Who's responsible for nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri's death? Not just Hillary
Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton went on Fox News over the weekend, and blasted Hillary Clinton for endangering the life of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who was hung over the weekend.
Let's go to the videotape.
While there's no doubt that Clinton mishandled the Amiri case, the real question is why Amiri was brought to the US without his wife and child in the first place. This is from a post I did in 2010.
Finally, for those who wonder - as I do - why the CIA didn't just bring his family along.
One
of the mysteries about Amiri is why he decided to defect without his
young wife and child, leaving them -- and himself -- vulnerable to
Iranian pressure. The CIA often tries to arrange for the escape of a
defector’s family, to avoid just this sort of squeeze.
“The
choice to come to this country, and who he brought with him, were his,”
said a U.S. official who is familiar with the details of Amiri’s case.
I would guess that Amiri's wife refused to defect. As my mother-in-law
often reminds me, whom you marry is the most important decision you make
in life.
Amiri should never have been brought to the US without his family unless everyone was sure that he wished to abandon them, which was clearly not the case. That's what Bolton discusses around the 4:30 mark. Who's responsible for that? Certainly, Obama is responsible, as is the CIA and its director Leon Panetta (later Secretary of Defense), who ran the CIA from 2009-11.
But Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State at the time, also bears some responsibility for what happened, and she may have been the one who disclosed to the Iranians just what Amiri had done.
And you want to make her President and keep her party in power?
Flashback: When the White House accused AP of 'trutherism' on Iran
In light of Ben Rhodes' revelation over the weekend that he led a White House effort to lie about the Iranian nuclear deal, it is useful to look back at last summer, when the White House attacked the Associated Press and its diplomatic reporter, @APDiplowriter (Matt Lee) for asking too many questions about the deal, particularly about the side agreement that allows the Iranians to 'self-inspect' their weapons production facility at Parchin.
What this story is really about is the
politicization of expertise, and how far things can go when one group of
experts (arms controllers) decides to fight by impugning the expertise
of another group (in this case, reporters) for the sake of public
theater. This is almost entirely a phenomenon of new media and the speed
of the news cycle in the modern era.
The Iran Deal supporters knew
there was no point in trying to rebut the substance of the claim: The
story was out, people had already read it, and politicians had already
reacted. A careful analysis of whether the document said what the AP
headline said it did would take too long, and most people wouldn’t
bother with it.
Instead, the story had to be
discredited and flushed, as soon as possible. There wasn’t time to
explain that “monitor” might mean different things to a lay reader and
to an expert. Better simply to throw an array of charges at the
Associated Press and its reporters and see what sticks.
In
the end, the most disturbing question of all is to ask what would have
happened if an institution of less prominence and reputation had
published this report. The Iran Deal truthers didn’t count on the AP
firing back, and despite Fisher’s testy accusation that reporter Matt
Lee was having a “meltdown,” the entire company stood behind the story.
The backlash-to-the-backlash has begun, and while the IAEA has said the
story is a “misrepresentation,” they haven’t said it’s false, either.
Neither has the White House. So far, the AP and its story are still
here.
The warning shot to other
journalists is clear, however. Reporters with one of the most reputable
news organizations in the world had to fight off odious charges for
doing their job. This is apparently the price to be paid for reporting
anything that challenges support for a deal that has reached, among its
adherents, the status of a dogma that tolerates no heresy.
After Friday's news, it's difficult to rebut the argument that the Iran deal has the status of a dogma that tolerates no heresy in the eyes of its supporters. But that won't stop them from trying. After all, Big Brother knows best what's good for us. And now that the fight is over, we can all read the bill.
Congress didn't 'buy' @rhodes44 lies either - they looked to him for cover
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
In a comment to this post, Nancy B writes, "Quite disturbing that so many in Congress bought this fiction hook, line and sinker!"
They didn't buy it. The Republicans opposed the Iran deal up and down the line. The Democrats were willing to do anything - anything - to avoid voting against their President. They were looking to avoid rocking the boat without risking the destruction of their careers. They were looking for cover for not opposing Obama. Rhodes provided it.
In an article appearing in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, White House speechwriter Ben Rhodes (@rhodes44) admits what Israel supporters claimed all along: He lied to Congress in order to sell the nuclear sellout to Iran.
Rhodes’s innovative campaign
to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future
administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The
way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal
presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with
Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political
reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought
moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the
purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story
are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to
take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s
closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with
Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his
presidency. “It’s the center of the arc,” Rhodes explained to me two
days after the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, was implemented. He then checked off the ways in which the
administration’s foreign-policy aims and priorities converged on Iran.
“We don’t have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other
ways to resolve these issues,” he said. “We can do things that challenge
the conventional thinking that, you know, ‘AIPAC doesn’t like this,’ or
‘the Israeli government doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the gulf countries
don’t like it.’ It’s the possibility of improved relations with
adversaries. It’s nonproliferation. So all these threads that the
president’s been spinning — and I mean that not in the press sense — for
almost a decade, they kind of all converged around Iran.”
In
the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the “story” of the Iran deal began in
2013, when a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan
Rouhani beat regime “hard-liners” in an election and then began to
pursue a policy of “openness,” which included a newfound willingness to
negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program. The
president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the
nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: “Today, after two years of negotiations,
the United States, together with our international partners, has
achieved something that decades of animosity has not.” While the
president’s statement was technically accurate — there had in fact been
two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the
J.C.P.O.A. — it was also actively misleading, because the most
meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012,
many months before Rouhani and the “moderate” camp were chosen in an
election among candidates handpicked by Iran’s supreme leader, the
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran
was politically useful to the Obama administration. By obtaining broad
public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in
the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to
moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their
neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have
otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy
choices that his administration was making. By eliminating the fuss
about Iran’s nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a
source of structural tension between the two countries, which would
create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established
system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and
Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin
the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East.
...
The person whom Kreikemeier credits with running the digital side of the
campaign was Tanya Somanader, 31, the director of digital response for
the White House Office of Digital Strategy, who became known in the war
room and on Twitter as @TheIranDeal. Early on, Rhodes asked her to
create a rapid-response account that fact-checked everything related to
the Iran deal. “So, we developed a plan that was like: The Iran deal is
literally going to be the tip of everything that we stand up online,”
Somanader says. “And we’re going to map it onto what we know about the
different audiences we’re dealing with: the public, pundits, experts,
the right wing, Congress.” By applying 21st-century data and networking
tools to the white-glove world of foreign affairs, the White House was
able to track what United States senators and the people who worked for
them, and influenced them, were seeing online — and make sure that no
potential negative comment passed without a tweet.
...
When
I suggested that all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed
from rational debate over America’s future role in the world, Rhodes
nodded. “In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse
the [expletive] out of this,” he said. “We had test drives to know who
was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use
outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So
we knew the tactics that worked.” He is proud of the way he sold the
Iran deal. “We drove them crazy,” he said of the deal’s opponents.
Yet
Rhodes bridled at the suggestion that there has been anything deceptive
about the way that the agreement itself was sold. “Look, with Iran, in a
weird way, these are state-to-state issues. They’re agreements between
governments. Yes, I would prefer that it turns out that Rouhani and
Zarif” — Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister — “are real
reformers who are going to be steering this country into the direction
that I believe it can go in, because their public is educated and, in
some respects, pro-American. But we are not betting on that.”
In
fact, Rhodes’s passion seems to derive not from any investment in the
technical specifics of sanctions or centrifuge arrays, or any particular
optimism about the future course of Iranian politics and society. Those
are matters for the negotiators and area specialists. Rather, it
derived from his own sense of the urgency of radically reorienting
American policy in the Middle East in order to make the prospect of
American involvement in the region’s future wars a lot less likely. When
I asked whether the prospect of this same kind of far-reaching spin
campaign being run by a different administration is something that
scares him, he admitted that it does. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober,
reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take
a vote,” he said, shrugging. “But that’s impossible.”
But it wasn't just Congress that was told lies. So was Obama's Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.
One
of the few charter members of the Blob willing to speak on the record
is Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s head of the C.I.A. and secretary of
defense and also enough of a product of a different culture to give
honest answers to what he understands to be questions of consequence. At
his institute at the old Fort Ord in Seaside, Calif., where, in the
days before he wore Mr. Rogers sweaters, he served as a young Army
intelligence officer, I ask him about a crucial component of the
administration’s public narrative on Iran: whether it was ever a salient
feature of the C.I.A.’s analysis when he ran the agency that the
Iranian regime was meaningfully divided between “hard-line” and
“moderate” camps.
“No,”
Panetta answers. “There was not much question that the Quds Force and
the supreme leader ran that country with a strong arm, and there was not
much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any
traction.”
I
ask Panetta whether, as head of the C.I.A., or later on, as secretary
of defense, he ever saw the letters that Obama covertly sent to
Khamenei, in 2009 and in 2012, which were only reported on by the press
weeks later.
“No,”
he answers, before saying he would “like to believe” that Tom Donilon,
national security adviser since 2010, and Hillary Clinton, then
secretary of state, had a chance to work on the offer they presented.
As
secretary of defense, he tells me, one of his most important jobs was
keeping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his defense
minister, Ehud Barak, from launching a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s
nuclear facilities. “They were both interested in the answer to the
question, ‘Is the president serious?’ ” Panetta recalls. “And you know
my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where
we had evidence that they’re developing an atomic weapon, I think the
president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.”
Panetta stops.
“But would you make that same assessment now?” I ask him.
“Would I make that same assessment now?” he asks. “Probably not.”
So another victim of the lies was Israel - specifically Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Except that in Panetta's telling the story, he didn't know he was lying to them. And Panetta now admits what everyone in Israel felt at the time: There was no way in the world Hussein Obama was going to use military force to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
PS I left this out, but it turns out that Laura Rozen - likely the biggest cheerleader for the Iran deal on Twitter, is described as the White House's RSS feed for the deal. Think about that the next time you read something in al-Monitor, which she edits.
[Hagel] said he remains puzzled why White House officials tried to
“destroy” him personally in his last days in office, adding that he
was convinced the United States had no viable strategy in Syria and was
particularly frustrated with National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who
he said would hold meetings and focus on “nit-picky” details.
“I
eventually got to the point where I told Susan Rice that I wasn’t going
to spend more than two hours in these meetings,” Hagel told Foreign
Policy. “Some of them would go four hours.”
Hagel said the administration struggled with how to handle Syria — hardly a surprise, given the way Obama said in August 2012
that it would be a “red line” for the United States if Syria moved or
used its chemical weapons stockpiles, but did not intervene militarily
the following year when Syria did so. Hagel said that hurt Obama’s
credibility, even if declared stockpiles eventually were removed through
an agreement reached with Damascus.
“Whether it was the right decision or not, history will determine that,” Hagel told Foreign Policy. “There’s no question in my mind that it hurt the credibility of the president’s word when this occurred.”
...
Hagel, for his part, told Foreign Policy that he got “the hell beat
out of him” figuratively at the White House for delaying in signing
transfer orders to release detainees from the military prison at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when he had concerns about the individuals
involved. He also said he felt micro-managed — something that Gates,
Panetta and other defense officials have all expressed.
“There is a danger in all of this,” Hagel told Foreign Policy, referring
to White House micromanagement and the administration’s expanding
national security staff. “This is about governance; this isn’t about
political optics. It’s about making the country run and function, and
trying to stay ahead of the dangers and the threats you see coming.”
Oh my: Obama's former Secretary of Defense blasts Iran deal
Shades of Winston Churchill. Shortly after Chamberlain's infamous appeasement of Hitler in 1938, Churchill told Chamberlain in the House of Lords:
“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
Although he's not likely to be President of the United States, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has essentially just said the same thing to President Hussein Obama regarding his sellout to a nuclear-armed Iran (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on
Friday, Panetta, a Californian who also served as head of the CIA, says
that “the Iran deal provides the United States with an opportunity to
define a policy of strength, not ambivalence, in the Middle East.”
Yet President Barack Obama has done the opposite, using the Iran deal
as an way to cement Iran as a regional power, in pursuit of what he
calls a “new equilibrium.”
Panetta’s argument is for a dramatic shift in Obama’s stance.
He concedes that critics of the Iran deal are right:
In itself, the Iran deal would appear to reward Tehran
for defying the world, make funds available for its extremist activities
and generally make it stronger militarily and economically. Although
the agreement provides for a temporary delay in Iran’s nuclear
enrichment capability, it allows Tehran to retain its nuclear
infrastructure and obtain sanctions relief. The risk is that Iran could
become an even bigger threat to the region.
He adds: “Let’s face it, given the situation in the Middle East,
empowering Iran in any way seems like a dangerous gamble.” The deal, he
says, is motivated by the fear of war, not sound strategy.
However, the deal could work if Obama would “make clear that the
fundamental purpose…is not just to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions
but to build a strong coalition that will confront both Iran and
terrorism in the future.”
But Obama and Kerry are too busy kissing up to the Ayatollah and Hassan Rohani to do anything of the sort. It is likely that there will be another war. This one will be a nuclear war. But Obama is hoping that it will at least take place after he leaves office and his legacy (such as it is) is cemented.
But
in a letter
Tuesday to members of the CNAS board of directors, Flournoy said she
would
remain in her post at the think tank and asked Obama to take her out of
consideration to be the next secretary of defense. Flournoy told the
board
members that family health considerations helped drive her decision and
the fact that two of her children are leaving for college in the next
two years.
"Last night I spoke with President Obama and removed myself from
consideration due to family concerns," reads the letter. "After much
agonizing, we decided that now was not the right time for me to reenter
government. The good news is that you all are stuck with me for the
indefinite future!"
The move means that only
one of the three names rumored for the post remains under consideration: Ashton
Carter, the former deputy secretary of defense. When Hagel was ousted Monday,
speculation had immediately turned to Flournoy, Carter, and Democratic
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a former Army Ranger. But Reed took himself out
of the running almost immediately after Hagel announced his resignation.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Monday suggested Hagel had vented “frustration” to him over his treatment by the White House.
The
steady stream of stories in recent weeks that suggested Hagel was
having a difficult time penetrating the president’s inner circle carried
echoes of Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, two past Defense secretaries
who went on to write tell-all books critical of the president’s handling
of defense policy.
Former Democratic aide Brent Budowsky said
Democrats across the Capitol saw Hagel’s ouster as the latest example of
“unprecedented” drama created by “too tight and too controlling of an
inner circle.”
He noted that not only had each of the president’s
previous Defense secretaries voiced concern over his Syria policy, so
had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“This is going to
precipitate a very visible battle beginning today and going through the
confirmation of his successor about what the policy should be, and
highlight the long-term and chronic internal disagreement,” said
Budowsky, who is a columnist for The Hill.
Other defense experts say Hagel was not particularly close with the president or members of his national security team.
"He
had no relationships that were already established within this
administration," said a retired military officer with current policy
experience in Washington, who wanted to speak on background.
The
retired officer noted that Hagel is also older than the president's
closest advisers, such as Rice and chief of staff Denis McDonough.
"The generational difference was a really difficult thing," he said.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has pulled a trick out of President Obama's book, going on CBS's Face the Nation to appeal directly to the American people.
Let's go to the videotape.
Also speaking on Face the Nation, former US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that the US ought to be skeptical of Iran's intentions.
"We've got to be very skeptical," Panetta said. "Iran is a country
that has promoted terrorism. They've had a hidden enrichment facility
that we had to find out about. So we've got to be skeptical and make
sure that, even with some kind of interim agreement, that we know what
the next steps are going to be in order to ensure that they really do
stand by their word."
"You better operate from a position of strength if you want to deal with the Iranians," he added.
Any
deal must question what will happen to enriched fuel that Iran already
has, the country's centrifuges, and heavy water reactors, Panetta said,
and must address ensure that the country does not have any other hidden
enrichment sites.
It's going to be an interesting week in Washington.
Republicans are filibustering Chuck Hagel’s nomination for
secretary of defense, Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.)
announced Thursday.
The Senate will vote to end debate on Hagel’s nomination
Friday morning, Reid said. Democrats need at least five Republicans to
meet the 60-vote threshold required to end a filibuster, though it is
unclear whether they have those votes in the bag. A GOP aide says “it’s
pretty clear” Reid does not have the votes. No major cabinet appointee
has ever been successfully filibustered.
Reid was visibly agitated as he made the announcement.
“This isn’t a high school getting ready for a football game,” he huffed
on the Senate floor. “There are serious consequences to this delay.”
He went on to denounce Republicans for their “shocking”
and “outlandish” behavior, falsely claiming that the United States will
be without a secretary of defense “in less than two hours,” when Leon
Panetta formally leaves the post. In fact, Panetta said he would remain on duty until his successor is sworn in.
Reid also dismissed GOP requests for further information
about the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi — a primary rationale for
the filibuster — as “political theater,” and suggested Republicans were
simply trying to placate the Tea Party. “Chuck Hagel had nothing to do
with the attack in Benghazi,” Reid said. “It’s tragic they have decided
to filibuster this qualified nominee.”
Fox News Channel confirms: "Senior Republican sources [are] telling
Democrats they intend to mount a full-scale filibuster of the Chuck
Hagel nomination and will block his nomination from receiving an up or
down vote."
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.
Incredible: US had real time info from Predator drone hovering over Benghazi consulate, still did nothing
This ought to give you some idea of what true cowards President 'gutsiest call ever' and his pussy Secretary of 'Defense' are: They had real-time information from a Predator drone hovering over the US consulate in Benghazi, and they sat and watched (or in Obama's case went to sleep) and did nothing.
The United States had an unmanned Predator drone over its consulate
in Benghazi during the attack that slaughtered four Americans — which
should have led to a quicker military response, it was revealed
yesterday.
“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,” former CIA commander Gary Berntsen told CBS News.
The
network reported that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft
observed the final hours of the hours-long siege on Sept. 11 — obtaining
information that should have spurred swift action.
But as
Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were killed by
terrorists armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers,
Defense Department officials were too slow to send in the troops,
Berntsen said.
...
“They made zero adjustments in this. You find a way to make this happen,” he fumed.
“There isn’t a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments.”
...
Several requests for additional security in Benghazi were made to the
State Department prior to the attack. They were all rejected.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to deflect blame from
President Obama last week, saying the decision not to beef up guards
was her responsibility.
“I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world [at] 275 posts,” she told CNN.
“The
president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about
specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They’re the
ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a
considered decision.”
Yeah sure. I suppose Hillary was watching the drone feed too. What a bunch of lies.
The man who made the 'gutsiest call ever' while Obama was on the golf course
No, it wasn't Barack Obama who made the 'gutsiest call ever.' Not according to this report anyway. He wasn't even with the girls of the view when it happened. He was out on the golf course.
The decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and kill
him was made without President Obama – and actually was kept from him
until after the helicopters already were in Pakistani airspace –
according to a new report from a retired major general who cites a
senior intelligence source.
The raid was handled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Director
of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta and others in this way because
Obama had vetoed multiple earlier opportunities to attack the man behind
the 9/11 terror attacks, the report said.
...
In a column published today by WND,
Vallely said a “senior and sensitive intelligence community source”
affirmed to a Stand Up America research team that Obama “did not know of
the raid in Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, until
after the helicopters with SEAL Team 6 had crossed into Pakistani
airspace.”
The source said Obama was notified “at the golf course … which is why
he was sitting in the strange sitting position in the picture that
documented the White House operations room event.”
The source told Stand Up America that Panetta “was the key player who organized and supported this daring raid.”
“He signed the ‘execute orders’ with only a few people aware:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,
Adm. Bill Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus.”
The source explained the White House “was closed out of the decision
because the president, through Valerie Jarrett, had turned down two or
three other earlier proposals.”
Panetta, Vallely’s source reported, “and his covert planning team
were extremely frustrated at all the denials, so saw the opportunity
slipping away, as implausible as it seems.”
The report said Panetta convinced his other principals to make the
decision and received their full-fledged support but the president,
according to the official, “remained clueless on the mission.”
“This tremendously serious and sensitive information was relayed by a
source who has been very frustrated with the continued dishonesty
within the White House,” Vallely reported.
Given what we know about the President, it seems plausible that he would not have wanted to kill Bin Laden. He MIGHT have wanted to put him on trial. If that.
Just imagine what a second term (God forbid) would be like....
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said on Friday that the United States has lost track of 'some' Syrian chemical weapons. How many? They're not saying. And no one knows whether the weapons are in the control of Syrian rebels, Iranians in the country helping the pro-Assad forces or someone else (Hat Tip: Sunlight).
“There has been intelligence that there have been some moves that have
taken place. Where exactly that’s taken place, we don’t know.” Panetta
said, in a Pentagon press briefing.
Panetta said that the “main sites” in Syria storing chemical weapons
with which the Pentagon is most concerned remain secured by the Syrian
military. But there is “some intelligence” that “limited” movements of
weapons from other sites have occurred, he said, “for the Syrians to
better secure what they – the chemicals.”
“But with regards to the movement of some of this and whether or not
they’ve been able to locate some of it,” he said of U.S. intelligence,
“we just don’t know.”
Following the briefing, Pentagon officials sought to clarify the extent of their grasp
on the status of Syria's stockpiles. "We've never had perfect visibility into
the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile, but we have excellent information
that accounts for most of it," said a senior defense offiical,
speaking on background. "We've seen it move, and we've been able
to make an assessment as to why it's been moved. This is a highly
distributed network of chemical weapons sites, and we have a good grasp
of what's going on inside that network."
What could go wrong? Well, that's not the end of it. It seems there's a lot about Mr. Panetta that we didn't know. Until now.
Here's Trevor Loudon addressing an enthusiastic crowd at the 2012 Gathering of
the Eagles crowd event in Turner, OR. Trevor is a libertarian activist
and political researcher from Christchurch, New Zealand and is founder
and editor of KeyWiki.org, a rapidly growing website with the goal of
unlocking the covert side of U.S. and Global politics. He is the author
of "Barack Obama and the Enemies Within". "Trevor Loudon does the job
that few in the media ever even attempt. This eye-opening book is proof
that one person really can make a difference, especially when they have
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Trevor Loudon has an awful lot to tell us about Leon Panetta, Barack Obama and the Communist party.
He didn't mention her by name, but in a comment at a press conference with the Bulgarian Prime Minister on Tuesday, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphatically rejected US Secretary of State Clinton's claim that there is no need for red lines on Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said that countries that refused to set deadlines for Iran to give up its nuclear program have no right to tell Israel to hold back on taking preemptive military action to thwart the regime’s nuclear ambitions.
His comments constituted an explicit and bitter rebuttal of comments made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said on Sunday that the US will currently not set deadlines or give ultimatums regarding Tehran’s refusal to curb its nuclear program.
“The world tells Israel to wait because there is still time. And I ask: Wait for what? Until when? Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel,” Netanyahu said. “If Iran knows that there is no red line or deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it is doing today, i.e., continuing to work unhindered toward achieving a nuclear weapon.”
Netanyahu also brushed off the sanctions again.
“As of now, we can clearly say that diplomacy and sanctions have not worked. They have hit the Iranian economy but they haven’t stopped the Iranian nuclear project,” Netanyahu said. “This is a fact. Another fact is that every day Iran gets closer to a nuclear bomb.”
If Iran decides to make a nuclear weapon, the United States would have a little more than a year to act to stop it, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday.
"It's roughly about a year right now. A little more than a year. And so ... we think we will have the opportunity once we know that they've made that decision, take the action necessary to stop (Iran)," Panetta said on CBS's "This Morning" program.
A year? A year? The breakout time from having sufficient 20% enriched uranium to making enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon is supposed to be 4-8 weeks. Iran is three months from having enough centrifuges underground to fully populate the Fordow facility near Qom. So where does Panetta see a year?
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said on Tuesday that he does not believe that Israel will really attack Iran. And because of cold water being poured on the prospect of an Israeli attack by Panetta and by several retired Israeli army officers, Iran doesn't believe that Israel will attack it either. And therefore, they are continuing full speed ahead with the development of a nuclear weapon.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday that he did not believe that Israel had made a decision on whether to attack Iran over its nuclear program, and added that he thought there was still time for a stronger sanctions push.
Panetta’s comments came at a Pentagon briefing against the background of the very loud and public debate in Israel about whether to attack Iran.
...
The conclusions the Iranians have drawn from the debates, at least judging from remarks made Tuesday by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, is that no attack is imminent.
“Even if some officials in the illegitimate regime [Israel] want to carry out such a stupid action, there are those inside [the Israeli government] who won’t allow it because they know they would suffer very severe consequences from such an act,” he was quoted by the AFP as telling reporters at a weekly briefing on Tuesday.
“In our calculations, we aren’t taking these claims very seriously because we see them as hollow and baseless,” he said.
He also reportedly said that Israel is only talking about an attack because of domestic problems, such as the economic protests. Israel Radio reported that Iranian leaders are convinced that Israel will not act without US backing, and that as long as Washington is indicating that they do not currently support such a move, there is no reason for undue concern.
Netanyahu, in a statement he made alongside Panetta earlier this month, foresaw this attitude, and said that despite forceful statements by the US and Israel, Iran is not convinced “that we are serious about stopping them.”
“Right now, the Iranian regime believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program. This must change and it must change quickly, because time to resolve this issue peacefully is running out,” Netanyahu continued.
Didi Remez posted the picture above on Twitpic. It's from today's Maariv, a Hebrew newspaper that does not have an English-language website. For the Hebrew-impaired, the headline reads "Panetta: Israel is an ingrate." You can find the article online here (link in Hebrew), and here's a Google translation.
Meetings of the American Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Barak and President Shimon Peres were indeed positive atmosphere, but in private conversations, he expressed frustration at the lack of confidence expressed by Netanyahu and Barak, the American commitment to stop the Iranian nuclear program. An Israeli source said the Americans believe it is a kind of "ingratitude" and "pigs" in light of unwavering U.S. support for Israel's security.
There is indeed 'unwavering US support' for Israel's security. The problem is that it's only in Congress and not in the White House. The White House was dragged kicking and screaming into imposing sanctions (recall how many 'national security' outs Congress put in the bill so that Obama wouldn't veto it and Obama still wasn't satisfied) and is now trying to jump onto the moving horse in a bid to use it as reelection propaganda.
I'd like to go back and show you a video of a Democratic Senator - New Jersey's Robert Menendez - expressing frustration with the Obama administration's lack of support for sanctions.
Let's go to the videotape.
And you wonder why we don't trust the Obama administration here? This video ought to be played over and over and over again to anyone who wonders why we don't regard the Obama administration as being 'the most pro-Israel evah.' Panetta was here trying to sell a lie. And Israel isn't buying.
Speaking at a press conference with visiting US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Netanyahu said: "You recently said that sanctions on Iran are having a big impact on the Iranian economy. And that is correct. And I am sure that the recent sanctions advanced by the president and the congress will have an even greater impact on the Iranian economy. But unfortunately, it's also true that neither sanctions nor diplomacy have yet have any impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program."
Netanyahu had more to say too. Let's go to the videotape.
The June 29 report, which was signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, states that Tehran "has boosted the lethality and effectiveness of existing systems by improving accuracy and developing new submunition payloads" that extend the destructive power over a broader area than a solid warhead.
According to Bloomberg, the report found that the improvements are in tandem with routine ballistic- missile training that "continues throughout the country" and the addition of "new ships and submarines."
Bloomberg said the report also addresses the Islamic Republic's nuclear program and the assistance it offers to Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraqi Shiite groups. It also repeated the US assessment that Iran with "sufficient foreign assistance may be technically capable of flight-testing" an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.
"There was a theme that Iran is improving the accuracy and lethality of its missiles," Bloomberg quoted Congressional Research Service Iran analyst Kenneth Katzman as saying.
"US government reports have previously always downplayed the accuracy and effectiveness of Iran’s missile forces," he added.
Speaking after two days of discussions between Iran and six world powers aimed at trying to defuse fears of a covert Iranian effort to develop nuclear bombs, the official added that looming additional sanctions were likely to raise pressure on Iran to seek an agreement ahead of a further round of talks in mid-June.
"These were difficult talks ... obviously we were far apart (at the start)," said the official, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the subject.
The official said a "significant difference" at the meeting was Iran's insistence that its right to enrich be recognized.
"Obviously (that) was not something we were prepared to do," the official said, echoing the US view that Iran does not automatically have this right under international law because, it argues, Iran is in violation of its obligations under counter-proliferation safeguards.
Continuing the Michael Jackson worldwide victory tour, the next round of talks is scheduled for June 18-19 in Moscow, giving Iran another month to continue its enrichment activities unimpeded.
On ABC's This Week on Sunday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta described a US military option against Iran as being 'available.'
Let's go to the videotape. Panetta's comments on Iran start at the 14:21 mark and end at the 15:41 mark.
Note that he did not answer the question of whether Iran is trying to run out the clock (clearly they are), nor did he answer whether the once a month negotiations are enough.
Former AG: Obama had memo drafted to blame military if Bin Laden assassination failed
You will remember that about two weeks ago, I reported that President Obama voted present on the Bin Laden assassination. Contrary to his attempts to present himself as a leader who made a 'gutsy call' to kill Bin Laden, Obama left the decision up to commanders in the field. Well, it's worse than that.
On Friday, Sean Hannity showed an interview with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who said that Obama had Leon Panetta draft a memo to protect the President politically in case the operation failed. If the operation to kill Bin Laden had failed, the US military was to be blamed.
Let's go to the videotape. This video is devastating to Obama, and not just because of his attempts to cover his tail in the Bin Laden assassination, but also because of the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower.
Much more from my friend Jim Hoft here (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
