point that while intelligence services, American and Israeli alike, had remarkable aptitudes, their estimates on Iran were not foolproof.

Obama snubs Netanyahu on Iran: My decisions - only what’s right for America

DEBKAfile Special Report

US President Barack Obama said Sunday night, Sept. 23 on CBS “60 Minutes” that he understands and agrees with Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons as this would threaten both countries, the world in general and kick off an arms race. But he then added:

"When it comes to our national security decisions – any pressure that I feel is simply to do what's right for the American people. And I am going to block out – any noise that's out there."

Obama went on to say: “Now I feel an obligation - not pressure but obligation - to make sure that we’re in close consultation with the Israelis on these issues because it affects them deeply.”

So, consultation? yes; cooperation? forget it. His comments removed the last hopes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak may have entertained of cooperation with the US for curtailing Iran’s nuclear designs by military force.

The US president was crystal clear: By saying he will be ruled solely by American security interests, he showed them that they too were being left to be guided by Israel’s security interests. So forget about red lines for America, he was telling Netanyahu.

His blunt verging-on-contemptuous dismissal of Israel’s concerns as “noise out there” was not much different from the way Iran’s leaders referred to the Jewish state.

Their threats against Israel have different dimensions: On the one hand, they say that if Israel is even thinking of attacking Iran, it will be destroyed in a preemptive attack. On the other, Israel has neither the military capability nor the courage to strike Iran.

Asked on CNN Sunday whether he feared a war with Israel was imminent, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "The Zionists are very much, very adventuresome… They seek to fabricate new opportunities for themselves and their adventurous behaviors."

Obama’ “noises” are Ahmadinejad’s “fabrications.”

The Iranian president had no need to explain how Iran would react, because the answer was broadcast ahead of his arrival in New York to address the UN General Assembly Thursday, by Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards missile section.

The general said Sunday:  Should Israel and Iran engage militarily, "nothing is predictable... and it will turn into World War III" Addressing Iran’s Arab-language network, he said, "In circumstances in which they (the Israelis) have prepared everything for an attack, it is possible that we will make a pre-emptive attack. Any Israeli strike would be presumed to be authorized by the US. Therefore, “we will definitely attackUS bases in Bahrain, Qatar and Afghanistan."

Tehran was therefore pulling against Obama by tying American and Israeli security interests into an inextricable bundle.

debkafile’s Jerusalem sources report that Netanyahu is now seriously considering calling off his trip to New York for a speech to the UN General Assembly scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 27. He realizes that by challenging US policy from the UN platform, he would lay himself open to criticism for gratuitous provocation of the president and interference in America’s election campaign weeks before a presidential election.

Obama’s Republican challenger Mitt Romney, in a separate CBS interview, attacked Obama’s reference to Israel’s legitimate concerns about a nuclear Iran as “noise out there,” calling it “just the latest evidence of his chronic disregard for the security of our closest ally in the Middle East.”

Earlier, Romney termed the president’s decision not to meet Netanyahu as sending a message throughout the Middle East “that we distance ourselves from our friends.”

As debkafile reported after that Obama snub, the wrangling with Washington has reduced Netanyahu’s options to start standing alone and making his own decisions.

Obama’s latest words underline this. The prime minister can no longer avoid his most fateful decision and one that is critical to Israel’s survival: to attack Iran and disrupt its nuclear program or live with an anti-Semitic nuclear Iran dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and a threat to world stability.

For two weeks, the Israeli prime minister has dodged and ducked around the White House message. Instead, he has kept on bombarding Washington with high-powered messengers. They all came back with the same tidings: the US President is not only fed up with Israeli pressure but more determined than evade any military engagement with Iran.

Israeli military, security forces on alert for anti-US Palestinian and Israeli-Arab riots

DEBKAfile Special Report

In the wake of the anti-US Islamist turbulence sweeping Arab capitals, Israel has posted additional military, police and security forces in the West Bank, opposite the Gaza Strip and among Israeli Arab communities following information received that all three are preparing to stage big anti-American protests Friday, Sept. 14, which could easily spill over into Israel.

debkafile: The Palestinian Authority hopes to re-direct West Bank and East Jerusalem anger against PA leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayad into an anti-US channel, while Hamas is under orders from the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo to fill the streets of Gaza with protesters against the alleged anti-Muslim film produced in the US in sync with a big Brotherhood demonstration in Cairo Friday.

Several scores of Israeli Arabs, members of the extremist Northern Section of the Islamic Movement, demonstrated outside the US embassy in Tel Aviv Thursday, chanting anti-American slogans and praise for the Prophet Muhammad.

Israeli authorities are bracing for this small demonstration to swell in numbers after Friday prayers at the mosques and send large numbers of Palestinians and Israeli Muslims out on the streets to replicate the riots against the US spreading Thursday through Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Morocco and Bangladesh since the deaths of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff in a premeditated Al Qaeda attack in Benghazi Tuesday, Sept. 11.

debkafile’s Washington sources report that the anti-US ferment sweeping Arab capitals in the last three days finds Obama administration policy-makers in two minds about how it fits into the bigger picture of the Arab Spring and its aftermath. According to one interpretation, the tumult has a domestic motive, and was stirred up or exploited to weaken the new rulers thrown up by the Arab Spring while at the same time dimming US influence in the region.

This view holds that radical Islamists, ranging from Salafites to groups associated with Al Qaeda, are fanning the flames to start a process that will lead to the overthrow of the overly “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood, which is the bedrock of the relationship President Obama is striving to build between the United States and the post-revolution Arab world.

The advocates of this approach say America must maintain the flow of economic and political assistance to Brotherhood-led regimes, notably President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, to help them stay on their feet against the violent buffeting of radical Islamists.

The other Washington camp takes the opposite line, arguing that “moderate” Islamic rulers like Morsi are in no danger at all and are in fact riding the anger of the masses over the film deriding Islam to solidify their grip on power at the expense of America’s unpopularity among Muslims.
To prove this point, they offer three examples:

1. Since becoming president, Morsi has never retracted statements he made denying al Qaeda’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks in America. Brotherhood Secretary General Mahmoud Hussein pinned the attacks on "one of the intelligence services in America, or the Jews." The Brotherhood still stands by the conspiracy theory that the US staged the atrocity to villify Islam.

2.   Morsi, who has been invited to the White House at the end of this month, refrained from condemning the murder of four US diplomats in Libya or offering the Egyptian people’s condolences to the US for its loss. He also waited 24 hours before issuing a tepid statement against the militants who stormed the US embassy in Cairo. he made no mention of the black al Qaeda flags hoisted above the US embassy in Cairo after the Stars and Stripes was torn down. Instead, the Egyptian president instructed his embassy in Washington to prepare a suit against the film’s director. That was before he turned out embarrassingly to be an Egyptian Copt.

3. Thursday, Brotherhood websites aired divergent messages on their English and Arabic sites:  In English, protesters were exhorted to exercise restraint. There were also words of self-congratulation that the US embassy gates were not broken down and no Americans harmed. In Arabic, the Egyptian masses were called out to demonstrate en masse Friday against the made-in-the-USA film.

That demonstration will be carefully watched to see whether it is quiet or veers into violence and anti-American outbursts. That will be the test of Morsi’s bone fides in American eyes. However, its main importance as he sees it is as a demonstration that the Brotherhood has regained control of the streets of Cairo.

It was to show the Egyptian president that he is still on trial in Washington, that President Obama said Thursday that the US would no longer consider the Egyptian government an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy. …I think we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident, to see how they respond to maintaining the peace treaty with Israel.” he said.

The way ahead is unclear for Washington as well as Jerusalem. The anti-US ferment in Arab capitals may just be starting. Its next directions and duration are still imponderable. Israel prepares to celebrate the New Year next week surrounded by extreme volatility among its neighbors.

By refusing to see Netanyahu, Obama sharpens his Iran dilemma

DEBKAfile Special Report

President Barack Obama’s refusal Tuesday Sept. 11 to see Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu because “the president’s schedule will not permit that,” left Jerusalem thunderstruck – and Washington too.

At one stroke, round after round of delicate negotiations on Iran between the White House, Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, the US National Security Council, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta collapsed. They had aimed at an agreement on a starting point for the meeting that had been fixed between the two leaders for Sept. 28 in New York to bridge their differences over an attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

By calling off the meeting, the US president has put paid to those hopes and publicly humiliated the Israel prime minister, turning the clock back to the nadir of their relations brought about by the comment by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Aug. 30: “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it” – meaning attack Iran.

By rebuffing Netanyahu, the president demonstrated that the top US soldier was not just talking off the cuff but representing the president’s final position on a possible Israel strike to preempt Iran’s nuclear program.

Tuesday, the US Defense Secretary said: “If Iran decides to make a nuclear weapon, the US would have a little more than a year to stop it.” He added that the United States has “pretty good intelligence” on Iran.

"It's roughly about a year right now. A little more than a year. And so ... we think we will have the opportunity once we know that they've made that decision, take the action necessary to stop (Iran)," Panetta said on CBS's "This Morning" program.

Panetta said the United States has the capability to prevent Iran from building an atomic bomb. "We have the forces in place to be able to not only defend ourselves, but to do what we have to do to try to stop them from developing nuclear weapons," he said.

Some optimists in Jerusalem took these comments to indicate that the crisis had become manageable now that the Obama administration was finally prepared to discuss a timeline and red lines for holding Iran back from making a bomb. This hope was soon dashed by word that the US president would rather confront Israel than Iran.

The White House may also have been incensed by the orders given by Netanyahu and Barak to the IDF to keep going on preparations for attacking Iran alongside the forthcoming meeting between the two leaders.

Netanyahu's comments to a news conference earlier Tuesday are unlikely to have salved angry administration spirits in Washington.

He said that with every passing day, Iran comes closer to a nuclear bomb, heedless of sanctions and diplomac. The world tells Israel 'wait, there's still time'. And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?' Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel," said Netanyahu on a note of frustration against the Obama administration.

debkafile reported earlier Tuesday:

The wrangling over Iran between the offices of the US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday, has been reduced essentially to a battle for the agenda of their meeting in New York on Sept. 28: Netanyahu will be pressing for a US commitment to military action if Iran crosses still-to-be-agreed red lines, while the White House rejects red lines – or any other commitment for action – as neither necessary nor useful.

Israel’s latest rebuttal came Monday, Sept. 10 from former Military Intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, who argued that even without agreed red lines, Israel was quite capable of coping with its enemies without the United States.

The sparring appeared to have reached a point of no return, leaving Obama and Netanyahu nothing more to discuss. However, just the opposite is true. For both leaders their upcoming tête-à-tête is vital. It is the US president’s last chance to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program before he faces the American voter on Nov. 6, while the prime minister will not forego any opportunity to harness the US to this attack. He needs to prove - not just to the anti-war camp ranged against him at home, but also to assure the military - which has been falsely reported as against an attack - that he bent over backward to procure US backing.

Netanyahu does not feel that even if he fails to talk Obama around (more likely than not), he has lost American support; he counts on the US Congress to line up behind Israel’s case for cutting down a nuclear Iran which is sworn to destroy the Jewish state, as well as sections of the US public and media and some of he president’s Jewish backers, including contributors to his campaign chest.

Those are only some of the reasons why the last-ditch US-Israeli summit cannot be avoided and indeed may be pivotal - both for their participants’ personal political destinies,and for the Middle East at large.

debkafile’s Washington and political sources disclose that their dialogue will have two levels according to current planning:

1. In New York, Obama and Netanyahu will try and negotiate a common framework;

2. At the Pentagon in Washington, defense chiefs Leon Panetta and Ehud Barak will be standing by to render any agreements reached in New York into practical, detailed plans which would then be referred back to the two leaders for endorsement.

The heated dispute between US and Israeli officials over “red lines” was therefore no more than sparring over each of the leaders’ starting-points for their New York dialogue and therefore their agenda and final understandings. Behind the clash of swords, US and Israeli diplomats are working hard to negotiate an agreed starting point. They are putting just as much effort into preventing the row deteriorating into a total rupture before Sept. 28.

Netanyahu discussed another red line Monday when he interviewed President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, their first meeting in three months. Although the Israeli presidency is a largely titular function, Peres has elected himself senior spokesman for the opponents of an Israeli military operation against Iran.

While their advisers sought to establish agreed lines between them ahead of Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama, debkafile reports that the confrontation between the two Israeli politicians ended inconclusively, because Peres kept on demanding that the prime minister bend to the will of the White House.

Barack Obama to hail himself as the new Franklin D. Roosevelt: President promises 'bold, persistent' leadership like FDR during the Great Depression

By Toby Harnden In Charlotte, North Carolina

President Barack Obama will tonight lay out his case for being re-elected to a second term by comparing himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won an unprecedented three presidential elections and led America to recovery after the Great Depression.

He will say: 'And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.'

Obama will formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination, capping a week in which speeches from his wife Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, the husband of his erstwhile rival, received widespread praise.

He will tell Americans: 'Our problems can be solved. Our challenges can be met. The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place.'

Speech excerpts released in advance showed that Obama would attempt to frame the election not as a referendum on his four-year term, during which unemployment has risen to 8.3 per cent, leaving more than 23 million Americans out of work, but as a choice between him and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee.

'On every issue, the choice you face won’t be just between two candidates or two parties,' he was due to say. 'It will be a choice between two different paths for America. A choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.'

This November's election, he argued, will represent 'the clearest choice of any time in a generation' between two different visions.

'Over the next few years, big decisions will be made in Washington, on jobs and the economy; taxes and deficits; energy and education; war and peace – decisions that will have a huge impact on our lives and our children’s lives for decades to come.

'I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth.

'And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.

'And by the way – those of us who carry on his party’s legacy should remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or diktat from Washington.

In a plea for four more years, he will say: 'But know this, America: Our problems can be solved. Our challenges can be met. The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place.

'And I’m asking you to choose that future. I’m asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country – goals in manufacturing, energy, education, national security, and the deficit; a real, achievable plan that will lead to new jobs, more opportunity, and rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation.

'That’s what we can do in the next four years, and that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States.'

Obama will also lay out a series of 'goals for America' in a second term. These will include creating a million new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016, doubling exports by the end of 2014 and cutting net oil imports in half by 2020.

On education, he will pledge to help cut the growth of college tuition in half over the next 10 years, recruit 100,000 maths and science teachers over the next 10 decade and train two million workers for 'real jobs' at community colleges

He will also pledge to 'invest in the economy with the money we’re no longer spending on war' and reduce 'the deficit' by more than $4 trillion over the next decade - an apparent reference to the $16 trillion national debt, not the annual federal spending rate.
In a statement, Romney said that Obama should report back on his previous promises, not offer new ones.

'I actually think it will be interesting to listen to the President tonight. What I’d like him to do is report on his promises, but there are forgotten promises and forgotten people.

'Over the last four years, the President has said that he was going to create jobs for the American people and that hasn’t happened. He said he would cut the deficit in half and that hasn’t happened.

He said that incomes would rise and instead incomes have gone down.

'And I think this is a time not for him not to start restating new promises, but to report on the promises he made. I think he wants a promises reset. We want a report on the promises he made.'

It is not the first time Obama has compared himself to Franklin Roosevelt or other great American presidents. Last December, he told ’60 Minutes’: I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president, with the possible exceptions of [Lyndon B.]Johnson, FDR, and [Abraham] Lincoln.'

This year, he conjured up the memory of President Ronald Reagan when he said that his so-called Buffett Rule raising taxes on those earning over $1 million a year was similar to a measure introduced by one of his predecessors.

'This president gave another speech where he said it was ‘crazy’ - that’s a quote -  that certain tax loopholes make it possible for multimillionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 per cent of his salary,' he said in May.

‘That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan…if it’ll help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the 'Reagan Rule' instead of the 'Buffett Rule'.’

Back in 2008, Obama said he didn’t view himself as ‘some sort of singular figure’ but then invoked Reagan and John F. Kennedy.

'I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what is different is the times,’ he told the Reno Gazette-Journal. ‘I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.’

He added: ‘I think Kennedy, 20 years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it has to do with the times. I think we are in one of those fundamentally different times right now were people think that things, the way they are going, just aren't working.’

Last year, Obama invoked America’s first president George Washington when talking about ‘the problem’ of taxes. ‘George Washington grappled with the problem,’ he said. ‘He said, “Towards the payment of debts, there must be revenue, and to have revenue, there must be taxes. And no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.'

‘But he understood that dealing with the debt is - his choice of words – 'always a choice of difficulties'. He also knew that public servants weren’t elected to do what is easy; they weren’t elected to do what was politically advantageous. It’s our responsibility to put country before party.

It‘s our responsibility to do what’s right for the future. And that’s what this debate is about.’

At a May 2011 fundraiser in New York, Obama compared how Martin Luther King had been treated with the criticism he had experienced since entering the White House.

‘There was a decade that followed the great successes of Birmingham and Selma in which he was just struggling, fighting the good fight, and scorned, and many folks angry. But what he understood, what kept him going, was that the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.’

Massed US, UK, French navies for drill simulating breach of blocked Hormuz

DEBKAfile Special Report

The third US aircraft carrier, USS Stennis, is moving into place off the Iranian Gulf coast to lead a 12-day naval exercise of 25 nations on Sept 16-27, that will include a large-scale minesweeping drill simulating the breaching of the Strait of Hormuz against Iranian efforts to block oil passage through the strategic waterway. President Barack Obama may see Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the last day of the exercise. He hopes to present him with proof of US readiness for military action against Iran and demonstrate that an Israeli strike is superfluous.

The Stennis will join two other aircraft carriers, the USS Enterprise and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, and their strike groups, which are already on operational duty off the coast of Iran, ready for the drill which kicks off in the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Sept. 16.

US officials say the Stennis will replace the Enterprise, but according to debkafile’s military and Washington sources all three carriers will remain in place opposite Iran in the Gulf region in the coming months. British and French warships are completing their transfer to new stations off Iran for the big exercise in which the Saudi and United Arab Emirates navies will also take part.

In addition to practicing tactics for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, the exercise will simulate operations for destroying Iranian naval, air and missile bases in the Persian Gulf area.

This war game has three additional objectives, reported here by debkafile’s military sources:

1. To forestall an Israeli offensive against Iran, President Barack Obama wants to convince its leaders as well as Gulf rulers that the US-Western military option for disrupting Iran’s race to a nuclear bomb is deadly serious and ready to be exercised when the need arises – although determining “when the need arises” is the nub of the US-Israel dispute.

The exercise winds up Sept. 27, the day penciled in by the White House for Netanyahu to arrive for talks with President Obama and enable him to show his visitor that there is no need for Israel to act.

2.  The exercise is intended to convey the same message to Iran, that the US military option is real and genuine and will be exercised unless it halts its nuclear weapons program. The awesome might the US-led  coalition is capable of wielding against the Islamic Republic in a prospective war will be brought home to Iran’s military strategists, its Revolutionary Guards, Navy, and Air Force commanders, across their television screens, radar and spy satellites.

3. The drill will assemble massive strength on the spot in anticipation of an Israeli decision after all to cut down the Iranian nuclear menace on its own.. 

The Netanyahu government found further grounds for going it alone in certain key amendments inimical to Israel introduced in the new Democratic Party’s platform on the Middle East. It is due for endorsement by the convention in Charlotte, Ca. Wednesday, ahead of Obama’s confirmation as the party’s presidential nominee. Those amendments are hardly designed to revive Israel's trust in the president's Middle East policies.

The 2008 platform confirmed a “commitment which requires us to ensure that Israel retains a qualitative edge in the Middle East for its national security and its right to self-defense.”  The 2012 platform is amended to “[t]he administration has also worked to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region,” with no commitment to doing so in the future.

The Democratic platform has also dropped the Democrats’ affirmation of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, leaving its status open for a negotiated peace with the Palestinians.

Also removed is the statement that Palestinian “refugees” should be settled in a future Palestinian state, not in Israel.”  The Obama White House has given itself a free hand to follow the Palestinian position on the refugee issue too like on Jerusalem (which he pointedly avoided visiting during his presidency.)

The new platform omits language characterizing Hamas as a terrorist group

The Israeli cabinet held a wide-ranging debate Tuesday, Sept. 4, on Iran after hearing briefings from the Military Intelligence, the Mossad, the Shin Bet and the Foreign Ministry’s Research Department on current Middle East crises, topped by Iran.  No bulletins were issued from the closed, classified proceedings.

Some of the participants described the information put before them as “worrying though not frightening.” They implied that the IDF’s level of preparations and alert has not been reduced, sharply refuting the misinformation opponents of direct Israeli action against Iran have circulated widely and planted in media headlines.

SEAL Book Says Bin Laden Was Unarmed, Killed Outside His Bedroom

By Dashiell Bennett

Several news outlets have finally got their hands on a copy of the new book about the raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound, and the details emerging contradict many of the earlier reports about what happened inside the house on the night the al Qaeda leader was killed.  No Easy Day is set to be released September 11, but The Huffington Post's Marcus Baram picked up a preview copy in a used bookstore, which is a common way to find pre-released books. The Associated Press bought a copy as well.

The book, written by ex-Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette (under the pseudonym Mark Owen), is a first-person account of the raid on the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden had been in hiding for years. According Bissonnette's version of events, there was no extended firefight between SEAL Team 6 members and bodyguards and bin Laden himself never got the chance to confront or even see the soldiers before they killed him. Instead, he was shot in the hallway outside of his bedroom, then "disappeared into the dark room." By the time the soldiers entered, he was already dying of wounds to the head. Bissonnette says he and another team member then shot him several more times in the chest to ensure he was dead.

The book also says that while there were two guns found in bin Laden's room, neither was loaded and he never had a chance to defend himself. Bissonnette even calls him a "pussy" for not being prepared to defend or kill himself. Even though bin Laden was killed without resisting, the SEAL were instructed beforehand that it was not an assassination mission and that bin Laden should have been brought back alive, if possible.

Bissonnette is also critical of President Obama in his story, saying that no one on the team was a fan of the president and that they believed he and other leaders would inflate their own roles in the story. Even before the raid began, the SEALs joked about how they would help Obama get re-elected and also speculated about who would play them in the Hollywood movie. Despite their personal feelings about Obama, however, the SEALs did agree that he made the right call, saying "Although we applauded the decision-making in this case, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that he would take all the political credit for this too.”

They also complained that after a White House meeting with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden  ("he reminded me of someone’s drunken uncle at Christmas dinner") the President invited them to return some other time for a beer, but that call never came.

Is Israel planning EMP attack on Iran?

Tehran nearing 'zone of immunity' against conventional assault on nuclear sites

by F. Michael Maloof

WASHINGTON – Analysts say because Israel now believes diplomacy has failed to halt Iran’s nuclear program and the Jewish state’s very survival is at stake, Israelis have not ruled out a Jericho III missile launch to detonate a single electromagnetic pulse warhead at high altitude over central Iran.
The assessment is underscored by recent comments from Israeli officials that the Islamic republic is reaching its “zone of immunity” from conventional military attack on its nuclear sites.

In addition, analysts point out the use of long-range aircraft with refueling capability would be highly complex and pose many logistical problems. Israel also probably would not be allowed overflight permission from Turkey, Iraq or Saudi Arabia to reach its Iranian targets. Further, such an approach would minimize any element of surprise.

Meanwhile, top religious and political officials in Iran have issued repeated warnings they plan to obliterate the Jewish state.

Israel has made an assessment that Iran is on the threshold of a breakthrough to make a nuclear weapon. However,  some national security experts, including some in the United States, believe Iran is several years away from making such a device. And they say actual weaponization – the ability to miniaturize a nuclear bomb to fit on its nuclear-capable missiles – still is further off.

Debate over just how close Iran may be to making a nuclear weapon has raised the issue of the quality of the intelligence to back Israeli claims. Sources point to the example of the intelligence used to assess Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that prompted the U.S. to attack Iraq in March 2003.

With Iran continuing its enrichment program, however, Israel and some Western countries are concerned that the amount of low-level uranium it has enriched could be enriched further to some 90 percent purity – which is what is required to make nuclear weapons.

U.S. officials don’t assess that Iran has reached that point.

Given that Iranian sites may be hardened against a conventional military attack, several Israeli and foreign sources believe that Israel has a nuclear device to create an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that would produce little radiation on the ground but could knock out all of Iran’s electronics.

Israel also is assessed to be able to launch nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles from its German-supplied Dolphin electric submarines that could carry a one-kiloton or more device and explode over Iran, effectively neutralizing all of Iran’s electronics.

This would include Iran’s command and control capabilities and its ability to launch ballistic missiles in retaliation to a pre-emptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, which Western intelligence has assessed is a cover to make nuclear weapons.

Sources say that an Israeli EMP attack also would effectively halt Iran’s ability to launch its forces to block the Strait of Hormuz, which the Islamic republic has threatened to do if it is attacked, along with targeting a number of U.S. military facilities in the region, as well as Israel.

An electromagnetic pulse occurs following a nuclear weapon exploded at a high altitude, creating a very strong electrical field that can overwhelm all electronics, knocking out or seriously damaging any electronic devices connected to power sources or antennas, including communications equipment, computers, electrical appliances, automobile and aircraft ignitions systems. Experts say it also can adversely affect a person’s implanted heart pacemaker device.

The effect from an EMP would be very similar to electronics in a near lightning strike or a solar storm which also can affect electronics but on a lesser scale than a pulse from a high-altitude nuclear explosion.

Another scenario discussed among some Israeli leaders is the detonation of an EMP over the entire Middle East, including Israel, whose military infrastructure has been hardened against such attacks.

This would allow Israel to fly its jets directly to Iran without concerns about detection. Though it would also turn out the lights in Israel, sources there say the Jewish state could bring power back for civilians in a matter of days. A detonation at an altitude of up to 250 miles not only would affect all electronics in Iran but could damage electrical systems from the Middle East and much of Europe, these experts add. Such an EMP event also would dramatically affect all U.S. military facilities in the region.

An EMP attack on the United States, for example, from a 30-kiloton nuclear weapon exploded at an altitude of 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, effectively would knock out 70 percent of electrical systems up to a thousand miles in every direction. A similar explosion at a higher altitude of some 250 miles would virtually affect all electronics from Boston to Los Angeles and from Chicago to New Orleans, according to experts.

Consequently, a detonation limited to Iran would have to be at a much lower altitude to avoid such far-ranging effects on the electronics in the region and beyond.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, Israel not only possesses nuclear devices of one kiloton or more which would be sufficient to create an effective result from an electromagnetic pulse but has Jericho III missiles which it tested in 2009 capable of carrying nuclear payloads some 2,500 miles. The distance between Israel and Iran is approximately 1,000 miles.

U.S. sources knowledgeable about ways to “harden” buildings and other facilities against an EMP attack say business in this area has been booming throughout the Middle East for months.

In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have told WND/G2Bulletin that they have detected Israel handling propellants for its Jericho missiles.

The prospect that Israel has this capability was first made known by an ex-CIA case officer, Chet Nagle, at a Capitol Hill EMPact America press conference held in Washington, D.C., in November 2011.

A similar prospect was outlined in a Nov. 10, 2011, Front Page Magazine article, “Connecting the Nuclear Dots on Iran,” written by Kenneth Timmerman who is the president of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran and maintains close ties with the Iranian opposition.

“Any Israeli attack on Iran is sure to make of Israel an international pariah, Nagle argues,” Timmerman said in quoting Nagle in a conversation. “Plus, the likelihood of success – that is, in destroying or disabling all of Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities (by conventional means) so they have nothing to launch on the morning after the attack – is low.

“If you’re going to go to all that trouble and be a pariah,” Timmerman quoted Nagel as saying in their conversation, “why not take one of those Jericho missiles, and detonate it 300 miles above the surface and deliver an EMP strike on Iran? That would stop their clock – if it’s electric – as well as all those centrifuges and everything else. Then the Greens can take over the country and we can go back in and rebuild the grid.”

The prospect for this doomsday approach has arisen due to a comment made by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak last February that Iran was entering a “zone of immunity” from military attack. Other officials in recent days have suggested that such a “zone of immunity” will be reached before the end of the year.

“The world, including the current U.S. administration, understands and accepts that Israel necessarily views the threat differently than they do, and that ultimately, Israel is responsible for taking the decisions related to its future, its security and its destiny,” Barak said.

Given that this “zone of immunity” could be reached before the end of the year, there has been increasing speculation in recent days that Israel may launch an attack prior to the U.S. presidential elections in an effort to force the U.S. to act. Sources say that the Israelis have assessed that if President Obama is re-elected, he may want to continue down the path of negotiating with the Iranians.

The sources add that by attacking prior to the U.S. elections in November, the U.S. then will have no choice but to back Israel due to the U.S. commitment to ensure Israel’s security. They add that it also will help Obama’s re-election efforts.

Iran, however, insists that its nuclear development program is for peaceful purposes as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Under the terms of the NPT, Iran has the “right” to enrich uranium as it is doing. Iran has enriched up to 20 percent, which is more than enough for refueling its nuclear reactors but is considered an acceptable level for medical research.

As early as 2005, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that is a legal pronouncement in Islam, that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic republic “shall never acquire these weapons.” Last February, Khamenei reiterated his 2005 fatwa.

“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons,” he said. “There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

Sources say that the edict from Khamenei is considered more than a fatwa, given that he not only is an ayatollah but also the supreme leader of Iran. For that reason, what he said is considered a hukm, or decree of the Supreme Jurisprudent, or Vali-yi Faqih, that determines the legal framework of the Islamic republic in accordance with Islamic law.

Niall Ferguson: Obama’s Gotta Go

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.”

Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.

Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

In an unguarded moment earlier this year, the president commented that the private sector of the economy was “doing fine.” Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.

In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year.

Unemployment was supposed to be 6 percent by now. It has averaged 8.2 percent this year so far. Meanwhile real median annual household income has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps.

Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.

And all this despite a far bigger hike in the federal debt than we were promised. According to the 2010 budget, the debt in public hands was supposed to fall in relation to GDP from 67 percent in 2010 to less than 66 percent this year. If only. By the end of this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will reach 70 percent of GDP. These figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund. Among developed economies, only Ireland and Spain have seen a bigger deterioration.

Not only did the initial fiscal stimulus fade after the sugar rush of 2009, but the president has done absolutely nothing to close the long-term gap between spending and revenue.

His much-vaunted health-care reform will not prevent spending on health programs growing from more than 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent in 2037. Add the projected increase in the costs of Social Security and you are looking at a total bill of 16 percent of GDP 25 years from now. That is only slightly less than the average cost of all federal programs and activities, apart from net interest payments, over the past 40 years. Under this president’s policies, the debt is on course to approach 200 percent of GDP in 2037—a mountain of debt that is bound to reduce growth even further.

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U.S. Army officer becomes first openly gay general

* 'What is relevant is upholding Army values and the responsibility this carries,' U.S. Army Reserve officer says of her milestone appointment

* President Barack Obama repealed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' the military's ban on allowing openly gay service members in December 2010

By Daily Mail Reporter

Tammy Smith has become the first openly gay officer to be promoted to the ranks of Brigadier General in the U.S. Army.

Smith's promotion took place on Friday in a private ceremony at the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. She received her stars from wife, Tracey Hepner, the first time her longtime partner was officially recognized as her significant other at a military gathering.

Smith is assigned as deputy chief in the Army Reserve Office of the Chief in Washington, D.C.
Her promotion comes less than a year after the implementation of the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' (DADT), the policy enacted in 1993 under U.S. President Bill Clinton.

The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service.

After much debate that the policy was discriminatory, the U.S. Congress voted to end it with the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010.

President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on December 22, 2010 and full implementation of the repeal occurred on September 20, 2011.

But Smith, 49, downplayed the milestone of her appointment in a post DADT military, in an interview with Stars and Stripes newspaper.

'All of those facts are irrelevant,' she said. 'I don’t think I need to be focused on that. What is relevant is upholding Army values and the responsibility this carries... For me, the story is about the promotion and the opportunities it brings.'

She did concede though, in an earlier interview, that the repeal of the policy meant that she and her partner 'will be able to go out and have drinks together without worrying.'

'The support we’ve received has been amazing,' Hepner told the paper.  'I wasn’t surprised that people were so accepting, but in some cases it has been even celebratory. It’s like nothing has really changed for us, and yet everything has changed.'

Hepner is a gay activist and co-founded the Military Partners and Families Coalition, which advocates for benefits and military programs for same-sex partners.

Smith is not the first gay general officer but most have disclosed their sexual orientation after their retirement or discharge under 'don't ask, don't tell.'

In May, the U.S. Air Force Academy graduated its first openly gay cadets.

Maria Conchita Alonso: Obama Reelection Moves U.S. Towards Becoming Chavez's Venezuela

By Noel Sheppard

As NewsBusters has reported over the years, Venezuelan actress Maria Conchita Alonso is no fan of her native country's current despotic ruler Hugo Chavez.

During a Spreecast interview with Steve Malzberg Wednesday, Alonso said that if Barack Obama wins reelection in November, America would be making a step towards becoming like Chavez's Venezuela "in the near future"

STEVE MALZBERG: One other question about Obama. Again, Hollywood, your industry embraces Obama, has fundraisers in their homes for Obama, yet Obama wants to punish people who are successful. Don’t’ the people in Hollywood understand that Obama will go after them and is going after them?

 MARIA CONCHITA ALONSO: I guess not, but you know what? They will understand when it touches them. Sadly that's what happens. A lot of people voted for Chavez I believe in the first term – which that’s the only one I believe that he won for real – and, and because he lied. And then, like more than half of the people that voted for him started realizing because then they started being, you know, punished like. They took away their jobs, you know, because they became like, they, they closed down stores, they closed down super markets. Venezuela was a country that exported so much food. We had all the medicines in the world. Now we are importing everything because he has destroyed the economy.

MALZBERG: Maria, do you believe if Obama wins again we could wind up like Venezuela in any way?

 ALONSO: Well, I think that would be a step forward that, moving forward there.

 MALZBERG: You mean a step towards that, a move in that direction. You mean we’ll move in that direction towards Venezuela?

 ALONSO: Yeah, I don’t mean that that’s going to happen in the next term, but in more time that there will be to make that happen in the near future.

Claim: 'Absolute proof' Obama was Indonesian citizen

Confirms WND reporting in 2008 of president's school records

by Jerome R. Corsi

A college classmate of Barack Obama who wrote a column asserting “The Obama Scandal is at Columbia” says he received a call from a reporter who claims to have “absolute proof” Obama became an Indonesian citizen.

WND has reported since 2008 that an Indonesian school record shows Obama attended school in the Asian nation registered as an Indonesian citizen and as a Muslim.

Wayne Allyn Root, in an interview with fill-in host Joe Pagliarulo on the “Glenn Beck Program,” said he received a phone call at 4 a.m. this morning from an investigative reporter with Breitbart.com probing Obama’s past in Indonesia.

The reporter, according to Root, a former Libertarian Party vice-presidential nominee, said he has “absolute proof” Obama was adopted by his mother’s new husband and became an Indonesian citizen.

“It’s a fact, it’s not a question,” the reporter told Root. “I’m looking at [the proof] right now.”

Sign up for on-demand viewing of Sheriff Arpaio’s most recent press conference on Obama’s eligibility. When you sign up for access, you’ll receive a copy of the official press release distributed at the conference.

Information about Obama’s Indonesian schooling first surfaced in January 2007 in a blog called An American Expat in Southeast Asia. The blog documented Obama was registered Jan. 1, 1968, under the name Barry Soetoro, with serial number 203, in Class 1B at the Catholic Franciscan Assisi Primary School in Jakarta.

School records listed Barry Soetoro as an Indonesian citizen born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961.

His religion was listed as Islam.

According to the blog, school documents recorded Barry’s father as L. Soetoro Ma, a worker in the director general’s office in the TNI Topography division of the Indonesian army.

The records indicated Barry attended the Franciscan school for three years, until Class 3.

WND reported Aug. 17, 2008, that conformation for Obama’s attendance in the Indonesian school came with the surfacing of a 2007 Associated Press photograph by Tatan Syuflana, an Indonesian AP reporter and photographer. The photo showed Obama’s registration card at the Assisi school.
An AP spokesman confirmed to WND that the photograph of the registration card was authentic.

The listing of Obama in an official record in a foreign country as a foreign citizen should have prompted a major media investigation.

Obama in Islam: A Muslim

After attending the Catholic school in Jakarta, Obama was enrolled at a public school.

WND has been unable to find an Indonesian law in force when Obama was in Jakarta that required a child to be an Indonesian citizen to attend public schools in Indonesia.

Indonesian law at the time required instruction in Islam, a contention confirmed by two academic studies done by Lambert Kelabora, a lecturer in Indonesian Education at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Writing in Asian Survey in 1976, Kelabora wrote that Sukarno’s defeat of the Partai Komunis Indonesia, the Communist Party of Indonesia, in an unsuccessful coup led to changes in religious instruction in the Indonesian public school curriculum.

“With the victory over the PKI in their hands,” Kelabora wrote, “Moslem groups had no difficulty in arguing that it was religion that had saved the country from Communism, and that it was time to make religion compulsory for everyone in order to strengthen the moral fibre of the nation.”

As a result, Islamic studies throughout Indonesian institutions were intensified “in the communist prison camps, in factories, in offices, and in all educational institutions.”

The study of Islam was then made mandatory in all Indonesian educational institutions in the country, including pre-primary schools. All students were required to increase their study of Islam to four lessons a week, some 10 percent of the curriculum, elevating the study of Islam “to the most important subject in the school curriculum.”

In a 1979 paper Kelabora published in Comparative Education, titled “Assumptions Underlying Religious Instruction in Indonesia,” he stressed “the changing political and security situation in the country since 1949 has made religion a compulsory subject for all, from pre-primary to tertiary level, from the communist prison camps to factories and government establishments.”

Even Kim Barker, a Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent, in an article focused on “debunking the myth Obama had attended a Madrassa,” admitted Barry Soetoro attended the mosque with his father to pray.

Barker interviewed Israella Darmawan, Barry’s first grade teacher at the Assisi school, the teacher previously interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Barker reported her as saying, “Sometimes Lolo went to the mosque to pray, but he rarely socialized with people. Rarely, Barry went to the mosque with Lolo.”

In an interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Obama was questioned about his Islamic education.

After acknowledging that he once got in trouble for making faces during Quran study classes in his elementary school in Indonesia, Obama recited for Kristoff the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer. It reads as follows:

“Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
 Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
 I witness that there is no God but Allah
 I witness that there is no God but Allah
 I witness that Muhammad is his prophet …”

Kristof noted Obama recited the prayer “with a first-rate accent.”

“In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks),” Kristoff wrote, “Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.’”

The lines of the Adhan are very similar to the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of the oneness of Allah and the acceptance of Muhammad as his final prophet. Recitation of the Shahada is one of the most important of the Five Pillars of Islam and is performed daily by Muslims worldwide.

Maya Soetoro: Obama’s ‘adopted’

WND reported April 28, 2011, one day after the White House posted a PDF file it claims is Obama’s authentic long-form birth certificate, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s Indonesian half-sister, suggested on a blog that Obama was adopted by her stepfather.

On a Facebook page, Soetoro-Ng wrote to a woman who had met her in Hawaii after Madelyn Dunham, the mother of Stanley Ann Dunham and grandmother to both Maya and Barack, passed away in 2008.

Soetoro-Ng was objecting to having a conversation with a critic of her half-brother and said she had been misquoted as saying her whole family was Muslim.

She wrote: “I did not say my brother was a Muslim. I did say that I was more philosophically Buddhist. I told you that you were upsetting me. You said that you were not trying to upset me but wanted to know the truth about (Raila) Odinga (a Muslim for whom Barack Obama campaigned in the 2007 presidential race in Kenya.) I told you I didn’t know who that was and had never met him. You mentioned the adoption laws of Indonesia that you saw as related to my brother’s legitimacy (you were suggesting that because my father, his stepfather, had adopted him, that my brother was no longer American) and I said that I had no idea about Indonesian adoption law.”

WND noted that while not a definitive statement, Maya’s post on Facebook supports the registration of Obama at the Catholic school in Jakarta as an Indonesian citizen.

Indonesian citizenship law

The Indonesian citizenship law in effect when Obama was there was titled “Laws of the Republic of Indonesia, Number 62 Year 1958, Regarding Citizenship of the Republic of Indonesia (LNRI 1958/113).”

Article 2(1) deals with the citizenship of foreign children and reads as follows:

A foreign child not yet 5 years of age who is adopted by a Republic of Indonesia state citizen, acquires Republic of Indonesian citizenship, when the adoption is declared lawful by the District Court of the place of residence of the person who adopts the child.

If Obama were adopted by Lolo Soetoro after the age of 5, he would have had to undergo the Indonesian naturalization process to become an Indonesian citizen.

If Obama had been naturalized, he would have been required to renounce U.S. citizenship, prove Indonesian language proficiency and knowledge of the history of Indonesia.

To this point, no official Indonesian adoption papers proving Lolo Soetoro legally adopted Obama have been presented; nor is there any proof Obama was naturalized as an Indonesian citizen when he was there with his stepfather and mother.

Obama ‘Soebarkah’

State Department documents released in two separate FOIA requests indicate that Ann Dunham apparently identified her son with an Indonesian surname and asked the State Department to drop him from her U.S. passport.

In a passport amendment she submitted in person to the State Department at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, on Aug. 13, 1968, less than a year after joining her second husband in Indonesia, she petitioned to renew her expiring passport.

In the amendment form, she also requested “Barack Obama II (Soebarkah)” be removed from her U.S. Passport No. 777788.

Her listing of her son’s name as “Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah)” suggests she intended to indicate he was an Indonesian citizen.

Until the State Department released the document in July 2010, the surname Soebarkah had never surfaced in reference to Barack Hussein Obama Jr. Indonesians do not typically use surnames, as is the custom in Western nations.

Surnames may be used to convey ethnic information and even within families surnames may vary. Soebarkah may be a variation of the Soetoro surname.

Arpaio: Obama birth record 'definitely fraudulent'

By Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — Investigators for an Arizona sheriff's volunteer posse have declared that President Barack Obama's birth certificate is definitely fraudulent.

Members of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's posse said in March that there was probable cause that Obama's long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April 2011 was a computer-generated forgery.

Now, Arpaio says investigators are positive it's fraudulent.

Mike Zullo, the posse's chief investigator, said numeric codes on certain parts of the birth certificate indicate that those parts weren't filled out, yet those sections asking for the race of Obama's father and his field of work or study were completed.

Zullo said investigators previously didn't know the meaning of codes but that the codes were explained by a 95-year-old former state worker who signed the president's birth certificate. Zullo said a news reporter who has helped out in the probe let investigators listen in on an interview he concluded of the former state worker.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on Arpaio's allegations.

The Arizona Democratic Party says in a statement that Arpaio's investigation is intended to draw attention away from problems within his own agency, such as hundreds of sex-crimes cases that the sheriff's office failed to adequately investigate over a three-year period.

So-called "birthers" maintain Obama is ineligible to be president because, they contend, he was born in Kenya.

Hawaii officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama's citizenship.

Obama released a copy of his long-form birth certificate in an attempt to quell citizenship questions.
Courts have rebuffed lawsuits over the issue.

Israel perturbed by Obama’s outreach to Mursi - against his word

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Israeli government and military leaders were taken aback by the news of US President Barack Obama’s invitation to the new Egyptian president Mohammed Mursi to visit Washington in September - in breach of the president's assurances to US Jewish leaders at the White House last month, debkafile’s exclusive Washington and Jerusalem sources report. His key assurance was that Mursi would not be invited to the White House and Obama would not maintain direct telephone contact with him until he met certain conditions, the foremost of which concerned a public and unambiguous commitment to Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

They American Jewish delegation was assured that President Mursi would be required to devote a section of his earliest speech on foreign affairs to the specific affirmation of his profound commitment to the peace pact with Israel. The unspecific pledge to uphold Cairo’s international accords he made upon his election on June 24 would not satisfy the US president, the American Jewish delegation was promised. Indeed the new Egyptian president would also be required to table the peace pact with Israel in the new Egyptian parliament for ratification.

With these assurances, the Jewish delegation was satisified.

However, it turned out Monday, July 8, that, instead of standing by his promises, President Obama had sent Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to Cairo for two days of interviews with Egyptian officials, in none of which did  future relations with Israel figure. President Mursi’s spokesman then announced that the US official had handed the new president an invitation to visit the White House in September. Neither Burns nor the White House contradicted him.

Furthermore, in a briefing to reporters after he saw Mursi, Burns vehemently denied that the peace pact had been discussed.

Next Saturday, July 14, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due in Cairo after a visit to Israel.

To signal disapproval and concern over the impact on Israel’s security of Washington’s unconditional outreach to Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Cairo, Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered the speeding up of construction on the fortified fence on the Israel-Egyptian border, known for decades as “the peace border,” and completion of the expanded military deployment in the border region.

In Jerusalem, the Obama administration is seen as suddenly backtracking on the conditions set the incoming Egyptian president in the last week of June, which essentially made US support of his regime conditional on his performance in key fields:

Those conditions were first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly:

1. Observance of a democratic agenda;

1. Respect for human rights, namely women’s’ status and minority rights, especially relating to the Christian Copts;

2.  The formation of a broad national unity government representing the country’s active mainstream parties - not just his own Muslim Brotherhood.

3.  Making the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel a central pillar of his foreign policy;

4.  Public affirmation of his commitment to uphold peace relations with Israel.

5.  A resolute effort to curb the terrorist elements running wild in Sinai and threatening Israeli security by restoring Egyptian control.

6.  An end to the rabid anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric pervading Egyptian media and the persecution of Western NGOs operating in Egypt.

The last three points give those demands the weight of an ultimatum:

7. Not until all the above steps are taken, will President Morsi be welcomed in Washington as an official guest.

8. Furthermore, not until the Egyptian president has satisfied Washington on all these scores will the Obama administration use its influence with the World Bank to ease Egypt’s dire liquidity problems and help find the cash to buy food on world markets. If Morsi can’t find the money to feed the population, hungry Egyptians will be out on the streets of their cities once again - clamoring this time for his and the Muslim Brotherhood’s removal.

Those conditions have mostly gone by the board along with President Obama’s promises, debkafile’s sources report.

Obama rebuffs Erdogan’s appeal to lead Turkey in Syria attack

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Another urgent bid for the US to lead an allied offensive against Syria’s ruling regime fell on deaf ears in Washington. It came Tuesday, June 26, from Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who is spoiling for action after a Syrian anti-air ambush downed a Turkish reconnaissance jet flying over Latakia last Friday.

In several phone calls to President Barack Obama, Erdogan argued forcefully that the incident provided the perfect opening for a Western-Muslim-Arab offensive, according to debkafile’s military and intelligence sources. This offensive, said the Turkish leader, could drive into Syria, create no-fly zones, attack regime and military targets and establish safe zones for rebels and refugees. The Turkish army, air force and navy stood ready for immediate action, he said, but the US must take the military lead in this operation – and not just “from behind,” as in Libya.

Obama replied the time had not yet come for direct US military intervention in Syria, and covert operations by American, British, Turkish and French special operations forces should continue inside the country.

Erdogan maintained that covert tactics would neither stop the bloody violence in Syria nor upend the Assad regime. Only the open exercise of American military might and logistic and military capabilities could work and without it Turkey was constrained from going forward on its own.

That disagreement was behind the mixed signals coming from Ankara over the Syrian shoot-down of the Turkish military plane – insistence on punishing Damascus, on the one hand, and statements that Turkey does not seek war, on the other.

Tuesday, the prime minister stated to parliament: “After this attack, we have entered a new stage,” he said. “The rules of engagement of the Turkish Armed Forces have changed. Any risk posed by Syria on the Turkish border, any military element that could post a threat, will be considered a threat and treated as a military target.”

Erdogan’s statement was couched in the future tense, meaning Syria was off the hook this time.

However, in the interests of muscle-flexing, Turkey’s media reported Wednesday that its military had moved forces including tanks up to the Syria border and placed them on “red alert” with license "to shoot to kill.”

This train of events shows Prime Minister Erdogan, notwithstanding his close friendship with the US president, is in the same bind on Syria as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is on Iran.

Ankara is more than ready to hit back at Syria, just as Jerusalem has been standing prepared for military action against Iran’s nuclear program. But both are held back by President Obama. He hopes that by keeping Iran’s key ally Bashar Assad untouched and diplomacy rolling, an accommodation with Tehran on the nuclear issue is attainable.

This has left Erdogan falling back on the stratagem Netanyahu employs with regard to Iran and HIzballah: tough rhetoric accompanied by inaction.

This did not stop Syrian President Bashar Assad from declaring to parliament Tuesday, when he introduced a new cabinet headed by Riyad Hijab: “We are in a state of real war in every respect of the word and when we’re in a state of war, all of our politics must be concentrated on winning this war.”

As he spoke, British special forces (whose presence in Syria was exclusively revealed by debkafile Monday) carried out two tasks: They helped rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army, extend their control of territory in the Idlib province on the northern Syrian border with Turkey and Lebanon, and gave them badly-needed hi-tech communications equipment.

They also made it possible for the first Syrian opposition leader, Burham Ghalioun of the Syrian National Council, to set foot in Syria. Under their heavy guard, Ghailioun toured rebel-controlled local villages in Idlib for a few hours before crossing back into Lebanon. Assad’s heavies watched helplessly.

Our military sources note the resemblance of this method of operation to the tactic employed by British special forces in Libya in early 2011, when they set up shop at the rebel center of Benghazi and from there, organized resistance to the Qaddafi regime.