White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs voiced his concern over the unauthorized release of secret US military reports about the war in Afghanistan during a White House briefing. The White House warned last night that billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan could be at risk if leaked intelligence reports prove that its security forces are colluding with the Taliban.
I think there is no doubt that this a concerning development in operational security and as we said earlier it poses a very real and potential threat to those that are working hard everyday to keep us safe, Gibbs said. More than 91,000 documents were released by WikiLeaks.org on Sunday. President Obamas spokesman ruled out a blank cheque to Islamabad as the Pentagon launched an investigation to hunt down the source of the biggest intelligence leak in US history. He repeated a statement first made by Mr Obama last year that the US will not and cannot provide a blank cheque to Pakistan if it fails to rein in extremists. He added: I am not going to stand here and tell you all is well.

US aware of connections between Taliban and Pakistan secret agencies was first posted on July 27, 2010 at 7:24 am.
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US aware of connections between Taliban and Pakistan secret agencies

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The cabinet has approved a new national education policy at its monday weekly meeting, the prime minister's press secretary Abul Kalam Azad told a briefing.

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Education policy gets cabinet nod

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Education policy gets cabinet nod

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs confirms that Obama will take a break from a Memorial Day weekend holiday trip to Chicago to make the trip.
This will be Obama’s second visit to the region since last month’s explosion and sinking of oil giant BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig. Since then, workers have been trying to plug [...]

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President Obama will travel to Louisiana’s Gulf Coast on Friday.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced at press conference on Thursday that the federal government has officially declared the oil spill in the Gulf Coast to be a “spill of national significance.”

President Barack Obama is stepping up the government’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by sending three Cabinet members to oversee the effort.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration also may send military ships and personnel to help control damage from the spill.

Joining Napolitano at the site will be Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and environmental protection administrator Lisa Jackson.

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‘Spill Of National Significance’ Declared Over Gulf Oil Spill

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‘Spill Of National Significance’ Declared Over Gulf Oil Spill

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Defense Secretary Robert Gates had asked Stanley to do a full review of the Pentagon’s personnel and readiness office. He said this is not the first nor the last change to take place.

“He was given wide latitude to make needed changes so that our men and women in uniform are better served,” said Morrell. “What you’re seeing is that the overhaul of that vitally important office is under way.”

Koch said he believes the decision was unjust and that he resigned “under duress” after Stanley told him he had no confidence in him. The Pentagon had no comment.

“No explanation was given, although I pressed for one,” he said. “No prior indication of dissatisfaction with the work of this office was cited.”

Koch said the wounded warrior program has done good work during the past 11 months since his appointment to lead the new office.

Nearly nine years of war, in Afghanistan and Iraq, has physically, mentally and emotionally battered the military, sending thousands home with severe injuries and spawning spikes in suicides and post-traumatic stress issues.

Officials have scrambled to set up transition units to help wounded troops recover and return to society or even the military, but the flood of patients and the complexities of their injuries have often overwhelmed the system.

___

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Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

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Noel Koch Ousted: Pentagon’s Head Wounded-Soldier Care Official Forced To Resign

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Noel Koch Ousted: Pentagon’s Head Wounded-Soldier Care Official Forced To Resign

In between a wave of questions about the president’s plans for the upcoming Supreme Court opening and regulatory reform legislation, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked a rather jarring and peculiar question:

“Do the complaints of birthers [those conspiracy theorists who doubt Obama is a natural citizen] complicate the president’s dealing with the American Muslim community?” a member of the White House press corps wanted to know.

That member was Fox News correspondent Wendell Goler, who earlier asked whether Obama agrees with the assessment of his chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, that “American Muslims have been subjected to excessive surveillance.”

Gibbs largely ducked that question, saying merely that the president has confidence in the job Brennan was doing. But the Press Secretary seemed genuinely bewildered with Goler’s follow-up — which may have been the first time birtherism has been brought into a discussion of Obama’s diplomatic outreach to the domestic Muslim world.

Goler: “[Obama's] been very much out front in dealing with Muslims abroad. There’s some question about whether or not he has been quite so visible at dealing with American Muslims. Do the complaints of birthers and other folks complicate the President’s dealing with the American Muslim community?

Gibbs: I have to say, you — I got to give you credit, Wendell, for getting a lot of crazy people in one question. (Laughter.)

Goler: I hope you’re not including me as one of the crazy people. (Laughter.)

Gibbs: No, no, no, I’m — but you artfully got in a lot of Internet complaints about the President in one –

Goler: Not to give credence to the arguments — I wonder if it complicates the President’s outreach politically.

Gibbs: No. We have — the President has dealt with the crazy Internet rumors for years. I don’t think that’s deterred anything that he’s done in understanding what the right thing is to do for this country and to broaden our relationship with Muslims throughout the world.

Again, I’ve said this many times, Wendell. If you’re — if after I asked that the President’s birth certificate be put on the Internet hasn’t dissuaded you from where he was being born, I’m almost positive that no argument is somehow going to dissuade you from that. I don’t — I got to tell you, I don’t — we don’t spend a lot of time here worrying about what to do about people that don’t think the President was born here. I don’t — again, I’m the guy who said “put the birth certificate on the Internet.” It has apparently, among those people, dissuaded virtually none of them.

Hard to see how this helps the already tense relationship between Fox and the White House though, for what it’s worth, Gibbs enjoys what appear to be quite cordial relations with the network’s White House reporters.

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Fox News To Gibbs: Does Birtherism Complicate Obama’s Muslim Outreach?

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Fox News To Gibbs: Does Birtherism Complicate Obama’s Muslim Outreach?

President Obama deserves congratulations for the new nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Reducing the number of nuclear bombs in the world is a good thing, and the Senate needs to ratify it as quickly as possible. So some of the big bullets are being removed as a threat to American citizens. But how about the .45 caliber-sized ones, Mr. President?

I am an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. The minute he announced his candidacy for president, I sent his campaign money. I bought Obama merchandise and gave it away to my friends. I volunteered to work on his campaign. I still have an “Obama ‘08″ bumper sticker on my car.

But when it comes to the issue of his leadership on gun violence, I am extremely disappointed in my President. His first year in office is checkered with his actions and lack of actions that fill me with disillusionment. With regard to gun laws, this is not the leader I hoped Obama would be.

In February, ‘09, the Obama Administration failed to oppose a gun lobby amendment repealing District of Columbia gun regulations that were attached to a D.C. voting rights bill. In April ‘09, he remained silent on the 10th anniversary of the shootings at Columbine. And Obama really lost me when he signed legislation on May 22 of last year that allows loaded guns national parks.

The list goes on. In July, activists help defeat a gun lobby amendment that would have allowed the carrying of loaded, concealed weapons across state lines. Obama failed to speak out against the amendment. Later in August protesters began showing up with assault weapons at the President’s town hall meetings, but the White House failed to condemn these security threats. Do you remember when it was deemed a threat to George W. Bush if someone showed up to one his public events wearing a t-shirt critical of him?

Every day in America, 85 people lose their lives to gun violence. That is more than two classrooms of men, women and children — every day. The President needs to show more leadership on an issue that has life and death consequences for many, many Americans.

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (named after Press Secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head during the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan), there have been at least 200 mass and high-profile shootings since Obama took office. It’s time the President spoke up on this needless violence, and lead the fight to restrict easy access to guns.

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Rich Robinson: Obama Tends to the Big Bullets — How About the 45-caliber Ones?

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Rich Robinson: Obama Tends to the Big Bullets — How About the 45-caliber Ones?

President Obama’s sit-down with Fox News’ Bret Baier, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, raised many eyebrows given the White House’s contentious relationship with the network.

Tuesday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained the appearance, saying, “Obviously they have a pretty big audience share and I think it is safe to say that a lot of members that are undecided are going … watch and their constituents watch this news. So we are happy to continue the argument on why health care reform is important to pass this year on Fox.”

In Mike Allen’s Playbook on Politico, though, an unnamed White House official takes a sharper tone, saying that Fox News is the “scene of the crime” on “many of the falsehoods and myths about health reform.”

The full comment:

“Many of the falsehoods and myths about health reform gained traction with Glenn Beck and others on FOX, so the President is returning to the scene of the crime to make the final sale. As we have said, we will work with Fox where it serves our communications interests, and this does.”

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White House: Fox News ‘Scene Of The Crime’ On Health Care Lies

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White House: Fox News ‘Scene Of The Crime’ On Health Care Lies

Finally, this health care stuff is getting interesting.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ assertion, on Fox News Sunday, of all deliberate places, that there will be a health-care bill passed this week is a declaration of brute political force and pure fuck you, no-accommodation certainty.

“I am absolutely confident we are going to be successful,” added David Axelrod on Meet the Press, also expressing the White House’s new macho thing.

All of the calculations are transparent:

They have the votes and can do it.

Doing it, with all its attendant risks, is better than not doing it.

Having done it, clarity and success are achieved.

Clarity and success are something you can run on–better, certainly, then convulsion and disappointment.

It’s a strategy that, suddenly, has the immediate virtue of obviousness. Bold and headstrong plays better than being stuck in the morass. Outflanking your enemies is better than being pinned down by them.

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Michael Wolff: Is the President Superman, After All?

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Michael Wolff: Is the President Superman, After All?

The iPhone welcomes a new free app, and it belongs to the White House.

“Today, we’re excited to announce the new White House App available for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. The White House App delivers dynamic content from WhiteHouse.gov to the palm of your hand,” read the blog entry titled “WhiteHouse.gov: Anywhere” on WhiteHouse.gov, posted on Jan. 19 at 10:38 p.m. EST.

This is the White House’s first iPhone app, and the move was inevitable for a White House that’s been consistently breaking new ground, from hosting online town hall meetings, offering live chats with top administration officials, to creating a robust YouTube channel, which hosts 481 videos, most of which are presidential speeches and events as well as press briefings by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. And the timing of the app’s release was no coincidence, of course, near the eve of President Obama’s one-year anniversary in office. For the record, Obama’s WhiteHouse.gov officially went live at 12:01 p.m. EST on Jan. 21, 2009.

First released in June 2007, more than 21 million iPhones have been sold worldwide. Some 100,000 apps are available on Apple’s iTune store.

Now, the most powerful office in the land is just a tap away in your iPhone.

Arguably the most innovative feature in in the White House app is live video streaming. Next week, for example, users can watch Obama’s State of the Union address on their iPhone in real time.

This is the first step in the White House’s mobile strategy, according to the White House’s new media department, led by Macon Phillips, a veteran of the Obama campaign. Soon, the White House will launch mobile.WhiteHouse.gov., a mobile-ready version of the White House’s virtual headquarters that is optimized for any Web-enabled mobile device. In other words, WhiteHouse.gov won’t just be iPhone-centric. “Mobile web usage grew over 100% in the last year” in the U.S. and more worldwide, the official blog posting pointed out, linking to a recent TechCrunch article that noted Apple’s dominance (the iPhone and the iPod Touch) in the mobile space, with a 65% market share in the U.S.

“We’ll continue to look for new and emerging technologies to engage the American people and make information about the President and his administration easily available,” the White House blog read.

A few hours later after the app hit iTunes, its first review from user name “goldenev” was posted, giving the White House app the highest score of 5 stars:

More govt organizations should follow the lead. Share with social networking sites would be great. Currently you can email or open in Safari. Notifications, comments integration and searching archives are nice to have. Thanks!

Check out other features of the White House app in the slideshow below, and rate your favorite.

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White House Launches New iPhone App (PHOTOS)