President Vladimir Putin expressed his reservations over the prospect of a military strike in Iran, urging Israel Monday to learn from negative US experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Putin's comments were made in a meeting with Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, after Israel's president asked the visiting leader to speak out on the Iran issue.
"Look at what happened to the Americans in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I told Obama the same thing," the visiting president said in a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, cautioning against hasty military action. "There is no need to do things too quickly; one should not act without thinking first.""Iraq has a pro-Iranian regime after everything that has happened there. These things should be thought out ahead of time before doing something one will regret later," he said. "One should not act prematurely."
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s soldiers are using artillery in fierce clashes against armed rebels near neighborhoods of government troops only five miles from the capital of Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for human rights.
Several people have been killed.
The right group told foreign news agencies that the location of the fighting is significant because it is home to families of government soldiers and officers.
The most senior general to desert Assad escaped on Sunday, along with a colonel and more than 20 soldiers. The general fled into Turkey Sunday night from Damascus and reportedly had been responsible for a large ammunitions depot.
Russia has no plans to abandon its naval base in Tartus, Syria, Navy chief Vice Adm. Viktor Chirkov said on Monday.
“We need that base,” he said. “It will continue to operate as it has until now.”
The Russian Navy needs the base to provide maintenance and technical support to Russian warships in the Mediterranean, as well as those on an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, he said.
Turns out that reports by the mainstream media of the Muslim Brotherhood being ‘mostly secular’ and basically harmless, were somewhat off the mark. They were only ‘mostly dead.’ The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was named the winner of the Egyptian election for PresidentUpon winning, Morsi claimed that very little would change, except of course for the better. So, I guess that explains why, he has claimed “Our Capital ‘Shall Be Jerusalem, Allah Willing’.” Sounds like a threat of war to me.And from Allen West:A year ago there were those of us who warned the Obama Administration of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt. We were castigated as alarmists and loose cannons. Today our predictions have come to reality and the ominous specter reminding us of the Iranian revolution is evident. The Muslim Brotherhood claimed they would not run a presidential candidate. Clearly the Arab Spring is nothing more than a radical Islamic nightmare. Now we need to unequivocally reiterate our support to the Coptic Christians and Israel. What an incredible foreign policy faux pas by the second coming of President Jimmy Carter, the Obama Administration. I call upon President Barack Obama to cut off American foreign aid to Egypt, denounce the results of this election, repudiate the Muslim Brotherhood, and all radical Islamist political entities.Sadly, West should not hold his breath on Obama and his administration’s support. After all, Obama’s administration was so ‘worried’ that they instructed Egypt’s military to cede power to The Muslim Brotherhood:The Obama administration warned Egypt’s military leaders on Monday to speedily hand over power or risk losing billions of dollars in U.S. military and economic aid to the country.
As Egypt’s Islamist candidate claimed victory in a presidential run-off, Pentagon and State Department officials expressed concern with a last-minute decree by Egypt’s ruling military council giving itself sweeping authority to maintain its grip on power and subordinate the nominal head of state. The move followed last week’s dissolution of parliament by an Egyptian court.
Egypt’s newly-elected Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Mursi may cement his victory with a coup against the Egyptian army, according to an analyst at Egypt’s Al-Ahram Institute quoted in today’s Gulf News:
“Mursi will likely face resistance from state institutions mainly inside the army and the police,” said Sobhi Assila, a political analyst. “However, Mursi has a full team inside the Brotherhood who will assist him in running the country’s affairs to overcome this expected resistance. This may turn Egypt into another Gaza,” he said, referring to the Israeli-besieged Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas.
Hamas, the Palestine chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, seized power from the Fatah-led Palestine Authority in the Battle of Gaza in June 2007, following its electoral victory in the 2006 Palestine elections. There haven’t been any elections in Gaza since then.
Before Mursi’s victory was announced earlier today, Egypt’s secular parties denounced the United States for intervening in the elections in support of the Muslim Brotherhood. As Al-Ahram reported in its English edition today:
The US Embassy in Cairo refuted on its official Twitter account Sunday circulating claims that the US administration was backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate.
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Egypt’s ruling military council to fulfill its promise and hand over power to the “legitimate election winner.”
Clinton, on June 21m denounced the military’s attempt to curtail the powers of the Muslim Brotherhood as “clearly troubling,” adding, “The military has to assume an appropriate role which is not to interfere with, dominate or try to subvert the constitutional authority.” In the Egyptian frame of reference, that’s a vote for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The time has come for the United States to give up on the notion of democracy in the Middle East. It isn’t going to happen, at least not anytime soon, and the country is starting to look silly with so many of its intellectuals clinging to a notion that has no basis in reality. Just look at Iraq, set upon a course that many Americans thought would lead to democracy, and paid for with the blood of more than four thousand American dead and some thirty-three thousand wounded. What do we see in today’s Iraq? A budding dictatorship moving in the direction of the last one—but with a big difference: this one is dominated by Shiites, a power arrangement that appreciably enhances the regional influence of neighboring Iran, considered by many Americans as their country’s most nettlesome adversary.Look at Egypt, where the “Arab Spring” set American hearts aflutter with the prospect of democratic pluralism. The lesson there is that it’s impossible to overestimate the willingness of the traditional power blocs to upend any democratic structures or procedures that threaten their position and prerogatives in that venerable land.And yet in the face of all this, and more, many idealistic Americans hold fast to the idea that if we can just provide assistance and guidance and apply sufficient military power against the bad guys, democratic institutions eventually will blossom in the region. The problem here isn’t just that this notion lacks any shred of realism; more significantly, it undergirds the constant call for America to apply military force in the region on behalf of democracy . . . or the prospect of democracy . . . or at least the prospect that some Middle Eastern nation might begin a long journey toward democracy. Consider, for example, Libya, where the demise of the dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi led many Americans to visualize the stirrings of a democratic impulse, made possible in large measure by America’s judicious application of force.
A political website that contained stinging criticism of the Obama administration and its handling of the Fast and Furious scandal was ordered to be shut down by the Obama campaign’s ‘Truth Team’, according to private investigator Douglas Hagmann, who was told by ISP GoDaddy his site contained information that was “maliciously harmful to individuals in the government.”Speaking with the chief investigator in the GoDaddy Abuse division, Hagmann discovered, “Ultimately it was found that the complaint originated ostensibly with a group associated with the campaign to re-elect Barack Hussein Obama.”
Turning to his contacts within government, Hagmann then contacted spoke with another source who confirmed that the ‘Obama Truth Team’ was responsible for the shut down order.
“I’m laying this right on the doorstep of the Obama Truth Team,” said Hagmann.
A political website that contained stinging criticism of the Obama administration and its handling of the Fast and Furious scandal was ordered to be shut down by the Obama campaign’s ‘Truth Team’, according to private investigator Douglas Hagmann, who was told by ISP GoDaddy his site contained information that was “maliciously harmful to individuals in the government"
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