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The Obama administration views Israel as one of the top spying threats facing its intelligence services, leaked documents reveal. A secret budget request obtained by The Washington Post from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden lumps Israel alongside U.S. foes Iran and Cuba as “key targets” for U.S. counterintelligence efforts. The document suggests Israel does not believe U.S. assurances that its interests are aligned with Israel's on crucial issues such as Iran and peace talks with the Palestinians. “To further safeguard our classified networks, we continue to strengthen insider threat detection capabilities across the Community,” reads the FY 2013 congressional budget...

New Delhi/Washington: India has sharply rejected that it "financed problems" in Afghanistan to create trouble for Pakistan, as alleged by Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's Defence Secretary nominee. Despite the controversy, the US Senate on Tuesday cleared the way for confirmation of Mr Hagel to be the US' next Defense Secretary. The confirmation is expected later in the day. "Senator Hagel's remarks are in sharp contrast to the viewpoint of the Obama Administration that has always been in praise of India's developmental role in Afghanistan and in fact has been pressing New Delhi to do more in Afghanistan," a statement...

WASHINGTON: American conservatives trying to torpedo the confirmation of Senator Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for US defence secretary, have pulled out an "India card". Hagel has been accused of fingering India for its alleged disruptive role against Pakistan in Afghanistan. A shocked New Delhi, which sees Hagel as a friend, angrily denied any suggestion that India is a troublemaker in the region. The provocative remark, in which Senator Hagel accuses New Delhi of "financing problems" for Pakistan in Afghanistan, was dredged out by a conservative publication on the eve of his confirmation hearing which his former Republican colleagues have...

After the successful May 2011 raid that took down Osama bin Laden, President Obama said that “his [bin Laden’s] demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.” Pakistan’s treatment of CIA informant Dr. Shakil Afridi tells a different story, however. The country’s spy agency (Inter-Services Intelligence) promptly arrested the doctor for helping Americans identify OBL’s compound. In addition to a fine and his entire bank account being looted, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison for high treason and is now reportedly being tortured: ... According to Afridi, ISI “regards America as its “worst...

The Obama administration is currently engaged in peace negotiations with the Taliban despite the fact that Barack Obama - during a Presidential debate in October of 2008 - excoriated the Pakistani government for conducting peace talks with the Taliban. "We have to change our policies with Pakistan," said Obama in '08. "We can't coddle a dictator, give him billions of dollars, and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban..."VIDEO

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. The Daily Caller has seen a portion of the chapter in which the stunning revelation appears. In ”Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him,“ Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the “kill” mission in January 2011, again in February, and a third time in March. Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett persuaded him...

A report in Pakistani media indicates that one of the Islamic world’s most notorious charities has been making appeals for zakat funds using Twitter. Jamaatud Dawa is considered the political arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jihadist terrorist organization that carried out the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack. In fact, in 2008, after the Mumbai attack, the United Nations declared Jamaatud Dawa a terrorist entity. The message on Twitter, which was also posted on its Facebook page, appealed for Zakat in any form.

Last Sunday, Up with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes ignited significant outrage with his musings about the word “heroes.” This morning, Up panelist and national security reporter for The Nation Jeremy Scahill waded into controversial semantic waters by repeatedly accusing President Obama of “murder” through the administration’s use of drone strikes, which have killed an indeterminate number of civilians. Surprisingly, Scahill’s indictment of the President was challenged, not by Hayes, but by Redstate.com co-founder Joshua Treviño. The topic of discussion was the so-called “kill list” of suspected terrorists to be exterminated in drone strikes. Hayes began by trying to drill...

GOP Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, expressed concern Wednesday about the extent of the Obama administration’s efforts to protect the Pakistan doctor who was sent to prison in Pakistan for treason after helping to find Usama bin Laden. "This has been handled very poorly right from the time of the raid," King told FoxNews.com. Dr. Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the Al Qaeda chief in a May 2011 raid. The operation...

Thirty-three years in prison. He could have gotten death if he'd been tried under Pakistan's penal code, but he was tried in a tribal court that follows a British-era colonial law so he got off "easy" with just a few decades behind bars. For helping catch the leader of Al Qaeda, who greenlit 9/11.The only way the treason charge makes sense conceptually is if you treat spying on Osama Bin Laden as a betrayal of Pakistan's national interests, the endless blather from Islamabad about "standing with the U.S." against AQ notwithstanding. Consider that the silver lining in this otherwise very...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it was "disturbing" and "difficult to understand" Pakistan's 33-year prison sentence for a doctor who aided the United States in finding terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Shakil Afridi, a 48-year-old Pakistani doctor, was convicted last week of high treason by a Pakistani tribal court for working with the CIA by running a fake vaccination program near the al Qaeda leader's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in an attempt to collect DNA samples from bin Laden's relatives to try to confirm his location.

<p>“We face the threats from rising powers — China, India, others — that we have to always have sufficient force protection out there in the Pacific to make sure they know we’re never going anywhere,” Mr. Panetta said during a visit to a shipyard in Groton, Conn., where he toured a submarine, the Mississippi, in the final stages of construction.</p>

The government of Iran, much like many across the Middle East, believes that the Obama administration is so consumed with a desire to undo the wrongs of the Bush era and get out from under the costs of two difficult, hard-to-justify wars in the region that it would never intervene against them militarily. Iranian leaders seem to believe that the United States would not risk another war in the region just to stop their development of nuclear weapons. The government of Israel, also worried that its number one ally has lost its appetite for complex entanglements in the region, seems...

ISLAMABAD: Text books in Pakistani schools foster prejudice and intolerance of Hindus and other religious minorities, while most teachers view non-Muslims as ”enemies of Islam,” according to a study by a US government commission released on Wednesday. The findings indicate how deeply ingrained hard-line Islam is in Pakistan and help explain why militancy is often supported, tolerated or excused in the country. ”Teaching discrimination increases the likelihood that violent religious extremism in Pakistan will continue to grow, weakening religious freedom, national and regional stability, and global security,” said Leonard Leo, the chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom....

A story in the UK Independent says that the US Congress showed its displeasure with the 'Palestinians' going unilaterally to the UN by withholding $200 million in aid that was supposed to be disbursed to Mahmoud Abbas' little fiefdom by the end of this fiscal year, which ended October 1st. Being part of the British press and sharing their well known attitude towards Israel, the article is sympathetic to Abbas, referring to him as being 'punished' and inferring that the US Congress is under the thumb of those Evil Zionists, rather than being upset with the 'Palestinians' for allying with...

By Diane Barnes Texas Governor Rick Perry charged on Thursday that President Obama has failed to build a U.S.-Indian alliance strong enough to mount an adequate response should Pakistani nuclear weapons fall into the hands of regional extremists (see GSN, Sept. 19).Islamabad maintains that its atomic assets are secure and has played down international fears that militants might steal a warhead or weapon-grade material from its nuclear stockpile. The United States, though, has reportedly discussed and possibly drilled on a contingency plan to forcibly secure Pakistan's nuclear stockpile during a crisis (see GSN, Aug. 4). Asked during a Republican presidential...

(Reuters) - U.S. officials say there is mounting evidence that Pakistan's chief intelligence agency has been encouraging a Pakistan-based militant network to attack U.S. targets. The allegations, if fully confirmed, heighten a painful dilemma for President Barack Obama's administration. Washington is under growing political pressure to take action against the Haqqani network after a spate of deadly attacks U.S. officials have attributed to it. These include last week's strike against the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Some U.S. intelligence reporting alleges that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) specifically directed, or urged, the Haqqani network to carry out the September...

Former singing star and now Republican activist Pat Boone has repeated his assertions that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore illegible to be in the White House. In an appearance at a Republican convention in Los Angeles, Boone, a member of the Beverly Hills Tea Party, told reporters: “I was in Kenya a year and a half ago and everybody said, ‘You know, he [Obama] was born here.” He added: “Why else would he be hiding all his records? He is spending millions of dollars so we do not have his records. And experts have already looked...

Last May I wrote the Pakis cannot be trusted. I hate being right about Pakistan. The Pakis view China as a better ally than the unstable United States under Barack Obama and their relationship with us has deteriorated since the killing of Osama bin Laden. They were upset about not being allowed to warn the al Qaeda leader about the planned raid on his compound as they clearly did in 1998 the before retaliatory cruise missile attacks for the U.S. Embassy attacks in Africa. Latest Episode During the raid that killed bin Laden the United States lost a stealth helicopter...