PrairiePundit

Washington Free Beacon: Kuwaiti News Anchor Calls Palestinian Rejection of UAE-Israel Peace Deal ‘Historic Mistake’ What these countries are seeing is that Israel may be their strongest ally against Iranian hegemony in the region.  It will become an even more important ally if Biden is elected and returns to Obama's terrible deal with Iran guaranteeing them a pathway to nuclear weapons.

WHIO: American troops deployed in Kuwait who were intentionally rammed by an Egyptian man over the weekend pulled their attacker from his burning vehicle after it caught fire, the U.S. Embassy said Sunday. The embassy described the incident on a Kuwaiti highway Saturday that was initially thought to be a traffic accident as "an attempted terrorist attack." All three uniformed U.S. military personnel in the truck that was struck escaped unharmed, the embassy said. The incapacitated attacker, identified by Kuwaiti authorities as Ibrahim Sulaiman, born in 1988, was hospitalized and in police custody. Kuwaiti authorities had earlier said five American soldiers were involved. The Interior Ministry published pictures of the aftermath of the crash showing a wrecked garbage truck along with items it described as a suicide belt loaded with shrapnel. The white pickup truck apparently carrying the soldiers had the left side of its bed smashed in. ... It is not clear why the bo...

Eli Lake: Remember when a mob of angry Iranians ransacked the British Embassy in Tehran, defacing its walls and stealing its computers? That was in 2011, not way back in 1979. But the rampage was glossed over this weekend when Britain's foreign minister reopened the embassy. In 2011, the U.K. helped impose crippling sanctions on Iran. Today, the U.K. is eager to lift those sanctions. It's easy to get caught up in the optimism. Now that Iran has signed the nuclear accord, there may be a window for the Islamic Republic -- in its own way -- to rejoin the community of nations. Iran's foreign minister has even told Secretary of State John Kerry that he is now empowered by the country's supreme leader to discuss areas of potential regional cooperation like Syria. Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, now talks about his country's initiative to tackle Islamic extremism in the region. Is the clenched fist now an outstretched hand? Not so fast. Only two days before Britain...

Washington Times: More than 4,000 soldiers from Fort Carson, Colorado’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team are headed to Kuwait . Once there, they will become the largest ground force in the region. “We are absolutely ready for this mission,” the brigade’s commander, Col. Greg Sierra said at a deployment ceremony, The Colorado Springs Gazette reported Friday. “We are prepared for any contingency. […] In the end, if we do get into fights, we win decisively,” he added. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team’s deployment ceremony comes just two days after President Obama sent his authorization for use of military force (AUMF) to members of Congress. The plan would grant U.S. presidents the ability to dispatch a range of military assets for the Islamic State fight until 2018. SEE ALSO: 100K ground troops needed to defeat Islamic State, former CIA deputy director says “If we had actionable intelligence about a gathering of ISIL leaders and our partners didn’t have the capacity to get them, I would be prepared...

Fox News: The U.S. military has been stockpiling huge quantities of gear in Kuwait in preparation for shipping it across the border into Iraq for possible use in a coordinated offensive against the terrorist group Islamic State, according to U.S. News & World Report. The gear is being housed near a busy commercial port, which is now the place where roughly 3,100 vehicles -- mostly ambush-protected vehicles known as MRAPs – are parked, in addition to electronic equipment and other supplies, the magazine reported, citing defense officials. The gear, which is primarily from the U.S. Army, will be repaired and assessed for use as planners decide what the United States and its allies will need to defeat Islamic State, also known as ISIS. From June to December, we’ve worked a lot on moving items into Kuwait,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Rowayne “Wayne” Schatz, the director of operations and plans for U.S. Transportation Command, told U.S. News. “The Army is holding the gear there, and it has ...

Breitbart: The USMC is preparing to deploy 2,100 Marines to Kuwait under the auspices of Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force (SPMAGTF). The deployment was planned before the current "conflict in Iraq and Syria with the Islamic State" began. According to Defense News , Colonel Kenneth DeTreux said the SPMAGTF will be deployed in "fiscal '15." They will have "attack aircraft, the AV-8B Harrier, and support aircraft such as the MV-22 Osprey and KC-130 Super Hercules." The SPMAGTF "will be equipped to perform noncombat evacuation, humanitarian assistance, infrastructure support, tactical aircraft recovery, fixed-site security and theater sustainment missions." But DeTreux made clear that the ultimate use of SPMAGTF will depend on politics: "I think as a military guy, you understand there's going to be political and diplomatic lenses you look through. We just have to remain flexible, agile and responsive." ... I think the...

Washington Post: Kuwait the top funder of al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria, U.S. alleges A U.S. Treasury official says the ally is “the epicenter” of fundraising for groups linked to al-Qaeda. That is a strange thank you for being rescued from the clutches of Saddam.  Syria is one of those wars where most people hope both sides lose.

Washington Times: Imagine a parking lot as large as 100 football fields and filled with nearly every type, make and model of U.S. military vehicle, covered in dust and dirt and baking under a desert sun in  Kuwait . Your job: Find one specific vehicle, read its serial number and catalog it for transport back to the United States. That’s part of the daunting task facing the Responsible Reset Task Force , which must inspect thousands of vehicles used in the Iraq War and decide which ones are worth sending back to the United States. “There’s just this huge, big expanse of sand with a fence around it,” said Army Col. Jeffrey Carra , the  task force ’s former chief of operations. “Forty rows of stuff that’s just parked head to tail.” The  Army  is responsible for about 15,000 vehicles at four U.S. military bases in  Kuwait , some with a dozen lots. About 9,000 vehicles will stay with the U.S. forces in  Kuwait , but up to 6,000 will be shipped home,...

NY Times: The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq  this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in  Kuwait  able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran. The plans, under discussion for months, gained new urgency after  President Obama’s announcement  this month that the last American soldiers would be brought home from Iraq by the end of December. Ending the eight-year war was a central pledge of his presidential campaign, but American military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake. After unsuccessfully pressing both the Obama administration and the Iraqi government to permit as many as 20,000 American troops to remain in Iraq beyond 2011, the P...

AP: The Obama administration is considering staging American troops in Kuwait next year as a backup or rotational training force for Iraq, after the Pentagon completes the scheduled withdrawal of its current 45,000-strong force from Iraq in December, U.S. officials said. The proposal, not yet announced, is among a number of options the administration is considering for extending its military training role in still-violent Iraq, whose divided government has been reluctant to ask Washington directly to keep troops on its soil beyond this year. ... The Obama administration favors a proposal that would leave 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq next year to train Iraqi forces, U.S. officials said this week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Iraq has not yet asked for any extension of forces. It has not previously been reported that staging U.S. forces in Kuwait as a part of that training mission, or possibly along with that mission, is being considered. One of t...

Image via Wikipedia Arab News: Kuwaiti lawyer Mufrih Ghareeb Al-Mitairi has filed a lawsuit at the office of the prosecutor general in Kuwait against two of his compatriots, a businessman and a lawyer, for defaming the late Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Baz (the Saudi grand mufti for most of the 1990s) and Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab (the 18th century Islamic scholar) linking their Islamic ideologies to terrorism, the local Arabic daily Al-Eqtisadiah reported Thursday. Al-Mitairi said Abdullah Bin Baz, the son of the late sheikh, has retained him and asked him to file the lawsuit and to see that justice is done. Speaking to the newspaper by telephone from Kuwait, Al-Mitairi said the lawsuit he filed Tuesday against Kuwaiti lawyer Khaled Al-Shatti and businessman Mahmoud Haidar was accepted and the two would appear before court. He said that Shatti leveled false allegations against Sheikh Bin Baz and Sheikh Abdul Wahab when talking to the Al-Adalah satellite channel on March 22. He ...

Image via Wikipedia Reuters/Arab News: A Kuwaiti criminal court has sentenced three people to death for being part of an alleged Iranian spy ring in the Gulf Arab state, Dubai-based Al Arabiya television said on Tuesday. The station did not give further details on a case that has strained relations between Kuwait and Tehran. Kuwait, which banned media coverage of the case, has said only that several people were detained in an unspecified security probe. Kuwaiti media said in May 2010 authorities had detained a number of people — Kuwaitis and foreigners — suspected of spying for Iran. The independent Al-Qabas daily said they were accused of gathering information on Kuwaiti and US military sites for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. ... My guess is they were working on Iran operations in Iraq and trying to get info on how the US forces operated in supplying its forces in Iraq. The Kuwaitis certainly treated the matter as grave and serious. Related articles Iraq-Kuwait Committee ap...

CNN: Kuwaiti security forces arrested six Kuwaitis linked to al Qaeda who planned to attack a U.S. military installation, the country's state-run news agency reported Tuesday. The suspects had planned to bomb Camp Arifjan during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Kuwaiti security sources said. It is unclear when the arrests took place. The plot also involved an attack on Kuwait's State Security Service headquarters and other government facilities, according to the Kuwait News Agency, which cited a statement from the Interior Ministry. An investigation into the alleged plot linked to al Qaeda is ongoing, the news agency reported. Two suspects confessed Tuesday that they planned to attack Camp Arifjan with an explosives-laden truck during Ramadan, which begins August 21, the security sources said. The other four suspects will be interrogated Wednesday, the sources said. ... The al Qaeda losing streak continues as it is getting harder to execute random acts of mas...

Amir Taheri: FORMER President George W. Bush 's policy of en couraging Middle East democratization has just produced spectacular results in the Kuwaiti general election. In a major victory for the secular reformists over the Islamists, women -- four of them -- were elected to the 50-seat national parliament for the first time. The Islamists' share of Sunday's vote dropped almost 30 percent from the last general election, held just more than a year ago. The radical Muslim Brotherhood lost three of its four seats, while the hard-line Salafis dropped to two from four. The election of women represents a political earthquake in the Gulf Cooperation Council, a grouping of six oil-rich traditional Arab monarchies. Kuwait has had a parliament on and off since gaining independence in 1960, but the other GCC members entered the era of electoral politics largely due to pressure from the Bush administration. US pressure also played a crucial part in persuading Kuwait's leader...