A campaign is being waged to get President Obama to finally take firm action on the pastor of an American pastor who is wrongfully imprisoned in Iran.
A series of prepared postcards has a message telling the President that the American people want to see him demand the release of Saeed Abedini as part of the nuclear negotiations with Iran.
“A man in your position has been given great power and responsibility to represent every American, whether on domestic or foreign soil. Please hold to your own words, that no one is left behind. We, the American people, ask you to do everything within your power to bring U.S. citizen, pastor, husband & father, Saeed Abedini, home to his family from his time of incarceration in Iran,” the card reads.
The American Center for Law and Justice, who is representing Pastor Abedini and his family, says that the President and his administration ignored the opportunity to work for Abedini’s release in previous negotiations.
At least 80,000 postcards have already been requested by those who will send them to the White House.
On the heels of the United Nations saying it lacked the resources necessary to stop the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, President Obama is asking Congress for billions in aid to fight the killer virus.
The President wants $6.18 billion to fund efforts both within the U.S. and in Africa to combat the virus.
“The funding is needed immediately to strengthen and sustain our whole-of-government response to strengthen preparedness in the U.S. and to help end the Ebola epidemic at its source in West Africa, and to prevent disease outbreaks, detect them early, and swiftly respond before they become epidemics that threaten the American people,” the administration said. “It’s in situations like this one, when activities surpass the current level of funding, that the request is deemed an emergency.”
The World Health Organization reported Wednesday that the death toll is at least 4,818 people out of 13,042 confirmed cases.
The head of the U.N. mission fighting the virus said there are still villages in the impacted countries that have received no aid or help from outside their nation.
“It’s not here yet,” Tony Banbury said about the needed resources. “There are still people, villages, towns [and] areas that [are] not getting any type of help right now and we definitely don’t have the response capability on the ground now from the international community.”
In their first meeting since the 50-day Israel-Hamas war, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a cordial tone.
Netanyahu praised President Obama for his commitment to destroy the Islamic terrorist group ISIS and his willingness to stand with Israel against Islamic terror. Obama said that Israel was dealing with a “turbulent neighborhood.”
Obama said there needs to be new and different efforts to end violence in the region.
“We have to find ways to change the status quo so that both Israeli citizens are safe … but also that we don’t have the tragedy of Palestinian children being killed as well,” Obama said.
Netanyahu also took time to praise Obama and the U.S. Congress for their support of more funding for the Iron Dome rocket defense system. The PM said the system saved “so many lives” during the conflict with Hamas.
However, the PM took a more aggressive tone when he said that further steps need to be taken to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
President Obama acknowledged the administration completely misjudged ISIS and the strength and will of the Islamic terrorist group.
However, the President put the blame on the former Iraqi government and U.S. intelligence services rather than accepting any of the blame himself. In January, the President called ISIS a Junior Varsity terrorist outfit.
“Our head of the intelligence community Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” the president said.
Intelligence service officials say the President has been receiving daily briefings on ISIS and their rise for the last 18 months. The White House refused to act on those intelligence reports.
Sen. John McCain said he was “puzzled” by the President’s claim and underestimating the threat of Islamic terrorists.
“The intelligence comments — intelligence people are pushing back hard,” McCain said. “We predicted this and watched it. It was like watching a train wreck and warning every step of the way that this was happening … It is a direct result of our failure to leave a residual force behind.”
Islamic State issued a call to its members in the United States, France and other countries that are connected to the coalition against ISIS to commit attacks.
The call from Islamic State included direct attacks on world leaders, including President Obama.
“O mule of the Jews, you claimed today that America would not be drawn into a war on the ground. No, it will be drawn and dragged … to its death, grave and destruction,” ISIS leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani said in the video.
ISIS leadership also dismissed the pending airstrikes from coalition countries and said they will have no impact on their reign of terror.
“It will be broken and defeated, just as all your previous campaigns were broken and defeated,” Adnani said.
Contrary to claims made by the President and his supporters when they were pushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress, the law actually does pay for abortions.
A report from the General Accounting Office has revealed that many insurers receiving the government subsidies put no restrictions on abortions. The report shows 15 of 18 Qualified Health Plans ignored the rules that abortions are not to be covered except in cases of rape, incest or health of the mother.
“Of the 18 issuers offering QHPs that cover non-excepted abortion services from which we obtained information, all but three issuers indicated that the benefit is not subject to any restrictions, limitations, or exclusions,” noted the GAO.
“These 18 issuers offered a total of 246 unique QHPs that covered non-excepted abortion services — or 24 percent of the total number of QHPs covering non-excepted abortion services in the 28 states with no laws restricting the circumstances under which abortion services can be provided as a covered benefit.”
The National Right to Life Committee had warned in 2011 that the ACA was full of loopholes that allowed violations of right-to-life principles.
“As enacted, the PPACA contains multiple provisions authorizing federal subsidies for abortion, and additional provisions on which future abortion-expanding regulatory mandates may be based,” charged the NRLC.
President Obama gave a confusing speech to the American people Wednesday night where he said that he would fight Islamic terrorism and that terrorists would have no place to hide…
But then he said that ISIS, the group that beheaded two Americans and has carried out mass killings of Christians across Iraq, is not Muslim and thus not an Islamic terrorist group.
“ISIL is not Islamic,” the President said. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.”
The President then went on to say that even though they are not Islamic, they used to be the Iraq branch of the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda.
“It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border,” Obama said. “ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.”
The President did acknowledge the Christians who have been killed and driven from their homes by the Islamic terrorist group.
“This includes Sunni and Shia Muslims who are at grave risk, as well as tens of thousands of Christians and other religious minorities,” Obama said. “We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands.”
President Obama held a press conference to address the beheading of an American journalist by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS and made an unusually strong denouncement of an Islamic group.
“The United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people. We will be vigilant and we will be relentless. When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done. And we act against ISIL, standing alongside others,” President Obama said, referring to the group by their previous name, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The President went on to denounce the group has not being a religious group at all because of their extreme views and actions.
“No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day,” the President said. “ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.”
The President ordered the U.S. military to continue to conduct air strikes against positions of the terrorists in northern Iraq. After the President’s address, the military carried out a series of strikes against terror positions near the country’s biggest dam to help support Iraqi and Kurdish troops who recaptured the dam earlier this week.
The President also spoke of the victim of the killing, photojournalist James Foley.
“Jim Foley’s life stands in stark contrast to his killers,” President Obama said.
“Today, America is coming to help,” President Obama stated after authorizing airstrikes in northern Iraq against the Islamic State.
After weeks of weighing options, the administration took action due to the unrelenting progress of the Islamic extremists and the mounting humanitarian crisis.
The most recent crisis involves the Yazidis, a small religious minority, who are currently trapped on a mountaintop after fleeing their homes and are surrounded by Islamic militants. The United States has made several airdrops containing food and water to the thousands of trapped Yazidis, but only recently took action against the surrounding Islamic militants.
Despite a deeper involvement in the conflict, President Obama assured the public that it would not lead to U.S. involvement in a ground war in Iraq.
On Thursday night, President Obama authorized U.S. military action against the Sunni extremist advance on the Kurdish capital of Erbil leading to the first of many strikes that hit Islamic State artillery positions in northern Iraq.
Five hundred pound bombs were dropped by U.S. F-18 fighters just outside of Erbil according to the Pentagon.
President Obama claims the goal of these strikes is to stop militants from seizing Erbil and aiding the Yazidis, a religious minority.
Washington has considered direct military involvement in the past, but has delayed action for two reasons: the slowing of the Sunni militants advance in the past and to pressure Iraqi lawmakers to form a new government that might counter the militants.