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The United States on Wednesday vowed to track down those behind the killings of its ambassador to Libya and three other Americans amid a regional furor over a film mocking Islam's prophet.
"We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act," said President Barack Obama. "And make no mistake, justice will be done."
The slain ambassador, Chris Stevens, helped save Libya's eastern city of Benghazi during last year's revolution. He died there Tuesday night, along with another diplomat and two State Department security officers, when a mob stormed the U.S. Consulate and set it ablaze in what U.S. sources said Wednesday was a pre-planned attack.
It was one of several American diplomatic missions that faced protests after the online release of a film that ridiculed Muslims and depicted the Prophet Mohammed as a child molester, womanizer and ruthless killer. In the Egyptian capital Cairo, several men scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy and tore down its American flag.
But the U.S. sources told CNN the attackers used the protest outside the consulate as a diversion, and Obama called the violence unwarranted.
"Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others," he said. "But there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence -- none."
© Government Press, European Pressphoto Agency Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, observes an army infantry exercise taking place on the Golan Heights. Netanyahu has been publicly criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to issue a more specific ultimatum to Iran over its nuclear program.
Washington - The White House struggled Tuesday to dispel reports that it had snubbed a request for a meeting this month from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as friction between the two allies again burst into the open.
As Netanyahu stepped up his criticism of President Obama's approach to the Iran nuclear threat, Israeli officials disclosed that Netanyahu had sought unsuccessfully to schedule a meeting with Obama at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session in New York. Netanyahu's office had been told, Israeli officials said, that Obama would not be at the U.N. on Sept. 27 and 28, when Netanyahu would be there.
After a day of news reports about the escalating feud, the White House arranged an evening phone call between Obama and Netanyahu and insisted in a statement that the leaders had discussed "our close cooperation on Iran and other security issues." It denied that the Israelis had asked for a meeting in Washington and added, "nor was a request for a meeting ever denied."
But the Israeli government, in a statement Tuesday night, confirmed that Netanyahu had sought a meeting in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. session, a time when national leaders often confer.
The back and forth came only hours after Netanyahu, in comments in Israel, had unleashed his most scalding criticism of the Obama administration's approach to Iran's nuclear program.
© Fars News Agency
A leading member of Bahrain's Islamic Action Society (Jamaiyyat al-Amal al-Islami) Hashem al-Sabbaq said that American and British military and security advisors are supervising the training courses of Bahraini security forces for suppressing the protesting people.
He lashed out at the Western and Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) countries for supporting the Al Khalifa regime.
"These countries are clearly interfering in the domestic affairs of Bahrain, especially in security and intelligence cases," Sabbaq told Al Alam TV network on Tuesday.
In December 2011, the British government admitted in a written report to the parliament that some 130 British troops were stationed in Bahrain at the start of renewed pro-democracy protests in the Arab country.
"There were 130 military personnel stationed in Bahrain in March 2011, the majority in the UK Maritime Component Command," Defense Minister Lord Astor said in a written parliamentary reply published at the time.
Also in 2011, the UK government admitted that members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard sent into Bahrain may have received military training from the British Armed Forces.
"It is possible that some members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard which were deployed in Bahrain may have undertaken some training provided by the British military mission," Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey said.
© Fars News Agency
The terrorist group has been revived, restructured and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan and North Waziristan in Pakistan for a new mission in Syria. The group, sponsored by the head of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, has now even found a new command center which is being transferred from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Syria.
Bin Sultan was once titled by King Abdullah as the head of the Saudi Security Council, but he was fired after strategic mistakes and left the Arab state for about 8 months before he returned to the country as the head of the Saudi secret service.
Bandar Bin Sultan who has long been the most hasted figure in the Saudi monarchy in who the king himself held a special grudge against, has come back home and to power to supervise specific projects in the Middle-East, which have been designed by the US and the CIA, one is toppling Iran's strategic ally Bashar al-Assad, and another one is derailing popular Arab revolutions, similar to the recent events in Tunisia in the last few months.
© Fars News Agency
The seized weapons in Salqain district in Idlib included 7.62 guns along with other weapons as well as boxes of gunshots with the words "NATO BALL" carved on them.
The military experts believe that the weapons do not belong to Turkey as the country's weapons always carry some Turkish words.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier in a meeting with his Tunisian counterpart Muhammad Monsef al-Marzouki in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, had warned of the plots hatched by the enemies and NATO to dominate the Muslim nations.
"Today the enemies of the regional nations and NATO forces are ready to dominate all Islamic states," Ahmadinejad said during the meeting on the sidelines of an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca mid August.
© Fars News Agency
It's also a sense evidently shared by American politicians, especially the presidential candidates. This is because for the first time in a decade, the September 11 attacks and the dismal wars that resulted are not the focus of the election campaigns for both President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney!
Unlike the other presidential elections following the attacks, polls show those issues are a low priority for voters now. A CBS News/New York Times survey has found "37 percent of voters called terrorism and security extremely important to their vote while 54 percent said the economy and jobs were that important."
It was much different eight years ago, in the first presidential election after the attacks. Back then, about two-thirds of voters said, "Protecting the country was more important than creating jobs." President George W. Bush convinced voters that he was the right man to keep the country safe, and the rest is history.
Comment: While an absolutely great article by Fars News Agency, touching on several important factors, there is an obvious element missing.
Having conducted talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that the Russian position is steadfast: foreign intervention in Syria is intolerable.
"We have to be realistic. We haven't seen eye-to-eye... that may continue," Clinton revealed on Sunday.
Since the Russian and American positions on Syria do not converge, "then we will work with like-minded states to support a Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls and to help prepare Syria for a democratic future and help it get back on its feet," she declared.
Two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention, former Bush administration National Security Advisor Condi Rice attacked the Obama administration for not taking action in Syria.
However, Rice did not mention how in 2001 the Bush White House failed to prevent terrorist attacks from Osama bin Laden, despite being warned numerous times.
It has already been made public that Clinton/Bush anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke gave the Bush White House a briefing on August 6, 2001 with the now-infamous heading 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.'
Now, the New York Times reports there were actually a series of warnings between May and August of 2001, which the Bush administration ignored.
However, Rice did not mention how in 2001 the Bush White House failed to prevent terrorist attacks from Osama bin Laden, despite being warned numerous times.
It has already been made public that Clinton/Bush anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke gave the Bush White House a briefing on August 6, 2001 with the now-infamous heading 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.'
Now, the New York Times reports there were actually a series of warnings between May and August of 2001, which the Bush administration ignored.
So believes the junior oil explorer that's snapped up virtually all of the land in the Green Point shale.
But Shoal Point Energy Ltd. (CNSX:SHP) hasn't quite figured out how to economically draw the crude - some 23 billion barrels of it in place, according to one estimate - from the uneven, broken-up rock.
"It's a bit of a wild frontier still," said George Langdon, the company's Newfoundland-raised CEO, who has long been fascinated by rocks on the Rock.
"There's a lot of oil in place. We haven't proven the viability of it yet. But just the sheer number of what could be in place there makes it, to me, one of the significant resources in North America, right up there with the big ones"
As in other shale formations throughout North America, tapping the Green Point will require hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to unlock the resource. The controversial practice involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals underground in order to crack the rock.
Fracking has unleashed huge supplies of natural gas and oil from shales across the continent, but it also brings with it concerns over the safety of groundwater supplies near drilling sites.
© Reuters/Gali Tibbon/Pool Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a joint news conference with his Bulgarian counterpart Boiko Borisov (not pictured) in Jerusalem September 11, 2012.
The apparent snub, coupled with Netanyahu's sharpened demands for a tougher U.S. line against Iran, threatened to plunge U.S.-Israeli relations into crisis and add pressure on Obama in the final stretch of a tight presidential election campaign.
An Israeli official said the White House had refused Netanyahu's request to meet Obama when the Israeli leader visits the United States to attend the U.N. General Assembly, telling the Israelis "the president's schedule will not permit that."
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor denied Netanyahu's request had been spurned, insisting instead that the two leaders were attending the General Assembly on different days and would not be in New York at the same time.
Netanyahu has had a strained relationship with Obama, but they have met on all but one of his U.S. trips since 2009. The president was on a foreign visit when the prime minister came to the United States in November 2010.
Comment: Fake tensions between the US and Israel, lies about Iran's nuclear intentions, it's all in there folks. Just out of spite though, what if Iran made a nuclear bomb, many other countries have them, so what. Would it be the end of the world or a counter-balance to Israels arsenal and constant threat and murder of her neighbors?
© Bendib
Comment: It's interesting to note that days after the Canadian government chose to close the Canadian embassy in Tehran, this so called "snub" happened by the U.S.. This should be perceived as what it is: a game of good cop, bad cop and it's all part of the show folks.