Petraeus: 'I know the real enemy and it's Iran'
In a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post, Retired General David Petraeus has contradicted the Obama administration, saying that
Iran is part of the problem in the Middle East, and not part of the solution.
"The current Iranian regime is not our ally in the Middle East. It
is ultimately part of the problem, not the solution," Petraeus said in a
wide-ranging response to written questions from
The Washington Post for a story published Friday.
"The
hard-earned progress of the surge was sustained for over three years.
What transpired after that, starting in late 2011, came about as a
result of mistakes and misjudgments whose consequences were predictable.
And there is plenty of blame to go around for that," Petraeus said,
reflecting on his time commanding U.S. troops around the 2007 surge.
"Yet
despite that history and the legacy it has left, I think Iraq and the
coalition forces are making considerable progress against the Islamic
State. In fact, I would argue that the foremost threat to Iraq’s
long-term stability and the broader regional equilibrium is not the
Islamic State; rather, it is Shiite militias, many backed by — and some
guided by — Iran," he added.
And Obama thought he had shut Petraeus up. Here's hoping to see General Petraeus on a ballot sometime soon.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, David Petraeus, Iran, Iranian nuclear threat, Iraq, Islamic State
Benghazigate was plot to bring down David Petraeus gone bad?
Were CIA director David Petraeus and Ambassador Chris Stevens
in the dark over the Benghazi consulate attack because the same CIA agents who exposed his affair with Paula Broadwell were trying to bring him down? That's the claim in a shocking new book
(Hat Tip:
Zvi S).
Senior CIA officers targeted Petraeus
because they didn't like the way he was running the agency - focusing
more on paramilitary operations than intelligence analysis. They used
their political clout and their connections to force an FBI
investigation of his affair with Paul Broadwell and make it public,
according to 'Benghazi: The Definitive Report.'
'It was high-level career officers on the CIA who got the ball rolling on
the investigation. It was basically a palace coupe to get Petraeus out
of there,' Jack Murphy, one of the authors, told MailOnline.
Murphy and co-author Brandon Webb also revealed that the September 11 Benghazi terrorist attack that killed
four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, was retaliation by
Islamist militants who had been targeted by covert U.S. military
operations.
The book claims that neither Stevens nor even Petraeus knew about the raids by American
special operations troops, which had 'kicked a hornet's nest' among the
heavily-armed fighters after the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar
Gaddafi.
John Brennan, President Barack Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser, had been
authorizing 'unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the
traditional command structure,' according to the e-book. Brennan is
Obama's pick to replace Petraeus as head of the CIA.
Hmmm.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Benghazigate, David Petraeus, John Brennan
Who's da' Boss?
It's important to try to defeat Chuck Hagel and John Brennan's nomination, but at the end of the day, I'm not convinced it matters. One person makes all the decisions in the White House (okay, maybe Michelle has a say too), so it doesn't really matter who is else is in charge. Case in point:
The Syrian rebels.
In congressional testimony on Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta, who is retiring, and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both said they supported a plan last year by
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David
Petraeus to provide weapons to the rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian
President Bashar Assad.
Their comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee came in
response to a question from Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona,
who has been a leading critic of the Obama administration for failing to
do more to help the Syrian rebels who are heavily outgunned by Assad’s
forces.
Their response to McCain’s question about whether they supported the Clinton-Petraeus plan was direct and terse.
“We do,” said Panetta. “We did,” said Dempsey.
That
means the White House was presented with unified support for sending
arms by the top members of Obama’s national security team outside the
White House staff.
Asked about disagreement over whether to arm the rebels, State
Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at a briefing
today that she won’t comment on “internal policy discussions.”
Administration
officials, such as Nuland, have said that the US assistance to the
Syrians is limited to humanitarian aid and non-lethal equipment for the
rebels, while some other nations may be providing weapons.
The point of this post isn't to determine whether or not the US should arm the Syrian rebels. I have my doubts on that question as well, mainly because I don't believe it's possible to arm the rebels without arming al-Qaeda and other Islamists.
The point of this post is to tell you that - unsurprisingly given the size of his ego - there is only one decision maker in the White House and his middle name is Hussein. Oh - and he's not an expert in anything military or anything involving US national security. And he loves Muslims.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, David Petraeus, Free Syrian Army, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Martin Dempsey, National Security, US foreign policy
An extra-marital affair and a fall on the head put Syria in the hands of al-Qaeda?
The
New York Times is reporting that outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former CIA Director David Petraeus had developed a plan to arm Syrian rebels who are not affiliated with Islamists, but the plan fell apart when
Petraeus was forced to resign due to his extramarital affair and Clinton fell and hit her head.
But it was Syria that proved to be the most difficult test. As that
country descended into civil war, the administration provided
humanitarian aid to the growing flood of refugees, pushed for sanctions
and sought to organize the political opposition. The United States
lagged France, Britain and Persian Gulf states in recognizing that
opposition as the legitimate representative of the Syria people, but by
December, Mr. Obama had taken that step.
Still, rebel fighters were clamoring for weapons and training. The White
House has been reluctant to arm them for fear that it would draw the
United States into the conflict and raise the risk of the weapons
falling into the wrong hands. Rebel extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda
had faced no such constraints in securing weapons from their backers.
When Mr. Petraeus was the commander of forces in Iraq and then-Senator
Clinton was serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee and preparing
for her 2008 presidential bid, she had all but called him a liar for
trumpeting the military gains of the troop increase ordered by President
Bush. But serving together in the Obama administration, they were
allies when it came to Syria, as well as on the debate over how many
troops to send to Afghanistan at the beginning of the administration.
Mr. Petraeus had a background in training foreign forces from his years
in Iraq, and his C.I.A. job put him in charge of covert operations. The
Americans already had experience in providing nonlethal assistance to
some of the rebels.
The plan that Mr. Petraeus developed and Mrs. Clinton supported called
for vetting rebels and establishing and arming a group of fighters with
the assistance of some neighboring states. Defense Secretary Leon E.
Panetta was said by some officials to be sympathetic to the idea. Mr.
Petraeus and a spokesman for Mr. Panetta declined to comment.
Wary of becoming entangled in the Syria crisis, the White House pushed
back, and Mrs. Clinton backed off. Some administration officials
expected the issue to be joined again after the election. But when Mr.
Petraeus resigned because of an extramarital affair and Mrs. Clinton
suffered a concussion, missing weeks of work, the issue was shelved.
In an interview last week, Mrs. Clinton declined to comment on her role
in the arms debate and emphasized other steps the United States had
taken. “We have worked assiduously, first to create some kind of
legitimate opposition,” she said. “We have been the architect and main
mover of very tough sanctions against Assad.”
She added: “Having said all that, Assad is still killing. The opposition
is increasingly being represented by Al Qaeda extremist elements.” She
also said that the opposition was getting messages from the ungoverned
areas in Pakistan where some of the Qaeda leadership was believed to be
hiding — a development she called “deeply distressing.”
So if this report is correct, it will one day be written that the United States earned Syria's enmity for the next 100 because David Petraeus couldn't keep his pants zippered, Hillary Clinton couldn't stay on her feet, and Barack Hussein Obama was in bed with the Islamists.
What could go wrong?
Labels: al-Qaeda, Barack Hussein Obama, David Petraeus, Free Syrian Army, Hillary Clinton, Islamist, Syrian uprising
White House blackmailed Petraeus for Benghazigate testimony
In an interview on Fox News, columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Tuesday that the Obama White House held CIA director David Petraeus' affair with biographer Paula Broadwell over his head in a bid to extract favorable testimony from Petraeus on Benghazigate.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip:
Newsbusters).
It will be interesting to see what happens when and if Petraeus testifies again in Congress.
Labels: Benghazigate, Charles Krauthammer, David Petraeus
'Jill Kelley' is really Jill Khawam
'Jill Kelley,' the woman who precipitated the David Petraeus scandal by reporting that she was being harassed by Petraeus paramour Paula Broadwell, is actually a
37-year old Lebanese woman named Jill Khawam (Hat Tip:
Sunlight via
Daniel Greenfield).
Kelley, 37, hails from a Lebanese family that emigrated to Philadelphia in the mid-1970s.
Her
parents, John and Marcelle Khawam, once operated a restaurant in
Voorhees, N.J., and still live in Washington Crossing, Bucks County,
according to public records. An older brother resides in South Jersey,
records suggest.
...
A 1988 Inquirer feature about the family's culinary roots described
Kelley's father as an accomplished musician in their homeland and her
mother as a chef who liked to entertain political and cultural figures.
At
one point, the Khawams ran a Middle Eastern restaurant in Voorhees
called Sahara. John Khawam also owned an auto tag store in Northeast
Philadelphia, records show.
After living in Northeast Philadelphia, the family moved to Huntingdon Valley.
Jill Khawam and her twin sister, Natalie, were the youngest of four children.
Both
women moved about a decade ago to Tampa, where Jill Kelley's husband
works as a surgeon and the couple are active in the social circuit.
Natalie
Khawam is a lawyer specializing in representing whistleblowers.
According to her online resume, she attended Beaver College (now
Arcadia), and earned graduate degrees from Temple University and
Georgetown University Law School.
An older sister, Caroline, also
lives in Florida, while Kelley's older brother, David Khawam, lives in
Mount Laurel, records show.
Lebanon? Hezb...? Hmmm....
It gets better: According to John Podhoretz,
she speaks Arabic.... (And she's a Maronite Christian
- Daniel Greenfield had that detail as well).
Labels: CIA, David Petraeus, Hezbullah
Surprise: Petraeus resignation delayed to avoid embarrassing Obama
On Friday, David Petraeus was forced out as director of the CIA because he was having an affair with his 'biographer.'
It's bad enough that Congress wants to talk to Petraeus about the Benghazi terror attack. What's worse is that the CIA and the FBI both knew Petraeus had to go, but delayed it so as to avoid embarrassing President Hussein Obama before the elections. This is from
John Hinderaker quoting Newsmax.
Still,
the White House, with concurrence by the FBI and Justice Department,
held off on asking for Petraeus’ resignation until after the election.
His resignation occurred three days after the election, avoiding the
possibility that Obama’s ill-fated appointment of Petraeus could become
an issue in the election.
FBI agents on the case were aware that such a
decision had been made to hold off on forcing him out until after the
election and were outraged.
“The decision was made to delay the resignation
apparently to avoid potential embarrassment to the president before the
election,” an FBI source says. “To leave him in such a sensitive
position where he was vulnerable to potential blackmail for months
compromised our security and is inexcusable.”
What was more important? The country's security or Hussein's reelection? Isn't it obvious by now?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, David Petraeus
