PUBLISHED: 14:16 EST, 29 January 2013 | UPDATED: 14:16 EST, 29 January 2013
Leaked emails have allegedly proved that the White House gave the green light to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that could be blamed on Assad’s regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country.
A report released on Monday contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence where a scheme ‘approved by Washington’ is outlined explaining that Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons.
Barack Obama made it clear to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last month that the U.S. would not tolerate Syria using chemical weapons against its own people.
Scroll down for video
War games: An explosion in the Syrian city of Homs last month. It has been now been suggested that the U.S. backed the use of chemical weapons to spur international military intervention
According to Infowars.com, the December 25 email was sent from Britam’s Business Development Director David Goulding to company founder Philip Doughty.
It reads: ‘Phil… We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.
‘We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have.
‘They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.
‘Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?
‘Kind regards, David.’
Britam Defence had not yet returned a request for comment to MailOnline.
Leaked: The email was allegedly sent from a top official at a British defense contractor regarding a ‘Washington approved’ chemical attack in Syria which could be blamed on Assad’s regime
The emails were released by a Malaysian hacker who also obtained senior executives resumés and copies of passports via an unprotected company server, according to Cyber War News.
Dave Goulding’s Linkedin profile lists him as Business Development Director at Britam Defence Ltd in Security and Investigations. A business networking profile for Phil Doughty lists him as Chief Operationg Officer for Britam, United Arab Emirates, Security and Investigations.
The U.S. State Department had not returned a request for comment on the alleged emails to MailOnline today at time of publication.
However the use of chemical warfare was raised at a press briefing in D.C. on January 28.
A spokesman said that the U.S. joined the international community in ‘setting common redlines about the consequences of using chemical weapons’.
Countless losses: Families attempt to identify the bodies of Syrian fighters shot and dumped in a river in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo today
A British defence company has been breached and as a result a heap of documents have been published online and now the site has gone offline.
The attack is on britam defence (
http://www.britamdefence.com/ ) and has been claimed by a hacker using the handle JAsIrX who uploaded the leaked information to various file sharing websites and released it via a single pastebin post with the a message about the release (see bottom).
The documents come in 6 parts and total over 423MB compress zip files and inside the compress files appears to be a common layout of three main folders named !!Syria, Iran and Iraq.
Inside these appear to be documents like passports, incident reports about drunk employees which are labelled private and confidential as well.
A quick look into the files shows shocking plans for chemical warfare attacks where they have planned to lure victims to kill zones. The file can be found in the Iran folder under OPLAN (Ruhayyat) 1433H-1.doc.
MOSCOW, June 17 (RIA Novosti) – Russia and the United States have signed a contract for the delivery of Russian Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan army, a Russian government agency said Monday.
The Russian state-owned defense firm Rosoboronexport and the US Department of the Army signed the contract on Sunday in Paris “as part of joint efforts to combat terrorism,” Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation said in a statement.
It did not say exactly how many helicopters were to be delivered, but Rosoboronexport deputy head Alexander Mikheyev told RIA Novosti that the contract was for 30 Mi-17V5 helicopters. He said the value could not be disclosed, according to the contract’s terms.
(Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Monday it will spend $572 million to buy 30 Russian-built military helicopters that will be used by Afghan security forces.
The Mi-17 helicopters will be used by Afghanistan’s National Security Forces Special Mission Wing, which supports counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and special operations missions……………
G8 summit: Europe will ‘pay the price’ if it arms Syrian rebels, Assad warns
US set for tense talks with Russia over arming rebels James Legge
Monday 17 June 2013
Europe will “pay the price” if it delivers arms to rebel forces in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with a German newspaper.
“If the Europeans deliver weapons, the backyard of Europe will become terrorist and Europe will pay the price for it,” he said in an advance extract of an interview due to be published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday.
He also warned that delivering arms would result in the direct export of “terrorism” to Europe. Assad was commenting for the first time since the United States announced on Thursday that they would be supplying military aid to rebels fighting for his overthrow, Assad said: “Terrorists will gain experience in combat and return with extremist ideologies.”
The threats from Assad come as Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama prepare for a frosty meeting later at the G8 summit, where disagreement over the Syrian civil war has stolen focus from the rest of the agenda.
The Russian president finds himself isolated over whether to aid the anti-Assad rebels, against whom the balance of the two-year conflict has recently turned. And at their first face-to-face meeting in a year, Obama will try to convince him to bring Assad to the negotiating table.
Assad warns West against supporting ‘al Qaeda rebels’
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Wednesday that Western nations would pay a “heavy price” for supporting Islamist Syrian rebels linked to al Qaeda, warning that the terrorist group would strike at the heart of Europe and the US.
By Lucy FIELDER , FRANCE 24 correspondent reporting from Beirut (video) News Wires (text)
President Bashar al-Assad accused the West on Wednesday of supporting al Qaeda militants in Syria’s civil war and warned they would turn against their backers and strike “in the heart of Europe and the United States”.
Assad also launched his strongest criticism yet of neighbouring Jordan for allowing thousands of fighters to cross the border to join a conflict he insisted his forces would win and save Syria from destruction.
“We have no choice but victory. If we don’t win, Syria will be finished and I don’t think this is a choice for any citizen in Syria,” the defiant president said in a television interview.
Assad’s forces have been fighting back across the country against rebels who have taken control of much of rural Syria and seized a provincial capital in March for the first time in two years of fighting.
The conflict started with mainly peaceful demonstrations but descended into a civil war in which the United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed. Islamist militants have emerged as the most potent of the anti-Assad rebels.
Drawing parallels with Western support for anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s, some of whom later formed the al Qaeda organisation which attacked the United States in Sept. 2011, Assad said Washington and Europe would regret supporting rebels in Syria.
The CIA is preparing to deliver arms to rebel groups in Syria through clandestine bases in Turkey and Jordan that were expanded over the past year in an effort to establish reliable supply routes into the country for nonlethal material, U.S. officials said.
The bases are expected to begin conveying limited shipments of weapons and ammunition within weeks, officials said, serving as critical nodes for an escalation of U.S. involvement in a civil war that has lately seen a shift in momentum toward the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.
Graphic
Areas in Syria with a rebel presence
Graphic
A look at the Syrian uprising nearly two years later. Thousands of Syrians have died and President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, despite numerous calls by the international community for him to step down.
Syria experts cautioned that the opposition to Assad remains a chaotic mix of secular and Islamist elements, highlighting the risk that some American-provided munitions may be diverted from their intended recipients.
But U.S. officials involved in the planning of the new policy of increased military support announced by the Obama administration Thursday said that the CIA has developed a clearer understanding of the composition of rebel forces, which have begun to coalesce in recent months. Within the past year, the CIA also created a new office at its headquarters in Langley to oversee its expanding operational role in Syria.
“We have relationships today in Syria that we didn’t have six months ago,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said during a White House briefing Friday. The United States is capable of delivering material “not only into the country,” Rhodes said, but “into the right hands.”
The confidence conveyed by Rhodes’s statement is in contrast to the concerns expressed by U.S. intelligence officials last year that the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies were still struggling to gain a firm understanding of opposition elements — a factor cited at the time as a reason the Obama administration was unwilling to consider providing arms.
“The Syrian puzzle has come into sharper focus in the past year, especially the makeup of various anti-regime groups,” said a U.S. official familiar with CIA assessments of the conflict. “And while the opposition remains far from monolithic, its military structures and coordination processes have improved.”
The official, like most others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments and planning.
The increased certainty is one of several factors that led to the reversal of a U.S. policy against providing lethal aid that had been in place since the uprising began in Syria more than two years ago.
Rhodes said the change was driven by a new determination by U.S. intelligence agencies that Assad’s regime had used chemical weapons, including sarin gas, on at least four separate occasions. Obama also faced mounting pressure to intervene more aggressively as members of Congress and overseas allies became increasingly alarmed that Assad’s forces were gaining strength with expanded assistance from Russia and Iran.
For the CIA, the shift on Syria marks a return to a covert-action role that was familiar to the agency during Cold War-era conflicts but that gave way to increasingly direct lethal operations as the agency’s drone campaign surged in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Photo provided by the Egyptian Presidency shows Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi addressing the audience at a popular conference in Cairo, June 15, 2013. Morsi on Saturday announced cutting ties with Syria, shutting down the Syrian embassy in Cairo and withdrawing the Egyptian charge d’affaires from Damascus, at a popular conference aired on state TV. (Xinhua/Egyptian Presidency)
by Mahmoud Fouly, Tian Dongdong
CAIRO, June 16 (Xinhua) — The recent decision of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to cut diplomatic ties with Syria is “harmonious” with the Western policies against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, especially that it comes after the United States approved providing arms for the Syrian opposition, analysts said.
On Saturday evening, Morsi told a conference in Cairo that he decided to shut down the Syrian embassy in Cairo and withdraw the Egyptian charge d’ affaires from Damascus.
“This is a step that conforms with the recent U.S. escalation to arm the Syrian rebels against Assad’s administration and conforms with its deliberation over imposing a no-fly zone on Syria,” Gamal Salama, head of political science department at Suez University, told Xinhua.
Salama said Egypt is one of the countries “revolving in the U.S. sphere,” and these U.S. allies always make decisions that go in harmony with the U.S. plans.
Blood on your hands: Vladimir Putin’s attack on Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of G8 talks on Syria
Russian President says his country will continue to arm the ‘legitimate government’ in Syria as Cameron’s Coalition allies warn against involving Britain in the conflict
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, rounded on Britain on Sunday, accusing David Cameron of betraying humanitarian values by supporting Syrian rebels with “blood on their hands”.
In harsh and undiplomatic language, Mr Putin accused the UK and other Western powers of attempting to arm rebels who “kill their enemies and eat their organs”. He insisted that Russia would continue to arm what he said was the recognised “legitimate government” in Syria and called on other countries to respect the same rules.
Mr Putin’s comments, ahead of Monday’s G8 summit in Northern Ireland, suggest that earlier British hopes of a softening of Russia’s position on Syria were misplaced. After around an hour of bilateral talks with David Cameron in Downing Street, Mr Putin’s spokesman told The Independent that the two sides remained as far apart as ever.
“There are very serious disagreements in terms of who is guilty and who is to blame,” he said. Asked what the impact of the American decision to arm Syrian rebels would be on potential peace talks, he added: “It makes it harder.”
In a press conference after the talks, Mr Cameron admitted that “President Putin and I have our disagreements on some of the issues”, but insisted the G8 could bring “new momentum and leadership” to start negotiations in Syria.
“What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome differences if we recognise that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people choose who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists,” he said.
“If we leave Syria to be fought over between a murderous dictator and violent extremists we will all pay the price,” he added.
A group of Conservative MPs and retired officers warned the prime minister that his plan to arm foreign-backed terror groups fighting the Syrian government would be the first step down a path that could lead to another British military invasion of the Middle East region.
This comes as the coalition government is sending redundancy notices to 5,300 Army personnel soon as part of its plan to reduce the number of soldiers from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2017.
The cuts are imposed at a time when David Cameron is contemplating to arm terrorists fighting the popular government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
“Here we are yet again with a government reducing our Armed Services and at the same time talking about military intervention of some sort in Syria”, said Richard Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset.
“In such an increasingly unstable world, events like Syria and Turkey can develop at any moment and yet here we are cutting our Armed Services to the size of a gendarmerie. Our Navy is now little more than something you put in the bath”, he said.
Earlier this month, 82 Tory MPs wrote to the Prime Minister to demand a parliamentary vote on any decision to equip Syria’s rebels.
Some Conservative MPs fear that any weapons given to the rebels could fall into the hands of some fighters who have links with al-Qaeda terrorist group.
Meanwhile, David Cameron has said that he will make every attempt to convince the Group of Eight (G8) authorities to support US plans to impose a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, when they gather for the G8 summit in Northern Ireland this week.
The push for action comes after US President Barack Obama said he would give “direct military aid” to terrorists in Syria.
Cameron was central to the development of a no-fly zone over Libya in 2011, which resulted in thousands of sorties and strikes against people on the ground.
(Reuters) – The United States said on Saturday it would keep F-16 fighters and Patriot missiles in Jordan at Amman’s request, and Russia bristled at the possibility they could be used to enforce a no-fly zone inside Syria.
Washington, which has long called for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, pledged military support to Syrian rebels this week, citing what it said was the Syrian military’s use of chemical weapons – an allegation Damascus has denied.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved a Jordanian request for American F-16s and Patriot missiles to remain in the Western-backed kingdom after a joint military exercise there next week, a Pentagon spokesman said.
Western diplomats said on Friday Washington was considering a limited no-fly zone over parts of Syria, but the White House noted later that it would be far harder and costlier to set one up there than it was in Libya, saying the United States had no national interest in pursuing that option.
Russia, an ally of Damascus and fierce opponent of outside military intervention in Syria, said any attempt to impose a no-fly zone using F-16s and Patriots from Jordan would be illegal.
“You don’t have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
The idea of a no-fly zone was endorsed by Egypt, the biggest Arab nation. President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist more distant from Washington than his deposed military predecessor, made a keynote speech in Cairo throwing Egypt’s substantial weight more firmly than before against President Bashar al-Assad.
Despite their differences, the United States and Russia announced in May they would try to convene peace talks involving the Syrian government and its opponents, but have set no date.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said chemical attacks by Syrian forces and Hezbollah’s involvement on Assad’s side showed a lack of commitment to negotiations and threatened to “put a political settlement out of reach”.
Kerry had not previously expressed such pessimism about prospects for the conference, which has run into many obstacles.
These include disarray in the Syrian opposition and military gains by the Syrian army and its Lebanese Hezbollah allies against rebels who have few ways to counter Assad’s air power.
The involvement of Hezbollah fighters on the side of Assad, a fellow ally of the main Shi’ite power Iran, has galvanized Arab governments, including Egypt, behind the rebels, who mostly follow the Sunni version of Islam that dominates the Arab world.
That has hardened sectarian confrontation across the region, which some Arabs hope might be softened by the election of the moderate Hassan Rohani as Iran’s president – though few believe he can truly influence Tehran’s supreme leader.
Mursi, addressing thousands of cheering supporters at a stadium gathering organized by Egyptian Sunni clerics, demanded Hezbollah pull out of Syria and, after his Muslim Brotherhood joined calls for jihad against Assad and his Shi’ite allies, the president said Cairo had now cut diplomatic ties with Damascus.
Egypt’s powerful, U.S.-backed army seems unlikely to involve itself in Syria, but religious passions are running high and more Egyptian volunteers could travel to join the rebels.
By DEB RIECHMANN and LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press
WASHINGTON June 15, 2013 (AP)
The Obama administration hopes its decision to give lethal aid to Syrian rebels will prompt other nations to beef up assistance, now that the U.S. has cited evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its people. But the international reaction Friday ranged from flat-out disbelief of the U.S. intelligence assessments to calls for negotiation before more weapons pour into the vicious civil war.
The administration now says it has “high confidence” that President Bashar Assad’s forces have killed up to 150 people with sarin gas. Although that’s a tiny percentage of the approximately 93,000 killed in the civil war so far, the use of a chemical weapon crosses President Barack Obama’s “red line” for escalating U.S. involvement in the conflict and prompted the decision to send arms and ammunition, not just humanitarian aid and defensive non-lethal help like armored vests and night goggles.
The administration’s plan heading into the G8 meeting of industrialized nations beginning Monday is to use the chemical weapons announcement and Obama’s decision on arms to persuade Russia to increase pressure on Assad to send a credible negotiating team to Geneva for talks with the opposition.
In addition, Obama is expected to use the G8 meeting and discussions on the sidelines to further coordinate with the British, French and potentially others an increase of assistance — lethal, non-lethal and humanitarian — to the rebels, the political opposition and refugees.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said the United States has determined that sarin was used in a March 19 attack on the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal and in an April 13 attack on the neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud. She said unspecified chemicals, possibly including chemical warfare agents, were used May 14 in an attack on Qasr Abu Samrah and in a May 23 attack on Adra.
U.S. officials have not disclosed any details about the weapons they intend to send to Syria or when and how they will be delivered. According to officials, the U.S. is most likely to provide the rebel fighters with small arms, ammunition, assault rifles and a variety of anti-tank weaponry such as shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and other missiles.
As of Friday, however, no final decisions had been made on the details or when it would reach the rebels, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal administration discussions with reporters.
Obama has consistently said he will not put American troops in Syria, making it less likely the U.S. will provide sophisticated arms or anti-aircraft weapons that would require large-scale training. Administration officials are also worried about high-powered weapons ending up in the hands of terrorist groups. Hezbollah fighters are among those backing Assad’s armed forces, and al-Qaida-linked extremists back the rebellion.
The lethal aid will largely be coordinated by the CIA, but that effort will also be buttressed by an increased U.S. military presence in Jordan.
Pentagon spokesman Dave Lapan sent the following statement to The Daily Beast after this story posted: “There is no new planning effort underway. The Joint Staff, along with the relevant combatant commanders, continue to conduct prudent planning for a range of possible military options.”
Along with no-fly zone plans, the White House is considering arming parts of the Syrian opposition and formally recognizing the Syrian opposition council, reports Josh Rogin.
The White House has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced by the U.S. and other countries such as France and Great Britain, two administration officials told The Daily Beast.
A Syrian army soldier holds a machine gun during a battle against opposition fighters in the city of Qusayr, in Syria’s central Homs province on May 23, 2013. (AFP/Getty)
The request was made shortly before Secretary of State John Kerry toured the Middle East last week to try and finalize plans for an early June conference between the Syrian regime and rebel leaders in Geneva. The opposition, however, has yet to confirm its attendance and is demanding that the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s rule be a precondition for negotiations, a condition Assad is unlikely to accept.
President Obama’s dual-track strategy of continuing to pursue a political solution to the two-year-old uprising in Syria while also preparing for more direct U.S. military involvement includes authorizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the first time to plan for multilateral military actions inside Syria, the two officials said. They added that no decisions on actually using force have yet been made.
“The White House is still in contemplation mode but the planning is moving forward and it’s more advanced than it’s ever been,” one administration official told The Daily Beast. “All this effort to pressure the regime is part of the overall effort to find a political solution, but what happens if Geneva fails? It’s only prudent to plan for other options.”
In a May 8 meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee, the White House tasked several agencies with reporting on the pros and cons of two additional potential courses of action: arming vetted and moderate elements of the Syrian opposition, such as the Free Syrian Army, and formally recognizing the Syrian opposition council as the government of Syria, which would mean removing formal U.S. recognition of the Assad regime.
Sen. John McCain—who’s advocated for more aggressive U.S. support of the Syrian rebels and who traveled secretly into the country Monday to meet with the leaders of the Free Syrian Army—told The Daily Beast last week that despite the request for plans he doubts the White House will decide to implement a no-fly zone in Syria. The Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs are opposed to the idea, he said.
“One thing about the Pentagon, if they don’t want to do something, they will tell you all sorts of reasons why they can’t do it. It’s going to take significant pressure for them to come up with realistic plans,” McCain said. “They will invent ways for us not to do it until the president of the United States says we’ve got to do it.”
McCain said a realistic plan for a no-fly zone would include hundreds of planes, and would be most effective if it included destroying Syrian airplanes on runways, bombing those runways, and moving U.S. Patriot missile batteries in Turkey close to the border so they could protect airspace inside northern Syria.
In April, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense that the military was planning for a range of options in Syria but that he did not necessarily support using those options.
Is Obama Starting A War With Syria Just To Distract Us From All The Scandals?
By Michael, on June 13th, 2013
Well, isn’t that convenient? At the moment when the Obama administration is feeling more heat then ever before, it starts another war. Suddenly everyone in the mainstream media is talking all about Syria and not about the IRS scandal, Benghazi, NSA snooping or any of the other political scandals that have popped up in recent weeks. As if on cue, Obama made headlines all over the globe on Thursday by claiming that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the rebels “multiple times”, and that the U.S. was now ready to do more to assist the rebels. That assistance is reportedly going to include “military support” for the rebels and a no-fly zone over at least part of Syria is being discussed. Without a doubt, these are acts of war, and this conflict is not going to end until Assad has been ousted. But Assad will not go quietly. And all it would take is for Assad to fire a couple of missiles at Tel Aviv for a huge regional war to erupt in the Middle East. And what happens if Russia or China decides to get involved in the conflict in Syria? Obama is playing with fire, but he has shown again and again that he is willing to do virtually anything if it will benefit him politically.
As far as the Obama administration is concerned, there is no such thing as a coincidence. The timing of this announcement regarding Syria was not an accident. If Obama wanted to use chemical weapons as an excuse to go after Syria he could have done it weeks ago, or he could have waited several more months before taking action. He chose to do it right now for a reason, and hopefully the American people will be able to see right through this.
So exactly what are we going to be doing for the Syrian rebels? Well, we will definitely be arming them and training them. And it is probably reasonable to assume that there will be American “advisers” on the ground inside Syria helping to organize the Syrian resistance. In fact, according to Debka, a large U.S. Marine force has already been deployed to the Jordanian border with Syria.
In addition, according to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. aircraft may be involved in enforcing a no-fly zone inside Syria…
A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials.
Asked by the White House to develop options for Syria, military planners have said that creating an area to train and equip rebel forces would require keeping Syrian aircraft well away from the Jordanian border.
To do that, the military envisages creating a no-fly zone stretching up to 25 miles into Syria which would be enforced using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom, according to U.S. officials.
No matter how you slice it, the United States is now in a state of war with Syria. The only question is how “involved” we are going to get.
And several prominent Republicans are already rushing forward to applaud Barack Obama on this latest move. The following comes from a CBS News report…
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who met with the rebels last month and has been a vocal critic of the president’s Syria policy said in a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.: “We appreciate the President’s finding that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on several occasions. We also agree with the President that this fact must affect U.S. policy toward Syria. The President’s red line has been crossed. U.S. credibility is on the line. Now is not the time to merely take the next incremental step. Now is the time for more decisive actions.”
But you know what? Many of these Syrian rebels have actually pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The whole point of the “war on terror” was to supposedly fight al-Qaeda, but now the U.S. military is allied with them.
A similar letter, which early tests indicated contained ricin, was also sent to the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, in Washington, D.C.
In both letters, the writer made threatening comments about Bloomberg’s support for gun control, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public information Paul Browne said. The letter to Bloomberg was opened on Sunday, and the letter in Washington was opened on Friday.
Civilian personnel in New York and Washington who came in contact with the opened letters remain asymptomatic, officials said. However, members of the NYPD Emergency Service Unit who came in contact with the letter that was opened at the city’s mail facility on Gold Street in Manhattan on Friday are being examined for minor symptoms of ricin exposure that they experienced on Saturday, which have since abated.
The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and the NYPD Intelligence Division, which is responsible for the Mayor’s protection, are investigating the threats.
A federal court on Thursday halted an effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to ban all ammunition containing lead, much to the dismay of gun control groups hoping to use environmentalism to “make an end run around the Second Amendment” right of access to ammunition, according to officials from several organizations representing gun owners and manufacturers.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that it had dismissed a lawsuit brought by the anti-hunting Center for Biological Diversity and six other left-wing groups which demanded that President Barack Obama’s powerful EPA ban traditional ammunition containing lead components.
Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan dismissed CBD’s lawsuit, finding that CBD’s current petition was nothing more than an attempt to seek reconsideration of their previous petition, which the EPA had denied. Judge Sullivan also indicated that he would defer to EPA’s determination that the agency was not congressionally authorized to regulate lead-based ammunition, according to the Institute for Legislative Action of the NRA.
Traditional ammunition represents 95 percent of the U.S. market and is the staple ammunition for target shooters, hunters and law enforcement, with more than 10 billion rounds sold annually, according to officials with the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Due to the social nature of this site, it may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit, to those who have expressed a prior interest in participating in this community for educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Any materials (ie. graphics, articles , commentary) that are original to this blog are copyrighted and signed by it's creator. Said original material may be shared with attribution. Please respect the work that goes into these items and give the creator his/her credit. Just as we share articles , graphics and photos always giving credit to their creators when available. Credit and a link back to the original source is required.
If you have an issue with anything posted here or would prefer we not use it . Please contact me. Any items that are requested to be removed by the copyright owner it will be removed immediately. No threats needed or lawsuit required. If there is a problem and you do not wish your work to be showcased then we will happily find an alternative from the many sources readily available from creators who would find it amenable to having their work presented to the subscribers of this feed.
Thank you for your time and attention, blessings to all :)
U.S. Buys More Russian Helicopters for Afghanistan
By Michael, on June 13th, 2013
