Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

The Little Pantsuit That Couldn't (Tell the Truth)

By Investor's Business Daily

Emailgate: The refusal of State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki to answer a simple yes or no question — did Hillary Clinton sign separation form OF-109? — is proof of a cover-up of a felony by the former secretary of state.

You'd think that if Clinton didn't sign separation form OF-109 or was not asked to, the State Department and Team Hillary would have just said so.

After all, it would be easier to deflect questions about getting special treatment than acknowledging the committing of a felony by essentially lying under oath with the false claim that you have returned all government materials in your possession, including your emails.

As former DOJ lawyer Shannen Coffin first pointed out, OF-109 is more than a promise that you have not absconded with some office supplies.

It's meant as a reminder that you can't take your work product with you, and that the employee is required to sign under penalty of perjury something akin to the threat of prosecution that looms just above the signature line on your Form 1040 at tax time.

NOT ISLAMIC AT ALL: Remember how Obama congratulated radical Islamists after their elections (but ignored Israel)?

By Warner Todd Huston

Our petty president Barack Hussein Obama has thus far today refused to personally congratulate Benjamin Netanyahu on his landslide re-election as Israel’s Prime Minister. But a look back at other recent elections shows that he had no problem immediately congratulating radical Islamist tyrants on their election victories. Obama even immediately congratulated one of our biggest international enemies, Vladimir Putin, on his last election victory.

As David Steinberg notes Obama immediately congratulated Turkey’s Erdogan–a radical Islamist tyrant. He also congratulated Egypt’s president not to mention praising the faux “election” of the terror-supporting Iranian president. He also congratulated Putin, the Saudis, Morsi and a whole list of other Islamist tyrants.

And how does the US government congratulate Bibi Netanyahu on his landslide re-election?

Our president stays silent and instead Obama sends John “Lurch” Kerry to do the duty.

Once again this proves that Barack Obama is a friend to tyrants and an opponent to free peoples everywhere.

But this should not surprise anyone. After all, Obama sent his operatives over to Israel to work to defeat Netanyahu. Obama, it seems, finally saw a regime change plan he liked. Fortunately Obama failed to destroy Benjamin Netanyahu.


Read more Warner Todd Huston at PubliusForum.com

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

"NOW WE HAVE A CALIPHATE" -- Dick Cheney Obliterates the Foreign Policy Disaster That is Barack Obama

In an interview featured in Playboy Magazine (I only read it for the compelling stories), Dick Cheney unleashes a fusillade of nuclear truth-bombs on Barack Obama, who is -- without question -- the worst president in American history. Some highlights:

ON SQUANDERING A VICTORY IN IRAQ

...Where do you start? I think with respect to the situation in Iraq, his precipitous withdrawal and refusal to leave any stay-behind forces, to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqis, was a huge mistake; we are paying a price for it now. He’s having to go back in now, and the guy who campaigned on the basis of bring the boys home and get out of Iraq is now redeploying forces to Iraq...

ON DEGRADING THE MILITARY CAPABILITY OF THE UNITED STATES

...I don’t think he ever bought into the notion that we’re at war, in terms of a war on terrorism; I think he always wanted to treat it as a law-enforcement problem. I think he’s done enormous damage to the military. I think what’s happened to the military in terms of morale, in terms of financing, budget and so forth is just devastating. The way Obama is functioning now, he’s crippling the capacity of future presidents to deal with future crises. It takes a long time to build up that military force. And I am absolutely convinced there will be a future president—two or three times down the road, perhaps—who will be faced with a major crisis and will not have the military capability he needs to deal with it. We are limiting the options of future presidents because of what is happening to the defense budget today...

BUMMER: Obama loses Israeli election to Netanyahu (UPDATE: includes funniest reactions to the losers)

Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett hardest hit.

Netanyahu faced an insurgent left-wing party, likely because of his hard line against both Iran and President Obama’s horribly failed foreign policy.

This is the first time the Israeli left came so close to coming back to full power in this post 9/11 world.


...Netanyahu’s Likud Party isn’t in such a strong position that it can control the whole government and seeing as how Israel is a Parliamentary system Netanyahu and Likud will now have to arrange a governing agreement with some of the lesser, left-wing parties.

But the fact that Bibi pulled this out at the last second is also telling. Israel is not ready to hand leftists full power.

Recall that Obama and his minions are reported to have spent U.S. taxpayer dollars to defeat Netanyahu.

Ted Cruz Befuddles MSNBC Hack on Congressional Role in Foreign Policy Using... History, Facts

For some reason, Ted Cruz decided to appear on MSNBC's The Morning Shmoe (Mark Levin's name for the lowest-rated news program on the lowest-rated network), where the combined IQ of the hosts -- the science is settled -- is roughly the square root of that of a goldfish.

Which makes Ted Cruz schooling Mika Brzezinski akin to teaching calculus to a Maine lobster.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Well, okay, do you know exactly what the deal is to call it a bad deal? Do you have all the information? I don't think you do.

TED CRUZ: We don't. We have some that the administration has leaked. And oddly enough the administration leaks more details about the deal to the media than they actually inform Congress. But I can point out the idea you're suggesting, if I'm understanding you'll right, that Congress shouldn't be interfering in what the president is doing, from the beginning of our country, Congress has done so.

In 1987 Congress passed the Boland Amendment restricting the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua. Now Ronald Reagan at the time was trying to stop communists in Nicaragua. Now my guess is you probably would have been very supportive of the Boland Amendment which was literally ripping the carpet out from underneath what President Reagan was trying to do in Nicaragua.

Let’s go even further back. Woodrow Wilson, at the end of World War I, negotiated the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I. Went back to Congress, the Senate rejected it. Now on your view, I guess, you know, the New York Daily News would run a story on the front page putting the pictures of all the senators and calling them traitors.

Monday, March 16, 2015

GOOD NEWS: Obama administration reports Iran and Hezbollah are no longer terror threats!

Oh, my goodness. What a relief! The 36-year long era of state-sponsored terror by the Iranian regime has finally drawn to a close.

An annual report delivered recently to the US Senate by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, removed Iran and Hezbollah from its list of terrorism threats, after years in which they featured in similar reports.

The unclassified version of the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communities, dated February 26, 2015 (PDF), noted Iran’s efforts to combat Sunni extremists, including those of the ultra-radical Islamic State group, who were perceived to constitute the preeminent terrorist threat to American interests worldwide.

...The United States and other Western nations, along with a coalition of regional allies, both Sunni and Shiite, has been launching attacks against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria in recent months. The Sunni group, also known by its acronyms IS, ISIS and ISIL, is an offshoot of al-Qaeda that has carved out a self-proclaimed caliphate across large swaths of Syria and Iraq, both of whose governments are allied with Iran’s.

The Shiite Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is funded and mentored by Tehran, has been fighting the Islamic State, independently of the American-led campaign, both in Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, the US has been engaged in marathon talks with Iran in an effort to reach an agreement on its nuclear program. Tehran, according to the National Intelligence threat assessment, has “overarching strategic goals of enhancing its security, prestige, and regional influence [that] have led it to pursue capabilities to meet its civilian goals and give it the ability to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons, if it chooses to do so.”


I'm so relieved. After all of the years of killing American warriors, Iran has finally renounced terrorism and has become our ally.

Thanks, President Jarrett!


Hat tip: BadBlue News. Illustration adapted from TNR.

SECURITAY: Hillary's Super-Secret, Super-Secure Email Server Can Only Be Accessed with a... Web Browser

Crowd-sourcing at its finest.

Marc Perkel reveals that Hillary Clinton's personal email server has web access enabled, which means an intrepid password-guesser might be able to access all of the Pantsuit's yoga emails.

Although we don’t know what IP address Clinton’s real email is on. It’s interesting to note IP addresses in the DNS for the clintonemail.com domain. Most host names like www.clintonemail.com all map to some holding page of no importance. However that host mail.clintonemail.com maps to a different IP address 64.94.172.146, which is in a data center in the New York area, Internap.com. Interesting that her “home server” resolves to a data center. Seems worth investigating to me. mail.presidentclinton.com resolves to the same IP address and also uses MxLogic.

So I thought, what if she has web mail? And sure enough – I GOT A LOGIN PROMPT! https://mail.clintonemail.com And I have verified by the SSL certificate that this is indeed the clintonemail.com server – still online! Click here and type in mail.clintonemail.com

I already tried hillary2016 for the password and that didn’t work. But I’m looking at this and thinking WTF!

Is Hillary’s server secure? It get’s a B rating here. Only supports weak protocols...


Gee, no security risk here. No, nothing to see, just move along.


Hat tips: RF and BadBlue Tech News.

REVEALED: Obama using the U.N. to enter a "binding" Iran nuclear agreement without Congress

By David Gerstman

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (Google link) that Secretary of State John Kerry is still upset about the open letter Sen. Tom Cotton (R – Ark.) wrote last week that was signed by 46 other Republican senators arguing that it was Congress’ role to review treaties.

Mr. Kerry said on Saturday in Egypt that these American lawmakers were “wrong.”

“It is almost inevitable it will raise questions in the minds of the folks with whom we’re negotiating as to whether or not they are negotiating with the executive department and the president, which is what the constitution says, or whether there are 535 members of Congress,” Mr. Kerry told reporters in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“Let me make clear to Iran…that from our point of view, this letter is incorrect in its statements,” he added. “As far as we are concerned, the Congress has no ability to change an executive agreement.”

It strikes me as odd that Kerry is doubling down on his non-binding argument. An executive agreement is not binding, unlike a treaty, and therefore not subject to Congressional review. It’s also odd that he claims, “as far as we are concerned.”

Shouldn’t the Constitution be the standard by which the Republican claims are judged? Finally, there’s Kerry’s famous declaration at the time the Joint Plan of Action was signed in November 2013 that the agreement was not based on trust. So if the agreement is not based on trust and it’s non-binding what “mechanism” will there to be verify that Iran isn’t overtly or covertly pursuing an illicit nuclear program?

More and more I’m convinced that Cotton’s reason for writing the letter was to smoke out the administration on this point.

It wasn’t unknown that the administration was portraying the emerging agreement with Iran as “non-binding.” Armin Rosen of Business Insider, for example, suggested this a week before Kerry and other administration officials admitted it. The problem of course with the administration’s position is, as Rosen wrote last week:

The US wouldn’t have a firm legal obligation to uphold the agreement, so Iran would have a built-in reason to assume American bad faith and push the limits of a future deal. In other words, without a legal guarantee on the US side, compliance with an agreement is potentially diluted Tehran’s side as well — and remember, this is a regime that hid the existence of two secret nuclear facilities and operated 20,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges in defiance of repeated UN Security Council resolutions.

One problem with Kerry’s harping on the Cotton letter is that it reinforces the weakness of the agreement that the United States is negotiating with Iran. The other problem is that despite the administration’s claim that the deal it is negotiating is non-binding, there is an effort to make this deal binding – on the United States.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Obama’s Treason Is the New Patriotism

By Daniel Greenfield

When Republicans complained that Obama refused to talk about Islamic terrorism, he accused them of playing into the hands of ISIS by demanding that he identify the enemy we’re fighting.

When they spoke out against his Iranian nuclear sellout, he accused them of “wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran”.

Those hardliners would presumably toe a harder line than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who responded to Obama’s outreach in his first term by saying, “The Islamic peoples all over the world chant ‘Death to America!’” and who stated last year that “This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it.”

(The Supreme Leader of a country which stones teenage rape victims and rapes teenage girls so that they don’t die as virgins, also claimed that “The European races are barbaric.”)

If the moderate Supreme Leader that Obama is dealing with wants Death to America, what could the real hardliners want for America that’s even worse than death? A third term of Obama?

Meanwhile Joe Biden, Obama’s number two, accused Republicans of undermining Obama. This would be the same Biden who threatened to impeach President Bush if he bombed Iran’s nuclear program and who blasted Bush and the idea of an Axis of Evil at a fundraiser in the home of a pro-Iran figure.

Biden undermined President Bush’s efforts to rein in Iran’s terrorism by voting against listing the Revolutionary Guard, which was supplying weapons to help the Taliban kill American soldiers, as a terrorist group (a position he shared with Kerry, Hagel and Obama) and berating Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for not negotiating with Iran and Assad.

The toadying of “Tehran Joe” to Iran had already reached its absolute lowest point when Biden responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11 by suggesting, “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.”

The administration that Biden is part of has instead been releasing $490 million a month to Iran.

Biden, along with Kerry and Hagel, became notorious as the Tehran Trio during the Bush years for their advocacy for Iran and Assad, and their appearances at pro-Iranian lobbying groups and fundraisers despite criticism from Iranian democracy advocates. Biden, Kerry and Hagel, Obama’s VP, the Secretary of State and the former Secretary of Defense, all appeared at American-Iranian Council events, a group whose founder stated that he is “the Iranian lobby in the United States.”

Treason doesn’t get more treasonous than that.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION: State Department kept just 61,156 emails of more than 1 billion sent

By Kathryn Watson

EMAIL ISSUES: A new report from the State Department Office of Inspector General finds that hardly any of the 1 billion emails State Department officials sent in 2011, during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, were preserved.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — It looks like Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only one in the U.S. Department of State with email issues.

A new report from the State Department’s Office of Inspector General found that employees only archived 61,156 emails out of the more than 1 billion they sent in 2011, a year that falls right in the middle of Hillary Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state.

To put that disparity in perspective, if each email created by the State Department that year were a sheet of paper, the paper stack would be more than 63 miles high, well into the thermosphere layer of Earth’s atmosphere and far higher than any plane can travel. But the archived portion of those emails or papers would only reach about 20 feet high, roughly the height of a two-story building.

“Federal law requires departments, agencies, and their employees to create records of their more significant actions and to preserve records according to government-wide standards,” the report reads.

HEY, N00BS: Laws are for the little people, not the Clintons!

By Investor's Business Daily

Transparency: Hillary Clinton insists she did everything by the book, that she broke no laws and heeded all regulations. That book is obviously not the State Department records management handbook.

The government's book says that you don't get to keep materials, classified or unclassified, in your personal possession and then get to sift through them at your leisure to decide which ones the government that paid you gets to see.

All documents are the property of the government. The State Department determines which ones are returned to you.

As Shannen W. Coffin, a contributing editor at National Review and senior lawyer at both the White House and Justice Department under President George W. Bush, points out, a provision titled "Removal Procedures" requires departing federal employees to relinquish any classified materials at the time of departure and to clear the removal through records-management officials.

State Department employees, from the secretary on down, have to abide by this process.According to Coffin, the records management handbook says, "(The) departing official or a staff member must prepare an inventory of personal papers and non-record materials proposed for removal."

Then the departing official must "request a review of the materials proposed for removal."

On leaving, the official must sign Form OF-109, a formal separation statement, certifying under penalty of law the departing official has "surrendered to responsible officials all unclassified documents and papers relating to the official business of the government acquired by me while in the employ of the (State) Department."

The employee does not get to determine what is classified or not, personal or not, and Clinton's assertion that she never emailed classified material is, as they say in court, irrelevant and immaterial.

Friday, March 13, 2015

FORMER DOJ DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: Hillary Clinton Broke The Law. Period.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics

MEGYN KELLY: Shannen, good to see you tonight. So, let's start with the broad brush, which is she followed all the rules, all the rules and she didn't commit any crimes whatsoever. You've been maintaining all along that's not necessary -- it's not true on the rules and it may not be true on the law if she concealed or destroyed federal records.

SHANNEN COFFIN, FORMER COUNSEL TO VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: It's demonstrably not true on the rules. She didn't comply with the Federal Records Act. And she clearly did not comply with her own records management handbook for the Department of State which sets out a very specific process about how you remove records from the department control.

PIC: One of her neighbors trolls Hillary

It would be funnier if a felony wasn't involved.



Hat tip: BadBlue News

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Why Obama freaked out when 47 GOP Senators sent a letter to Iran

By Sara Noble

The Hill reported today that the Republican letter to Iran has backfired. They said it jeopardizes the alliance Democrats and Republicans have formed to pass the Iran sanctions bill, a bill that might prove worthless in the end. Once this deal is through, Barack Obama will impede and delay any efforts by Congress regardless of the bill. What the hill failed to consider is the letter successfully sent the message to the Mullahs.

It is what is being lost in all this.

The letter infuriated Barack Obama because it told the Mullahs that any deal must include Congress and the president is not the sole decision maker. It infuriates Obama personally and ideologically to have his power limited.

Forty-seven members of the Republican senate united to make a point and the other seven are uniting to throw them under the bus along with the media.

The seven Republicans who did not sign the letter to Iran are out ripping it along with the Wall Street Journal. It plays into the president’s power over Democrats. The Corker-Menendez bill might now be in danger of not getting the 60 votes needed to pass but the message in the letter is arguably as important.

The Republicans should consider doing what the Democrats and a Hillary Clinton might do – dismiss the attacks and diminish the opposition. Instead of defending themselves, they need to use the opportunity to talk about the seriousness of this lousy deal. They need to make that case and not be distracted.

It’s understandable that some would not want to sign the letter but it is not understandable that they would then attack 47 of their colleagues and give support to the president’s case. If they think siding with the Democrats will get votes, they’re mistaken. They just gave them a platform.

Democrats are now insisting the Republicans denounce the letter on the Senate floor but the letter was 100% accurate.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

BECAUSE, CRUSADES: Kerry, State Department Agree That any Iran Deal Would Be "Non-Binding"

By The Tower

Over the past two days, both U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki have admitted that the current nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran is “non-binding.”

Speaking at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, Kerry said that the deal is not “legally binding.”

“We’ve been clear from the beginning we’re not negotiating a legally binding plan. We’re negotiating a plan that will have a capacity for enforcement,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We don’t even have diplomatic relations with Iran right now.”

Kerry made his remarks in the context of addressing what he called the “misconceptions” contained in the open letter released earlier this week that was signed by 47 Senators.

In an exchange with reporters at yesterday’s daily State Department press conference, Psaki was asked how the deal could be non-binding if the United States does not trust Iran. The video is embedded below the transcript.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Here's How Ted Cruz Could Win the GOP Nomination for President

Via Glenn Beck

Last night, author Trevor Loudon joined Glenn for an in-depth discussion on the growth of the progressive movement. In the interview, Loudon said that he believed Ted Cruz could be the leader America needs to lead it away from progressivism and back towards freedom. To secure his nomination, and eventually the presidency, Loudon suggested an unusual strategy: Cruz should name his cabinet and run as a team.

Glenn: So Trevor, you say that it is not the battle between Republicans and Democrats that is coming. You say it is the battle between…?

Trevor: It’s basically between the constitutionalists and the Communists. Those are the forces operating in the country today. The Communists are basically taking over the Democratic Party to a large degree, and on the other side of the fence, you’ve got the Republicans who are about a third progressives, a third go-alongs-to-get-alongs, and a third constitutionalists, and they have their Tea Party allies, the 9/12 allies, etc. So, to save America, that third of the GOP with the Tea Party, with the 9/12s, they have to be the people that do this. They are the only force that can turn this country around.

From a distance, you watch what’s happening here in America. Do you see anybody on the horizon that you think really gets it?

Yeah, look, I’m a big Ted Cruz fan, to be honest. I think he’s the one with the inspiration factor. He’s got the leadership qualities. He’s the most Reaganesque out there. I’m advocating that he runs early and names his entire cabinet, runs as a team, and barnstorms this country, you know, he puts Rand Paul as Secretary of the Treasury, do what he damn well wants to the Federal Reserve and the IRS, you know?

Nobody’s ever done that.

20 Funniest Reactions to Hillary's Catastrophic Email Press Conference

Maybe her illegal email server -- which explicitly violates the Federal Records Act -- will turn up in the White House someday like those infamous Rose Law Firm files?



Monday, March 09, 2015

Life Under the American Umbrella

By Caroline Glick

South Korea lives under a US security umbrella. Both on a conventional and nuclear level, South Koreans are dependent on the US to deter North Korea from attacking them and overrunning their country.

Last Friday, US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman scolded South Koreans for being too nationalist. In her words, “Nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy.”

The South Koreans interpreted her remarks as criticism of their President Park Geun-hye for her refusal to reinstate reunification talks with North Korea due to Pyongyang’s refusal to discuss the dismantlement of its nuclear program.

Sherman negotiated the US’s nuclear pact with North Korea in the 1990s. The North Koreans used the deal as a smokescreen behind which they developed nuclear weapons while receiving financial assistance from the US which paid off the regime for signing the deal.

Once Pyongyang was ready to come out as a nuclear power, it threw out the nuclear inspectors, opened the sealed nuclear sites, vacated its signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and began testing nuclear bombs.

Sherman is now the US’s chief negotiator in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran.

12 Questions Iran Refuses to Answer About its Nuclear Weapons Program

By The Tower

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has questions about twelve aspects of Iran’s past nuclear weapons research that the Islamic Republic has failed to satisfactorily answer, according to an analysis that appeared in The New York Times on Sunday.

These twelve areas of past Iranian research include computer simulations, detonation experiments, and delivery systems for nuclear warheads. While the analysis lists one of the areas of questions as having been discussed and two as “being on the table,” the other nine have not been discussed at all.

The one listed as having been discussed was research into electrically-fired detonators, which Iran explained as having applications for peaceful mining purposes. But experiments involving such detonators are believed to have taken place in the military base at Parchin, and Iran has not allowed a thorough investigation of the site. It has also paved over areas where the experiments are believed to have taken place.

According to the analysis, there is an ongoing debate among Western negotiators over how much weight to give to Iran’s failure to abide by past agreements (including the November 2013 Joint Plan of Action) and come clean about its illicit military nuclear program.

That inner debate, as one European official in the midst of the negotiations put it, turns on “whether to force Iran to explain its past” — especially before 2003, when American intelligence officials believe Iran operated a full-scale equivalent of the Manhattan Project — “or whether to focus on the future.”

American officials are vague when pressed on how fully Iran will have to answer questions it has avoided for years from United Nations inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna. To date, Iran has dodged all but one of the agency’s dozen sharp questions on bomb design.

Sunday, March 08, 2015

OBAMA'S FORMER DEFENSE INTEL CHIEF: Uhm, Of Course Obama Lied About Al Qaeda Being on the Run to Get Reelected

By Sara Noble

People shouldn’t be surprised that Barack Obama continually lies to us. He lied to get elected and the lies were obvious, such as his lie that al Qaeda was on the run.

He’s been selling us snake oil.

To most of us, this is not big news.

Gen. Michael Flynn, who served under Barack Obama as his defense intel chief, was interviewed by Bret Baier of Special Report this past week and it was clear to him that what Barack Obama was saying was diametrically opposed to all we knew was taking place on the ground.

Bin Laden, at the time of his death, was actively running al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was not on the run. “The lines were thicker and the organizations were more robust”. Gen. Flynn said.