Mideast Stuff: Workplace Accident Kills Two At....Secret Iranian Nuclear Facility. Joe Biden Apologizes But He Shouldn't Have. Finally, Oh, France.

I blame congratulate the Jews.

The BBC cited the pro-reform website Sahamnews as saying that the explosion on Sunday evening was “so intense that windows of buildings 15 km (nine miles) away were shattered.”

“The glare from the blast could also be seen from a great distance,” the report said.

ISNA quoted Iran's defense industries organization as saying that “[u]nfortunately, due to the incident, two workers of this production unit lost their lives."

I'm sure Obama will vow to help Iran get to the bottom of this and assist in punishing anyone found responsible.

Joe Biden's gaffe that wasn't a gaffe.

"The Turks … the Saudis, the Emirates, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar) Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war," Biden said during the speech at Harvard University.

"What did they do?” he continued. “They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad -- except that the people who were being supplied were al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."

He's been made to apologize for those remarks. Because as we all know, the greatest sin in politics is telling the truth.

Dr David Weinberg, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who recently testified on Qatari terror finance before the US Congress, said he was preparing a report which would name 20 Qataris with links to terror financing.

“The scope of Qatar-based terrorist fundraising is astonishing,” said Dr Weinberg, “According to current US officials, tiny Qatar has displaced its much bigger neighbour Saudi Arabia as the number one source of private donations to Isil and other violent extremists in Syria and Iraq."

Dr Weinberg added: “Qatar has a long history of turning a blind eye to backers of al-Qaeda in its midst. Now the Qataris are repeating history all over again, refusing to arrest blacklisted terror financiers right under their noses. The known al-Qaeda funders whom they let out of jail have gone on to become some of terrorism’s top moneymen, boosting Isil, Khorasan, and other al-Qaeda linked groups.”

Crazy idea that just might work: Start killing these money guys instead of illiterate goat-herders. It's all fun and games until your penthouse blows up with you in it.

And finally...

Dear France, Holy SHIT

A former French intelligence officer who defected to al Qaida was among the targets of the first wave of U.S. air strikes in Syria last month, according to people familiar with the defector’s movements and identity.

Two European intelligence officials described the former French officer as the highest ranking defector ever to go over to the terrorist group and called his defection one of the most dangerous developments in the West’s long confrontation with al Qaida.

...

European intelligence officials said the former officer had defected from either French military intelligence or from France’s foreign intelligence agency, the General Directorate for External Security, known by its French-language acronym as the DGSE.

The former officer, according to one rebel source, is an explosives expert who fought in Afghanistan and in Syria with al Qaida and had assembled a group of about five men that was operating out of a mosque in Idlib.

The French appear to be rather unhappy that this news got out. Can't say that I blame them. A highly trained westerner defecting to al Qaeda? That's...not good.

posted by DrewM. at 12:13 PM

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