Monday, June 30, 2014

Is this the best we got?



Dorothy Brown receives a kiss from her husband, Benton Cook III, on election night, March 20, 2012. | Sun-Times file photo

Clerk Dorothy Brown's campaign paid her husband $90,000

Before he was paid more than $146,000 for work on Gov. Pat Quinn’s scandal-plagued anti-violence initiative, Benton Cook III says he spent four years as a “media production director” for political candidates.
His biggest client, as it turns out, was his wife, Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, records show.
Brown’s campaign fund paid the video production company based at her husband’s then-South Side home nearly $90,000 over a four-year period ending in 2010, according to Illinois State Board of Elections records. The business, Gideon Video Productions, doesn’t appear to have been licensed with the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago or Cook County.
Cook doesn’t refer to Gideon by name on the resume he submitted to get hired as an administrator for Quinn’s Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, the $54.5 million anti-violence program now under investigation by federal and Cook County prosecutors.
But besides Brown’s campaign sending checks for video production work to Cook’s then-home address, the online job-networking site LinkedIn lists “Benton Cook” from the “Greater Chicago Area” as president of “Gideon Productions.”
Cook repeatedly refers to his television production background on his resume, saying he “was responsible for the video and photographic production for political candidates and organizations for the 2006, 2008 and 2010 General Elections” and “produced/wrote and directed television and radio commercials, along with in-house events and fund-raisers.”
According to state elections records, though, Gideon Video Productions’ only client was Brown.
The clerk’s campaign fund made 48 payments totaling $89,370 to Gideon Video between August 2006 and October 2010. Brown and Cook got married in September 2009.
Cook himself was paid another $5,500 by a handful of judicial candidates in 2007 and 2008, mostly for distributing campaign literature.
Asked about the work Gideon Video Productions did for Brown’s campaign and whether it had a business license or paid taxes, Cook’s lawyer, Edward M. Genson, had no comment.
Jalyne Strong-Straw, a spokeswoman for Brown, also declined to comment.
A former mayoral candidate, Brown came under fire from her 2012 election opponent, Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd), for accepting campaign contributions from employees of her county office. Now in her fourth term, she’s told her staff she no longer will accept political contributions from them.
Cook became a lightning rod for criticism of Quinn’s Neighborhood Recovery Initiative following Chicago Sun-Times reports that he was hired to help supervise $2.1 million in anti-violence grants despite having a felony conviction for writing bad checks. Cook didn’t work directly for the state, but for a not-for-profit group that paid him $146,401 in salary and benefits over 22 months out of the state anti-violence funds.
Quinn, a Democrat, has said he had no idea until recently that Cook — whose wife also is a Democrat — had been hired for that job.
Republicans have blasted the since-disbanded Neighborhood Recovery Initiative as a “political slush fund” Quinn used to get out the vote in Cook County neighborhoods as the 2010 gubernatorial election approached.
Illinois Auditor General William Holland put out a scathing report about the program in February and has said it had little, if any, effect on curbing street violence.
Separately, state regulators filed a complaint against Cook last month accusing him of misrepresenting himself as a licensed clinical psychotherapist and offering psychotherapy services on a website. Cook is fighting that complaint, saying he never offered such services.
On his resume, “Benton Cook III PH.D” says he did “doctoral studies in clinical psychology” at the Jacksonville Theological Seminary and was a “professor of psychology” there between May 1999 and May 2004. He also says he has a “masters of humanities in psychological counseling” and a bachelor’s degree in “religion and biblical studies” from Aspen Theological Seminary.
Cook offers more details about his TV production background, saying he worked for affiliates of ABC and NBC for years in Los Angeles and Denver.
“I worked for ABC . . . at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games,” he writes. “In the fall of 1984, I was hired at the Denver local owner-operated NBC station, where I worked as engineer, director/technical director for Denver Bronco football and Denver Nugget basketball, along with several national and international sporting events.”
He also says he’s produced and directed religious programs and “several current and past TV series,” including “Coloreds in the Confederacy,” which he describes as a “docu-drama which explains the participation of black troops in the Confederate army.”

Monday, June 23, 2014

Decadence


This weekend I watched Saturday Night Live on NBC. The episode was originally broadcast in April 2014. 

This particular show had to be the most decadent, vile and filthy entertainment ever broadcast over the public airways. Where are the censors? Where is the common sense? It is obvious that the writers are on some type of a mission. They are hell bent on changing the value system of our society from traditional Judeo-Christian to something out of a freak show. 

I did some checking and discovered that NBC is owned by General Electric Corporation. It's time for the folks at GE to take control of their subsidiary. 

Saturday, June 21, 2014

President Obama has become extremely unpopular with the nation's youth.

They think he is incompetent and full of hot air. They fear they made a bad deal. 

VIRAL VIDEO: BREAKING UP WITH OBAMA



It’s not me, it’s you. That is the message the South Dakota College Republicans have for President Obama in a new video released last week, set to the song “Say Something” by A Great Big World.
The video depicts millennials “breaking up” with Obama like teenagers would break up with their significant others – his Facebook page is unfollowed, his pictures torn up, his text messages ignored.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

"Child" Refugees coming over the border.

Below is what I think is the most accurate description of the problem. There is hardly a mention of this invasion in the mainstream media. Why would that be?
A surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America crossing the border illegally into Texas has so overwhelmed the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley that officials have transported more than 750 children since last week to Border Patrol facilities in Arizona — with plans to bring hundreds more, if necessary.
Calling the situation "a humanitarian crisis," President Barack Obama has sent federal officials scrambling to ramp up temporary housing in three other states for about 3,000 more migrant children.
Reports suggest Monday that at least 1,100 immigrant children are being held by the U.S. Border Patrol in Nogales, and more are expected as children continue to cross the Mexican border in Texas.
Here are the key questions and answers about what is happening and why:
How many unaccompanied children are crossing?
According to Customs and Border Protection, in the past eight months, agents have apprehended about 47,000 unaccompanied minors who crossed the border into the U.S. illegally from Mexico.
The CBP estimates that apprehensions of minors this year may reach 90,000.
Almost three-fourths of the children apprehended are from Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador. And 33,470 of them entered through the Rio Grande Valley Sector, which this year surpassed the Tucson Sector as the busiest for illegal crossings. Overall, Border Patrol apprehensions of undocumented migrants are still running at less than half of the rate of 2000-06, when they typically exceeded 1million a year.
Why are so many children crossing now?
Gang violence in El Salvador and in urban areas of Guatemala has escalated dramatically in recent months since a weak truce among rival gangs has evaporated, said Elizabeth G. Kennedy, a Fulbright scholar reached Monday in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
"Half of them are fleeing for their lives," she said.
Kennedy, investigating the causes of child migration, has interviewed more than 400 child migrants. For many, Kennedy said, "their decision is: Do I face possible death in migrating or sure death in staying?"
The gang violence "particularly affects youths," said Alison Ramirez, who works on a U.S.-funded violence-prevention project in El Salvador and who frequently visits Honduras and Guatemala.
"The gangs are in schools, neighborhoods. They're everywhere," she said. "Even if the kids don't want to be a part of it, they get caught up in the crossfire, extorted, threatened."
"The violence is one of the drivers in Honduras," said David Scott FitzGerald, associate director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies in California. "Just looking at the homicide rate, it has tripled in the last decade. It's the highest in the world for a country not at war."
Children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador aren't just fleeing to the United States. Increasing numbers have been seeking asylum in Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Belize, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Kennedy and Ramirez agreed that most children who flee to the United States do so because they have family members here.
The family ties are a key factor, too, said Cecilia Menjivar, a sociologist at Arizona State University who has researched migration from Central America for more than 16years.
"Immigration laws have as much to do with the crisis as the conditions back home," she said.
She said that because of civil war and post-conflict violence, Hondurans have been able to seek asylum and be granted temporary protected status since 1998. Salvadorans have been able to gain temporary protected status since an arthquake in 2001.
That status doesn't allow holders to gain permanent residency, but they are allowed to work.
"A lot of people who have that status have children they haven't seen in a long time," Menjivar said. "That means they may be encouraging their family members to take the dangerous journey north even as children are motivated to flee violence or seek better economic opportunities."
Why are they being sent to Arizona?
Capacity. For most of the past decade, the Tucson Sector has been the busiest in the country for illegal border crossings, Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame said.
As a result, the sector "has gotten a lot of resources in terms of agents, infrastructure and technology," he said. "And we have two big processing facilities, in Nogales and Tucson."
It's important to note that the unaccompanied children being sent to Arizona won't stay here indefinitely. In a telephone conference Monday, White House officials agreed to discuss what the administration is doing so long as they were identified only as "senior administration officials."
They said the goal — not yet being met — is to process each minor within 72hours either to be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings or to the Health and Human Services Department to be reunited with family members or placed in foster homes pending deportation proceedings.
The Nogales, Ariz., holding facility received mattresses and four portable showers over the weekend. The Border Patrol didn't respond by deadline to questions about whether additional showers and other supplies had been delivered Monday.
Can't the Border Patrol just stop them?
The short answer: No. While the U.S. government has spent more than $126billion over the past nine years on border security and enforcement, much of the fencing and infrastructure was built in California, Arizona and western Texas, which were the major crossing areas over the past decade.
The Border Patrol has been moving increasing numbers of agents into the Rio Grande Valley Sector, but vast stretches of the river are easy to cross, and there is extensive vegetation along the banks that makes it easy to hide both before and after crossing.
What is the Obama administration doing about the children?
Senior administration officials said Monday that they had been preparing for increased numbers of unaccompanied children but that the numbers have been much greater than they expected.
Officials said they have been in daily contact with the governments of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and carrying out public-information campaigns in those countries to warn people of the dangers children face and that they are not eligible for any kind of residency or protected status under any potential immigration-reform measure.
The administration last week named a team, led by W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to coordinate with Homeland Security on how to handle the massive influx of unaccompanied minors.
Federal officials said they are working to improve the conditions in the Nogales processing facility. As of Monday, they had also readied facilities to temporarily house up to 1,767 children at military bases in California and Texas, and they were preparing additional temporary housing at Fort Sill, Okla.
Depending on how many minors Border Patrol agents continue to apprehend in Texas, more children may be sent to Arizona, officials said.

Friday, June 13, 2014

It's all about democracy!


ISIS fighters near the Iraqi town of Tikrit. 8 June 2014Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have made gains in Syria and Iraq
The borders of the modern Middle East are in large part a legacy of World War One. They were established by the colonial powers after the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
Those borders could now be in peril for two main reasons - the continuing fighting and fragmentation of Syria and the ISIS assault in Iraq Unless the military gains of ISIS can be reversed, the Iraqi state is in peril as never before. The dual crises in Syria and Iraq combine to offer the possibility of a "state" encompassing eastern Syria and western Iraq where the jihadists of ISIS hold sway.
This would have huge implications for the region and beyond. Iraq has to a large extent staggered from crisis to crisis, so what went wrong?
1. 'Original sin'
Map showing distribution of groups in Iraq
For some, Iraq's problems begin at the creation, with the founding of the modern Iraqi state itself. Britain, as the colonial power, established a Hashemite kingdom that took little account of other communities like the Shia or the Kurds - a theme that was to recur throughout Iraq's turbulent history.
The monarchy was eventually overturned by a military coup similar to the secular, nationalist and modernising forces that propelled the Nasser regime to power in Egypt.
It is this edifice that was eventually headed by Saddam Hussein whose Sunni-dominated regime dealt harshly with Shia and Kurdish sentiment.
Western support for Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War only seemed to consolidate his brutal regime.
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2. Operation Iraqi Freedom
Statue of Saddam Hussein toppled in Baghdad. April 2003The toppling of Saddam Hussein left Iraq struggling to stay united
The Baathist state was destroyed by the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saddam Hussein was deposed and ultimately tried and executed by the new Iraqi government. Iraq's military was largely dismantled and a new security force created.
The war which some US neoconservatives saw as an explicit attempt to bring democracy to the region, established new political arrangements, which while seeking to unite all communities, effectively produced a state dominated by the Shia majority.
Many had actually wondered if Iraq could actually hold together as a unitary state, not least because the Kurds in the north had been able to carve out a significant degree of autonomy for themselves.
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3. US pull-out
US troops leave Iraq in 2011
Despite initial plans to keep some forces in Iraq to assist the local army, no agreement could be reached between Baghdad and Washington, and the last US troops pulled out in December 2011 leaving security in the hands of the often less-than-effective Iraqi military.
The US had chalked up some significant successes in courting Sunni groups to help fight al-Qaeda-linked jihadist terrorism. Without the Americans these arrangements quickly broke down.
Sunnis found themselves increasingly the victims of the Shia-dominated government's security forces.
Indeed, the heavy-handedness of Iraqi forces may have effectively acted as a "recruiting sergeant" for ISIS.
Bar chart of civilian deaths in Iraq 2008 - 2014
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4. Sectarianism in the new Iraq
The great paradox of the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein is that by destroying Iraq as a regional player they accelerated and facilitated the rise of Iran. Tehran saw the Shia in Iraq as its allies in a wider regional struggle.
Maybe emboldened by support from Iran, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Shia triumphalism antagonised many Sunnis worsening the security situation on the ground.
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5. Economic and social failure
Sectarianism and the Sunni-Shia divide is seen by many commentators in a kind of chicken and egg situation.
Is it the sectarian differences in themselves that are the problem or is it that the Iraqi state's social and economic failure prompted more bitter divisions?
Iraqis - despite their country's oil wealth - are generally poor and levels of corruption in the country are very high.
Food deprivation
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6. Regional context
Nothing that happens in the Middle east occurs in a vacuum. Iraqis, while fixated inevitably on their own problems, have watched as the currents of the Arab Spring have come and gone; the almost circular political transformation in Egypt; and of course crucially the upheavals in neighbouring Syria. The jihadist surge there has inevitably had implications across the border in Iraq.
Backing for extreme Sunni fighters from the Gulf States has also facilitated the emergence and consolidation of groups like ISIS with a broader regional agenda.
And while direct collusion between Syria's Assad regime and the jihadists is hard to prove, there have been consistent reports that the Damascus government's military has paid far less attention to such groups while concentrating its fire on more moderate Western-backed fighters. This has given ISIS room to establish its own administrative structures in the areas it controls.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

What was President Obama's motive?



Father Of Soldier Who Obama Released, Declares Muslim Victory Call, And Obama Smiles As Soon As He Hears The War Cry Of Allah


Here is one of Robert Bergdahl’s YouTube favorites, entitled “The real terrorist was me US Soldier”:
Here’s another one.
When we discussed last Saturday’s bizarre Rose Garden event celebrating the release of 5 of the most dangerous Gitmo detainees on last Sunday’s edition of The Teri O’Brien Show, we told you about Bowe Bergdahl’s father, and the tweet he sent out on 5/28/14. If you didn’t hear about it, here it is.Screenshot 2014-06-03 13.36.52
Now, courtesy of Walid Shoebat, we find out that the tweet was just the tip of the jihadist iceberg. From his excellent report:
What no one in the media captured was Robert Bowe Bergdahl’s favorites on his Youtube account.
It reveals a dark mind, a collector of a litany of ‘terrorist favorites’, videos from training on how to become Muslim Jihadist to urging American troops to desert and even favorite speeches by confirmed terrorists like Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki, condemning America as a terrorist state. …
On one of the videos Bergdahl subscribes to a Jihadi message titled, “Duaa (prayer).”
But prayer for what? His son’s release only? Hardly, its for the release of the terrorists in American captivity. The prayer begins in Arabic, as Shoebat.com translates:
O Allah, release our prisoners, the Muslim prisoners, and send them back to our families in peace!
One would think that Bergdahl does not understand what is said in Arabic? Think again, he comments himself stating:
“Al-Hamdu Lillah, Ameen, Ameen May the duas of the ummah be heard and may Allah free my son from captivity! بِسْÙ…ِ اللَّÙ‡ِ الرَّØ­ْÙ…َٰÙ†ِ الرَّØ­ِيمِ Ø¥ِÙŠَّاكَ Ù†َعْبُدُ ÙˆَØ¥ِÙŠَّاكَ Ù†َسْتَعِينُ”
English:
Praise be to Allah, Amen, Amen, my prayers for all the Muslim Nation (ummah) be heard and may Allah free my son from captivity. In the name of Allah most merciful most beneficient, it is thee whom I worship, it is thee whom I seek refuge.
He types perfect Arabic and announces he is Muslim, “thee [Allah] I worship …”
Another favorite is a lecture from Mufti Ismail Menk, who identifies himself as a Muslim scholar titled “Qualities Of A True Worshipper”. Menk was also a favorite of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev.
The best part of all is Walid’s post is the video of Obama smiling as soon as Bergdorg praises Allah. It’s today’s “Post of the Day.”

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Is this something that needs to be discussed?

TERRORIST PROSECUTOR TO DISCUSS IMPEACHMENT NEXT THURSDAY IN CHICAGO

Andrew-McCarthy-leaders-e1362750365712Author Andrew McCarthy will discuss new book in Chicago next Thursday
By Nancy Thorner -
Those who watch the Fox News Channel know that author/analyst Andrew McCarthy appears from time to time on the Fox evening lineup of political commentary shows. Last week, he appeared as a guest on the very popular show, The Kelly File, hosted by Megan Kelly.  As a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense for Democracies and a columnist for the National Review Andrew was previously the Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, involved with trials of several international terrorists. Most famously, he was the lead prosecutor in the trial against Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman and 11 other terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
As a nationally acclaimed author, McCarthy has written several books on national security, specifically the threat of radical Islam in America. His books include, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America and Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad
Next Thursday, McCarthy will visit The Heartland Institute from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at its Chicago location, One South Wacker Drive, Suite #2740, to discuss his newest book, Faithless Execution: Building a Political Case for Obama's Impeachment.
Although Impeachment is rare in American history, and for a good reason, it is the ultimate remedy against abuse of executive power.  Politically convulsive in nature, the Framers understood impeachment to be a necessary protection if the rule of law is to be maintained. 
But what are impeachable offenses? There is widespread confusion among the American people about the answer to this question.
Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution lists treason and bribery, along with “other high crimes and misdemeanors as the standard for impeachment.   
Despite what “crimes” and “misdemeanors” connote, the concept has precious little to do with violations of a penal code.  Rather, it is about betrayal of the political trust reposed in the president to execute the laws faithfully and “preserve, protect and defend” our constitutional system, as his oath of office requires.  Recognized by the Founders in providing for the impeachment of an errant executive was that the rule of law is a sham if lawlessness is rampant among those who govern.
As addressed by the Framers at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, notions of oath, honor and trust were more demanding of public officials than the black and white prohibitions of criminal law which might not even be considered criminal if committed by a civilian. 
As Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist Papers (No. 65) impeachment of the president should take place for "offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to society itself." 
In Faithless Execution, McCarthy weighs the political dynamics as he builds a case, assembling a litany of abuses that add up to one overarching offense: the president’s willful violation of his solemn oath to execute the laws faithfully. The “fundamental transformation” he promised involves concentrating power into his own hands by flouting law — statutes, judicial rulings, the Constitution itself — and essentially daring the other branches of government to stop him. McCarthy contends that our elected representative are duty-bound to take up the dare.  It is a truth that we ignore at our peril.
How might Andrew McCarthy deal with these topics?
  • Is making the case for impeachment the same as moving forward with impeachment?
  • What is needed to go forward with impeachment?
  • Would pursuing impeachment hurt Republicans?
  • How does the case for Barack Obama's impeachment compare to the campaigns to impeach Nixon and Clinton?
  • How impeachment becomes a political and not a legal remedy.
  • What McCarthy thinks of GOP fecklessness in face of Obama's lawlessness?
Hear these issues and more discussed by signing up now!  Space is limited.
Location: The Heartland Institute, One South Wacker Drive, #2740
When:    Thursday, June 12, from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Cost:       $15.00 lunch;  $35.00 lunch with a copy of 
              Faithless Execution: Building the Political
             Case of Obama's Impeachment

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Our Next Mayor, BUMPED UP

DONE DEAL
The Daley's have decided to run Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle for mayor next year. The reasons are multiple but start off with Rahm being rammed down their throats and the way he unnecessarily insulted Mayor Daley at the inaugural. Combine that with Rahm terminating Daley inspired contracts, the loss of patronage jobs, etc., and you have an incumbent that is intolerable. 

Preckwinkle is the choice mainly because she can be controlled. An added benefit is that her election will open up the presidency of Cook County for the nicest guy in politics, John Daley. 

Tom Dart was also in the running but shot himself in the foot by constantly promoting himself  by being on TV talking about puppies, corruption in Harvey and John Wayne Gacy. All of it is nonsense when considering the out of control violence in Chicago, for which he has remained silent.  The thinking is that perhaps he is not stable enough for the 5th floor, at this time. Preckwinkle's term will be last four years (when she will be 72). Dart may be reconsidered then but being named to the appellate court before that may be a better ending for him. 

The battle is being spearheaded by the Chicago Tribune with their biweekly negative reports about Rahm. After Labor Day, expect a full frontal assault. Rahm, knowing he is outgunned and not able to afford a loss, may decide to just take that offer of Ambassador to wherever they have a quick flight.  

Politics

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Another Screwup

On June 30, 2009, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl went missing from the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, serving in a remote military outpost in Paktika Province on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
He was captured by the Taliban and imprisoned for 5 years — the only U.S. prisoner of war in the Afghan war.
The Obama administration made a deal with the Taliban. On May 31, 2014, without consulting with Congress, Obama released five prisoners from Gitmo — the U.S. detention camp for terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — in exchange for Bergdahl.
Deserter Pfc Bowe Bergdahl
Deserter Pfc Bowe Bergdahl

Here are 8 things you should know about the Bergdahl scandal:

1. OBAMA BROKE A LAW REQUIRING HIM TO CONSULT CONGRESS

The POS had signed the NDAA law in 2013, which requires him to notify Congress 30 days before releasing anyone from Guantanamo Bay.
  • House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Buck McKeon of California and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma said Obama had “clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress thirty days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated.” (Source: Daily Mail)
  • CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Obama “clearly broke the law. The law says 30-days’ notice. He didn’t give 30-days’ notice.” Obama’s opinion expressed in a signing statement “is not law. The law is on the books, and he didn’t follow it.” (Source: Mediaite)

2. THE 5 MEN WHO WERE RELEASED ARE SOME OF THE MOST DANGEROUS OF JIHADISTS

Mohammad Fazl, Khairullah Khairkhwa, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mohammed Nabi and Abdul Haq Wasiq were the most senior Afghans held at the Gitmo detention facility in Cuba, having been captured in 2001. The 5 jihadists were released to Qatar and received a hero’s welcome. A Taliban commander gloated that the exchange was the first time its “enemy,” the U.S., had “officially recognized our status. Once we confirmed the arrival of our five heroes back in Qatar, celebrations started everywhere in Afghanistan and the neighboring Pakistan.” (Source: Daily Mail)

3. THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS SOMETHING TO HIDE

  • Many of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers — from his squad to the larger group that comprised the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division — signed nondisclosure agreements to never share any information about Bergdahl’s disappearance and the efforts to recapture him. (Source: CNN)
  • The White House “inadvertently” outed the CIA station chief in Kabul to silence him?

4. BOWE BERDAHL IS A DESERTER, NOT A HERO

  • That’s what the soldiers who had served with Bergdahl say. (CNN)
  • A soldier claims Bergdahl mailed home his valuables mid-tour. (IJReview)
  • Bergdahl had carefully planned to leave his platoon. We now know when he went “missing,” he had taken with him a soft backpack, water, knives, a notebook and writing materials, but left behind his body armor and weapons — startling, given the hostile environment around his outpost. (New York Times)
  • Bergdahl left behind a note in his tent saying he had become disillusioned with the Army, did not support the American mission in Afghanistan and was leaving to start a new life. (New York Times)
  • An official Pentagon report concluded in 2010 that Bergdahl was a deserter — “walked away”. (Daily Mail)

5. BOWE BERGDAHL CONVERTED TO ISLAM

The Taliban claimed in 2010 that Bergdahl had converted to Islam and was teaching bomb-making to its jihadists. (Source: Jihad Watch)

6. BERGDAHL WAS ANTI-AMERICAN, COMPLAINED ABOUT FELLOW SOLDIERS, AND WANTED TO RENOUNCE U.S. CITIZENSHIP

This was reported for the Rolling Stone by the late Michael Hastings who died in a suspicious single-car accident. According to Fox News (via The Blaze), Bergdahl had written a note expressing a desire to renounce his American citizenship.

7. U.S. SOLDIERS WERE KILLED WHILE LOOKING FOR BERGDAHL

Nathan Bradley Bethea was an infantry officer in the U.S. Army from 2007 to 2014, had served in the same battalion as Bergdahl and participated in the attempts to find and rescue Bergdahl throughout the summer of 2009. Bethea writes for The Daily Beast: “For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl . . . for fear of endangering him. He is safe, and now it is time to speak the truth. And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.”
The 7 U.S. soldiers who sacrificed their lives while looking for Bowe Berdahl are:
  1. Pfc Aaron Fairbairn
  2. Pfc Justin Casillas
  3. Pfc Morris Walker
  4. Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen
  5. Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss
  6. Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews
  7. Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey

8. ROBERT BERGDAHL, BOWE’S FATHER, PRAISES ALLAH AND ISLAM

  • Like his son, Robert Bergdahl is a convert to Islam who has called for the release of the jihadists in Guantanamo. (Source: Jihad Watch)
  • Appearing in a White House news conference with the beaming POS standing by his side, the first words uttered by Robert Bergdahl were these Arabic words, “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim,” which mean “In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Compassionate.”
~Eowyn