Bombs away! The Obama years

Map shows where President Barack Obama dropped his 20,000 bombs --outgoing US leader carries out 3,000 more strikes in 2016 than year before

And as the world gears up for a seemingly more violent four years, it is worth reflecting on President Obama's tenure.

According to newly released figures, President Obama had already upped the number of bombs on foreign countries.

US forces dropped over 3,000 more bombs in 2016 than 2015, taking the grand total of strikes for the year to at least 26,171.

This map by Statista shows you where they were:

Vast majority of strikes carried out in Iraq and Syria

The figures are likely to be an underestimate, since the only reliable data only comes from a handful of countries, and multiple bombs can be classed as a single “strike” under the Pentagon's definition.

A history of Arab Terrorism

I wrote this history in 2005, almost 8,000 words, so not a casual read. It recounts the rise of terrorism by Arab groups through its three stages of the 20th century: insurgency against Arab countries' secularist rulers; political terrorism against Israel; and finally Islamist terrorism against both insufficiently Islamic Arab rulers and the West, mainly the United States.

A terrorist of the PLO at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich,
where 11 Israeli hostages and five of the eight terrorists were killed. 

The Old is New AgainThe war that radical, violent Islamists are waging against the West springs from the fact that Islamism and Westernism are fundamentally incompatible. But both are too deeply embedded in both sides' culture, social systems, politics and religion to be very easily altered. Compared to this centuries-old struggle, the Cold War was a brief respite. Rather than the new millennium inaugurating a golden age of human progress and well-being, what was old is new again. History has returned.

Just click here.

The enduring price of war

Jerral Hancock was driving a tank in Iraq. A roadside bomb pierced the armor, breaching the interior. Jarral lives in Lancaster with his two, beautiful children

Found at American Digest, which asks,

At some point you have to ask,

“Just what has been done,

Just what has been won,

That’s worth the suffering of our sons?”

See more, if you can bear it, at: What Veterans Look Like After A Decade Of War In The Middle East

And this does not include the veterans who bear mental scars. Those, of course, have always been a cost of war, as letters and memoirs dating back to Civil War soldiers show.

God be with them, every one.

How ISIS does digital

Edited

Messaging app Telegram centrepiece of IS social media strategy

BTW, the BBC news app is one of the best news feeds you can find.

Methodist terrorists

The Spectator blog sums up British media coverage of the massacre of children in Manchester at the end of an Ariana Grande performance in We must come together – and repeat the mantra ‘hope not hate’

We must all come together. Hope, not hate. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just a rogue individual, possibly in the employ of some mysterious foreign agency. Just terrorism, bad people. Unaligned wickedness. Nothing to do with religion. We must all come together. And show love. And solidarity. Hope not hate.

Je Suis Ariana Grande. Already viciousness is being expressed on social media sites. People jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Horrible, horrible, people – no better than the murderer. Who might just as easily have been a Methodist. Remember Jo Cox? That wasn’t them, was it? There, you see.

So we should come together. Hope not hate. Nothing to do with immigration. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just horridness of no discernible provenance. Hope not hate. [boldface added]

Let it be noted that the media in Britain are state controlled. Not state organs, mind, but Her Majesty's government has the authority under law to prohibit British media from covering stories or using angles of coverage that the government doesn't approve of. And so you get pablum like above. As British singer Morrisey tweeted,

The Queen receives absurd praise for her 'strong words' against the attack, yet she does not cancel today's garden party at Buckingham Palace - for which no criticism is allowed in the Britain of free press.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham says the attack is the work of an "extremist". An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?

At least US media are actually acknowledging that the Manchester bombing was carried out by person(s) who at least thought of themselves as Muslims (even though, you know, they weren't, not really). ABC News went straight to the point and expressed deep concern About Potential ‘Anti-Islamic Backlash’ After Manchester Terror Attack.

But why would there be a backlash against Muslims if the attack objectively had nothing to do with Islam? You may as well be worried about a backlash against Seventh Day Adventists or, well, Methodists.

Well, at least Methodists can be held partly responsible for the destruction of Rock Ridge:



And that is about the level of coverage of most media.

Trump couldn't buy this

Even with his billions, Trump couldn't buy this kind of great publicity:

Al-Qaeda Slams Trump as 'Hateful Crusader Master,' Issues Fresh Call for Jihad

Enemies who shouldn't be, enemies who must be

This is a photo of Soviet army and US Army officers shortly after World War II. They seem to be at least halfway to getting drunk, and the Soviet in the middle is probably winning the race.

In my military career I was fortunate enough to have served with officers of many foreign nations, not all actually allied nations. German officers of course were my most common foreign companions; I well remember the Prussian haughtiness of Hauptmann Schneider - but it was an act and he was a great guy.

I wrote before about Egyptian Lt. Col. Solomon, with whom I served at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was representing the Egyptian army along with Lt. Col. Osman, both wonderful companions and great friends who were also outstanding military men.

There were many others, such as Brits and some Aussies and a handful of Indian army officers and Saudis, and many Honduran officers, who were simply superb. My personal acquaintance with Soviet officers was quite limited. The first time I met one in person was when I stepped into the corridor outside my office at the Pentagon and almost ran into two Soviet officers walking down the hall! Quickly I reached for a pistol that I wasn't wearing and then watched dumbfounded as they ambled on down the hall.

That day was not long after the failed coup attempt against Soviet general Secretary Gorbachev, which marked the beginning of the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Shortly the USSR ended and was succeeded by the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia would become Russia again, and it was officers of this post-Soviet military whom I encountered in the Pentagon. But their uniforms were the same.

The Russians were here to learn how to be an army of a democratic, free-market state, and I think that  at the time both they and we believed that this would come about. Of course, it did not. Putin came to permanent power and former die-hard communists morphed into die-hard capitalist oligarchs. (You think we have pay gaps here? Ha, we're pikers compared to the former commies of both the USSR and China.)

That being said, the Russian officers I did work with (though briefly) were great guys, too, and serious about their craft.

And herein is the issue. In 2013 wrote a review of a book by the late Lt. Col. Phillip Corso, who served in Army Intelligence at the Pentagon in the early 1960s. He wrote of the relationship between the CIA, the British MI-6 and the Soviet KGB:

They were all professional spies in a single extended agency playing the same intelligence game and trafficking in information. Information is power to be used. You don't simply give it away to your government's political leadership, whether it's the Republicans, the Tories, or the Communists, just because they tell you to. You can't trust the politicians, but you can trust other spies. At least that's what spies believe, so their primary loyalty is to their own group and the other groups playing the same game. The CIA, KGB, British Secret Service, and a whole host of other foreign intelligence agencies were loyal to themselves and to the profession first and to their respective governments last.

This kind of informal integration was not the case among the countries' armed forces, but I am confident that regular officers of the US Army, the British Army, the Soviet army, the Egyptian army, the German army, you name it, all felt a fundamental distrust of their nation's government at a very basic level, even if on the choice, responsibilities and intricacies of employing military forces. And every one of us, distrusting though we probably were, would have gone (and we did go) when told.

Even so, if you ever could have locked a group of American, Soviet, Egyptian, British, Saudi, and (even) French officers of equal rank in the same room, gave them a few cases of Coors to pass the time, and locked the door on your way out, when you came back in a couple of hours you would find a group of best friends telling each other war stories and nodding their heads at each others' tales, exclaiming, "Us, too!"

Did you ever notice that when two nations on the brink of war hold a last-gasp peace conference, the confreres are always wearing business suits? Funny that they never let the generals and colonels and captains get together and sort the thing out - maybe the suits are afraid we would. After all, of all men or women, military veterans know the futility and stupidity of war. And every one of them who might take the place of suits at a peace conference don't really trust their own governments, anyway.

For almost all of American history, we have fought enemies who shouldn't be enemies. The exceptions can be easily listed in one breath: The Nazis, the bushido Japanese and the North Koreans. The Nazis and the bushido Japanese are gone and North Korea is more dangerous than ever. But that's about it.

And now ISIS. They are enemies who must be. I cannot imagine any fellowship, any negotiation, with ISIS' officers or commanders that could come to a peaceful accommodation. ISIS seeks only to kill.

And so we must fight. After Manchester the task seems clear and unavoidable. To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, we may not want to fight ISIS, but ISIS definitely wants to fight us. Our choice is not whether to go to war. We are already at war. Our only choice is how the war will end.

ISIS is full of slackers!

No, its' not The Onion or Duffelblog, it's hard news reporting: "Fair-weather fighters: ISIS jihadists claim headaches, bad backs to get out of battle, documents show."

Headaches, bad backs and general malaise are plaguing the ranks of ISIS, with jihadists calling out sick from the fight to save their caliphate, according to a report. 

Foreign fighters in particular seem to be going soft in the face of an offensive led by the Iraqi national military, Kurdish fighters and international forces. Documents discovered in recently liberated sections of Mosul show how the fair-weather jihadists go to great lengths to get out of combat. 

The Washington Post reported that Iraqi forces who took over an ISIS base in Mosul found a document lamenting 14 “problem” fighters from the Tariq Bin Ziyad battalion. On the surface, reports that militants are on the ropes in former stronghold cities appears to be a good thing, but some disenfranchised members may work their way back to Europe. 

“He doesn’t want to fight, wants to return to France,” one note reportedly said about a 24-year-old Algerian, who is  a resident of France. “Claims his will is martyrdom operation in France. Claims sick but doesn’t have a medical report.” 

Another man from Kosovo complained of a headache. A Belgian militant got out of fighting by offering a doctor's note saying he had back pain.

A former US Marine infantry officer with several years' Middle East service emailed me the article with the comment, 

I love the light-duty-chit approach that is shared by [slackers] around the globe - the mysterious, but ubiquitous, "Oh my back!!".

Yeah, "martydom operations" ain't all they're cracked up to be, right? So legions of jihadis seem to be as smart as Simpkins here:



Things will go rapidly downhill from here for ISIS, especially since the US Marines accidentally mis-routed one of their regimental clerks to Raqqa, Syria, capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

RAQQA, Syria — The self-proclaimed Islamic State has been reportedly paralyzed by administrative paperwork and bureaucracy after a U.S. Marine administrative clerk was mistakenly sent there, Duffel Blog has learned.

Marine Staff Sgt. Alonso Gray executed a mistaken set of permanent change-of-station orders to Raqqa earlier this month, moving to ISIS’s de facto capital and starting work in their administrative section. Within days of his arrival however, pay errors, late morning reports and “improperly routed routing sheets” have caused the group to crumble from within.

Seemingly unaware that he was working for the global terrorist organization, Gray insisted they submit their DTS vouchers to him at least 90 days prior to going TDY. Commanders then panicked when he told them that their units were “non-mission capable” due to incomplete annual training requirements.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of the group, says taking Gray on board was the worst decision he ever made.

“I was supposed to PCS from Mosul to Raqqa before the Iraqi Army attacked, but instead he sent me here,” said Baghdadi, speaking from his cell in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

I'll bet one reason that the Greeks' Trojan War lasted 10 years was because it took that long to get the requisitions approved for the Trojan Horse.

US Army tortures Taliban prisoners most cruelly

The US Army Criminal Investigation Command is investigating torture of Taliban and other jihadist prisoners in the Army's custody, according to sources in the command.

The inhumane techniques are said to fall under the general category of "PowerPointing." As an example, Taliban prisoners were given a full, American Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, then were told they couldn't sleep it off until after they had explained this slide to interrogators:

In a report titled “For the Greater Good,” PowerPointing is defined as “forcing a subject to view a series of PowerPoint slideshow presentations to the point of exhaustion, thereby making it possible to gain answers or information from the subject.”

According to the report, interrogators used the technique to deal with uncooperative or belligerent prisoners.

“PowerPointing is torture, plain and simple,” said lead investigator Hugh Johnson. “Even though we’re dealing with people who are often terrorists plotting against the United States and our allies, we can’t stoop to their level.”

Johnson said Army interrogators collected PowerPoint presentations from their unit’s training officers. Presentation topics included fraternization, sexual harassment, and motorcycle safety.

This is cruel beyond all humanity. Asked of the report, White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated President Trump's endorsement of torture, including waterboarding, as legitimate tools in wartime interrogations.

"But the president told me this morning that PowerPointing can never be justified," Spicer said. "Beating them on the bare soles of their feet with rubber stanchions, that's okay. Auto-battery electric shocks? Fine. But PowerPointing? Sickening, just sickening. Must be stopped."

Defense Secretary James Mattis' office released a statement that he was actively considering taking this step in response to the report.

Will ISIS resort to bubonic plague bioweapons?

The Sun reports that University of Texas researchers are working to develop vaccines and other treatments to counter bubonic plague attacks by terrorist organizations.

Today the disease – which has a 90 to 100 per cent mortality rate – has been classed by the World Health Organisation as a “re-emerging human pathogen”.

Dr Ashok Chopra, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas, is leading studies he hopes will develop a vaccine to counter all three strains.

He told The Sun Online: “We are specifically looking at pneumonic plague because the mortality rate associated with pneumonic plague is very high – almost 100 percent.”

Bubonic plague is the most commonly recognised strain of the disease – but the pnuemonic variant is much more virulent, and unlike bubonic, is spread via airborne particles.

“If terrorists use those organisms – they could utilise the bacteria. It could lead to mass deaths in a very short period of time. It would spread very, very quickly.

“Think about the bubonic plague in Europe in the 13th, 14th century. One third of the population was wiped out because of infection. That’s the typical scenario that you should think of.

“At the time it started with the bubonic plague and then it went to the pnuemonic plague and one third of the population died so the consequences could be enormous.”

This is bad news, too:

Studies have since revealed the USSR focused on developing “aerosolized” forms of the disease – thereby removing the need for it to be transmitted via infected fleas [Yersinia pestis - D.S.] or animals.

Work on this continued into the 1990s at least.

I pointed out last year that weaponizing the plague could be in the cards. Back in 1988-89 I wrote a 105,000-word novel about an Iranian plot to infiltrate a weaponized, extremely lethal form of Y. pestis into the United States, aiming to kill millions of Americans. The plotters were not the Khomeinist government, but the dwindling number of Iranian communists who were supported from Moscow by a small, rogue element of the Soviet general staff. It is set in the late 1980s, during Gorbachev's tenure as General Secretary.

You can read the first section of the third chapter. Click here and page down a little (Blogger's page-jump coding is pathetic, sorry).

Am I on the ISIS kill list?

ISIS Puts Out Holiday Attack List Of U.S. Churches

The Islamic State published the names and addresses of thousands of churches in the United States and called on its adherents to attack them during the holiday season, according to a message posted late-night Wednesday in the group’s “Secrets of Jihadis” social media group.

A user going by the name of “Abu Marya al-Iraqi” posted an Arabic-language message calling “for bloody celebrations in the Christian New Year” and announced the group’s plans to utilize its network of lone wolf attackers to “turn the Christian New Year into a bloody horror movie.”

Well, I will be in my church on Christmas morning. I can't find a copy of the list, but if mine isn't on it I am going to be really ticked.

Warning to ISIS members or sympathizers: If you come on the premises of my church this Sunday or any other time, I will baptize you!

Meanwhile in Iraq, crucifixions continue

Reuters: Crucifixions and vice patrols show Islamic State maintains Mosul grip

Islamic State militants fighting to hold on to their Mosul stronghold have killed at least 20 people in the last two days for passing information to "the enemy" and are back on the city streets policing the length of men's beards, residents say.

Five crucified bodies were put on display at a road junction on Tuesday, a clear message to the city's remaining 1.5 million residents that the ultra-hardline Islamists are still in charge, despite losing territory to the east of the city.

Others were seen hanging from electricity poles and traffic signals around the city, residents said on Wednesday.

Thousands of Islamic State fighters have run Mosul, the largest city under their control in Iraq and neighboring Syria, since they conquered large parts of northern Iraq in 2014.

They are now battling a 100,000-strong coalition including Iraqi troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and mainly Shi'ite paramilitary groups, which has almost surrounded the city and has broken into eastern neighborhoods.

Residents contacted by telephone said many parts of the city were calmer than they had been for days, allowing people to venture out to seek food, even in areas which have seen heavy fighting over the last week.

"I went out in my car for the first time since the start of the clashes in the eastern districts," said one Mosul resident. "I saw some of the Hisba elements of Daesh (Islamic State) checking people's beards and clothes and looking for smokers".

Islamic State's Hisba force is a morality police unit which imposes the Sunni jihadists' interpretation of Islamic behavior. It forbids smoking, says women should be veiled and wear gloves, and bans men from Western-style dress including jeans and logos. ...

"I saw five corpses of young men which had been crucified at a road junction in east Mosul," not far from districts which had seen heavy fighting, said another resident.
"The Daesh people hung the bodies out and said that these were agents passing news to the infidel forces and apostates," he said, referring to the Western allies backing the campaign and the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad.

82d Airborne Division going to Iraq

I'm so old that I remember when the president told us he had "ended the war in Iraq."

Over the next two months, our troops in Iraq—tens of thousands of them—will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home. The last American soldiers will cross the border out of Iraq—with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.

Yeah, that statement is no longer operative: "Army to Deploy 1,700 Paratroopers to Iraq."

The U.S. Army announced Thursday it will deploy 1,700 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division this winter to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces currently trying to retake Mosul from Islamic State fighters.

The 82nd Airborne's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will deploy to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to take part in Operation Inherent Resolve, according to an Army press release.

The unit will replace the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, in training, advising and assisting the Iraqi forces.

Last spring there were 5,000 US troops who had returned to Iraq to help fight a war that we were told had ended. You will search in vain to find the number there today. But rest assured, it's higher, likely much higher.

The 82d Airborne Division is, of course, the world's premier parachute combat force. They get to the battlefield like this:



The problem is, from then on you walk.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate bombs Yemen

Obama to Paul Ryan: US missile strikes on Yemen 'necessary and appropriate'

Actually, I think the strikes were justified under actions and precedents extending all the way back to Thomas Jefferson's administration. It just struck me that as someone who received the Nobel Peace Prize at the beginning of his first term, this president sure has bombed or otherwise attacks a lot of different people and countries.

Here was the action:

Published on Oct 12, 2016
RED SEA (Oct. 13, 2016) The guided missile destroyer USS Nitze (DDG 94) launches a strike against three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled territory on Yemen's Red Sea coast. Due to hostile acts, continuing and imminent threat of force, and multiple threats to vessels in the Bab-al Mandeb Strait, including U.S. naval vessels, Nitze struck the sites, which were used to attack U.S. ships operating in international waters, threatening freedom of navigation. Nitze is deployed to the 5th Fleet area of operations to support maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (U.S. Navy Video/Released) 

Update:

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Barack Obama is now facing some tough decisions about two countries he is bombing in the Middle East. Watching the demoralizing carnage in Syria and an uptick in the hostilities in Yemen, an itchy press corps and policy class are starting to demand that Obama sack up and really fight. ...

Sort of like this. Jump to 30 seconds in.

Obama was right

Tragically:

"Democrats have become the Party of War"

Adam Walinsky, who served as legislative assistant and speechwriter for Robert Kennedy, explains why this year he is voting for Donald Trump:

John and Robert Kennedy devoted their greatest commitments and energies to the prevention of war and the preservation of peace. To them that was not an abstract formula but the necessary foundation of human life. But today’s Democrats have become the Party of War: a home for arms merchants, mercenaries, academic war planners, lobbyists for every foreign intervention, promoters of color revolutions, failed generals, exploiters of the natural resources of corrupt governments. We have American military bases in 80 countries, and there are now American military personnel on the ground in about 130 countries, a remarkable achievement since there are only 192 recognized countries. Generals and admirals announce our national policies. Theater commanders are our principal ambassadors. Our first answer to trouble or opposition of any kind seems always to be a military movement or action.

Nor has the Democratic Party candidate for president this year, Hillary Clinton, sought peace.

And now playing in a country near you:

Read the whole thing. And read this for some illumination why The War Party has no vision ever to stop: "Chronic Virtue," the devotion of the Democrats to successively-failing peace processes that never bring and end to the conflicts and so enable the administration to keep sending bombers and drones to keep killing actual and assumed enemies.

There is no obvious end for the conflict which began on September 11, 2001, nor any plan for winning it.  The conflict is now sometimes referred to as the Forever War. Plan B for Kerry's now demised ceasefire is instructive.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the next move is to expand the war on general principles, though to what end no one seems to be able to explain. ...

One reason for the "Forever War" is because winning has become optional. Unlike WW2 when Roosevelt and Truman were under pressure to win the war and bring the boys home, Obama's America can sustainably fight major conflicts without putting masses of voters under arms.  Whenever things get dicey, the administration can just send a B-1 over to restore the balance so Kerry can go back to the nth doomed ceasefire.

Today with the draft abolished and in possession of gee-whiz weapons which are orders of magnitude more powerful than anything Assad or ISIS has, Obama can avoid the hard question of ends with endless procrastination. Freed from the risk of actual defeat by a crushing military superiority, Washington doesn't have to identify the enemy or seek victory. It can devote itself to the ends-free activity of pursuing the Process.

In common with many modern intellectuals he can regard winning as unnecessary and even evil, a triumphalism, a kind of bullying act, since as someone famously put it: "war never solves anything". In the absence of the concept of victory the Peace Process can be pursued for its own sake. Indeed the administration's entire objective in Syria has apparently been to to stay on the diplomatic road, to keep talking, to keep negotiating, to stagger from ceasefire to ceasefire, each more fragile than the last, so frail that they don't even believe in it themselves. Why? Because that's the "right thing to do".

The result of such high-mindedness alas is not peace but endless conflict, suffering without cease, the destruction of nations, the dissolution of borders, the maiming and death of hundreds of thousands. But there was no overt aggression; nothing to be blamed for. Forever War has become cheap for political elites. Never has virtue signalling and indecisiveness been so affordable. 

Forever Wars are the ultimate liberal foreign policy luxury. 

Does not today's Democrat party make you think of the classic definition of insanity? Why yes, yes it does.

The coming European civil wars

Giles Kepel, one of the foremost scholars of Islam in the Western world, has said Europe better get ready for war:

According to German newspaper Die Welt, Kepel said the terror group’s [ISIS] aim is to incite hatred towards Muslims from the rest of the society which would eventually radicalise others to the point that Europe could enter into full-blown civil war.

Kepel, who is a specialist on Islamic and contemporary Arab world, added these ISIS fanatics not only want to destroy Europe, but to eliminate more moderate Islamic opposition.

“The terrorism is above all an expression of a war within Islam,” he explained. “The long-term goal of the Jihad Generation is to destroy Europe through civil war and then build an Islamic society from the ashes.

See also my 2005 series, "The Forever Jihad."

And from January, "Europe's coming civil war," in which Swiss

Lieutenant-General André Blattmann has issued a warning to the Swiss people that society is dangerously close to collapse and advised those not already armed as part of the Swiss Army reserve to take steps to arm themselves.

A 15-year memorial

I made this video for the 10th anniversary, but I do not think I could do better now.

Yogi Berra on $400 Million Iran ransom

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. [Link]

The administration insists that the $400 Million payout has no relationship to the hostages Iran just happened to release at the same time. No relationship at all, none, nada, zip, null set.

Well, of course. But remember what Yogi Berra once observed: "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

And it's also such a coincidence that Berra's line applies over and over to this administration and its doings.

Update: "This is not the first time Obama has paid a ransom to the mullahs."

The slow rolling start of World War 3

Corsican terrorists issue warning — to MUSLIM terrorists

In a way this is like watching Mafia families go to the mattresses. You hope they both lose. But it is emblematic of the box Western governments have painted themselves into: if they continue to treat jihadist terrorism as only a law enforcement matter they will learn that "If ordinary people can’t protect themselves using the system, maybe other less liberal sorts will fill the gap."

Citizen anti-terrorism is going to become more common. At least in France President Hollande got a clue after the attack in Nice and is forming a national guard "composed of volunteers from existing operating reserves, including the police, paramilitary police, and military." But other European governments are not still in the "see no evil" mode.

And when even Pope Francis says that "the world is at war" then maybe governments need to wake up, because their peoples are already way ahead of them.

This, too, is part of the dynamic: "The Whole World Is Turning On Its Elites."