Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
Let’s see. Under the Obama presidency and under his regime, North Korea has had two nuclear tests, repeatedly tested ballistic missiles, threatened America more times than in ANY previous administration, and just moved missiles to threaten South Korea. Right after re-starting a nuclear plant that they had shut down under Bush.
Generals and foreign policy experts are saying that North Korea – under the Obama regime’s handling, mind you – is a greater threat than it has EVER been.
Meanwhile, under Obama’s failed presidency, we had the meltdown that the mainstream media liberals so idiotically called “the Arab Spring.” We had violent revolutions across the Arab world as the governments of vital U.S. allies were toppled by terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. With Egypt now instituting sharia law to complete the insult. We have incredible bloodbaths under Obama with Syria’s death toll now numbering over 70,000. We have Iran on the verge of getting their nukes and their ballistic missiles and their Armageddon. And where are the hypocrite Democrats now who teed off so viciously on George W. Bush??? Where are they in decrying Obama for a far, far worse and more unstable world?
Let’s get in our memory trains and take a little ride, when Obama’s future Secretary of State was demagoguing Bush in the most savage way imaginable:
Democrats blew it on North Korea Now they should join Republicans to force changes in the country’s behavior
October 15, 2006 12:00 am
By Jack Kelly / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
If Democrats went after America’s enemies with the ruthlessness with which they attack Republicans, the Axis of Evil would be toast.
No sooner had North Korea completed its (botched or faked) nuclear bomb test last weekend than Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., were blaming it on “the failed policies of the Bush administration.”
That annoyed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.:
“I would remind Sen. Clinton . . . that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure,” he said. “Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something — not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor — they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.”
Media commentators spun Mr. McCain’s remarks as jockeying with Ms. Clinton for the presidency in 2008, but in fact Mr. McCain had been speaking out against her husband’s Agreed Framework deal with North Korea since May of 1994.
Here is the history Democrats would like you to forget: The CIA began worrying in the late 1980s that North Korea was trying to build an atomic bomb. President Clinton attempted to head them off by offering a massive bribe. If the North Koreans would forgo their nuke plans, the United States would provide them with 500,000 tons of free fuel oil each year, massive food aid and build for them two $2 billion nuclear power plants. The deal made North Korea the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Asia.
Mr. McCain was against the deal from the get-go, because it was all carrots and no sticks, and there were no safeguards against North Korean cheating.
North Korea took the bribes President Clinton offered, and kept working on its bomb.
Two experts told a House committee in April of 2000 that North Korea was producing enough highly radioactive material then to build a dozen bombs a year, but it is unclear when the North actually built a bomb (if yet) because our intelligence on the reclusive regime there is so poor.
Most experts think North Korea restarted its nuclear weapons program between 1997 and 1999, said Paul Kerr of the Arms Control Association. But the Congressional Research Service thinks the North began cheating in 1995.
Signs of cheating were abundant by 2000. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright flew to Pyongyang that October to put lipstick on the pig. She offered dictator Kim Jong Il a relaxation of economic sanctions if he’d limit North Korea’s missile development. Kim took those carrots too, but kept building missiles.
The Bush administration called North Korea on its cheating and suspended fuel aid pending an improvement in its behavior. North Korea declared (in 2002) it had the bomb, and the United States organized the six-party talks to try to persuade it to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Like Mr. McCain, I thought the Agreed Framework was a bad idea from the get-go. But I don’t blame the Clinton administration (very much) for trying. Massive bribery hadn’t been tried before, and if it had worked, it certainly would have been preferable to war. And, since as far as we know, serious cheating didn’t begin until 1997 or 1998, it can be argued the deal did buy us a little time.
But even though the ultimate failure of the Clinton policy of appeasement is excusable, the refusal of Democrats to acknowledge that failure is not.
Democrats tend to view foreign policy crises through the narrow prism of their impact on domestic politics. But the villain here isn’t Bill Clinton or George Bush. It’s Kim Jong Il. And what’s important here is not which party controls the House of Representatives. It’s whether we can prevent a second Korean War.
Democrats ordinarily make a fetish of “multilateralism,” which is what President Bush has been pursuing through the six-party talks, the only format that offers hope of reining in North Korea short of war, because only China is in a position to force North Korea to behave.
Kim wants direct negotiations with the United States, both to undermine the six-party talks, and because he wants to return to the good old days when the Clinton administration was providing him with aid in exchange for, in effect, nothing. Democrats, astoundingly, want to give him exactly what he wants, without first insisting upon a change in his behavior. They would rather restore a failed policy than admit a mistake.
If tragedy is to be avoided, Democrats must stop putting their partisan ambitions ahead of the security of the United States.
And, of course, to this day, if Obama were to attack North Korea with as much vile as he has repeatedly attacked Republicans, the Axis of Evil “toast” would be a pile of burnt ash.
I contemplate Kim Jong-Un’s fearmongering rhetoric and have a hard time telling the difference from Obama’s rhetoric on issues such as the sequester. Both men seem to very much have in common a complete lack of grasp on reality when they are dealing with their political foes. Just as both men’s national press corps’ seem to have the same determination to present whatever the hell their “dear leaders” are saying with as much deceit.
Democrats, who were of course nearly completely responsible for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, attacked, backbit, undermined, slandered and demonized George Bush at every turn in his attempt to hold talks that would include China as the ONLY country that could reign in North Korea.
The radioactive glow had barely worn off Kim Jong Il’s face when liberals began to lay the blame for North Korea’s detonation of a small nuclear device (maybe) at George W. Bush’s feet. But their criticisms have left many of us downright confused.
On North Korea, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid complained, “the Bush administration … [has] made America less secure.” His remedy? “Speak directly with the North Koreans so they understand we will not continue to stand on the sidelines.” Sen. Joe Biden (D.-Del.), the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, concurred that “the strategy must include direct engagement with the North [Koreans].”
Potential Democratic presidential aspirants also want the U.S. to assume the lead role in this unfolding drama. Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wisc.) demanded that the Bush administration jettison its “hands-off approach to North Korea,” because “the stakes are too high to rely on others.” And Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.) noted that “for five years, I have been calling for the United States to engage in direct talks with North Korea” and “for five years this administration has ignored them.”
But, rather than ignore the metastasizing cancer in North Korea, the United States has expended considerable diplomatic capital on the so-called six-party talks — the long-running effort by the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan to convince Kim Jong Il to abandon his nuclear program. This multilateral process, moreover, grew out of the failed Clinton-era effort to engage the North Koreans directly. Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) recently described that process in scathing terms: “Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something –not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from the reactor — they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.”
President Bush abandoned the one-on-one approach when he learned that the North Koreans violated their agreement not to enrich uranium (in exchange for a cool $350 million in fuel), opting instead to invite China and the other regional powers into the process. Thus began three years and five frustrating rounds of six-party talks. At first North Korea participated. Then in February 2005 it withdrew in a huff, only to re-engage a few months later for two more grueling rounds. Finally, Kim Jong Il sent a clear message about these talks when he launched two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan in March of this year, then seven more over the 4th of July weekend. Kerry and his allies dismiss this aggressive form of multilateral diplomacy as nothing more than “cover for the administration to avoid direct discussions.”
Hence the confusion. We thought that one of the major foreign policy fault lines separating liberals from conservatives has been whether the United States should reserve the right to act unilaterally to protect its national interests (the conservative position favored by Bush) or whether we should act only after securing the support of our allies (the liberal position embraced by Kerry and virtually all Democrats).
As a presidential candidate, John Kerry summed up the multilateral approach: “Alliances matter. We can’t simply go it alone.” We must exhaust all avenues of diplomacy, persuade rather than bully, and “assemble a team.” The Bush administration’s “blustering unilateralism,” he concluded, is “wrong, and even dangerous, for our country.” And nowhere, Kerry said, is the need for multilateral action more “clear or urgent” than when it comes to preventing the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons of mass destruction.
And that leads us to North Korea. It appears Kerry favored the multilateral approach before he opposed it. In a major foreign policy address at Georgetown University in 2003, he actually praised Bush’s engagement in the six-party talks: “Finally, the administration is rightly working with allies in the region — acting multilaterally – to put pressure on Pyongyang.” And, he added, “the question is why you’d ever want to be so committed to unilateralist dogma that you’d get on [that merry go round] in the first place.”
So what gives? Isn’t it time for lawmakers to transcend the finger-pointing and focus on the real issue?
Let’s give Sen, Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) the last word: “The president’s political opponents attack him for a ‘unilateral’ approach to Iraq. Now they attack him over a multilateral approach to North Korea. Listening to some Democrats, you’d think the enemy was George Bush, not Kim Jong Il.”
Mike Franc, who has held a number of positions on Capitol Hill, is vice president of Government Relations at The Heritage Foundation.
North Korea is now a more psychotic threat than ever before. But where’s all the denunciations of Obama from the ideologues who used to reign blame down on George Bush???
Remember how the president of the United States was responsible for absolutely everything that went wrong when Bush was that president? Now we have a president who absolves himself as being responsible for ANYTHING while we’ve got a media that has actively covered up for his failures. And where are we now?
Our greatest statesman today seems to be Dennis Rodman.
We are watching rogue nation after rogue nation rearing its ugly head and rising to threaten the world because they know that a weakling and a coward is the pathetic failed leader of once-great America.
We are also watching the United States of America degenerate into a banana republic under this failed presidency. Our welfare roles are rising even faster than the nuclear-armed dictators who shake their fists at us.
Here’s one for you: if Republicans were even a FRACTIONas treasonous and willing to undermine America’s national security for cynical political advantage as Democrats have been, they would be demanding that Obama hold one-to-one talks with Kim Jong-Un the way Democrats did when Bush was president.
You probably wouldn’t want me as president: what I would have done – whether in 2006 or today – would be to arm Taiwan with nuclear weapons (to the frothing and rabid outrage of China, which claims that Taiwan is part of China). And I would simply tell China: “North Korea’s nuclear weapons are every bit as unacceptable to the United States as Taiwan’s having nuclear weapons is to you. Disarm North Korea’s nukes and we’ll disarm Taiwan’s nukes.”
American Marines were not stationed at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli or the American mission in Benghazi, as would typically have been the case. In the spirit of a “low profile,” the administration didn’t even want an American company in charge of private security. Blue Mountain, the British firm the State Department hired, was willing to abide by the “no bullets” Rules of Engagement (ROE), so were a logical fit for the contract. These sub-standard protections for American diplomats were signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the ROE.
In essence, the Obama Administration tasked an unarmed British firm with security responsibilities that should have been handled by armed American servicemen, and it was all approved by the Secretary of State. Needless to say, the plan failed and an Ambassador was murdered, along with several others.
As of now, the State Department has not disclosed the full State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya.
You want to talk about an administration being COMPLETELY and CRIMINALLY UNPREPARED for a threat that any FOOL should have seen coming (unless “9/11″ is merely a date on a calendar)???
But now you find it’s far worse than that; Obama clearly doesn’t even CARE about American foreign policy. After all, he’s the guy who got bin Laden (gag me); he’s invulnerable to criticism of his foreign policy. It doesn’t matter if Iran is just about to get a nuclear bomb under his watch (and if Obama is reelected, there is ABSOLUTELY no question Iran WILL get nuclear weapons because of Obama’s weakness); it doesn’t matter if Vladimer Putin – very contrary to Obama’s ill-fated “reset” – is telling America to go to hell as Russia restores itself to its former Stalinist glory; it doesn’t matter if China is more aggressive under Obama’s weak foreign policy than it had been at any time since the Chosin Reservoir surprise attack of US forces during the Korean War; and it doesn’t matter if fully 33 Muslim nations - more than EVER in history – have burned America’s flag in their streets and attacked sovereign American territory.
Name just ONE Muslim country that the US has better relations with than the day Bush left office. There ISN’T one. You could have at least said “Libya” a few weeks ago (and that would have been the ONLY possibility); but then again a few weeks ago Libya had NEVER MURDERED AN AMERICAN AMBASSADOR PRIOR TO THAT, HAD IT?
And now what do we have under this demon-possessed turd who has worked mightily to bring the world ever closer to that day the Bible described as “Armageddon”???
President Barack Obama is about to release or transfer 55 Gitmo prisoners, despite reports that the Libyan believed to be behind the killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was a former Guantanamo inmate transferred to Libyan custody.
The large percentage of those scheduled to be released are Yemeni, according to a list made public by the Obama administration.
Obama stopped the release or transfer of Yemeni inmates in 2010, because the conditions in the country were viewed as too “unsettled” at the time.
A release or transfer of 55 inmates means Obama is moving out one third of the prisoners at Guantanamo. And while it doesn’t represent a shutdown of the facility, it’s certainly indicative of a move toward that end.
Could it be that Obama is trying to set himself up to campaign as the man who is taking steps to finally close Gitmo, just as he recently reversed the Afghanistan surge in order to campaign as the man who’s winding down the war in the Afghanistan?
The ACLU has praised the releases as “a partial victory for transparency.”
We’re showing the Muslim world all the weakness that Obama and Democrats falsely and stupidly promised the American people would make the Muslim world love us: we’re pulling out of Afghanistan; we’re refusing to protect our ambassadors lest we create some sort of “profile” that will somehow anger Muslims; we’re apologizing for our 1st Amendment’s guarantee of free speech as some sort of tragic mistake that Obama will surely remedy if he is reelected; and we’re releasing all the terrorist monsters who we’ve been holding at Gitmo.
What Obama has demonstrated is that he is the most nakedly cynical political weasel who has ever so much as VISITED the White House let alone lived in it. He will exploit ANYTHING no matter how vital to America and no matter who has to die for him to get reelected.
As Israel faces a very urgent decision as to whether to attack Iran as its only hope of national survival, Obama refused to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and then lied about refusing to meet with him. Of course, he’s got plenty of time to meet with Pimp with a Limp and the cast of the view in lieu of doing any interviews where he might get asked questions about why his presidency has been such an abject failure.
You get the essence of this coward in two snapshots: snapshot one is where Obama goes before the United Nations to denounce the man who made that stupid practically homemade Youtube video attacking Muhammad; snapshot two is when “Piss Christ” comes back to New York with Obama’s complete silence. And of course it was liberals just like Obama who forced Christians to not only accept a Crucifix of Jesus being placed in a jar of urine and calling it “art” but to subsidize it with their tax dollars in the name of free speech, just as it is liberals who are now desperate to denounce that same free speech to protect a hateful and murderous fascist political system masquerading as a “religion.”
The beast of the Book of Revelation is coming. Democrats will worship him and take his mark on their right hands or on their foreheads. And someday very soon hell will swallow and devour them all.
Why not attack our ambassadors? We are a nation led by a weak, gutless, pathetic, failed little turd masquerading behind lies and arrogance.
Obama’s not going to do anything about it. That would take courage and resolve. Obama would have to take personal responsibility for something for the first time in his life.
I’m past sick of Obama claiming credit for killing Osama bin Laden. If you listen to the left, Obama’s giving the order was the most courageous act since Thermopylae. Obama’s idiot Joe Biden said it was the most audacious plan in 500 years. The men who waded ashore as their buddies were torn apart by machine guns at Omaha Beach didn’t have the courage that Obama has in his pinky finger.
If Obama had refused to give the order to take out bin Laden after our intelligence and special operations community had dedicated their lives to kill the sonofabitch, you don’t think some seriously pissed off intelligence professional would have leaked that disgrace the way pretty much every OTHERsecret has been leaked during the Obama regime??? And just what to you think would have happened to Obama’s reelection chances by running as “the president who refused to get bin Laden”??? I don’t just think he would have kissed his reelection chances bye-bye if he hadn’t made that “audacious call,” I think he would have been impeached and Democrats would have voted his skinny little weasel ass out of office.
Other than giving the order to kill Osama bin Laden, just what the hell else has Obama done that hasn’t been an abject disaster???
If the Chinese militaristic regime did not want this protest that threatened an American ambassador WITHIN EIGHT DAYS of one of our ambassadors being humiliated and murdered to happen, it wouldn’t have happened. They wanted to send a message, and they sent it.
A crowd of around 50 Chinese protesters surrounded the official car of the United States ambassador in Beijing, who escaped unharmed, a State department spokesman said.
The melee occurred outside the gates of the US embassy on Tuesday and security guards had to intervene to protect Gary Locke, 62. The protesters caused minor damage to the vehicle, a statement from the embassy said.
“Embassy officials have registered their concern regarding today’s incident with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and urged the Chinese Government to do everything possible to protect American facilities and personnel,” the statement said.
The incident happened on Tuesday, while large crowds of protesters were massed outside the Japanese embassy nearby, to demand that Japan relinquish control of an island chain claimed by China in the waters between the two countries.
The statement gave no details about the demonstrators who blocked Mr Locke’s car, or what angered them.
However the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei tweeted a photograph of the protest on Tuesday afternoon, and said the crowd had chanted: “Down with US imperialism” and “Pay us back our money!” referring to the trillion dollars or so of US government debt that China holds.
Some Chinese observers have blamed the US for standing behind the Japanese on their claim, and suggested that the US is attempting to foment unrest in the region as a pretext for “pivoting” its naval forces back to the Pacific.
The incident came as the US Defence secretary, Leon Panetta, was meeting with senior Chinese leaders to reassure them that the US does not intend to “contain” China by building up a military presence in Asia.
On Wednesday, Mr Panetta met with Xi Jinping, the 59-year-old Chinese president-in-waiting who recently disappeared for two weeks without explanation, cancelling a scheduled engagement with Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, the protests against Japan have now evaporated. The road outside the Japanese embassy in Beijing has reopened and there was no sign of any discord.
“It seems the protests in front of our embassy have subsided,” the Japanese embassy said in an email to Japanese citizens.
Beijing police sent out a mass text message telling the public not to stage any more protests, according to the Japanese embassy.
Mass protests across China over the weekend, and running into Tuesday, forced many Japanese businesses to shut their doors or close down factories. However, most, if not all of these businesses are now returning to normal.
Did some American film a homemade Youtube movie about Chairman Mao?
I don’t know about you, but I am waxing in my enormous power (according to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, etc. etc.) that I can send the entire planet into a frothing, violent rage merely by gluing a fake beard on my face and making a video that insults Muhammad.
According to the Obama regime, if I or any of the other 315 million Americans in this country used his or her cell phone camera to make an anti-Islam Youtube video, the entire Muslim world would erupt in violence. It’s a heady feeling, having this kind of power. I can create a Youtube account and have the command of one billion Muslims at my instant disposal!!!
Obama says the other villain is free speech. Because that damned stupid 1st Amendment means that Americans aren’t forced to live under Sharia law and we foolishly have the right to express our views. Not to worry, though; because if you vote for Obama he’ll make sure that mistake is corrected.
Do you think the White House has received an extortion letter threatening to make a Youtube video unless somebody gets paid off?
So, you can see why it would be nice for me to have this same power Obama says I have because of that cursed 1st Amendement over one billion Chinese that I enjoy over one billion Muslims who will all riot any time I want them to.
Have I mocked the stupidity of the idiocy of the Obama White House yet? Because I could blather on if I had to.
But if you read this article, you will see the ample documentation that the Obama regime says some stupid cheap homemade movie did exactly what I’m laughing my ass off about:
America is such a laughing stock under this failed fool president.
Obama took his oath as Messiah and promised that he would lower the level of the oceans and heal the planet and create worldwide peace and a new beginning for the human species.
And now we know what that “new beginning” looks like: sodomized murdered ambassadors, American flags adding ten degrees to the global temperature due to all the burning of them, and Muslims chanting, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas!”
Now China is looking at our chump-in-chief and deciding its their turn to humiliate America.
Iran, Russia, China and Syria are planning to hold
the largest war games exercise in the Middle East in less than a month, Iran’s
Fars media reported Tuesday.Citing “informed sources,” the report said
that 90,000 soldiers from the four countries are to take part.The
massive war games drill will include air defense and missile units as well as
ground, air and naval forces. It is scheduled for early July.
A total of
400 planes and 1,000 tanks are said to be taking part, among them “12 Chinese
warships… Russian atomic submarines and warships, aircraft carriers and
mine-clearing destroyers as well as Iranian battleships and
submarines.”
All of the above are to arrive shortly in Syria, according
to the report.”
Russia denies that any war games will take place. While it is certainly possible there won’t be any 90,000 troops and hundreds of ships, etc. flooding the Syrian coast, I personally don’t have much more trust in Russia (especially under Putin) than I had for the U.S.S.R. So allow me to entertain the notion that the FARS report is accurate.
Given the environment (I mean, Syria has now brutally murdered way, WAAAAAY over 14,000 of their own citizens while Egypt is in political meltdown), why on earth would anybody be doing a war game?
Consider one other rather massive “elephant-in-the-room” development: Iran has clearly used the just-suspended-as-futile UN talks as nothing more than a way to keep stalling for time while developing their nuclear weapons program – a program that never would have existed in the first place without Russia and China. Which of course is exactly what Israel and American conservatives said was the case from the very beginning.
And Syria is nothing more than a puppet state of the Iranian regime.
So let me answer my question: why on earth would Iran, Syria, Russia and China conduct “war games” while war that is very definitely NOTa game looms everywhere?
Because they want to deter Israel from launching its attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, that’s why. How could Israel attack Iran with the Russian, Chinese, Syrian and Iranian navies massed off her coast???
The fascist powers that be - Syria, Iran, Russia, China and the United States of God damn America under Obama – do not want Israel to be able to defend her right to exist. Fortunately, God has other plans.
One of the few Old Testament prophecies that was never fulfilled – YET! – is that the city of Damascus would be utterly destroyed. I look at the incredibly wicked state of Syria today recently murdering over fourteen thousand of her own people as a puppet state of Iran, and the one thing I can tell you as a certainty is is that Damascus has it coming to them.
Let’s see, I’m a totalitarian communist thug dictator and I don’t want any “issues” affecting my ability to make the people abject slaves. What is it I need to do?
Let me put on my Democrat Party thinking cap. Hmmmm. Oh, that’s right – TAKE AWAY THEIR RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS!!!
“The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens’ lives and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant gun ownership,” the report claims. “The U.S. people hold between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world’ s civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns [and] 47 percent of American adults reported that they had a gun.”
The conclusion that gun bans will result in enhanced protection of lives and personal security flies in the face of both the American and Chinese experience. Predictably, the report presents many of the same cherry-picked arguments used by “leading” U.S. and international “gun control” organizations that totally ignore the protective benefits of arms in private hands. And, as typical with advocates of a centralized monopoly of violence, Chinese-style genocide, which resulted in government-caused deaths of unknown tens of millions of defenseless human beings in the 20th Century, and the current brutal occupation and tyrannical suppression of Tibetan sovereignty, is left unacknowledged. Left unsaid is the inconvenient truth that rendering captive populations unable to resist makes such monstrous crimes against humanity not only possible, but inevitable.
Also left unquestioned: What is the motivation and agenda of any American who advocates Chicom-style citizen disarmament, knowing full-well its blood-drenched historic record?
The reason the founding fathers made gun ownership a primary part of their vision of government was because they hated tyranny and wanted to prevent government from becoming our lords and masters.
Democrats have spent the last fifty years doing precisely the opposite.
BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Western and Arab states voiced outrage on Sunday after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution that would have backed an Arab plan urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give up power, and Washington vowed harsher sanctions against Damascus.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the veto a “travesty”. It came a day after activists say Syrian forces bombarded a district of Homs, killing more than 200 people in the worst night of bloodshed of the 11-month uprising.
Russia said the resolution was biased and would have meant taking sides in a civil war. Syria is Moscow’s only big ally in the Middle East, home to a Russian naval base and customer for its arms. China’s veto appeared to follow Russia’s lead.
Washington’s U.N. ambassador Susan Rice said she was “disgusted” by Russia and China’s vetoes on Saturday, and “any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands”.
In Syria, Barack Obama has simply failed. His cabinent-level United Nations ambassador has failed. It’s past time for people to get fired according to a man who served four UN ambassadors over eight years:
One of the reasons the American public holds unelected government officials in such low esteem is that they are never held accountable for their failures.
Presidents and cabinet officials could send a strong message of accountability if they held senior appointees responsible for their performance.
President Obama should use this weekend’s UN failure to show Americans and Arabs alike that it is unacceptable to stand idly by while some 6,500 Syrians are killed by their government. Obama should ask for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s resignation and replace her with someone tougher and more effective. If she won’t voluntarily resign then she should be fired.
The case against Susan Rice has been building over the last few years.
This weekend’s embarrassing failure on a Syria resolution was the latest and last straw. Her diplomatic failures and silence have given the United States a weak representation at the United Nations.
Next month marks the anniversary of the Syrian uprising. But Rice, as she has on many issues, has ignored Syria’s growing problems for too long.
Rather than speaking out immediately when the violence started, she stayed silent.
Rather than calling for action, she did nothing.
Russia and China saw Rice’s passivity as a sign that Syrian President Assad’s removal wasn’t a priority.
By the time Rice started pressuring Security Council members to confront the growing violence and death, it was too late.
Once a draft resolution condemning Syria was introduced, Rice was too quick to negotiate changes that weakened it without insisting on a date for the Security Council to vote. Her constant agreement to changes seemed desperate. The frantic and late maneuvering left the United States at the mercy of Russia and China, who vetoed even the watered down measure.
On her post-veto media tour, however, Rice sought to blame Russia for not listening to the United States or other western governments rather than acknowledge her failed diplomatic skills – an ironic spin given that Rice and team Obama created this same new Russian resolve when they naively and dramatically called for a “re-set” to our relationship with Russia.
The “reset” Rice championed and spoke affectionately about has not only failed to deliver support for US national security policies but it has also exposed the dangers of an inexperienced team’s strategy of personal diplomacy.
This continues Rice’s pattern of failing at her own stated goals.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Susan Rice talked very openly about restoring America’s leadership at the United Nations and often derided President George W. Bush for acting without U.N. backing.
Rice cheerfully exclaimed that, unlike Bush, Barack Obama would engage in active diplomacy even with countries considered our enemies.
She was very critical of the US’s reputation at the UN and vowed to build better relationships with every country.
In her current stump speech Rice claims that her goal has been accomplished, “We’ve repaired frayed relations with countries around the world. We’ve ended needless American isolation on a wide range of issues. And as a consequence, we’ve gotten strong cooperation on things that matter most to our national security interest.”
This past weekend shows just how disastrous Rice’s strategy has been.
Rice has been silent on important issues and ineffective when she does engage. She skipped Security Council meetings when Israel needed defending and even failed to show up for the emergency session on the Gaza Flotilla incident.
Rice didn’t even show up for the first two emergency Security Council meetings on the unfolding Arab revolution last year.
Rice stayed silent when Iran was elected to the UN women’s committee, she didn’t call out Libya when it was elected to the Human Rights Council, she was absent from the Haiti crisis meeting and was a no-show for the last open meeting scheduled before the planned U.N. vote to recognize Palestinian statehood. When she actually shows up, she is a miserable failure.
Take the crucial issue of Iran. Rice spent the last several years undermining and grumbling about the Bush administration’s increasingly tough measures but has only been able to pass one resolution of her own – compared with the Bush team’s five.
Rice’s one and only Iran resolution was 22 months ago. And it passed with just 12 votes of support – the least support we have ever seen for a Security Council sanctions resolution on Iran. In fact, Susan Rice lost more support with her one resolution than the previous five Iran resolutions combined.
In another example, Rice secretly negotiated with the Arabs on acceptable language for a possible U.N. resolution to condemn Israel’s settlement activity.
Rice’s engagement sent a strong message that making a new policy, rather than encouraging the two sides to negotiate directly, may not garner an automatic U.S. veto.
In February of 2011, the US abruptly changed tactics on the Arabs and vetoed a UN resolution on Israeli settlements.
The Palestinians were justifiably furious with Rice. After all, they had just spent weeks going back and forth with her on acceptable language to make Israeli settlement activity a violation of international law — something previous U.S. administrations had bluntly and immediately threatened a veto over. Rice’s negotiations suggested the U.S. was open to change, when in fact it was not.
Whether the issue is Sudan, Egypt, North Korea or Rwanda, Rice has been either missing in action or unable to deliver a quick and effective resolution.
Firing Rice may serve Secretary of State Hillary Clinton too. Clinton’s team has always viewed Susan Rice with suspicion dating back to the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, when Rice went on MSNBC to slam Clinton’s ad claiming she was best equipped to take the national security emergency call at 3 a.m.
“Clinton hasn’t had to answer the phone at three o’clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready. They’re both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call,” Rice said. Secretary Clinton, one State Department diplomat told me, has tried to distance herself from Rice and her lackluster UN performance.
President Obama could show the Arab street that it is unacceptable for the United States government to sit idly by while the United Nations Security Council does nothing. What better way to show that things at the U.N. have to change than to fire the woman spearheading the failed U.S. efforts there.
Rice’s last diplomatic initiative should be putting the United States’ reputation above her own.
Richard Grenell served as the spokesman for four US Ambassadors to the United Nations. including John Negroponte, John Danforth, John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilzad. He is currently based in Los Angeles. For more visit his website at www.richardgrenell.com.
For the “disgusted” and “outraged” liberals who are so shocked that Russia and China would block such an effort, let me just say one thing as politely as I know how:
YOU QUIVERING, HYPOCRITE, ABJECT PILES OF FOUL-SMELLING TOXIC SLIME!!! HAVE THE DECENCY TO THINK BACK TO 2003 WHEN RUSSIA AND CHINA (ALONG WITH YOUR BUDDIES IN FRANCE) DID THE SAME EXACT THING WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH WAS JUST TRYING TO GET REASONABLE WMD INSPECTIONS!!! YOU ACTUALLY JOINED RUSSIA AND CHINA LIKE THE TRAITORS YOU ARE. AND YOU GAVE BUSH NO CHOICE WHATSOEVER BUT TO GO TO WAR WITH IRAQ!!!
I tried to write a history of what Democrats did in joining Russia and China as a means to undermine Bush:
I also provided the FACTS about how truly treacherous and in fact blatantly traitorous the Democrats truly were in their before-and-after statements about Iraq:
If Democrats had just been united with the rest of the nation, we could have presented a strong, united front to the world. As it was, Saddam Hussein did not believe America would invade because Democrats had so fractured America, and Russia, China and France saw no reason to cooperate with the President of the United States when no DEMOCRATS in his own country would lift a finger to do anything other than stab him in the back.
In the end, it was basically the United States and its historic ally England standing against Iraq, Russia, China, France, the United Nations and the Democrat Party.
So now Russia and China are doing the same thing they did to George Bush for year after year and suddenly only NOW it’s “disgusting” and “outrageous”???
It obviously IS “disgusting” and “outrageous” what Syria is doing. They have killed thousands of their own people.
Since 2003 in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of bodies have been discovered in more than 300 mass graves. The Ministry of Human Rights estimates that as many as 1,500,000 people remain missing and unidentified. The missing may have been captured, abducted, secretly detained or killed and buried en masse in unmarked graves. Iraqi Minister of Human Rights Mohammed S. Al-Sudaney stated “It is important for the future of Iraq that we engage in a sustainable effort to address this issue. Millions of Iraqis have been affected by decades of abuse and we must work on their behalf to find their missing relatives.”
You Democrats are on an eternal walk of shame.
As vile as Russia and China are for their veto of any resolution to help the people of Syria, it is no more than what the vile current president of the United States deserves.
And never forget that the Democrat Party stood for the rape, torture and murder of untold hundreds of thousands of the Iraqi people. Even as they falsely postured themselves as championing human values.
You need to understand the STAKES of what is going on in Syria as Russians and Chinese (along with Syrian thugs) sense weakness in a truly weak President Obama:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As the Obama administration weighs worst-case scenarios for Syria, one stands out: a civil war that develops into a proxy battle between Arabs and the West on one side, and Russia and Iran on the other.
U.S. officials stress they do not want to play a military role in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on protests has killed more than 5,000 people and raised fears of a protracted power struggle in a country at the heart of the Arab world.
But after U.S. and Arab-led efforts to craft consensus in the U.N. Security Council on Syria’s political transition were torpedoed by vetoes from Russia and China, some analysts say risks are growing that the international community will line up on opposite sides of a fratricidal war.
The volatile ingredients are already in place.
Resistance fighters known as the Free Syrian Army have pledged to liberate the country from Assad’s rule. Activists call for armed support for rebels. And Syrian security forces are ratcheting up the violence, vowing to fulfil their president’s threat to strike with an “iron fist” against the government’s opponents.
“”There is a risk of it could become a proxy conflict. It is already headed in that direction,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Now think of Egypt and Obama’s massive failure there.
Mr. Obama downplayed concerns that the Muslim Brotherhood could take power and install a government hostile to U.S. interests.
“I think that the Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt. They don’t have majority support in Egypt but they are well organized and there are strains of their ideology that are anti U.S., there is no doubt about it,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama said he wanted a representative government in Egypt that reflected the country’s broader civil society.
Though the current upheavals in the Middle East were not initiated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist parties in Egypt, as in Tunisia and Libya, have been the chief beneficiaries of the collapse of long-standing authoritarian repressive regimes across North Africa.
In Egypt itself, the two largest Islamist groups, the Brotherhood and the Salafists, won about three-quarters of the ballots in the second round of legislative elections held in December 2011, while the secular and the liberal forces took a battering.
The Brotherhood, an organization founded by Egyptian schoolteacher Hassan el Banna back in 1928, has never deviated from its founder’s central axiom:
“Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
It is this radical vision, which animates all those in the region who seek a fully Islamic society and way of life.
The Muslim Brotherhood has always been deeply anti-Western, viscerally hostile to Israel and openly anti-Semitic — points usually downplayed in Western commentary on the “Arab Spring.”
CAIRO — Ignoring a U.S. threat to cut off aid, Egypt on Sunday referred 19 Americans and 24 other employees of nonprofit groups to trial before a criminal court on accusations they illegally used foreign funds to foment unrest in the country.
Egypt’s military rulers had already deeply strained ties with Washington after their crackdown on U.S.-funded groups promoting democracy and human rights that the country’s leadership has accused of stirring up violence in the aftermath of the uprising a year ago that ousted Hosni Mubarak. The decision to send 43 workers from the groups to stand trial marks a sharp escalation in the dispute.
The 19 Americans include Sam LaHood, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s son and the head of the Egypt office of the Washington-based International Republican Institute.
“Threatening to cut off aid”??? What the hell business do we have giving the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AID?!?!?
But, yes, Obama was actually trying to INCREASE AID TO THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD-DOMINATED EGYPT JUST A FEW SHORT WEEKS AGO:
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama plans to accelerate the pace of American aid to Egypt, a top State Department official said on Wednesday, as the most populous Arab nation reaches a critical stage in its uncertain transition away from autocratic rule.
Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats, part of a U.S. delegation that held unprecedented talks last week with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington wanted to provide “more immediate benefits” to Egyptians, who earlier this month conducted their first democratic elections in decades.
“During this period, we want to be as supportive as we can. This is an historic moment. Egypt’s a country of enormous importance,” Hormats said.
Hosni Mubarak was a dictator and a thug, but he was the best America and Israel were ever going to get in a region of evil nutjobs. Now what do we have thanks to Obama???
If you haven’t already seen the magnitude of this president’s utterly contemptible and despicable failure, you are without excuse if you don’t understand it now.
As for Iran and the nuclear weapons that Obama will allow them to have, and the war Obama’s failure to that regard will create, I just wrote a piece about that. Suffice it to say that George Bush TRIED to do something about Iran’s dangerous nuclear weapons program, but demonic Democrats including Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton prevented him from being able to do anything.
Democrats were completely wrong; Bush was 100 percent RIGHT.
Every single Democrat who voted for Obama deserves to have an Iranian nuclear bomb shoved right up their anuses and detonated, but unfortunately they are going to take the rest of the world with them.
Remember Libya and Obama’s overthrow of Gaddafi? And how Obama took all the credit in the world for that?
The political situation in Libya is falling apart:
I was pointing out that Obama had taken us from bad to far, far worse as far back as August of last year. So it’s not like Obama couldn’t have known what would probably happen.
Up to 3,000 Libyans demonstrated Friday in the eastern city of Benghazi, demanding that sharia be the source of the North African country’s future constitution.
“Islamic! Islamic!,” chanted the demonstrators, with some waving copies of the Qur’an.
A press statement distributed at the rally called for an article identifying Islam as the state religion to be added to the constitution.
That article should be non-negotiable and not subject to change in the forthcoming referendum on the constitution, it said.
Demonstrators also expressed opposition to any plan to make Libya a federal state.
Obama has Samantha Powers (the wife of Cass Sunstein, the man who “nudges us”) close to him and advising him on matters of war. According to the very liberal publication The Nation, “She began to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values.” What if you had an ultra conservative – oh, say a Sarah Palin – openly acknowledged to pursue war and risk American lives to advance her radical values??? What would the left call this if not “fascist”?
But it’s only fascist if Republicans do it, of course.
Then we come to Obama’s colossal and inexcusable failure in Iraq.
I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.
Aside from the fact that it is naked chutzpah that the same two men who demonized George Bush for his successful surge strategy and tried to do everything they could to undermine and backstab Bush during his efforts to prevail in Iraq, it at least serves to prove that Iraq was a huge success for Bush as Obama took office.
Listen to the general who directed that surge speaking of Obama’s disastrous and disgraceful failure in Iraq:
President Obama’s decision to pull all U.S. forces out of Iraq by Dec. 31 is an “absolute disaster” that puts the burgeoning Arab democracy at risk of an Iranian “strangling,” said an architect of the 2007 troop surge that turned around a losing war.
Retired Army Gen. John M. Keane was at the forefront of persuading President George W. Bush to scuttle a static counterinsurgency strategy and replace it with 30,000 reinforcements and a more activist, street-by-street counterterrorism tactic.
Today, even with that strategy producing a huge drop in daily attacks, Gen. Keane bluntly told The Washington Times that the United States again is losing.
“I think it’s an absolute disaster,” said Gen. Keane, who advised Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was top Iraq commander. “We won the war in Iraq, and we’re now losing the peace.”
We also learned that Obama’s decision to not even TRY to negotiate for U.S. troops to stay to safeguard what we had won was KNOWN to be a huge mistakeeven as Obama was MAKING that mistake:
(Reuters) – U.S. intelligence agencies warned that security gains in Iraq could degenerate into sectarian violence after a troop pullout that some officials say left the United States with little leverage in a country it occupied for nearly nine years.
A wave of bombings that killed at least 72 people in Baghdad on Thursday provided further evidence of a deteriorating security situation just days after the last U.S. troops left Iraq.
“This should be a surprise to no one that this is happening,” said House of Representatives intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers.
“Most people believed, the assessments that were coming out believed, that the sudden rapid withdrawal with no troop presence on the ground was going to leave this vacuum that would be filled with the kind of problems that you’re seeing,” Rogers, a Republican, said in an interview with Reuters.
Rogers said the troop pullout reduced U.S. influence and that a chaotic Iraq plays into Iran’s desire for increased influence in that region.
And now, under Obama’s completely failed and depraved leadership, the headline is, “Iraq Stands on the Brink of Disaster.” It is poised to fall under the influence of Iran because Obama was too much of a coward and a weakling to stick around like America did in Germany and Japan and Korea and a whole bunch of other places.
Even the New York Times writes about “a sharp sign of declining American influence in the country.” It describes US State Department officials as being “confined to the embassy because of security concerns” after we pulled all of our troops out of the country. And the obvious result is that we are going to lose everything we fought so hard for and sacrificed so much for to win in Iraq.
And Barack Obama is criminally responsible for that complete disaster.
That leaves us with the dismal failure of Obama in Afghanistan.
Obama demanded a timetable for withdrawal so that our friends in Afghanistan would know they couldn’t count on us to stay and our enemies the Taliban would know that they could wait us out.
We find that Obama never bothered to listen to his generals in Afghanistan dating back to when they wanted 40,000 for their surge and he decided not to give them their request after humming and hawing FOREVER.
Lieutenant General John Allen told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that the Afghanistan decision President Obama announced last week was not among the range of options the military provided to the commander in chief. Allen’s testimony directly contradicts claims from senior Obama administration officials from a background briefing before the president’s announcement.
In response to questioning from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Allen testified that Obama’s decision on the pace and size of Afghanistan withdrawals was “a more aggressive option than that which was presented.”
Graham pressed him. “My question is: Was that a option?”
Allen: “It was not.”
Allen’s claim, which came under oath, contradicts the line the White House had been providing reporters over the past week—that Obama simply chose one option among several presented by General David Petraeus. In a conference call last Wednesday, June 22, a reporter asked senior Obama administration officials about those options. “Did General Petraeus specifically endorse this plan, or was it one of the options that General Petraeus gave to the president?”
The U.S. military said in a secret report that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw, raising the prospect of a major failure of Western policy after a costly war.
Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed the existence of the document, reported on Wednesday by Britian’s Times newspaper and the BBC.
Which is EXACTLY what conservatives predicted would happen if we followed Obama’s incredibly stupid and immoral policies.
When we elected Barack Obama, we elected a truly evil and vile man to lead us. Obama’s wicked reverend Jeremiah Wright spake as a prophet concerning the Obama presidency when he said, “No, no, no. Not God bless America! God DAMN America.” And this IS God damn America.
Barack Obama is a clear and present danger to America, to the American people and to the world. And if we don’t wise up and vote him out of office, we deserve every catastrophe that his presidency will create.
The Bible forewarned us that the beast is coming. And Obama was the useful idiot who has done so much to prepare the way for Antichrist.
Barack Obama said something a few days ago that festers like a nasty strain of brain cancer.
When mainstream media “reporters” handed Obama a softball question about Republicans calling him out for appeasement (in a question that failed to mention ANY of the reasons the Republicans had given for accusing Obama of appeasement in the first place), Obama said:
“Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaida leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever is left out there, ask them about that,” the president said during a news conference.
Iran is going to have a nuclear weapon SOON. That day will be a dark and terrible one, because Iran will ultimately be able to a) shut down the Strait of Hormuz and send oil prices skyrocketing above $14 a gallon; b) launch an international wave of terrorism; or c) even attack Israel with IMPUNITY when they get nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. Because if we attack a nuclear – and frankly crazy and truly evil - Iran, we get to kiss a few cities and tens of millions of Americans goodbye.
There were several other reasons the various GOP rivals rightly accused Obama of appeasement. But let’s just ask ourselves: if those biased leftist hyper-partisan psuedo-journalists had confronted Obama with the disgrace of Iran’s nuclear program in the context of their question about “appeasement,” wouldn’t that have made it just a little bit harder for a biased leftist hyper-partisan pseudo-president to give us such a smash-that-lob response???
In any event, Obama is a great, strong, powerful leader and NOT a timid appeaser because he got Osama bin Laden – and just don’t you mind the rest of the foreign policy disasters he’s presided over. That’s the Obama line.
Let’s forget that, mainstream media, so we can lob Obama a softball question devoid of any context at all – and allow Obama to say something like, oh, “Ask Osama bin Laden if I’m an appeaser.”
So let’s consider Obama’s answer: does Obama being the brave, brave Sir Robin who happened to be the carbon-based lifeform inhabiting the Oval Office at the time we got Osama bin Laden make up for all of the above appeasement???
Well, first consider the FACT that the waterboarding Obama opposed, demonized and in fact actually tried to criminalize-after-the-fact was ESSENTIAL to finding out where Obama was (see also here). If Obama had got his way, and Bush had not waterboarded terrorist suspects, we can toss out the only link we had to Obama (courier) and we can toss out the city where he was hiding (Abbottabad):
Oops. Did I forget to mention that Obama has actually had many more acts of appeasement than what I had above? Because not only did he denounce the very waterboarding that got us Osama bin Laden, but he also denounced the Gitmo where we got that information.
So why does Obama get all the credit for getting Obama and Bush none?
Please refer to my previous statements regarding the level of bias in American pesudo-journalism.
But then there’s also “the decision” to get Osama bin Laden. Wasn’t that like really brave?
Well, I’m going to the dentist this week to get some really painful work done. I’m just as brave as Obama was to get in my car and show up at that dentist office.
Imagine if Obama had REFUSED to get Osama bin Laden (after making a campaign promise that he would do so if he knew where bin Laden was hiding). What do you think are the odds that that information would never get out? What are the odds that no so much as one single member of the armed forces or the intelligence community would be outraged by such an act of cowardice and not leak the fact that Obama refused to get the world’s number one terrorist in the world? And what are the odds that Obama would have been re-elected with Republicans running that ad again and again and again like Bush Sr.’s “Read my lips, no new taxes” line???
It wasn’t “brave” for Obama to approve that mission; it was an act of self-political-survival.
And that mission to get Osama bin Laden had some huge consequences that for some strange reason the media has refused to lay at the door of the guy they gave all the credit for getting him to.
If Obama deserves the credit, does he not also deserve the blame?
For one thing, U.S. relations with vital partner in the war on terror Pakistan are at an all-time-low because of the thing that Obama claims so much credit for having done.
Imagine if Mexico launched a commando raid into the heart of the United States to kill someone their government was after. Or imagine if Canada did that to us. How would we respond to the fact that soldiers with guns flew into our country without our knowledge or consent to start shooting people?
Do you remember when Obama falsely and in fact demonically attacked Bush for bringing down the U.S. image to the rest of the world. Now the world hates us more than it ever did under Bush. Even the ARAB WORLD hates us more, because they at least had some respect for Bush. Versus Obama who is just a simpering – and yes, appeasing – scrawny-necked dumbo-eared little weasel.
But hey, I’m not a “journalist” or a “reporter,” so I can bring facts like that up, can’t I???
There was another casuality to Obama’s grand mission that everyone gave him total credit for: we gave away BILLIONS in stealth technology to our enemies in China and Russia.
Remember that helicopter tail section Obama left behind in Pakistan?
Several of us at Big Peace have reported in the past about the noticeable warming relationship between China and Pakistan. This has concerned the US because of the amount of cooperation and assistance – worth billions of dollars — given to Pakistan. It was eventually decided that that we would have to accept Pakistan’s warts if we were to have a regional partner in the War on Terror. It was an uneasy concession from the start and hard pill to swallow. In fact, that pill hasn’t fully worked its way down.
Just recently there were immediate questions over the successful downing of Chinook that did more damage to US forces in an instant in what otherwise could not be accomplished by the Taliban in over ten years of war. Those questions were directed to the highest reaches of the Pakistan government and its intelligence arm, the ISI.
Now comes in what appears to be an open betrayal by our so-called mission partners.
The US employed new stealth technology in the successful raid on Osama bin Laden. Special Forces used a previously unknown capability, and so far as we know, is unduplicated by any other country, when they swooped down on Osama’s compound in stealth-modified Blackhawk helicopters. One of those helicopters had a mechanical malfunction and crashed on site as a result. Despite urgent requests by the CIA and the US government, Pakistan allowed China to view the new machine.
“The US now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI, gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad,” the paper quoted a person “in intelligence circles” as saying.
Pakistan, which enjoys a close relationship with China, allowed Chinese intelligence officials to take pictures of the crashed chopper as well as take samples of its special “skin” that allowed the American raid to evade Pakistani radar, Reuters reported.
No one from the Pakistani army was available for comment, but the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Pakistan’s top spy agency, denied the report. The paper said Pakistan’s top general, chief of army staff Ashfaq Kayani, denied that China had been given access.
Do you know how much it cost to develop that technology that China can now easily reverse-engineer for pennies on the millions of dollars?
You don’t want to know. Seriously.
Our enemies can not only reverse engineer our stealth technology and make their own stealth helicopters to use against U.S. interests, but it can also now devise better countermeasures against our stuff to leave us weaker in the future.
And Obama isn’t through on that score. He just left behind a hi-tech radar-evading stealth drone for Iran to find.
And what did it cost us to develop that thing? A bunch. What’s it going to cost Iran – and its allies Russia and China to develop? Nada.
But, hey. That kind of thing gets in the way of the mainstream media narrative that anything that we don’t want to credit Obama for we will blame Bush for.
We’re back in the days of the Marxists and the Nazis (fellow socialist travellers) rising to power. All it would have taken for the ugliest period in the history of the human race to have been averted was a little honest reporting by the medias of those countries. But the media had become ideological pawns of totalitarian agendas. It had become an actual ally of those agendas.
Reports are emerging today that Chan Guangcheng, a prominent human rights activist who had led the fight against forced abortions under the one-child policy in China, may have been killed by Chinese officials.
Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, informed LifeNews today that ominous reports regarding blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng have emerged this week and, according to Radio Free Asia, Chinese authorities detained a group of at least nine human rights activists trying to visit Chen.
On Wednesday, many members of the group were cut off from communication and, according to a report by Canyu, Shandong authorities shot at these activists. Voice of America reports that villagers told it “Chen is dead already,” but the media outlet is attempting to verify that claim.
“We are alarmed at the report that villagers are saying that Chen is already dead,” Littlejohn told LifeNews. “If Chen is dead, then the Chinese Communist Party is fully responsible for killing him through torture, denial of medical treatment and slow starvation. If Chen is alive, we urgently demand that he and his family be released immediately and unconditionally, for medical evaluation and treatment.”
Bob Fu, President of the China Aid Association, commented as well, and said, “We are concerned about the report that authorities have shot at the activists trying to visit Chen.”
“These netizens display the same brave spirit that Chen has, and they should continue in their courageous attempts to see him,” he added.
Fu said Gao Zhisheng, another human rights lawyer, has disappeared as well.
“Gao and Chen are shining lights for human rights in China. Their shocking torture and Gao’s disappearance demonstrate the CCP’s willingness to trample on the rule of law,” Fu continued.
Chen exposed the systematic use of forced abortion and involuntary sterilization in implementing China’s One Child Policy. Time Magazine named him in its list of “2006′s Top 100 People Who Shape Our World,” in the category of “Heroes and Pioneers.” He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Earlier this year, the House of Representatives unanimously approvedan amendment to its appropriations bill that provides support for Chen Guangcheng, the blind attorney who has campaigned against forced abortions in China. Chen, as LifeNews.com has repeatedly profiled, was jailed for years after officials produced bogus charges. Since his release from prison, Chen and his family have been placed under house arrest and prevented from accessing the outside world and obtaining proper medical care. Human rights groups have been pressing Chen’s case with lawmakers in Congress and got help from pro-life Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey.
Smith proposed a successful amendment in support of Chen and his wife that lawmakers added to the State Department 2012 appropriation bill.
Chen exposed the fact that there were 130,000 forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations in Linyi County in 2005. The Chinese Communist Party imprisoned Chen for four years and three months and has kept him and his family under strict house arrest since September, 2010. His health has been declining because of malnutrition, intestinal illness, repeated torture and the denial of medical treatment.
We’re not that far away from similar policies and similar brutality.
Once you deny the essential value of an innocent human being – whether that human being is in the womb or anywhere else – it is a very fine line to cross to get to where China is today.
The Word of God can’t be any more clear:
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6)
What does it mean to be in “the image of God”? Does it mean to have a fully developed human body? Does God have a body?
Clearly it does not. God doesn’t have a body; God is too big to have a body. Rather, God is a soul. It was our souls that were created in God’s image. Our bodies that continue to form and develop are animal bodies that have nothing whatsoever to do with the imago Dei. And it is the imago Dei that makes murdering a human being a moral crime.
When exactly does the soul form in a human being? Christian philosophers who actually take the Word of God as being God’s Word are rather clear: the soul of a baby is present from the very moment of conception, when the seed of the man and the egg of the woman join and become one individual (or in the case of twins, etc., two or more individuals). It’s actually a fascinating discussion; DNA is akin to the words of a language, with the proteins serving as individual letters. A individual’s DNA is very much like an instruction manual that says how to put an organism together. But as any parent who has ever tried to assemble a children’s bike knows, the instructions can’t put anything together by themselves. You need something else to read the instructions and assemble the being. DNA needs a driver or it is useless.
Think of a marching band forming the letters of the university (e.g., “UCLA”). Does it simply happen by random chance? Obviously not. Somebody has to plan and coordinate and direct that process. And many philosophers such as J.P. Moreland, Scott Rae and others argue that this unfolding process is directed by none other than the soul. Something non-physical is directing and guiding this process. We are becoming what our souls direct us to become according to our unique DNA instructions.
That soul must exist prior to the body in order to perform that role.
The Democrat Party and every single Democrat who has ever voted for Democrats or the Democrat Party have murdered fifty-four MILLION innocent human souls who were made in God’s image. One day you will all pay for your moral crime the same way God demanded: with your own lives.
I have mentioned abortion several times in this article. What does science really say about abortion?
To put it simply, science properly understood tells us that human embryos are human by virtue of their parents, and beings by virtue of the fact that they are living things (they grow, feed,respire,excrete,respond to stimuli, and reproduce): they are human beings. Science further tells us that human embryos are NOT part of their mother’s bodies; rather, they are clearly unique genetic individuals, with their own unique human DNA. Moreover, scientifically, every single living thing is rigorously classified by the science of taxonomy into the categories of: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. And a human embryo – an unborn baby – is of the kingdom Animalia, of the phylum Chordata, of the class Mammalia, of the order Primates, of the family Hominidae, of the genus Homo, and of the species sapiens. Same as you, same as me, and same as any human being who has spent a lifetime living outside of his or her mother’s womb.
We recently took a giant step toward this in the passage of ObamaCare.
We don’t have “a death panel.” The fact of the matter is that we have 160 death panels:
D. James Kennedy prophetically explained what will happen next:
Get ready, they’re coming. As the costs of health care soar even faster because of the corrupt boondoggle known as ObamaCare takes over a system that had already been rendered inefficient by excessive government interference, the costs will skyrocket. And it will become a rather painfully obvious fact that old people consume the vast majority of health care resources. And the next inevitable step is to say, “Time to die with dignity, Grandma.”
The ObamaCare snowball is going to very quickly become an avalanche. And the most demonic policy (abortion) in the history of the human race will spread like a plague – just as it did in Nazi Germany, and just as it is doing in China as we speak.
Sugar daddy China has already learned that it is not a good investment to keep funding America’s (mostly Democrat’s, fwiw) reckless spending. Which is to say, who we going to beg money from now???
China is pissed.
Mind you, Obama’s answer to China could be, “Yes, I’m screwing you. But keep in mind, I’m screwing the American people even more. It’s their money I’m making worthless, after all.”
This is a typical example of a story that comes out in the Friday dump. The government always releases its most embarassing stuff before the weekends when no one’s paying attention. And, of course, the mainstream media which is determined to protect their messiah reliably follows suit.
That way, they don’t have to seriously cover the damage that Obama has done to the U.S. dollar.
A Chinese ratings house has accused the United States of defaulting on its massive debt, state media said Friday, a day after Beijing urged Washington to put its fiscal house in order.
“In our opinion, the United States has already been defaulting,” Guan Jianzhong, president of Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd., the only Chinese agency that gives sovereign ratings, was quoted by the Global Times saying.
Washington had already defaulted on its loans by allowing the dollar to weaken against other currencies — eroding the wealth of creditors including China, Guan said.
Guan did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.
The US government will run out of room to spend more on August 2 unless Congress bumps up the borrowing limit beyond $14.29 trillion — but Republicans are refusing to support such a move until a deficit cutting deal is reached.
Ratings agency Fitch on Wednesday joined Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s to warn the United States could lose its first-class credit rating if it fails to raise its debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on loans.
A downgrade could sharply raise US borrowing costs, worsening the country’s already dire fiscal position, and send shock waves through the financial world, which has long considered US debt a benchmark among safe-haven investments.
China is by far the top holder of US debt and has in the past raised worries that the massive US stimulus effort launched to revive the economy would lead to mushrooming debt that erodes the value of the dollar and its Treasury holdings.
Beijing cut its holdings of US Treasury securities for the fifth month in a row to $1.145 trillion in March, down $9.2 billion from February and 2.6 percent less than October’s peak of $1.175 trillion, US data showed last month.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei on Thursday urged the United States to adopt “effective measures to improve its fiscal situation”.
Dagong has made a name for itself by hitting out at its three Western rivals, saying they caused the financial crisis by failing to properly disclose risk.
The Chinese agency, which is trying to build an international profile, has given the United States and several other nations lower marks than they received from the the big three.
If you’ve got money in the bank, your money is worth substantially less than it was just a few years ago.
Obama made sure of that.
So we can point fingers at China - whom no one should like because it’s a mean, nasty communist country (albeit less communist than we are now under Obama) – and laugh. But when we point a finger at them, three fingers are pointing back at ourselves.
Stop and think about it. Remember that massive $870 (it really cost taxpayers $3.27 TRILLION, but who is seriously counting anymore?) billion stimulus Obama shoved through Congress entirely on Democrat votes? We are now at the point where we’re going to be paying the equivalent of an Obama stimulus PLUS every single year in interest payments - mostly to China. We’re beyond broke; we’re a dead Dodo bird walking. But Democrats won’t cut ANYTHING, and shrilly demonize Republicans for cutting even a tiny fraction of what is necessary if we are to prevent a massive economic implosion that will make 2008 or even the Great Depression look like heaven.
Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” (Revelation 6:6).
Messiah Obama wisely understands that we need sky high energy prices to force us to abandon lifestyles that are bad for the world. That way he can keep the promise he made to the earth: “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” The earth is much bigger than your little children, so Obama can break his competing promises to you and your family. In fact, your evil if you want him to keep his promises that would prevent him from his messianic duties of healing the whole world.
A gallon of gas was $1.79 when Obama took over from that terrible George Bush. Unfortunately, it has gone up about 110% under Obama, to $3.88 this week. Damn that Bush devil! Can you believe the way he actually wanted to keep the cost of our energy low, so people could do awful stuff like drive to work? The half of us who sponge off the other half don’t need work, so why should the half we sponge off of?
We already voted for the “hope and change” of $9 a gallon gas in the wonderful fundamentally transformative election of 2008. And how dare people get angry about that now!!!
Because Obama in his blessed wisdom knows that most Americans are far, far too stupid to understand anything that happens gradually, such as gas rising to the $8 a gallon levels like they are in Europe. And it doesn’t really matter how much the American people suffer. Not compared to healing earth and lowering the seas like Moses. Obama will be better than Moses; he’ll make the level of the whole ocean change!!!!
And food? So what if the price of food is going through the roof? Michelle Obama will tell you that you’re too fat anyway. You need to lose a whole lot of weight, and her husband’s policies will give you the help you need. You shouldn’t be allowed to eat half as much food as you eat, anyway. They don’t get to eat in North Korea, and it’s a socialist worker’s Utopia. So why should it be any different in the worker’s Utopia your Dear Leader is trying to create for you here? North Koreans are 5.3 inches (13.5 cm) shorter and 30 pounds (13.5 kg) lighter than those fat overfed capitalist South Korean bastards. And American kids should be as short and gaunt as their fellow socialist travellers.
I sure hope I’m not putting too much crap in the sandwich I’m feeding you. Because excrement is a precious commodity in North Korea. And it should be just as precious here.
But just in case you think the hope and change of Obama’s fundamental transformation is already more than you can bear, it gets even better. The cost of having a roof over your head is skyrocketing, too. Which might help you not worry so much about the price of food and the price of fuel.
Record numbers of Americans are paying more than half of their pretax income for rental housing, according to a new study.
The study, by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, found that the recession’s toll on incomes had increased more families’ housing-cost burdens. Almost 26% of renters spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities. Another 26.2% spend 30% to 50% of their incomes.
The study’s findings are similar to the findings of the Center for Housing Policy, which found that working families, both renters and homeowners, were spending a larger proportion of their income on housing. [..]
Lower-income renters have historically struggled to find affordable housing and have paid a disproportionate share of their income in rent. But, according to the study, that problem is moving up the income ladder with more lower-middle-income renters and middle-income renters paying 30% to 50% of their incomes for rent and utilities. [...]
The study offers the latest in a series of grim statistics about the scarcity of rental housing, especially for the working poor. The supply has not kept up with demand in part because of a shortage of apartments, a key source of new rentals. Developers cut back on such projects when the economy deteriorated in 2009, which drove down vacancies and boosted rents. Analysts say they expect rents to keep climbing as developers try to ramp up new projects and catch up with demand.
In many areas, the demand is driven by families who lost their homes to foreclosure during the housing bust and ended up searching for rentals. Meanwhile, as the job market recovers, more newly employed young adults appear to be seeking their own apartments instead of living with their parents, putting even more upward pressure on rental rates, according to one of the study’s researchers.
But don’t worry. Pretty soon, thanks to Obama’s financial policies, you’ll have cash. Lots and lots of cash. Wheelbarrows full of it, in fact.
