Lawyer: Drone Strikes Literally Being Used as an Alternative to Guantanamo

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Photo Credit: Yahya Arhab/EPAThe lawyer who first drew up White House policy on lethal drone strikes has accused the Obama administration of overusing them because of its reluctance to capture prisoners that would otherwise have to be sent to Guantánamo Bay.

John Bellinger, who was responsible for drafting the legal framework for targeted drone killings while working for George W Bush after 9/11, said he believed their use had increased since because President Obama was unwilling to deal with the consequences of jailing suspected al-Qaida members.

“This government has decided that instead of detaining members of al-Qaida [at Guantánamo] they are going to kill them,” he told a conference at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Obama this week pledged to renew efforts to shut down the jail but has previously struggled to overcome congressional opposition, in part due to US disagreements over how to handle suspected terrorists and insurgents captured abroad.

An estimated 4,700 people have now been killed by some 300 US drone attacks in four countries, and the question of the programme’s status under international and domestic law remains highly controversial.

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Your Tax Dollars Fund Ethnic Cleansing of Christians

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On April 22, two Orthodox bishops of Aleppo, Syria, were kidnapped by U.S.-supported Islamist fighters. Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Boulos Yaziji were kidnapped as they were returning from an attempt to obtain the release of two priests previously kidnapped. The priests, Father Michel Kayyal, an Armenian Catholic, and Father Maher Mahfouz, a Greek Orthodox, were kidnapped in February and still remain in the hands of the Islamist fighters the Western media refer to as “rebels.”

In a Huffington Post article, Orthodox priest Peter-Michael Preble said of the two kidnapped bishops: “They were on a mission of peace, to bring aid and comfort, and they were taken hostage as part of the systematic extermination of the Christian population in Syria.”

As an eyewitness to Capitol Hill, I can say without hesitation that the Republican Party leadership is allowing the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Syria in order to obtain some minor political gain over President Obama. A momentary “we got you” win against Obama is more important to the Republican leadership than the lives of millions of Christians and the destruction of the ancient churches founded by Peter, Paul, John and the other early Saints. Rather than Speaker John Boehner using the power of his office to stop Obama’s support of the jihadist fighters in Syria, he is pushing for our overburdened and over-deployed Armed Forces to get directly involved.

On the Senate side, it is John McCain, who is the principal Republican promoter of the destruction of the Syrian church. McCain seems totally blind to the human suffering of war and has no regard for Christians suffering at the hands of the jihadists in Syria. As McCain sees it, Iran is currently our main enemy and eliminating one of its power bases – its alliance with Syria – is worth the human suffering and ethnic cleansing of the Christian population. McCain is actually pushing Obama to do even more damage in Syria. McCain has demanded that our Air Force face one of the most sophisticated air defense systems in the world, the Russian SA-22 Pantsir S1, so that we can assist jihadist fighters.

It is very true that Iran is a threat to the peace of the Middle East and to Israel, but arming jihadists associated with al-Qaida and allowing them to murder Christians and destroy churches in Syria does not seem to me as the optimal way to limit the power of Iran. Indeed, the harsh persecution of Christians by jihadist fighters supported in Syria by Barack Obama is no different than the persecution of Christians in Iran. At least in Iran the Christians get a phony show trial before they are jailed and tortured. In Syria, Christians are tortured and murdered with no trial at all and using American tax dollars given to jihadists by Barack Obama.

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Militia Hired by State Dept. Warned It Wouldn’t Protect Stevens’ Movements in Benghazi

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(CNSNews.com) – The February 17th Martyrs Brigade, a Benghazi-based militia with Islamist elements that the State Department hired as a “quick reaction force” (QRF) to protect the department’s mission in Benghazi, warned the State Department that it would not protect the movements of Amb. Chris Stevens when he visited there last September.

That warning was relayed to the regional security officer (RSO) at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli–the top security adviser to the ambassador–in an internal State Department email dated Sept. 9, 2012.

That was one day before Stevens departed Tripoli for Benghazi–for what was scheduled to be a five-day visit.

“[O]n September 8, 2012, just days before Ambassador Stevens arrived in Benghazi, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade told State Department officials that the group would no longer support U.S. movements in the city, including the Ambassador’s visit,” said a report on Benghazi released last week by the chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Oversight, Judiciary and Armed Services committees.

In a footnote, the report attributed this information to an “Email from Alec Henderson to John B. Martinec, ‘RE: Benghazi QRF agreement,’ (Sep. 9, 2012 11:31 PM).”

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Chinese Create New Strains of Bird Flu in Lab

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Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.

They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.

“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.

“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said.

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Obama Campaigns for Immigration Reform . . . in Mexico

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama will ramp up his calls for comprehensive immigration reform during a trip to Mexico and Costa Rica that comes amid growing obstacles in Washington to his preferred pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

White House officials framed immigration reform as the “backdrop” of the three-day trek that begins Thursday, an attempt by Obama to move the needle on an issue in which he’s left the bulk of negotiations to lawmakers. The president will look to build momentum for the reforms while not jeopardizing talks on Capitol Hill.

The trip takes on even greater importance considering the fragile state of negotiations. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., widely seen as the most influential conservative in the immigration debate, conceded that the current immigration bill crafted by a bipartisan group of senators would not pass the GOP-controlled House.

Obama, recently dealt a bitter defeat on gun control, is desperate to avoid another high-profile loss. Experts said the trip to Latin America is a crucial opportunity for the White House to allay fears that immigration reform would trigger a new flood of illegal immigrants into the U.S.

“Obama can present a more accurate picture of Mexico, which is extremely important in the domestic debate about immigration,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who attended a meeting this week with Obama and Vice President Biden previewing the presidential trip. “There’s a real concern about recreating the flow of [undocumented immigrants] from Mexico. Mexico has changed, and it’s not something a lot of people in Washington know about.”

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Socialized Medicine So Bad in UK that Brits are turning to Assisted Suicide

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Photo Credit: ALAMYMore than a third of those who said they support a change in the law cited a belief that dying people cannot expect to receive “decent” care at the end of their lives among their reasons.

And while a conviction that people in the 21st century should have a “right to choose” how and when they die dominated the thinking of supporters of assisted dying, only a minority of opponents cited traditional arguments based on life being “sacred”.

The findings emerge from detailed polling of than 4,000 people by YouGov on behalf of the organisers of the regular Westminster Faith Debates.

Overall seven out of 10 people polled agreed with the notion that people with “incurable” illnesses should have the right to ask close friends or relatives to help them commit suicide, without the risk of those people being prosecuted.

Only 16 per cent were actively opposed to the suggestion while 14 per cent were torn.

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Besieged Syrian Leader Makes Rare Public Appearance

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Photo Credit: APPresident Bashar al-Assad of Syria, apparently seeking to counter the impression of a leader in hiding after consecutive days of suspected insurgent bombings in his power base, Damascus, made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, visiting workers at an electric station.

Syrian state television and the official SANA news agency said that Mr. Assad mingled with workers at the Umayyad Electrical Station and congratulated them on the occasion of international Labor Day. Photographs showed Mr. Assad dressed in a dark suit as workers showed him the station.

“They want us to be afraid,” Mr. Assad said in one television clip. “Well, we won’t be afraid.” As he spoke, loyalists in the background chanted, “May God protect you.”

Mr. Assad, whose government is fighting an increasingly violent insurgency that grew out of his repression of peaceful political protests more than two years ago, is not often seen outside his heavily guarded presidential palace these days. His appearance followed an assassination attempt in the form of a car bombing on Monday aimed at his prime minister and a bombing on Tuesday that killed at least 13 people outside a former Interior Ministry building. The attacks were carried out in the heart of Damascus, the capital, which has remained basically under the control of Mr. Assad’s loyalist forces.

His visit to the power station coincided with a new set of explosions in central Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain but with a reporting network in Syria, said that rockets hit the neighborhood of Bab Mesalla, an area of shops and a transportation hub, and that a bomb detonated near the police headquarters on nearby Khalid bin Walid Street, a site of previous bomb attacks. SANA later confirmed the attacks, saying at least two people were killed and 28 were wounded. It attributed the attacks to terrorists, the Assad government’s blanket description for armed opponents.

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Mexican Immigrant Busted at Border after Getting Tangled in Razor Wire

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Photo Credit: mopsografieA suspected illegal immigrant was rescued Tuesday by San Diego firefighters after becoming ensnared in the razor wire on top of a fence at the U.S.-Mexico border, Fox5SanDiego.com reported.

Border Patrol agents saw the man stuck in the fence east of Otay Mesa just before 3:45 p.m., and they called the San Diego Fire Department, the report said. It took rescuers more than an hour to free the man stuck some 20 feet above the ground. The undocumented man was evaluated by EMTs at the scene and was not injured. He was handed over to border agents and taken into custody, the report said.

The concertina wire on top of the fence is two rows deep and designed to make moving forward or backward excruciatingly painful.

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Iran Source: President Ahmadinejad Arrested

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Photo Credit: WNDIranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was arrested and held for seven hours Monday and warned to keep his mouth shut about matters detrimental to the Islamic regime before he was released, according to a source within the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence unit.

After his visit to Tehran’s 26th international book fair Monday, the source said the head of Ahmadinejad’s security team informed the Iranian president that he had been asked to appear at the supreme leader’s office for an urgent matter.

On the way to the meeting, contact between the security team within the president’s convoy was disconnected while three other cars joined the convoy, instructing the lead car to take a different direction. Ahmadinejad, instead of being taken to the supreme leader’s office, was taken to a secret location in one of the buildings belonging to the Foreign Ministry, which is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit.

As soon as Ahmadinejad exited the car, he and his security team were involved in an altercation with Guards’ members in which his team was disarmed and communications equipment confiscated. Ahmadinejad was then forced to enter an office belonging to Hossein Taeb, the head of the Guards’ intelligence, located underneath the building.

As this was happening, the source said, hundreds of other Guards’ members from the intelligence unit sought out Ahmadinejad’s associates throughout Tehran and questioned them on the existence of documents detrimental to the regime.

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Obama: ‘I Don’t Want These Individuals to Die,’ Seeks Closure of Guantanamo

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Photo Credit: IndyDina with Mr. WonderfulPresident Barack Obama on Tuesday renewed his pledge to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but the impediments that have thwarted him thus far remain.

At a White House news conference, Obama said he would try to persuade Congress to end restrictions that have prevented him from closing the facility. The president’s comments followed the arrival Monday of medical reinforcements at the U.S. naval prison to help deal with a hunger strike by about 100 of the 166 detainees there. The forced feeding of detainees has refocused human rights concerns on the issue.

“I don’t want these individuals to die,” Obama told reporters.

He added that the situation was “not sustainable” and that he had asked advisers to review it. He also said he would press the issue with lawmakers.

“I’m going to re-engage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interest of the American people,” he said.

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