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Trump Tells Taliban Negotiators to Rethink It
Thomas Gallati
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France Betrays US With $15 Billion Iran Bailout
by clarionproject.org ~ France slapped the U.S. in the face with its $15 billion Iran bailout offer, which would serve to undo all the progress made by the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Iran... What should the consequences be? Listen to Clarion’s National Security Analyst and Shillman Fellow Ryan Mauro discuss this on I24 News as well as the latest reports that Hezbollah has now moved its precision missiles intended for Israel into civilian areas. Israel’s response to the Iranian and Hezbollah missile build up in Syria and Lebanon is now being publicly defended by Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Amid the missile build ups by Iran and Hezbollah have come the disclosure by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran performed experiments of nuclear weapons at a previously undisclosed site.
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Jim Mattis Leaves Andrea Mitchell At A Loss
For Words After Torpedoing Her
Anti-Trump Narrative
by Brandon Morse
{ redstate.com } ~ While appearing on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell, former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was asked about the damage President Donald Trump was doing to the NATO alliance... “In the last two years we’ve seen our alliances weaken in NATO, specifically in Asia and in Europe,” said Mitchell. Mattis responded by pointing out that what we always see is the tensions, “because that’s what always grabs your attention.”“However, right now you see a NATO – I think we’re in the fourth or fifth straight year – of the nations…increasing their defense budgets,” said Mattis. “I can say quantitatively NATO’s actually stronger today,” he continued. Mattis said that the tensions seen between countries in NATO have always been there, and said he can trace every President back to scumbag/liar-Clinton saying that NATO allies need to pay more. What’s more, Mattis has told these nations personally that the American people will never care about the lives of their children more than they do, and that it’s up to them to provide more to their defense. For a few seconds, Mitchell seemed rudderless. She began to speak as if to counter Mattis, but immediately pivoted to his resignation letter in order to change the subject. It’s always fun to watch the mainstream media get its narrative’s teeth figuratively kicked in as we learn the truth. Mattis has never been one to shy away from reality, and the fact that he’s bringing it onto shows where they were hoping there’d be something damning to attack Trump with is just hilarious. Mattis is currently making the rounds to promote his new book Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. While many seemed to think it’d be an anti-Trump screed, Mattis is disappointing a lot of people.
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NRA Sues San Francisco over
‘Domestic Terrorist Organization’ Label
By JACK CROWE
{ nationalreview.com } ~ The National Rifle Association filed suit Monday against the city of San Francisco in response to city’s board of supervisors labeling the gun-rights group a “domestic terrorist organization.”... The suit — filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against the city and county of San Francisco, as well as the board of supervisors — claims the city violated the gun lobby’s first amendment rights by seeking to prevent any individuals or entities associated with it from doing business in San Francisco. The resolution also declares the board’s desire to “limit those entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business with this domestic terrorist organization.” It was drafted in the immediate aftermath of the mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in July in which a lone gunman killed three festival-goers and injured 17 others. Three mass shootings — in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and, most recently, Odessa and Midland, Texas — have occurred since then. The San Francisco city attorney’s office responded to the NRA’s suit by suggesting the group focus its resources on preventing gun violence rather than retaliating against the city. “The American people would be better served if the NRA stopped trying to get weapons of war into our communities and instead actually did something about gun safety,” John Coté, a spokesman for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, told the Associated Press. “Common-sense safety measures like universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and restricting high-capacity magazines would be a good start.” “This lawsuit comes with a message to those who attack the NRA: we will never stop fighting for our law-abiding members and their constitutional freedoms,” NRA CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in a statement shared with the Washington Post. The board of supervisors passed a resolution last week in response to the country’s “epidemic of gun violence,” that accuses the NRA of using “its considerable wealth and organization strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence.”
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Family split: 'Tension' over Trump at
George W. Bush staff reunion in Washington
by David M. Drucker
{ washingtonexaminer.com } ~ Differences over President Trump reverberated during a weekend reunion bash for White House alumni of George W. Bush, exposing rifts in the network of Republican operatives and officials... Matt Schlapp, a lobbyist and enthusiastic Trump supporter who served as political director in the Bush White House, had to be convinced to attend the reunion by a fellow "Bushie," often a term of scorn in the Trump White House, after he expressed fears of being confronted. Another Bush administration veteran, sometimes critical of Trump and sometimes not, was accosted at the gathering by a former colleague and accused of being too pro-Trump. Both the Never Trump and pro-Trump factions are outspoken, rarely hesitating to criticize each other despite their shared Bush roots. That was the case as approximately 2,500 of them met for a few days in Washington to reminisce about old times. “There’s been a lot of passion — and tension,” said Schlapp. His wife, Mercedes, also a Bush official, was a senior White House official until recently. Bush, 73, and Dick Cheney, 78, his vice president, spoke at the reunion but generally steered clear of the disagreements roiling national politics. The party was held Saturday night at The Anthem, a concert venue in Washington. “I understand the tensions,” added Ron Kaufman, a Republican insider who worked for Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush. Kaufman, who is supportive of Trump, has witnessed the evolution of the family’s political network over three decades. Among attendees were: Peter Wehner, Bush's head of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, who is virulently anti-Trump; Tom Bossert, who was Trump's assistant for Homeland Security; pro-Trump Rep. Liz Cheney; anti-Trump MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, who is no longer a Republican; and Joe Hagin, who was Bush's deputy chief of staff for operations and then held the same job under Trump...
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Here’s The Latest Update On
Construction Of Trump’s Border Wall
by AMBER ATHEY
{ dailycaller.com } ~ The Trump administration is replacing old, ineffective barriers at the U.S. southern border, but they cannot say when they will begin constructing wall in areas with no existing border barrier... Acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner Mark Morgan provided updates on wall construction during a press briefing Monday, explaining that the administration has erected 65 miles of border wall to replace vehicular barriers or otherwise small, dilapidated structures that are not effective deterrents for pedestrian border crossers. Comparatively, the new wall largely consists of 30-foot tall structures that are embedded in concrete.“If you go to those areas where there was pedestrian barriers or their old landing mat, where they can just knock it over the car, or cut a hole in it in seconds — where new wall was going in, that’s exactly what it is,” Morgan argued. “And if you go out there and ask the agents, they’ll tell you that’s new wall.” With the help of the $3.6 billion in wall funding pulled from the Pentagon and other executive actions taken by President Donald Trump, the administration expects to be able to complete 450-500 miles of this “new border wall” by the end of 2020. Morgan did acknowledge a difference between what he calls “new wall” and “new linear miles.” The new linear miles would encompass border wall being built in sectors where no barriers — no matter how small — previously existed. He noted that by 2020 the Rio Grande Valley sector could “easily reach 100 new miles of linear wall.” Morgan declined to answer, however, when the Daily Caller asked when Americans can expect the administration to actually break ground on construction projects on new linear miles of wall. A senior administration official told the Caller that the administration’s focus on “new wall” rather than “new linear miles” is due to the priorities of border agents and logistical roadblocks. “These places were actually priority, not just building in areas to say we are making progress,” the official said...
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Trump Tells Taliban Negotiators to Rethink ItThomas Gallatin: Over the weekend, Americans learned that President Donald Trump had been planning a secret meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David to continue negotiations for ending the 18-year war in Afghanistan after he announced via social media that he had decided to cancel the meeting. Trump explained:
[Taliban leaders] were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. … Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?
Clearly, Trump, like many Americans, is tired of the unending war in Afghanistan. He has regularly noted not only the war’s financial cost but its continued toll in American lives. And like the businessman that he is, Trump’s instinct is to cut his losses on a seemingly futile endeavor and move on to greener pastures. But Afghanistan is not some business deal, and evaluating a just return for all the human and financial capital the U.S. has invested is not easily calculated or dismissed. That said, this war needs a clearly defined goal.
And that lack of a clearly defined objective is why both Trump and Barack scubag/liar-nObama struggled in bringing about an acceptable resolution to the war. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Trump’s decision to suspend talks with the Taliban stemmed from opposing views within his administration, the group’s refusal to meet certain conditions and growing bipartisan criticism of an emerging deal to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.” Trump’s advisers are divided over the issue, with National Security Advisor John Bolton “consistently opposed [to] making a deal with the Taliban.”
The proposed deal would have brought about a 5,000-troop withdrawal within the first 135 days following its signing, with the remaining 9,500 Americans drawing down in several subsequent phases, assuming the Taliban upheld the agreement.
For the moment, the current Afghan government is breathing a sigh of relief, as Afghan officials’ fears were mounting that the U.S. was about to sign a deal that would have effectively handed the country over to the Taliban. A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani noted that Trump’s decision “reflects the concerns raised by the Afghan people and government about a process that would make a group that is behind the killings of so many innocent people, both Afghans and otherwise, look victorious, rather than lead them to halt violence.” There is still no end in sight for the Long War. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/65343?mailing_id=4519&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4519&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
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