Chinese armed drones now flying across Mideast battlefields

FILE – In this Oct. 10, 2015, file photo, Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi, center, inspects a first Chinese drone to be used by the Iraqi Air Force before sending it to bomb Islamic State group positions at an airbase in Kut, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. Across the Middle East, countries locked out of purchasing U.S.-made drones due to rules over excessive civilian casualties are being wooed by Chinese arms dealers, who are world’s main distributor of armed drones. The sales are helping expand Chinese influence across a region crucial to American security interests and bolstering Beijing’s ambitions of being a world leader in high-tech arms sales. (AP Photo, File)

 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — High above Yemen’s rebel-held city of Hodeida, a drone controlled by Emirati forces hovered as an SUV carrying a top Shiite Houthi rebel official turned onto a small street and stopped, waiting for another vehicle in its convoy to catch up.

Seconds later, the SUV exploded in flames, killing Saleh al-Samad, a top political figure.

The drone that fired that missile in April was not one of the many American aircraft that have been buzzing across the skies of Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001. It was Chinese.

Federally Funded U.S. Institute for Peace Hosts Pro-Hamas Tunisian Group

 

A pro-Hamas leader of Tunisia’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked Ennahda Party met last month with the federally funded U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) in Washington.

The Nov. 29 meeting covered the relationship between Islam and democracy in the light of Ennahda’s 10^th Party Congress in May 2016, the Ennahda Abroad Facebook page said. There, the group agreed to stop trying using electoral politics to achieve its religious objectives. This change of tactics likely was caused by Ennahda’s 2014 defeat in Tunisian elections.

Washington is letting the Russians win in Syria

 

BERLIN – Just days after the deadline set by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for President Bashar Assad to begin a political transition in Syria, fighting is raging in Aleppo, the last urban stronghold of the rebels opposed to the regime. The United States, however, is not coming to their rescue, because the wrong kind of rebels are involved in the battle. In terms of helping to end the war, the U.S. inaction may be worse than the scenario touted by Donald Trump — an alliance with Russia to defeat Islamic State — but it’s more politically acceptable.

Saudi Arabia cuts diplomatic ties with Iran amid rising tensions

The move came after Iranians stormed and burned the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran in protest of Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir says his country is severing diplomatic ties with Iran amid spiking tensions over the execution of a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric.

Al-Jubeir said late Sunday evening that Iranian diplomatic personnel had 48 hours to leave the country and all Saudi diplomatic personnel in Iran were being recalled home.

The execution of a Shiite cleric in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia laid bare the divisions now gripping the Middle East, as protesters set fire Sunday to the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran and demonstrators took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan.

Police: Las Vegas mentioned as al-Qaida terror target

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) – Metro police have confirmed al-Qaida leaders are encouraging lone jihadists to target Las Vegas for terror attacks. That information comes from a recent publication which names the city as a top spot to strike.

“It’s just a suggestive rhetoric to those who subscribe to violent jihadists ideologies,” said Lt. Nichole Splinter with the Southern Nevada Counter-Terrorism Unit.

It’s in a publication titled Palestine where you can see Las Vegas listed as a top spot for a potential terror attack. The city is listed in a section about building and using car bombs. Splinter said it’s not uncommon for publications like this to suggest the names of big cities to target.

Liberated by the West

BERLIN/BAGHDAD (Own report) – Western aggressions in the Middle East and support from the West’s important regional allies have facilitated the rise of the terrorist organization, the “Islamic State” (IS), as observers point out. According to an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), the IS predecessor, “Al-Qaida in Iraq,” was able to develop into a “powerful organization” only after the US led aggression against Iraq (“liberation from Saddam”). Not until the chaos provoked by the war in Syria, which Germany also helped fuel (“liberation from Assad”) was the IS predecessor the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) in a position to conquer and control whole regions and set up a power base for its further expansion. IS could not have reached its current strength without the financial and logistical support furnished by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, two close allies of the West. The SWP reports that there are even “indications” that “the cross-border traffic between the IS-controlled territory in Syria and Turkey” is still “considerable” – thus also, presumably, the transport of supplies. Meanwhile Western governments are preparing a “long military operation” against IS.

Report: 12,000 potential terrorists from 81 nations got combat training in Syria

The Soufan Group has warned that Al Qaida could use any of thousands of foreign fighters in Syria to attack the West.

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In a report, Soufan, a risk assessment consultant based in New York, cited threats from Ahrar Al Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Nusra Front for the Defense of Levant.

Exclusive: Confidential source reveals to me what really happened in Benghazi

I was seated beside someone who personally knew one of the men who was there on the roof in Benghazi. This person was excited to share with me the “ground truth” of what happened September 11, 2012.

My seat mate drew schematics to orient me to the “time and spacing” and the direction of the attack. I learned about the repeated orders to the men at the CIA annex to stand down and do nothing — thank God two of them, Glenn Doherty and Ty Woods, lived up to their code of honor and ran to the sound of the guns, resulting in their loss of life — but the preservation of life for others, their fellow Americans.

Obama is reversing Reagan’s Cold War victory, inviting new hot wars

President Obama is on the verge of an historic triumph.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the American Left has been bitter about America’s victory in the Cold War. For decades, they preached moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union.

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Without firing a shot, Reagan achieved the unthinkable — the U.S.S.R was swept into the dustbin of history. Moreover, the United States emerged as the world’s sole superpower. Its military might was unrivaled. Its economic prosperity was unmatched. Its democratic system was the envy of the world.

Muslim Brotherhood Launches Own U.S. Political Party

Islamofascism: With an eye toward the 2016 election, the radical Muslim Brotherhood has built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc.

‘Muslim voters have the potential to be swing voters in 2016,” said Nihad Awad in launching the benign-sounding U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, whose membership reads like a Who’s Who of Brotherhood front groups.

“We are aiming to bring more participation from the Muslim community.”

USCMO also aims to elect Islamists in Washington, with the ultimate objective of “institutionalizing policies” favorable to Islamists — that is, Shariah law.

Navy Seals ‘Feel Politicized Under Obama’

The Obama administration endangered the elite Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden by publicly revealing their role in the mission, and the SEAL culture is under assault from a politically correct Pentagon, according to a new book on the SEALs and their role in the war against Islamic extremism.

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Perhaps the best known unit is SEAL Team Six, the group that successfully targeted and killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. But the fact we know they carried out the mission may also be the reason many of them are now dead. Instead of leaving the identity of the men a mystery to the world, Vice President Joe Biden publicly identified them just two days after the raid.

Saudis bankroll new rebel force to fight own war on Assad

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 8 (UPI) — Saudi Arabia, exasperated with U.S. vacillation related to Syria’s chemical arsenal and now its effort to reconcile with Iran, Riyadh’s foremost adversary, is forging a new alliance of Islamist rebels in Syria under a pro-Saudi warlord to supersede the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army.

Riyadh also wants to foment an Iraq-style “Sunni Awakening” to unite Syria’s majority sect to topple the minority Damascus regime of President Bashar Assad.

Middle East analyst Michael Weiss, writing in the Beirut Web portal Now Lebanon, observed Riyadh has “taken substantive measures to circumvent Washington altogether on Syria by activating a cadre of new clients in the form of a hard-line Salafist rebels who are now united under the umbrella of the army of Islam.

Are terrorists setting U.S. wildfires?

As the 2013 season of devastating wildfires continues to rage across the American West, the question of arson as a form of major terrorism is again being raised.

Already this year, 35,440 reported fires have burned a total of 3.9 million acres, with a quarter-million acres scorched the iconic Yosemite National Park.

Large blazes continue to burn in several states, with six alive in Idaho, five each in California and Montana, and one each in Alaska, Louisiana, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

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In July 2012, William Scott, a former National Security Agency official and Aviation Week editor, told the American Center for Democracy that terrorists are using fire as a tactical weapon of war.

CIA’s favorite Saudi prince is laying the groundwork for a post-Assad Syria

King Abdullah names Prince Bandar, director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, on top of his post as secretary-general of the National Security Council.

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan fell in love with the United States when he was still an air force pilot and took aerobatics training on an American air base. The romance was renewed several years later when he was named the Saudi ambassador to Washington, a tenure that lasted 22 years. He was a regular guest of George H.W. Bush and later his son, and was the only ambassador guarded by the U.S. Secret Service.

Why Iraq Is On the Precipice of Civil War

These days, no one in Iraq is safe.

Last Wednesday, a bridal party was the target. On Thursday, separate attacks brought destruction upon civilians and police officers alike.

According to the UN, in May Iraq suffered its highest rate of violent deaths in five years.

This is a country standing on the edge of an existential precipice.