Northwest Indiana Discussion

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – A senior Iranian naval commander says his country has sent several warships to the Atlantic Ocean, close to U.S. maritime borders for the first time.

The commander of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet, Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Saturday that the vessels have already begun the journey to the Atlantic Ocean via waters near South Africa.

Iranian officials said last month that the fleet consisted of a destroyer and a logistic helicopter carrier, which will be on a three-month mission.

Haddad says the fleet is approaching U.S. maritime borders for the first time. The Islamic Republic considers the move as a response to U.S. naval deployments near its own coastlines. The U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet is based in nearby Bahrain.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has backed talks with world powers but warned Tehran will never give up its nuclear programme.

He said Iran had agreed to the talks to “break the hostile atmosphere” with the international community.

But he urged his negotiators in Vienna not to yield to “coercive words”.

Iran and the six world powers involved in the talks are working to secure a comprehensive deal to replace an interim agreement that expires in July.

The US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany want to see Iran scale back its enrichment of uranium, which they fear could be used to make a nuclear bomb.

Tehran says its nuclear work is purely peaceful and hopes to agree a deal in return for a permanent lifting of sanctions.

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a joint statement on Wednesday that their third round of talks since November had included “substantive and detailed discussions covering all the issues which will need to be part of a Comprehensive Agreement”.

They will meet again in May for a fourth round of talks to “bridge the gaps in all the key areas and work on the concrete elements of a possible” agreement, the statement said.

Iran and its close ally President Bashar al-Assad have won the war in Syria, and the US-orchestrated campaign in support of the opposition’s attempt to topple the Syrian regime has failed, senior Iranian officials have told the Guardian.

In a series of interviews in Tehran, top figures who shape Iranian foreign policy said the west’s strategy in Syria had merely encouraged radicals, caused chaos and ultimately backfired, with government forces now on the front foot.

“We have won in Syria,” said Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee and an influential government insider. “The regime will stay. The Americans have lost it.”

Terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaida-linked jihadist groups and individuals armed and funded by Sunni Muslim Arab countries was now the main threat facing the Syrian people, Borujerdi said. Many foreign fighters who had travelled to Syria from Britain and other European countries could soon return. “We are worried about the future security of Europe,” he said.

Amir Mohebbian, a conservative strategist and government adviser, said: “We won the game in Syria easily. The US does not understand Syria. The Americans wanted to replace Assad, but what was the alternative? All they have done is encourage radical groups and made the borders less safe.

“We accept the need for change in Syria – but gradually. Otherwise, there is chaos.”

The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

The Right Didn’t Mind When Bush Paid a Ransom to Terrorists

Republicans are howling (with no proof) that Obama paid a ransom for Bowe Bergdahl’s freedom. Funny. They weren’t howling when Bush actually did it.

The Bowe Bergdahl story moves to the hearing stage this week, so we’ll be treated to the sight of preening House Republicans trying to press Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on when it was that he, too, started hating America. Meanwhile, over in the fever swamps, speculation is growing about an alleged “ransom” the Obama administration may have paid to bring Bergdahl home. That Ollie North, of all people, started this talk is one of those laugh, cry, or shoot-the-television moments that now assault our synapses with such regularity; it’s like Judas calling John or James a traitor, or Bernie Madoff aspersing Warren Buffett as a swindler.

North aside, the charge is picking up steam. Fox “News” “reported” that a ransom was on the table last year. The Free Beacon the other day quoted a “senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press,” who “speculated” that a cash payoff to the Haqqani Network, Bergdahl’s captors, surely had to be involved; the whole story made no sense otherwise. Get the picture? The typical evidence-free allegation, oxygenated by rife speculation from the usual suspects, who have no knowledge of anything but just want to get a meme started. So far, among elected officials, only House GOPer Steve “I’m Even Too Out There for Texas Republicans” Stockman has uttered the r-word.

But what starts with Stockman rarely ends with Stockman. And so I predict this charge is going to become a central talking point on the right in the coming days and weeks. Why wouldn’t it? It’s as high-voltage an allegation as Republicans can muster up. It carries, in its crude form, a subtext not only of colossally naive misjudgment but quite possibly of treason: the idea that not merely did the Manchurian president pay too high a price in the form of the Taliban Five to get back a good-for-nothing deserter, but now he (the theory will go) paid cash money to an evil terrorist network, thus helping to finance the group’s operations against America. As North, who knows whereof he speaks on the subject of abetting terrorists, put it: “Was there a ransom paid? Did the government of the United States, either directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist organization?”

Abu Sayyaf rebels are seen in the Philippines in this video grab made available February 6, 2009. (Reuters)

This would all be quite shocking if proved true, right? And maybe even legitimate grounds for impeachment. Funny, though—it somehow wasn’t either of those things in 2002, when the Bush administration did it.

We turn now to the Philippines, where the Abu Sayyaf terror network—Islamic fundamentalist, al Qaeda-linked, occupant of a slot on the State Department’s official terrorist-organization list since Bill Clinton put it there in 1997—was rampaging around the southern archipelago and taking Westerners hostage. Two such hostages were an American husband-and-wife missionary team, Martin and Gracia Burnham. They were kidnapped in May 2001. Their captivity was a pretty big story for a while, but then came September, and the inferno of Lower Manhattan.

It was after 9/11. Bush was our Churchill. We were strong then, united! And sure enough, I find little record of conservative talking heads criticizing Bush.

The Abu Sayyaf M.O. was the normal one—to demand large (or oddly not so large; the original demand for the Burnhams’ safety was $1 million) sums of money for their captives’ safe return. There were talks, and they bled into 2002. In April of that year, Bush gave a speech that included the line: “No nation can negotiate with terrorists, for there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death.”

A nice line. But of course, at that exact moment, the United States was negotiating intently with Abu Sayyaf for the Burnhams’ release. And not only that: The Bush administration arranged an indirect payment to Abu Sayyaf of $300,000, as reported a little later by ABC’s John McWethy, the veteran Pentagon correspondent, and even by Fox’s Brent Baier, whose phrasing had it that “the U.S. government facilitated a ransom payment to al Qaeda-linked terrorists.”

It seems that the payment was indirect rather than direct. But these days, that’s good enough for Ollie North (go reread his quote above). Even an indirect payment by the Obama administration to the Haqqani Network would clearly have these people screaming for impeachment hearings.

But then? Well, that was different. It was after 9/11. Bush was our Churchill. We were strong then, united! And sure enough, I find little record of conservative talking heads or elected Republicans criticizing Bush then, and alas not even any sense that cowed Democrats said much of anything. Those were the days of watching what you said, watching what you did.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ists.html#

Why isn't this on Fox News?

Scumbag conservatives...they're 'effing hypocrites.
Where was the outrage?

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel admitted that “the trust has been broken” between the White House and Congress following the Obama administration’s decision to skirt U.S. law and release five top Taliban leaders without first consulting with lawmakers.

Hagel admitted to lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday that the administration unilaterally inked a deal with the Taliban to release five top prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp without first notifying Congress, as is legally mandated.

The deal was signed “without providing 30 days notice to Congress,” as is required by law, Hagel told lawmakers before attempting to justify the administration’s decision to ignore this law.

The White House’s decision to skirt this law has prompted the House Armed Services Committee to launch a full investigation into the matter, lawmakers revealed on Wednesday.

Tikrit, Iraq (AFP) – Militants took control of the Iraqi city of Tikrit and freed hundreds of prisoners on Wednesday, police said, the second provincial capital to fall in two days.

“All of Tikrit is in the hands of the militants,” a police colonel said of the Salaheddin provincial capital, which lies roughly half way between Baghdad and Iraq’s second city Mosul which fell on Tuesday.

A police brigadier general said that the militants attacked from the north, west and south of the city, and that they were from powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

A police major said the militants had freed some 300 inmates from a prison in the city.

ISIL is spearheading a spectacular offensive that began late on Monday and has since overrun all of Nineveh province and its capital Mosul as well as parts of Kirkuk to its southeast and Salaheddin to its south.

ISIS Seizes Control of Another Iraqi City, “All Of Tikrit Is In The Hands Of Militants”
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I'm surprised...I thought it was "Mission Accomplished" many years ago![/url]