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Is Barack Obama the “promised warrior” coming to help the Hidden Imam of Shiite Muslims conquer the world? The question has made the rounds in Iran since last month, when a pro-government Web site published a Hadith (or tradition) from a Shiite text of the 17th century. The tradition comes from Bahar al-Anvar (meaning Oceans of Light) by Mullah Majlisi, a magnum opus in 132 volumes and the basis of modern Shiite Islam. According to the tradition, Imam Ali Ibn Abi-Talib (the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law) prophesied that at the End of Times and just before the return of the...

After former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates considers the country’s involvement in the Syrian civil war “a mistake”, another prominent politician is riding the waves to drown the government’s decision to support Syrian rebels.Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin threw scathing remarks last Saturday against the government’s plans to provide weapons and ammunition to Syrian opposition groups. She said the US government should “let Allah sort it out” instead of meddling in the affairs of the troubled nation. Palin issued the statement as a closing talk during the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C. last June 15, as reported...

The ex-president's willingness to speak out on Syria spells disaster for Obama in more ways than one.I wish that when President Bill Clinton started spouting off the other day about the need for President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria's horrific civil war or risk looking like "a total fool," Obama had followed the example set by his wife when she was recently confronted by a heckler. I wish that Obama had leaped from his bully pulpit, got in Clinton's face and silenced him with a withering put-down. But of course, that didn't happen. Instead of resisting the intensifying pressure...

WASHINGTON: The United States will begin formal talks with the Taliban, including the Haqqani network, in Doha, Qatar, in a couple of days, Obama administration officials said in a major announcement on Tuesday. The engagement, the first of its kind since the post 9/11 conflict, follows key concessions made by Washington, including dropping the pre-condition that Taliban immediately break ties with al-Qaida, in return for much broader, generic, self-serving commitments by the unyielding terrorist group. In a conference call from Northern Ireland where President Obama is attending the G8 summit, US officials said they expected Taliban to issue a statement...

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the New York Police Department over its surveillance of Muslim communities, accusing the police of trampling on religious freedoms and constitutional guarantees of equality. The surveillance by the NYPD's intelligence division has extended beyond New York City's five boroughs into neighboring New Jersey and other nearby states. The police department says that surveillance of Muslims is legal under an earlier federal court order. The lawsuit is the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle between the NYPD and civil liberties advocates over the department's aggressive policing tactics - including...

June 18, 2013 Benghazi Whistleblower Lawyer Says Joint Chief’s Chairman Lied to Congress Fred Lucas (CNSNews.com) – An attorney whose firm represents two Benghazi whistleblowers said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lied to the Senate when he said there was never a “stand down” order during the Benghazi attack on Sept. 11, 2012. “What was fascinating is that he explained his lie to them,” Joe DiGenova, an attorney representing one of the whistleblowers, told CNSNews.com. “He actually said they were sent to Tripoli. They were needed in Benghazi,” said DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney, now...

O'REILLY: "Personal Story" segment tonight. CBS News announced on Friday that Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson's computer was hacked into late last year. This, combined with the James Rosen situation here at Fox News and the A.P. snooping, causing a lot of concern. With us now on a Factor Cable Exclusive is Ms. Attkisson. So, when did you know that somebody was messing with your computer. SHARYL ATTKISSON, INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT, CBS NEWS: Well, there were signs probably around 2011 but I don't think I recognized exactly what was going on until perhaps the fall of last year when so many things...

Obama: You Can't Understand Syria Policy 'If You Haven't Been in the Situation Room' Obama: I hear folks saying, "Katie, bar the door, let's just go in and knock out Syria." 7:03 AM, Jun 18, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER Charlie Rose last night asked President Obama his new Syria policy. The president first objected to it being called a new policy. "I'm not sure you can characterize this as a new policy. This is consistent with the policy that I've had throughout," he said. Obama then explained the goal is regional stability, and especially in Syria. "Really, what we're...

General Carter Ham is scheduled to testify to the House Armed Services Committee on June 26 at a classified briefing about his knowledge of events that took place when the attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya happened last September, reports Fox News' Greta Van Susteren: Below is from my FNC colleague Justin Fishel: Subject: Fox First: General Carter Ham to testify on Benghazi for first time next week Fox News has learned that the House Armed Services Committee will hold a classified briefing next Weds June 26 at 9:00 on Benghazi. Briefers will include: Gen....

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly launched a stinging rebuke to the federal government’s secret phone and Internet monitoring campaign — and suggested leaker Edward Snowden was right about privacy “abuse.” “I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said if he were president, he would have intervened in Syria much sooner than President Obama did to identify the “reasonable” rebels opposed to the regime of President Basher Assad. “It behooved us to kind of identify whether there was any elements there within Syria fighting against Assad that we could work with—reasonable people that wouldn’t carry out human rights violations and could be part of building a new Syria. We failed to do that,” Rubio told Jonathan Karl on ABC News’ “This Week.” … Obama announced this week that the Assad regime had crossed the...

Al Qaida-linked group Syria rebels once denied now key to anti-Assad victories Nearly a year later, however, Jabhat al Nusra, which U.S. officials believe has links to al Qaida, has become essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad. “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!” one Nusra fighter shouted in the northeastern Syrian city of Ras al Ayn when he was told an American journalist present. He laughed as he said it and then got into a van and drove off, leaving the journalist unable to ask whether it had been a...

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly launched a stinging rebuke to the federal government’s secret phone and Internet monitoring campaign — and suggested leaker Edward Snowden was right about privacy “abuse.” “I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials. His blast came days after the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder outraged New York officials by endorsing a federal monitor for the NYPD. Kelly appeared to firmly reject Holder’s claim that disclosure of the monitoring campaign seriously damaged efforts to fight terrorism. “I think the American public can accept the...

The Mideast: The president opposed arming the Syrian rebels last year on the grounds the arms could find their way into Islamist hands. This year he's changed his mind — but the rebels haven't changed their Islamist spots. One would have thought that the decision to intervene in the Syrian civil war, a conflict in which the U.S. has no clear strategic interest, would have been announced by President Obama, sans golf garb, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, and not by Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. One would also have...

If you’re like me, you’ve gotten increasingly frustrated with the constant mention of “the rebels” in reports about Syria, without much context about who they are. It reminds me of some 1980s action movie in which generic “rebels” serve as some sort of MacGuffin for the hero to blow stuff up. Now that President Obama has decided to arm the rebels, it’s even more imperative that Americans have a good idea of the different rebel groups in Syria, which unfortunately are dominated by Islamists. Today, the Wall Street Journal reports: The move is an about-face by Mr. Obama, who last...

Below is from my FNC colleague Justin Fishel: Subject: Fox First: General Carter Ham to testify on Benghazi for first time next week Fox News has learned that the House Armed Services Committee will hold a classified briefing next Weds June 26 at 9:00 on Benghazi. Briefers will include: Gen. Carter Ham (ret.) He was head of AFRICOM during Benghazi attack. LTC Gibson RADM Brian Losey – Special Operations Command Africa This is being coordinated by the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the HASC. It will be closed door but will be the first time Ham has been questioned by...

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the attention of the FBI on at least two occasions prior to a Russian government warning in March 2011 that said he appeared to be radicalizing, FBI Director Robert Mueller said in Congressional testimony this week. The earlier references have led some lawmakers to question whether the FBI acted too quickly in closing an assessment of Tsarnaev's potential ties to terrorism done in response to the Russian request.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the New York-based American Center for Democracy's Economic Warfare Institute warns that last July "al-Qaeda's English-language online magazine, Inspire, published an article called 'It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,' which featured instructions on how to build an incendiary bomb to light forests on fire. "A few months later, Russia's security (FSB) chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov warned, 'al-Qaeda was complicit in recent forest fires in Europe' as part of the terrorists' 'strategy of a thousand cuts.' Bortnikov spoke of 'extremist sites [that] contained detailed instructions of waging the forest jihad and stressed that such a...

Iran will deploy 4,000 Revolutionary Guards to Syria to bolster Damascus against a mostly Sunni-led insurgency, media reported. Meanwhile, US F-16s and Patriots will stay in Jordan – speculatively, to help establish a no-fly zone to aid Syrian rebels. The deployment of the first several-thousand strong military contingent was reported by The Independent on Sunday who quoted Iranian sources tied to the state’s security apparatus. The sources said the move signals Iran’s intention to drastically step up its efforts to preserve the government of President Bashar Assad. The Islamic Republic’s heightened military commitment could reportedly extend to the opening up...

It's becoming increasingly difficult to give the government the benefit of the doubt in regards to dragnet domestic surveillance. Even before Glenn Greenwald published a top secret court order compelling Verizon to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems and interviewed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, there were credible reports that the NSA was intercepting U.S. communications. The most significant of those occurred in July, when the court that was established to "hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance," called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), found that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction...

House approach on Benghazi: Crazy — or plain stupid? By: Fred J. Eckert June 16, 2013 09:52 PM EDT Sometimes watching Speaker John Boehner and his House Republican “leadership” team in action calls to mind that scene from “Forrest Gump” in which Bubba’s mother looks incredulously at Forrest and asks: “Are you crazy — or just plain stupid?” More than six months ago, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) introduced a proposal to create a House Select Committee on the terrorist attack in Benghazi, a select committee being generally regarded as the best way to ensure an intelligent, well-coordinated, bipartisan investigation without...

The White House on Sunday defended its approach to the Syrian conflict as Republicans launched fresh accusations that the Obama administration is doing too little and has moved too slowly to aid rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad. “We have to be very discerning about what's in our interest and what outcome is best for us, and the prices that we're willing to pay to get to that place,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “We've rushed to war in this region in the past. We're not going to do it here,”...

So it wasn’t just strong warnings from Russia and Saudi Arabia, there were other red flags. And that wasn’t enough for the dhimmi FBI to spring into action. Because Obama scrubbed all references to jihad and Islam from counter terror materials, substituting the homicidal “outreach” approach in accordance with Islamic supremacist demands from Muslim Brotherhood groups like CAIR (and their lapdogs in the media like Spencer Ackerman). All 263 families of the victims of the Boston jihad bombers should file multi-million dollar lawsuits against the Obama administration. Redirect some of the blood money he is handing over to the Muslim...

Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.

By authorizing the arming of Syrian rebels known to be led by members of al-Qaeda, is Obama violating the National Defense Authorization Act? President Obama OKs Shipment of Arms to Al-Qaeda in Syria The New American 14 June 2013 President Obama has given the green light to the shipping of weapons from the United States to opposition forces in Syria. In a statement released by Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, the White House claims that “our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin.” The Syrian...

On Wednesday, Qusair fell to the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. Qusair is a strategic town that connects Damascus with Assad’s Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean, with its ports and Russian naval base. It’s a major strategic shift. Assad’s forces can now advance on rebel-dominated areas in central and northern Syria, including Aleppo. For the rebels, it’s a devastating loss of territory, morale, and their supply corridor to Lebanon. No one knows if this reversal of fortune will be the last, but everyone knows that Assad now has the upper hand. In 1958, President Eisenhower — venerated by today’s fashionable...

... Obama authorized his administration to provide arms to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, officials said Thursday, a major policy shift after the White House said it had confirmed that Damascus used chemical weapons in the country's civil war.

The White House, writes the New York Times, will “begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition, according to American officials.” USA Today concurs, quoting an unnamed official “knowledgeable about the plans” who “confirmed to USA TODAY that the new assistance would include arming the rebels.” The Wall Street Journal explains that “Obama issued a “classified order directing the Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate arming the rebels in concert with its allies. However, there are other administration officials who tell the press that the White House is not going to send weapons to the opposition....

AP story so no excerpt

President Obama has given the green light to the shipping of weapons from the United States to opposition forces in Syria. In a statement released by Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, the White House claims that “our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin.” The Syrian government’s purported use of a chemical weapon, the president’s national security statement said, “crosses clear red lines” for the United States and the international community. On April 26, President Obama invoked very historic words when asked about where precisely the...

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny. “It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just...

I haven't been able to write this week here because I've been participating in the debate over the fallout from last week's NSA stories, and because we are very busy working on and writing the next series of stories that will begin appearing very shortly. I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency's previously secret surveillance activities: "What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today. . ....

More details of a massacre in Homs late last month have emerged following the global outcry of a massacre in Deir el-Zour yesterday.The massacre, carried out by Free Syrian Army militants reportedly targeted men, women and children in the Christian village of al-Duwayr/Douar close to the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. The incident received little media attention, having occurred at the same time as thousands of Syrian troops converged on the insurgent-occupied town of al-Qusayr.According to sources, around 350 heavily armed militants entered the village, broke into homes and assembled residents in the main square of...

The following document is the current Department of Defense manual on the procedures for intercepting wire, electronic and oral communications for law enforcement. The manual also discusses 'access to electronic communications in electronic storage or in a remote computing service.' Though the manual was issued in 1995, it is still current according to another, unreleased DoD Directive-Type Memorandum updated in 2012 (DTM 11-007 – Delegation of Authority to Approve Consensual Interceptions for Law Enforcement) that makes reference to the manual and modifies some of its language.

Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to meet with House Republicans as part of their probe into whether he misled Congress or acted inappropriately in the Justice Department’s investigation of two separate leaks to media outlets. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) made the announcement late Friday after exchanging several weeks worth of testy letters with the nation’s top cop. In agreeing to meet with the lawmakers, Holder staved off the threat of a subpoena from Goodlatte for a second time in as many weeks. Goodlatte is investigating whether Holder misled the committee last

from the whoa dept Okay, here's one that's just crazy. A few weeks ago, lots of folks, including us, covered the story of how the Justice Department claimed to a court that reporter James Rosen was "an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator" in a leak of some State Department info concerning North Korea. He was none of the above. He was a reporter, but the DOJ was abusing its power in order to spy on his email and phone records, to try to find the source of the leak. Soon after that, it came out that the DOJ had been...

Three hundred US Marines have been deployed to northern Jordan to pave the way for the West to arm Syrian rebels. A Patriot anti-aircraft missile system, designed to protect Jordanian territory from attack by Assad missiles, has also been moved into the area.

There is no evidence that the FBI has contacted a single tea party group in its criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service, according to the groups the IRS abused. “We have not been contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,” Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on Thursday. The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25 conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next couple weeks, according to a spokesman.

Regarding the Patriot Act’s Section 215, Rep. Sensenbrenner says that it “was originally drafted to prevent data mining,” not protect it. In a recent op-ed railing against Obama’s Big Brother tactics, the Wisconsin Representative writes: “[B]ased on the scope of the released order, both the administration and the Fisa court are relying on an unbounded interpretation of the act that Congress never intended. The released Fisa order requires daily productions of the details of every call that every American makes, as well as calls made by foreigners to or from the United States. Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities...

Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) welcomed the chemical weapons assessment. The two have been among the sharpest critics of the administration, saying it has not been doing enough to help the rebels. “U.S. credibility is on the line,” they said in a joint statement. “Now is not the time to merely take the next incremental step. Now is the time for more decisive actions,” they said, such as using long-range missiles to degrade Assad’s air power and missile capabilities.

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized. Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of...

In a sharp escalation of the U.S. role in Syria's bloody civil war, the White House announced late Thursday that it will provide military aid to rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad after confirming that his government used chemical weapons on the opposition. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call that President Barack Obama had heard pleas from Syria's rebel Supreme Military Council (SMC) for more help. "Our aim is to be responsive," Rhodes said, underlining that the new assistance would have "direct military purposes."

Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert lit-up and clearly irked Obama FBI Director Robert Mueller, who testified under oath before the House Judiciary Committee today. Gohmert specifically focused on the FBI’s handling (i.e., mishandling) of the Boston Bombings. Below is a partial text of the heated exchange...

The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits. Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be...

Chad Pergram �@ChadPergram 2m Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell resigns.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday that four members of Army special forces in Tripoli were never told to stand down after last year's deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, disputing a former top diplomat's claim that the unit might have helped Americans under siege. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said timing and the need for the unit to help with casualties from Benghazi resulted in orders for the special forces to remain in Tripoli. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, died in two separate attacks several hours apart...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Beirut: The Next Benghazi?Posted By Michael Volpe On June 12, 2013 @ 12:30 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Nine months after four Americans, including our ambassador, were killed at the US consulate in Benghazi, a new State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) report warns that a series of security vulnerabilities at the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon leaves it vulnerable to a similar attack in that unstable area.The report released in May concluded that a series of security deficiencies, including weaknesses in the physical structure itself, leave the Beirut embassy vulnerable....

All can agree that the Obama administration is mired in myriads of scandals, but as yet no one can quite figure out what they all mean and where they will lead. Benghazi differs from all the other scandals — and from both Watergate and Iran-Contra — because in this case administration lapses led to the deaths of four Americans. Nine months later, the administration’s problems of damage control remain fourfold: (a) there was ample warning that American personnel were in danger in Libya, and yet requests for increased security were denied; (b) during the actual attack, the American tradition of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading Republican senator on Tuesday described controversial U.S. spy programs as looking far deeper into Americans' phone records than the Obama administration has been willing to admit, fueling new privacy concerns as Congress sought to defend the surveillance systems. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC., says the U.S. intelligence surveillance of phone records allows analysts to monitor U.S. phone records for a pattern of calls, even if those numbers have no known connection to terrorism.

A couple in Philadelphia has filed a class-action lawsuit against the National Security Agency and Verizon, claiming they and their phone records were targeted for surveillance because of their outspoken criticism of Barack Obama and the U.S. military. This is believed to be the first official lawsuit filed against the government and the company, since it was revealed that Verizon had been ordered to turn over phone metadata for all of its customers. The couple who filed the class-action suit are not just any disgruntled Verizon customers, however. They are Charles and Mary Ann Strange, the parents of a Navy...