Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan,
headed a firm that was
cited in March for
breaching sensitive files in
the State Department’s passport office, according to a State Department
Inspector General’s
report released this past July.
The
security breach, first reported by the Washington Times and later
confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, involved a
contract employee of Brennan’s firm, The Analysis Corp., which has
earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting
services to federal agencies and private companies.
During a State Department
briefing on March 21, 2008, McCormack confirmed that the contractor had
accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Barack Obama,
Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain, and that the inspector general
had launched an investigation.
Sources who tracked the
investigation say that the main target of the breach was the Obama
passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to
"cauterize" the records of potentially embarrassing information. "They looked at the McCain and Clinton files as well to create
confusion," one knowledgeable source said. "But this was basically an
attempt to cauterize the Obama file."
At the time of the breach,
Brennan was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.
The passport files include "personally identifiable information such as
the applicant’s name, gender, social security number, date and place of
birth, and passport number," according to the inspector general report.
The files may contain additional information including "original
copies of the associated documents," the report added. Such
documents include birth certificates, naturalization certificates, or
oaths of allegiance for U.S.-born persons who adopted the citizenship of
a foreign country as minors.
The State Department Office of
Inspector General (OIG) issued a 104-page report on the breach last
July. Although it is stamped "Sensitive but Unclassified," the
report was heavily redacted in the version released to the public, with
page after page blacked out entirely."
This guy should be in prison, not
in the Executive Office Building.
"Lt." Quarles Harris
During the
investigation into the passport breach, The Washington Times
reported that a key witness in passport fraud case was fatally shot in front of a Washington, DC, church.
The report said Lt. Quarles Harris Jr.,
24, who had been cooperating with federal investigators in a passport
case, was found late
slumped dead inside a car. The reports said that Lt. Harris' death remains unsolved, and
mysteriously, unreported until one year later, when the blogosphere
discovered the murder, and conflated Harris' murder with the passport
breach.
"Lt." Quarles
Harris
was a petty street punk con-artist. His name was "Leiutenant"
(note spelling), he was not a lieutenant in anything. He was arrested
in the possession of many phony credit cards that he had acquired via an
identity theft scheme which involved stealing personal information from
passport applications.
Leiutenant Harris was in court for that
case three days before his murder. "He felt like he was going to
do jail time. He was willing to do jail time," said his mother.
Police had stopped her son and found 20 credit cards and eight completed
passport applications. According to
court documents, Leiutenant Harris told police he and someone inside
the State Department were taking information off passport applications,
which they used to get fraudulent credit cards. Another
conspirator, inside the Postal Service, intercepted the cards before
they could get to the actual people.
There IS no connection
between "Lt." Quarles Harris and the scrubbing of Obama's passport
files.
Counter Terrorism In Obama's Washington
Daniel Pipes,
writing
in FrontPage magazine, directs our attention towards Obama's assistant
for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John O. Brennan, who
conveniently outlined the administration's present and future policy
mistakes in a
speech on August 6, "A New Approach for Safeguarding Americans."
To start with, his address to the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, has an unusual tenor. "Sycophantic"
is the word that springs to mind, as Brennan ninety times in five
thousand words invokes either "President Obama," "he," "his," or "the
president." Disturbingly, Brennan ascribes virtually every thought
or policy in his speech to the wisdom of the One. This
cringe-inducing lecture reminds one of a North Korean functionary paying
homage to the Dear Leader.
Specifics are no better. Most
fundamentally, Brennan calls for appeasing terrorists: "Even as we
condemn and oppose the illegitimate tactics used by terrorists, we need
to acknowledge and address the legitimate needs and grievances of
ordinary people those terrorists claim to represent." Which
legitimate needs and grievances, one wonders, does he think Al-Qaeda
represents?
Brennan carefully delineates a two-fold threat, one
being "Al-Qaida and its allies" and the other "violent extremism."
But the former, self-evidently, is a subset of the latter. This
elementary mistake undermines his entire analysis.
He also
rejects any connection between "violent extremism" and Islam: "Using the
legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy
struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious
legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it
risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with
Islam itself."
This passage regurgitates a theory of radical
Islam that, according to Lt. Colonel Joseph C. Myers of the U.S. Air
Command and Staff College, "is part of a strategic disinformation and
denial and deception campaign"
developed by
the Muslim Brotherhood.
Discredited
in 2007 by Robert Spencer, the theory distinguishes between good jihad
and bad jihad and denies any connection between Islam and terrorism.
It's a deeply deceptive interpretation intended to confuse
non-Muslims and win time for Islamists. The George W. Bush
administration, for all its mistakes, did not succumb to this ruse.
But Brennan informs us that his boss now bases U.S. policy on it.
Well, Obama did say this
about Muslims: "I will stand with them should the political winds
shift in an ugly direction." Once again, he's just doing what he
said he'd do.
The speech contains disquieting signs
of ineptitude. We learn that Obama considers nuclear weapons in
the hands of terrorists to be "the most immediate and extreme threat to
global security." Fine. But how does he respond? With
three feeble and nearly irrelevant steps: "leading the effort for a
stronger global nonproliferation regime, launching an international
effort to secure the world's vulnerable nuclear material …, and hosting
a global nuclear summit."
Nor can Brennan think straight.
One example, requiring a lengthy quote.
"Poverty does not cause
violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause
terrorism. But just as there is no excuse for the wanton slaughter
of innocents, there is no denying that when children have no hope for an
education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel
disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for
the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to
ideologies of violence and death."
Even though most of the terrorists
that have made the big time come from financially fixed families, and
are well-educated, even holding professional degrees.
Summary: Poverty and a lack of education do not cause
terrorism, but a lack of education and a job make people more
susceptible to the ideas leading to terrorism. What is the
distinction? Woe on us when the White House accepts illogic as
analysis.
Further, let's focus on the statement, "when
governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then
people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death," for
it contains two stunning errors. First, it assumes the socialist
fiction that governments provide basic needs. No. Other than
in a few commodity-rich states, governments protect and offer legal
structures, while the market provides.
Second, every study on the
subject finds no connection between personal stress (poverty, lack of
education, unemployment) and attraction to radical Islam. If
anything, massive transfers of wealth to the Middle East since 1970
contributed to the rise of radical Islam. The administration is
basing its policy on a falsehood.
Where, as they say, is the
adult supervision? Implementation of the inept policies outlined
by Brennan spells danger for Americans, American interests, and American
allies. The bitter consequences of these mistakes soon enough will
become apparent.
Brennan is
just another gangster serving in the Obama administration. He's the guy that breached Obama
passport file during the campaign in order to "cauterize" Obama's travel
records of potentially embarrassing information. "They looked at the
McCain and Clinton files as well to create confusion," one knowledgeable
source said. "But this was basically an attempt to cauterize the
Obama file."
At the time of the breach, Brennan was working as
an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.
This guy should be in
prison for breaking into the the State Department and breaching it's
passport files, not in the Executive Office Building.
More Nonsense From Obama's Terrorism Expert
The Obama administration official who declared there was "no smoking
gun" that could have alerted authorities about an al-Qaida plot to bring
down a U.S. airliner over Detroit had received a personal, high-level
briefing in October warning of a new al-Qaida tactic of hiding a bomb in
an attacker's underwear.
On Fox News Sunday, John Brennan,
assistant to the president for homeland security, told host Chris
Wallace, "There was no smoking gun. There was no piece of
intelligence that said, 'This guy's a terrorist. He's going to get
on a plane.' No, not whatsoever."
Brennan's comment evoked
derision from international expert Arnaud de Borchgrave Monday during an
exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV's Kathleen Walter.
"I would
call that twaddle in all its unrational splendor," said de Borchgrave,
author, syndicated columnist, and director of the Center for Strategic
and International Studies. "It's ridiculous to maintain such a
thing. But [Brennan] is trying to put the best face possible on a
very difficult situation. I've known him a long time, he's a
highly competent man."
Despite Brennan's contention that no
smoking gun preceded the attack, Newsweek reported that Brennan received
a personal briefing in October from Muhammad bin Nayef, the Saudi Prince
who narrowly survived an al-Qaida assassination attempt in August.
Nayef was wounded in the explosion, which used the same technique, and
the same PETN explosive material, that authorities say Nigerian Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab employed to try to bring down a Northwest airliner
on Christmas Day.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed
responsibility for both attacks.
An intelligence source told
Newsweek bin Nayef personally briefed Brennan because "he didn't think
[U.S. officials] were paying enough attention" to the growing al-Qaida
threat in Yemen.
U.S. intelligence sources say they believe the
same bomb maker built both devices.
Brennan told CNN that,
although he personally toured the site of the bombing in Saudi Arabia
and met with bin Nayef, "There was no indication, though, that al-Qaida
was trying to use that type of attack and that modus operandi against
aircraft."
I guess
Brennan never heard of the "Shoe Bomber." Other than that, Brennan
is a worse liar than Obama.
Obama's Spook Lies
Last Sunday, Obama's spook, John Brennan, who got his job because he
scrubbed Obama's passport files, was interviewed by Fox News' Chris
Wallace about the circumstances surrounding the events of Christmas and
the Crotch Bomber (transcript).
Yesterday, Pete Hoekstra said Brennan lied about the facts in his
interview with Wallace.
Rep. Hoekstra (R-MI) disputes Brennan's claims about Christmas
briefing (05:01)
At 3:29 in the video, during
a previous interview (03:29) with Perky, Katie Couric asks Obama if he
has ruled out conducting the KSM trial in the Big Apple. Obama
responds, "I have not ruled it out."
He didn't say the
attorney general has not ruled it out. I contend that
confirms my opinion from the previous item.
Obama's Complacent Terror Czar
Associated Content is reporting that Obama's Terror Czar John
Brennan says that 20% of the released terrorists going back to the
battlefield to kill Americans and others "isn't that bad." In
another "What the hell did you just say?!"-moment that's becoming,
sadly, increasingly common with Obama's rogue terror czar, John Brennan
was speaking at -- of all places! -- the Islamic Center of New York
University just this past Saturday. Since it was the Islamic
Center and all, what better venue for John Brennan to spout another
completely shocking and widely condemnable opinion that just confirms
all the prior criticism that's rightfully been swirling around him for
months! You know, just the same old, same old criticism that he's
not up to the job, is inept, or simply is too liberal to be effective at
his post as terror czar.
Brennan's stunning attitude of
complacency toward the very real statistic that one-fifth of all
released terrorists will immediately return to kill Americans referred
to a now-notorious figure that made an appearance in a letter to Nancy
Pelosi earlier this month. This 20%-figure was first found in a
Pentagon study on recidivism rates of the terrorists who were held at
Guantanamo Bay.
The context in which Brennan used that 20%-figure
during his speech at the ironically appropriate Islamic Center at New
York University was his comparison of terrorists and recidivism to mere,
common criminals in the American penal system and recidivism there.
In fact, as you will witness yourself in the following video, Brennan's
exact words on the subject were:
"People sometimes use that
figure, 20%, say, 'Oh, my goodness, one out of five detainees returned
to some type of extremist activity.' You know, the American penal
system, the recidivism is up to something about 50% or so, as far as
return to crime. 20% isn't that bad."
Michelle Malkin
says it’s bad enough that John Brennan, Obama’s national security
deputy, thinks Gitmo jihadi recidivism is "not that bad." But in
his talk last week with Islamic law students at New York University,
Brennan made even more reckless comments about our counterterrorism
programs while pandering to one of the worst Muslim grievance-mongers
and sharia peddlers in
America.
During the question-and-answer session, Brennan welcomed
a question from
Omar Shahin. He identified himself as the head of the "North
American Imams Federation." What he didn’t mention was his role as
the chief ringleader of the infamous
flying
imams. You remember them: They were the six Muslim clerics
whose suspicious behavior -- provocatively shouting "Allahu Akbar!"
before boarding the plane, fanning out in the cabin before take-off,
refusing to sit in their assigned seats, requesting seat-belt extenders,
which they placed on the floor -- led to their removal by a U.S. Airways
crew in 2006.
In coordination with the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Shahin and his radical delegation attempted
to shake down the airline with a discrimination lawsuit and bully the
citizen "John Does" who flagged the imams’ security-undermining
behavior. CAIR mouthpiece Ibrahim Hooper blasted "anti-Muslim hysteria" by those who saw
something and said something about the imams’ in-flight shenanigans.
Shahin ranted in a teleconference strategy session in 2007 that, indeed,
he and his cohorts were spoiling for the incident and planning to
engineer "many, many cases" to sabotage airline security efforts.
As head of the Islamic Center of Tucson in Arizona --
described as the first cell of al-Qaida in the United States and
home to past jihadi dry-run plotters -- Shahin preached that his
followers must put Islamic sharia law above Western laws. He told
the Arizona Republic that he doubted Muslims were behind the 9/11
terrorist attacks, concluding: "All of these, they make it up."
Brennan didn’t appear to know who Shahin was. Somebody around him
should have briefed him. Shahin’s involvement in Hamas-linked
charities and radical Wahhabi "youth groups" has earned the
Jordanian-born naturalized citizen increased FBI scrutiny over the
years.
Instead, Brennan treated him as just another innocent
Muslim with "reasonable" concerns about the government.
Shahin
began with faux, flag-waving emotion,
"We came to this country to enjoy freedom."
"We feel that since September 11, we aren’t enjoying these
values anymore. … Also, we feel that there’s a big lack of trust
between Muslims’ community and our government. … My question: Is
there anything being done by our government to rebuild this trust?"
Instead of countering the narrative, exposing
Shahin’s true intentions and vigorously defending America’s homeland
security apparatus, Brennan dutifully genuflected to the gods of
political correctness. Obama, he told the militant 9/11 inside-job
theorist and jihad white-washer, is "determined to put America on a
strong course."
No, not a "strong course" that includes national
security profiling of Islamic radicals pretending they care about our
country’s best interests. By "strong course," Brennan assured
Shahin, he meant a course toward assuaging the civil rights groups who
have objected to every security program at airports, borders, train
stations and visa offices for the past nine years.
Brennan told
Shahin that the post-9/11 response of the Bush administration was a
"reaction some people might say was over the top in some areas" (insert
indignant grievance-monger nodding and mmm-hmming here), and that "in an
overabundance of caution, (we) implemented a number of security measures
and activities that upon reflection now we look back, after the heat of
the battle has died down a bit, we say they were excessive, OK."
It gets worse: Brennan then went on to decry the "ignorant feelings" of
Americans outraged at the jihadi attacks on American soil. And
then he told Shahin and the audience of Muslim students that he "was
very concerned after the attack in Fort Hood as well as the
December 25
attack that all of sudden there were people who went back into this
fearful position that lashed out not thinking through what was
reasonable and appropriate."
The Fort Hood jihadist slaughtered
14 innocent soldiers and an unborn baby after an Army career of openly
threatening the lives of our soldiers, and Brennan is wringing his hands
about the rest of us "lashing out" over government incompetence.
He believes our true sin is not in the systemic under-reaction from the
military, homeland security, intel and White House officials in charge,
but in the "overreacting" of the American public.
With clueless
capitulationists like Brennan in charge of our safety, who needs
enemies?
Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad As
"Legitimate Tenet Of Islam"
FOXNews.com is
reporting that Obama's top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday
called jihad a "legitimate tenet of Islam," arguing that the term
"jihadists" should not be used to describe America's enemies.
During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
John Brennan described
violent extremists as victims of "political, economic and social
forces," but said that those plotting attacks on the United States
should not be described in "religious terms."
He repeated the
administration argument that the enemy is not "terrorism," because
terrorism is a "tactic," and not terror, because terror is a "state of
mind" -- though Brennan's title, deputy national security adviser for
counterterrorism and homeland security, includes the word "terrorism" in
it. But then Brennan said that the word "jihad" should not be
applied either.
"Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or
'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of
Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is
nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men,
women and children," Brennan said.
The technical, broadest
definition of jihad is a "struggle" in the name of Islam and the term
does not connote "holy war" for all Muslims. However, jihad
frequently connotes images of military combat or warfare, and some of
the world's most wanted terrorists including Usama bin Laden commonly
use the word to call for war against the West.
Brennan defined
the enemy as members of bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and "its terrorist
affiliates."
But Brennan argued that it would be
"counterproductive" for the United States to use the term, as it would
"play into the false perception" that the "murderers" leading war
against the West are doing so in the name of a "holy cause."
"Moreover, describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence
to the lie propagated by Al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify
terrorism -- that the United States is somehow at war against Islam," he
said.
The comment comes after Brennan, in a February speech in
which he described his respect for the tolerance and devotion of Middle
Eastern nations, referred to Jerusalem on first reference by its Arabic
name, Al-Quds.
"In all my travels the city I have come to love
most is al-Quds, Jerusalem, where three great faiths come together,"
Brennan said at an event co-sponsored by the White House Office of
Public Engagement and the Islamic Center at New York University and the
Islamic Law Students Association at NYU.
Brennan is either an idiot or a
foreign agent. He may believe that jihad means "to purify oneself
or one's community," but click
here
to see what "jihad" really is.
White House Linked To Flotilla Organizers
Jerome R. Corsi
says a top adviser to Obama is the contact person within the White
House for communications with the Free Gaza Movement over plans to
challenge Israel's blockade of the terrorist Hamas-controlled Gaza
Strip, according to a reputable source close to the Netanyahu
government.
The source, a career official whose reliability was
established through his tips for the book, "Why Israel Can't Wait,"
identified Obama's personal "black bag" guy,
John O. Brennan, Deputy
National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, as
the contact.
The allegation raises the bizarre possibility that
the Free Gaza Movement's flotilla action in the Mediterranean was being
coordinated with the White House, something that would align with a
shift in U.S. policy toward Israel being debated within the Obama
administration.
Brennan's activities in his "counterterrorism"
work have involved him in situations with domestic groups known to have
ties to Middle East terrorism.
WorldNetDaily has previously
reported that Brennan
participated in a meeting with Muslim law students, facilitated by the
Islamic Society of North America, a group that was named an unindicted
co-conspirator in a case where the founders of the Holy Land Foundation
of Texas were given life sentences "for funneling $12 million" to Hamas,
the group currently in political control of Gaza.
There are
additional reports
that at a meeting with Muslim law students at New York University,
Brennan declared himself a "citizen of the world" who believed the
United States government should never engage in "profiling" in pursuit
of national security.
The New York Times reported this week that
the Obama administration's policy toward Israel was changing in a
re-evaluation that now considers Israel's blockade of Gaza to be
untenable. But Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu insisted in a
special press conference in his office Thursday that "Israel will not
apologize for defending itself," which strongly suggested Israel fully
intends to continue its blockade.
In a speech delivered Aug. 9,
2009, to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and
archived on the White House website, Brennan commented that using "a
legitimate term, 'jihad,' meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy
struggle for a moral goal" to describe terrorists "risks reinforcing the
idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself."
In a July 2008 article in The Annals, a publication of the American
Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Brennan argued it "would not
be foolhardy, however, for the United States to tolerate, and even to
encourage, greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon's political
system, a process that is subject to Iranian influence."
Continued Brennan: "Hezbollah is already represented in the Lebanese
parliament and its members have previously served in the Lebanese
cabinet, reflections of Hezbollah's interest in shaping Lebanon's
political future from within government institutions. This involvement
is a far cry from Hezbollah's genesis as solely a terrorist organization
dedicated to murder, kidnapping and violence."
At the August
2009 press conference for the CSIS, Brennan declared, "Hezbollah started
out as purely a terrorist organization back in the early '80s and has
evolved significantly over time. And now it has members of parliament,
in the cabinet; there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the
Hezbollah organization."
Middle Eastern terrorist groups like
Hamas and Hezbollah frequently maintain civilian units of doctors and
lawyers so as to emphasize their outreach with local politicians and
increase their political acceptance in the international arena.
Conceivably, the Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms
and Humanitarian Relief, better known by the Turkish acronym IHH, would
fit Brennan's definition of the charitable side of organizations such as
Hezbollah, despite IHH's ties to al-Qaida that have been documented by
experts such as former investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who led
the French judiciary's counter-terrorism unit for nearly two decades
before retiring in 2007.
The IHH, in fact, is not included on
the U.S. State Department's current list of 45 groups designated as
foreign terrorist organizations. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are listed.
In his speech to the New York University law school students
posted on YouTube by the White House, Brennan included a
lengthy
statement in Arabic that he did not translate for his
English-speaking audience.
Noting that he spent time spent as an
undergraduate with the American University in Cairo during the 1970s,
Brennan proceeded to use only the Arabic name "Al Quds" when referring
to Jerusalem, commenting that during his 25 years in government he spent
considerable time in the Middle East, as a political officer with the
State Department and as a CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia.
"In
Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as
custodians of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina," he said. "I
marveled at the majesty of the hajj and the devotion of those who
fulfilled their duty as Muslims of making that pilgrimage."
Terrorists Are The Real Victims?
The Washington Times says the Obama
administration legitimizes the terrorist viewpoint, and Obama's top
counterterrorism adviser knows very little about terrorism -- that's
scary for America.
John Brennan, deputy national security adviser
for counterterrorism and homeland security, asserted in a speech last
month that the United States cannot be at war with terrorism because
terrorism is only a "tactic." Terrorism, however, is also a
strategy and method, with a long history and extensive theoretical
literature. This is why it is an "-ism" and not simply "terror."
It is bewildering that Mr. Brennan would make such a glaring error on
such a fundamental concept.
Mr. Brennan also asserted that
"violent extremists" are victims of "political, economic and social
forces." This dense statement implies that counterterrorism should
focus not on terrorists themselves but the underlying causes that
purportedly "victimized" them. It's similar to the discredited
argument that the way to fight urban crime is through big-government
social programs rather than putting more police on the beat.
Making terrorists into victims also legitimates their grievances, which
is a strange way to fight them.
Mr. Brennan's curious views may
be part of a larger move by the O Force to redefine terrorism.
According to Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, an
effort is under way to revise counterterrorism strategy. Last
week, at a speech at the Center for a New American Security, she said,
"one of the discussions we're having in that context is what are the
root causes of extremism."
The anguished quest for the "root
causes" of political violence is hardly new. The root cause of
terrorism has been the holy grail of counterterrorism research for
decades. Most scholars have ruled out the simplistic notion that
terrorism is the product of vague social or economic forces or that
terrorism arises from backwardness or privation. Were that the
case, there would be a great deal more terrorism in the world, and it
would not be the hobby of a billionaire's son like Osama bin Laden.
So a strategy that focuses on mitigating supposed root causes is
hamstrung by the fact that the causes cannot reasonably be determined
and that the United States is incapable of solving the world's social
and economic problems.
Mr. Brennan also has been waging his own
crusade on jihad. He claims "jihad is a holy struggle, a
legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community,
and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering
innocent men, women and children." It's true that the term jihad
can refer to the inner struggle for purification, something known as the
"greater jihad" in Islamic theology. But jihad also can mean the violent
struggle against non-Muslims for the defense or extension of the Islamic
faith, something known as the "lesser jihad," which to the United States
is the greater threat. Mr. Brennan chooses to blind himself to
this definition of the word, which is like not understanding that the
word "prey" can be both a noun and a verb, each with very different
implications.
Mr. Brennan believes attacks on the United States
should not be justified in religious terms, but this is how terrorists
in fact do justify them. His obtuseness is dangerous.
Knowing the enemy is a necessary precondition for victory. A good
starting point is bin Laden's November 2002 "Letter to the American
People" in which he explicitly addresses the question of why al Qaeda is
at war with the United States. It is a comprehensive critique of
American society, which he describes as the "worst civilization in the
history of the world." Bin Laden's missive is steeped in religious
language and is the product of a radical Islamic intellectual tradition
that goes back more than a century.
Mr. Brennan's view of Islam
as a universally benign force may lead him to dismiss some of al Qaeda's
justifications for violence, which reveals willful ignorance. He
may maintain that he knows more about Islam than our enemies, but they
are dying to prove him wrong.
More Obama Chutzpah
Here's an old video, that I had not seen before (sorry about the
commercial at the beginning). It features a deeply disturbed
Barack Obama, lamenting about the "accessing" of his passport files.
What he doesn't say, is that
John Brennan, his
personal spook, and the dhimmi
he would appoint as Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland
Security and Counterterrorism, is the guy behind the passport breach
-- Brennan was/is an Obama agent.
So, here we see Obama
expressing outrage that someone tapped into his passport file,
saying he expects a full and thorough investigation -- ha!
But here's the chutzpah. Obama says, "Not, that I have any
particular concerns. I'm assuming any information that anybody
obtained is available in other ways."
What a devious bastard!
He has spent millions keeping American citizens from access to ALL
of his records. He KNOWS whatever is in, excuse me, WAS in
those passport files that may have been prejudicial is long gone.
Brennan's employee at Analysis, Inc, where Brennan was CEO, not
only looked at Obama's file, but also hacked into McCain's file.
That guy has been disciplined, but not fired -- of course not -- he
or she is on the team.
"That individual no longer has access
to that kind of information," a State Department spokesman said.
The passport files would provide basic information like birth
dates and background on where candidates have traveled, but the
files would also include sensitive information like Social Security
numbers, which could be used to track down credit reports and other
personal information.
Hell, Obama's two-dozen Social Security
numbers have been
posted on the Internet for almost two years.
It's really
quite unbelievable, Obama directs his spook to scrub his passport
files, and then calls for a full and thorough investigation.
Read the whole thing
here -- and just check out that "What, me guilty?" look in the
image associated with the video above -- priceless!
The FactCheck Link Between The Obama
Campaign And Passportgate
This technical analysis was provided by John F.
Sweeney, who reminds us that the two-year anniversary of "Passportgate"
was this past Monday, March 14. Passportgate was the covert
"accessing" of passport records by three contractors at the State
Department. Two of the contractors were fired. The contractor who was
not fired, but only disciplined, worked for The Analysis Corporation. John O. Brennan
was the president of The Analysis Corporation. He is also
a former CIA official and is now Deputy National Security Adviser for
Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
The
dates of access are
January 9, February 21 and March 14, 2008. The initial reports indicated
only a breach of Obama’s records. Later it was reported that Clinton and
McCain’s records had been accessed. The names of the individuals,
including the one still working at the State Department, have never been
released. Officially, it was a simple matter of snooping; no criminal
charges were filed and it was handled only with "disciplinary" action. For such a serious breach, the penalties were light.
So what is
the relevance of Passportgate and March 14, 2008? One must go back two
days to March 12, 2008 for the answer. This is because from all
available information, background, verifiable data and facts, March 12,
2008 is the first verifiable history of the now infamous Obama internet
COLB, exactly two days prior to the last passport break-in. Specifically, the first documentable record of the COLB starts at the
hour of 22:41:37 on March 12, 2008. This is the date and time stamp from
the digital photo that is shown on the
FactCheck.org website dedicated to
Obama’s COLB.
Specifically, it is the photo named
"birth_certificate_3.jpg." FactCheck has removed the original embedded
data, known as EXIF data, from its website, but an original version with
the EXIF data can be found at the
24ahead.com website
[discussion and amplification
here].
What is
known about this photo named "birth_certificate_3.jpg"? As stated above,
the date/time stamp digitally recorded when the photo was taken
indicates the photo was taken March 12, 2008 and the time is recorded as
22:41:37 or 10:41 p.m. Other data available from the EXIF data indicates
the camera used was a Canon PowerShot A570IS. It was in Auto mode with
red-eye reduction mode on, the flash did not fire during the photo, the
exposure time was 1/60th (relatively slow), and the F-stop (aperture)
was 4.00.
While these values are shown in the EXIF data, we know
they were automatically selected by the camera and not the photographer
because we can also see the camera was set to full auto mode -- simply
point and shoot. The result was a slightly blurred, overexposed photo of
printed, greenish-tint document.
In the photo, a document is
being held up to a light source. The light source is behind the
photographer since the shadow of his arm is over the document. The light
source is also the predominant lighting since the background is dark and
the overhead office lights are off in the background. Analysis of the
background finds: a) the overhead office lights off, and b) no natural
light coming in from the large windows that can be seen. The conclusion
is that that photo was taken at night. Was it at 10:41 p.m.? There is
nothing in the photo to contradict that digitally-captured time.
Alan Caruba
says there's a
YouTube video of John Brennan, the President’s national security
advisor, praising Islam and the Arab culture to an unidentified group of
Arabs that is so revealing it should be probable cause for his removal
from office. At one point, he addresses them in fluent Arabic, a
language acquired in his studies and CIA posts over the years.
When the British Empire spanned much of the globe there was a term
for men who embraced the culture and nations to which they were
assigned. They were deemed to have “gone native”, often wearing Arab
garb and becoming apologists or advocates. Among the most famous was
Lawrence of Arabia, but there were many others such as
Lieutenant-General, Sir John Bagot Glub, called “Glub Pasha” and best
known for leading and training Jordan’s Arab Legion from 1939 to 1956;
the same Legion that took part in attacks on Israel after it declared
independence in 1948.
In the video, Brennan waxes poetic about Arab culture. In 1977
Brennan had received a degree in political science from Fordham
University. During his studies he had spent his junior year learning
Arabic and taking Middle Eastern Studies courses at the American
University in Cairo. He received a Master of Arts degree in government
with a concentration in Middle East studies from the University of Texas
at Austin in 1980.
His career in the Central Intelligence Agency was one in which he
reached the highest rungs as an analyst, serving at one point as a daily
intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton. In 1996, he was the CIA
station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers, a housing
complex, was blown up by a truck bomb, killing nineteen U.S. servicemen
billeted there. He would serve under CIA Director George Tenet as the
director of its newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center from
2003 to 2004. He would serve as director of the CIA’s National
Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2005.
One might assume from such an impressive resume that Brennan was the
ideal man to be appointed President Barack Hussein Obama’s chief
counterintelligence advisor with the title of Deputy National Security
Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
One might assume that, but Brennan, from his earliest days in that
post made a number of statements and authored a USA Today opinion
editorial that revealed deeply felt sympathies for the very people who
were and are attacking Americans at home and overseas. In his USA Today
opinion, Brennan criticized “Politically motivated criticism and
unfounded fear-mongering that only serve the goals of al Qaeda.”
Commenting on Brennan’s USA Today opinion, Jeb Babbin, in an article
for
Human Events on February 11, 2010, wrote of Brennan and the Obama
administration’s incomprehensible national security actions, “Consider
their consistent record of bad decisions only one year into Obama’s
presidency: to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba; to move Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other al Qaeda varsity out
of the military commissions system and try them in civilian criminal
court; to war against the intelligence community; to put the White House
in charge of interrogations of captured terrorists; and, most recently,
the hasty decision to put the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab, in civilian custody thus preventing professional
intelligence interrogators from having access to him.”
Babbin characterized Brennan’s USA Today article as “a string of fibs
and misleading statements so easily disproved (that) it leaves observers
wondering about Brennan’s sanity.”
Writing in the Washington Observer on May 26, 2010, Spencer Ackerman
reported that “Brennan signaled as well that the administration is
concerned that blowback from civilians killed by drones could turn
tactical success into strategic failure.” Brennan said the U.S. had an
obligation to destroy al Qaeda proactively, “but also has a
responsibility not to overreact in the event of a successful attack.”
One wonders if he thought that President George W. Bush overreacted
to the al Qaeda attack on 9/11. One can only assume he agreed with
President Obama’s decision to send a SEAL team to assassinate Osama bin
Ladin. In his defense of the decision to have Adulmatalleb read his
Miranda rights, Brennan said, “Cries to try terrorists only in military
courts lacks foundation.” This ignores the long history of trying people
who commit acts of war against the United States the use of military
courts.
The fact that Brennan is one of the chief advisors to President Obama
explains a lot about the decisions Obama has made since taking office
with regard to protecting the nation against al Qaeda and other
terrorist organizations. It explains Obama’s now famous “apology tour”
of the Middle East that he took in 2009 and his conciliatory speech
delivered at the University of Cairo.
Egypt has now moved outside the nation’s zone of influence and Iran
openly mocks the Obama policies of using diplomacy and sanctions to stop
their quest for nuclear weapons. Israel, despite Obama’s latest
reassurances, was earlier told to stop building housing in its capitol
city and to retreat to indefensible 1967 borders.
Inside the White House, Obama continues to be advised by a man whose
sympathies, despite his long service in the CIA, appear to be with the
Islamic enemies of the nation. It is no surprise that Brennan has
maintained a very low profile since 2009-2010.
There have been many calls for Brennan’s resignation or firing, but
he remains in Obama’s good graces. That, too, is no surprise.
"Too Much
Freedom Is Possible"
Charles C. Johnson
is reporting that In his 1980 graduate thesis at the University of
Texas at Austin, John Brennan denied the existence of "absolute human
rights" and argued in favor of censorship on the part of the Egyptian
dictatorship.
"Since the press can play such an influential role
in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some
degree of government censorship," Brennan wrote. "Inflamatory [sic]
articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence, especially
in developing political systems."
Brennan serves as President
Barack Obama"s national security advisor. Obama has nominated him to
lead the Central Intelligence Agency.
The thesis, "Human
Rights: A Case Study of Egypt," was a requirement for Brennan"s
Master of Arts degree in government with a Middle Eastern studies
concentration. It grew out of his time studying at the American
University in Cairo.
"These four rights reflect not only my own moral concept of human
rights [but] also my interpretation of the Western human rights
perspective," Brennan wrote in his introduction.
"I don"t
feel that the possible forfeiture of rights under certain circumstances
precludes their inalienability."
Brennan ultimately
concluded that human rights do not exist because they cannot be
"classified as universal."
"The United States should be
expected to pass a more strict human rights test [than Egypt] because
its environment is more conducive to the realization of those rights,"
Brennan concluded. "An economic comparison between Egypt and one of its
wealthy Arab neighbors such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait would be equally
unfair due to the wealth of those countries."
"[T]he stage
of economic development and political development have a direct impact
on human rights," he wrote. "The former enables a political system to
offer its citizens welfare (e.g. health services) and security (e.g.
military defense)."
Paradoxically, Brennan also claimed
Egyptian rulers" repressive regimes were part of that nation"s move
toward democracy.
"[I]f democracy is a process rather than
a state, the democratic process may involve, at some point, the
violation of personal liberties and procedural justice," he wrote.
"[Anwar] Sadat"s undemocratic methods, therefore, may aim at the
ultimate preservation of democracy rather than its demise."
Brennan justified Sadat"s use of emergency powers to crack down on
protests from communists because Egyptian citizens" "exercis[e] of
democratic rights would have an adverse affect on stability and even on
democracy itself. This implies that too much freedom is possible and in
the end, even detrimental to the cause of democracy."
"[W]ould
the ability to demonstrate effectively increase human rights and
democracy in Egypt?" Brennan asked rhetorically. "In the light of the
political environment, probably not. At the present stage of political
development in Egypt widespread open opposition to the administration
would be beyond the capacity of the system to handle."
Brennan conceded that his explanation of why it is sometimes acceptable
to abuse human rights "can provide a convenient excuse for any
authoritarian leader in any country of the world."
"Can
human rights violations in the Soviet Union be as easily justified in
terms of the preservation of the communist ideology? Unfortunately
(looking at events from a democratic perspective), yes. Since the
absolute status of human rights has been denied, the justification for
the violation of any of those rights has to be pursued from a particular
ideological perspective. Leonid Brezhnev could justify human rights
violations in the Soviet Union as a necessary part of the preservation
of the communist ideological system."
