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lol dailycaller
FBI Admits US Can't Vet All Syrian Refugees For Terror Ties | The Daily Caller
FBI director James Comey said during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday that the federal government does not have the ability to conduct thorough background checks on all of the 10,000 Syrian refugees that the Obama administration says will be allowed to come to the U.S.
“We can only query against that which we have collected,” Comey said in response to a line of questioning from Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson .
“And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their iden y or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.”
More than 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland amid a brutal civil war. But many Middle Eastern countries have refused to accept refugees, putting the burden on Europe and the West. Under pressure to assist, President Obama approved a proposal to allow at least 10,000 refugees to settle. According to The New York Times, just over 1,800 have come to the U.S. so far.
But many have expressed concerns over allowing refugees from ISIS’ breeding ground to enter the country.
As Thompson, a Democrat, said, “a lot of us are concerned about whether you have enough information available to you to do an accurate vetting.”
Comey acknowledged that knowledge gap.
“You can only query what you’ve collected,” he reiterated.
He also acknowledged differences in the U.S.’s ability to screen Syrian refugees compared to how Iraqi refugees were vetted in the aftermath of the Iraq War.
“And with respect with Iraqi databases, we had far more because of our country’s work there for a decade,” he said.
“This is a different situation.”
lol dailycaller
lol associated press
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/12458...etting-process
—Administration officials have acknowledged that checking the accuracy or authenticity of do ents provided by refugee applicants against foreign government records can be especially difficult involving countries that don't cooperate with the U.S. government, such as Syria. It can also complicate U.S. efforts to check foreign government records for local arrests or lesser bureaucratic interactions, such as bank records, business licenses or civil filings. "We do the best we can with the information we have," one U.S. official said.
—FBI Director James Comey told Congress weeks ago that the FBI sees a risk with Syrian refugees and "we will work hard to mitigate it." He said the biggest challenge is that a background check is as only as good as the information available. "That's the challenge we are all talking about, is that we can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their iden y or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home but ... there will be nothing show up because we have no record on that person," Comey said.
Im sure this is on Republican minds.
Especially since we do our best here in Texas to prevent massive voter fraud.
Does vetting potential voters who are already citizens cost money I wonder...
There is no such thing like EU refugee vetting process and that`s the problem
Agreed.
Highlighting Western Victims While Ignoring Victims of Western Violence
Glenn Greenwald
Mar. 25 2016, 4:17 p.m.
FOR DAYS NOW, American cable news has broadcast non-stop coverage of the horrific attack in Brussels. Viewers repeatedly heard from witnessesand from the wounded. Video was shown in a loop of the terror and panic when the bombs exploded. Networks dispatched their TV stars to Brussels, where they remain. NPR profiled the lives of several of the airport victims. CNN showed a moving interview with a wounded, bandage-wrapped Mormon American teenager speaking from his Belgium hospital bed.
All of that is how it should be: That’s news. And it’s important to understand on a visceral level the human cost from this type of violence. But that’s also the same reason it’s so unjustifiable, and so propagandistic, that this type of coverage is accorded only to Western victims of violence, but almost never to the non-Western victims of the West’s own violence.
A little more than a week ago, as Mohammed Ali Kalfood reported in The Intercept, “Fighter jets from a Saudi-led [U.S. and U.K.-supported] coalition bombed a market in Mastaba, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah. Thelatest count indicates that about 120 people were killed, including more than 20 children, and 80 were wounded in the strikes.” Kalfood interviewed 21-year-old Yemeni Khaled Hassan Mohammadi, who said, “We saw airstrikes on a market last Ramadan, not far from here, but this attack was the deadliest.” Over the past several years, the U.S. has launched hideous civilian-slaughtering strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, and Iraq. Last July, The Intercept published a photo essay by Alex Potter of Yemeni victims of one of 2015’s deadliest Saudi-led, U.S.- and U.K.-armed strikes.
You’ll almost never hear any of those victims’ names on CNN, NPR, or most other large U.S. media outlets. No famous American TV correspondents will be sent to the places where those people have their lives ended by the bombs of the U.S. and its allies. At most, you’ll hear small, clinical news stories briefly and coldly describing what happened — usually accompanied by a justifying claim from U.S. officials, uncritically conveyed, about why the bombing was noble — but, even in those rare cases where such attacks are covered at all, everything will be avoided that would cause you to have any visceral or emotional connection to the victims. You’ll never know anything about them — not even their names, let alone hear about their extinguished life aspirations or hear from their grieving survivors — and will therefore have no ability to feel anything for them. As a result, their existence will barely register.
That’s by design. It’s because U.S. media outlets love to dramatize and endlessly highlight Western victims of violence, while rendering almost completely invisible the victims of their own side’s violence.
Perhaps you think there are good — or at least understandable — reasons to explain this discrepancy in coverage. Maybe you believe humans naturally pay more attention to, and empathize more with, the suffering of those they regard as more similar to them. Or you may want to argue that victims in cities commonly visited by American elites (Paris, Brussels, London, Madrid) are somehow more newsworthy than those in places rarely visited (Mastaba, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah). Or perhaps you’re sympathetic to the claim that it’s easier for CNN or NBC News to send on-air correspondents to glittery Western European capitals than to Waziristan or Kunduz. Undoubtedly, many believe that the West’s violence is morally superior because it only kills civilians by accident and not on purpose.
But regardless of the rationale for this media discrepancy, the distortive impact is the same: By endlessly focusing on and dramatizing Western victims of violence while ignoring the victims of the West’s own violence, the impression is continually bolstered that only They, but not We, engage in violence that kills innocent people. We are always the victims and never the perpetrators (and thus Good and Blameless); They are only the perpetrators and never the victims (and thus Villainous and Culpable). In April 2003, Ashleigh Banfield, then a rising war-correspondent star at MSNBC, returned from Iraq, gave a speech critiquing the one-sided, embedded U.S. media coverage of the war, and was shortly thereafter demoted and then fired. This is part of what she said:
That said, what didn’t you see? You didn’t see where those bullets landed. You didn’t see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. … It was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn’t journalism, because I’m not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful, terrific endeavor, and we got rid of horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn’t see what it took to do that. …In other words, the death, carnage, and destruction the U.S. invasion was causing was generating huge amounts of anti-American hatred and a desire to bring violence to Americans, even if meant sacrificing lives to accomplish that. But the U.S. media never showed any of that, so Americans had no idea it existed, and were thus incapable of understanding why people were eager to do violence to Americans. They therefore assumed that it must be because they are primitive or inherently hateful or driven by some inscrutable religious fervor.
I think there were a lot of dissenting voices before this war about the horrors of war, but I’m very concerned about this three-week TV show and how it may have changed people’s opinions. It was very sanitized. … War is ugly and it’s dangerous, and in this world, the way we are discussed on the Arab street, it feeds and fuels their hatred and their desire to kill themselves to take out Americans.
That’s because the U.S. media, by showing only one side of the conflict, by presenting only the nationalistic viewpoint, propagandized — deceived — American viewers by making them more ignorant rather than more enlightened. As a result, when the trains of London and Madrid were attacked in 2004 and 2005 as retaliation for those countries’ participation in the invasion of Iraq, that causal connection (which even British intelligence acknowledged) was virtually never discussed because Western media outlets ensured it was unknown. The same was true of attempted attacks on the U.S.: in Times Square, the New York City subway system, an airliner over Detroit, all motivated by rage over Western violence. In the absence of any media discussion of those victims and motives, these attacks were was simply denounced as senseless, indiscriminate slaughter without any cause, and people were thus deprived of the ability to understand why they happened.
That’s exactly what’s happening still. Because I was traveling in the U.S. this week, I was subjected to literally dozens of hours of cable and network news coverage of the Brussels attacks. The most minute angles of the attack were dissected. But there was not one moment devoted to the question of why Belgium — and the U.S., France, and Russia before it — were targeted by ISIS (as opposed to a whole slew of non-Muslim, democratic countries around the world that ISIS doesn’t target), even though ISIS explicitly stated the reason and it is, in any event, self-evident: because those countries have been bombing ISIS in Syria and Iraq and these bombings were intended as retaliation and vengeance. Nor was there any discussion of why ISIS seems to have little trouble attracting support among some in Western countries: As even a Rumsfeld-commissioned study found in 2004, it is in large part because of widespread anger among Muslims over ongoing Western violence and interference in that part of the world.
The point, as always, isn’t justification: It is always morally unjustified to deliberately target civilians with violence (see the update here on that point). Nor does it prove that the bombing of ISIS in Iraq and Syria is unjustified or should cease. The point, instead, is that the war framework in which much of this violence takes place — one side that declares itself at war and uses violence as part of that war is inevitably attacked by the other side that it targets — is completely suppressed by one-sided media coverage that prefers a self-flattering, tribalistic cartoon narrative.
The ultimate media taboo is self-examination: the question of whether there are actions we take that exacerbate the problem we say we are trying to resolve. Such a process would not dilute the evil of ISIS’s civilian-targeting violence, but it would enable a more honest and complete understanding of the role Western governments’ policies play and the inevitable costs they entail. Perhaps those costs are worth enduring, but that question can only be rationally answered if the costs are openly discussed.
But whatever else is true, if we are constantly bombarded with images and stories and dramatic narratives highlighting our own side’s victims, while the victims of our side’s violence are rendered invisible, it’s only natural that large numbers of us will conclude that only They, but not We, are committing civilian-killing violence. That’s a really pleasing thing to believe, no matter how false it is. Having media outlets perpetrate self-pleasing and tribal-affirming — but utterly false — narratives is the very definition of propaganda. And that’s what largely drives Western media coverage of these terrorist attacks every time they occur in the West.
moderate muslims
So they all believe in stoning and they're all "normal" Muslims - not extremists.
Following Brussels attack, GOP wants Obama to visit … Florida?
After this week's terrorist attack, Republicans wanted President Obama to go to D.C.
Then they said go to Brussels.
Now, in the wake of terrorism, they want him to go to ... Florida?
After this week’s deadly terrorist attack in Brussels, Republicans are certain President Obama should go somewhere. They just aren’t sure where.
Ted Cruz, for example, declared at a press conference, “President Obama should be back in America keeping this country safe, or President Obama should be planning to travel to Brussels.”
The Texas senator didn’t have any specific rationale for such a challenge, probably because his rhetoric didn’t make a lot of sense. Whether or not the president cut short his overseas trip would have no bearing on Americans’ security, and the last thing Brussels needs right now is the added burden of preparing security precautions for an Obama visit.
But as TPM noted yesterday, Gov. Rick Scott (R) has an entirely different itinerary in mind for the president: what Obama really ought to do in the wake of terrorism in Brussels is go to … Florida.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) thinks the best way for President Barack Obama to address the concerns of Americans troubled by Tuesday’s deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels is to head to the Sunshine State.
“Not only do I believe that President Obama should immediately return to America, I am inviting him today to come to Florida and address the concerns of American tourists considering travel to Europe,” Scott said in a statement released Thursday.
I’ve read the governor’s press release a few times, trying to make sense of it, but I have no idea what Scott’s talking about. Apparently, the Florida Republican is worried about European tourism suffering in the aftermath of an attack, so Scott wants the president to visit Florida to reassure Americans who are considering trips across the Atlantic.
Perhaps the governor was searching for a new way to complain about Obama, and this was the best he could come up with?
Looking at this in the larger context, this week’s Republican reactions to the president’s itinerary were a reminder about the politics of appearances.
After Brussels, Obama should fly back to DC! Why? Well, because it might look good.
Wait, no, maybe Obama should fly to Brussels! Why? You know, for symbolic significance.
Actually, no, maybe Obama should fly to Florida! Why? Because evidently the state’s governor is suddenly an enthusiastic ally of European tourism boards.
Such thinking seems to have at least some effect on the broader political perceptions, as evidenced by a press conference in Argentina this week in which a reporter asked Obama about the “optics” of the president’s overseas visits following the Brussels attack.
At a certain point, however, how things “look” has to be less important than how things are.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
America had enough "optics" from Hollywood's St Ronnie the Diseased, and America is still ed up 35 years later.
Maybe Scott wants Obama to suggest going to Florida instead of Europe?
you Repugs have some real cretins on your side
Rudy Giuliani: Obama should have cut Cuba trip short because Brussels was his ‘Pearl Harbor’
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/rudy...e+Raw+Story%29
is it a coincidence every single Muslim sympathizer has avoided this video? You all know who you are.
They have nothing to say because every single Muslim in that room believes in those things that are abhorrent to us (like stoning) .
as long as they're nonviolent and abide by laws its not an issue
The problem conflating Islam with Christianity is there is no contrast to Mohammed like the Bibles contrast between the law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. Some Christians are more militant old testament style eye for an eye types, but OTOH there is a more "modernly viable" alternative in the Gospels and their messages of brotherhood and peace. The Qoran certainly contains both elements, of course, but there isnt any semblance of a dividing line nor is there a specific separate doctrine within the Qoran itself.
another difference is that right now we don't have a large christian organization occupying territory and slaughtering thousands in the name of jesus
sure, we have nutjob christians, the guy who shot up planned parenthood, etc. but there isn't a current parallel to isis
Technically true
is israel christian, splits?Technically true
I believe the Jewish state is Jewish.
That's why I said "technically true".
It receives tons of support from Evangelicals and the government which is made up of majority Christians gives 3 billion in aid every year. Also the Evangelicals do not support a Palestine state since they believe that Jesus will return once Isreal is whole and fully controlling Jerusalem.
that makes no sense. no purpose for quotation marks or the word technically in there. israel is completely off topic, here
No, it is not "completely off topic".
Your statement was technically true because it specified Christianity. A client state of ours is currently occupying territory and slaughtering thousands. If you don't think that provides justification and recruitment for lunatics in the ME, then I don't know what to tell you.
The reason evangelicals support Israel is mind blowingly cynical.
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