PrairiePundit

 American Action News: A Jordanian national has been indicted for allegedly attacking an energy facility and other businesses, as well as threatening to destroy the U.S. for its perceived support of Israel, according to a Thursday statement from the Justice Department. Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen, a 43-year-old Jordanian living in the Orlando, Florida, area, has been charged with one count of destruction of an energy facility and four counts of threatening to use explosives, according to a Thursday press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). The indictment stems from a series of threats and attacks against businesses in the Orlando area that began over the summer, resulting in damages that are estimated to top well over half a million dollars. “Under the guise of expressing his beliefs, the defendant allegedly attacked a power facility and threatened local businesses, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. ...

  The White House refused to comment on what looks like a thwarted attack.

 Times of Israel: Jordan’s King Abdullah gives one of his most pointed criticisms of Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught. “All attacks against innocent civilians, women and children, including those of October 7, cannot be accepted by any Muslim,” he says alongside US President Joe Biden. “As I have previously stressed, we must make sure the horrors of the past few months since October 7, are never repeated, nor accepted by any human being.” “We must together, along with Arab partners and the international community, step up efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and immediately start working to create a political horizon that leads to a just and comprehensive peace” on the pre-1967 lines, he says. “This is the only solution that will guarantee peace and security for the Palestinians and the Israelis as well as the entire region. ... King Abdullah is right.  The mass murders on October 7 are inexcusable. 

 Rumble: Jim Jordan's speech on House floor is exactly why some want him as Speaker This is a speech about righting the wrongs of the Democrats over the last two years. 

 Micheal Goodwin: As generations of students learned in typing class, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” It’s a pity so many House Republicans either missed that class or forgot they were supposed to help their own party, not the other one. The GOP’s inability to elect a Speaker despite having a majority is more than a personal rebuke to the presumed leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. It’s a mark of incompetence and a worrisome sign the party is so fractured it will not be able to unite to accomplish anything of significance for the next two years. Instead of being a check on the White House and the Democrat-controlled Senate and using its investigative power to probe President Biden and his family’s corrupt business deals, the chaos suggests too many Republicans are freelancing and engaged in a fools’ errand masquerading as an act of principle. As such, it’s amateur hour and a mystery over what the holdouts stand for, in part because they don’t...

 Tyler O'Neil: Israel is on the brink of war with the terrorist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. This past week, Hamas launched more than 1,600 rockets into Israel — most of which got intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome — after a violent confrontation between Israeli police and Palestinian rioters at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the Temple Mount, near the third-holiest site in Islam. The rioters had protested the eviction of Palestinians who have not paid rent for living on land allegedly owned by Israelis. The riot broke out just before Israel’s Supreme Court could decide the issue. Hamas has claimed that the evictions constitute “aggression” against the Palestinian residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Activists in the United States have echoed this claim, with some describing the evictions as an act of “settler-colonialism.” In truth, it seems Hamas has orchestrated unrest — an unrest that appears to be escalating toward war — because the Palestinians are likely ...

World Israel News: Behind closed doors, Israeli officials were reportedly critical of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of Syria. One senior minister called it a “horrifying moral and a bad diplomatic step.” “The move does not serve Israel’s interests, harms the Kurds, strengthens [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan and will give Iran additional routes through which to send weapons to Syria,” said the minister. Cabinet ministers and diplomatic officials have also confirmed to Israel Hayom that while Netanyahu said earlier this week that Trump had advised him on Monday that he was pulling U.S. troops out of Syria, and that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had discussed the matter with him on Tuesday, the information was never shared with Israel’s National Security Council or the cabinet. One minister told Israel Hayom that he thought Netanyahu might have been worried that cabinet officials would vocally criticize the American move. Netanyahu’s offi...

Washington Examiner: ordan rolled out false claims and gave shifting explanations after one of its soldiers killed three U.S. Green Beret trainers outside one of its bases in 2016, according to a new lawsuit brought by their families. Fathers of the three slain soldiers who sued the kingdom this week say its handling of the deaths is reminiscent of Saudi Arabia’s changing explanations for the murder of Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at one its consulates last month. The lawsuit takes aim at key Middle East ally Jordan and its lucrative relationship with the U.S., which saw $1.7 billion in aid flow to the kingdom last year — another echo of the tens of billions of dollars in arms sales at the heart of the Khashoggi debate. “For life to work, we all have to be willing to hold the powerful accountable, whoever the powerful are, for whatever they’ve done,” James Moriarty, father of the Army staff sergeant of the same name, said at the National Press...

NY Times: Israel Helps ‘White Helmets’ and Their Families Flee Syria The Israeli government facilitated the passage of the rescue workers through its territory to Jordan so that they could be resettled abroad. It looks like the Syrian civil war is limping to a close and the rescue workers need a place to land.

NY Times: Video Shows U.S. Soldiers Surrendered Before Shooting Newly released footage of a gunfight that left three Americans dead near a military base in Jordan in November shows a deliberate attack that was initially explained as a mistake. In this case, the video does not lie but the perps do. There is some evidence that the killer was a radical Islamist.

CBS News: A new -- and sinister-- picture is emerging in the shooting deaths of three American soldiers earlier this month in Jordan, an important U.S. ally in the Middle East. When Army Sgt. James Moriarity’s body came home, U.S. officials said a video of the incident in which he and two other American soldiers were killed appeared to show a deliberate terrorist attack -- not, as was first believed, a tragic accident. The three soldiers were all Green Berets working for the CIA in Jordan, training Syrian rebels. U.S. officials say the security camera video shows several American vehicles stopped in broad daylight at the entrance to the Jordanian air field where the Green Berets were based. The first was allowed to pass through the gate, but then a guard suddenly opened fire on the second vehicle, killing both Americans inside. The Americans in the third and fourth vehicles jumped out and started returning fire. The Jordanian guard shot and killed one of them before he was wounde...

NY Times: C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Are Stolen, Officials Say Weapons are systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, with some believed to have been used last year to kill two Americans and three others, according to American and Jordanian officials. I have also seen stories of the rebels turning the weapons over to al Qaeda affiliates in Syria.  It raises serious questions about the vetting process for arming these people, and the ability of the administration to actually vet those who are also trying to come to this country as refugees.

Daily Mail: The SAS has been fighting ISIS on the ground in Libya since the beginning of the year according to King Abdullah of Jordan. Senior ISIS commanders have been fleeing into Libya as their control of large areas of Iraq and Syria is being weakened. Details of a secret briefing between King Abdullah and US congressional leaders which was leaked to a specialist Middle East security website confirm the elite warriors presence in the failed north African state. According to Middle East Eye, King Abdullah told the US politicians that his own special forces were operational in Libya alongside the SAS. The leaked document states: 'His Majesty [King Abdullah] said he expects a spike in a couple of weeks and Jordanians will be imbedded [sic] with British SAS, as Jordanian slang is similar to Libyan slang.' The King continued: 'The problem is bigger than ISIL, this is a third world war, this is Christians, Jews working with Muslims against Khawarej, outlaws.' ...

CNN: ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria can be defeated "fairly quickly," Jordan's King Abdullah asserted Wednesday, even as President Barack Obama expressed during his State of the Union speech that the fight would take time. Abdullah, who was in Washington for meetings with the Pentagon about his country's military strategy against ISIS, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview that the group could be taken off the battlefield soon. "Hopefully ... the military part is short-term," he said. "The mid-term is going to be the intelligence and security aspect. The long-term is the ideological one and the educational one." ... There is more. I agree with his analysis.  I think Obama has been far too reticent in the use of force necessary to defeat the enemy.  His gradual tempo of operations is unnecessarily dragging out the war making it longer and bloodier.

PJ Media: Have Archaeologists Uncovered the Ruins of Sodom? Ten years of digging may have unearthed an incredible find. It could be a fascinating find.  Will they also find a pillar of salt nearby?

Washington Times: China to sell Jordan missile-firing drones after Obama says no to helping ally Jordan needs the missiles to help in their war with ISIL.  This administration seems to have a knack for alienating allies in the region.

Jane's: Jordan moves forces away from Israeli border Jordan is in a bad neighborhood and Israel is the lest of their worries.  Besides worrying about Iran's aggression in the region they it also has to worry about ISIL on its borders.

Washington Post: Jordan says its airstrikes are targeting Islamic State leadership The kingdom’s military said it has carried out 56 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in recent days. Decapitation strikes makes sense in the sue of limited resources to hit those responsible for the atrocities.  Jordans concentrated effort is a good first step, but the US needs to also pick up the pace of its pin prick strategy.  It needs to hit the oil tankers used by ISIL to deliver its black market sales.  It needs to target their Toyota pickup trucks they used to move to contact.  It needs better surveillance to attack anyone carrying one their black flags.

NBC News: United Arab Emirates to Station F-16 Jets in Jordan to Help Fight ISIS The additional squadron will allow a more concerted effort.  The current air campaign lacks the kind of persistence needed to effect ISIL's ability to operate.

Amir Taheri: ... To start with, Daesh isn’t fighting a conventional war of position. It’s operating in three concentric circles. The inner circle centers on the Syrian city of Raqqah, where the “caliphate” has its headquarters, and on Mosul, Iraq’s No. 3 city. The next circle includes the Iraqi cities Ramadi, Fallujah and Tikrit, which ISIS uses as bases for launching rapid strikes into other cities, including Baghdad itself. In the third circle, ISIS maintains a number of units based in villages across the great desert that spans from Syria and Iraq to Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Following a model set by the Prophet in his own wars, these units engage in hit-and-run incursions such as the one against Saudi Arabia last month. Most original inhabitants refuse to return to the towns and villages liberated from ISIS. The heap of rabble that is now Kobani has drawn no more than 10 percent to come home. Less than 5 percent are willing to return to Jabal Sanjar, the strongh...