Monday, June 23, 2014
DHS ransacks Florida couple’s home without explanation, strips woman naked
A Florida couple was traumatized after a dozen heavily armed SWAT agents crashed through their front door, flash-banged their cat, aimed rifles at them and searched their home without explanation.
The raid took place in the pre-dawn hours of June 10th, 2014. At approximately 6:16 a.m., Kari Edwards and her live-in boyfriend were intruded upon by men dressed in full SWAT gear and wielding rifles. After smashing down the couple’s front door, agents tossed concussion grenades and proceeded into the home.
“They busted in like I was a terrorist or something,” said Ms. Edwards.
“[An officer] demanded that I drop the towel I was covering my naked body with,” Ms. Edwards said, “before snatching it off me physically and throwing me to the ground.”
“While I lay naked, I was cuffed so tightly I could not feel my hands. For no reason, at gunpoint,” Edwards said. “[Agents] refused to cover me, no matter how many times I asked.”
Ms. Edwards said her boyfriend told her that an agent holding an assault rifle to her back was gawking at her exposed body. “Eying me up and down like I was eye candy,” she said.
The house was equipped with a surveillance system, which captured video of the agents from a couple different angles.
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Rand Paul: If we had followed Reagan’s foreign policy there would have been no Iraq war
In 1984, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, in an effort to prevent another Vietnam from happening, laid out the criteria for engaging in war in his speech “Uses of Military Power.”
His rules for military engagement became known as the Weinberger Doctrine and were an integral part of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy vision.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called for a return to Reagan’s vision and emphasized that if it had been followed during the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, that war might not have happened.
Paul summed up the Weinberger Doctrine as follows:
The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the U.S. or its allies are involved and only “with the clear intention of winning.” U.S. combat troops should be committed only with “clearly defined political and military objectives” and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives and with a “reasonable assurance” of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress and only “as a last resort.”
Paul notes that these criteria were not met when first engaged in Iraq.
The intent to win was there, but the objectives were nebulous; nor could it be said that the Iraq War was undertaken as a last resort — the healthy amount of public support aside. As the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) continues to bear down on Iraq and the surrounding region, Paul argues that Weinberger’s criteria must apply to the current crisis if we are to avoid repeating past mistakes.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Parents of toddler injured by flash bang grenade during raid on Georgia home call for justice after meeting with feds
The parents of a 19-month-old severely injured when police threw a flash bang grenade into his playpen during a raid met with federal authorities in Georgia Tuesday to plead for justice.
The toddler, Bou Bou Phonesavanh, remains in a medically induced coma two weeks after he was blasted in the face and chest during a botched drug raid on the Habersham County house, where he and his parents were staying following a fire at their Wisconsin home.
So far, state and federal agents, including the Georgie Bureau of Investigations and investigators from two district attorneys’ offices, have found no wrongdoing in last month’s predawn raid.
At a news conference Tuesday, the tot’s father, Bounkham Phonesavanh said the officers who lobbed the explosive into his sleeping child’s playpen showed no remorse afterward, and lied to he and his wife about the extent of his injuries, saying the boy had only lost a tooth, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“The officers cursed and yelled at us and threatened to arrest me after we expressed our concern for our son,” Phonesavanh said, according to NBC Atlanta.
The tot suffered severe burns and wounds to his face and chest, and was in critical condition at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
Price Index for Meats, Poultry, Fish & Eggs Rockets to All-Time High
The seasonally-adjusted price index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs hit an all-time high in May, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1. As of last May, it was 234.572. By this January, it hit 240.006. By April, it hit 249.362. And, in May, it climbed to a record 252.832.
“The index for meats, poultry, fish and eggs has risen 7.7 percent over the span [last year],” says the BLS. “The index for food at home increased 0.7 percent, its largest increase since July 2011. Five of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in May. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 1.4 percent in May after a 1.5 increase in April, with virtually all its major components increasing,” BLS states.
In addition to this food index, the price for fresh whole chickens hit its all-time high in the United States in May.
In January 1980, when the BLS started tracking the price of this commodity, fresh whole chickens cost $0.70 per pound. By this May 2014, fresh whole chickens cost $1.56 per pound.
A decade ago, in May 2004, a pound of fresh chicken cost $1.04. Since then, the price has gone up 50%.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
How the Taliban got their hands on modern US missiles
The Obama administration isn’t only giving the Taliban back its commanders — it’s giving them weapons.
Miliary records and sources reveal that on July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile.
They thought they had a surefire kill. But instead of bursting into flames, the Chinook just disappeared into the darkness as the American pilot recovered control of the aircraft and brought it to the ground in a hard landing.
The assault team jumped out the open doors and ran clear in case it exploded. Less than 30 seconds later, the Taliban gunner and his comrade erupted into flames as an American gunship overhead locked onto their position and opened fire.
The next day, an explosive ordnance disposal team arrived to pick through the wreckage and found unexploded pieces of a missile casing that could only belong to a Stinger missile.
Lodged in the right nacelle, they found one fragment that contained an entire serial number.
The investigation took time. Arms were twisted, noses put out of joint. But when the results came back, they were stunning: The Stinger tracked back to a lot that had been signed out by the CIA recently, not during the anti-Soviet jihad.
Reports of the Stinger reached the highest echelons of the US command in Afghanistan and became a source of intense speculation, but no action.
Everyone knew the war was winding down. Revealing that the Taliban had US-made Stingers risked demoralizing coalition troops. Because there were no coalition casualties, government officials made no public announcement of the attack.
My sources in the US Special Operations community believe the Stinger fired against the Chinook was part of the same lot the CIA turned over to the Qataris in early 2011, weapons Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department intended for anti-Khadafy forces in Libya.
They believe the Qataris delivered between 50 and 60 of those same Stingers to the Taliban in early 2012, and an additional 200 SA-24 Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.
Qatar now is expected to hold five Taliban commanders released from Guantanamo for a year before allowing them to go to Afghanistan.
Full article: http://nypost.com/20 … -modern-us-missiles/