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Obama tells
banks and corporation
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If
The Eyes Are The Windows To The Soul |
Doesn't that glare give you a warm, comfortable feeling?
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Obama Cancels Nuke Program |
Michael Crowley,
writing at The New Republic, says that Obama's new budget plan includes
a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his
vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of
long-lasting nuclear weapons that don't need to be tested. (The military
is worried that a nuclear test moratorium in effect since 1992 might
endanger the reliability of an aging US arsenal.)
But this spring Obama
issued a bold call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and part of that
vision entails leading by example. That means halting programs that
expand the American nuclear stockpile. For the past two budget years the
Democratic Congress has refused to fund the Bush-era program. But
Obama's budget kills the National Nuclear Security Administration
program once and for all.
"My colleagues just stared at that
line," says Joe Cirincione, a longtime nonproliferation expert and
president of the Ploughshares Fund. "They had never seen anything like
that." Killing the program, he said, was "the first programmatic impact
of the new [zero nukes] policy. People have said they want to see more
than words, this is the very first action."
Here's the relevant
language from Obama's budget explaining the thinking behind the move:
In the upcoming year, NNSA will participate in the national debate
to lay out a vision for our nation’s nuclear security and
non-proliferation goals. This vision is based on the reality that
nuclear security is not just about warheads and the size of the
stockpile. The vision emphasizes that we must increase our focus on
nuclear security and transforming the Cold War nuclear weapons complex
into a 21st century national security enterprise. We must ensure our
evolving strategic posture places the stewardship of our nuclear
arsenal, nonproliferation programs, missile defenses, and the
international arms control objectives into one comprehensive strategy
that protects the American people and our allies.
One
particularly interesting angle here: Obama has overruled his secretary
of defense, Robert Gates, who has been pushing for months to maintain
the warhead program. Last October, Gates warned that
"[t]o be
blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent
and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to
testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program."
But
even though "modernization" has now been halted, Obama will almost
certainly not resume nuclear testing. So one has to presume Gates is not
a happy camper on this score. |
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Obama's Poison Photo-Drop |
American soldiers,
American civilians, and other innocent people are going to die because
Obama wants to release photographs of prisoner abuse. Note: I said,
"wants to release" -- not "has to release," or "is being forced to
release," or "will comply with court orders by releasing." The photos,
quite likely thousands of them, will be released because Obama
wants them released. Any other description of the situation is a dodge.
If Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in
order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security
of Americans -- his two highest obligations as president -- he could do
so by simply issuing an executive order. The applicable statute
expressly allows for it, just as it provides for Congress -- now in the
firm control of the president and his party -- to withhold the photos
from disclosure. Instead, Obama and congressional Democrats are choosing
to release the photos.
Continue reading
here . . . |
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Obama To Release Bin Laden Associate |
The U.S.
Justice Department has decided to release another detainee from
Guantanamo, a Yemeni named Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi. It is not
entirely clear why Batarfi has been cleared for release. But we can be
reasonably sure, based on Batarfi’s own freely given testimony, that he
was no innocent swept up in the post-9/11 chaos of Afghanistan, as his
lawyers claim.
Batarfi first traveled to Afghanistan in 1988 to
fight the Soviets. The government claims he was trained at the Khalden
camp, which graduated hundreds of al Qaeda members, but Batarfi denies
this. Batarfi has admitted to participating in at least one nighttime
raid against Soviet forces. This is important because it shows that he
was willing to participate in hostilities from a young age -- and was not
merely a humanitarian adventure seeker in Afghanistan.
Batarfi
then went to Pakistan, where he became an orthopedic surgeon. From
there, things get really interesting.
There are at least three
aspects of Batarfi’s testimony given before his administrative review
board hearings at Gitmo that are noteworthy. Keep in mind that
these hearings were not interrogations, and the detainees had the option
of not participating, or simply issuing blanket denials, as some
detainees did.
First, Batarfi admitted that he was an employee of
al Wafa, a charity that has been designated a terrorist organization.
Al Wafa is discussed in brief in the 9/11 Commission’s report as an al
Qaeda front. The unclassified documents released from Guantanamo
are littered with references to the organization. It is clear that
al Wafa actively supported al Qaeda and the Taliban in a variety of ways
-- from transporting jihadists to Afghanistan (often through Iran) to
purchasing sophisticated weaponry. Al Wafa was not a real charity
-- it was a terrorist front group, and Batarfi admitted to working for
the group for several months in 2001. He says he left the
organization after it was designated as a terror-supporter, but this was
most likely just Batarfi’s way of trying to explain away his al Wafa
ties. As we will see below, he was at Tora Bora after the
designation on al Wafa came down.
Second, Batarfi admitted that
he met with a "Malaysian microbiologist" and authorized the purchase of
medical equipment for this individual. As I have written
previously, this microbiologist is most certainly Yazid Sufaat. Batarfi
denies knowing that Sufaat was working on anthrax when they met in 2001.
Over and over again, Batarfi claimed that he just happened to run into
and consort with terrorists without knowing who they were.
Third,
the best example of this last point is Batarfi’s admitted ties to Osama
bin Laden. Batarfi admitted that he met with bin Laden in the Tora
Bora Mountains in November 2001. But he claimed that he sent a
letter to someone (he does not say whom) asking to meet with the "head
of the mountain" and, somewhat magically, he just happened to get a
face-to-face sit down with the world’s most wanted terrorist…at Tora
Bora…in November of 2001…you know, when the whole world was looking for
him. This was the second time Batarfi claims to have accidentally
met bin Laden. The first time came at a funeral in Kabul when,
again, bin Laden just happened upon the scene.
Continue reading
here . . . |
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Copyright Beckwith 2009
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