GITMO will close before the end of the year. GITMO Cuba.

GITMO will close before the end of the year.  GITMO Cuba.  Castro wants the leased land back and the U.S. troops off the Communist Russian backed island of Cuba and Barack Obama is dumb enough with his head up his ass to give in.  The conspiracy continues as Barack Obama roams around Havana with empty streets and full jail cells. 

GITMO CUBA The clear spark of Revolution; GITMO Cuba is be closed by President Obama Executive Order - The corrosive anti-American Barack Obama is no longer fireproof as federal marshals can be ordered to arrest the President of the United States as he showers the American people with lawless and radical actions.

The clear spark of Revolution; GITMO Cuba is be closed by President Obama Executive Order, the greatest plunderer in the history of the United States Barack Obama is again outside of the law and remains lawless as he closed GITMO as he sinks lower into the progressive socialists swamp.  Many members of Congress calling for arrest warrant but radical progressive Loretta Lynch refuses to take the call.  If Loretta Lynch refuses to take actions a Congressional appointed marshal can arrest and hold the president and Loretta Lynch.  National Guard Units being called up and distributed around the Washington D.C. beltway area to provide government security.  Iran announces that Hussein Obama has notified them that Jihadist Muslim Radicals will be released or moved to American soil as a direct result of his executive order.  John Kerry stands silent on closing GITMO. 

The Muslim Brotherhood

has fully infiltrated the Obama Administration

The invisible river of cash and gold, by the hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed or promises have been received to fund the closing of GITMO

Saudi Arabia

Consult your calendar because the American people still have the time to impeach and then jail president Barack Obama as the great inferno has just started as Obama forces GITMO Cuba closed against the wishes and the laws of the United States of America.  The corrosive anti-American Barack Obama is no longer fireproof as federal marshals can be ordered to arrest the President of the United States as he showers the American people with lawless and radical actions.

GITMO Cuba - Barack Obama plans to let loose 17 killers. Obama continues to feed the Islamic Radical Monster and more good people will die

GITMO Cuba - Barack Obama plans to let loose 17 killers.  Congress said, it had put a stop to Barack Obama's lawlessness but that little tiny speed bump won't stop Obama from feeding the Islamic Monster. 

If a person supports the release of Islamic Radical Extremists from GITMO you must also support ISIS ISIL AL-QAEDA TALIBAN forces killing around the world.  

A released GITMO prisoner quickly unites to fight and kill infidel Christians around the world.  Ask the people in San Bernardino California Mr. President before you go on your multi-million dollar vacation with hundreds of armed guards.  This is not the Kingdom of Allah or Muhammad Mr. President, we have laws and there is a price for you to pay. 

.

Syrian Slaves Syrian Terrorists Syrian Refugees Brought To America now live in these states on Welfare thanks to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Terrorist Threat ISIS ISIL AL-QAEDA TALIBAN

The 10 states that have processed the most Syrian refugees as of Sunday are as follows: Remember, ISIS, ISIL in Paris France with Dead Americans, now think of Detroit, New York City, Atlanta and more. 

1. California – 218
2. Texas – 194
3. Michigan – 188
4. Arizona – 153
5. Illinois – 131
6. Pennsylvania –  119
7. Florida – 104
8. Kentucky – 92
9. New Jersey – 75
10. Ohio – 72

The Koran Quran Caliphate in Ohio The Muslim Brotherhood CAIR inside America funneling money through Ohio to support Islamic terrorism

The Muslim Brotherhood CAIR inside America cannot claim the prize this time as they live in their own Islamic Muslim Jihadist parallel universe inside America.  Sure, essentially you have a terrorist in your city, town or village and more coming to town.  Anointed as just poor Muslim's looking for a better life it seems they're looking for a better knife.  As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton holds hands with the Sierra Club and kill of the Keystone Pipeline the Islamic Jihadist grow stronger in the heart of America.

Muslim men have been indicted for funneling money through Ohio to support Islamic terrorism. Yahya Farooq Mohammed, Asif Salim, Sultane Salim, and Ibrahim Mohammad are the alleged terrorist supporters according to a 72-page indictment showing their ties to Ohio and the $22,000 they raised to support al-Qaeda's now deceased senior recruiter Anwar Al-Awlaki, killed by an American drone in Yemen in 2011.

Obama agrees to let Iran operate underground nuclear facilities to enrich their weapons program and to avoid Israeli air strikes. Now Barack Obama is telling Iran how to hide and protect their nuclear weapons program from Israel.

Obama agrees to let Iran operate underground nuclear facilities to enrich their weapons program and to avoid Israeli air strikes.  Now Barack Obama is telling Iran how to hide and protect their nuclear weapons program from Israel.

It's noted that Saudi Arabia and Israel will combine military forces and strike Iran before the end of the year,  John Kerry, the U.S. Military Vietnam radical is bribing everybody he can to strike a deal with the devil Iran, that will crush the hopes and dreams of tens of millions of people.  Iran produces (pumps) oil for about $0.05 cents per gallon in their rich oil fields but claim they must have nuclear energy to survive. 

Obama has been quoted as saying that he would have the U.S. Air Force shoot down any Israeli war plans on a mission to bomb Iran.  

There is no report what idiots inside the White House agree to the terms.  Iran, now moving in Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq is receiving considerable arms support from Russia as Putin continues to raid, rape and murder inside the Ukraine. 

The Iranian Nuclear deal by Barack Obama is done. The dog and pony show continues but the deal has been made. Obama sold out America. Iran will have a Nuclear Bomb, Iran will have no sanctions, Iran knows that the radical Obama will do anything for the deal, and he did.

The Iranian Nuclear deal by Barack Obama is done.  The dog and pony show continues but the deal has been made.  Obama sold out America.  Iran will have a Nuclear Bomb, Iran will have no sanctions, Iran knows that the radical Obama will do anything for the deal, and he did.  Iran could have 100 Nuclear Weapons in ten years or less and Barack Obama, the militant Muslim Brotherhood supporter, sells out Western Civilizations.  

10 Nuclear Years to World War III Who may support the Destruction of Israel by supporting the Obama Nuclear deal with Iran These same democratic socialist progressives gave you ObamaCare, Fast and Furious, Terrorist Swaps for Bergdhal, IRS Lois Lerner Scandal, V.A. Administration Death Waiting List, Chinese Yellow Menace Expansion, DHS Scandals, Open Borders, Illegal Aliens Wetbacks by the Millions, Climate Change, Global Warming, AR-15 Ammunition Ban, Net Neutrality, EBOLA Virus, AIDS Virus, Legal Pot in Washington D.C., Black Liberation, Hillary Rodham Clintons Private Secret Conspiring State Department, War in Crimea Ukraine with Russia Putin, North Korean Nuclear Missiles, Yemen Gone, Cuban Communists, and other Barack Obama Administrative Socialist State policies. Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Jeremiah Wright, Mohamoud Ahmadinejad, Sonia Sotomayor, John Koskinen, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Rashid Khalidi, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore, Tom Hanks, Alicia Keys, George Clooney, Jonathan Gruber, Lois Lerner, Bill De Blasio, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Louis Farrakhan, Rahm Emanuel, Bergdahl, Kim Jong Un, George Soros, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Fidel Castro, David Axelron, Tom Wheeler, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Van Jones and thousands of others. The militants surrounding Barack Hussein Obama may be considered a national threat as the media ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and others fail to reveal the true nuclear threat from Iran and their mission to destroy Iran, by any means. Barack Obama believes in Sharia Law and will not allow police officials to monitor Islamic Mosques,

Barack Obama - Netanyahu - The Congressional speech today was to help Americans understand, maybe for the first time, understand the motives of Barack Hussein Obama and his progressive socialist leanings in favor of Iran, Syria, Iraq and against Israel.  When you listen to the democratic socialist now, they hate Israel and love the anti-American president Barack Obama.  The progressive dog whistle has been sounded and the radicals are grouping to attack Israel which will most like allow the greatest enemy of America a nuclear bomb.  These same democratic socialist progressives gave you ObamaCare, Fast and Furious, Terrorist Swaps for Bergdhal, IRS Lois Lerner Scandal, V.A. Administration Death Waiting List, Chinese Yellow Menace Expansion, DHS Scandals, Open Borders, Illegal Aliens Wetbacks by the Millions, Climate Change, Global Warming, AR-15 Ammunition Ban, Net Neutrality, EBOLA Virus, AIDS Virus, Legal Pot in Washington D.C., Black Liberation,  Hillary Rodham Clintons Private Secret Conspiring State Department, War in Crimea Ukraine with Russia Putin, North Korean Nuclear Missiles, Yemen Gone, Cuban Communists, and other Barack Obama Administrative Socialist State policies.  Susan Rice, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Jeremiah Wright, Mohamoud Ahmadinejad, Sonia Sotomayor, John Koskinen, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Rashid Khalidi, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore, Tom Hanks, Alicia Keys, George Clooney, Jonathan Gruber, Lois Lerner, Bill De Blasio, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Louis Farrakhan, Rahm Emanuel, Bergdahl, Kim Jong Un, George Soros, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Fidel Castro, David Axelron, Tom Wheeler, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Van Jones and thousands of others.  The militants surrounding Barack Hussein Obama may be considered a national threat as the media ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and others fail to reveal the true nuclear threat from Iran and their mission to destroy Iran, by any means.  Barack Obama believes in Sharia Law and will not allow police officials to monitor Islamic Mosques, Close the borders, take actions in Syria, Iran, Iraq.  At this very moment, Iran is fighting with heavy arms in Iraq. 

Stone cold American Hater Samantha Power, one of Obama’s closest shadow advisers and currently the American hating U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, suggested invading Israel with American ground forces to impose Palestinian statehood back in 2002.

Stone cold American Hater Samantha Power, one of Obama’s closest shadow advisers and currently the American hating U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, suggested invading Israel with American ground forces to impose Palestinian statehood back in 2002.

How many days did Obama really spend in Pakistan when he was younger? 10:32 PM - 25 Feb 2015

How many days did Obama really spend in Pakistan when he was younger?

10:32 PM - 25 Feb 2015

Barack Obama Part Thirteen

Trying Terrorists in Civilian Court Rather Than in Military Tribunals

In November 2006 Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, formally authorizing the adjudication of war crimes and terrorism cases in military courts. According to the Defense Department, military tribunals, where military officers serve as the judges and jurors, are designed to deal with offenses committed in the context of warfare. The issue of whether it is appropriate to try someone accused of the aforementioned transgressions in a military court depends upon how one answers a single overriding question: Is terrorism a matter of war, or is it a legal issue where redress should be pursued via the criminal-justice system—like robbery, vandalism, or murder?

In Obama’s view, the creation of military commissions to try terror suspects captured in the War on Terror was, from its inception, “a bad idea.” From the beginning of his presidency, he articulated his belief that civilian courts were the proper venue in which terrorism cases should be tried.

Obama and his fellow critics of military commissions accuse the latter of trampling on the civil rights and liberties of defendants who, the critics contend, should be entitled to all the rights and protections afforded by the American criminal court system—where they would enjoy the enhanced rights and protections that such courts afford to all defendants (particularly with regard to the admissibility of secret evidence).

Immediately following his inauguration, Obama's first act as U.S. President was to order the suspension of all military tribunals that had been established to adjudicate the cases of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which continued to house more than 200 al Qaeda and Taliban combatants captured by the American military during its post-9/11 wars in the Mideast.

In November 2009, the Obama administration announced that it planned to try five Guantanamo detainees with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy in a civilian court.

In November 2010, al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani—responsible for the deaths of 224 people in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania—became the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried in civilian court and was acquitted on all but one of the charges against him.

Avoiding Political Suicide, Obama Announces That 9/11 Conspirators Will Be Tried in Military Tribunal Rather Than Civilian Court

On April 4, 2011, the Obama administration announced that, in a reversal of its November 2009 decision, it would now proceed to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (and four co-conspirators) in a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay. This move was made because the policy of civilian trials for terrorists was proving to be immensely unpopular with the American public. As former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy observed: “[Obama's] reversal comes not because the administration wanted to abandon the push for a civilian trial. It comes because the president ... is seeking reelection. Trying to force a civilian trial of the 9/11 attacks would doom that effort.... [I]t was the president who, as a candidate, campaigned on returning the country to the pre-9/11 counterterrorism model that regarded al-Qaeda’s onslaught as a mere law enforcement problem. That policy was a debacle.... Never in the history of the United States have our wartime enemies been invited into our civilian courts, clothed in the majesty of our Constitution, enabled by our due process rules to comb through our intelligence files, and given a platform to put our government, our troops, and our society on trial.”

Obama Says He Would Have Tried Bin Laden in Civilian Court if Captured Alive

On October 3, 2012, The Hill reported that according to President Obama, if Osama bin Laden had been captured alive rather than killed in May 2011, he would have been sent to a civilian U.S. court for a criminal trial. Obama was quoted as having said: “We worked through the legal and political issues that would have been involved, and Congress and the desire to send him to Guantánamo, and to not try him, and Article III…. I mean, we had worked through a whole bunch of those scenarios. But, frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.”

Mastermind of the USS Cole Bombing Is Released

In early February 2009, President Obama announced that all charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole (which killed 17 American servicemen), would be dropped. Nashiri, who had issued confessions under the duress of such procedures as waterboarding and mock executions, was slated to be tried by a military commission, where evidence obtained by means of those measures would have been admissible. But because Obama had now outlawed military commissions, that evidence would no longer be admissible. Thus the defendant was released.

Obama Has Continued Bush-Era Anti-Terrorism Policies That He Condemned As a Senator

Contrary to campaign pledges he made in 2008, President Obama has continued a number of Bush-era policies, such as detaining suspected terrorists without trial; keeping the Guantanamo Bay detention center open (on this issue Congress gave him virtually no choice); calling for limits on habeas corpus in countries like Afghanistan; using robotic killer drones in nations with which America is not at war (e.g., Pakistan); emphasizing surveillance and secrecy in tracking down terrorists; and, as discussed above, trying terrorists in military tribunals rather than civilian courts.

Obama Trades 5 Guantanamo Prisoners for the Last American POW from Iraq War

In early June 2014, President Obama made a deal with the Taliban to win the release of American POW Bowe Robert Bergdahl. Some of the men who had served with Bergdahl claimed that he had deserted his post, and that six American soldiers had died because of his actions. As former Sergeant Matt Vierkant told CNN: "Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him." According to the Daily Mail, the men who died looking for Bergdahl were: "Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen, 29, and Private First Class Morris Walker, 23, who were killed in an IED explosion on August 18, 2009;Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss, a 27-year-old father of two, who died in a firefight on August 26, 2009; Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews, 34, and Private First Class Matthew Michael Martinek, 20, [who] died after a rocket-propelled grenade ambush on September 4, 2009; and Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey, 25, [who] was killed in an IED blast on September 5, 2009." Michelle Malkin subsequently reported that in fact eight -- not six -- American soldiers were killed in the process of trying to locate and recover Bergdahl.

In exchange for Bergdahl's release, Obama agreed to free five Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Los Angeles Times gave details of who the five released Taliban prisoners were:

The five released prisoners were all senior Taliban commanders and were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban government. Before the exchange Saturday, none were deemed eligible for release by the Pentagon.

Muhammad Fazl, 47, served as Taliban deputy defense minister during the U.S. invasion and commanded troops fighting the U.S. forces in northern Afghanistan, according to a 2008 Defense Department document on his case. He was wanted by the United Nations for "possible war crimes, including the murder of thousands of Shiites," the document said. "If released, the detainee would likely rejoin the Taliban," it added.

Khairullah Khairkhwa, according to another 2008 Defense Department document, served as the Taliban government's interior minister and as governor of Herat province, and he was "directly associated" with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the fugitive Taliban leader. Khairkhwa also "was associated" with a military training camp run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a notorious Al Qaeda-linked leader later killed by U.S. forces in Iraq. In addition, he was "probably one of the major opium drug lords in western Afghanistan," the document said.

Mullah Norullah Noori, according to a similar 2008 document, was the senior Taliban commander in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif during the 2001 invasion. He was wanted by the U.N. for possible war crimes, including the deaths of thousands of Shiite Muslims, the document said. He was "associated" with Omar and senior Al Qaeda leaders, it said.

Abdul Haq Wasiq, according to a 2008 document on his case, served as deputy minister of intelligence during the Taliban rule and was involved in recruiting other militant groups to fight against the U.S. after the 2001 invasion. He used his office to support Al Qaeda and "arranged for Al Qaeda personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff," it said.

Mohammed Nabi was a "senior Taliban official" with close ties to Al Qaeda, the Haqqani network and other groups that fought the U.S. in Afghanistan, according to a 2008 Defense Department document. He was part of a militant cell in Khowst that attacked U.S. troops and facilitated the smuggling of weapons and fighters, the document said.

The Weekly Standard offered the following profiles of the released Taliban:

Mullah Mohammad Fazl (Taliban army chief of staff): Fazl is “wanted by the UN for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiites.” Fazl “was associated with terrorist groups currently opposing U.S. and Coalition forces including al Qaeda, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), and an Anti-Coalition Militia group known as Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami.” In addition to being one of the Taliban’s most experienced military commanders, Fazl worked closely with a top al Qaeda commander named Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, who headed al Qaeda’s main fighting unit in Afghanistan prior to 9/11 and is currently detained at Guantanamo.

Mullah Norullah Noori (senior Taliban military commander): Like Fazl, Noori is “wanted by the United Nations (UN) for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiite Muslims.” Beginning in the mid-1990s, Noori “fought alongside al Qaeda as a Taliban military general, against the Northern alliance.” He continued to work closely with al Qaeda in the years that followed.

Abdul Haq Wasiq (Taliban deputy minister of intelligence): Wasiq arranged for al Qaeda members to provide crucial intelligence training prior to 9/11. The training was headed by Hamza Zubayr, an al Qaeda instructor who was killed during the same September 2002 raid that netted Ramzi Binalshibh, the point man for the 9/11 operation. Wasiq “was central to the Taliban's efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against U.S. and Coalition forces after the 11 September 2001 attacks,” according to a leaked JTF-GTMO threat assessment.

Khairullah Khairkhwa (Taliban governor of the Herat province and former interior minister): Khairkhwa was the governor of Afghanistan’s westernmost province prior to 9/11. In that capacity, he executed sensitive missions for Mullah Omar, including helping to broker a secret deal with the Iranians. For much of the pre-9/11 period, Iran and the Taliban were bitter foes. But a Taliban delegation that included Kharikhwa helped secure Iran’s support for the Taliban’s efforts against the American-led coalition in late 2001. JTF-GTMO found that Khairkhwa was likely a major drug trafficker and deeply in bed with al Qaeda. He allegedly oversaw one of Osama bin Laden’s training facilities in Herat.

Mohammed Nabi (senior Taliban figure and security official): Nabi “was a senior Taliban official who served in multiple leadership roles.” Nabi “had strong operational ties to Anti-Coalition Militia (ACM) groups including al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), some of whom remain active in ACM activities.” Intelligence cited in the JTF-GTMO files indicates that Nabi held weekly meetings with al Qaeda operatives to coordinate attacks against U.S.-led forces.

In an email to his father just days before he deserted the U.S. military in 2009, Bowe Bergdahl wrote: “I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.” He thundered: “I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.” His father replied: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!” (Emphasis in original.)

On May 28, 2014, Bergdahl’s father, Robert, tweeted the following: "I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!" [sic]

On May 31, 2014, Robert Bergdahl and his wife joined President Obama in the Rose Garden of the White House to speak to reporters about the release of their son. In the course of his remarks, Mr. Bergdahl recited the most frequent phrase in the Koran — “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim” —which means “In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Compassionate.” A moment later, he finished his statement and Obama hugged him.

The Daily Mail reported:

Barack Obama broke a federal law that he signed just six months ago when he authorized the release of five high-ranking Taliban terror targets from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in exchange for the return of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, senior congressional Republicans claimed today.

And the president may also have written a new chapter in the case for his own impeachment, according to a former federal prosecutor who helped bring the 1993 World Trade Center bombers to justice.

'The return of senior terrorists to the Taliban [is] ... a "high crime and misdemeanor",' author Andrew C. McCarthy told MailOnline.

Obama 'clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress thirty days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated,' House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Buck McKeon of California and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. JIm Inhofe of Oklahoma said Saturday....

The law Obama is accused of breaking, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2013, requires Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to 'notify the appropriate committees of Congress ... not later than 30 days before the transfer or release' of detainees from Guantanamo.

Hagel is required to explain why prisoners are being let go, why it's 'in the national security interests of the United States,' and what the administration has done 'to mitigate the risks' that the terror targets will 're-engage' in war against the U.S.

Obama signed the lengthy law in December – it sets budgets and policy for the entire Defense Department – but issued a statement saying that he thought the notification requirement was unfair.

'[I]n certain circumstances,,' he wrote, it 'would violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The executive branch must have the flexibility, among other things, to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.'

According to Andrew C. McCarthy, transferring the five high-value prisoners to Qatar, as Obama authorized, "violates the law against material support to terrorism. And because high crimes and misdemeanors are not statutory offenses but political wrongs that endanger the United States, the return of senior terrorists to the Taliban while we still have soldiers in harm’s way is, in my view, a 'high crime and misdemeanor'."

President Obama's June 2, 2014 claim that the U.S. would "be keeping eyes" on the five freed Taliban leaders, was immediately challenged by a senior Gulf official who said that they would in fact be permitted to "move around freely" and then be allowed to travel outside Qatar after a year -- and even "go back to Afghanistan if they want to." The official further contradicted Obama's claim that U.S. officials would be involved in monitoring their movements.

On June 5, 2014, Fox News reported:

"U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a 'mujahid,' or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News....These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe."

The Eclipse Group report stated:

"Bergdahl has converted to Islam and now describes himself as a mujahid. Bergdahl enjoys a modicum of freedom, and engages in target practice with the local mujahedeen, firing AK47s. Bergdahl is even allowed to carry a loaded gun on occasion. Bergdahl plays soccer with his guards and bounds around the pitch like a mad man. He appears to be well and happy, and has a noticeable habit of laughing frequently and saying 'Salaam' repeatedly."

At a June 5, 2014 press conference, President Obama was asked about the backlash over the Bergdahl deal. He replied: "I'm never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington."

On June 6, 2014, NBC News reported: "One of the five Taliban leaders freed from Guantanamo Bay in return for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's release has pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan, according to a fellow militant and a relative. 'After arriving in Qatar, Noorullah Noori kept insisting he would go to Afghanistan and fight American forces there,' a Taliban commander told NBC News via telephone from Afghanistan."

In an August 21, 2014 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that President Obama had violated a “clear and unambiguous” law by releasing the 5 detainees in exchange for Bergdahl. “[The Department of Defense] violated section 8111 because it did not notify the relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of the transfer,” said the report. “In addition, because DOD used appropriated funds to carry out the transfer when no money was available for that purpose, DOD violated the Antideficiency Act. The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from incurring obligations exceeding an amount available in an appropriation.”

Rejecting the Obama administration's suggestion that the law was unconstitutional, the GAO report said: “It is not our role or our practice to determine the constitutionality of duly enacted statutes. In our view, where legislation has been passed by Congress and signed by the President, thereby satisfying the bicameralism and presentment requirements in the Constitution, that legislation is entitled to a heavy presumption in favor of constitutionality.”

On September 21, 2014, the New York Post reported the following about Bergdahl:

Before slipping away, Bergdahl shipped much of his gear, including a personal computer, back home to Idaho.

In e-mails to his parents, excerpted in Rolling Stone, he complained he was “ashamed to even be American” and was “sorry for everything here,” adding: “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.”

When he left his outpost near the Pakistan border, he left behind his body armor and weapon and only took with him water and a backpack with a camera, notebook and writing materials — bizarre, given the hostile territory around his post.

He left a farewell note in which he stated he was deserting and explained his disillusionment with the war, according to The New York Times; other reports say he sought to renounce his American citizenship.

Within 24 hours, the Taliban confirmed they had picked him up, whereupon he expressed his displeasure with his countrymen and “wanted to accept Islam,” two Afghans who were Taliban commanders at the time told NBC News.

Bergdahl converted to Islam during his captivity and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret military documents obtained by Fox News.

Soon after his rendezvous with the Taliban, the improvised explosive devices the enemy used to attack US convoys became more accurate and lethal. “IEDs started going off directly under the trucks; they were getting perfect hits every time,” Beutow recalled, suggesting Bergdahl shared military intelligence with his captors.

The Pentagon never classified Bergdahl a POW during his five years in captivity.

Obama Says It Is Vital Not to Overinflate the Importance of Terrorist Networks

In a February 1, 2015 interview with CNN, Obama was asked about the magnitude of the terror threat against the United States. He replied:

"What I do insist on is that we maintain a proper perspective and that we do not provide a victory to these terrorist networks by overinflating their importance and suggesting in some fashion that they are an existential threat to the United States or the world order. You know, the truth of the matter is that they can do harm. But we have the capacity to control how we respond in ways that do not undercut what's the -- you know, what's essence of who we are. That means that we don't torture, for example, and thereby undermine our values and credibility around the world. It means that we don't approach this with a strategy of sending out occupying armies and playing Whac-A-Mole wherever a terrorist group appears because that drains our economic strength and it puts enormous burdens on our military. What's required is a surgical, precise response to a very specific problem. And if we do that effectively, then ultimately these terrorist organizations will be defeated because they don't have a vision that appeals to ordinary people."

Administration Says ISIS Cannot Be Stopped Militarily, But by Helping Them to Get Jobs

In a February 16, 2015 interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf delivered the Obama Administration's position on how the U.S. should deal with the barbaric terrorist group ISIS:

MATTHEWS: How do we stop this? I don’t see it.... If i were ISIS, I wouldn’t be afraid right now. I can figure there is no existential threat to these people. They can keep finding places where they can hold executions and putting the camera work together, getting their props ready and killing people for show. And nothing we do right now seems to be directed at stopping this.

HARF: Well, I think there’s a few stages here. Right now what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. That’s really where they flourish.

MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them?

HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether —

MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?

HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people. You're right, there is no easy solution in the long term to preventing and combating violent extremism. But if we can help countries work at the root causes of this -- what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business -- maybe we can try to chip away at this problem....while at the same time going after the threat, taking on ISIL in Iraq in Syria and helping our partners around the world.

KILLING OSAMA BIN LADEN

(Return to Table of Contents)

Osama bin Laden Is Killed by U.S. Navy SEALs

On May 2, 2011, forty U.S. Navy SEALS raided a Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden was believed to be residing. They found there terrorist leader therein and gunned him down.

Obama Was a Longtime Critic of the Very Tactics that Allowed the U.S. to Find Bin Laden

A key development in the search for the elusive bin Laden had occurred in 2007, when two Guantanamo Bay detainees—Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi—were shipped to “extraordinary rendition” sites in Eastern Europe where they were waterboarded. As a direct result of the waterboarding, these men provided U.S. officials with the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden's most trusted personal couriers. The informants indicated that the courier in question might be living with, and protecting, the al Qaeda leader. Proceeding from that tip, U.S. intelligence officials painstakingly set out to locate the courier. In August 2010 they finally succeeded in tracing him to a house in a suburb about 35 miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan. Further surveillance suggested, though never conclusively proved, that bin Laden himself was also living there. His presence was ultimately confirmed on the night of his death.

It is highly significant that Obama had long been an outspoken critic of both the Guantanamo Bay detention center and enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. Indeed, the administration had seriously entertained the idea of prosecuting Bush-era officials who had crafted legal opinions that authorized waterboarding.

Obama Called off Three Previously Planned Missions to Kill Bin Laden

Obama's supporters praised him for authorizing the Navy SEAL mission that resulted in bin Laden's death. Some critics, meanwhile, pointed out that it would be inconceivable for any president to have done otherwise. Then, author Richard Miniter, in his 2012 book Leading from Behind, reported that according to a Joint Special Operations Command source, Obama, at the urging of advisor Valerie Jarrett, had actually canceled the operation to kill bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 mission.

Obama Says He Would Have Tried Bin Laden in Civilian Court if Captured Alive

On October 3, 2012, The Hill reported that according to Obama, bin Laden, had he been captured alive, would have been sent to a civilian U.S. court for a criminal trial. Obama was quoted as having said: “We worked through the legal and political issues that would have been involved, and Congress and the desire to send him to Guantánamo, and to not try him, and Article III…. I mean, we had worked through a whole bunch of those scenarios. But, frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.”

Obama Allegedly Played Cards During Bin Laden Raid

Reggie Love, who in 2011 served as President Obama's special assistant and personal aide -- commonly referred to as the "body man" entrusted with taking care of the president's most immediate needs -- later stated publicly that he and Obama had played cards during the bin Laden raid. Said Love: “Most people were like down in the Situation Room and [President Obama] was like, ‘I’m not going to be down there, I can’t watch this entire thing,’ We must have played 15 games of spades."

Obama's Reaction to ISIS Beheadings

On February 16, 2015, ISIS terrorists in Libya beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who were among among thousands of unemployed Egyptians who had gone to Libya desperately seeking work. ISIS then released a videotape of the barbaric mass murder. In the video (titled A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross), a masked, English-speaking jihadi declared: "Oh people, recently you've seen us on the hills of Al-Sham [Greater Syria] and on Dabeq's Plain, chopping off the heads that had been carrying the cross delusion for a long time, filled with spite against Islam and Muslims, and today we… are sending another message: oh crusaders, safety for you will be only wishes. Especially when you're fighting us all together, therefore we will fight you all together until the war lays down its burdens and Jesus peace be upon him will descend, breaking the cross, killing the swine." The speaker concluded with a reference to the late Osama Bin Laden: "The sea you've hidden Sheikh Osama Bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah, we will mix it with your blood." The extremely graphic video then ended with a shot of sea water red with the blood of the murdered Copts, while jihadist hymns played in the background.

In response to this incident, the Obama administration released the statement below. Notably (see bold-faced words), the statement does not identify the victims as Christians, but rather as "citizens" and "innocents." It also asserts that a political (rather than military) solution must be pursued with ISIS, a terror group dedicated to wanton slaughter:

"The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens in Libya by ISIL-affiliated terrorists. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Egyptian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens. ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect, or ethnicity. This wanton killing of innocents is just the most recent of the many vicious acts perpetrated by ISIL-affiliated terrorists against the people of the region, including the murders of dozens of Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai, which only further galvanizes the international community to unite against ISIL.

"This heinous act once again underscores the urgent need for a political resolution to the conflict in Libya, the continuation of which only benefits terrorist groups, including ISIL. We call on all Libyans to strongly reject this and all acts of terrorism and to unite in the face of this shared and growing threat. We continue to strongly support the efforts of the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General Bernardino Leon to facilitate formation of a national unity government and help foster a political solution in Libya."

During the three-day Presidents' Day weekend (February 15-17) on which the beheadings occurred, President Obama was on a golf vacation in Palm Springs, California.

Though Obama Said Nothing About the Anti-Christian Motivation Behind the Libya Beheadings, He Speculated Openly About the Anti-Muslim Motivations Behind a North Carolina Triple Murder

On February 10, 2015, a white North Carolina man murdered three young Muslims, execution style, in an incident that police said was apparently related to a long-simmering dispute over a parking space -- not religious hatred. In response to the killing, Obama issued a statement saying that “[t]he brutal and outrageous murders” would be investigated by the FBI as possible hate crimes, and that “no one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.” “Michelle [Obama] and I offer our condolences to the victims’ loved ones…. we are all one American family,” the statement added.

Just As Obama Said Nothing About the Anti-Christian Motivation Behind the Libya Beheadings, He Was Likewise Silent on the Religious Motivations Behind Two Murders in Denmark

On February 14, 2015, a machine-gun-wielding Muslim man in a Copenhagen, Denmark cafe murdered a movie director at a public event celebrating the free-speech right to criticize Islam or any other religion -- an event which was held in the wake of the infamous Charlie Hebdo murders by two Muslims -- and then gunnned down a young Jewish man in a Danish synagogue. Obama later issued a brief, three-sentence statement regarding the cafe murder: “The United States condemns today’s deplorable shooting in Copenhagen. We offer our condolences… [and] stand ready to lend any assistance necessary to the investigation.” He said nothing about the synagogue murder.

Barack Obama Part Twelve

The Cuban System

Leftists revere Communist Cuba for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the government-run, universal health care system that was put in place by Fidel Castro. Many of these admirers—among the more notable of whom is the filmmaker Michael Moore—form their impressions of the Cuban health care system from its tourist hospitals, which are, by any standards, clean, well staffed, and of excellent quality. Indeed Cuba, in an effort to attract wealthy foreign tourists who might be willing to spend their money on health care services, has pioneered the practice of so-called “health tourism” through agencies such as Servimed, which markets Cuban medical services abroad.

But hospitals for ordinary Cubans possess a dearth of even the most basic medicines and medical equipment. They have virtually no access to antibiotics, insulin, heart drugs, sphygmomanometers to measure blood pressure, sterile gloves, clean water, syringes, soap, or disinfectants.

Cuban hospitals typically feature unsanitary conditions. Hospital gowns, linens, and towels must be provided and cleaned by the patients' families. Poor sanitation is extended to the medical instruments handled by doctors and nurses; often these items are not properly sterilized and they remain soiled with traces of tissue and blood after their use. Syringes are frequently used to inject multiple patients without any sterilization, and “disposable” gloves are likewise used and reused. Consequently, infectious diseases are commonplace in the Cuban hospital population.

Cuba's health care system is a disaster not only for patients but also for physicians. Because of the meager salaries paid to Cuban doctors—on the average 400 pesos per month (equivalent to $20 U.S.)—many have quit the profession to seek jobs in the only industry that offers them any degree of economic opportunity: the Cuban tourism industry. Former doctors in Cuba can commonly be found driving dilapidated taxis, acting as tour guides, or even working in family inns as waiters or cooks. Those who choose to remain in the medical profession work long hours in dismal conditions.

It is noteworthy that in the pre-Castro years of the 1950s, the Cuban population as a whole had access to good medical care through association clinics which predated the American concept of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) by decades, as well as through private clinics. At that time, the Cuban medical system ranked among the best in the world; its ratio of one physician per 960 patients was rated 10th by the World Health Organization. In addition, Cuba had Latin America's lowest infant-mortality rate, comparable to Canada's and better than those of France, Japan, and Italy.

OBAMA AND ENERGY / ENVIRONMENT

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Obama's “Global Warming” Alarmism

Barack Obama is unambiguous in maintaining that human industrial activity causes global warming. As his 2008 presidential campaign declared: “Global warming is real, is happening now and is the result of human activities. The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years. Glaciers are melting faster; the polar ice caps are shrinking; trees are blooming earlier; oceans are becoming more acidic, threatening marine life; people are dying in heat waves; species are migrating, and eventually many will become extinct. Scientists predict that absent major emission reductions, climate change will worsen famine and drought in some of the poorest places in the world and wreak havoc across the globe. In the U.S., sea-level rise threatens to cause massive economic and ecological damage to our populated coastal areas.”

The Truth about Global Warming

The geophysicist Fred Singer points out that: “The Earth's climate has never been steady; it has either warmed or cooled—without any human intervention—since the dawn of time. The measured variations have often been larger and more rapid than those currently predicted by climate models for the year 2100. In the last 3,000 years, temperatures in the North Atlantic have changed by as much as 3°C within a few decades.... None of the climate models incorporate the effects of a variable sun. It has always been assumed that solar variability is simply too small, but this view is now changing. Evidence shows that solar winds and sunspots can affect the earth's ozone layer and influence atmospheric circulation or cloudiness—which in turn can cause significant climate changes.... As for the association of climate change with atmospheric greenhouse gases, on the time-scale of hundreds of millions of years, carbon dioxide (CO2) has sharply declined; its concentration was as much as 20 times the present value at the beginning of the Cambrian Period, 600 million years ago. Moreover, glaciations have occurred throughout geologic time even when CO2 concentrations were high.”

As of mid-2008, no fewer than 31,000 U.S. scientists had signed a petition rejecting the assumption that the human production of greenhouse gases was damaging Earth's climate.

In late November 2009, the so-called “Climategate” scandal cast grave doubt on the intellectual integrity of those leading the effort to spread fear about the alleged dangers of global warming. At the heart of the controversy was the discovery that a number of leading American and British climatologists who held that mankind's industrial activity was causing a dangerous warming trend in the earth's atmosphere, had intentionally manipulated the evidence in order to provide “proof” that their warnings were justified. The scientists' deceptions were found out when hundreds of their private email messages and documents were obtained and publicized by computer hackers.

In October 2012, it was reported that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there had been no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. A the Daily Mail explained: “This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.”

Obama Opposes Oil Drilling in Alaska's ANWR Region

As a U.S. Senator, Obama voted against permitting the United States to drill for oil and natural gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a 19.6-million-acre area situated in the top northeast corner of Alaska, just north of the Arctic Circle and about 1,300 miles south of the North Pole. He continues to oppose drilling in ANWR, asserting that such a measure would despoil a pristine natural wonderland.

The Truth About ANWR

The portion of ANWR where drilling would occur consists of just 2,000 acres, or one-one hundredth of 1% of ANWR's total expanse. Moreover, it is a barren, frozen wasteland for much of the year. During its eight-month winter, temperatures drop as low as 70 degrees below zero. The region is shrouded in near-total darkness for five months, and for 56 days there is no sunlight at all. No trees live in this inhospitable region, and wildlife is present for only about six weeks each year.

Opponents of drilling warn that local caribou populations would suffer mass death as a result of any industrial intrusion by man. The same was said in the 1970s by opponents of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (TAP), which became operative in 1977 and now transports heated oil south from Prudhoe Bay (located about 100 miles west of Area 1002). TAP is the most environmentally responsible oil field in the world. After TAP's inception, the caribou population in its vicinity increased from about 3,000 in the 1970s to more than 32,000 in 2009; animals have actively sought out, and thrived in, the heat radiating from the oil pipes. Not a single wildlife species has decreased in population at Prudhoe Bay since TAP became part of the landscape.

Just Make Sure “Your Tires Are Properly Inflated”

At a July 30, 2008 campaign stop in Missouri, Obama said: “There are things that you can do individually ... to save energy; making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off [from] drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much.”

Obama and the Demise of the Coal Industry

In January 2008 Obama said the following about the future of the coal industry, which currently accounts for half of all the electricity produced in America: “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” Added Obama: “When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know, under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

In late March 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule that would limit carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. No coal-fired power plant would be able to meet the emission limit (1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of power produced), but natural gas-fired power plants could. If passed, this rule would ensure that no new, modern coal-fired power plants would be built in the United States.

Obama's Energy Secretary Reiterates His Support for High Gas Prices

In 2008, Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, advocated steep rises in gasoline prices as a means of coaxing Americans into being more fuel-efficient and purchasing green energy cars: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” (i.e., approximately $10 per gallon). In March 2011, Chu reiterated his support for high gasoline prices: “What I’m doing since I became secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices. We have been very focused in the Department of Energy on that. And, in fact, the entire administration has been very focused on that.”

Cap-and-Trade: An Energy Tax on Everyone

In a February 2009 speech to Congress, President Obama called for the implementation of a cap-and-trade environmental plan designed to reduce carbon emissions. The cap-and-trade legislation (known officially as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or the Waxman-Markey bill, in honor of its congressional sponsors) would have established an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions and then permitted companies to buy or sell emission “credits.”

Robert Murphy, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, explained the mechanism by which cap-and-trade would impose costs on the American public: “Under a cap-and-trade scheme, the government sets an absolute cap on how much carbon dioxide industries can emit in the United States, and it enforces this cap by selling a limited number of allowances. All of the operations (utilities, factories, etc.) covered by the law must turn in the appropriate number of allowances based on how much carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere each year. The government gets its revenues from auctioning off these allowances to the highest bidder.”

The ultimate result of cap-and-trade would be carbon rationing, since there would be a fixed number of carbon allowances available to American businesses as a whole. Such rationing would raise the operating costs of many businesses, which in turn would pass those costs on to their customers. According to the Heritage Foundation, the average American household would incur additional costs ranging from $1,870 to $6,970 per year. An MIT study placed the figure at $3,100. A March 2009 U.S. Treasury Department document said “a cap and trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.” That is the equivalent of raising personal income taxes by approximately 15%, or $1,761 a year, per household.

In 2008, candidate Obama readily acknowledged that cap-and-trade would impose significantly higher energy costs on Americans of all income levels: “[U]nder my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Because cap-and-trade proposals became extremely unpopular with the American public in 2009, the legislation was never passed by the Senate and thus did not become law, thereby preventing Obama from imposing an enormous tax on the American people.

Thus rebuffed by Congress, Obama next sought to impose cap-and-trade by circumventing the legislative process and imposing cap-and-trade through edicts by his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As the Washington Post reported in August 2011: “Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection Agency will finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. Mercury, smog, ozone, greenhouse gases, water intake, coal ash—it’s all getting regulated.... Industry groups such the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, and the American Legislative Exchange Council have dubbed the coming rules 'EPA’s Regulatory Train Wreck.' The regulations, they say, will cost utilities up to $129 billion and force them to retire one-fifth of coal capacity. Given that coal provides 45 percent of the country’s power, that means higher electric bills, more blackouts and fewer jobs.”

A Heritage Foundation report states that cap-and-trade, if pursued unilaterally by the United States, “would moderate temperatures by only hundredths of a degree in 2050 and no more than two-tenths of a degree at the end of the century.” In other words, the bill would extract trillions of dollars out of the U.S. economy in exchange for a benefit so small as to be—even in a best-case scenario—wholly imperceptible. Said the same report: “A multilateral approach would not fare much better. In the case of international cooperation, India, China, and the rest of the developing world would have to revert to their 2000 levels of CO2 emissions by 2050. On a per-capita basis, China would backtrack to about one-tenth of what the U.S. emitted in 2000. India and most of the developing world would have to drop to even lower levels. This scenario, in addition to being highly unlikely, would de-develop the developing world.” The issue of multilateralism was moot, however. China and India hadve long maintained that they have no intention of abiding by the regulations of any cap-and-trade schemes.

Obama's Opposition to U.S. Oil Drilling

On March 31, 2010, President Obama announced that he would open the door to oil drilling off Virginia's coast, in other parts of the mid- and south Atlantic, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and in waters off Alaska. At the same time, he declared off-limits the waters off the West Coast and in Alaska's Bristol Bay, canceled four scheduled lease sales in Alaska and called for more study before allowing new lease sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Steve Everly of American Solutions.com put Obama's announcement in context: “The plan is defined more by what it restricts than what it opens up.... No drilling in the Pacific Ocean. No drilling in a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean. No drilling in some of the most promising areas of the Gulf of Mexico. No drilling in much of Alaska.... When Congress voted in 2008 not to extend the ban on offshore drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf [OCS], they did not choose to keep a ban on Pacific waters, nor did they intend for a de facto ban to remain in effect in the OCS for at least another four years. What Congress did through legislative action, acting in accordance with the public will, the President has undone with the stroke of a pen.”

On April 20, 2010, the disastrous BP/Deepwater Horizon oil leak began to spew thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico on a daily basis. In a report which he issued on May 27, 2010, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recommended a six-month moratorium on all deepwater drilling—notwithstanding the fact that five out of seven consulting engineers stated that such drilling had a strong safety record, and that targeted inspections would be more sensible than a blanket moratorium.

In June 2010, federal judge Martin Feldman of Louisiana ordered Salazar and the Obama administration to to lift their “arbitrary and capricious, and therefore, unlawful” ban on offshore drilling in the Gulf. The following month, when a U.S. Court of Appeals denied the administration's bid to put a hold on Feldman's order, the Interior Secretary promptly concocted a second, “revised” moratorium to replace the one Feldman had nullified. Though Salazar officially “lifted” this second ban three months thereafter, he would issue no additional permits that year. Rather, in 2010 he actually rescinded 77 oil-lease contracts that had previously been granted—after seven full years of rigorous study and debate—during the final days of the Bush administration. Federal courts repeatedly scolded Salazar and the Obama administration for their “determined disregard” of judicial orders and their “increasingly inexcusable” action on stalled deepwater drilling projects, to no effect.

In February 2011, Judge Feldman—complaining that the Obama administration’s “time delays at issue here are unreasonable”—ordered Salazar and the President to decide within a month whether they would grant a set of five permits for deepwater drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama and Salazar chose not to comply for several weeks, and instead issued yet another request to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of Feldman's order. Finally, in March 2011 Salazar gave the Shell Offshore Company permission to apply for drilling permits for three new exploratory wells off the Louisiana coast.

Obama Funds Brazilian Oil-Drilling Venture

In late August 2009, President Obama agreed to lend $2 billion to Brazil’s quasi-public national oil company, Petrobras, to fund its exploration and drilling of 270 sites in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the richest oil fields in the world (where environmentalist objections had historically thwarted any drilling proposals by U.S. companies). Petrobras is headed by José Sergio Gabrielli, a socialist member of Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party. Brazil’s socialist government holds 40% of Petrobras’ shares of stock. The government of China also owns a significant stake in Petrobras.

Brazil was not the only country preparing to drill for oil in the Gulf region. China, India, Norway, Spain, and Russia, to name a few, had also signed agreements with countries bordering the Gulf, such as Cuba and the Bahamas, authorizing them to initiate exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama's False Claims about U.S. Oil and Gas Production under His Watch

During his January 24, 2012 State of the Union Speech, President Obama took credit for the highest levels of natural gas production in more than 30 years and the highest levels of oil production in eight years. But these increases had nothing whatsoever to do with Obama's policies. A non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) report released in March 2012 revealed that fully 96 percent of the increase in oil production had occurred on private land, not on land owned or controlled by the federal government.

According to a January 2012 Heritage Foundation report, oil and natural gas production on federal lands was down by more than 40% compared to a decade earlier. Under the Obama administration, fewer onshore leases were issued in 2010 than in any year since 1984.

Obama's Assault on the Oil and Gas Industries

Obama seeks to raise taxes on the oil industry by denying it access to tax credits available to other industries. As the Heritage Foundation points out, the same tax treatment is extended to producers of clothing, roads, electricity, water, and many other manufactured goods; in fact, oil companies receive less of a tax break (6%) than those manufacturers (9%). In short, Obama's condemnation of oil company profits is nothing more than populist rhetoric.

The Heritage Foundation adds: “When President Obama lashes out at 'Big Oil,' guess who’s going to pay the price? You. First, raising taxes on any company means that the costs will be passed on to consumers.... Second, when the president talks about 'Big Oil,' keep in mind who 'Big Oil' is—it could very well be you. Thirty-one percent of U.S. oil and natural gas shares are owned by public or private pension plans. On top of that, individual retirement accounts hold 18 percent of shares, individual investors have 21 percent, and asset management companies including mutual funds account for 21 percent—comprising more than 90 percent of oil and gas stocks in 2011. That means when those companies profit, there’s a good chance you profit. And when those companies suffer, there’s a good chance that you suffer, too.”

Obama Limits Oil Shale Exploration

On November 9, 2012 -- three days after Obama's reelection as president -- the administration's Interior Department announced its plan to close 1.6 million acres of federal land in the West originally slated (by the Bush administration) for oil shale development. Interior’s Bureau of Land Management cited environmental concerns for the proposed changes. For example, it excised lands with “wilderness characteristics” and areas that infringed on sage grouse habitats. The plan left 677,000 acres in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming open for oil shale exploration, and called for another 130,000 acres in Utah to be set aside for tar sands production.

The “Green Energy” Disaster: Solyndra, etc.

Between 2009 and 2012, Obama pumped $90 billion of taxpayer money into green energy initiatives, most of which failed because they could not compete in the energy marketplace. This included, most famously, $535 million that was fast-tracked to the solar panel company Solyndra. A major Solyndra investor, billionaire George Kaiser, was a big Obama donor and one of the president's campaign fundraising “bundlers.”

It was obvious, from the outset, that Solyndra was a risky investment. As early as 2008, Fitch Ratings assigned the company a mediocre B+ credit rating, and Dun & Bradstreet assessed its credit as “fair.” In March 2010, the accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers observed that Solyndra “has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” Yet two months later, Obama told an audience of Solyndra employees that “the future is here.” A month after that, Solyndra withdrew a scheduled Initial Public Offering, despite being informed by auditors that the company would not survive even a year if it failed to raise the $300 million it was seeking.

In late October 2010, Solyndra was ready to announce that it would have to lay off many of ts workers. But the Obama administration pushed the company “very hard” to delay that announcement until November 3—the day after the midterm elections where Democrats were in danger of losing control of the House of Representatives. Solyndra complied, and waited until November 3 to make its announcement.

In July 2011, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison went to Washington, DC to tell lawmakers that his company was in a “strong financial position.” Two weeks later, the company closed its doors, laid off 1,100 workers and filed for bankruptcy.

Other Federally Funded “Green Energy” Debacles

Amonix Solar: In July 2012, this Las Vegas-based manufacturing plant—subsidized by more than $20 million in federal tax credits and grants awarded by the Obama administration—permanently shuttered its operations a year after it had opened.

Solar Trust of America: This company filed for bankruptcy on April 3, 2012.

Bright Source: Though this solar-power company has already lost billions of dollars, the Obama administration continues to pump money into it.

LSP Energy: This electricity producer filed for bankruptcy protection and a sale of its assets in February 2012.

Energy Conversion Devices: This renewable-energy company and its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy on February 14, 2012.

Abound Solar: Soon after receiving a $400 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration, this solar-panel company announced in June 2012 that it would file for bankruptcy. A major investor in Abound Solar was Bohemian Companies, whose founder, Democratic mega-donor Pat Stryker, had not only donated $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund, but had also contributed $50,000 for Obama’s 2008 inauguration and bundled another 87,000 for that event.

SunPower: This company stopped producing solar cells in 2011, when it was near bankruptcy.

Beacon Power: This energy company filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2011, just a year after Obama had approved a $43 million government loan guarantee.

Ecotality: This San Francisco-based green-technology company received approximately $115 million in loan guarantees from President Obama, though it has never turned a profit and sits on the precipice of bankruptcy.

A123 Systems: This lithium battery manufacturer, backed by $249 million in subsidies from the Obama administration, filed for bankruptcy on October 16, 2012.

UniSolar: This company filed for bankruptcy on June 20, 2012 after laying off hundreds of employees. Obama then awarded it additional money, but it continues to operate at a huge loss.

Azure Dynamics: After the Obama administration gave this electric- and hybrid-vehicle company millions of dollars in “stimulus” funds as well as tax abatements and tax credits, this company filed for bankruptcy in June 2012.

Evergreen Solar: After receiving $527 million in taxpayer funds from the Obama administration, this company laid off some 1,800 workers in early 2011. Later that year, it filed for bankruptcy.

Ener1: This electric-car battery manufacturer received a $118 million grant from Obama's Energy Department, then defaulted on debt and filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2012.

Commitment to the Fight Against “Global Warming

During his second inaugural address as president on January 21, 2013, the newly re-elected Obama emphasized his commitment to pursuing “green energy” as a means of addressing the threat of global warming: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition. We must lead it.”

Obama Prepares to Roll out Sweeping Climate Regulations

On November 11, 2014, Politico reported that "the Obama administration is set to roll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president’s environmental actions of the past quarter-century ... sweeping executive actions to combat global warming.... The coming rollout includes a Dec. 1 proposal by EPA to tighten limits on smog-causing ozone, which business groups say could be the costliest federal regulation of all time; a final rule Dec. 19 for clamping down on disposal of power plants’ toxic coal ash; the Jan. 1 start date for a long-debated rule prohibiting states from polluting the air of their downwind neighbors; and a Jan. 8 deadline for issuing a final rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions from future power plants."

Climate Accord with China

On November 12, 2014, President Obama, who was in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, reached a "climate change" agreement (limiting "greenhouse gas emissions") with Chinese President Xi Jinping. According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal would require the U.S. to "double the average pace of its carbon-dioxide reductions after 2020, eyeing an overall reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions of between 26% and 28% by 2025, compared with 2005 levels." China, meanwhile, would continue to increase its emissions for 15 years before capping them in 2030. Said Obama: "We hope to encourage all major economies to be ambitious -- all countries, developing and developed -- to work across some of the old divides, so we can conclude a strong global climate agreement next year."

OBAMA AND HOMELAND SECURITY / WAR ON TERROR

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Obama Condemned Warrantless Wiretaps of Terror Suspects

Denouncing the Bush administration's warrantless wiretaps of terror suspects, candidate Obama said in 2007: “This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not.”

Obama Accused the Bush Administration of Trampling on the Constitution

“I taught constitutional law for ten years at the University of Chicago,” said candidate Obama in 2008. “... Your next president will actually believe in the Constitution, which you can’t say about your current president.”

Senator Obama Denounced the Troop Surge That Ultimately Turned the Tide of the Iraq War

In January 2007—three weeks after President Bush announced that he would deploy an extra 20,000 troops to Iraq in a “surge” strategy designed to crush the enemy with overwhelming force—then-Senator Obama derided the surge in unequivocal terms. “I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground,” he said prior to its implementation. Soon after the surge had been initiated, Obama declared prematurely: “Here’s what we know. The surge has not worked.”

The surge proved to be a spectacular success and enabled the U.S. to win the war in Iraq.

New Limits on Interrogating Terrorists

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order requiring all U.S. agents who interrogate high-value detainees to abide by the guidelines set forth in the Army Field Manual (AMF), whose limits on interrogation practices are much stricter than those traditionally followed by the CIA. For example, the AMF prohibits interrogators from subjecting detainees to “excessive noise,” “excessive dampness,” or “excessive or inadequate heat, light or ventilation”; it bans any sleep deprivation that does not permit a detainee at least four hours of sleep per night; it states that “all prisoners and detainees, regardless of status, will be treated humanely”; and it forbids interrogators from taunting detainees by such means as mocking those passages of the Koran that serve as the basis for the jihadists’ fanatical beliefs.

“Man-Caused Disasters,” Not “Terrorism”

In March 2009, Obama's Department of Homeland Security broke with its traditional practice of warning the American public about potential “terrorist” threats, and instead began referring to acts of terrorism as “man-caused disasters.”

Miranda Warnings for Suspected Terrorists

In June 2009 the Obama Justice Department, demonstrating its preference to treat terrorism as a law-enforcement issue rather than as a military matter, ordered the FBI to give Miranda warnings to enemy combatants captured at war in Afghanistan.

Obama Refers to Jihadist Mass Murder As "Workplace Violence"

On November 5, 2009, U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan -- a Muslim convert who had previously made his jihadist objectives known -- went on a shooting rampage inside the Fort Hood military post in Texas, killing 13 people and wounding at least 31 others. According to eyewitnesses, he shouted "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is Great!") while he was shooting. The Obama administration characterized the incident as "workplace violence."

Obama Releases 12 Prisoners from Guantanamo

In December 2009, President Obama released twelve more jihadists from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba: four Afghanis, two Somalis, and six Yemenis. One of the ex-prisoners, a Somali named Mohamed Saleban Bare, had ties to Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiya, a Somali Islamist movement that produced many leaders of the al Qaeda-linked Shebab terror group.

Obama's Reluctance to Use the Word “Terrorist”

On Christmas Day of 2009, a Nigerian al Qaeda operative boarded a Northwest Airlines flight (from Amsterdam to Detroit) and attempted, without success, to blow up the plane in midair with a chemical bomb. In public remarks soon after the incident, President Obama referred to the man as an “isolated extremist” rather than as a terrorist or a jihadist. In subsequent days the administration announced that it would offer the perpetrator a plea agreement to persuade him to reveal what he knew about al Qaeda operations in Yemen; if such an arrangement could not be worked out, the government planned to try him in federal civilian court.

Obama Condemns Waterboarding

On the matter of using enhanced interrogation techniques (such as waterboarding) on high-level terrorist suspects, in 2008 candidate Obama emphatically pledged to end that practice, which he viewed as “torture.”

Betraying CIA Personnel, Obama Releases Highly Classified “Torture” Memos

In April 2009, against the protestations of former CIA director Michael Hayden, President Obama released a number of legal memos detailing the types of enhanced-interrogation techniques that U.S. authorities had used on suspected terrorists in the past. According to the declassified memos, waterboarding had been used on both Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (mastermind of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and the 9/11 attacks) and Abu Zubaydah (al Qaeda’s operational planner).

In an interview, Hayden said that anyone who objected to the CIA’s use of such methods was avoiding a very “inconvenient truth”: “[T]he use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer.... [O]ne detainee led to another, led to another, with the use of these techniques.... At the tactical level, what we have [now] described [with the release of the memos] for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al-Qaeda terrorist. That’s very valuable information.”

President Obama later stated that while the “enhanced interrogation” techniques had indeed produced valuable intelligence, the same information could have been obtained in other ways—though he did not specify how.

Obama Threatens to Prosecute Bush Administration Officials and CIA Interrogators Who Condoned and Practiced Waterboarding

On April 21, 2009, the Obama administration announced that it would entertain the idea of prosecuting Bush administration officials who had crafted legal opinions that led to the use of methods (such as waterboarding) that Obama considered to be torture.

In late August 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would soon launch a criminal probe of former CIA interrogators who, during the Bush administration, may have used techniques such as waterboarding, which Obama had recently banned. Former Vice President Dick Cheney reacted to Holder’s announcement as follows: “It’s an outrageous political act that will do great damage, long-term, to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say…. It’s a very, very devastating, I think, effect that it has on morale inside the intelligence community.”

On September 18, 2009, seven former CIA chiefs—John Deutch, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, James R. Schlesinger, George Tenet, William Webster and R. James Woolsey—sent a letter to President Obama urging him to call off the investigation of the agency's interrogation methods, on grounds that it would weaken the government's intelligence-gathering abilities and deter other nations from working with the United States. Said the letter: “Success in intelligence often depends on surprise and deception and on creating uncertainty in the mind of an enemy. But, the administration must be mindful that public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help al Qaeda elude U.S. intelligence and plan future operations…. Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments in the aftermath of an attack such as Sept. 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal rules that govern their actions.”

Obama responded by saying that he had no intention of calling off the investigation.