Tag Archives: Islamic State

He Said That? 11/28/15

Posted on November 28, 2015 | Leave a comment

From a source in the Saudi Arabia justice ministry, threatening a Twitter user who compared Saudi Arabian justice to ISIS justice:

“Questioning the fairness of the courts is to question the justice of the Kingdom and its judicial system based on Islamic law, which guarantees rights and ensures human dignity,” a source in the justice ministry told the newspaper, according to a translation by Reuters. The ministry would not hesitate to sue “any media that slandered the religious judiciary of the Kingdom,” the source added.

From The Washington Post, as quoted on libertyblitzkrieg.com, “Another New Low – Saudi Arabia Threatens to Sue Twitter Users Who Compare it to ISIS“

Leave a comment

Posted in Horseshit, Humor, Law

Tagged , ,

How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Over the course of the last four or so weeks, the media has paid quite a bit of attention to Islamic State’s lucrative trade in “stolen” crude.

On November 16, in a highly publicized effort, US warplanes destroyed 116 ISIS oil trucks in Syria. 45 minutes prior, leaflets were dropped advising drivers (who Washington is absolutely sure are not ISIS members themselves) to “get out of [their] trucks and run away.”

The peculiar thing about the US strikes is that it took The Pentagon nearly 14 months to figure out that the most effective way to cripple Islamic State’s oil trade is to bomb… the oil.

Prior to November, the US “strategy” revolved around bombing the group’s oil infrastructure. As it turns out, that strategy was minimally effective at best and it’s not entirely clear that an effort was made to inform The White House, Congress, and/or the public about just how little damage the airstrikes were actually inflicting. There are two possible explanations as to why Centcom may have sought to make it sound as though the campaign was going better than it actually was, i) national intelligence director James Clapper pulled a Dick Cheney and pressured Maj. Gen. Steven Grove into delivering upbeat assessments, or ii) The Pentagon and the CIA were content with ineffectual bombing runs because intelligence officials were keen on keeping Islamic State’s oil revenue flowing so the group could continue to operate as a major destabilizing element vis-a-vis the Assad regime.

Ultimately, Russia cried foul at the perceived ease with which ISIS transported its illegal oil and once it became clear that Moscow was set to hit the group’s oil convoys, the US was left with virtually no choice but to go along for the ride. Washington’s warplanes destroyed another 280 trucks earlier this week. Russia claims to have vaporized more than 1,000 transport vehicles in November.

Of course the most intriguing questions when it comes to Islamic State’s $400 million+ per year oil business, are: where does this oil end up and who is facilitating delivery? In an effort to begin answering those questions we wrote:

The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking
Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey’s President

To continue reading: How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, War

Tagged , , ,

ISIS Coverup: US Centcom Accused Of Lying To President, Congress, Public About Airstrikes, Ground Fight, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 23, 2015 | 1 comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.co:

“…there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it as many times as it takes for the naive, largely aloof American public to catch on: the quote excerpted above is the smoking gun when it comes to Washington’s ISIS “strategy.”

Note that no tin foil hats or conspiracy theories are needed. The passage shown above is from a 2012 declassified Pentagon report on the situation in Syria (you can read it in full here). What it says is that US intelligence was well aware of the possibility that Sunni extremists working to destabilize the Assad government might move to establish a proto-state in eastern Syria based around orthodox, ultra-conservative, Sunni Islam. It also says “the supporting powers to the opposition” (i.e. the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey) would be delighted with such an outcome as it would “isolate” Assad on the way to dealing a strategic death blow to Iran’s Shiite crescent (i.e. Tehran’s regional ambitions). That’s the only possible interpretation of the quote shown above and it’s completely consistent with the information contained in a leaked diplomatic cable sent in 2006 by acting Deputy Chief of Mission in Syria William Roebuck which contained the following “advice” on how to go about destabilizing the Assad government:

PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business. Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here, (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders), are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue.

Importantly, you don’t have to believe alien corpses are stored at Roswell to grasp what’s going on here. That is, the declassified documents and leaked diplomatic cables clearly indicate that the US planned to play on the Sunni/Shiite divide in Syria and subsequently acquiesced to the establishment of a hardline, Salafist dominion because the CIA and The Pentagon knew that such an outcome was the worst nightmare for the government in Damascus and also for Shiite Iran, whose link to Hezbollah would be cut and whose influence in Iraq would be in jeopardy if a Saudi-backed, Sunni militant group could somehow manage to take and hold large swaths of territory.

To continue reading: ISIS Coverup: US Centcom Accused of Lying

1 Comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Horseshit, Military, War

Tagged , ,

State Sponsors Of The Islamic State——-The Turkey, Saudi, Qatar Connection, by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed

Posted on November 22, 2015 | 1 comment

Once upon a time (2001) the US government vowed to go after “state sponsors of terrorism.” Now it has jumped in bed with them, and card-carrying members of the same al Qaeda and affiliates responsible for 9/11. Here is chapter and verse on ISIS’s support from the US’s purported allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and why US efforts against ISIS have been so ineffectual. From a guest post by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed on davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

We stand alongside Turkey in its efforts in protecting its national security and fighting against terrorism. France and Turkey are on the same side within the framework of the international coalition against the terrorist group ISIS.”

Statement by French Foreign Ministry, July 2015

The 13th November Paris massacre will be remembered, like 9/11, as a defining moment in world history.

The murder of 129 people, the injury of 352 more, by ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) acolytes striking multiple targets simultaneously in the heart of Europe, mark a major sea-change in the terror threat.

For the first time, a Mumbai-style attack has occurred on Western soil — the worst attack on Europe in decades. As such, it has triggered a seemingly commensurate response from France: the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1961 Algerian war.

ISIS has followed up with threats to attack Washington and New York City.

Meanwhile, President Hollande wants European Union leaders to suspend the Schengen Agreement on open borders to allow dramatic restrictions on freedom of movement across Europe. He also demands the EU-wide adoption of the Passenger Name Records (PNR) system allowing intelligence services to meticulously track the travel patterns of Europeans, along with an extension of the state of emergency to at least three months.

Under the extension, French police can now block any website, put people under house arrest without trial, search homes without a warrant, and prevent suspects from meeting others deemed a threat.

“We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” said the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time.”

Hollande plans to strengthen the powers of police and security services under new anti-terror legislation, and to pursue amendments to the constitution that would permanently enshrine the state of emergency into French politics. “We need an appropriate tool we can use without having to resort to the state of emergency,” he explained.

Parallel with martial law at home, Hollande was quick to accelerate military action abroad, launching 30 airstrikes on over a dozen Islamic State targets in its de facto capital, Raqqa.

France’s defiant promise, according to Hollande, is to “destroy” ISIS.

The ripple effect from the attacks in terms of the impact on Western societies is likely to be permanent. In much the same way that 9/11 saw the birth of a new era of perpetual war in the Muslim world, the 13/11 Paris attacks are already giving rise to a brave new phase in that perpetual war: a new age of Constant Vigilance, in which citizens are vital accessories to the police state, enacted in the name of defending a democracy eroded by the very act of defending it through Constant Vigilance.

Mass surveillance at home and endless military projection abroad are the twin sides of the same coin of national security, which must simply be maximized as much as possible.

“France is at war,” Hollande told French parliament at the Palace of Versailles.

“We’re not engaged in a war of civilizations, because these assassins do not represent any. We are in a war against jihadist terrorism which is threatening the whole world.”

The friend of our enemy is our friend

Conspicuously missing from President Hollande’s decisive declaration of war however, was any mention of the biggest elephant in the room: state-sponsorship.

To continue reading: State Sponsors Of The Islamic State

1 Comment

Posted in Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Military, War

Tagged , , , ,

ISIS Is a Monster of Our Own Creation, by Bill Bonner

Posted on November 21, 2015 | 1 comment

From Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners, at bonnerandpartners.com:

We were living in Paris in 2003 when President George W. Bush and his team decided to attack Iraq.

Our misgivings were recorded in the Daily Reckoning e-letter we were writing at the time. As we put it:

The U.S. invasion was arguably the best thing that ever happened to jihadists. It challenged them. It forced them to grow and adapt. Like an oversupply of antibiotics in a New Delhi hospital, U.S. interference has wiped out the weakest of the terrorists and forced others to mutate into much more lethal varieties.

The war in Iraq led to dozens of experiments and innovations — in the art of insurgency as well as in organizational skills and management. What was just a handful of nut-job jihadists a few years ago, under pressure from the U.S. military, has become far more powerful and much less amateurish.

But the worst thing that could come from an aggressive attack, we warned, would be victory. It would encourage even more stomping around where we have no business.

We reported that the French had wisely, in our view, decided to stay out of it and suggested that Americans might be better off out of it too.

This view so infuriated readers that thousands canceled their free subscriptions. One wrote to say he hoped the U.S. would “bomb Paris on its way to Baghdad.”

To continue reading: ISIS Is a Monster of Our Own Creation

1 Comment

Posted in Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, War

Tagged ,

Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It, by Kamel Daoud

Posted on November 21, 2015 | 1 comment

The New York Times is certainly not a bastion of truth, but when it prints an article that says the same thing that many in the non-mainstream press and blogosphere, including SLL,  have said for years—Saudi Arabia a leading state sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist repression and terror—it offers a measure of confirmation of that argument. Here then, for that rapidly shrinking group who doesn’t believe anything until it’s printed in the Times, is Kamel Daoud bluntly asserting that ISIS and other Islamic extremists are supported by what he calls the Saudi’s “religious-industrial complex.”

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi Arabia is a Daesh that has made it.

The West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture. The younger generations of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books, and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns.

One might counter: Isn’t Saudi Arabia itself a possible target of Daesh? Yes, but to focus on that would be to overlook the strength of the ties between the reigning family and the clergy that accounts for its stability — and also, increasingly, for its precariousness. The Saudi royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by succession laws that encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between king and preacher. The Saudi clergy produces Islamism, which both threatens the country and gives legitimacy to the regime.

To continue reading: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

 

1 Comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Military, War

Tagged ,

Why ISIS Has All the Money It Needs, by Cam Simpson and Matthew Phillips

Posted on November 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Cam Simpson and Matthew Phillips at bloomberg.com:

Weeks before the attacks that killed 129 people in Paris, U.S. warplanes resumed sorties above Syria and Iraq, targeting anew oil fields and other parts of a vast petroleum infrastructure that fuels—and funds—Islamic State, one of the richest terrorist armies the world has known.

These airstrikes were launched not because U.S. officials were prescient. They came after the Obama administration found and quietly fixed a colossal miscalculation. U.S. intelligence had grossly overestimated the damage they’d inflicted during airstrikes on the militants’ oil production apparatus last year, while underestimating Islamic State’s oil revenue by $400 million. According to U.S. Department of the Treasury officials and data they released in the wake of the Paris mayhem, the terrorist group is actually taking in $500 million from oil a year. What’s more, just a few hours before the first Islamic State suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Stade de France on Nov. 13, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren conceded at a press briefing that some American airstrikes disrupted IS oil operations for no more than a day or two.

The Obama administration “misunderstood the [oil] problem at first, and then they wildly overestimated the impact of what they did,” says Benjamin Bahney, an international policy analyst at the Rand Corp., a U.S. Department of Defense-funded think tank, where he helped lead a 2010 study on Islamic State’s finances and back-office operations based on captured ledgers. He says the radical revision on oil revenue came after Treasury officials gained new intelligence on Islamic State’s petroleum operations—similar to the ledgers Rand used for its study—following a rare ground assault by American Special Operations Forces this May. U.S. forces, operating deep into the group’s territory in eastern Syria, targeted and killed an Islamic State “oil emir,” a man known by the Arabic nom de guerre Abu Sayyaf, Pentagon officials said at the time. (Treasury officials, who are charged with leading the administration’s war on Islamic State’s finances, declined to comment specifically on whether Abu Sayyaf’s ledgers were at the root of their new estimates, but the agency has said the figures are extrapolated from the militant group’s oil earnings from a single region in a single month earlier this year.)

It’s not clear how the U.S. got it so wrong, Bahney says, but he suspects that the latest round of airstrikes are directly related to the administration’s new math. “You have to go after the oil, and you have to do it in a serious way, and we’ve just begun to do that now,” he says. Yet even if the U.S. finally weakens the group’s oil income, Bahney and other analysts in the U.S., the Middle East, and Europe contend, Islamic State has resources beyond crude—from selling sex slaves to ransoming hostages to plundering stolen farmland—that can likely keep it fighting for years. In any case, $500 million buys a lot of $500 black-market AK-47s.

To continue reading: Why ISIS Has All The Money It Needs

Leave a comment

Posted in Military, Money, War

Tagged

From Paris to Polarization, by Dan Sanchez

Posted on November 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Dan Sanchez at antiwar.com:

What were the Islamist terrorists trying to accomplish by attacking Paris on Friday, killing over 300 French civilians? An increasing number of analysts now agree with Juan Cole’s theory, which he raised after the last such attack (the Charlie Hebdo murders), writing:

“The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world… In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.

Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.”

Cole likened this strategy to the early 20th century communist revolutionaries in Austria who would launch attacks for the express purpose of provoking a police crackdown on left-leaning citizens in order to radicalize them. From the perspective of the vanguard of the proletariat:

“…the fact that most students and workers don’t want to overthrow the business class is inconvenient, and so it seemed desirable to some of them to “sharpen the contradictions” between labor and capital.”

This is the strategy explicitly professed by ISIS (aka Daesh), the group that almost surely perpetrated the Friday attacks. Also shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, in its official magazine Dabiq, ISIS ran an article titled, “The Extinction of the Grayzone.”

The “grayzone” is the “gray area” between black and white. According to the authors, the grayzone is the middle ground between extremist, Salafi, terrorist theocrats (i.e., themselves, whom they exclusively regard as the “camp of Islam”) on one side and an imperialist, war-waging, western “crusader camp” on the other.

In other words, the grayzone is the realm of coexistence, communication, cooperation, and commerce among people of different creeds. The grayzone is where civilization resides.

To continue reading: From Paris to Polarization

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Government

Tagged , ,

Syria Is Fixed! Kerry Devises Farcical “Transition Plan” With Russia, Others, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 15, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Tyler Durden, at zerohedge.com:

As those who follow Syria’s nearly half decade-old civil war are probably aware, John Kerry, Sergei Lavrov, and their counterparts from other “interested” countries including of course Saudi Arabia recently began holding Friday meetings in Vienna in an attempt to work out a “political” solution to the conflict which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and precipitated the worst migrant crisis in Europe’s history.

Thus far, the results of the talks have been predictably underwhelming with all sides agreeing to little more than to keep talking.

The main sticking point: the fate of Bashar al-Assad. Earlier this month, Washington and Riyadh begrudgingly allowed Tehran to have a seat at the table in the negotiations which of course makes sense considering the Iranians (along with various militias backed by Tehran) are doing most of the fighting on the ground and considering that when it comes to the political future of Syria, no country is more keen on preserving its interests than Iran.

Predictably, things didn’t go so well. Iran’s deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian accused Saudi Arabia of playing a “negative and unconstructive” role, while Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir accused the Iranians of being an “occupying force” in Syria. The spat culminated with Tehran telling Riyadh that is “none of Saudi Arabia’s business how Iran fights terrorism.”

A few weeks went by and Russia began to circulate a “draft” document that was a kind of “trial balloon” for a possible political solution to the conflict, but because it did not specifically call for Assad’s departure, it was promptly shot down by the Saudis and the Syrian National Coalition (which, as an aside, has fallen into virtual irrelevancy on the battlefield).

Well, in the wake of the Paris terror attacks (which themselves came on the heels of the Russian passenger jet disaster over the Sinai Peninsula and bombings in Beirut that killed 43), everyone involved apparently felt compelled to send some kind of message to the public regarding a collective desire to work towards a solution in Syria and so, the foreign ministers have now produced an amorphous “transition plan” for the country that calls for a meeting between Assad and “recognized” opposition groups followed by a cease fire within 6 months. Ultimately, there would be a new constitution and elections by the the end of 2017. Here’s Bloomberg with more:

Seventeen nations, spurred on by Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris, overcame their differences on how to end Syria’s civil war and adopted a timeline that will let opposition groups help draft a constitution and elect a new government by 2017.

As a first step, the United Nations agreed to convene Syria’s government with opposition representatives by Jan. 1, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday at a joint press conference in Vienna. A cease-fire between the government in Damascus and recognized opposition groups should be in place within six months, according to their statement.

“It is time to deprive the terrorists of any single kilometer in which to hide,” Kerry said. “There can be no doubt that this crisis is not Syria’s alone to bear.”

Assad has “cut his own deal” with Islamic State, buying oil from the group and failing to attack militants, Kerry said. Assad’s allies have conveyed that he’s prepared to be serious and engage in talks, but the “proof will be in the pudding,” he said.

Diplomats meeting in the Austrian capital also decided to place Islamic State, along with the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front terrorist group, on a list of those subject to military strikes even when a cease-fire is in place. The list, managed by the Kingdom of Jordan, may later be expanded to include other groups in Syria, Kerry and Lavrov said.

The Paris attacks “show that it doesn’t matter if you’re for Assad or against him,” said Lavrov, “ISIS is your enemy.”

Well, maybe. Unless of course you view ISIS as a valuable destabilizing element that helps not only to keep Assad off balance but also to undercut Iranian influence in Iraq, in which case ISIS wouldn’t be your enemy. “Strategic asset” gone rogue, maybe. “Frankenstein” turned on its creators, maybe. But not exactly your “enemy.”

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Other Views, War

Tagged , , , ,

The Enemy Within, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on November 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

What is the biggest threat to the national security of the United States?

There are several nominees for the position. In the post-9/11 world, it used to be incontestable that the prize goes to al-Qaeda. No more. That the former head of the CIA, David Petraeus, could openly call for an alliance with the heirs of Osama bin Laden is proof positive, in my view, that the baton has been passed to other entrants.

Okay, then, what about ISIS, a.k.a. the “Islamic State”? Surely these head-choppers, whose brutal crimes make al-Qaeda look “moderate,” qualify for the prize? Well, not exactly, at least in the estimation of our wise rulers, since a) US-supported Syrian rebels of an Islamist bent have regularly defected to the Islamic State’s ranks, demonstrating that the line between friend and foe is blurry at best, and b) Russia’s entry into the fight against the self-proclaimed “Caliphate,” far from being welcomed by Washington, has elicited denunciations from US government officials and politicians of all stripes, on the grounds that they’re poaching on our territory, as well as making no distinction between alleged“moderates” and the Islamic State.

If ISIS were indeed the main danger to US national security, then wouldn’t we welcome the Russian initiative?

Which leads us to our third candidate, which is Russia itself, and specifically Vladimir Putin’s Russia – because prior to the Russian leader’s rise to power, the former Soviet Union was considered a spent force. However, under Putin – who is routinely demonized as the second coming of Stalin – a vastly shrunken Russia is now characterized as a “revisionist” power which seeks to reclaim its lost empire by any means necessary. A nation with a rapidly falling birth rate, an economy that is on the skids, and a level of public health that is far below what it was during the Soviet era, is now being held up as the main obstacle to American military and ideological primacy across the globe.

How credible is that?

Another nominee for Biggest Threat is China, in spite of the fact that the Chinese military budget is a small fraction of our own, and in direct contradiction to China’s actual record, which clearly shows that its territorial ambitions don’t extend much beyond the South China Sea. Yet our alarmists contend that, due merely to its population and its rising economic power, China represents a dire threat to the US.

The reality is far different, however: the Chinese are supremely uninterested in projecting power beyond their borders, choosing to concentrate instead on the goal of raising their standard of living. “To get rich is glorious,” said Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader who supplanted Mao as the chief ideologist and “Great Helmsman” of the post-Mao era, and certainly the Chinese have taken him up on his challenge: the nation’s industry and technological development has undergone unparalleled growth. The Chinese are too preoccupied with their own internal affairs – including, I might add, the fragility of the Communist Party’s hold on power – to bother with empire-building. They have enough on their plate.

None of these alleged threats to the United States measure up to their billing: the terrorist threat was always inflated, and has since abated with the shrinkage of al-Qaeda. The Russians are a ramshackle remnant of their former glory, and the Chinese are wisely more concerned with economic than military matters.

We should emulate the Chinese in their fiscal focus, since the real threat to our national security is economic rather than any external military peril. Admiral Michael Mullen, former head of the joint chiefs of staff, was on target when he identified the soaring national debt – now standing at $20 trillion – as the biggest threat we must confront before it’s too late.

To continue reading: The Enemy Within? 

Leave a comment

Posted in Debt, Economy, Government, Other Views

Tagged , , ,