Tag Archives: Egypt

Obama is skipping over half of his daily intelligence briefings (PDBs)

From the liberal Washington Post:

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting.

The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule. Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.”

Please see my previous post on Obama’s top 10 foreign policy failures.

Let’s review the most important one:

Failure #1: No Results In Slowing Or Stopping Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Today, Iran is on the cusp of nuclear weapons capability. Such a capability in the hands of the world’s top terrorist sponsoring state poses the greatest threat facing the United States and our friends and allies, and it risks sparking a nuclear arms race across the Middle East.

Despite promising to “do everything in his power” to stop Iran, four years of President Obama’s irresolute policies have failed to slow the progress of Iran’s program. In fact, that progress has sped up:

  • Fastest Rate Of Enrichment Ever. In 2009, Iran’s enrichment rate of low-enriched uranium was 56 kilograms per month.  That jumped to 116 kilograms per month from November 2011 to February 2012. The enrichment rate now stands at 158 kilograms per month, the fastest rate ever.[1]
  • More Spinning Centrifuges. The total number of spinning centrifuges has gone from 3,936 to 10,477 during Obama’s term. The growth rate of spinning centrifuges went from 112 centrifuges per month before Obama came into office to 152 centrifuges per month during his term.[2]
  • Fordow Underground Enrichment Facility Nearing Completion. The fortified underground facility is 70 percent complete. The number of centrifuges installed has gone from 1,064 in May to 2,140 today. The facility’s limit is 3,000 centrifuges.[3]

The Iranian program has gotten to this point because President Obama has squandered all credibility with the ayatollahs:

  • A Failed Engagement Policy. President Obama offered the ayatollahs “no preconditions” talks, which were rebuffed. The latest round of multilateral talks has produced no results.
  • Refrained From Supporting The Green Movement. When asked during a press conference, President Obama shamefully refused to voice support for Iranian dissidents in 2009 as they were being killed in the streets, saying he did not want to “meddle” in Iran’s affairs.
  • A Weak Sanctions Policy. President Obama opposed and sought to water down crippling sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank until he was forced into them by Congress and our European partners.[4] He then undermined those sanctions by issuing waivers to 20 of the top importers of Iranian oil, including China.[5]
  • Abandoned Missile Defense. He abandoned a European missile defense system meant to protect against Iranian missiles.
  • Undermined The Credibility Of The Military Option. His administration has given the Iranians no reason to believe it is serious about a military option. The administration has repeatedly talked down the effectiveness and advisability of the military option, and seems to have devoted more energy toward preventing an Israeli strike on Iran than toward preventing an Iranian nuclear weapons capability. Obama officials leaked that the administration has focused its efforts on explaining to Israel “the dangers of an Israeli attack” on Iran and has attempted to “make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel.”[6] And the President himself, after boldly stating to AIPAC that the United States “has Israel’s back,” changed his tune two days later by saying his statement was “not a military doctrine.”

In the face of such irresolution, the ayatollahs are pressing forward toward nuclear weapons capability without fear of repercussion because they do not believe we are serious.

And now we know why. He’s played golf over a 100 times. He’s in over his head.

Israel calls up 6 army battalions to deal with threats from Egypt and Syria

Map of the Middle East
Map of the Middle East

From the Times of Israel.

Excerpt:

The IDF has issued emergency call up orders to six reserve battalions in light of new dangers on the Egyptian and Syrian borders. And the Knesset has given the IDF permission to summon a further 16 reserve battalions if necessary, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.

An IDF spokesperson said intelligence assessments called for the deployment of more soldiers.

According to 2008′s Reserve Duty Law, combat soldiers can be called for active reserve duty once every three years, and for short training sessions during the other two. Rising tensions between Israel and Egypt and the ongoing unrest in Syria caused the army to ask the Knesset for special permission to call up more soldiers, more often.

The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved the request recently, enabling the IDF to summon up to 22 battalions for active duty for the second time in three years. Already, the army has called up six of them.

This signifies that the IDF regards the Egyptian and Syrian borders as the potential source of a greater threat than in the past,” the former deputy chief of staff, Dan Harel, said on Wednesday night.

“The army needs a better ‘answer’ than in the past to the threat,” he said, citing Egypt’s deteriorating control over the Sinai, marked by an upsurge in Bedouin smuggling of weapons and other goods. He also spoke of the growing threat of terrorism from Sinai, as exemplified by an infiltration last August in which eight Israelis were killed.

The Syrian situation was also highly combustible, Harel said, “and it could explode at any moment… and pose a direct challenge to us.”

Could we be seeing a war soon in the Middle East?

Obama’s Arab Spring: Rockets fired from Egypt hit Israeli city

From the Chicago Tribune. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

A rocket fired from Egypt’s Sinai desert struck the southern Israeli resort of Eilat on Thursday, police said, fuelling Israeli worries over militant activity in the border area.

No casualties or damage were reported.

An Egyptian security source told Reuters in Cairo that Egyptian forces were searching the area along the border but had not found any evidence indicating any rockets had been fired from the Sinai.

The head of Eilat police, Ron Gertner, told Israeli Army Radio that explosions were heard in Eilat soon after midnight. Police found the remains of one rocket in a construction site, about 400 meters (yards) from a residential area.

Asked if the rocket was fired from Sinai, Gertner said: “Based on our working assumptions and the range, yes.”

Officials in Israel have been worried that the Sinai has become a base for Islamist militants since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s downfall last year.

“For a long while now we have been seeing that the Sinai peninsula is turning into a launching ground against the citizens of Israel, for terror,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the attack.

It was launched a day before the start of the Jewish Passover holiday, which commemorates the exodus of the biblical Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Eilat is expected to be full of vacationers during the week-long holiday.

The Israel-Egypt border had been relatively quiet since the two countries signed a peace agreement in 1979. But Israel says that since Mubarak was overthrown, Cairo has lost its grip on the Sinai and militants are exploiting the lawlessness.

Here’s something related that I found on Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Egypt’s new parliament is dominated by the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which is busy rewriting the nation’s constitution and — contrary to its own past promises — is running a candidate for the nation’s presidency.

Once the Brotherhood controls both the presidency and the legislature, it can pretty much do what it pleases — kill homosexuals, force women behind the veil, oppress Christians and other religious minorities, and unilaterally abrogate the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace deal.

Despite this ominous turn of events, as the French news service AFP reports, White House officials held talks with Muslim Brotherhood representatives in Washington this week.

“We believe that it is in the interest of the United States to engage with all parties that are committed to democratic principles, especially nonviolence,” said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, adding that the talks emphasized “the importance of respect for minority rights, the full inclusion of women and our regional security concerns.”

Well, not only does the Muslim Brotherhood not “respect” minority rights, but it also wants to impose rigid Islamic Shariah law on all of Egypt.

So much for “democratic principles.”

As for the “inclusion of women”, westernized Egyptian women who dream of freedom will soon find themselves subjugated in a way they’ve never been before.

What’s especially tragic is that as the Muslim Brotherhood takes over, it won’t take long for it to replace the 33-year-old peace of Camp David with a new state of war with Israel.

So why are we talking to the Muslim Brotherhood and giving it credibility? What’s to be gained?

The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. And it means to place Egypt under Shariah law — the antithesis of a regime based on democracy and human rights.

As they prepare to take over, Egypt’s pending rulers make clear their contempt for us and for our Western values. So is Egypt’s military, which has arrested U.S. citizens for the odious crime of promoting democracy.

Our response? After suspending $1.3 billion in military aid, we reinstated it last month. And we added $250 million in economic assistance to sweeten the pot.

We’re deluding ourselves if we think this is going to end favorably. Islamists have taken over or are about to in Libya, Tunisia and now Egypt, something that our government largely applauded and aided.

Turkey, once a solid ally of the West, has quietly moved to the hard-core Islamist side. Syria, now in the throes of a revolt against Bashar Assad and his socialist Baath Party, may soon join the ranks — a clean sweep.

Today, Israel is friendless and vulnerable, more so than at any time in its modern existence. It will be on the receiving end of many more missile volleys.

We need to be taking steps to restrain aggression against us, our allies and our interests abroad. The Obama administration has done the exact opposite.