Palestinian Terrorist Plots To Kidnap Israeli Soldiers and Civilians Thwarted

This story, from The Long War Journal, shows once again how Israel simply cannot take a single day off from the threat of Islamic terror - each and every day of the year the IDF and Mossad and Shin Bet must be on full alert as the Islamists never stop trying to kill or kidnap Israelis.

I wonder how the leftist Western media will spin this to make it look like Israel's fault?

More Palestinian kidnapping plots thwarted by Israel


Israeli authorities today announced the thwarting of a number of kidnapping plots by Palestinian terror groups in recent months. Two separate cells operating near Hebron, one tied to Hamas and another tied to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), had plans to carry out terror attacks against Israelis that included kidnappings.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the members of the PIJ Jihad cell had planned "to approach a hitchhiking station, open fire on Israeli soldiers or civilians waiting there and then kidnap them." Those arrested from the PIJ cell were Motaz Muhammed Taleb Abido, Bashir Aid Muhammed Zahda, Hazem Auni Muhammed Tawil, and Abdullah Muhammed Ata Abido.

Cell members Hazem Tawil, Motaz Abido, and Abdullah Abido had previously served time in Israeli prisons for terror-related activities. According to the IDF, Motaz Abido is a "senior operative of Islamic Jihad in the Hebron area" and was responsible for recruiting other members of the cell.

The Hamas cell was comprised of at least nine members and led by Nadel Mazen Balut. According to the IDF, the cell "intended to kidnap and murder an Israeli, hide his or her body and then negotiate for the release of prisoners."

It is unclear exactly how far along in their planning each cell was at the time of the arrests. An explosive device was found in the possession of members of the Hamas cell, however.

Today's announcement comes almost a fortnight after Israeli authorities announced the arrest of members of a Hamas cell in the West Bank that was planning to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers, among other terror activities.

Since January the Shin Bet has tallied over 30 thwarted kidnapping attempts in the West Bank, according to recent Israeli media reports. By contrast, in all of 2012, there were 24 thwarted attempts in the West Bank. According to the Shin Bet's 2012 annual report, one-third of the approximately 100 "significant attacks" it thwarted from Gaza, the West Bank, and within Israel in 2012 were kidnapping attempts.

One IDF officer recently conceded that while Israeli authorities "have been able to thwart the kidnapping attempts ... the scope is extraordinary, and it is clear we will not be able to foil these attempts forever."

In recent months, Israeli authorities have exposed a number of Hamas terror cells in the West Bank. On March 13, the Shin Bet revealed that Hamas' Interior Minister Fathi Hammad has been at the forefront of the terror group's efforts to carry out terror attacks in the West Bank, including kidnappings, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks.

Less than two weeks earlier, authorities announced the arrest of members of a Hamas cell in Hebron that "intended to carry out various terror attacks -- but were arrested before executing their plans." On Feb. 6, Israeli authorities reported the thwarting of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad kidnapping plot.

In late January, Israeli authorities announced the arrest of approximately 20 Hamas terrorists who were trying "to establish a local headquarters in Hebron" and were "planning to kidnap an IDF soldier."

Video: The Israelis Defend Their Land

NATO Begins Withdrawal of Equipment From Afghanistan....Countdown To Taliban Takeover of the Country Begins

From DAWN.

Nato troops start equipment withdrawal from Afghanistan


QUETTA: The Nato and US troops have started withdrawal of their equipments from Afghanistan after more than ten years of war.

The US and its allies invaded Afghanistan to oust Taliban government in the aftermath of tragic incident of September 11, 2001. They are set to withdraw all their forces by the end of 2014.

Pakistan is a key transit route for the Nato mission in landlocked Afghanistan, from where it is driven to the border from the Arabian Sea port of Karachi.

First convoy carrying weapons, armoured vehicles and trucks reached Quetta, the capital of Balochistan amid tight security on Tuesday evening.

Sources in frontier corps told Dawn.com that 50 trucks and armoured vehicles reached Quetta from Kandahar, the Taliban’s previous spiritual headquarter amid strict security measures.

They said levies and FC personnel guard the Nato convoy from Pak-Afghan border to Quetta. The convoy would leave for Port Qasim Karachi on Wednesday.

“Withdrawal of weapons and other equipments would continue in the coming days,” they said. Sources said security in and around Chaman, Pakistan’s bordering town with Afghanistan, was tightened following shifting of equipments.

Militants have attacked Nato supplies in different parts of Balochistan in the past.

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The 10 P.M. Phone Call: Clinton and Obama Discussed Benghazi. What Did They Say?

Can you imagine if you could have been a fly on the wall during that discussion on September 11, 2012?

The story comes from Family Security Matters.

The 10 P.M. Phone Call: Clinton and Obama Discussed Benghazi. What Did They Say?


"What would you be focusing on in the Benghazi investigation?" I spent many years in the investigation biz, so it's only natural that I've been asked that question a lot lately.

I had the good fortune to be trained in Rudy Giuliani's U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. Rudy famously made his mark by making law enforcement reflect what common sense knew: Enterprises take their cues from the top. Criminal enterprises are no different: The capos do not carry out the policy of the button-men - it's the other way around.

So if I were investigating Benghazi, I'd be homing in on that 10 p.m. phone call. That's the one between President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - the one that's gotten close to zero attention.

Benghazi is not a scandal because of Ambassador Susan Rice, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, and "talking points." The scandal is about Rice and Nuland's principals, and about what the talking points were intended to accomplish. Benghazi is about derelictions of duty by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton before and during the massacre of our ambassador and three other American officials, as well as Obama and Clinton's fraud on the public afterward.

A good deal of media attention has quite appropriately been lavished on e-mail traffic between mid-level administration officials in the days leading up to Sunday, September 16. That is the day when Ms. Rice, a close Obama confidant, made her appalling appearances on the Sunday-morning political shows. Those performances were transparently designed to mislead the American people, during the presidential campaign stretch run, into believing that an anti-Islamic Internet video - rather than a coordinated terrorist attack orchestrated by al-Qaeda affiliates, coupled with the Obama administration's gross failure to secure and defend American personnel in Benghazi - was responsible for the killings.

Fraud flows from the top down, not the mid-level up. Mid-level officials in the White House and the State Department do not call the shots - they carry out orders. They also were not running for reelection in 2012 or positioning themselves for a campaign in 2016. The people doing that were, respectively, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.

Obama and Clinton had been the architects of American foreign policy. As Election Day 2012 loomed, each of them had a powerful motive to promote the impressions (a) that al-Qaeda had been decimated; (b) that the administration's deft handling of the Arab Spring - by empowering Islamists - had been a boon for democracy, regional stability, and American national security; and (c) that our real security problem was "Islamophobia" and the "violent extremism" it allegedly causes - which was why Obama and Clinton had worked for years with Islamists, both overseas and at home, to promote international resolutions that would make it illegal to incite hostility to Islam, the First Amendment be damned.

All of that being the case, I am puzzled why so little attention has been paid to the Obama-Clinton phone call at 10 p.m. on the night of September 11.

Even in the conservative press, it has become received wisdom that President Obama was AWOL on the night of September 11, after first being informed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in the late afternoon, that the State Department facility in Benghazi was under attack. You hear it again and again: While Americans were under attack, the commander-in-chief checked out, leaving subordinates to deal with the crisis while he got his beauty sleep in preparation for a fundraising campaign trip to Vegas.

That is not true . . . and the truth, as we've come to expect with Obama, is almost surely worse. There is good reason to believe that while Americans were still fighting for their lives in Benghazi, while no military efforts were being made to rescue them, and while those desperately trying to rescue them were being told to stand down, the president was busy shaping the "blame the video" narrative to which his administration clung in the aftermath.

We have heard almost nothing about what Obama was doing that night. Back in February, though, CNS News did manage to pry one grudging disclosure out of White House mendacity mogul Jay Carney: "At about 10 p.m., the president called Secretary Clinton to get an update on the situation."

Obviously, it is not a detail Carney was anxious to share. Indeed, it contradicted an earlier White House account that claimed the president had not spoken with Clinton or other top administration officials that night.

The earlier story better fit Obama's modus operandi, which is to disappear in times of crisis. His brief legislative career was about voting "present" because he prefers to be absent when accountability knocks. The idea is to be the Obama of Evan Thomas lore: "standing above the country, above - above the world, he's sort of God." He reemerges only after the shooting stops and the smoke clears: gnosis personified, here to diagnose our failings. He is not a commander-in-chief for the battle but the armchair general of the post mortem.

In this instance, though, Carney's hand was forced by then-secretary Clinton. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, she recounted first learning at about 4 p.m. on September 11 that the State Department facility in Benghazi was under attack. That was very shortly after the siege started. Over the hours that followed, Clinton stated, "we were in continuous meetings and conversations, both within the department, with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally." It was in the course of this "constant ongoing discussion and sets of meetings" that Clinton then recalled: "I spoke with President Obama later in the evening to, you know, bring him up to date, to hear his perspective."

Yes, the 10 p.m. phone call.

In contrast to President Obama's preference for absence, Mrs. Clinton has always projected the image of the tireless hands-on leader. But the aim of this energetic ubiquity is not all that different from that of Obama's disappearing act: If you're dazzled by how hard she works, she may not need to account for what it is she's been working on.

In the case of Benghazi, however, we now have context for Clinton's frenetic activity. Thanks to the whistleblower testimony at a House hearing by Gregory Hicks, the State Department's No. 2 official in Libya at the time of the Benghazi siege, we know what Clinton learned in her "continuous meetings and conversations" that night.

When Clinton began monitoring events after 4 p.m., State's No. 1 official in Libya, Ambassador Christopher Stevens, had just urgently called his deputy, Hicks, to alert the State Department that the Benghazi facility and Stevens himself were "under attack." Hicks, who was in Tripoli at the time, made clear that everyone on the ground in Libya knew what was happening in Benghazi was a terrorist attack - the anti-Islamic video "was a non-event," he explained. He also made clear that he was the leader of what Clinton had called "our team in Tripoli." As such, he kept the State Department in Washington up to speed on developments.

We also know that at 8 p.m. Washington time, Hicks spoke directly with Clinton and some of her top advisers by telephone. Not only was it apparent that a terrorist attack involving al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Sharia was underway, but Hicks's two most profound fears at the time he briefed Clinton centered on those terrorists: First, there were reports that Ambassador Stevens might be in the clutches of the terrorists at a hospital they controlled; second, there were rumblings that a similar attack on the embassy in Tripoli could be imminent, convincing Hicks that State Department personnel should evacuate. He naturally conveyed these developments to his boss, the secretary of state. Clinton, he recalled, agreed that evacuation was the right course.

At about 9 p.m. Washington time, Hicks learned from the Libyan prime minister that Stevens was dead. Hicks said he relayed all significant developments on to Washington as the evening progressed - although he did not speak directly to Secretary Clinton again after the 8 p.m. briefing.

That is the context of the 10 p.m. phone call between the president and the secretary of state.

We do not have a recording of this call, and neither Clinton nor the White House has described it beyond noting that it happened. But we do know that, just a few minutes after Obama called Clinton, the Washington press began reporting that the State Department had issued a statement by Clinton regarding the Benghazi attack. In it, she asserted:

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.

Gee, what do you suppose Obama and Clinton talked about in that 10 p.m. call?

Interestingly, CNS News asked Carney whether, in that 10 p.m. phone call, the president and Secretary Clinton discussed the statement that Clinton was about to issue, and, specifically, whether they discussed "the issue of inflammatory material posted on the Internet."

Carney declined to answer.

We now know from the e-mails and TV clips that, by Sunday morning, the White House staff, State Department minions, and Susan Rice were all in agreement that the video fairy tale, peppered with indignant rebukes of Islamophobia, was the way to go.

How do you suppose they got that idea?

This article appears at NRO.

US drones strike again in Yemen, kill 2 AQAP fighters

From The Long War Journal.

US drones strike again in Yemen, kill 2 AQAP fighters


The US launched its second drone strike in Yemen in four days, killing two members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in an area in the central part of the country.

The remotely piloted Predators or the more deadly Reapers launched missiles at the two fighters "as they left a farm on a motorbike" in the Khobza area of Baydah province today, AFP reported.

Two members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were killed in the airstrike. The Yemeni military identified the fighters as Abd Rabbo Mokbal Mohammed Jarallah al Zouba and Abbad Mossad Abbad Khobzi.

Al Qaeda maintains a foothold in Baydah

AQAP has increased its presence in Baydah province over the past several years, and the US has pursued the terror group with drone strikes. On May 28, 2012, the US targeted Kaid al Dhahab, AQAP's emir in the province, and his brother Nabil, who is also a senior leader in the terror group, in a strike in the town of Rada'a.

Kaid took control of AQAP in Baydah after the death of his brother Tariq, who was the top AQAP leader in Baydah before he was killed in early 2012 in a feud with another brother, Hazam, a senior tribal leader in the town. Hazam was concerned that Tariq's affiliation with AQAP would incur the wrath of the Yemeni government. Before he was killed, Tariq had seized control of Baydah, raised al Qaeda's banner, sworn allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri, and warned that "the Islamic Caliphate is coming."

Kaid and Nabil were tasked with regrouping AQAP's forces in Baydah after Tariq's death. The two leaders are also brothers-in-law of slain AQAP leader and ideologue Anwar al Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in the fall of 2011.

In January, US drones killed Mukbel Abbad, a senior AQAP leader in the province. Abbad was a brother-in-law of Tariq al Dhahab.

US expands drone strikes in Yemen

Since losing control of large areas of Abyan and Shabwa, AQAP has spread out into the provinces of Aden, Baydah, Al Jawf, Damar, Hadramout, Hodeida, Ibb, Marib, Saada, and Sana'a. Of the 30 drones strikes recorded by The Long War Journal over the past 11 months, 26 have taken place in the provinces of Aden, Baydah, Al Jawf, Damar, Hadramout, Hodeida, Ibb, Marib, Saada, and Sana'a.

The US has launched 10 drone strikes in Yemen so far this year. The last strike took place three days ago in the province of Abyan; four AQAP operatives were reported killed.

In 2012, the US launched 42 drone strikes in Yemen against AQAP and its political front, Ansar al Sharia. The previous year, the US launched 10 drone and air strikes against the al Qaeda affiliate.

Although five senior AQAP operatives were killed in strikes in Yemen in 2012, the group's top leadership cadre remains intact. In January, the Yemeni government claimed that Said al Shihri, the deputy emir of AQAP, died following an attack last fall; AQAP has not confirmed his death, however, and recently released a statement that hinted he may be alive.

The US has targeted both senior AQAP operatives who pose a direct threat to the US, and low-level fighters and local commanders who are battling the Yemeni government. This trend was first identified by The Long War Journal in the spring of 2012 [see LWJ report, US drone strike kills 8 AQAP fighters, from May 10, 2012]. Obama administration officials have claimed, however, that the drones are targeting only those AQAP leaders and operatives who pose a direct threat to the US homeland, and not those fighting AQAP's local insurgency against the Yemeni government.

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Don't You Feel All Warm and Fuzzy Knowing That Your Tax Dollars Paid For Huma Abedin To Sit Home Long After Her Maternity Leave and Even Moonlight For Other Companies?

After reading this story from Family Security Matters, you might just think it's the bomb to be working for then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...but then again, Ambassador Chris Stevens' family would probably beg to differ with you.

Huma Abedin...America's favorite underground spy for the Muslim Brotherhood.  It's great to know that Hillary treated her like a queen that last six months.

Huma’s Moonlighting? No Problem … Just Don’t Mention Her Crescent-lighting


Well, well, well, the Huma Abedin controversy has finally hit the legacy media. Okay, okay - it's not the Huma Abedin controversy, but it's one Obama's court stenographers apparently feel comfortable talking about.

It seems Ms. Abedin, accurately described by the New York Times as Hillary Rodham Clinton's "longtime aide and confidante," spent her last months at the State Department not really at the State Department. Despite maintaining her title as Secretary of State Clinton's deputy chief of staff, she was permitted, upon returning to government service from maternity leave in mid-2012, to remain at home in New York with her newborn child and her husband, the disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner - he of the notorious Weiner all aTwitter photos. While the State Department was paying her $135,000 as a "special government employee," Abedin was also permitted to moonlight as a "strategic consultant" for Teneo, a firm founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. (Teneo, the Times informs us, advises such firms as MF Global, the brokerage firm whose investors were broken by Jon Corzine - the former New Jersey governor and Obama campaign bundler.) In addition, Abedin found time in her busy "special government employee" schedule to do consultant work for the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation.

With that familiar Clinton flare, Abedin did not disclose her consultant income on government financial disclosure forms. According to the State Department, you see, her new "part-time" position as "special government employee" meant the usual disclosure requirements did not apply to her ... notwithstanding that, the Atlantic Wire reports, Abedin continued to be referred to in official documents as deputy chief of staff to the United States secretary of state. The arrangement finally came to an end in March when Ms. Abedin officially left the State Department to head up Mrs. Clinton's six-person "transition office" - i.e., the transition from secretary of state to what the tongue-in-cheeky Atlantic calls Mrs. Clinton's "version of private life."

Apparently not to the great delight of the Clintons, Weiner, as part of his effort to come back from his virtual sex scandal and maybe make a run for New York City mayor, decided to release the couple's 2012 tax returns. They show that these dedicated public servants made just shy of a half-million dollars last year. Turns out Weiner's been "consulting" too, but the couple is not saying how much of the haul comes from Abedin's extracurricular activities while she was still on the government payroll.

This story is getting some attention - sure to be fleeting - from the reliably Clinton-adoring press and some "good government" types. But that has more to do with a potential Weiner political campaign than with the tangled web of government policy-making and Clinton cronies (like the Saudis and Qataris - multi-million dollar donors to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation who do mega-business with the State Department). There has to date been scant media interest in Abedin's earlier part-time job.

As detailed previsously here at Ordered Liberty, Ms. Abedin began her long professional association with Mrs. Clinton in 1996, as an intern to the first lady in the Clinton White House. In the years that followed, she remained a Clinton staffer from the White House to the Senate, and eventually to the State Department. At the same time, she also served from 1996 through 2008 as assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, a publication founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major financier of al Qaeda whose Islamic "charity," the Rabita Trust, is a designated terrorist organization (on which Naseef colluded with Wael Hamza Jalaidan, an Osama bin Laden intimate who is one of al Qaeda's founders).

Naseef is a former secretary general of the Muslim World League, which Osama bin Laden described as one of al Qaeda's primary funding sources. In the late seventies, he retained Abedin's parents to run his newly formed Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs and edit its journal, which has been an Abedin family affair ever since. For seven years, Naseef overlapped with Huma Abedin at the journal, as a member of its advisory editorial board. He withdrew after 2003 - right around the time he was named as a defendant in the civil case brought by the victims of the 9/11 atrocities (a suit from which he was dropped in 2010 because a court found it lacked jurisdiction over him). The journal is still edited by Ms. Abedin's mother, Dr. Saleha Abedin, who took over when Ms. Abedin's father passed away. Both parents have had deep Muslim Brotherhood ties. In fact, Saleha Abedin runs an organization, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, which is a part of the Union of Good - a major Hamas supporter and, yes, a designated terrorist organization run by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the top Muslim Brotherhood sharia jurist.

Somehow, Ms. Abedin's consulting work at Naseef's journal has been of considerably less interest to the media.

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The Battle Of Athens

By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle

Or How Common Citizens Removed A Corrupt Government From Their County.

The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation.

Here is what happened:

Following World War II in 1946, violence erupted when returning American soldiers discovered their Tennessee county had been taken over by political corruption. Their plan to take it back involved bullets—lots of bullets—and dynamite.

Why Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee became a battleground was due to Paul Cantrell, a Democrat running for sheriff in the 1936 election. He won over his Republican opponent, although the victory was tainted by rumors of fraud. Cantrell was a corrupt sheriff—for example, since state law allowed his office to collect fees for each person booked, jailed, and released, deputies boarded buses passing through the city and arrested passengers on bogus charges of drunkenness, forcing them to pay fines. Prostitution, gambling, and kickbacks from illegal drinking establishments were commonplace.

The tide began to turn in 1945 when GIs returning to Athens were subjected to arrest on the flimsiest excuses and heavily fined. When the fed up soldiers attempted to support their choice for sheriff against Pat Mansfield (by then, Cantrell had been elected to the state Senate and backed Mansfield’s bid), matters boiled over into direct conflict on Election Day 1946.

Mansfield hired several hundred armed “deputies” to patrol the voting precincts in Athens—and no doubt to assist in the typical ballot stuffing and voter intimidation. The volatile situation escalated when Walter Ellis, an ex-GI and volunteer poll watcher, was arrested by Mansfield’s deputies and held without charge. A black resident, Tom Gillespie, was refused the right to vote, beaten, and shot. More GIs were arrested and threatened with violence. By the end of the day, the former soldiers had enough.

They broke into the town armory for weapons and besieged the jail, where Mansfield and his deputies had taken the ballet boxes. Battle continued sporadically throughout the night, resulting in wounded on both sides. When the GIs ran out of bullets around dawn, they began throwing dynamite. The deputies inside the jail surrendered.

The highly publicized Battle of Athens not only ousted corruption from one county in Tennessee, the lesson learned would ultimately lead to great reforms in Southern politics.

**************************************************************************

This is a part of American history that all elected official should learn and remember.  When the government forgets whom they serve and dictates to the American People what to think, do, say, read, and how to vote, it is incumbent upon the citizens of that town, city, county, state or nation to rise up and remove (By force if necessary.) the dictator.

What happened in Athens, Tennessee was the most extreme example of citizen action.  The last resort of a desperate people.

In such desperation the American people will do anything to return their rights to them.  Something every politician in this nation should remember.