Saturday, August 10, 2013

Million Muslim March on D.C. Intentionally Set for 11 September 2013 Anniversary of WTC Terrorist Attack



Source: http://www.westernjournalism.com/million-muslim-march-on-dc-set-for-9112013/

First, let me start by saying that I am not trying to scare anyone and that I’m not asking anyone to think like me. But I am asking people to think. I have many friends in the military who are keeping me up to date on the UN forces that are amassing here in OUR Republic.

The “Million Muslim March” on DC, set for 9/11/2013, is when I expect “things to get out of control.” And this POTUS may try to take advantage of the situation (and by “executive order” begin Martial Law.)With the MASSIVE buildup of UN Forces added to the Islamic Jihad Terrorists already positioned in this country, I believe something may happen; and we better be prepared.

Obama knows we’re all on to him
, and he’s being backed into a corner with all of these scandals surrounding him. So what better way to stir up trouble than to have his Muslim brothers amass in DC.? No doubt they’ll have some instigators stir something up. Karl Marx said that “The masses are too stupid and ignorant to understand how good communism will be for them, so they need to be forced down that path, by any and all means possible. Lie, deceive, create class and race warfare issues, and use catastrophes (and if there are none, make some up; the ends justify the means)” Lets face it: Obama wants to be king, and what better way to begin Martial Law than to have his Terrorist Brothers cause problems?

Islamic jihad terrorists are well positioned here and have been for quite a while. Of the world’s 1.9 billion claimed by Islamic leaders, there are an estimated 7-10 million Muslims in the U.S. That is up from 5 million estimated 10 years ago. I believe the 7-10 million is a low-ball figure. No one knows for sure because our Census laws do not allow us to ask about religious affiliation.

All Muslims say the same shahada – confession of faith – There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is Allah’s prophet. That sets the stage for taking over the world for Allah, the establishment of a worldwide caliphate with Sharia Law, forced conversion of all infidels – unbelievers in Islam, subjugation in dhimmi of those who will not convert, or elimination of those who have converted or not at the whim of some Islamist leader (starting with any who have left Islam, then in order moving on to Jews, Christians, and others.)

Obama has said there are 2000 mosques, Islamic societies, and such in the U.S. now, up from 1200 10 years ago. Obama should know due to the strong influences on him by Islamists and Marxists; his installing Islamist and Marxist operatives in his tyrannical, despotic, evil regime; and hosting hundreds of Islamist visitors at the White House for consultations with him. The Islamists include Valerie Jarrett – Obama’s closest advisor, born in Iran – and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s adviser Huma Abedin – who has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.


You can search online and get maps of the locations of: 1) the mosques, etc., 2) Islamic jihad terrorist fundraising sites, and 3) Islamic jihad terrorist training sites in the U.S. The mosques, etc. and fundraising sites maps are near mirror images. The training sites are under Jamaat al-Fuqra.

A specific purpose of Jamaat al-Fuqra is to recruit and train domestic terrorists in the US. The two Pakistani brothers arrested in Ft. Lauderdale last year may well have been trained by Jamaat al-Fuqra. Naturalized US citizens, they were planning terrorist attacks in the US with WMDs, according to the FBI.

If people are even semi-conscious (and not deaf, blind, and dumb), they should remember the Ft. Hood Massacre, when US Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan ran around screaming “Alahu akubar” and gunning down US soldiers, their family members, and other citizens. There were also two young, unarmed US Army recruits shot down in front of a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting station in that time frame. Various other plots have been thwarted. One was for an attack with bombs and real assault rifles, machine guns, etc. on Ft. Dix, NJ. An alert citizen got law enforcement onto that plot. He was and still is a camera and photoshop owner who saw pictures the plotters brought in for processing at his business.

According to a recent report, Obama has requested that at least 15,000 Russian troops trained in disaster relief and “crowd functions” [i.e. riot control] be pre-positioned to respond to FEMA Region III during an unspecified “upcoming” disaster.

Also in the report, DHS head Janet Napolitano said these Russian troops would work “directly and jointly” with FEMA, whose mission in part is to secure the continuity of the US government in the event of natural disasters or war.

Important to note, this report says, is that FEMA Region III (the area Russian troops were requested for) includes Washington D.C. and the surrounding States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.




h/t  Jack WV










Bibi’s choice

FRESNO ZIONISM


posted on Saturday, August 10th, 2013
News item:
MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. law enforcement officials expressed outrage over the release from prison of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero and vowed to continue efforts to bring to justice the man who ordered the killing of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
Caro Quintero was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of DEA agent Enrique Camarena but a Mexican federal court ordered his release this week saying he had been improperly tried in a federal court for state crimes. 
The Association of Former Federal Narcotics Agents in the United States said it was “outraged” by Caro Quintero’s early release and blamed corruption within Mexico’s justice system.
“The release of this violent butcher is but another example of how good faith efforts by the U.S. to work with the Mexican government can be frustrated by those powerful dark forces that work in the shadows of the Mexican ‘justice’ system,” the organization said in a statement.

So imagine how they would react if 104 “violent butcher(s)were released from prison as a result of improper influence on the justice system, particularly if that influence came from a foreign power! This describes the prisoner release that Israel’s leaders have been coerced into accepting as the price for beginning talks with the PLO.

There isn’t justice in nature. Sometimes evil people do terrible things and escape punishment, even thrive. This brute fact has prompted countless pages of philosophical and theological discourse. But one thing that is not in doubt is that it is one of the functions of civilization to try to bring some order out of this moral chaos by imposing justice.

Hence one of the seven Noachide laws — one of the moral principles that Judaism recognizes as a requirement for any civilized nation, Jewish or not — is to establish courts of law. Subverting justice, then, is one of the worst crimes a person can commit.

PM Netanyahu fell into a trap set for him by Barack Obama, perhaps payback for the humiliation Obama suffered in May 2011, when Bibi dared to publicly instruct the ‘leader of the free world’ about “Middle East reality.”

Now Obama has handed him a “Sophie’s choice,” a moral dilemma in which both forks are horrible. Should he release the prisoners, cause immense pain to the families of their victims, damage Israel’s honor and deterrence, and subvert the legal system that condemned them (and by the way, destroy his own reputation and political career)? Or should he tell Obama to go to hell and expose Israel to whatever consequences were threatened?

Bibi has made his choice. History will judge him.

http://fresnozionism.org/2013/08/bibis-choice/


The West’s Blind Spot Towards Russia

by  on August 9, 2013
By Ralph H. Sidway, guest contributor 
Perhaps there really is a “colonial mentality” afflicting the Western Powers after all.  How else to explain the succession of disastrous foreign policy choices by Barack Obama, David Cameron, and the NATO alliance regarding the “Arab Spring,” which are not merely ill advised, but downright immoral.

The Burning of Christian Smyrna by Turkish Troops, September 14, 1922
It’s one thing to put forth a foreign policy which tries to spread democracy, but it is quite another when one puts one’s finger on the scale—as the Obama Administration has done in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and now Syria—in order to leverage into power repressive forces who historically have persecuted their neighbors, and have stated their intention to do so again today.
Democratic governance in Islamic nations should not, in fact, be the goal of United States foreign policy. As Raymond Ibrahim has written, “as with all forms of governance, democracy is a means to an end: based on whether that end is good (freedom) or bad (tyranny) should be the ultimate measure of its worth.”
Indeed, as we have seen in the bloody persecution of Christians under Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood Egypt and the other poisonous fruits of the “Arab Spring,” Islamists do not respect the principles nor the goals of democracy, but merely use it as a tool, a means to their end, even likening voting to a form of jihad, their ultimate goal being the institution of shariah law. And as nearly fourteen hundred years of Islamic history has proven, the shariah means tyranny for non-Muslims.
This extreme dissonance regarding the end goal is one component of the West’s blind spot towards the Levant. Mistaking the process of democracy as a goal in and of itself, the West has chosen some spectacularly unsavory bedfellows. And by allying itself to the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the cannibalistic Syrian rebel jihadis, the Obama Administration and its partners have launched out on a course which can only lead to another genocide against indigenous Christians, a classic case of history being repeated.
In the early-mid 19th century, although Great Britain, France and Russia together sought to protect the Christian minorities under the Ottoman yoke, Britain later, under Disraeli, actually aligned with the Ottomans, and effectively allowed severe repressions of the Serbs in 1875, and massacres of Bulgarians in 1876, in which as many as 100,000 Christians were slaughtered by Turkish forces.
It was only the Russians who actually came to the defense of the Armenians and the Balkan Christian populations in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Romania, Serbia and Montenegro gained full independence through the Russian victory, and Bulgaria autonomy. Britain became more alarmed, however, at Russia’s resurgence than at the Ottoman threat to Christian minorities, and forced Russia out of Ottoman territory through the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. This led to a soft-influence, “lead from behind” approach by the Great Powers, which ultimately enabled the irrefutably documented Turkish genocidal massacres of Armenian and Christian populations from 1894 through to 1915.
The similarities to our own age are startling.
Did Russia have territorial goals in the 19th century? Certainly, but modest ones, related to ports and sea access, and no threat to Great Britain. One ought not underestimate the motivating force of Russia’s self-perceived role as protector and liberator of the enslaved Orthodox and Armenian Christians. The British were blind to this dynamic, and millions were killed by the Turks as a result. One might even make the case that had Tsarist Russia been supported by Britain and France in her 1878 containment policy towards the tottering Ottoman Empire, that even World War I might have been averted. But that’s 20/20 hindsight for you.
In any case, one must admit of an inherent Western blind spot when it comes to understanding Russia’s foreign policy vis a vis vulnerable Christian populations. I would submit that what we are witnessing today in Russia’s clearly articulated role as protector of Christian minorities in the Islamic world is the contemporary application of a deeply felt holy duty, which the Russian Orthodox Church has enjoined upon the Putin government.
Appreciating this motivating dynamic behind Russian foreign policy, and schooling our president and elected representatives is now the essential task. It is certain that if Obama has his way and manages to install radical Islamist groups in Egypt, Syria and other Muslim nations, then indigenous Christians will suffer worst of all.
In the last decade we’ve already seen the collapse of the Christian population in Iraq, an explosion of genocidal atrocities against the Copts in Egypt, and massacres of whole Christian villages in Syria. Is it prudent for the United States to continue down this path, when the outcome already mirrors the treatment of the Armenian, Pontus and Greek Christians by the vengeful Turkish Muslims of a century ago?
And let us not forget the destruction of the ancient Christian port of Smyrna in September 1922, during which as many as 100,000 Armenian and Greek Christians were massacred, their homes and shops burned to the ground by Turkish troops, under the callous eyes of British and French warships anchored in the harbor, and American troops in the city, ordered to not intervene.
Let us not repeat such scandalous moral failures of yesteryear.
Rather, our times call for a radical re-alignment of American foreign policy with the morally undergirded realpolitik of Russia’s robust stance against radical Islam. It will require force, a willingness to face reality, and a moral commitment to defend the most vulnerable of the Islamic world’s population, in order to establish peace in the volatile Muslim world. And it will take clear vision.
But can the West overcome its stubborn blind spot regarding Russia?
Ralph Sidway is an Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, and author of Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad.  He operates the Facing Islam blog.

When Failure Carries No Cost

August 9, 2013 By  

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post. 
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This week, after a three-and-a-half-year delay, US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was finally placed on trial for massacring 13 and wounding 32 at Ft. Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009.
Hasan was a self-identified jihadist. His paper and electronic trail provided mountains of evidence that he committed the massacre to advance the cause of Islamic supremacy. Islamic supremacists like Hasan, and his early mentor al-Qaida operations chief Anwar al-Awlaki, view as enemies all people who oppose totalitarian Islam’s quest for global domination.
Before, during and following his assault, Hasan made his jihadist motives obvious to the point of caricature in his statements about the US, the US military and the duties of pious Muslims. But rather than believe Hasan, and so do justice to his victims, the Obama administration, with the active collusion of senior US military commanders went to great lengths to cover up Hasan’s ideological motivations and hence the nature of his crime.
On the day of the attack, Lt.-Gen. Robert Cone, then commander of III Corps at Ft. Hood, said preliminary evidence didn’t suggest that the shooting was terrorism. Cone said this even though it was immediately known that before he began shooting Hasan called out “Allahu akhbar.” He called himself a “Soldier of Islam” on his business cards.
In an interview with CNN three days after the attack, US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said, “Our diversity, not only in our army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
The intensity of the Obama administration’s participation in this cover-up became clear in May 2012. At that time, Congress had placed a clause inside the Defense Appropriations Act requiring the Pentagon to award Purple Hearts to Ft. Hood’s victims. Rather than accept this eminently reasonable demand, which simply required the administration to acknowledge reality, Obama’s emissaries announced he would veto the appropriations bill and so leave the Pentagon without a budget unless the clause was removed.
Rather than define Hasan’s attack as an enemy attack or a terrorist act, the administration has defined it as a case of “workplace violence.” Following this determination, those wounded in the attack, as well as the families of the murdered, are denied the support conferred on soldiers killed or wounded by enemy fire.
At the first day of Hasan’s trial this week, he admitted that he perpetrated the murderous attack because he is a jihadist who “switched sides” in the war. That is, he told the court that he conducted the attack as an act of war against the United States to advance the goals of the global jihad.
Hasan’s statement made clear, once again, that in its efforts to describe his actions as “workplace violence,” the administration is engaging in a cover-up. Its purpose is to deny the American people the truth about the nature of the jihadist threat to their country.
Outside the conservative media, and certain circles of the Republican Party, there has been no public outcry over the government’s decision to cover up the nature of Hasan’s actions. The public’s passivity in the face of the government’s mendacious, unjust behavior owes to the fact that the mainstream media have not castigated the administration for its decision to hide that Hasan was not a garden variety disgruntled employee but a traitor who acted in the service of declared enemies of the United States. In the absence of a media-induced public outcry, the administration has no reason to change its behavior. It has no impetus to acknowledge the truth and act accordingly.
THE SAME is the case with regards to the September 11, 2012, attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi. Already on the day of the attack, it was apparent that the US mission and the CIA annex had been targeted in a premeditated, preplanned attack. Footage of the attack broadcast in real time showed armed men attacking the consulate with rocket-propelled grenades. It was not an act of savage mob violence. Mobs do not carry RPGs or act in a coordinated manner. That is, already at the time of the attack it was apparent that it was not a spontaneous protest in response to an anti-Islamic video on YouTube.
And yet, from the outset, the administration covered up what happened. And the media colluded. Fox News was the only major network that pursued the story. A US ambassador was raped and murdered on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. US personnel were under multi-pronged attack for hours. Their desperate pleas for assistance were denied by the administration. And the US media went along with the fiction that the attack was a spontaneous outburst of rage over a YouTube video no one had ever seen.
The media’s collusion was so great that CNN anchor Candy Crowley threw a US presidential debate when she defended Barack Obama’s handling of the attack by inserting false information in the middle of the debate that she was moderating.
The Benghazi story keeps getting more and more outrageous. Last week we learned that some two dozen CIA personnel were on the ground during the attack. The administration has reportedly scattered these operatives throughout the US and forced them to adopt new identities. They have reportedly been prohibited from speaking to the media or congressional investigators, and subjected to monthly polygraph tests.
US personnel wounded in the attack have been hidden from investigators since the attack took place.
This behavior is scandalous, and unprecedented. Yet, outside of the “usual suspects” in the conservative media and the Republican Party, there is no outrage. The media coverage of this shocking revelation is nearly nonexistent, and where it exists, the reportage is laconic, indifferent.
Here, too, the administration feels comfortable perpetuating its cover-up. As in the case of Ft. Hood, why come clean if there is no price to pay for lying and covering up?
Speaking of the frequent US failures in understanding events in faraway lands, Winston Churchill famously quipped, “We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
But what if the other possibilities are never exhausted? The media’s collusion with the Obama administration’s false portrayal of jihadist attacks on US targets gives foreign leaders concerned about the US’s lackadaisical attitude toward jihadist threats no reason for confidence. In the absence of public pressure, the Obama administration has no reason to change course when its policies fail.
IN ISRAEL’S case, the first place where the lesson of this state of affairs needs to be internalized is in regards to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Since taking office, Obama has repeatedly claimed that he will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But in practice, his actions have enabled Iran to vastly expand its nuclear weapons program. Due to his malfeasance, today Iran has arrived at the cusp of a nuclear arsenal. More than his words, Obama’s actions have made clear that he has no intention whatsoever of conducting military strikes against Iran’s nuclear installations to prevent the regime from developing nuclear weapons.
Obama’s latest ploy for running the clock down is his embrace of the fiction that Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, is a moderate interested, (and perforce empowered), to cut a nuclear deal with the US that would see Iran voluntarily and credibly end its uranium enrichment activities.
Speaking of Rouhani this week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu referred to him as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and warned US and European officials not to be taken in by his act. Netanyahu also noted that Iran has expanded its nuclear activities since Rouhani was elected two months ago.
But he might as well save his breath.
Rouhani’s act – like that of his supposedly moderate predecessors Mohammad Khatami and Ahkbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – is so thin that it can only work on people who will be taken in by anyone. And indeed, the Obama administration was taken in by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For five years Obama insisted on conducting self-evidently futile negotiations with Iran while Ahmadinejad – the anti-moderate – was serving as president.
The US and Europe are not taken in by Iran because Iran is good at hiding its true intentions. They are taken in by Iran because they want to be taken in. They want to believe that they don’t have to attack Iran and overthrow the regime to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power. They want to believe they can appease Iran by pretending it isn’t a danger, just as they believe they can end the threat of terror by jihadists in the US military and Benghazi by pretending they don’t exist.
They want to believe these threats can be ignored, or appeased away. And just as Obama and his followers are willing to pretend away Hasan’s actions to protect “diversity,” and to pretend away the September 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi to protect the myth of the Arab Spring, so they are willing to permit Iran to go nuclear to protect the sanctity of appeasement.
The only thing they are willing to put their foot down about is the prospect of an Israeli strike. And they have put their foot down on this issue for the past decade. It isn’t that the US is deliberately enabling Iran to acquire a nuclear arsenal. It is just that the US elite in government and the media care more about protecting their faith in diversity and appeasement than they do about preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
They have convinced themselves that the prospect of appeasing Iran will evaporate if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear installations. And so we have seen a parade of senior US defense officials descending on Israel every time it appears that Israel is planning to attack Iran. We have seen a parade of former Israeli military and security chiefs with close ties to the US defense establishment declaring before every available microphone that Israel must not strike Iran and that we can count on Obama to protect us.
But we mustn’t believe their assurances or succumb to their pressure. Obama will not change course. He doesn’t have to. So long as he maintains faith with the god of appeasement, the US media will protect him. And so long as they protect him, he will pay no price for his failures. So he will repeat them.
Israel cannot countenance a nuclear Iran. So Israel needs to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.
No more needs to be said.

PRESS CONFERENCE: STARED DOWN BY SNOWDEN


Somewhere in Russia, Edward Snowden Is Smiling

Obama couldn't say it—he denied it repeatedly in fact—but Edward Snowden was very much the reason he felt compelled to stand before the national press on a sunbaked Friday August afternoon and attempt to explain why his administration would pursue reforms of its counterterrorism programs even though—and this is the tricky part—he wouldn't concede that those programs are flawed in any way.
"It's not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs," Obama said before reporters in the White House East Room. "The American people need to have confidence in them, as well."
Even as the president was outlining his plans, he was just as quick to insist that the NSA's wide latitude to collect data isn't being abused. "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people," Obama said. The surveillance programs, he said, were valuable and "should be preserved." The flaw, if there was one, he said, lay in his assumption that the public would trust that the "checks and balances" in place between the administration, Congress, and the courts was enough to secure personal freedom. Instead, he said, after Snowden's revelations, "I think people have questions about this program."
 Read more: http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/somewhere-in-russia-edward-snowden-is-smiling-20130809

Bee's note:
So, Obama "thinks" people have questions about NSA's program - "thinks"!?!

If Obama ever had an original thought, he would admit that the Office of the Presidency is "above his pay scale" and resign immediately.  But, that is the last thing an egoistical, Narcissist individual would do, even if it would be for the good of this nation.
Yesterday's Press Conference was just another example of a man who attempts to by-pass serious questions, coverups, and disturbing issues, such as, Benghazi, IRS, NSA (to mention a few) that Americans want direct answers to, while Obama stands before the nation, and as un-Presidential as he is, cannot even demonstrate diplomacy when speaking of Russia's President Putin. Is Obama trying to start a "War of Words" between the United States and Russia?  Has Obama ever, since first elected, demonstrated self control when speaking of, or to, world leaders?

Obama's picked up on "body language" and mentioned it yesterday, in his "jokingly" style, as he referred to Putin.  How interesting!  World leaders and American citizens have been observing Obama's body language for years; both his, and that of his staff, including the former Secretary of State Clinton.  For instance, have you ever noticed that Obama has rarely smiled when speaking to PM Netanyahu?  He saves those genuine smiles for the Arab PLO/PA Abbas, et. al.  

Here's an example that rivals the one taken recently of Obama-Putin:

Obama should never speak about someone else's body language; his own is a dead giveaway, always! Thousands upon thousands of photos demonstrate the child-like, temper-tantrums, thrown by "Barry" and it's never a pretty sight.  Is this petty?  Of course it is, and that is how petty our "President" was yesterday, during his meeting with the Press.  One last thing:  world leaders are bound to have disagreements; but their disagreements are normally discussed behind closed doors - not in front of the Media, and certainly not at a Press Conference.

Americans are not just concerned about NSA's spying, or America's failed economy, or Obama's "disastrous outreach to the Muslim world", over-riding and destroying America's relationships with long-term friends and allies; Americans are deeply concerned that whatever Obama says or does in "Office" is an ongoing undermining of the best interests of the United States - period.  An interesting article for bedtime reading can be found here.

Complete Obama Press Conference on NSA Surveillance, Snowden

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
August 09, 2013

Remarks by the President in a Press Conference

3:09 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. Please have a seat.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking about what I believe should be our number-one priority as a country -- building a better bargain for the middle class and for Americans who want to work their way into the middle class. At the same time, I’m focused on my number-one responsibility as Commander-in-Chief, and that's keeping the American people safe. And in recent days, we’ve been reminded once again about the threats to our nation.

As I said at the National Defense University back in May, in meeting those threats we have to strike the right balance between protecting our security and preserving our freedoms. And as part of this rebalancing, I called for a review of our surveillance programs. Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate, but not always fully informed way.

Now, keep in mind that as a senator, I expressed a healthy skepticism about these programs, and as President, I’ve taken steps to make sure they have strong oversight by all three branches of government and clear safeguards to prevent abuse and protect the rights of the American people. But given the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance -- particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives.

I’m also mindful of how these issues are viewed overseas, because American leadership around the world depends upon the example of American democracy and American openness -- because what makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation, it’s the way we do it -- with open debate and democratic process.

In other words, it’s not enough for me, as President, to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them as well. And that's why, over the last few weeks, I’ve consulted members of Congress who come at this issue from many different perspectives. I’ve asked the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to review where our counterterrorism efforts and our values come into tension, and I directed my national security team to be more transparent and to pursue reforms of our laws and practices.

And so, today, I’d like to discuss four specific steps -- not all inclusive, but some specific steps that we’re going to be taking very shortly to move the debate forward.

First, I will work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to Section 215 of the Patriot Act -- the program that collects telephone records. As I’ve said, this program is an important tool in our effort to disrupt terrorist plots. And it does not allow the government to listen to any phone calls without a warrant. But given the scale of this program, I understand the concerns of those who would worry that it could be subject to abuse. So after having a dialogue with members of Congress and civil libertarians, I believe that there are steps we can take to give the American people additional confidence that there are additional safeguards against abuse.

For instance, we can take steps to put in place greater oversight, greater transparency, and constraints on the use of this authority. So I look forward to working with Congress to meet those objectives.

Second, I’ll work with Congress to improve the public’s confidence in the oversight conducted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISC. The FISC was created by Congress to provide judicial review of certain intelligence activities so that a federal judge must find that our actions are consistent with the Constitution. However, to build greater confidence, I think we should consider some additional changes to the FISC.

One of the concerns that people raise is that a judge reviewing a request from the government to conduct programmatic surveillance only hears one side of the story -- may tilt it too far in favor of security, may not pay enough attention to liberty. And while I’ve got confidence in the court and I think they’ve done a fine job, I think we can provide greater assurances that the court is looking at these issues from both perspectives -- security and privacy.

So, specifically, we can take steps to make sure civil liberties concerns have an independent voice in appropriate cases by ensuring that the government’s position is challenged by an adversary.

Number three, we can, and must, be more transparent. So I’ve directed the intelligence community to make public as much information about these programs as possible. We’ve already declassified unprecedented information about the NSA, but we can go further. So at my direction, the Department of Justice will make public the legal rationale for the government’s collection activities under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The NSA is taking steps to put in place a full-time civil liberties and privacy officer, and released information that details its mission, authorities, and oversight. And finally, the intelligence community is creating a website that will serve as a hub for further transparency, and this will give Americans and the world the ability to learn more about what our intelligence community does and what it doesn’t do, how it carries out its mission, and why it does so.

Fourth, we’re forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era. We now have to unravel terrorist plots by finding a needle in the haystack of global telecommunications. And meanwhile, technology has given governments -- including our own -- unprecedented capability to monitor communications.

So I am tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities -- particularly our surveillance technologies. And they’ll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy -- particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. And they will provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy, and our foreign policy.

So all these steps are designed to ensure that the American people can trust that our efforts are in line with our interests and our values. And to others around the world, I want to make clear once again that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused, above all, on finding the information that’s necessary to protect our people, and -- in many cases -- protect our allies.

It’s true we have significant capabilities. What’s also true is we show a restraint that many governments around the world don't even think to do, refuse to show -- and that includes, by the way, some of America’s most vocal critics. We shouldn’t forget the difference between the ability of our government to collect information online under strict guidelines and for narrow purposes, and the willingness of some other governments to throw their own citizens in prison for what they say online.

And let me close with one additional thought. The men and women of our intelligence community work every single day to keep us safe because they love this country and believe in our values. They're patriots. And I believe that those who have lawfully raised their voices on behalf of privacy and civil liberties are also patriots who love our country and want it to live up to our highest ideals. So this is how we’re going to resolve our differences in the United States -- through vigorous public debate, guided by our Constitution, with reverence for our history as a nation of laws, and with respect for the facts.

So, with that, I’m going to take some questions. And let’s see who we’ve got here. We’re going to start with Julie Pace of AP.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to ask about some of the foreign policy fallout from the disclosure of the NSA programs that you discussed. Your spokesman said yesterday that there’s no question that the U.S. relationship with Russia has gotten worse since Vladimir Putin took office. How much of that decline do you attribute directly to Mr. Putin, given that you seem to have had a good working relationship with his predecessor? Also will there be any additional punitive measures taken against Russia for granting asylum to Edward Snowden? Or is canceling the September summit really all you can do given the host of issues the U.S. needs Russian cooperation for? Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Good. I think there’s always been some tension in the U.S.-Russian relationship after the fall of the Soviet Union. There’s been cooperation in some areas; there’s been competition in others.

It is true that in my first four years, in working with President Medvedev, we made a lot of progress. We got START done -- or START II done. We were able to cooperate together on Iran sanctions. They provided us help in terms of supplying our troops in Afghanistan. We were able to get Russia into the WTO -- which is not just good for Russia, it’s good for our companies and businesses because they're more likely then to follow international norms and rules. So there's been a lot of good work that has been done and that is going to continue to be done. What's also true is, is that when President Putin -- who was prime minister when Medvedev was president -- came back into power I think we saw more rhetoric on the Russian side that was anti-American, that played into some of the old stereotypes about the Cold War contests between the United States and Russia. And I've encouraged Mr. Putin to think forward as opposed to backwards on those issues -- with mixed success.

And I think the latest episode is just one more in a number of emerging differences that we've seen over the last several months around Syria, around human rights issues, where it is probably appropriate for us to take a pause, reassess where it is that Russia is going, what our core interests are, and calibrate the relationship so that we're doing things that are good for the United States and hopefully good for Russia as well, but recognizing that there just are going to be some differences and we're not going to be able to completely disguise them.

And that's okay. Keep in mind that although I'm not attending the summit, I'll still be going to St. Petersburg because Russia is hosting the G20. That's important business in terms of our economy and our jobs and all the issues that are of concern to Americans.

I know that one question that's been raised is how do we approach the Olympics. I want to just make very clear right now I do not think it's appropriate to boycott the Olympics. We've got a bunch of Americans out there who are training hard, who are doing everything they can to succeed. Nobody is more offended than me by some of the anti-gay and lesbian legislation that you've been seeing in Russia. But as I said just this week, I've spoken out against that not just with respect to Russia but a number of other countries where we continue to do work with them, but we have a strong disagreement on this issue.

And one of the things I'm really looking forward to is maybe some gay and lesbian athletes bringing home the gold or silver or bronze, which I think would go a long way in rejecting the kind of attitudes that we're seeing there. And if Russia doesn't have gay or lesbian athletes, then it probably makes their team weaker.

Q Are there going to be any additional punitive measures for Russia, beyond canceling the summit?

THE PRESIDENT: Keep in mind that our decision to not participate in the summit was not simply around Mr. Snowden. It had to do with the fact that, frankly, on a whole range of issues where we think we can make some progress, Russia has not moved. And so we don't consider that strictly punitive.

We're going to assess where the relationship can advance U.S. interests and increase peace and stability and prosperity around the world. Where it can, we’re going to keep on working with them. Where we have differences, we’re going to say so clearly. And my hope is, is that over time, Mr. Putin and Russia recognize that rather than a zero-sum competition, in fact, if the two countries are working together we can probably advance the betterment of both peoples.

Chuck Todd.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Given that you just announced a whole bunch of reforms based on essentially the leaks that Edward Snowden made on all of these surveillance programs, is that change -- is your mindset changed about him? Is he now more a whistle-blower than he is a hacker, as you called him at one point, or somebody that shouldn’t be filed charges? And should he be provided more protection? Is he a patriot? You just used those words. And then just to follow up on the personal -- I want to follow up on a personal --

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, I want to make sure -- everybody is asking one question it would be helpful.

Q No, I understand. It was a part of a question that you didn’t answer. Can you get stuff done with Russia, big stuff done, without having a good personal relationship with Putin?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t have a bad personal relationship with Putin. When we have conversations, they’re candid, they’re blunt; oftentimes, they’re constructive. I know the press likes to focus on body language and he’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom. But the truth is, is that when we’re in conversations together, oftentimes it’s very productive.

So the issue here really has to do with where do they want to take Russia -- it’s substantive on a policy front. And --

Q (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT: No. Right now, this is just a matter of where Mr. Putin and the Russian people want to go. I think if they are looking forward into the 21st century and how they can advance their economy, and make sure that some of our joint concerns around counterterrorism are managed effectively, then I think we can work together. If issues are framed as if the U.S. is for it then Russia should be against it, or we’re going to be finding ways where we can poke each other at every opportunity, then probably we don’t get as much stuff done.

See, now I’ve forgotten your first question, which presumably was the more important one. No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot. As I said in my opening remarks, I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks.

My preference -- and I think the American people’s preference -- would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws, a thoughtful fact-based debate that would then lead us to a better place. Because I never made claims that all the surveillance technologies that have developed since the time some of these laws had been put in place somehow didn't require potentially some additional reforms. That's exactly what I called for.

So the fact is, is that Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies. If, in fact, he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American citizen, he can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case. If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistleblower protection to the intelligence community -- for the first time. So there were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions.

But having said that, once the leaks have happened, what we’ve seen is information come out in dribs and in drabs, sometimes coming out sideways. Once the information is out, the administration comes in, tries to correct the record. But by that time, it’s too late or we’ve moved on, and a general impression has, I think, taken hold not only among the American public but also around the world that somehow we’re out there willy-nilly just sucking in information on everybody and doing what we please with it.

That's not the case. Our laws specifically prohibit us from surveilling U.S. persons without a warrant. And there are a whole range of safeguards that have been put in place to make sure that that basic principle is abided by.

But what is clear is that whether, because of the instinctive bias of the intelligence community to keep everything very close -- and probably what’s a fair criticism is my assumption that if we had checks and balances from the courts and Congress, that that traditional system of checks and balances would be enough to give people assurance that these programs were run probably -- that assumption I think proved to be undermined by what happened after the leaks. I think people have questions about this program.

And so, as a consequence, I think it is important for us to go ahead and answer these questions. What I’m going to be pushing the IC to do is rather than have a trunk come out here and leg come out there and a tail come out there, let’s just put the whole elephant out there so people know exactly what they're looking at. Let’s examine what is working, what’s not, are there additional protections that can be put in place, and let’s move forward.

And there’s no doubt that Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board to go through, and I had sat down with Congress and we had worked this thing through. It would have been less exciting. It would not have generated as much press. I actually think we would have gotten to the same place, and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security and some very vital ways that we are able to get intelligence that we need to secure the country.

[Q&A on Federal Reserve chairman omitted.]

Carol Lee.

Q Thank you, Mr. President.

I wanted to ask you about your evolution on the surveillance issues. I mean, part of what you’re talking about today is restoring the public trust. And the public has seen you evolve from when you were in the U.S. Senate to now. And even as recently as June, you said that the process was such that people should be comfortable with it, and now you’re saying you’re making these reforms and people should be comfortable with those. So why should the public trust you on this issue, and why did you change your position multiple times?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it’s important to say, Carol, first of all, I haven’t evolved in my assessment of the actual programs. I consistently have said that when I came into office I evaluated them. Some of these programs I had been critical of when I was in the Senate. When I looked through specifically what was being done, my determination was that the two programs in particular that had been at issue, 215 and 702, offered valuable intelligence that helps us protect the American people and they're worth preserving. What we also saw was that some bolts needed to be tightened up on some of the programs, so we initiated some additional oversight, reforms, compliance officers, audits and so forth.

And if you look at the reports -- even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden has put forward -- all the stories that have been written, what you're not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and listening in on people's phone calls or inappropriately reading people's emails. What you're hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now, part of the reason they're not abused is because these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC.

Having said that, though, if you are outside of the intelligence community, if you are the ordinary person and you start seeing a bunch of headlines saying, U.S.-Big Brother looking down on you, collecting telephone records, et cetera, well, understandably, people would be concerned. I would be, too, if I wasn't inside the government.

And so in light of the changed environment where a whole set of questions have been raised, some in the most sensationalized manner possible, where these leaks are released drip by drip, one a week, to kind of maximize attention and see if they can catch us at some imprecision on something -- in light of that, it makes sense for us to go ahead, lay out what exactly we're doing, have a discussion with Congress, have a discussion with industry -- which is also impacted by this -- have a discussion with civil libertarians, and see can we do this better.

I think the main thing I want to emphasize is I don't have an interest and the people at the NSA don't have an interest in doing anything other than making sure that where we can prevent a terrorist attack, where we can get information ahead of time, that we're able to carry out that critical task. We do not have an interest in doing anything other than that. And we've tried to set up a system that is as failsafe as so far at least we've been able to think of to make sure that these programs are not abused.

But people may have better ideas and people may want to jigger slightly sort of the balance between the information that we can get versus the incremental encroachments on privacy that if haven't already taken place might take place in a future administration, or as technologies develop further.

And the other thing that’s happening is, is that as technology develops further, technology itself may provide us some additional safeguards. So, for example, if people don’t have confidence that the law, the checks and balances of the court and Congress are sufficient to give us confidence that government is not snooping, well, maybe we can embed technologies in there that prevent the snooping regardless of what government wants to do. I mean, there may be some technological fixes that provide another layer of assurance.

And so those are the kinds of things that I’m looking forward to having a conversation about.

Q Can you understand, though, why some people might not trust what you're saying right now about wanting to --

THE PRESIDENT: No, I can’t.

Q -- that they should be comfortable with the process?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact that I said that the programs are operating in a way that prevents abuse, that continues to be true, without the reforms. The question is how do I make the American people more comfortable.

If I tell Michelle that I did the dishes -- now, granted, in the White House I don’t do the dishes that much -- (laughter) -- but back in the day -- and she’s a little skeptical, well, I’d like her to trust me, but maybe I need to bring her back and show her the dishes and not just have her take my word for it.

And so the program is -- I am comfortable that the program currently is not being abused. I’m comfortable that if the American people examined exactly what was taking place, how it was being used, what the safeguards were, that they would say, you know what, these folks are following the law and doing what they say they’re doing.

But it is absolutely true that with the expansion of technology -- this is an area that’s moving very quickly -- with the revelations that have depleted public trust, that if there are some additional things that we can do to build that trust back up, then we should do them.

Jonathan Karl.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You have said that core al Qaeda has been decimated, that its leaders are on the run. Now that we’ve seen this terror threat that has resulted in embassies closed throughout the Arab world, much of Africa, do you still believe that al Qaeda has been decimated? And if I can ask in the interest of transparency, can you tell us about these drone strikes that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks in Yemen?

THE PRESIDENT: What I said in the same National Defense University speech back in May that I referred to earlier is that core al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated. But what I also said was that al Qaeda and other extremists have metastasized into regional groups that can pose significant dangers.

And I’d refer you back to that speech just back in May where I said specifically that although they are less likely to be able to carry out spectacular homeland attacks like 9/11, they have the capacity to go after our embassies. They have the capacity, potentially, to go after our businesses. They have the capacity to be destabilizing and disruptive in countries where the security apparatus is weak. And that’s exactly what we are seeing right now.

So it’s entirely consistent to say that this tightly organized and relatively centralized al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 has been broken apart and is very weak and does not have a lot of operational capacity, and to say we still have these regional organizations like AQAP that can pose a threat, that can drive potentially a truck bomb into an embassy wall and can kill some people.

And so that requires us, then, to make sure that we have a strategy that is strengthening those partners so that they’ve got their own capacity to deal with what are potentially manageable regional threats if these countries are a little bit stronger and have more effective CT and so forth. It means that we’ve got to continue to be vigilant and go after known terrorists who are potentially carrying out plots or are going to strengthen their capacity over time -- because they’re always testing the boundaries of, well, maybe we can try this, maybe we can do that. So this is a ongoing process. We are not going to completely eliminate terrorism. What we can do is to weaken it and to strengthen our partnerships in such a way that it does not pose the kind of horrible threat that we saw on 9/11.

And I’m not going to discuss specific operations that have taken place. Again, in my speech in May, I was very specific about how we make these determinations about potential lethal strikes, so I would refer you to that speech.

Q So you won’t even confirm that we carried out drone strikes in Yemen?

THE PRESIDENT: I will not have a discussion about operational issues.

Ed Henry.

Q I hope you would defend me as well.

THE PRESIDENT: I would.

Q Okay, thank you. I want to ask you about two important dates that are coming up. October 1st you’ve got to implement your signature health care law. You recently decided on your own to delay a key part of that. And I wonder, if you pick and choose what parts of the law to implement, couldn’t your successor down the road pick and choose whether they’ll implement your law and keep it in place?

And on September 11th we’ll have the first anniversary of Benghazi. And you said on September 12th, “Make no mistake, we’ll bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.” Eleven months later, where are they, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I also said that we’d get bin Laden, and I didn’t get him in 11 months. So we have informed, I think, the public that there’s a sealed indictment. It’s sealed for a reason. But we are intent on capturing those who carried out this attack, and we’re going to stay on it until we get them.

Q And you’re close to having suspects in custody?

THE PRESIDENT: I will leave it at that. But this remains a top priority for us. Anybody who attacks Americans, anybody who kills, tragically, four Americans who were serving us in a very dangerous place, we’re going to do everything we can to get those who carried out those attacks.

[Q&A on health care and the budget omitted.]

END 4:00 P.M. EDT