The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
Iran wishes to replace the US as the
regional hegemon, at the America's expense
by Caroline B. Glick
~~~
.
About That New Bill liar-Clinton Accuser
News has surfaced of yet another woman accusing Bill liar-Clinton of sexual assault. Leslie Milwee, a reporter at a TV station in Arkansas in 1980, claims that then-Governor liar-Clinton sexually assaulted her in a news room on three occasions. When questioned as to why she waited until now to tell her story, Milwee responded, "I watched the way the liar-Clintons and liar-Hillary slandered [Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones] — did unthinkable things to them. And I just did not want to be part of that. I had very small children at the time. I had a job in pharmaceuticals. ... I didn't want to do anything to bring harm to my career and my family."
In light of the resent and far more politically convenient accusations made by several women who claim Donald Trump sexually assaulted them in the past, it will be interesting to see how the Leftmedia responds to this accusation against liar-Clinton. Will they question the timing of this story as politically motivated or will they take it at face value? (So far, it's been lost amid the apocalyptic warnings about the end of democracy after Trump refused to say he'd respect the election results.) Admittedly, it's not Bill who's currently running for office, but he is still married to liar-Hillary, and she has repeatedly latched onto the accusations against Trump as proof of him being unfit for office. How will liar-Hillary respond to this latest accusation? The response of both liar-Hillary Clinton and the media will speak volumes to their motivations regarding this election and their commitment to women. Not that we don't already know the score...
~The Patriot Post
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EPA Couldn't Care Less About Coal Job Losses
Murray Energy Corp. scored a victory this week — albeit probably a minor one — thanks to District Judge John Preston Bailey, who ruled that the EPA failed to calculate the number of job losses resulting from its regulatory avalanche on America's energy infrastructure, particularly coal. Judge Bailey said, "Congress unmistakably intended to track and monitor the effects of the Clean Air Act and its implementing regulations on employment in order to improve the legislative and regulatory processes." Furthermore, "EPA cannot redefine statutes to avoid complying with them. Nor can EPA render them superfluous or contrary to their original purpose by simply defining them to be."
There is a catch, however, as Hot Air's Jazz Shaw explains: "This ruling may indeed force someone at the agency to go dredge up their projections for job losses, collect the data for actual mine closures and layoffs and publish all of it. But that doesn't mean that they will then turn around and modify any of their regulatory policies with an eye toward saving jobs. They can dump that task in the lap of Congress, deciding internally that such losses are simply one of the costs of doing business." In any case, Judge Bailey's smackdown further elucidates the absurdity of Barack nObama's claim to lead the most transparent administration in history. The EPA clearly didn't want to take job losses into consideration. Now it's up to Congress to show that it cares. ~The Patriot Post
.
.
WH Spokesliar Earnest Can’t Explain nObama
Connection To Election Fraud Racketeers
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ nObama doesn’t think we’re entitled to answers or the truth, our non-elite little peasant minds couldn’t handle it. We’re deplorable rednecks and as such he must be very careful in dispensing what we’re allowed to believe... We also shouldn’t trust what we hear with our ears or see with our lying eyes. nObama and liar-Clinton will provide our proper programming at the appropriate time; they’ll tell us what to believe. nObama’s spokesliar and information filter, Josh Earnest, warned the fragile and impressionable American people not to accept the truth about the regime’s voter fraud and racketeering that was revealed in the Project Veritas videos. He said they should be taken “not just with a grain of salt but maybe even a whole package of salt.” Wow, they must be just packed with lies; please show us where they are Mr. Earnest and thank you for protecting us. Earnest is in a tough spot. He can’t dispute the indisputable evidence, the admissions of criminal election fraud and mob tactics being used against Americans supporting Donald Trump. He did what Democrats often do when the news is damaging or unpleasant, he attacked the messenger. Earnest said, “Despite what the name might suggest, these videos have not often revealed the truth.”... http://rickwells.us/wh-spokesliar-earnest-obama-connection-election-fraud-racketeers/
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New liar-Clinton emails appear
to contradict her sworn testimony
by Sarah Westwood
{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ Emails recovered from liar-Hillary Clinton's server by the FBI and made public Wednesday cast doubt on the former secretary of state's own testimony about her email use... Responding to a set of questions under oath last week, liar-Clinton said through her lawyer that she did not recall discussing her server with Bryan Pagliano, the IT aide whose immunity deal was the first to emerge publicly from the year-long FBI probe. "Secretary liar-Clinton states that she does not recall having communications with Bryan Pagliano concerning or relating to the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of any emails in her liar-clintonemail.com email account," liar-Clinton testified through her lawyer, David Kendall, after raising objections to the question...
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new-clinton-emails-appear-to-contradict-her-sworn-testimony/article/2604988
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new-clinton-emails-appear-to-contradict-her-sworn-testimony/article/2604988
.
Iran Seeking ‘Many Billions of Dollars’
in Ransom to Free U.S. Hostages
by Adam Kredo
{freebeacon.com} ~ Iran is seeking “many billions of dollars” in payments from the United States in exchange for the release of several U.S. hostages still being detained in Iran... according to reports by Iran’s state-controlled press that are reigniting debate over the nObama administration’s decision earlier this year to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash. Senior Iranian officials, including the country’s president, have been floating the possibility of further payments from the United States for months. Since the White House agreed to pay Tehran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year as part of a deal bound up in the release of American hostages, Iran has captured several more U.S. citizens. Future payments to Iran could reach as much as $2 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter, who said that Iran is detaining U.S. citizens in Iran’s notorious Evin prison where inmates are routinely tortured and abused... http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-seeking-many-billions-dollars-ransom-free-u-s-hostages/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=8ad8c97fef-WFB_Morning_Beacon_10_20_1610_19_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-8ad8c97fef-45611665
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Julian Assange Gets Sweet Revenge After
liar-Hillary Cuts His Internet
by Harry Hibbs
{gopthedailydose.com} ~ Here is a nice list of 13 actions by liar-Hillary Clinton that could be considered treasonous. From ‘donations’ to ‘birthday gifts’ to the good old pay-to-play influence pedaling, here are the things we know about... The last nine days has revealed the inner workings of liar-Hillary Clinton’s campaign and mind – what’s been found hasn’t been pretty or American. Instead what has been seen through the Wikileaks revelations has been incredible details of illegalities, immorality, and treason against the American people. It’s difficult to digest all of the details and with that in mind, through the first 8 days of Wikileaks revelations, the following are 13 of the most relevant emails from liar-Hillary Clinton which show acts of treason... http://gopthedailydose.com/2016/10/20/julian-assange-gets-sweet-revenge-hillary-cuts-internet/
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Iraqi Advance Into
Mosul Exceeds Expectations
by Douglas Burton
{freebeacon.com} ~ The Iraqi Army is advancing into Mosul faster than expected, causing jihadist defenders to brace for defeat... “The Mosul operation is proceeding ahead of schedule due to the deterioration of ISIS defenses,” Iraqi Army Chief of Staff Gen. Othman Al-Ghanimi said Tuesday. Islamic State terrorists have destroyed their administrative buildings in the city, including offices containing passports and tax records... http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iraqi-advance-mosul-exceeds-expectations/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=8ad8c97fef-WFB_Morning_Beacon_10_20_1610_19_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-8ad8c97fef-45611665
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WikiLeaks Releases Barack nObama
Emails Within Podesta Files…
{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ President nObama used a secretive email address “bobama@ameritech.com” as part of his political communication network to operatives like John Podesta (liar-Clinton’s fixer). Today WikiLeaks categorized and released some of the nObama emails: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/10/20/wikileaks-releases-barack-obama-emails-within-podesta-files/
nObama's email: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/?q=bobama&mfrom=&mto=&title=¬itle=&date_from=&date_to=&nofrom=¬o=&count=50&sort=6#searchresult
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Planned Parenthood at 100: Millions
of Deaths, Billions of Taxpayer Dollars
by Michael Tennant
{thenewamerican.com} ~ On Monday, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America celebrated its 100th birthday, but it is hardly cause for breaking out the party hats and noisemakers... Since 1978, Planned Parenthood has killed more unborn babies than the current populations of Chicago and Los Angeles combined — a statistic that would surely have horrified the group’s founder, Margaret Sanger, who, for all her faults, was adamantly opposed to abortion. Planned Parenthood traces its origins to Sanger’s opening of the first birth-control clinic in the United States, on October 16, 1916. Sanger, a radical leftist and eugenicist who feared “overpopulation,” founded her Brooklyn clinic as part of her ongoing crusade to reduce the size of families. The New American’s Lisa Shaw wrote:... http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/health-care/item/24445-planned-parenthood-at-100-millions-of-deaths-billions-of-taxpayer-dollars
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"Nothing to Do with Islam"?
{gatestoneinstitute.org"} ~ Politicians rarely have long term vision. They want tangible, if possible immediate, results." Watch Denis MacEoin in our latest video... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9160/maceoin-nothing-to-do-with-islam
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O'Keefe complaint to FEC
cites Dems' 'criminal conspiracy'
by Bob Unruh
{wnd.com} ~ Citing a Democratic operative’s confirmation of a chain of command that runs directly from liar-Hillary Clinton’s campaign to agents who “execute … on the ground,” the activists at Project Veritas are asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate a “criminal conspiracy.’... The filing of the complaint with the federal agency follows the release earlier this week of two videos in which Democrats explain how they can attempt to change the outcome of the election through apparently fraudulent means, such as having people travel across state lines to vote illegally. The complaint follows the filing of a another complaint with the FEC, by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to protect the right to vote, preserve the constitutional framework of American elections, and educate the public on the issue of election integrity.”... http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/okeefe-complaint-to-fec-cites-dems-criminal-conspiracy/
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General Cartwright is paying the price
for liar-Hillary Clinton’s sins
by Josh Rogin
{washingtonpost.com} ~ The nObama administration Justice Department has investigated three senior officials for mishandling classified information over the past two years but only one faces a felony conviction, possible jail time and a humiliation that will ruin his career... former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman General James E. Cartwright. The FBI’s handling of the case stands in stark contrast to its treatment of liar-Hillary Clinton and retired General David Petraeus — and it reeks of political considerations. Monday marked a stunning fall from grace for Cartwright, the man once known as “nObama’s favorite general,” who pleaded guilty to the felony charge of lying to the FBI during its investigation into the leaking of classified information about covert operations against Iran to two journalists. His lawyer Greg Craig said in a statement that Cartwright spoke with David Sanger of the New York Times and Dan Klaidman of Newsweek as a confirming source for stories they had already reported, in an effort to prevent the publication of harmful national security secrets. Under his plea deal, Cartwright could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Last year, Petraeus cut a deal with the Justice Department after admitting he had lied to the FBI and passed hundreds of highly classified documents to his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell. He pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor of mishandling classified information and was sentenced to two years probation and a $100,000 fine... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/10/18/general-cartwright-is-paying-the-price-for-hillary-clintons-sins/?utm_term=.e9e07d8a5910
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.
Iran wishes to replace the US as the
regional hegemon, at the America's expense
by Caroline B. Glick
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ Off the coast of Yemen and at the UN Security Council we are seeing the strategic endgame of Barack nObama’s administration. And it isn’t pretty.
Since Sunday, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked US naval craft three times in the Bab al-Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al-Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately controls the Suez Canal.
Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply green-lighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strikes on the US. The Houthis would never have exposed themselves to US military retaliation if they hadn’t been ordered to do so by their Iranian overlords.
The question is why has Iran chosen to open up an assault on the US? The simple answer is that Iran has challenged US power at the mouth of the Red Sea because it believes that doing so advances its strategic aims in the region.
Iran’s game is clear enough. It wishes to replace the US as the regional hegemon, at the US’s expense.
Since nObama entered office nearly eight years ago, Iran’s record in advancing its aims has been one of uninterrupted success.
Iran used the US withdrawal from Iraq as a means to exert its full control over the Iraqi government. It has used nObama’s strategic vertigo in Syria as a means to exert full control over the Assad regime and undertake the demographic transformation of Syria from a Sunni majority state to a Shi’ite plurality state.
In both cases, rather than oppose Iran’s power grabs, the nObama administration has welcomed them. As far as nObama is concerned, Iran is a partner, not an adversary.
Since like the US, Iran opposes al-Qaida and ISIS, nObama argues that the US has nothing to fear from the fact that Iranian-controlled Shiite militias are running the US-trained Iraqi military.
So, too, he has made clear that the US is content to stand by as the mullahs become the face of Syria.
In Yemen, the US position has been more ambivalent. In late 2014, Houthi rebel forces took over the capital city of Sanaa. In March 2015, the Saudis led a Sunni campaign to overthrow the Houthi government. In a bid to secure Saudi support for the nuclear agreement it was negotiating with the Iranians, the nObama administration agreed to support the Saudi campaign. To this end, the US military has provided intelligence, command and control guidance, and armaments to the Saudis.
Iran’s decision to openly assault US targets then amounts to a gamble on Tehran’s part that in the twilight of the nObama administration, the time is ripe to move in for the kill in Yemen. The Iranians are betting that at this point, with just three months to go in the White House, nObama will abandon the Saudis, and so transfer control over Arab oil to Iran.
For with the Strait of Hormuz on the one hand, and the Bab al-Mandab on the other, Iran will exercise effective control over all maritime oil flows from the Arab world.
It’s not a bad bet for the Iranians, given nObama’s consistent strategy in the Middle East.
nObama has never discussed that strategy.
Indeed, he has deliberately concealed it. But to understand the game he has been playing all along, the only thing you need to do listen to his foreign policy soul mate.
According to a New York Times profile published in May, nObama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes is the president’s alter ego. The two men’s minds have “melded.”
Rhodes’s first foreign policy position came in the course of his work for former congressman Lee Hamilton.
In 2006, then-president George W. Bush appointed former secretary of state James Baker and Hamilton to lead the Iraq Study Group. Bush tasked the group with offering a new strategy for winning the war in Iraq. The group released its report in late 2006.
The Iraq Study Group’s report contained two basic recommendations. First, it called for the administration to abandon Iraq to the Iranians.
The group argued that due to Iran’s opposition to al-Qaida, the Iranians would fight al-Qaida for the US.
The report’s second recommendation related to Israel. Baker, Hamilton and their colleagues argued that after turning Iraq over to Iran, the US would have to appease its Sunni allies.
The US, the Iraq Study Group report argued, should simultaneously placate the Sunnis and convince the Iranians of its sincerity by sticking it to Israel. To this end, the US should pressure Israel to give the Golan Heights to Syria and give Judea and Samaria to the PLO.
Bush rejected the Iraq Study Group report. Instead he opted to win the war in Iraq by adopting the surge counterinsurgency strategy.
But once Bush was gone, and Rhodes’s intellectual twin replaced him, the Iraq Study Group recommendations became the unstated US strategy in the Middle East.
After taking office, nObama insisted that the US’s only enemy was al-Qaida. In 2014, nObama grudgingly expanded the list to include ISIS.
nObama has consistently justified empowering Iran in Iraq and Syria on the basis of this narrow definition of US enemies. Since Iran is also opposed to ISIS and al-Qaida, the US can leave the job of defeating them both to the Iranians, he has argued.
Obviously, Iran won’t do the US’s dirty work for free. So nObama has paid the mullahs off by giving them an open road to nuclear weapons through his nuclear deal, by abandoning sanctions against them, and by turning his back on their ballistic missile development.
nObama has also said nothing about the atrocities that Iranian-controlled militia have carried out against Sunnis in Iraq and has stopped operations against Hezbollah.
As for Israel, since his first days in office, nObama has been advancing the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations. His consistent, and ever escalating condemnations of Israel, his repeated moves to pick fights with Jerusalem are all of a piece with the group’s recommended course of action. And there is every reason to believe that nObama intends to make good on his threats to cause an open rupture in the US alliance with Israel in his final days in office.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s phone call with Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry on Saturday night made this clear enough. In the course of their conversation, Netanyahu reportedly asked hanoi-Kerry if nObama intended to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass in the UN Security Council after the presidential election next month. By refusing to rule out the possibility, hanoi-Kerry all but admitted that this is in fact nObama’s intention.
And this brings us back to Iran’s assaults on US ships along the coast of Yemen.
Early on Sunday morning, the US responded to the Houthi/Iranian missile assaults by attacking three radar stations in Houthi-controlled territory. The nature of the US moves gives credence to the fear that the US will surrender Yemen to Iran.
This is so for three reasons. First, the administration did not allow the USS Mason destroyer to respond to the sources of the missile attack against it immediately. Instead, the response was delayed until nObama himself could determine how best to “send a message.”
That is, he denied US forces the right to defend themselves.
Second, it is far from clear that destroying the radar stations will inhibit the Houthis/Iranians.
It is not apparent that radar stations are necessary for them to continue to assault US naval craft operating in the area.
Finally, the State Department responded to the attack by reaching out to the Houthis. In other words, the administration is continuing to view the Iranian proxy is a legitimate actor rather than an enemy despite its unprovoked missile assaults on the US Navy.
Then there is the New York Times’ position on Yemen.
The Times has repeatedly allowed the administration to use it as an advocate of policies the administration itself wishes to adopt. Last week for instance, the Times called for the US to turn on Israel at the Security Council.
On Tuesday, the Times published an editorial calling for the administration to end its military support for the Saudi campaign against the Houthis/Iran in Yemen.
Whereas the Iranian strategy makes sense, nObama’s strategy is nothing less than disastrous.
Although the Iraq Study Group, like nObama, is right that Iran also opposes ISIS, and to a degree, al-Qaida, they both ignored the hard reality that Iran also views the US as its enemy. Indeed, the regime’s entire identity is tied up in its hatred for the US and its strategic aim of destroying America.
nObama is not the only US president who has sought to convince the Iranians to abandon their hatred for America. Every president since 1979 has tried to convince the mullahs to abandon their hostility. And just like all of his predecessors, nObama has failed to convince them.
What distinguishes nObama from his predecessors is that he has based US policy on a deliberate denial of the basic reality of Iranian hostility. Not surprisingly, the Iranians have returned his favor by escalating their aggression against America.
The worst part about nObama’s strategy is that it is far from clear that his successor will be able to improve the situation.
If liar-Hillary Clinton succeeds him, his successor is unlikely to even try. Not only has liar-Clinton embraced nObama’s policies toward Iran.
Her senior advisers are almost all nObama administration alumni. Wendy Sherman, the leading candidate to serve as her secretary of state, was nObama’s chief negotiator with the Iranians.
If Donald Trump triumphs next month, assuming he wishes to reassert US power in the region, he won’t have an easy time undoing the damage that nObama has caused.
Time has not stood still as the US has engaged in strategic dementia. Not only has Iran been massively empowered, Russia has entered the Middle East as a strategic spoiler.
Moreover, since 2001, the US has spent more than a trillion dollars on its failed wars in the Middle East. That investment came in lieu of spending on weapons development. Today Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft missiles in Syria reportedly neutralize the US’s air force.
US naval craft in the Bab al-Mandab have little means to defend themselves against missile strikes.
The US’s trillion-dollar investment in the F-35 fighter jet has tethered its air wings to a plane that has yet to prove its capabilities, and may never live up to expectations.
Israel is justifiably worried about the implications of nObama’s intention to harm it at the UN.
But the harm Israel will absorb at the UN is nothing in comparison to the long-term damage that nObama’s embrace of the Iraq Study Group’s disastrous strategic framework has and will continue to cause Israel, the US and the entire Middle East.
Since Sunday, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked US naval craft three times in the Bab al-Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al-Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately controls the Suez Canal.
Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply green-lighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strikes on the US. The Houthis would never have exposed themselves to US military retaliation if they hadn’t been ordered to do so by their Iranian overlords.
The question is why has Iran chosen to open up an assault on the US? The simple answer is that Iran has challenged US power at the mouth of the Red Sea because it believes that doing so advances its strategic aims in the region.
Iran’s game is clear enough. It wishes to replace the US as the regional hegemon, at the US’s expense.
Since nObama entered office nearly eight years ago, Iran’s record in advancing its aims has been one of uninterrupted success.
Iran used the US withdrawal from Iraq as a means to exert its full control over the Iraqi government. It has used nObama’s strategic vertigo in Syria as a means to exert full control over the Assad regime and undertake the demographic transformation of Syria from a Sunni majority state to a Shi’ite plurality state.
In both cases, rather than oppose Iran’s power grabs, the nObama administration has welcomed them. As far as nObama is concerned, Iran is a partner, not an adversary.
Since like the US, Iran opposes al-Qaida and ISIS, nObama argues that the US has nothing to fear from the fact that Iranian-controlled Shiite militias are running the US-trained Iraqi military.
So, too, he has made clear that the US is content to stand by as the mullahs become the face of Syria.
In Yemen, the US position has been more ambivalent. In late 2014, Houthi rebel forces took over the capital city of Sanaa. In March 2015, the Saudis led a Sunni campaign to overthrow the Houthi government. In a bid to secure Saudi support for the nuclear agreement it was negotiating with the Iranians, the nObama administration agreed to support the Saudi campaign. To this end, the US military has provided intelligence, command and control guidance, and armaments to the Saudis.
Iran’s decision to openly assault US targets then amounts to a gamble on Tehran’s part that in the twilight of the nObama administration, the time is ripe to move in for the kill in Yemen. The Iranians are betting that at this point, with just three months to go in the White House, nObama will abandon the Saudis, and so transfer control over Arab oil to Iran.
For with the Strait of Hormuz on the one hand, and the Bab al-Mandab on the other, Iran will exercise effective control over all maritime oil flows from the Arab world.
It’s not a bad bet for the Iranians, given nObama’s consistent strategy in the Middle East.
nObama has never discussed that strategy.
Indeed, he has deliberately concealed it. But to understand the game he has been playing all along, the only thing you need to do listen to his foreign policy soul mate.
According to a New York Times profile published in May, nObama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes is the president’s alter ego. The two men’s minds have “melded.”
Rhodes’s first foreign policy position came in the course of his work for former congressman Lee Hamilton.
In 2006, then-president George W. Bush appointed former secretary of state James Baker and Hamilton to lead the Iraq Study Group. Bush tasked the group with offering a new strategy for winning the war in Iraq. The group released its report in late 2006.
The Iraq Study Group’s report contained two basic recommendations. First, it called for the administration to abandon Iraq to the Iranians.
The group argued that due to Iran’s opposition to al-Qaida, the Iranians would fight al-Qaida for the US.
The report’s second recommendation related to Israel. Baker, Hamilton and their colleagues argued that after turning Iraq over to Iran, the US would have to appease its Sunni allies.
The US, the Iraq Study Group report argued, should simultaneously placate the Sunnis and convince the Iranians of its sincerity by sticking it to Israel. To this end, the US should pressure Israel to give the Golan Heights to Syria and give Judea and Samaria to the PLO.
Bush rejected the Iraq Study Group report. Instead he opted to win the war in Iraq by adopting the surge counterinsurgency strategy.
But once Bush was gone, and Rhodes’s intellectual twin replaced him, the Iraq Study Group recommendations became the unstated US strategy in the Middle East.
After taking office, nObama insisted that the US’s only enemy was al-Qaida. In 2014, nObama grudgingly expanded the list to include ISIS.
nObama has consistently justified empowering Iran in Iraq and Syria on the basis of this narrow definition of US enemies. Since Iran is also opposed to ISIS and al-Qaida, the US can leave the job of defeating them both to the Iranians, he has argued.
Obviously, Iran won’t do the US’s dirty work for free. So nObama has paid the mullahs off by giving them an open road to nuclear weapons through his nuclear deal, by abandoning sanctions against them, and by turning his back on their ballistic missile development.
nObama has also said nothing about the atrocities that Iranian-controlled militia have carried out against Sunnis in Iraq and has stopped operations against Hezbollah.
As for Israel, since his first days in office, nObama has been advancing the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations. His consistent, and ever escalating condemnations of Israel, his repeated moves to pick fights with Jerusalem are all of a piece with the group’s recommended course of action. And there is every reason to believe that nObama intends to make good on his threats to cause an open rupture in the US alliance with Israel in his final days in office.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s phone call with Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry on Saturday night made this clear enough. In the course of their conversation, Netanyahu reportedly asked hanoi-Kerry if nObama intended to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass in the UN Security Council after the presidential election next month. By refusing to rule out the possibility, hanoi-Kerry all but admitted that this is in fact nObama’s intention.
And this brings us back to Iran’s assaults on US ships along the coast of Yemen.
Early on Sunday morning, the US responded to the Houthi/Iranian missile assaults by attacking three radar stations in Houthi-controlled territory. The nature of the US moves gives credence to the fear that the US will surrender Yemen to Iran.
This is so for three reasons. First, the administration did not allow the USS Mason destroyer to respond to the sources of the missile attack against it immediately. Instead, the response was delayed until nObama himself could determine how best to “send a message.”
That is, he denied US forces the right to defend themselves.
Second, it is far from clear that destroying the radar stations will inhibit the Houthis/Iranians.
It is not apparent that radar stations are necessary for them to continue to assault US naval craft operating in the area.
Finally, the State Department responded to the attack by reaching out to the Houthis. In other words, the administration is continuing to view the Iranian proxy is a legitimate actor rather than an enemy despite its unprovoked missile assaults on the US Navy.
Then there is the New York Times’ position on Yemen.
The Times has repeatedly allowed the administration to use it as an advocate of policies the administration itself wishes to adopt. Last week for instance, the Times called for the US to turn on Israel at the Security Council.
On Tuesday, the Times published an editorial calling for the administration to end its military support for the Saudi campaign against the Houthis/Iran in Yemen.
Whereas the Iranian strategy makes sense, nObama’s strategy is nothing less than disastrous.
Although the Iraq Study Group, like nObama, is right that Iran also opposes ISIS, and to a degree, al-Qaida, they both ignored the hard reality that Iran also views the US as its enemy. Indeed, the regime’s entire identity is tied up in its hatred for the US and its strategic aim of destroying America.
nObama is not the only US president who has sought to convince the Iranians to abandon their hatred for America. Every president since 1979 has tried to convince the mullahs to abandon their hostility. And just like all of his predecessors, nObama has failed to convince them.
What distinguishes nObama from his predecessors is that he has based US policy on a deliberate denial of the basic reality of Iranian hostility. Not surprisingly, the Iranians have returned his favor by escalating their aggression against America.
The worst part about nObama’s strategy is that it is far from clear that his successor will be able to improve the situation.
If liar-Hillary Clinton succeeds him, his successor is unlikely to even try. Not only has liar-Clinton embraced nObama’s policies toward Iran.
Her senior advisers are almost all nObama administration alumni. Wendy Sherman, the leading candidate to serve as her secretary of state, was nObama’s chief negotiator with the Iranians.
If Donald Trump triumphs next month, assuming he wishes to reassert US power in the region, he won’t have an easy time undoing the damage that nObama has caused.
Time has not stood still as the US has engaged in strategic dementia. Not only has Iran been massively empowered, Russia has entered the Middle East as a strategic spoiler.
Moreover, since 2001, the US has spent more than a trillion dollars on its failed wars in the Middle East. That investment came in lieu of spending on weapons development. Today Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft missiles in Syria reportedly neutralize the US’s air force.
US naval craft in the Bab al-Mandab have little means to defend themselves against missile strikes.
The US’s trillion-dollar investment in the F-35 fighter jet has tethered its air wings to a plane that has yet to prove its capabilities, and may never live up to expectations.
Israel is justifiably worried about the implications of nObama’s intention to harm it at the UN.
But the harm Israel will absorb at the UN is nothing in comparison to the long-term damage that nObama’s embrace of the Iraq Study Group’s disastrous strategic framework has and will continue to cause Israel, the US and the entire Middle East.
Comments
Thanks Donna
Excellent Post, there should be more comments. Thx for your efforts.