Congressional Gold Medal Awarded to First Black Marines

Congressional Gold Medal Awarded to First Black Marines: When the Rev. Norflette Mersier became a U.S. Marine, it was not so easy. His mother feared he would get killed in battle. His commanders would not let him go see his wife when he was picked for overseas duty. But perhaps the biggest obstacle Mersier faced was...

BBC News - Laser gun fired from US navy ship

BBC News - Laser gun fired from US navy ship

PressTV - Turkey announces 3-phase road map for Libya crisis

PressTV - Turkey announces 3-phase road map for Libya crisis

Heavy clashes in Libya's rebel-held Misrata - National Business - MiamiHerald.com

Heavy clashes in Libya's rebel-held Misrata - National Business - MiamiHerald.com

US MAY CONSIDER SENDING TROOPS TO LIBYA

IF THE US REALLY WANTS GADDAFI OUT, GROUND TROOPS MAY HAVE TO BE SENT IN AFTER HIM.

Amplify’d from www.military.com

Ham: US May Consider Sending Troops to Libya April 08, 2011 Associated Press WASHINGTON -- The U.S. may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, the former U.S. commander of the military mission said Thursday, describing the current operation as a stalemate that is more likely to go on now that America has handed control to NATO. But Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers that American participation in a ground force would not be ideal, since it could erode the international coalition attacking Moammar Gadhafi's forces and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya. He said NATO has done an effective job in an increasingly complex combat situation. But he noted that, in a new tactic, Gadhafi's forces are making airstrikes more difficult by staging their fighters and vehicles near civilian areas such as schools and mosques. The use of an international ground force is a possible plan to bolster the Libyan rebels, Ham said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Asked whether the U.S. would provide troops, Ham said, "I suspect there might be some consideration of that. My personal view at this point would be that that's probably not the ideal circumstance, again for the regional reaction that having American boots on the ground would entail." President Obama has said repeatedly there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Libya, although there are reports of small CIA teams in the country. Pressed by Sen. John McCain, a leading Republican, about the situation in Libya, Ham agreed that a stalemate "is now more likely" since NATO took command. Ham also disclosed that the U.S. is providing some strike aircraft to the NATO operation that do not need to go through the special approval process recently established. The powerful side-firing AC-130 gunship is available to NATO commanders, he said. His answer countered earlier claims by the Pentagon that all strike aircraft must be requested through U.S. European Command and approved by top U.S. leaders, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Ham said that process still applies to other fighters and the A-10 Thunderbolt, which can provide close-air support for ground forces. He said that process is quick, and other defense officials have said it can take about a day for the U.S. to approve the request and move the aircraft in from bases in Europe. Overall, he said the U.S. is providing less than 15 percent of the airstrikes and between 60 percent and 70 percent of the support effort, which includes intelligence gathering, surveillance, electronic warfare and refueling. Recent bad weather and threats from Gadhafi's mobile surface-to-air missile systems have hampered efforts to use the AC-130 and A-10 aircraft for close-air support for friendly ground forces. Ham said those conditions, which include as many as 20,000 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, contributed to the stalemate. Ham said he believes some Arab nations are starting to provide training or weapons to the rebels. And he repeated assertions that the U.S. needs to know more about the opposition forces before it would get more deeply involved in assisting them. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, complained that the lack of knowledge about the rebels is a U.S. intelligence failure. "It strikes me as unusual and maybe something that Congress needs to look at further, that our intelligence capabilities are so limited that we don't even know the composition of the opposition force in Libya, " Cornyn said. Ham said it was important for the U.S. to turn control over to NATO because many of the troops involved in the Libya strikes are preparing to go to Iran or Afghanistan or have just recently returned from the warfront. "While we can certainly surge to meet operational needs," Ham said, "there is a longer-term effect if greater numbers of U.S. forces had been committed for a longer period of time in Libya and it would have had downstream operational effects in other missions." Separately, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said U.S. envoy Chris Stevens' talks continue with the Libyan opposition in Benghazi. Read more at www.military.com

 

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HOW THE U.S. SUGAR COATED THE REAL LIBYA

Amplify’d from www.kansascity.com

WikiLeaks cables show U.S. took softer line toward Libya By JONATHAN S. LANDAY McClatchy Newspapers More News Obama, top lawmakers still can't come to terms on budget Obama, top lawmakers still can't come to terms on budget Obama, top lawmakers still can't come to terms on budget WikiLeaks cables show U.S. took softer line toward Libya Federal officials ready employees for possible shutdown Alaska Native corporations defend contracts Alaska Native corporations defend contracts Lawmakers, Obama close to deal but can't quite reach it House passes EPA limits a day after Senate defeated them Facing expulsion from church, priest vows to live for peace Facing expulsion from church, priest vows to live for peace Facing expulsion from church, priest vows to live for peace Sea lions' appetite for salmon has lawmakers out for blood Trump hammers away at Obama's citizenship question St. Louis, Kansas City buck anti-tax trend Still no budget deal as federal shutdown looms Kaine defends request to send killer to Germany Obama friend arrested for soliciting prostitute Senate votes down effort to weaken EPA authority Still no budget deal as federal shutdown looms Dozens of confidential and secret cables sent in recent years by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to the State Department describe a softer and gentler Libya that Americans following the bloody crisis there now would have a hard time recognizing. Moammar Gadhafi's son Saif al Islam, who has become the most vehement defender of his father's bloody onslaughts against protesters that triggered the civil war, is portrayed as a human rights advocate and reformer on the losing end of a battle with his harder line brother, Muatassim, Moammar Gadhafi's national security adviser. Moussa Koussa, the former foreign minister who recently defected to Britain, is called a "useful" and "powerful interlocutor" who seeks closer ties with the U.S. But there is no mention of his suspected roles in patronizing international terrorist groups, the 1988 midair bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 190 Americans or the 1989 downing of a plane in Africa that killed the wife of a U.S. ambassador. The cables, part of a cache of 251,287 sensitive U.S. diplomatic communications that the WikiLeaks website first began publishing in November and that it recently passed to McClatchy Newspapers, also describe the problems encountered by U.S. officials charged with trying to foster military, trade and counterterrorism cooperation with Libya. Mike Hammer, the acting State Department spokesman, declined to comment specifically on the cables' contents. "The United States strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information," he said in an email. "In addition to damaging our diplomatic efforts, it puts individuals' security at risk, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with countries to solve shared problems. We do not comment on the authenticity of the documents released by WikiLeaks." Taken as a whole, the cables lift the veil on quiet but persistent efforts by the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama to end Gadhafi's decades of isolation and enlist his cooperation in fighting terrorism and resolving regional conflicts. But in light of current events, they also raise questions about whether U.S. officials were so focused on that mission that they were blind to the ruthlessness with which the regime would crush any challenge to its power. The views reflected in the cables sent during the Bush and Obama administrations contrast sharply with the views expressed during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. A 12-page November 1991 "white paper" that U.S. embassies were instructed to share with their host governments during the George H.W. Bush presidency recited a litany of terrorist acts blamed on Libya, including the Lockerbie bombing and the September 1989 midair bombing that killed 171 people, including Bonnie Pugh, the wife of the then U.S. ambassador to Chad, Robert Pugh. The cable identified Koussa by name as a Gadhafi "confidant" who headed the Anti-Imperialism Center, which, the paper said, "is used by the Libyan government to support terrorist networks." The goal of that cable was to gain support for international sanctions to isolate Gadhafi's regime. But that goal had changed substantially 18 years later. A cable quotes Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman as having told Koussa at a July 27, 2009, meeting in Tripoli that the U.S. seeks "to press the relationship forward by establishing a series of dialogues on human rights, political-military relations, trade and investment, and civil-nuclear engagement." Feltman even held out the possibility that Obama would meet with Moammar Gadhafi during the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York that September. But prospects of progress were repeatedly dashed by a regime that reflected the mercurial and unpredictable nature of its leader, the cables show. For instance, the regime reneged on assurances to U.S. officials that the intelligence agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing would receive a low-key reception after his Aug. 20, 2009, release from a Scottish prison on health grounds. Instead, Abdel Bassett al Megrahi received a hero's welcome, triggering angry condemnation from Obama. In November 2009, the Gadhafi regime resorted to what amounted to nuclear blackmail in an unsuccessful bid to strong-arm the Obama administration into selling Libya U.S. weapons and funding the construction of a nuclear medicine center. At the last moment, the regime refused on Nov. 25 to allow the last 12 pounds of highly enriched uranium from its abandoned nuclear arms program to be flown to Russia for disposal, prompting U.S. experts to warn that the overheating material would rupture the shipment casks and leak in an "environmental disaster." Two days later, Saif Gadhafi told U.S. Ambassador Gene A. Cretz that the shipment, which was protected by a single armed guard, had been stopped because Libya was "fed up" with the slow pace of bilateral normalization and a U.S. failure to reward the regime for giving up its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Saif Gadhafi also relayed a litany of other perceived U.S. slights, including a U.S. refusal to allow his father to stay in a tent while he attended the U.N. General Assembly session two months earlier, Cretz wrote in a Nov. 30, 2009, cable. "Libya sought a high-level reaffirmation of the United States' commitment to the bilateral relationship, in the form of a message to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in order to move forward on the HEU shipment," Cretz wrote. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed U.S. intentions to expand relations in a Dec. 3, 2009, telephone call to Koussa, and the highly enriched uranium shipment was flown to Russia, according to a Dec. 7, 2009, cable signed by the embassy's No. 2 official, Joan A. Polaschik. The cable said that Saif Gadhafi's chief of staff, Mohamed Ismail Ahmed, had told another embassy official that "the secretary's Dec. 3 call to Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa had expressed the statement of commitment requested by Saif during his recent meeting with the ambassador." There is no indication in the cables that Koussa's suspected role in terrorist incidents ever came up in his frequent meetings with U.S. officials after the George W. Bush administration re-established diplomatic relations with Libya in May 2005. According to the 1991 White Paper, Koussa, who became foreign minister in March 2009, had, as head of the Anti-Imperialism Center, overseen the provision of training, arms and other support to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal and other Middle Eastern and Latin American terrorist groups. By 2005, however, U.S. officials were much more concerned about Gadhafi's agreement to give up secret chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Gadhafi also was quietly helping the U.S.-led fight against al-Qaida, which counted numerous Libyans in its ranks. A June 25, 2008, cable authored by the U.S. charge in Tripoli, Chris Stevens, said that Libya's foreign intelligence service, which Koussa then oversaw, was working closely with Syria to stop Libyans from crossing into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. Information provided by Koussa's agency "suggests that over 100 Libyan foreign fighters have been transferred from Syria to the custody of the GOL (government of Libya) in the past two years," Stevens wrote. Stevens is now the special U.S. envoy to the Libyan rebel leadership. The embassy's "assessment is that the GOL has calculated that returning extremists pose a potentially serious threat to the regime's stability, and that efforts to stem the flow of Libyan foreign fighters to Iraq are in its strategic interest," Stevens wrote. It wasn't just the administration that was pushing to improve ties with Tripoli. An Aug. 31, 2006, cable summarizes the second visit to Libya in as many years by the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., then the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee. Lantos is quoted as telling Libyan officials that having seen Libya removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and full diplomatic relations re-established, "his next goal is to increase the number of Libyan students studying in America from 150 ... to 6,000 over the next three years." Meeting with Saif Gadhafi, Lantos was quoted as saying he was "very proud" of a speech that Gadhafi's son had made earlier that week calling for major political and economic reforms. Numerous cables discuss Saif Gadhafi's advocacy of a freer news media, the adoption of a revised constitution and his support for closer ties with the U.S., and the opposition he encountered from his father's more conservative lieutenants. Once seen as Moammar Gadhafi's hand-picked heir, Saif Gadhafi is described as losing a succession struggle to his younger, less sophisticated brother, Muatassim, who apparently gained the support of his father and the conservatives. In a June 18, 2009, cable, Cretz, the U.S. ambassador, says that a regime takeover of Saif Gadhafi's media company, the al Ghad Group, represented the "end of nominally independent media in Libya" and a "serious blow" to Saif Gadhafi. The takeover, the cable said of Saif Gadhafi, shows "the limits of the 'soft power' approach he has taken in his effort to effect political-economic reform." The loss of the company, Cretz said, followed a Cabinet reshuffle that preserved a conservative as prime minister and the rejection by the Libyan parliament of a new constitution that Saif Gadhafi had drafted. "The seizure of the al Ghad Group is a significant development in the context of the ongoing struggle for primacy between Saif al Islam and Muatassim," Cretz wrote. "It is of a piece of the view that while Muatassim's star is waxing, Saif al Islam's is waning." The cables describe the frictions between the conservatives and more moderate officials as extending to ties with the U.S. The former are resistant and the later want better relations, albeit in exchange for sales of U.S. military hardware and U.S. funds for civilian nuclear technology that they believe Libya deserves as rewards for giving up its weapons of mass destruction programs. In a Jan. 15. 2009, cable, Cretz relates a conversation in which a senior Libyan official expresses his "private view" that "Libya would miss its window of opportunity for expanded cooperation and engagement with the U.S. because of disorganization within the regime and lingering ambivalence about the nature of the relationship Libya wants." The official, whose name McClatchy Newspapers is withholding for safety reasons, told Cretz there was a "pro-U.S. camp and a group that remained suspicious of U.S. motives and steadfastly opposed to a broader suite of engagement." The pro-U.S. group included Gadhafi, Saif al Islam and Muatassim, the cable said. Posted on Thu, Apr. 07, 2011 06:38 PM Read more at www.kansascity.com

 

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OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE

Amplify’d from www.staradvertiser.com

Appeals court rebuffs man seeking Obama birth certificate By Star-Advertiser staff POSTED: 11:02 a.m. HST, Apr 07, 2011 Share92 244 Comments <p>The state appeals court affirmed this morning the denial of a request to inspect and review President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.<br /> <br /> In a 3-0 vote, the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld a 2009 ruling by then-state Circuit Judge Eden Elizabeth Hifo, who dismissed the lawsuit by a man identified as “Dr. Robert V. Justice,” who represented himself. He listed a Beverly Hills, Calif., address on his court papers.</p> <p>In his legal brief to the appeals court, Justice wrote the inspection of the birth certificate will “ensure the health and safety of all 300 million of us by making sure that our military and our nuclear and chemical arsenals are still under our control and not in the control of any one of our enemies.”<br /> <br /> The appeals court said Justice sought the review under the state open-records law requiring the disclosure of documents based on a showing of “compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of any individual.”<br /> <br /> But the court said the provision relates to access to records in “medical or safety emergency situations.”<br /> <br /> Birth certificates are confidential under state law, except to certain people, such as relatives, who have a “direct and tangible interest” in the records. <br /> <br /> Justice had written a letter dated Dec. 31, 2008, to the state Health Department seeking to inspect the birth certificate to “allow me and other fellow Americans to determine whether or not Mr. Obama is eligible to hold the Office of President,” the appeals court said.<br /> <br /> After the department denied his request, Justice filed the lawsuit seeking a court order directing the department to disclose the birth certificate.<br /> <br /> Chief Judge Craig Nakamura of the appeals court wrote the 17-page opinion. Appeals Judge Katherine Leonard wrote a concurring opinion.</p> Star-Advertiser archives This file image shows the certificate of live birth issued by the state of Hawaii for Barack Obama. The Intermediate Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling denying access to a man who wanted to personally inspect Obama's birth certificate. The state appeals court affirmed this morning the denial of a request to inspect and review President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. In a 3-0 vote, the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld a 2009 ruling by then-state Circuit Judge Eden Elizabeth Hifo, who dismissed the lawsuit by a man identified as “Dr. Robert V. Justice,” who represented himself. He listed a Beverly Hills, Calif., address on his court papers. In his legal brief to the appeals court, Justice wrote the inspection of the birth certificate will “ensure the health and safety of all 300 million of us by making sure that our military and our nuclear and chemical arsenals are still under our control and not in the control of any one of our enemies.” The appeals court said Justice sought the review under the state open-records law requiring the disclosure of documents based on a showing of “compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of any individual.” But the court said the provision relates to access to records in “medical or safety emergency situations.” Birth certificates are confidential under state law, except to certain people, such as relatives, who have a “direct and tangible interest” in the records. Justice had written a letter dated Dec. 31, 2008, to the state Health Department seeking to inspect the birth certificate to “allow me and other fellow Americans to determine whether or not Mr. Obama is eligible to hold the Office of President,” the appeals court said. After the department denied his request, Justice filed the lawsuit seeking a court order directing the department to disclose the birth certificate. Chief Judge Craig Nakamura of the appeals court wrote the 17-page opinion. Appeals Judge Katherine Leonard wrote a concurring opinion. Read more at www.staradvertiser.com

 

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