Global SITREP A25-13: Crunch Time?

 Obama will seek congressional approval before any military action against Syria

31 August 2013: Let us pray he means it.  What remains to be seen is how Israel will react to this, and more importantly how the Syrian combatants and Iran respond. 

1 September 2013: I would like to note a trio of pretty important items. 

Number One: According to Foxnews, immediately after the above image was taken and statement was given to the mass media both Obama and Biden went out to play golf at a local course. That's because Congress will not likely address the 'use of force' issue until 9 September (one week from tomorrow). No big rush for Congressional approval and the perfect political face-saving move for Obama.

Number Two: The Al Qaeda jihadists in Syria, specifically Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL), have for the most part gone to ground in Syria. According to sources they expect that if U.S. strikes do materialize some of their best units could receive the same ordnance delivered on them as is would be delivered on al-Assad's military Command and Control (C2) infrastructure.

Number Three: The Saudi Arabian lobbyists in Washington Dc and London, England have gone into overdrive. Saudi Arabia has deems it essential to secure both U.S. Congressional approval and a UK Parliamentary re-vote in support of military intervention on Syria. Accordingly, the Saudi's have instructed their lobbyists that should the coming US vote and UK re-vote be lost they can begin the search for a new employer. Pressure will be specifically applied to US Congressmen and UK Parliamentarians in whose districts Saudi-funded contracts or companies with Saudi contracts currently exist that those contracts will expire and/or be defunded immediately should the vote be lost.

Global SITREP A24-13: The West Blinks in Military Stare Down Over Syria

UPDATE 12:45 EDT/19:45 IST 30 August 2013: The UN chemical weapons investigation team has departed Syria and is enroute to Beirut, Lebanon.  The question is now whether or not the US and France will actually strike Syrian targets, and which targets they might be now that intelligence reports are confirming that most of Syria's ballistic missile forces have redeployed into hardened shelters or are on-the-move making real-time targeting that much more difficult. Could be an interesting evening... and morning.

Also found in today's pile of 'must read' OSINT is an article by Ernesto Londono published yesterday by the Washington Post. Here are the key bullet items I have taken from this article:

• Former and current officers, many with the painful lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan on their minds, said the main reservations concern the potential unintended consequences of launching cruise missiles against Syria.
• Some questioned the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggested that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to fundamentalist rebels, they said, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous. 
  

With respect to the first bullet, the Londono's article informs that "Marine Lt. Col. Gordon Miller, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, warned this week of “potentially devastating consequences, including a fresh round of chemical weapons attacks and a military response by Israel.”" This is precisely the focus of our concern, that Isaiah 17 may be about to come to fulfillment before our eyes. Marana tha. 

CORROBORATION UPDATE 30 August 2013: About 12 hours ago a full, 100% corroboration of the substance of the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) intercept report from the IDFs highly classified Unit 8200 I noted below was published by Kenneth Timmerman, President of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, on the Daily Caller website. Page 1 of the article, "Verify chemical weapons use before unleashing the dogs of war" is quoted below in its entirety.

"The Obama administration has selectively used intelligence to justify military strikes on Syria, former military officers with access to the original intelligence reports say, in a manner that goes far beyond what critics charged the Bush administration of doing in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.

According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain, France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel’s famed Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.

The doctored report was leaked to a private Internet-based newsletter that boasts of close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, and led to news reports that the United States now had firm evidence showing that the Syrian government had ordered the chemical weapons attack on August 21 against a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus.

The doctored report was picked up on Israel’s Channel 2 TV  on Aug. 24, then by Focus magazine in Germany, the Times of Israel, and eventually by The Cable  in Washington, DC.

According to the doctored report, the chemical attack was carried out by the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army, an elite unit commanded by Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother.

However, the original communication intercepted by Unit 8200 between a major in command of the rocket troops assigned to the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division, and the general staff, shows just the opposite.

The general staff officer asked the major if he was responsible for the chemical weapons attack. From the tone of the conversation, it was clear that “the Syrian general staff were out of their minds with panic that an unauthorized strike had been launched by the 155th Brigade in express defiance of their instructions,” the former officers say.

According to the transcript of the original Unit 8200 report, the major “hotly denied firing any of his missiles” and invited the general staff to come and verify that all his weapons were present.

The report contains a note at the end that the major was interrogated by Syrian intelligence for three days, then returned to command of his unit. “All of his weapons were accounted for,” the report stated.

The New York Times reported this morning  that the White House is now backing off its claims to have a “smoking gun that directly links President Bashar al-Assad to the attack.”

The new argument is more deductive: since the Assad regime has chemical weapons and chemical weapons were used in Mouadhamiya, therefore the Syrian regime must have been the ones to use them.

Page 2 of this corroborating article is linked HERE.

UPDATE 19:30 29 August 2013: Resolution on the issue of British participation in a Syrian strike has come earlier than expected after an unanticipated vote in Parliament proceeded. Prime Minister Cameron lost an authorization for use of force by 13 votes during what should have been a nonbinding motion calling for an international response against Syria this evening in the UK. Nevertheless, PM Cameron conceded defeat by announcing, "I get it",  with the meaning that he would not proceed with a strike on Syria that was clearly against the will of Parliament and the British people. The Parliamentary vote was 285 to 272 against strikes on Syria.

This means that as of this evening, the Commander-In-Chief of United States armed forces, Barack Hussein Obama II, stands completely alone as still threatening a strike against Syria, without US Congressional authorization or a UN Security Council mandate as was received with respect to use of military force operations against the Ghadhafi government in Libya. Some  Obama Administration talking heads are saying that a US strike could still occur as soon as word that the UN inspection team has departed from Syrian territory is received.

Meanwhile in Israel, the extremely prudent decision for no let up in the IDFs guarded defensive posture has resulted from the British decision against and other European powers increasing misgivings about striking Syria without the minimum of a UN intelligence finding support such a strike. Israel's leaders have basically announced that while they have no dog in the current fight plaguing the Western powers deliberations, they stand fully prepared to respond with great force in response any attack against Israel as has been pretty much nonstop threatened from both Damascus and Tehran  in the past forty-eight hours.

This situation between Obama still threatening to strike, given the stated direct threat to Israel coming from Iran should a US attack occur, has me wondering: which regime is the most apocalypse-minded, the U.S. Obama Administration or the Islamic Republic of Iran's Ayatollah's Administration? It currently appears to be a toss-up from my perspective.

Additionally, I learned about four hours ago that Bashar al-Assad, with his family and senior Ba'ath Party leaders in tow, arrived in Tehran, Iran early yesterday morning for urgent consultations with Ayatollah Khamenei and senior Iranian military staff. I'm not sure how ominous al-Assad and company's departure from Damascus is at this point, but it's definitely not a good sign.

UPDATE 11:00 EDT 29 August: Media reports today are beginning to corroborate the information contained below and cast doubt upon the punitive strike rationale posited by the Obama Administration in recent days. In fact, US intelligence officials are today painting a much different picture, diametrically opposed to what was stated as fact by President Obama less than 36 hours ago about Syrian government culpability in the chemical attack via the US news program "News Hour" broadcast on PBS. Serious doubts now exist openly on the origin of the Jobar chemical attack as resting upon the shoulders of Bashar al-Assad, his general staff or their subordinate commanders. US intelligence officials have resurrected the "no slam dunk" or "no smoking gun" mantras regarding Syrian culpability, and gone also is any confident insistence that Sunni jihadist rebel elements do not possess a chemical weapons capability as occurred in the Ghouta district neighborhood of Jobar, Syria. Botching intelligence on this would would not only start a major regional war, but it could be the catalyst for impeachment already on the lips of some regarding Benghazi and a few other sordid affairs.

29 August 2013: The blinking began yesterday in Europe. Significant opposition from all political considerations to a stream-roller of Western threats regarding an imminent strike on Syria began bubbling up yesterday and continues at this time.

In the UK outright rebellion in Parliament rose to a level that can best be described as 'mutinous' against PM David Cameron and his government's war planning.  Retired General Sir "Mike" Jackson tore PM David Cameron a new one in publicly telling him that his budget cuts have not only cut Britain's warfighting capabilities to the bone, but that the bone itself has been cut clean through. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson then hit a resonant chord with the public that all but guarantees the UK will not participate at this time in a Syrian strike: "Due to you your cuts the British military will sustain heavy losses and defeat."  The UK is keenly aware of what occurred to their troops after budget cuts in the 1930s resulted in tail-between legs retreat that ended on the beaches of Dunkirk and land combat powerlessness against Hitler in the early days of the war.

These and other items yesterday forced PM Cameron to postpone a Parliamentary vote on a use of force authorization. One of the key other items to surface was that a full 50% of the Prime Minister's own Tory base of support in Parliament told him they would not vote for the authorization without a full UN investigation being released. The UK Parliament therefore cannot even think about considering having an authorization vote until at least next Wednesday, 4 September. Even then a pro-strike outcome is far from assured.

Similar deep cracks have also appeared in France where opposition to military intervention splits political affiliations - the center-right are evenly split for/against, the socialists are in total disarray, and the hard left and communists are dead set opposed.

In Italy there is significant and rising opposition to participating in the strikes for the same reasons as have presented themselves in Britain and France.  Not many in Europe have any interest in launching punishing military strikes against Bashar al-Assad's forces that might effectively further enable the battlefield effectiveness of the Sunni rebels who are clearly led by various Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist "brigades" primarily from Syria and Iraq.

President Barack Hussein Obama appears to be the exception to this mindset, but new information might put a damper on his apparent enthusiasm.

There is an as yet uncorroborated report which has direct implications on the intelligence to be cited by the Obama Administration of Syrian government use of chemical weapons. This report originated in Israel, and again, while it is currently uncorroborated, but I will report it pending a confirmation because of its potential importance.

An Israel Defense Forces Signal Intelligence Units known as Unit 8200 is the source of data provided to the Obama Administration that pointed to the Syrian military as being responsible for the deadly chemical weapons assault last Wednesday. A synopsis on specific intelligence is as follows.

A communication between the commander of the 155th Brigade of the Syrian  4th Armored Division and the panicked general staff at Syrian military higher headquarters was intercepted by IDF Unit 8200. The basis for the panic at the Syrian general staff headquarters was due to an assumption that the 155th brigade commander had apparently launched an unauthorized chemical attack in direct defiance of their instructions. The 155th brigade commander vigorously denied he launched any attack and invited an immediate general staff inspection of his weapons inventory to verify his compliance with their standing orders forbidding the release of chemical weapons. The general staff inspection occurred, along with 3-day long interrogation of the commander by Syrian intelligence. In the end the commander was exonerated and all weapons of the 155th brigade were accounted for.

Accordingly, the current US "Intelligence Assessment" is being rewritten because previous statements of Syrian government responsibility are not meshing with this specific intelligence collected from the field as forwarded to the American intelligence community.  Corroboration/confirmation of this information has been posted above in the update of 30 August.

Global SITREP A23-13: Prelude to a Great, Big Regional War

28 August 2013: From this vantage point on the "Golan Watchtower" the consensus of opinion of former military and intelligence professionals is that this long prophesied regional war is going to happen. The evidence is that overwhelming this evening: there is zero chance of averting this war.  Why is it going to happen? Because the presidential administration of Barack Hussein Obama II wants it to happen. 

Let me repeat that with emphasis. President Obama is fully prepared to start a regional war without:

A.) the requisite Congressional approval much less a single pair of words in debate; 

B.) any United Nations Security Council discussion, debate or vote of authorization to act; 

C.) an official presentation of inviolable intelligence to any of the above named bodies or the American people for that matter;

D.) Zip, nada, nothing. A big "Zero Burger."

I am now going to repeat with added emphasis the comment I made in the previous post's comments and discussions area.

There are zero strategic objectives or priorities served in the limited tactical strikes being planned by the Obama Administration against Syria.

Zip, nada, none.

The planned strikes are utterly pointless and will be extremely counterproductive and destructive to world peace if they occur.

The planned strikes are an utterly insane 'wag the dog' distraction that will have the potential to cause the unnecessary deaths of thousands upon thousands of people.

When these Syrian strikes occur our feckless Congress should immediately initiate impeachment proceedings against the Commander-In-Chief in my humble opinion. However, I will not be holding my breath in anticipation of that legislative procedure occurring. There are better chances of Satan repenting of his rebellion against God.

By the way... where are the throngs of ridiculously painted faces, rainbow wigs, morbid costumes and death masks of the anti war crowd we saw parading in American streets in 2002-2003? Where are they now?

Am I angry this evening? You bet your sweet bippy I am angry. Livid in fact.

Even so, Marana tha!

Global SITREP A22-13: The Syrian Situation

UPDATE 27 August 2013: Recent reports are suggesting that a 'last minute' diplomatic accord with assurances to avert strikes on Syria in response to the al-Assad regime's alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians last Wednesday have failed. While the reports are almost certainly accurate in stating that this last ditch effort failed, that is not what is critically important about the reports. What is critically important about them is that the attempted accords to forestall the strikes were not made directly with the al-Assad regime in Damascus, Syria, they were in fact face-to-face efforts with the the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran!  Bashar al-Assad is no longer the power to be reckoned with in Syria, but the Islamic Republic of Iran is the power to be reckoned with; it is the de facto government controlling what's left the Syrian regime and its military forces.

This confirms what many inside the Washington DC Beltway have known for some time now. It confirms what was related to them recently by Ahmed Jarba, the President of the opposition Syrian National Council. As Jarba informed Washington, "the real rulers of Syria are the Iranian Revolutionary Guard with the participation of Hezbollah fighters." Jarba went on to point out the true nature of the tactical situation is Syria is that the Al-Assad regime has in fact already collapsed and that what remains of it and at least half of its territory is under the full control of Iranian armed forces and Hezbollah. 

The implication of these new facts on the ground in Syria are nothing short of monumental when it comes to our understanding of Bible prophecy as long discussed on this blog and elsewhere regarding Isaiah 17, Jeremiah 49 and the other related prophecies. This also points out the folly in the US and NATO allies planning to strike Syria for things which have been determined and executed by the apocalypse-minded Iranian regime 900 miles to the east. Consider this: the apocalyptic Persian Shi'a in Iran are the driving force behind what may well lead to the decimation of Arab Sunni Islam in the Levant of the eastern Mediterranean Sea caused by a WMD strike upon Israel.

26 August 2013: What if... What if the widely reported and anticipated Western-Sunni Arab military intervention in the Syrian civil war occurs within the next few days, is there Bible prophecy which predicts such an occurrence?  I believe there is.  Let's look at Jeremiah 49:23-27 (NKJV):

"Against Damascus.

“Hamath and Arpad are shamed,
For they have heard bad news.
They are fainthearted;
There is trouble on the sea;
It cannot be quiet.

Damascus has grown feeble;
She turns to flee,
And fear has seized her.
Anguish and sorrows have taken her like a woman in labor.

Why is the city of praise not deserted, the city of My joy?

Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets,
And all the men of war shall be cut off in that day,” says the Lord of hosts. 

 “I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus,
And it shall consume the palaces of Ben-Hadad.""

Verse 23 opens with two cities in northern Syria, which I believe equate to Hama and Homs, hear bad news about Damascus which causes great fear and sorrow. Some great trouble comes into Syria from the West, from the Mediterranean Sea. It causes Damascus great fear, pain and anguish as a woman in the midst of childbirth. This seems to foretell exactly what real-world events are now pointing towards.

And what if this intervention is met with the promise of the Al-Assad regime to retaliate as noted specifically in the main part of the SITREP below. What if Israel and northwestern Jordan are the targets of Al-Assad's retaliation? (Links to a Times of Israel report) They may well be as the prophecy of Isaiah 17 indicates. If so, then we clearly have an Isaiah 17 fulfillment imminently before us, with the potential for the rest of the directly related prophecies to follow "like a flood." Jeremiah 49 is definitively among these prophecies.

 
Consider this update to be my most urgent "watchman on the wall" warning to date. It is an "Alert Condition Red." If the NATO-Sunni Arab alliance strikes on Syria do materialize, as now appears to be the case, then they will occur without UNSC sanctioning as was the case in Libya two years ago. Russia and China most certainly would veto any UN Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention in Syria, and therefore UNSC approval is likely not to be sought by the interventionist powers. This appears to be the same template of military action as found in the attempt to invade Israel prophesied in Ezekiel 38/39.

####

25 August 2013: Last Wednesday one of the belligerents in the Syrian civil war unleashed a genuine chemical weapon, a neurotoxin, within the confines of the Damascus governorate, in a suburb known as Jobar. The neurotoxin may have been a Sarin-based weapon, or possibly Tabun or Soman. Based upon evidence I have seen in uploaded videos, I'm ninety-five percent sure the chemical weapon was one of these three. What I am one-hundred percent certain of is that no one knows which side in the war was responsible for the attack.

The fact of the matter here is that while all of the secular world powers and belligerents are pointing fingers at one another for this chemwar attack, the one group that is not doing so is led by Mego Terzian, the President of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). Mr. Terzian was recently quoted in global media saying:

"We are almost sure, even 100 per cent sure, that neurotoxic agents have been used, what type of agent we cannot confirm, who did that — rebels or government troops — we cannot confirm."

The problem here is that the powers that be external to Syria appear to be using this event pursuant to their agenda. For the U.S. and the Obama Administration this provides a perfect 'wag the dog' scenario to distract from the fully-primed Benghazi investigation and several other great scandals that are also approaching critical mass. For Syria it provides a credible deterrent against foreign intervention (air strikes or a no-fly zone) since the Al-Assad government in Damascus threatened in July 2012 to use its full and considerable chemical weapons arsenal (New York Times article, 23 July 2012) against those involved in any military intervention.

This is where we must pay very close attention to the Syrian threat. Would Syria retaliate against three U.S. Navy destroyers or the Western naval armada off its coast with non-precision chemical weapons? I think not. The most likely targets for Syria's chemical weapons would be in northwestern Jordan (i.e. "the cities of Aroer") where the Western-Sunni Arab land and air headquarters combat components are based, and Israel. Sound familiar? This should because it appears to be verbatim from the prophecy of Isaiah 17:1-2.

“Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city,
And it will be a ruinous heap.
The cities of Aroer are forsaken;
They will be for flocks
Which lie down, and no one will make them afraid."

Would Israel sit idly by as Western forces and perhaps central Israel itself came under chemical assault by Bashar al-Assad's missile forces? I think not.Thus I believe we will witness the fulfillment of these prophetic verses.

Just beyond the Golan and southern Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese frontier IDF armored forces have been massed as seen in the image above.  In Jordan the coalition forces are limited to headquarters staff, some F-16s and light-footed special operations troops whose primary function is to serve as a tripwire against Syrian expansion of the ground war into Jordan. Therefore, Israel holds all the military cards should the prophetic Isaiah 17 scenario become the reality I believe it will become in the near term. And on that occasion we will need to keep Isaiah 17:12-13 in mind as one of the inevitable results:

"Woe to the multitude of many people
Who make a noise like the roar of the seas,
And to the rushing of nations
That make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!

The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters;
But God will rebuke them and they will flee far away,
And be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind,
Like a rolling thing before the whirlwind."

These verses could just as easily foretell the subsequent final battle of Psalm 83 as they could foretell what becomes, at least initially, of the foreign military interventionists. We'll have to keep close watch as this Syrian situation intensifies into the full-scale WMD warfare being foretold.

Global SITREP A21-13: Paying Attention to Current Events Details to Determine the Prophetic Future

BREAKING NEWS 23 August 2013: 85-year old Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been released from prison and was taken to an Egyptian military hospital in Cairo. 

Additionally: Overnight Israel scored a direct hit on a Jihad Islami terrorist target south of Beirut Lebanon after that group fired four rockets into the vicinity of Nahariya in northern Israel yesterday afternoon. One of the four rockets was destroyed in mid-flight by the Iron Dome defense system.

21 August 2013: Reports are coming in of the discovery of at least four mass graves of genocide victims. These mass have been located in the Raba'a section of Cairo, two others are outside the city of Alexandria and one is just south of Port Said. There are thousands of genocide victims in the mass graves containing the decomposing bodies of men women and children, many of whose bodies exhibit clear evidence of gruesome torture, and many of whom were Coptic Christians. The blood of these innocents are on the hands of the Ikhwan Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood) as well as the Obama Administration which  put the Islamists into power in Egypt.

19 August 2013: Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is to be freed from jail by the Egyptian judiciary within hours after a dismissal of most of the charges against him. One other item hindering his total freedom will be resolved shortly.

17 August 2013 (revised, expanded and updated): I have been very consistent in making the prophetic interpretation that Ezekiel 38/39 speaks to a pre-70th Week alliance between the West ("the merchants of Tarshish and all their young lions") and Sunni Islam ("Sheba and Dedan"), especially the primary nations of the Arabian Peninsula, also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

I'll refer to this new reality as the "New Arabian Paradigm." It is the paradigm of "Sheba and Dedan" being joined with Tarshish and their young lions in Ezekiel 38. This Western-Sunni Arab alliance will have its basis in the false unifying notion of kinship in an 'Abrahamic' religion. 'Abrahamic' religion is the vehicle by which the global elite will initially unify the avowed Jewish and Christian faiths with Islam. 'Abrahamic' religion will falsely unify the God of Israel with the false god Allah of Islam. Here also, at least in part I believe, is the basis for the great, global mercantile harlot arrayed in purple and scarlet of Revelation 17.

One really needs to dig into the OSINT reports of the past couple of weeks to find evidence of exactly this alliance, an alliance that pits Islam against itself (Sunni versus Shi'a) and also is manifest in the established regimes or power brokers of the Sunni Islamic world against the Jihadists such as Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This SITREP will present that evidence to you.

The most in-our-face evidence is, of course, the Sunni versus Shi'a war in Syria, and in Lebanon. Multiple repeated high casualty attacks in Beirut against Hezbollah of late have grabbed most of the headlines. So too the Saudi Arabian's using their front line strike aircraft against Al Qaeda jihadists along the Yemeni frontier and the Bahraini's declaring Shi'a insurrectionists the equivalent of Muslim apostates.

The more is found in what occurred in Qatar recently and that direct impacted the military coup in Egpyt. That event was the (possibly forced) abdication of the Qatari absolute monarch, Emir Sheikh Hamad Ibn Khalifa al-Thani, in favor of his son, Sheikh Tamim, on 24 June 2013. 

As a bit of background to understand the full scope of this event, the Qatari regime had been the financial backbone of Mohammed Morsi and his Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood under Emir al-Thani, just as the Qatari's had been the financial backbone of the Sunni jihadists in Syria in providing millions of petrodollars worth of heavy weapons and financial aid, and even before that to the jihadists who overthrew Muamar Qadhafi in Libya. 

Until 24 June Qatar single-highhandedly had propped up the Egyptian economy under Morsi and the Ikhwan's (Muslim Brotherhood's) rule. The Qatari's had also been paying Mohammed Morsi a six figure stipend, and that is the basis for the treason and criminal charge of betraying Egypt's national security that General El-Sissi has referred to the Egyptian judicial system for trial. FoxNews reported this on 9 July, six days after the military coup that removed Morsi and the Ikhwan from power.

The bottom line: it took just 9 days after Emir Al-Thani's abdication for new Qatari Emir Tamim to reverse the course of Qatar's foreign policy and cut the legs off the Egyptian Ikhwan, and pull the rug from under Mohammed Morsi's fundamentalist Islamic rule and set the course for the Egyptian military to seize control of the government from the Islamists. Moreover, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been quite antagonistic rivals until the abdication of al-Thani. Now under Emir Tamim a rapprochement has occurred between "Sheba and Dedan" and they're now in full accord with each other.

The final aspect of the emergence of the "New Arabian Paradigm" is also found in Saudi Arabia, where the ruling absolute monarch made his position perfectly clear just yesterday. The new position of King Abdullah places the House of Al-Saud in direct opposition to the fundamentalists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan, and like their Qatari cousins in full support of the new Egyptian military regime. Both the Qatari's and the Saudi royals have sided with the majority of the Egyptian people against the Islamic fundamentalists. King Abdullah has pledged $5 to 20 billion in cash in support of Egypt's interim government established by General el-Sissi and the Egyptian Army.  Other adjustments like this within the realm of Sunni Islam are likely to be forthcoming, and very soon.

I believe the impact of this new paradigm will be monumental, a sea change that will set a new course, a more defined course as events play themselves out enroute to the end-game that will be the fulfillment of Isaiah 17, Psalm 83 and ultimately Ezekiel 38/39 in the run-up to the advent of the 70th Week. On the chance that I be accused of engaging in "newspaper exegesis" with this real-world observation, I would advise those prospective claimants to watch these events have their full-impact prior to making such a criticism. I believe most of the key recent events I have just described are actually news to many Bible prophecy expositors at this point.

Update 18 August 2013: We will simply have to watch as American military Commander-In-Chief Barack Hussein Obama's untenable and incoherent position in full support of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism (the Ikhwan Muslimun, the Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt will be forced to execute a 180 degree somersault of real and immediate change in favor of the interim government of General El-Sissi or the age American influence and military alliance with Egypt will swiftly come to an abrupt end. One could reasonably expect that preparations and calculations for the execution of our CInC's somersault were in progress even before the ink dried in the paper the ultimatum was printed on.

Yesterday Egypt's leading newspaper, El-Watan, published an ultimatum to Commander-In-Chief Obama and his Pentagon generals that was signed by Egypt's Major General Muhammad al-Assar and entitled "Sisi to Pentagon." This ultimatum made no bones about the fact that Obama MUST change his present course. Quoting a portion of the ultimatum, "We will not retreat from fighting terrorism; the [Egyptian] military does not run, for [our] republic has leadership, and our message is clear: we will not allow red lines to be crossed.”  The Watan editorial was the chosen venue for the publishing of the ultimatum because the interim government in Egypt had cut off all contact with the Obama Administration through normal channels, although contact with the Pentagon itself was not completely severed, as a direct result of Obama's condemning speech delivered this past Thursday evening.

One could now reasonably expect that all of Obama's threats of withdrawing $1.3 billion in financial and military aid to Egypt (easily offset by Saudi Arabia's pledge of $5-20 billion) will cease forthwith; the annual American-Egyptian "Operation Bright Star" military exercise which was cancelled last week by Commander-In-Chief Obama will be summarily reinstated as previously scheduled, and the in-hiatus sale of F-16 strike aircraft will be put back on schedule as well. Commander-In-Chief Obama will soon announce that America stands foursquare with the overwhelming popular will of the Egyptian people who have made clear their rejection of Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-led Islamic dictatorship.. Such is the likely result when spineless, untenable and incoherent ideological pursuits are met head-on with national backbone and resolve. 

Addendum: What is the key thing that both the Islamic terrorists of the Ikhwan and American Commander-In-Chief Barack Obama got wrong about Egypt?  They both failed to recognize that Egypt is a country with a culture which has existed for many thousands of years. Egypt contains a culture that was harmonized with both ancient Greek and Roman cultures. It is a culture that has also withstood the invasion of Islam as a foreign occupying ideology for hundreds of years. It is a culture which the Bible repeatedly addresses and prophecies about for the present and the future; it is a culture in which Christianity was brought to it by the Apostle Mark more than half a millennium prior to the Islamic invasion; a Christianity which survives to this day in the Coptic Orthodox Church and other churches throughout the continent of Africa. What the Ikhwan and Obama failed to recognize is that the culture which Egypt possesses is multifaceted, ancient and enduring; that most of its people want no part of an Islamic dictatorship lording over them. Egypt's future as determined by God is detailed in Isaiah 19:18-25.

Update 19 August 2013:  Contrary to the near panic-stricken and hand-wringing musings of the secular Israeli's who penned today's lead story for DEBKAfile, there is no immediate risk of a renewed Russian military presence on Israel's borders with Syria and Egypt. The prophecy of Ezekiel 38/39 will come to pass at its appointed time, but now is clearly not that time according to the text of Ezekiel's prophecy.  At most the Russian's are attempting to exploit the incompetency and compounded errors being made through U.S. Commander-In-Chief Barack Obama's incoherent policy in support of the Egyptian Ikhwan terrorists.

And also to the contrary, DEBKAfile's claim that "Israel has absolutely no involvement in Gen. El-Sisi’s war on the Muslim Brotherhood," is patently false. Israel is intimately involved in all aspects of support of the Egyptian interim government's war against the Ikhwan terrorists. This is due to the fact that should the Egyptian military fail to completely secure Egypt from the Islamic dictatorship the Ikhwan had begun to create, Israel would then face Islamic jihadist regimes on all of its borders, including Jordan.

Proof of Israel's intimate dealings with the Egyptian military and intelligence apparatus is self-evident in the instantaneous notification of Israel's military and intelligence apparatus of the Egyptian police executing an arrest of Muhammed al-Zawahri, the brother of Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri on Saturday, 17 August, at a security checkpoint in Giza, Egypt. Mohammed al-Zawahri had previously be personally leading jihadists attacks against Israel from the Sinai. In this light there is no doubt that Israeli intelligence (i.e. the Mossad and/or Shin Bet) had been tracking his movements closely and may have been intimately involved in the interception and arrest at the Giza checkpoint, hence the instantaneous knowledge of his arrest.

Global SITREP A19-13: America at the Crossroads of Destiny

10 August 2013: Great Grany 5 is one of you, the one hundred twenty-two regular Bride of Christ followers of this blog. A Christian, American, Red-White and Blue, a "Don't Tred On Me" Patriot just like all the rest of us, and tens of millions of our fellow countrymen. We are the remaining backbone of our Constitutional Republic. We are a nation born of the borrowed principles and truth found in the 10 Commandments that God Himself handed down to Moses on the Mount. We are a nation which, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is clearly in great distress. America has arrived at the crossroads of our national destiny, and I do not believe it's any coincidence that we're arrived at this point, in these last days, when the Harpazo of the Bride of Christ seems more imminent than ever.

In her comment to the previous SITREP our Sister-in-Christ GG5 asked, "What is really going on and what is HE trying to cover up with all of this trash?" There is no better introduction to the focus of this Global SITREP than this question; a question most of us have probably asked ourselves.

In the image above is a statement from Nikita Khrushchev, the 1960s leader of the former Soviet Union, the ancient nation many of us believe to be the prophetic land of Magog, Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.  If you can't read the subtext of the image, it says "We cannot expect Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have communism."  This is what all of the Benghazi, domestic spying, IRS and NSA cover-up trash is about! This is what is really going on; this is what America is finally waking up to: America has been betrayed by our highest elected official and a select cadre of similarly-minded Benedict Arnold's, toadies and lackeys. Quisling's, the lot of of them, betrayers of America to the World Socialist Global Oligarchy.

And America is now fully aware of this betrayal. We see it now because these scandals have been instrumental in exposing it. A recent FoxNews poll convinces me that America has finally awoken to this betrayal. And if there's one thing all patriotic Americans take seriously, it is betrayal. 

In my prolific daily reading of open source intelligence (OSINT), I came across an article referencing a new book by another American patriot, Diana West. The title of Diana's new truth-telling book:"American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character." To quote Diana West, in her JewishWorldReview.com article (please read Diana's article at the link) published just yesterday about this book and the many, many other truth-tellers who've been very busy alarm clocks of late in alerting Americans about this betrayal: (emphasis added)

"These are the men and women who refused to stay silent and thus enable the "betrayal" the book lays out -- engineered by a de facto Communist "occupation" of Washington by American traitors loyal to Stalin and, even more heartbreaking, largely covered up by successive U.S. administrations and elites."

 We all know, or at least we all should know by now, that every time something like this kind of mass exposure of the betrayal of America comes up the apologists for these communist betrayers will take to the media and trot out the old "witch hunt" and "McCarthyism."  I, for one, have seen this occur with regularity and more frequently since the election of Barry Soetoro, a/k/a Barack Hussein Obama II, five years ago. That these American communists and their agenda have been exposed is the net result of an overambitious Five Year Plan. The multitude of Obama Regime scandals serve as the most recent prima facie evidence as well as a curtain raiser for the "Communist occupation" of our nation's capital. The fact-of-the-matter is that America's premier long-term existential enemies (Godless Communism and False God Fundamentalist Islam) have become the Obama Regime's key allies. Truth has been turned upon its head and we are fully aware of it.

The World Socialist-Global Oligarchy wolf is no longer dressed in sheep's clothing. In fact, they're not wearing anything; they have been fully exposed by naked truth and you and I and millions of our fellow brethren Bride of Christ know it. We see it daily with our own eyes and we hear it on the evening news with our own ears. And we pray to our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ, "Marana'tha, O Lord, Marana'tha!" And let us each preach His Gospel and win one more soul for Him; and may we be eyewitnesses, even if for just a little while longer, of the prophetic future that we know will now come to its precise fulfillment, as it is written:

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." 2 Thessalonians 2:7-12 NKJV

Amen.

Global SITREP A18-13: "Come to Periscope Depth..."

08 August 2013: In this SITREP we're going to take a look into the future, but not the Biblical prophetic future you're probably used to.  For this look forward we're going to use a man-made periscope for our future forecast.

Norfolk, VA. Above is a US Navy photograph of carrier row in Naval Station Norfolk, Virgina taken last December. It's a crowded set of piers in this photo. Given the way in which our national treasure has been squandered by the current Administration and Congress those piers may well have already seen their heyday. According to a report posted today by the Norfolk area PilotOnline.com titled "Hope of Saving Carriers Sinking as Cash Dries Up," paints a pretty dismal picture for both US National Security and the economy of Virginia where half of our carrier fleet has their homeport. 

In a nutshell, unless Congress does something drastic to mitigate $500 billion in defense cuts over the next ten years the loss of at least three entire Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) is all but certain. The CSGs led by the carriers USS George Washington, USS John C. Stennis and USS Harry S. Truman (fourth from left in above image) will become the leading candidates to be mothballed when their mid-life refueling cycle rolls around. The loss of these carriers would have a drastic effect on America's ability to project power, and therefore regional stability, around the world from that day forward. With just 8 carriers, or even just 7 in a worst case scenario, we would be hard pressed to have just one CSG deployed to the Atlantic and one to the Pacific at the same time. However, with America's strategic focus looking towards the Pacific Rim, Norfolk may end up taking most of the projected cuts in our fleet. If you haven't written or spoken to your elected representatives in a while, now would be a good time to start, before it too late.

Russia: Much has been made in the media of late about President Obama "snubbing" Russian President Vladimir Putin by refusing to meet with him at a Moscow summit. Don't believe a word of it; smoke and mirrors designed to make The One look tough. He ain't tough; it's a ruse and the jokes on you if you happen believe it. Obama refuses to talk to the American people about the alleged Al Qaeda terrorist threat over which our embassies in nearly two dozen Islamic countries have been closed, but Obama can never refuse to meet his pal Vladimir Putin, at least now that he has "more flexibility." The fact of the matter is that Obama will be attending the G20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia in a few weeks time. He will meet with Vladimir Putin at that summit.

Israel: There a pretty good chance that in some near-term future war involving Israel that the IDF will press into service an airborne vehicle that glides just two feet above ground level like the fictional landspeeder that Luke Skywalker used in the Star Wars movies. The image above is of a very low flying UAV called the AirMule which being developed for the IDF by the Israel aerospace company Urban Aeronautics. The IDF plans to use this real-world landspeeder to ferry supplies to the troops on the front lines and return wounded back to field hospitals, among other tasks that will invariably reveal themselves on a future battlefield.  And if you think this is just a little too fanciful, consider this: the very able working prototype went from being a piece of concept artwork to functioning reality in less than three years. One might wonder what other ideas movie makers have placed in the minds of combat developers. Hmm?

Global SITREP A17-13: More Indications and Warnings

Fukushima, Japan: There hasn't been much good news coming out of the site of the TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) nuclear plant disaster in 2011, but what is being reported of late is not nearly as horrendous as folks should be made aware.  Here is the unvarnished truth. The meltdown of the reactor cores have progressed to the point that it is beyond the capability of TEPCO to control them any longer.  Recent data collected indicates the cores have melted through the containment vessels and into the earth beneath the plant, and the plant engineers actually have no idea where the cores have gone. What they do know is that radiation levels, particularly those correlating to Cesium and Strontium, beneath the plant are now higher than they ever were when the cores were still within the containment vessels. The highly radioactive ground water is leaking into the Pacific Ocean, primarily because TEPCO had no plans to deal with containing contaminated ground water on such a scale as this. All nations with northern Pacific Ocean coastlines are at risk from the unprecedented nuclear contamination that is being naturally circulated between Asia and North America.

Islamic Terrorism (UPDATED) : As can be plainly seen by anyone paying attention to the news, the threat of Islamic terrorism, from Al Qaeda in particular, has suddenly attained an advanced "strategically significant" level which forced the Obama Administration's hand in tacitly declaring defeat where it had previously declared victory via the closure of ALL United States Embassies throughout the Muslim World based solely upon an single intercepted terrorist communication that conveyed a high level of confidence for an imminent large-scale attack. ALL U.S. Embassies were closed even though American officials do not know the specific target of the planned attack. For that matter, they don't even know if the intercepted terrorist communication was a ruse, a psychological operation which our government may have fallen for hook, line and sinker. Seems to me the our national intelligence apparatus has been far too busy in the collection of data on its own citizens instead of those who seek to kill us, Such a situation is also highly indicative of the Obama Administration's priorities these days.

UPDATE: At 4:30 PM Monday afternoon when Jennifer Griffen of the Fox News Channel was confirming the existence of the threat from Al Qaeda through Greta Van Susteren's blog, defense and intelligence specialist Bill Gertz (Inside the Beltway and GeoStrategy-Direct) was reporting that his intelligence community sources were saying that the intercepts regarding the AQ attack planning were not new; that the intelligence was somewhat dated having been known by US intelligence agencies in detail for months, and that an attack had been planned for Sunday, 4 August, but no attack occurred.  What I had privately suspected about the sudden US embassy closings in the Muslim world was confirmed in this Bill Gertz report: the Obama Administration is fully engaged in a "Wag the Dog" scenario! 

Quoting the report with emphasis:

"The timing of the administration’s announced closure of numerous U.S. embassies in the Middle East has raised concerns among some U.S. officials that the Obama administration is politicizing intelligence to distract attention from the Benghazi and other scandals. “Why is this coming out now?” asked one official with access to terrorist threat data. “Is the administration trying to suck up news coverage with the embassy threats to distract attention from what the CIA was doing in Benghazi?”"

Crisis on the Nile River: There is an international crisis between Egypt and Ethiopia, and possibly the Sudan that has emerged over the Ethiopia's hydroelectric dam construction project across the Nile River. The recent scrubbing of a planned sale to Egypt of 20 F-16 fighter aircraft may not be as related to the Egyptian Army's ousting of Mohamed Morsi as the Obama Administration might like us to believe.  Apparently Obama's pentagon is more worried that these new F-16s would be used in a military strike to destroy the Ethiopian hydroelectric project before it is completed. Ethiopia and Sudan are for the project's completion while Egypt is dead-set against it. Sounds to me like the prophecy of Ezekiel 28 is now also standing at the threshold of fulfillment.

Jordan: King Abdullah has been powerless, despite the significant presence of foreign military forces in the Hashemite Kingdom, to keep Islamists from over-running most of the territory of his sovereign domain. The foreign Islamic jihadists have taken over vast amounts of territory along the Syrian border and in the southern areas of the country where arms and war materiel destined for the jihadists in Syria flow northward. Many of these jihadists were freely allowed into Jordan through King Abdullah's acquiescence to the demands of the Qataris and the Saudis that Jordan play host to the Sunni rebel forces fighting the Alawite-Iranian Shi'a axis in Syria and Lebanon. Of course if Syria were on Qatar's or Saudi Arabia's border those Arab royals might not be so accommodating, or as stupid, as Abdullah has been. Not many have considered that Jordan could be the biggest victim of the Syrian civil war; this certainly has major implications for the final act of the Psalm 83 war as well.

Israel: While Muslim Arabs of the Sunni and Shi'a flavors continue killing each other in ever increasing numbers all across the whole of the Middle East, Israel has been steadily completing its nationwide Iron Dome missile defense system. The sixth of twelve Rafael Advanced Defense Systems planned and strategically located Iron Dome bases will be operational within just a few weeks time. Except for the recent deployment to the area of Eilat, most of the Iron Dome Division of the IDFs bases locations are classified and off the beaten track. When all twelve Iron Dome batteries are completed they will be staffed by regular and reserve forces IDF soldiers who have been thoroughly trained and experienced in system operations.

Bereshiyth ... Genesis ... My View of "And God said.."

4 August 2013: Taking another break from the Global SITREP series to go back to the Bereshiyth, the Genesis, the "In the beginning..." when God said and spoke all of creation into existence. 

Right up front I will say that my view of "And God said..." is one that is not confined to six literal 24-hour days of Creation.  I, as one of His created, have absolutely no business placing the eternal and omnipotent God into a 144-hour box as some brethren view the creation narrative given to us by our Creator through Moses and the Apostle John.  

I do not accept that our omnipotent God needed a humanly relative 24-hour first day of evening and morning to speak 'owr, light, into existence across the vast formless void and expanse of the tĕhowm, the deep, to see that it was good, and then to separate it from the choshek, the non-Heavenly darkness of the abyss (where Abaddon/Apollyon and his host are at this time).

When I read Genesis 2:4 it became clear that towlĕdah, literally multiple generations of time were involved in the entire Genesis narrative of creation. The word towlĕdah literally defines how the Hebrew word yowm is to be interpreted within and throughout the thirty-one verses of the creation narrative.

Put another way, the Bible informs us that there are two paradigms for reckoning time, God's time paradigm which is absolutely limitless to infinity, and the human time paradigm which is based upon the rotation of the earth in orbit around our sun.

Question: In which of these two time paradigms was God operating prior to the creation of the our solar system's sun?

I hold this view as being very consistent with understanding the Word of God as a literal narrative of His Creation which occurred according to His spoken Word over epochs of time as humankind now understands time.