Tag Archives: Israel

News

Romney narrowly wins, but refuses to attack Obama on Benghazi cover-up

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Re-cap from the Palm Beach Post.

Excerpt:

Romney also repeated his claim that Obama had gone on an “apology tour” to the Arab world when he took office, saying foreign leaders saw it as an act of weakness.

“Nothing Gov. Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing,” Obama said, calling Romney’s claim “the biggest whopper of the campaign.”

Romney stood by his assertion.

“Mr. President, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And by the way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region but you went to the other nations,” Romney said.

“And by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in those nations, and on Arabic TV, you said that America had been dismissive and derisive. You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations. Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators.”

Here’s a clip of that speech:

Now here’s an example of Obama from NBC News:

Romney: “Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now at under 285…We’re headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me.”

Obama: “I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works.

“You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

Here’s the clip of that speech:

I don’t think that this arrogant tone he adopted is going to work on women and independents.

Moderate Chris Wallace’s opinion of the debate:

I don’t have much to say about this debate. To me, if Romney wanted to win, he would have gone after Obama on Benghazi, hammer and tongs. I’m disappointed with Romney’s weakness, but I think that there was enough there for Romney to eke out a narrow victory. I think that Romney thinks that he has it in the bag, and just doesn’t want to come off as patronizing like Obama did.

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News

Israel reports first use of shoulder-fired surface-air-missiles by Gaza terrorists

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SA-7 Grail with Russian Strela-2 missile
SA-7 Grail with Russian Strela-2 missile

From CNS News.

Excerpt:

In a new sign of the growing dangers facing Israel, security officials have confirmed that terrorists in the Gaza Strip for the first time have fired an anti-aircraft missile at an Israeli aircraft.

Officials told the Yedioth Ahronothdaily that the weapon, apparently a Strela shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile, targeted an Israeli military helicopter over the Hamas-ruled territory last week but missed.

Israel has long suspected Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza of having such weapons, and amid the chaos accompanying the downfall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya many went missing, and more are believed to have been smuggled into the Strip, via tunnels from the Sinai peninsula.

Soviet-designed Strela-2 missiles (known by NATO as SA-7 Grail) have been used in various insurgencies around the world, including the mujahedeen’s fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the anti-coalition insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.

The threat posed by such missiles – also known as “man-portable air defense systems” (MANPADS) – has been cited for years by Israeli security officials in expressing concerns about the risks of Palestinian militants using them against passenger aircraft approaching of leaving Israel’s main international airport. Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv is located less than five miles from the nearest territory the Palestinians want included in a future state.

[…]MANPAD’ ease of operation, portability and relatively low cost make them a weapon of choice for terrorists wanting to target civilian or military aircraft.

According to U.S. government data, more than 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by such weapons over the past four decades, resulting in some 800 deaths. Rebels used the weapons to shoot down a plane carrying the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda in 1994, an act that helped to trigger the genocide that claimed more than 800,000 lives.

In one known al-Qaeda use, terrorists tried unsuccessfully to down an Israeli airliner shortly after it took off from an airport in Kenya in 2002.

The reported use of a MANPAD by Gaza-based terrorists came during the same week as Hezbollah, the Shi’ite Iranian proxy in Lebanon, deployed a drone aircraft over Israel. The unmanned plane was shot down over an uninhabited area in southern Israel, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a speech said it had been designed in Iran and assembled by his group in Lebanon.

The Strela-2 has a maximum range of about 5 KM. You can read more about them here. Keep in mind that Hezbollah has used Chinese missiles to sink Israeli surface vessels. The missiles were provided to the Syria-based terrorists by Iran.

News

CBS reporter blasts Obama administration: victory in Afghanistan is a “major lie”

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CBS News correspondent Lara Logan
CBS News correspondent Lara Logan

This must-read article appears in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Excerpt:

Lara Logan, a correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” delivered a provocative speech to about 1,100 influentials from government, politics, media, and the legal and corporate arenas.

[…]Her ominous and frightening message was gleaned from years of covering our wars in the Middle East. She arrived in Chicago on the heels of her Sept. 30 report, “The Longest War.” It examined the Afghanistan conflict and exposed the perils that still confront America, 11 years after 9/11.

Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .”

[…]The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”

Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.

She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

[…]Logan even called for retribution for the recent terrorist killings of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other officials. The event is a harbinger of our vulnerability, she said. Logan hopes that America will “exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil. That its ambassadors will not be murdered, and that the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”

Although social issues are very important, and fiscal issues are very important, I do think that it’s about time that Christians also start to think seriously about foreign policy and national security as well. We need to realize that it is not good for anyone when evil is allowed to grow and flourish anywhere in the world. Hitler could easily have been defeated in the mid-to-late 1930s, but instead the Western nations turned a blind eye to his increasing military strength, and it cost us much more to fight him when we finally faced reality. Similarly, we have a major problem with radical Islam today in the Middle East. When we decide policy we have to know what is really going on in the Middle East.