The Blame Game Masters: Iran’s Plan B Has Always Been Obama’s Plan A-Z. Consider How Obama Blames Bush For His Iraq Failure.

This is almost funny it’s so sad.  Iran has mastered how to defeat America by watching the master at defeating America at work: Barack Hussein Obama.

Analysis Iran maneuvers to win blame game if nuclear talks collapse
By Paul Richter
June 17, 2014, 4:46 AM|Reporting from Vienna

Iran’s nuclear negotiating team has come to this city hoping to seal a deal on its disputed nuclear program that will finally remove the international sanctions crippling its economy..

But just in case they don’t win that diplomatic victory, they are carefully positioning themselves to come away with a valuable second prize: a win in the ugly blame game that would follow the collapse of negotiations.

Tehran’s team wants to make sure that if its talks with six world powers collapse, many nations would conclude that Iran had been prepared to compromise and the obstacle was the maximalist demands of the United States and its hawkish Israeli and Persian Gulf allies.

The Iranians hope that if many countries come to that view the countries will begin to shed sanctions, allowing Tehran to sell its oil again, and to continue pursuing a nuclear program.

What happens to the sanctions, the world’s great point of leverage on Iran, “depends on who wins the blame game,” said Cliff Kupchan, a former State Department official who follows Iran for the Eurasia Group risk consulting firm.

Iran’s last president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, liked to project an image of thunder and fire. He didn’t look reasonable to the world audience, and didn’t much care.

But the smiling team of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif seek to come across as reasonable representatives of a country that deserves more than pariah status.

In the run-up to this fifth round of talks, Iran’s nuclear negotiating team has put considerable effort into convincing the world that they are not the threat to a diplomatic solution to the 2-decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

At a news conference last Saturday, Rouhani stressed Iran’s “goodwill and flexibility” and his hopes that a deal could still be wrapped up by the current deadline of July 20.

He seemed to signal that he was prepared to set aside Iran’s longstanding enmity with the United States, saying it might cooperate with the U.S. on the struggle against Sunni extremists in Iraq. Of course, as a responsible world power, any Iranian step would be consistent with “international law,” he emphasized.

Rouhani also argued that the sanctions are unraveling anyway. “Conditions will never go back to the past,” he said, in an apparent effort to convince oil-consuming nations they will soon be able to resume oil purchases.

Foreign Minister Zarif, meanwhile, has been building a case that Iran’s goals in the nuclear negotiations are reasonable and that the West’s are extreme.

In a Washington Post Op-Ed article last week, Zarif wrote that in 2005, he and Rouhani floated a plan to the West that would have allowed an international panel to regulate Iran’s nuclear program based on whether they thought it was peaceful. Instead, the George W. Bush administration demanded a halt to Iran’s uranium enrichment, undermining diplomacy and leading to a huge expansion of the Iranian nuclear program.

“They were mistaking our constructive engagement for weakness,” Zarif wrote.

He argued that “small but powerful constituencies” in the West have been calling for tough action against Iran by saying that the country is only a couple of months from having enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

In fact, Zarif wrote, Iran would still need “several years” of work to complete all the complex processes needed to turn the fuel into a bomb.

He pointed out that 2005 and 2012 National Intelligence Estimates, which represent the U.S. intelligence community consensus, concluded that Iran wasn’t trying to build a bomb.

The Iranian team is hoping that if the talks collapse, the defection of a few non-Western oil-importing nations, such as China, Turkey or India, might begin an accelerating unraveling of the sanctions.

Obama administration officials contend the sanctions have remained strong since the signing of an interim nuclear deal last November that eased some of the penalties on Iran.

Many countries remain wary of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in part because of evidence that Iran for years was secretly expanding the program.

Yet the administration has some vulnerabilities in the public relations battle.

One is that many countries are increasingly skeptical of the U.S.’ heavy use of its powerful economic sanctions, which the White House this spring has imposed on Russia because of the dispute over Ukraine.

Many countries, including some in Europe, see Congress’ use of sanctions as excessive.

A senior administration official, asked in a briefing this week about Iran’s efforts to win over world opinion, may have bolstered its argument by warning that if Tehran didn’t yield in negotiations it would be clobbered by more sanctions legislation.

“If Iran does not feel it can make the choices that are necessary, I have no doubt that Congress will take action,” warned the official, who declined to be identified under administration ground rules.

We’ve never seen such a demagogue in the White House.  EVER.  This wicked man ran promising to “transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.”  Obama deceived and lied his way into office, pure and simple.  And dug in like a disease-bearing tick, he proceeded to “fundamentally transform America” by abandon any and all compromise and ramming home his Stalinist partisan ideology by whatever means necessary (usually Stalinist means through “executive orders” and simple lawlessness, mind you).

Everything was Bush’s fault.  And as that myth started to wear out, everything was the Republicans’ fault.  Obama is a one-trick pony, and the blame game is his one trick so he keeps doing it over and over and over again, ad nauseum.

Our enemies have taken notice of how pathologically weak and cynical Obama is.  And they have taken note of how to be like Obama and use rhetoric to delegitimize truth.

Obama demonized George Bush over EVERYTHING.  Except the way Bush won the Iraq War.  Obama didn’t demonize that; nope: he tried to take credit for it (as I documented in a recent article).  Joe Biden put it this way when Bush was long out of office and everything seemed to be going so, so well:

“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.”

Obama BOASTED in 2011 about how wonderfully HIS plan had worked to produce a stable Iraq:

“This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant.”

Of course, NO ONE in the Pentagon had agreed with Obama’s plan.  They had BEGGED Obama to keep the sort of residual force in Iraq that John McCain had described America as needing to ensure true long-term security:

QUESTIONER: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years —

McCAIN: Maybe a hundred.

QUESTIONER: Is that — is that —

McCAIN: We’ve been in South Korea — we’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans —

QUESTIONER: So that’s your policy?

McCAIN: — As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, then it’s fine with me. I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, and equipping and motivating people every single day.

Had we remained in Iraq the way we remained in South Korea and the way we remained in Japan and the way we remained in Europe, WE WOULDN’T BE WHERE WE ARE NOW.

And where we are now is a complete disaster, with Iraq collapsing to terrorists who are – get this – WORSE than al Qaeda while we beg our ENEMY Iran – which is responsible for one third of all American deaths and casualties suffered in Iraq – to help us because we are too weak to help ourselves now.

Let’s look at the timeline of what the military said was wise and what they said was idiotic.  Let’s start with Feb 2, 2009 only days after Obama took office:

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 2009 (IPS) – CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn’t convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Obama’s decision to override Petraeus’s recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama’s decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, “Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama.”

Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.

Obama was a fool.  He still IS a fool.  He will ALWAYS be a fool.

Note that we DID have an end-run around the just-as-stupid-as-Obama Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: just re-categorize the troops as “support troops.”  And there are PLENTY of such end runs if Obama had wanted them: for example, now, if Obama sends in ANY troops, he could provide cover for them by declaring them to be under the protections of embassy personnel.  He could have ALWAYS played such games had he wanted to.  The fact of the matter is, Obama wanted OUT of Iraq.  He cut and ran, just as we said.  He never TRIED to negotiate anything but his ass not hitting the door on his way out.

Note that back in 2009, literally one day after taking office (January 21), Obama was already IGNORING the superior knowledge and wisdom of the military and frankly even his own experts in his own cabinet that he had chosen.  And he imposed his idiot liberalism on America and now we’re paying for it and will pay far MORE for it soon.

Note that American military commanders ALWAYS assumed that Obama wouldn’t be such a fool as to do what he did, as this article underscores:

Despite Obama’s declarations Friday and the celebrations they have sparked on the liberal blogosphere, the Pentagon certainly seems to believe its forces may well be in Iraq after 2011. NBC’s Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszeswki reported on Friday that “military commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that all U.S. forces would be out by the end of 2011, are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated. And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years.” Some have suggested that such statements from the military are insubordination and contrary to Obama’s orders, but they could also reflect discussions between the White House and the Pentagon to which the public is not privy. Then there’s the monstrous U.S. embassy unveiled last month in Baghdad, the largest of any nation anywhere in the history of the planet and itself resembling a military base. Maintaining this fortified city will require a sizable armed U.S. presence in Baghdad and will regularly place U.S. diplomats in armed convoys that put Iraqi civilian lives in jeopardy.

The fact is this: the military demanded that we need to have at least 20,000 men as a residual force; Obama refused to listen to wisdom and ordered the military to draw up a new plan.  So the military scratched their heads at Obama’s arrogant idiocy and returned, asking for at least 10,000 troops.  Again, Obama refused common sense.  Obama was only going to allow a way-too-small force of 3,000.

And when Obama came to the Iraqi Prime Minister with that clearly-too-small-to-do-any-good number, Nouri al -Maliki understood that Obama had absolutely no intention of truly remaining as a stabilizing force in Iraq, that he was cutting and running, that America under Obama was useless, and that he would need to run to the Iranians instead of relying on the Americans.

In other words, Obama lost the war right then and there.  Obama – who wanted OUT – offered absolutely nothing whatsoever that al-Maliki could use, which made it easy for al-Maliki to refuse Obama’s “assistance.”  Hence no status of forces agreement.

Let’s go to a period – April 10, 2011 – after the Obama-King-Dumbass-of-the-Universe policy on Iraq is on the verge of being implemented:

WASHINGTON — Eight months shy of its deadline for pulling the last American soldier from Iraq and closing the door on an 8-year war, the Pentagon is having second thoughts.

Reluctant to say it publicly, officials fear a final pullout in December could create a security vacuum, offering an opportunity for power grabs by antagonists in an unresolved and simmering Arab-Kurd dispute, a weakened but still active al-Qaida or even an adventurous neighbor such as Iran.

The U.S. wants to keep perhaps several thousand troops in Iraq, not to engage in combat but to guard against an unraveling of a still-fragile peace. This was made clear during Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit Thursday and Friday in which he and the top U.S. commander in Iraq talked up the prospect of an extended U.S. stay.

Note how the media slants and distorts the story.  The military wasn’t having “second thoughts” about this idiotic move by Obama; THEY HAD ALWAYS OPPOSED IT.

Also, note that they feared not only terrorists taking over Iraq, but the terrorist State of Iran taking over Iraq.  Under Obama’s wicked, demon-possessed stupidity, BOTH ARE NOW HAPPENING.

We learn – if we care about history rather than liberal’s fact-warping rhetoric – that:

Obama’s plan, as his advisors have often said, is subject to “conditions on the ground,” meaning it can be altered at any point between now and 2011. Underscoring this point, a spokesperson for New York Rep. John McHugh, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said on Friday that Obama “assured [McHugh] he will revisit the tempo of the withdrawal, or he will revisit the withdrawal plan if the situation on the ground dictates it. … The president assured him that there was a Plan B.”

In other words, Obama made the call.  He made the call AFTER Bush had secured victory.  And Obama foolishly made THE WRONG CALL.  And now the Middle East is melting down around us as a result of our Idiot-in-Chief.

Of course, we now know what Obama’s “PLan B” was: to blame Bush for Obama’s idiotic failures and count on the mainstream media to sell it.

As another example of how the Fool-in-Chief annihilated American influence in the Middle East, consider how Obama – after his “red line” debacle – refused wisdom in sending aid to the pro-democratic rebels in Syria as John McCain and Lindsey Graham begged Obama to do a good two years plus ago.

We had a chance to topple Syrian dictator Assad AND install a government friendly to us, but Obama dithered too long and blew any chance we had.  And then – because Obama is a true fool – he involved Russia and Putin who takes Obama to school every time they negotiate.  And Putin maneuvered Obama into literally NEEDING Assad to remain in power to secure a WMD deal that Putin and Assad held over Obama’s head like a carrot while Assad murdered now well over 160,000 of his own people.  And while a vicious terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – ISIS – metastasized first across Syria and now into Iraq.

These are all just facts.  It is what happened.

But the way Obama – using his “Iran Plan B” strategy as per the top article above – has handled his debacle is to blame Bush for it.  If Bush hadn’t started the war, we wouldn’t be here.

You know, just like “If I didn’t have an opposable thumb, I wouldn’t have smashed my finger with this hammer.”

It is significant that BOTH of Barack Obama’s Secretaries of State – first Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry – voted to authorize Bush to attack Iraq.  Because they looked at the clear and present danger that Iraq posed and they looked at the intelligence evidence that Bush was also looking at, and they came to the same decision that any rational human being would come to faced with such overwhelming evidence.

History records THAT as a fact as well.  It also records the fact that nearly sixty percent of DEMOCRATS in the United States Senate (29 of 50) supported Bush’s policy on Iraq in the form of something called “the Iraq WAR Resolution.”  That’s right, kids: “The Iraq WAR Resolution.”  Only to turn on him like treasonous dogs the moment that politics and unbelievable dishonesty and cynicism on the part of the Democrat Party entered into the picture.

Again, note that the two people who served as Obama’s Secretaries of State – Hillary Clinton and John Kerry – both voted “YES.”

Democrats are demonic, backstabbing traitors.  And if you give them power, they will undermine America every single time.

So Obama is trying to play games and blame pretty much all of the scandals that HIS administration is responsible for on Bush.  Like the VA scandal.

Now Obama’s – OBAMA’S – failed policy is coming home to roost.  And the man who just a few years ago was claiming total credit for Iraq is now using his army of media cockroaches to suggest that Bush so screwed up Iraq that it’s wrong to blame Obama.  BULLCRAP.

The fact of the matter is that George W. Bush secured victory in Iraq and handed off a safe, stable, secure nation to Barack Obama.  Barack Obama claimed credit for what he received and in so doing claimed ownership of it.  Had his policy not been so wrong, had he not so completely and so arrogantly IGNORED his wise military advisors, we would not be in this mess.

Don’t let Obama play his “Iranian strategy” on this one.

 

Report Shows Obama Failed – And Failed From DAY ONE – In Afghanistan

Raise your hand if you EVER believed Obama’s incredibly stupid and naïve “strategy” in Afghanistan would work before he cut and ran on his “timetable for surrender.”

Please note: people like me were declaring Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan would fail from the first moment he declared, “If we declare exactly when we’re going to crawl out with our tails between our legs, and then leave Afghanistan to the terrorists, we’ll win.”  And people like me were right, and as usual people like Obama are a) evil because they wasted all of our blood and everything we invested and b) stupid beyond human belief.

Obama already HAS largely pissed Iraq away and wasted our victory there by refusing to stay.  Cutting and running equals LOSING.  I still remember the day that Obama demonized and slandered John McCain for declaring that we ought to remain in Iraq for a hundred years, if necessary, to peacefully secure what we won the same way we remained in Germany and the same way we remained in Japan and the same way we remained in South Korea to keep what we had won safe and free.  What McCain was very clearly saying – CORRECTLY – was that America needed to maintain a low key presence and a commitment to these countries in order to keep the terrorists who had taken over Afghanistan to attack us on 9/11 and to keep the terrorists who wanted to do the same thing with Iraq out and American influence in.

Obama said absolutely not, that his policy of declaring to the enemy exactly when we were going to withdraw and then leaving would succeed.  On Obama’s failed view, “cutting and running” would force Afghanistan and Iraq to get their acts together and fight the terrorists themselves.

But that was never going to work, and frankly the stakes were too high for America to ever stupidly believe that it had any chance of working.

And now here we are:

EXCLUSIVE: Confidential U.S. assessments show Afghanistan not ready to govern on own
State Department tries to hide risks of corruption
By Guy Taylor – The Washington Times
Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Confidential U.S. assessments, which the State Department tried to hide from the public, show nearly all Afghan Cabinet ministries are woefully ill-prepared to govern after the U.S. withdraws its troops, often describing the gaps in knowledge, capability and safeguards as “critical” and describing an infrastructure in danger of collapsing if left to its own accord.

The State Department USAID reports, obtained by The Washington Times, paint a sobering portrait about the impact of the billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on nation-building over the past decade.

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SEE ALSO: See the scathing documents detailing $600 billion squandered in Afghanistan

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Treated as a whole, the reports suggest that the U.S. spending has yet to create a sustainable civilian government in Afghanistan and, in some cases, has been diverted to corrupt politicians or extremists looking to destabilize the country.

USAID officials told The Times on Tuesday that the risks of corruption and waste associated with trying to develop a government in Afghanistan have long been known and that U.S. taxpayers must be patient before they see further returns on their aid investments.

Americans need to appreciate that the Afghan government ministries hardly existed a dozen years ago, said the officials, who argued that the government has progressed dramatically over the years — giving all the more reason for Washington now to ensure that the gains are not lost and U.S. national security hurt during the years ahead.

Further, USAID spokesman Matt Herrick told The Times that “we strongly reject all claims that we have improperly withheld information.”

“USAID takes very seriously its obligation to share information about its operations with Congress, auditors and the public,” Mr. Herrick said.

But questions remain about precisely why the secret assessments, which were conducted by USAID officials in 2012 and 2013 and are known in foreign aid circles as “Stage II Risk Assessment Reports,” are just coming to light.

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SEE ALSO: U.S. fears Afghan services may be cut as corruption sharply reduces customs taxes

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The documents focus specifically on seven Afghan government ministries overseeing the nation’s finance, mining, electric utilities, communications, education, health and agriculture.

USAID concluded outright that six of those ministries simply cannot be trusted to manage aid from U.S. taxpayers without a dangerous risk that the money will fall victim to fraud, waste, abuse or outright theft.

Only in one of the seven cases — the Afghan Ministry of Finance in March 2013 — did auditors conclude that the ministry’s systems were “adequate to properly manage and account for” money being channeled in from Washington.

But even with that conclusion, USAID auditors identified 26 risks for fraud and waste at the finance ministry. Three of the risks were deemed to be “high” and the rest were rated “critical,” including the overarching danger of the Finance Ministry simply “not being able to fulfill its mandate and carry out its operation.”

The reports, which also contain specific recommendations for each ministry to root out mismanagement, are being made public against a backdrop of mounting debate in Washington over America’s nation-building project in Afghanistan over the past 12 years.

The Times obtained the assessments under a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the chief U.S. watchdog over the State Department’s nation-building efforts.

The State Department provided the documents earlier to private groups and congressional lawmakers, but in redacted, edited and compressed formats, leading to complaints that the department hid essential information about the poor state of Afghanistan’s governing ability. The Times’ copies were mostly free of edits, laying bare the stark assessments USAID gave about each Afghan ministry.

‘Should not be released’

At the center of that debate sits serious questions about the impact — or lack thereof — of the more than $100 billion that Congress says has been channeled toward Afghanistan reconstruction.

Although the amount is far less than the $600 billion estimated to have been spent on U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, it represents the core of America’s attempt to build a government that would not crumble quickly should President Obama come through on his promise to pull all U.S. forces out of the nation by the end of this year.

USAID alone has channeled $20 billion toward the effort, according to SIGAR officials.

SIGAR and USAID have fought bitterly in public in recent weeks over whether the U.S. exerted enough safeguards over its spending and whether the State Department has tried to hide the blemishes inside each Afghan ministry.

The Stage II Risk Assessment Reports, along with a series of other Afghan ministry audits that USAID contracted out to the high-level Washington accounting firms KPMG and Ernst & Young, have sat at the center of the dispute.

SIGAR used the assessments as the basis for its scathing report in January highlighting rampant claims of fraud and abuse across the ministries. But what came next was even more eye-opening: The watchdog group wrote a letter to USAID accusing the agency of seeking at “virtually every turn” to block the information from becoming public.

“When SIGAR first requested copies of the ministry assessments at issue here, USAID stamped them ‘Sensitive But Unclassified’ (SBU), with a legend on the front covers stating that they should not be released ‘outside the Executive Branch,’ i.e., should not be released to Congress or the public,” SIGAR General Counsel John G. Arlington wrote in a March 26 letter to USAID’s legal branch.

The letter triggered speculation inside government circles in Washington that USAID might be guarding the material because of a reference that the ministry assessments had made to terrorism.

A version of the assessment, which was conducted by KPMG, appeared this month on the website of the Project on Government Oversight and highlighted how the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development had never developed a mechanism “for screening of beneficiaries for their possible links with terrorist organizations before signing contracts or providing funds to the suppliers.”

Lack of accountability

That particular assessment, along with others that USAID contracted KPMG and Ernst & Young to conduct, were not included in the FOIA response that SIGAR provided Tuesday to The Times.

In the response, SIGAR provided The Times with more than 100 pages of the assessments that USAID officials conducted to gauge the capabilities of Afghan ministries.

The documents paint a sobering picture. In one, USAID auditors assessed a shocking lack of management over the financial dealings at the ministry overseeing all mining activities in Afghanistan.

“There is no financial management and accounting system in place to record transactions for both operational and development budget,” states the September 2012 assessment of the Afghan Ministry of Mines.

“There is no evidence of reconciliation of monthly payroll records,” auditors wrote. “In fact, staff are receiving bonuses in cash which are not declared on their bank transfer.”

What’s worse, USAID concluded, is that the “same staff is recording and reconciling transactions.”

An examination of Afghanistan’s main power and electricity generating utility, Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat — known as DABS — paints an equally bleak picture. The assessment, dated October 2012, found “significant weaknesses in DABS’ financial management and accounting system.”

“These weaknesses create opportunities for fraud, including off-balance sheet financing,” USAID auditors wrote. “Evidently DABS does not have sufficient financial management capacity to manage donors’ funds, without strong mitigation measures and/or substantial involvement from donors.”

Six of 12 risks that auditors identified for fraud and waste at DABS were assessed as “critical.” Six others, including the risk of DABS’ management “not being committed to sound organizational structure and competence,” were rated as “high.”

Documents prove oversight

Each of the assessments contains a section outlining the Obama administration’s 2010 policy to channel “at least 50 percent” of all U.S. government development aid to Afghanistan directly into the budget of the Afghan government.

Under the policy, USAID officials wrote, the agency is committed to evaluating the government capability of whatever nation is receiving aid — in this case Afghanistan. The point, the officials wrote, is to “understand the fiduciary risk environment in targeted countries” in order to decide whether a given nation’s agencies can be trusted with U.S. taxpayer money.

“If the assessment reveals clear evidence of vulnerabilities to corruption, and the partner country government fails to respond, the use of partner country systems must not be authorized,” USAID officials wrote.

Although the assessments go on to highlight such vulnerabilities across the Afghan ministries, USAID agreed as of August to channel roughly $695 million in “direct assistance” to those ministries.

USAID officials defended their actions Tuesday by pointing out that the agency has disbursed only about $200 million, specifically because of concerns about widespread fraud and corruption.

Mr. Herrick said suggestions that USAID has tried to hide the risk of such problems only “distract from the larger story that is often overlooked here — that USAID is protecting U.S. taxpayer money while providing critical development assistance and putting in place strict safeguards and oversight measures.”

“These documents, the Stage II assessments, very clearly demonstrate those oversight measures,” he said.

Another USAID official told The Times that Congress and U.S. government auditors have access to USAID documents in unredacted form either in their offices or at USAID.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, asserted that it “is a common practice to redact information from the general public about vulnerabilities and other information that could be exploited by unscrupulous actors if exposed.”

Other officials said the USAID goes to lengths to work with Afghan officials in an attempt to help them develop the capability to effectively manage their ministries on their own, rather than simply throw money at the situation. As a result, one official said, the process takes significant time and care.

Ghost employees

Officials writing the documents pulled few punches. The one conducted on the Ministry of Mines, for instance, described a landscape ripe for corruption. Operational problems, USAID auditors wrote, have created a “critical” risk of “kickbacks and bribery.”

Similarly strong language was used in a “Conclusion & Results” section of an October 2012 assessment of the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, commonly referred to as “MAIL.”

“MAIL’s financial management/accounting system is not adequate to properly manage and account for donors’ funds,” auditors wrote. “MAIL does not have the financial management capacity to manage proposed activities.”

USAID auditors also pointed to damaging personnel problems within the Ministry of Public Health, whose “payroll database is vulnerable to unauthorized access and modification.”

The ministry “runs the risk of paying ghost employees and making improper payments to employees,” the assessment states.

A “lack of transparency” within the ministry’s procurement and purchasing system “creates an opportune environment for fraud, waste and abuse,” USAID auditors wrote, adding that ministry was in violation of existing Afghan government procurement laws, operating with “no effective control over public expenditures.”

Thirteen of 14 risks USAID identified in the assessment were rated as “critical,” including the risks that the ministry’s officials are diverting “government resources for unintended purposes” and manipulating accounting information to “hide illegal actions.”

While a January 2013 assessment of the Ministry of Education painted a relatively optimistic view of the ministry’s future, auditors cited a “high” risk of government resources being diverted to “unintended purposes.”

USAID auditors also found a host of accountability issues associated with the manner in which not just money — but actual cash — flows through the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to the ministry’s employees.

“The Ministry permits salary advances in the form of cash to staff, however, there are no internal controls to monitor and track the cash advances and [a] separate ledger to record the cash advances is not maintained,” auditors wrote in a January 2013 assessment.

We have needed all along to stay small in Afghanistan, and to just keep using our elite forces and our air and artillery power to just keep finding out where the Taliban were and taking them out.  As Bush had successfully done.

Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy was NEVER going to work.  Because we were NEVER going to be able to win the hearts and minds of such a primitive tribal people who are so easily deceived (all too much like the American people, sadly).

What we needed to do was what Bush did: drive the Taliban out and just proceed to keep them on their heels by killing them with raids when they tried to gather and terrorize the people in their villages.

Bush lost 630 Americans in Afghanistan during his eight years.  Now, you can demonize Bush as having lost to many, as Barack Obama did.  But now you’ve got to answer for the fact that Barack Obama has lost 1,687 American lives so far in Afghanistan.  And he is about to lose the whole enchilada because his strategy was wildly wrong.  And he’s ALREADY lost the Iraq War that George Bush won by refusing to stay and keep what we fought for.

Obama has thrown away three times as many American lives as Bush AFTER DEMONIZING Bush.  Only to fail those men and fail America.

Liberals won’t answer for those facts, of course, because to be a Democrat is to be a rabidly dishonest hypocrite.

But every thinking person ought to hold Obama accountable for his bovine feces rhetoric and his bovine feces results.

Obama’s failure in Afghanistan has been predicted over and over and over again right from the very start by people like me.  Because we understood the true evil that is Barack Obama and his God Damn America policies:

Afghanistan and Iran: Weakling President Obama Confronted By ‘Strong’ Candidate Obama

September 28, 2009

Obama’s Afghanistan Mess Proves Why Making Iraq Central Front Good Idea

October 15, 2009

Biden Reveals Obama Administration Treating Afghanistan As Political Problem

October 19, 2009

Some ‘Change’: Closest Ally Britain Says Obama Undermining War In Afghanistan

November 24, 2009

Obama’s Message To Taliban Re: Afghanistan: ‘Just Keep Fighting And Wait Us Out And It’ll Be All Yours’

December 2, 2009

Speigel Regards Obama And His Afghanistan Policy With Naked Contempt

December 2, 2009

How’s Obama Doing In Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq? Not So Good

April 7, 2010

Obama Reducing Afghanistan Into ‘Echoes Of Vietnam’

April 7, 2010

Napalitano Travels To Afghanistan To Make Its Border As Secure As America’s

January 3, 2011

Great General Leaving Afghanistan So Fool President Can Be The Weakling His Leftist Base Demands

February 16, 2011

Obama – Who Demonized Iraq And Afghanistan During Bush Administration – Now Warns Against Sending ‘Mixed Messages’ In His ‘Kinetic Action’ In Libya

June 16, 2011

Obama REPEATEDLY IGNORED GENERALS As He Pursued His Political Policy Of First Surge Then Cut-And-Run In Afghanistan

June 29, 2011

Obama’s Utterly Failed Policy With Syria, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan And The Entire Middle East Is A Clear And Present Danger

February 9, 2012

I think those older articles establish my bona fides that I TOLD YOU SO.

And one of the things I pointed out in one of the earliest articles was why Obama was such a stupid and reckless fool to make the war on terror all about Afghanistan to begin with.  The bottom line is that Iraq was PERFECT for American policy.  It had an educated people who were capable of listening to reason; and it had flat terrain where our air and armor power could easily dominate and guarantee victory.  Obama was stupid to drag us deeply into Afghanistan – which Bush refused to do no matter how much John Kerry and then Barack Obama and other Democrats demonized him for it – because unlike those fools Bush listened to his generals and understood the folly.  That is why he kept the Afghanistan theater in low key and instead opened the theater in Iraq where we had a dictator’s ass to kick in the heart of the Arab World.

Obama’s campaign was based on demonization from the very outset.  He had made Iraq “the bad war” and – because it was deemed politically foolish to make Democrats completely anti-war – they offered Afghanistan as “the good war.”

Only Democrats are rabid liars and fools and Afghanistan was NEVER a good ANYTHING.

We have struggled massively to educate stone-age people who live in a country that is dominated by mountains and caves that defy all of our military advantages.

It was a death trap right from the start.

The rest of the world knew this: which is why Afghanistan had already been called “The Graveyard of Empires” LONG before another fool like Obama came along to experience the lessons of history anew.

Just keep voting for Democrats, America.  Because you’ve clearly demonstrated that you want to go the way of the Dodo bird.

Obama REPEATEDLY IGNORED GENERALS As He Pursued His Political Policy Of First Surge Then Cut-And-Run In Afghanistan

Is Obama succeeding in Afghanistan?  Consider this little factoid: There are 280 provinces in Afghanistan; AND ONLY 29 OF THEM ARE UNDER U.S. OR AFGHAN CONTROL!!!

That’s what I call “failure.”  Obama is a failed president on every single front, both domestically and internationally.  More on that below.

What we have immediately below is documented proof that not only did Barack Hussein ignore his generals’ (and even both the senior Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers!!!) regarding military policy and strategy, but he that HE LIED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE about it.

At what point do we demand the impeachment of this lying, corrupt dishonest fraud???

General Reveals that Obama Ignored Military’s Advice on Afghanistan
5:21 PM, Jun 28, 2011 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES

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 senior administration official twice claimed that the Obama decision was within the range of options the military presented to Obama. “In terms of General Petraeus, I think that, consistent with our approach to this, General Petraeus presented the president with a range of options for pursuing this drawdown. There were certainly options that went beyond what the president settled on in terms of the length of time that it would take to recover the surge and the pace that troops would come out – so there were options that would have kept troops in Afghanistan longer at a higher number. That said, the president’s decision was fully within the range of options that were presented to him and he has the full support of his national security team.”

The official later came back to the question and reiterated his claim. “So to your first question I would certainly – I would certainly characterize it that way. There were a range. Some of those options would not have removed troops as fast as the president chose to do, but the president’s decision was fully in the range of options the president considered.”

(The full transcript of the exchange is below; the full transcript of the call is at the link.)

So the new top commander in Afghanistan says Obama went outside the military’s range of options to devise his policy, and the White House says the president’s policy was within that range of options. Who is right?

We know that Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have both testified that the administration’s decision was “more aggressive” than their preferred option. And there has been considerable grumbling privately from senior military leaders about the policy. Among their greatest concerns: the White House’s insistence that the 2012 drawdown of the remaining 23,000 surge troops be completed by September. That means that drawdown will have to begin in late spring or early summer—a timeline for which there exists no serious military rationale. Afghanistan’s “fighting season” typically lasts from April through November. (Last year, it continued into December because of warmer than usual temperatures.) So if the White House were to go forward with its policy as presented, the largest contingent of surge troops would be withdrawn during the heart of next year’s fighting season.

Would Petraeus have made such a recommendation? No. He wants to win the war. When he was pressed last week to explain the peculiar timeframe, Petraeus said that it wasn’t military considerations that produced such a timeline but “risks having to do with other considerations.”

Which ones? Petraeus declined to say. But in a happy coincidence for the White house, the troops will be home in time for the presidential debates of 2012 and the November election.

Q    Hi, everyone.  Thanks for doing the call.  I’ve got a couple, but I’ll be quick.  Did General Petraeus specifically endorse this plan, or was it one of the options that General Petraeus gave to the president?  And as a follow-up, did Gates, Panetta and Clinton all endorse it?  Finally, will the president say about how many troops will remain past 2014?  And of the 33,000 coming home by next summer, how many are coming home and how many are going to be reassigned somewhere else?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Okay, I’ll take part of that.  In terms of General Petraeus, I think that, consistent with our approach to this, General Petraeus presented the president with a range of options for pursuing this drawdown.  There were certainly options that went beyond what the President settled on in terms of the length of time that it would take to recover the surge and the pace that troops would come out — so there were options that would have kept troops in Afghanistan longer at a higher number.

That said, the president’s decision was fully within the range of options that were presented to him and has the full support of his national security team. I think there’s a broad understanding among the national security team that there’s an imperative to both consolidate the gains that have been made and continue our efforts to train Afghan security forces and partner with them in going after the Taliban, while also being very serious about the process of transition and the drawdown of our forces.

So, to your first question, I would certainly — I would characterize it that way. There were a range.  Some of those options would not have removed troops as fast as the President chose to do, but the president’s decision was fully in the range of options the president considered.

There is no question which side is lying and which side is telling the truth.  BARACK OBAMA IS A LIAR AND A FOOL.

Let’s go back and contemplate how cynical and dishonest the Obama administration has been all along in its political game plan played with the lives of American servicemen:

Charles Krauthammer pointed out the sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and the  Democrat Party as regards Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to what  the Democrats themselves said:

Bob Shrum, who was a high  political operative who worked on the Kerry campaign in ’04, wrote a very interesting article in December of last year in which he talked  about that campaign, and he said, at the time, the Democrats  raised the issue of Afghanistan — and they made it into “the right war”  and “the good war” as a way to attack Bush on Iraq.  In  retrospect, he writes, that it was, perhaps, he said, misleading.  Certainly it was not very wise.

What he really meant to say — or at least I would interpret it — it  was utterly cynical. In other words, he’s confessing, in a  way, that the Democrats never really supported the Afghan war.  It was simply a club with which to bash the [Bush] administration on the  Iraq war and pretend that Democrats aren’t anti-war in general, just  against the wrong war.

Well, now they are in power, and they are trapped in a box as  a result of that, pretending [when] in opposition that Afghanistan is  the good war, the war you have to win, the central war in the war on  terror. And obviously [they are] now not terribly interested in it, but  stuck.

And that’s why Obama has this dilemma. He said explicitly on ABC a  few weeks ago that he wouldn’t even use the word “victory” in  conjunction with Afghanistan.

And Democrats in Congress have said: If you don’t  win this in one year, we’re out of here. He can’t win the war in  a year. Everybody knows that, which means he [Obama] has no  way out.

More on this utterly hypocritical and cynical chutzpah here.  Which is even more maddening given the fact that the liberals who screamed about the two wars Bush got us in are almnost completely mum about the FIVE WARS Obama has us in.

And these same total pieces of cockroach scum who cynically pitched Afghanistan as “the good war” and Iraq as “the bad war” as a political ploy for Obama Democrats to demonize Bush and our American troops while pretending to remain pro-American security are now both taking credit for what they called “the bad war” in Iraq –

On Larry King Live last night, Vice President Joe Biden said Iraq “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.”

– while cutting and running in defeat from what they claimed was “the good war.”

By the way, Obama has NEVER bothered to listen to his generals in Afghanistan.  Which is why he is the clearest and most present threat to our national security.

Let’s consider what Obama did: after demonizing Bush – who was successful in Iraq where he chose to fight – Obama dragged us into the quagmire of Afghanistan.  He wanted a “political” surge.  Germany’s leftist Der Speigel rightly said Obama’s “new strategy for Afghanistan” “seemed like a campaign speech.”  And then they said:

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into  Afghanistan — and then they will march right back out again.

Which reminds us that conservatives SAID the policy of “timetables” would never work and would fail.  And here we are now proving that assessment was 100% correct as we begin to cut-and-run having accomplished NOTHING but a “surge” of dead Americans and a “surge” in American bankruptcy.

What did I say back in December of 2009?  My title: “Obama’s Message To Taliban Re: Afghanistan: ‘Just Keep Fighting And Wait Us Out And It’ll Be All Yours’” should say it all.

Obama refused to listen to his generals when he refused to give them enough troops to begin with.  He compounded that stupid error by ignoring his generals and mandating a timetable for pullout that FURTHER guaranteed failure.  And now he’s AGAIN refusing to listen to his generals as he cuts-and-runs far faster than they can accommodate.

And the only thing more stupid that Obama can do is to export this policy of stupidly refusing to listen to his military experts.  Which is exactly what he did in Libya when he got us in there under utterly false pretenses:

“It was reported in March that Gates, along with Counterterrorism Chief John  Brennan and National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, privately advised the  president to avoid military involvement in Libya — but they were overruled…”

Now we face an unmitigated debacle in Afghanistan as Obama cuts-and-runs.  We will be pulling troops out exactly when we most need them in the height of the fighting season.  And why?  Because Obama cynically wants to bring the troops home in time to bolster his pathetic campaign for a second term.

As a final comment about the Democrats’ fundamental hypocrisy, here’s a piece from 2004 Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry demanding that Bush “listen to his generals.”  Bush DID listen to his generals – which was why HE TURNED IRAQ AROUND INTO WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION NOW SAYS IS “ONE OF THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS OF THIS ADMINISTRATION.”

Here’s my question: where are you NOW, Kerry, you hypocrite coward???

Obama and Democrats have owed George Bush and Dick Cheney abject apologies for their lies and demagoguery of these two men for years.

Democrats are VERMIN.  They have been vermin for most of the last 50 years.  They have been documented vermin on American foreign policy all over the world.  And we need to keep reminding Americans as to what verminous rat bastards they have been and continue to be.

Obama will be an abject disaster for American foreign policy for decades to come.  And fighting under Obama’s foreign policy is exactly like Vietnam (or shall we call it “echoes of Vietnam”?).

Just like conservatives warned all along.

The moment I saw the “Jeremiah Wright” videos I realized that Barack Obama was a truly evil human being who would lead America to ruin.  It was like an apocalyptic vision of warning.  And it has turned out to be even worse than I feared…

Wisconsin Cut-and-Run Democrats Are FleeBaggers

Michelle Malkin has a way with words.  Handle her wit with extreme care, because that sucker is razor sharp.

We were called “tea baggers” by journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper who masquerades as someone who is remotely objective.  The word “tea baggers,” as Cooper made sure we understood, is a crude sexual reference to a rather disgusting act.

And, of course, we were also called “Astroturf” by liberals like Nancy Pelosi, which was an accusation that somehow we weren’t an authentic grass roots movement. 

Now we’ve got liberal union thugs being bussed in to protest events from all over the country, and we get to see what morally intelligent people knew all along: that if you want to see actual Astroturf, look at the Democrats’ field.

And in honor of the 14 Wisconsin Democrats who actually fled the state so that democracy could not take place (well, unless showing up and voting is somehow the OPPOSITE of the democratic process), Michelle Malkin has coined a new term: “fleebaggers.”

Fleebaggers: The New Cut-and-Run Democrats
By Michelle Malkin  •  February 23, 2011

First lady Michelle Obama said, “Let’s Move!” Who knew Democratic politicians in Wisconsin and Indiana would take her literally?

Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states — paralyzing Republican fiscal reform efforts. Like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin and his band of quivering knights, these elected officials have only one plan when confronted with political hardship or economic peril: Run away, run away, run away.

Scores of Fleebagger Democrats are now in hiding in neighboring Illinois, the nation’s sanctuary for political crooks and corruptocrats. Soon, area hotels will be announcing a special discount rate for card-carrying FleePAC winter convention registrants. Question: Will the White House count the economic stimulus from the mass Democratic exodus to Illinois as jobs “saved” or “created”? More important question: How much are taxpayers being charged for these obstructionist vacations?

Voters have spoken: In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and across the heartland, they put Republican adults in charge of cleaning up profligate Democrat-engineered messes. Instead of defending their same old tax-hiking, union-protecting, spending-addicted ways, Democrats are crossing their state borders into big government sanctuary zones — screaming “la, la, la, we can’t hear you” all the way.

Wisconsin Democrats warned that their delinquent members — evading state troopers and literally phoning it in — could be gone “for weeks” to prevent a quorum on GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s modest plan to increase public union workers’ health insurance and pension contributions, end the compulsory union dues racket and rein in collective bargaining powers run amok.

Big Labor insists its intransigence isn’t about money, but about “rights.” But the dispute is about nothing but money and power — the union’s power to dictate and limit its members’ health insurance choices to a lucrative union-run plan, for example, which adds nearly $70 million in unnecessary taxpayer costs.

On Tuesday, only three of 40 House Democrats in Indiana showed up for legislative debate on a similar bill to end forced unionism and join 22 other “right to work” states. Hoosier media reported that some of the fugitive pols may be headed to Kentucky in addition to President Obama’s old political stomping grounds.

The White House and Beltway Democrats have paved the way for subverting deliberative democracy, of course. If only Republicans in Wisconsin and Indiana had followed the Obama/Pelosi/Reid model and rammed their behind-closed-doors-crafted legislative agenda through in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, the Fleebaggers wouldn’t be on the lam today. But GOP legislators just don’t roll that way. It’s Democrats who cut and run — abroad in wartime and at home in crisis.

Almost eight years ago, more than 50 Texas Democratic state lawmakers holed up in Oklahoma and New Mexico for weeks to stymie a vote on Republican-sponsored redistricting plans they opposed. Over the past week, it was thousands of public school teachers in Wisconsin who faked illness and boycotted their classrooms. And it’s union henchmen calling out loud for statewide strikes to bring Republican reformers to their knees.

The Party of Truancy has become a laughingstock — and Americans aren’t waiting for left-wing late-night comedians to bring down the hammer of well-earned mockery. The Internet has lit up over the past week with “Wanted” posters and all-points-bulletin alerts for missing Democrats.

Blogger John Hayward of the conservative Human Events newspaper joked that “the next issue of National Geographic will track the migratory patterns of fugitive Democrats across the great plains.” Seton Motley of LessGovernment.org weighed in: “First, Wisconsin. Now, Indiana. When we said ‘runaway government,’ it was a complaint — not a suggestion.” Comedian Stephen Kruiser snickered that OFA — the Democrats’ political organizing arm, Organizing for America — now stands for “Organizing Fleeing Americans.”

Note: Many of the loudest Washington and Hollywood critics of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to resign from office in 2009 are themselves now AWOL on the Wisconsin and Indiana AWOL-ians. Who’s all for mocking “quitters” now? Anyone?

One mortified Wisconsin taxpayer speaks for many. “As the daughter of former Wisconsin Senate Minority Floor Leader William R. Moser (D-Milwaukee, Dist. 6),” Mary Magdalen Moser told me, she’s humiliated by the “flee-bagging” politicians. “I am ashamed of the actions taken by the minority party to subvert our system of government by boycotting its legitimate processes. Anarchy is undemocratic, and I know that my Dad is spinning in his grave right now. … I do not support refusing to participate, because that will not solve any of the issues facing our state.”

Remember the 2008 Democratic Party chant: “Fired up! Ready to go!” Well, there’s a new Democratic Party motto in town: “Ready to go? OK, then, let’s blow this pop stand!” It’s difficult to see how Obama and his absconder allies can “win the future” when they’re stampeding over each other to escape the present.

I remember not that long ago when liberals were actually tearing into Republicans merely for VOTING their consciences.  How DARE they not support us in our hard-core liberal agenda that we rammed down their throats?  Then it was un-American to show up to vote.  As long as you were a Republican.

They sneered at us, “Elections have consequences.  And you lost!”  But as angry as we were about every trick in the book used to ram home a liberal agenda, we showed up every day to fight our cause.

Democrats abused their power.  They abused the people’s trust.  And they lost that trust massively as displayed in November.

Now, all of a sudden, elections SHOULDN’T have consequences.  Now, all of a sudden, any vile dirty trick is fine as long as its liberals who get to play them.

The Democrats are now fleeing their states so they don’t have to attend to the democratic process of that state and do its business.  They flee to other liberal states so that they won’t be sent back in handcuffs.  If this were the national Congress, these Democrats would be fleeing to Cuba or North Korea or Libya where similar-minded dictators would welcome them as they turn their backs on democracy.  That’s what the Democrat Party has degenerated to.

Principle means staying in the ring and fighting, even when the fight isn’t going your way.  Just imagine if Republicans had decided that they didn’t want to play “democracy” any longer and fled town during the ObamaCare debacle.  Imagine how they would have rightly been excoriated by the media!!!

Republicans in Wisconsin – and anywhere else Democrats play this un-American game of shutting down democracy by literally fleeing from their states like child molesters – need to first pass every non-budget item in their agenda.  Every single one, such that they can set the Democrat Party in that state back 100 years for refusing to represent their constituents.  And then they should strip the collective bargaining element of the budget out and then vote for it as a non-budgetary matter.

Of course, now that Democrats say it’s fine to shut down the government, now that Democrats say it’s fine to ignore democratic processes and simply run out of town, shutting down the government this way should become the new norm.  The only reason this wouldn’t be the case is because Democrats are inherent childish hypocrites who damn others for doing what they did first.  And America will therefore continue – led by vile Democrats – to degenerate.  Democrats are like a giant reciprocating engine, whose every downward stroke and counterstroke inevitably drives the whole culture further and further down into the sewers of a banana republic.

Great General Leaving Afghanistan So Fool President Can Be The Weakling His Leftist Base Demands

Here’s a stunner: did you think Afghanistan was going badly?  It’s about to get a LOT worse.  Because yet another top general under Obama – and probably the greatest field commander of this generation – is on his way out:

Gen. David Petraeus, the most celebrated American soldier of his generation, is to leave his post as commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, The (London) Times reported Tuesday.

The Times reported that the Pentagon aims to replace Petraeus, who was appointed less than eight months ago, by the end of the year.

Sources have confirmed that the search for a new commander in Kabul is under way. It forms part of a sweeping reorganization of top American officials in Afghanistan, which the Obama administration hopes to present as proof that its strategy does not depend on the towering reputation of one man.

[…]

Many of the moves are expected to coincide with a reduction in US troop numbers, which Obama has promised will start this summer, despite General Petraeus’s objections.

The news that the general himself would be leaving Kabul stunned close observers of US strategy, but the Pentagon insisted Tuesday it was a natural development, given the demands of running the war and Washington’s need for fresh blood in a crucial role.

“This is a heck of a demanding job,” Morrell said of General Petraeus’s central task of driving the Taliban from its strongholds in southern Afghanistan, which US commanders now claim is almost complete. “He will have to be rotated out at some point.”

Nothing to see here, folks.  Please return to your hovels at once.

You remember General Patton, of course, and how he was always whining about the all the stress and how he didn’t want to fight and all he wanted to do was go home.  Happens all the time.

You get to see the REAL REASON for this departure via Reuters:

The question is what this move, if confirmed, would mean for policy.  Petraeus, more than anyone else, has been identified with the intensified military campaign in Afghanistan which, according to critics of the policy,  has reduced prospects of a political settlement by alienating Taliban leaders who might otherwise be coaxed into peace talks. 

Petraeus has been a towering figure in Washington and difficult to challenge politically. He had what was seen in the United States as a good track record in Iraq. And he was backed by Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — making it very hard for those within the U.S. administration who disagreed with his assessment to win President Barack Obama over to their point of view. 

Moreover, Obama had already sacked two generals — Generals David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal — and could hardly dismiss a third. (If I remember rightly — and no doubt someone will correct me if I am wrong — no president since Abraham Lincoln has changed his generals so frequently in wartime.) Promoting Petraeus would be far easier.

His departure, especially with Gates on his way out, could create the space for Obama to recalibrate Afghan strategy, backing away from the military surge and focusing more on a political settlement – if he wants to do so.

Appeasement will work.  It has always worked before.  The best thing you can do is ignore the fact of history that weakness is a provocation and appease, appease, appease your enemy.

If it hadn’t been for Neville Chamberlain and his highly succesful policy of appeasement, it’s difficult to imagine how the world would not have erupted into war in 1939.  Thank the all powerful state that we listened to weakness and gave up Poland and Czechoslovakia to Hitler and gave up Manchuria and China to Tojo.  Strengthening our enemies by giving them land and materials while becoming weaker ourselves is invariably a certain path to peace and prosperity.

I’ll stop.  Pathetically ignorant and naive weakling moral idiot liberals will probably actually think I’m being serious.

It is stunning what an embarassment and what a disgrace the first community agitator ever to become president has been for this country.

Remember how Obama predicted Iraq would be a failure and said the surge strategy wouldn’t work?

The Fool-in-Chief said back when he was just another fool liberal US Senator:

January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

But, of course, George Bush was right about Iraq and about the surge; Obama was the totally wrong moron he still is.  And in fact Iraq went so well that soon after Bush left office the Obama administration was crowing:

“I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

You can see those and other statements from Obama in article documenting just what a cynical and manipulative liar this appeasing weakling truly is.

One of the many ways you can see how loathsome liberals are is their hypocritical turnabout on General David Petraeus himself.  Or should I say, “General Betray Us?”

As we get ready for Obama to show his liberal spots and cut-and-run as anyone not a moron always said Obama would do, consider that the same heroic General Petraeus who had previously been lambasted as General Betray Us simply because he commanded troops and fought for his country while a Republican was president essentially said that Obama’s 2011 cut-and-run timetable was merely a political decision.

And let’s not forget how Obama not only demonized the war in Iraq that Bush won only to claim credit for Bush’s victory, but also how Obama made Afghanistan “the good war.”  And allow me at the same time to take a trip down “I told you so” lane:

Charles Krauthammer pointed out the sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party as regards Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to what the Democrats themselves said:

Bob Shrum, who was a high political operative who worked on the Kerry campaign in ’04, wrote a very interesting article in December of last year in which he talked about that campaign, and he said, at the time, the Democrats raised the issue of Afghanistan — and they made it into “the right war” and “the good war” as a way to attack Bush on Iraq.  In retrospect, he writes, that it was, perhaps, he said, misleading. Certainly it was not very wise.

What he really meant to say — or at least I would interpret it — it was utterly cynical. In other words, he’s confessing, in a way, that the Democrats never really supported the Afghan war. It was simply a club with which to bash the [Bush] administration on the Iraq war and pretend that Democrats aren’t anti-war in general, just against the wrong war.

Well, now they are in power, and they are trapped in a box as a result of that, pretending [when] in opposition that Afghanistan is the good war, the war you have to win, the central war in the war on terror. And obviously [they are] now not terribly interested in it, but stuck.

And that’s why Obama has this dilemma. He said explicitly on ABC a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t even use the word “victory” in conjunction with Afghanistan.

And Democrats in Congress have said: If you don’t win this in one year, we’re out of here. He can’t win the war in a year. Everybody knows that, which means he [Obama] has no way out.

Afghanistan was just a way to demagogue Bush in Iraq by describing Afghanistan – where Obama is failing so badly – as “the good war” and Iraq – where Bush won so triumphantly – as “the bad war.”  It was beyond cynical; it was flat-out treasonous.

George Bush selected Iraq as his central front for sound strategic reason.  Iraq had a despotic tyrant who supported terrorism.  Saddam Hussein needed to be removed to mount any kind of successful peace effort in the Middle East.  Iraq is located in the heart of the Arab/Islamic world.  It has an educated population relative to the rest of the region.  It also offered precisely the type of terrain that would allow American forces to implement their massive military superiority in a way that mountainous, cave-ridden Afghanistan would not.

Bush was determined to fight a war where he could win.  Obama foolishly trapped us in a war that would bleed us.  Why?  For no other reason than pure political demagoguery.  And he needs to be held accountable.

And where are we now under Obama’s failed leadership???

An article entitled, “Pentagon worried about Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan” ended with this assessment from a senior Pentagon official:

“I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier.  We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war.”

See my piece from last year predicting this failure.  Read that article and explain to me where I was wrong, liberals.  I dare you.

I’m still waiting, you pathetic liberal vermin.

Bush won in Iraq; he changed the entire dynamic in the Middle East.  And if anything is contributing toward the movement toward democracy in the Middle East, it is the fact that George W. Bush built a democracy in the very heart of the Arab and Muslim world.  Barack Obama demanded that we fight in Afghanistan – where Bush had essentially mounted a containing operation because Afghanistan is and always has been the grave yard of empires.  And he has been losing there miserably ever since he dramatically and massively escalated the war there.

Obama insisted that we cut-and-run where we could win; and he demanded that we fight to the bitter end where we would bog down.

I’ve tried to explain that to liberals.  But better to teach physics to my dog than common sense to a liberal.  Iraq was perfect terrain for the US to mount a successful military operation; and Afghanistan is the worst terrain imaginable for our tactics while serving as the best terrain imaginable for the guerrila tactics of the Taliban.  You ever try to drive a tank up a mountain or fly a gunship into a cave?  Bush succeeded in Iraq largely because he wasn’t a fool and fought in the right geography.  Obama is losing in Afganistan because he’s a fool.  Plain and simple.

Look at the casualties in Afghanistan: Obama more than doubled the 2008 casualties in Afghanistan under Bush in his first year.  And then he took that figure that he doubled from Bush and increased it by over 57% his next year as Failure-in-Chief.

And now here we are in “preparation-t0-cut-and-run” mode after Obama utterly failed.

And we now already know that the whole war fiasco was nothing but cynical politics from the get-go for Obama:

… the president decided to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan because, he said, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

And liberals are the kind of scum – and “scum” is if anything to weak of a word – who continue to denounce Bush’s victory even as they cheer Obama for first losing and then cutting and running in defeat and disgrace.

Cynicism piled on top of more cynicism.  A sauce of weakness poured over that.  And then – like the cherry – appeasement on top.

Obama will almost certainly offer General Petraeus the Chairman of the JCS position.  I hope General Petraeus turns him down and resigns.  But General Petraeus will likely believe that he’s better serving his country by taking the top military position.

Here’s why I believe he’s wrong to do so, and NOT serving the country’s interests at all.  Suppose you are a master mechanic and you take a job at a repair shop.  I’m the owner of the shop, and I am a total disgrace who is determined to screw the customers and ruin their cars.  You take the job because you think you can at least mitigate the disaster I create.  But can you, if you’re carrying out my orders?  You’re going to end up doing nothing more than assisting me while I screw the customers and ruin their cars.  If you REALLY want to help the customers, your best bet is to quit and then blow the whistle on all the harm I’m causing.

And that’s what General Petraeus should do.

Most generals don’t want to do that.  They don’t want to make that unfamiliar transition from military strategy to political policy.  But as long as General Petraeus continues to serve a fool, he’s only going to end up implementing foolish and unworkable policies.

Obama Reducing Afghanistan Into ‘Echoes Of Vietnam’

History has an unsavory way of repeating itself.  And that is especially dangerous when Democrats are running things.

From the Wall Street Journal:

APRIL 7, 2010
The Karzai Fiasco
Echoes of Vietnam in a spat that only helps the Taliban.

President Obama isn’t faring too well at converting enemies to friends, but he does seem to have a talent for turning friends into enemies. The latest spectacle is the all-too-public and counterproductive war of words between the White House and our putative ally, Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The only winner so far in this spat is the Taliban.

The Obama Administration seems to have had it out for Mr. Karzai from the day it took office, amid multiple reports based on obvious U.S. leaks that Vice President Joe Biden or some other official had told the Afghan leader to shape up. The tension escalated after Mr. Karzai’s tainted but ultimately recognized re-election victory last year, and it reached the name-calling stage late last month when President Obama met Mr. Karzai on a trip to Kabul and the White House let the world know that the American had lectured the Afghan about his governing obligations.

The public rebuke was a major loss of face for Mr. Karzai, who later returned fire at the U.S., reportedly even saying at a private meeting that if the Americans kept it up, he might join the Taliban. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs kept up the schoolyard taunts yesterday by suggesting that Mr. Obama might not meet with Mr. Karzai as scheduled in Washington on May 12.

“We certainly would evaluate whatever continued or further remarks President Karzai makes, as to whether it is constructive to have that meeting,” said Mr. Gibbs, in a show of disdain he typically reserves for House Republicans.

The kindest word for all of this is fiasco. American troops are risking their lives to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that requires winning popular support in Afghanistan, and the main message from America’s Commander in Chief to the Afghan people is that their government can’t be trusted. That ought to make it easier to win hearts and minds.

Mr. Karzai has been disappointing as a nation-builder, has tolerated corrupt officials and family members, and can be arrogant and crudely nationalistic. Presumably, however, Mr. Obama was well aware of these defects last year when he recognized the Afghan election results and then committed 20,000 more U.S. troops to the theater.

You go to war with the allies you have, and it’s contrary to any diplomatic principle to believe that continuing public humiliation will make Mr. Karzai more likely to cooperate. On the evidence of the last week, such treatment has only given the Afghan leader more incentive to make a show of his political independence from the Americans.

All the more so given that Mr. Karzai has already heard Mr. Obama promise that U.S. troops will begin leaving Afghanistan as early as July 2011. This shouting spectacle will also embolden the Taliban, who after being run out of Marjah have every reason to tell the citizens of Kandahar that even the Americans don’t like the Afghan government and are short-timers in any case.

This treatment of an ally eerily echoes the way the Kennedy Administration treated Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam in the early 1960s. On JFK’s orders, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge refused to meet with Diem, and when U.S. officials got word of a coup against Diem they let it be known they would not interfere. Diem was executed, and South Vietnam never again had a stable government.

By contrast, President George W. Bush decided to support and work closely with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during the 2007 U.S. military surge in Iraq. The Maliki government was sectarian and sometimes incompetent, and some of its officials were no doubt corrupt, but Mr. Bush understood that the larger goal was to defeat al Qaeda and to stabilize the country. From FDR to Reagan, Presidents of both parties have had to tolerate allied leaders of varying talents and unsavory qualities in the wartime pursuit of more important foreign-policy goals.

Coming on the heels of the U.S. public chastisement of Israel’s government, the larger concern over the Karzai episode is what it reveals about Mr. Obama’s diplomatic frame of mind. With adversaries, he is willing to show inordinate patience, to the point of muffling his objections when opposition blood ran in the streets of Tehran. With allies, on the other hand, the President is unforgiving and insists they follow his lead or face his public wrath. The result will be that our foes fear us less, and that we have fewer friends.

I wrote an article yesterday which came out today that recognized this same (quite obvious) point: Obama commits tens of thousands of troops and spends hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan, and then refuses to call the Afghani government an ally?  How is that not insane?

We won’t lose the war in Afghanistan because of our troops.  Our troops are the greatest warriors in the history of the world, and they truly deserve the word “heroes.”  If we lose, we will lose because of our failure-in-chief.

Turning Afghanistan into the next Vietnam by poisoning the national government is inherently stupid.  It is tantamount to refusing to recognize that we are fighting a war against Islamic jihadism.   The Bush Doctrine of preventative war stated, “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”  Obama is now fundamentally altering that strategy into one that incredibly refuses to recognize that Islamic jihadism has anything whatsoever to do with terrorism.  Obama first refused to use the phrase “war on terror” favoring the neutered (as in “having no testicles”) phrase, “Overseas contingency operation,” and now he is leaving that “overseas contingency operation” with its feet dangling in midair.

Just who or what in the hell are we supposed to be fighting???  Every single attack we have faced – be it on foreign battlefields or right here at home – was the result of a radical Islamic worldview.  And we’re supposed to pretend that we’re too morally stupid to realize that???

The recent past is a canvass full of examples.  Following a long list of Muslim terrorists attempts to create “man-caused disasters” in the US under Obama’s watch, we had a Muslim Army psychologist with “Soldier of Allah” business cards murder a dozen soldiers at a military base while screaming “Allahu Akbar!”.  Then we had a Muslim terrorist try to explode a passenger jet on Christmas day.

So, yesterday, we had another “incident” on a passenger jet plane.  A man from the Qatari embassy named Mohammed Al-Madadi was on his way to visit a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist minion named Ali Al-Marri imprisoned in Denver when he created an international incident by mocking American security authorities by “joking” that he was attempting to light his shoe bomb.

But we’re responding by increasingly assuming that Islam has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.  Your grandma is a bigger security risk than Osama bin Laden as far as Obama is concerned.

Obama once said he didn’t like to think in terms of “victory,” in very direct opposition to every president before him (including Ronald Reagan, who summed up his Cold War goals in four words: “We win, they lose.”).  I suppose it’s good that Obama doesn’t want victory, because he will never secure one given his America-despising policies.

Obama wanted to relabel terrorism as a “man-caused disaster“; but the only “man-caused disaster” is the Obama administration.

Obama’s Message To Taliban Re: Afghanistan: ‘Just Keep Fighting And Wait Us Out And It’ll Be All Yours’

I took a nap in front of a television, and dreamed I was being lectured to by this incredibly annoying, pontificating nerd.  When I woke up, Barack Obama was speaking.

In a nationally televised speech, Barack Obama assured the Taliban fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan that they will have an exit strategy out of a bitter conflict.

“Don’t worry, brave and noble Taliban fighters, your long fight will not be in vain.  We will be here today, but gone tomorrow.  I promise you as a Democrat and a liberal that in 18 months, the ultimate victory will be yours, and then you can invite those al-Qaeda friends of yours to come back.”

Don’t worry, Obama didn’t actually say that, at least not in so many words.  But that is nevertheless the clear outcome of his policy.

I feel sorry for our troops.  They have just been told that they are being committed not to a war that they will be allowed to fight and win, but an abandonment to a lost cause that will end with cutting and running.

From the AP:

As President Barack Obama outlined his plan to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan — while pledging to start bringing them home in 2011 — soldiers, Marines and their families interviewed by The Associated Press felt a tangle of fresh concerns and renewed hopes. Some took in the televised announcement as they played darts in a barroom near their base, while others watched from their living rooms.

“All I ask that man to do, if he is going to send them over there, is not send them over in vain,” said 57-year-old Bill Thomas of Jacksonville, N.C., who watched Obama’s televised speech in his living room, where photos of his three sons in uniform hang over the TV.

One of his sons, 23-year-old Cpl. Michael Thomas, is a Marine based at neighboring Camp Lejeune. He’ll deploy next year to Afghanistan.

An ex-Marine himself, Thomas said he supports Obama’s surge strategy. But he shook his head when the president announced a 2011 transition date to begin pulling out troops.

“If I were the enemy, I would hang back until 2011,” Thomas said. “We have to make sure that we are going go stay until the job is done. It ain’t going to be as easy as he thinks it is.”

Some troops chose to ignore Obama’s promise of a timetable of victory for the Taliban:

The president also began outlining an endgame to the war, saying troops would begin pulling out of Afghanistan in July 2011 — though he did not say when a withdrawal could be completed.

Army 1st Lt. Emily Stahl, who is preparing to deploy from Fort Campbell next spring, said she’s not going to focus on the timetable.

“We have to get the job done,” Stahl, 24, said after watching the speech from her home outside the Army post, where she serves in the 101st Airborne Division. “If we do what we’re supposed to do, the end of the war will come when it comes.”

But whether they ignore it or not, the decision has already been made: another Democrat president has promised to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory by assuring the enemy of a future American retreat.

Of course, in addition to the decision to commit not to commit, Obama has blessed our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan with the spirit of indecisive dithering:

At the John Hoover Inn, a bar in Evans Mills, N.Y., near Fort Drum, a dozen soldiers watched the speech on a large-screen TV, drinking beer out of red cups. When Obama announced the troop increase, only one cheered, and the rest remained silent. They continued to play darts while the president was speaking.

“I’m just relieved to know where we’re going,” said Spc. Adam Candee, 29, of Chicago.

Theresa McCleod said she worries what Obama’s plans might mean for her husband, a soldier in the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. She said he’s already done a long combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving her to care for their three children.

“First he was supposed to be pulling everyone out, and now all the sudden he’s throwing everybody back into Afghanistan and it’s like nobody can really make up their minds,” McCleod said of Obama.

Don’t worry, Theresa.  You’re not the only one who’s confused about what the president is doing.  I mean, Barack Obama is the president, and he doesn’t have a clue what the president is doing.

The Obama administration says it was surprised at the corruption in Afghanistan.  Because, after all, who would ever have thunk that the world’s largest producer of opium and heroin would be corrupt?

In similar news that caught the Obama administration completely off guard, it was revealed that there is something called “sand” on the beach.

McChrystal wanted 80,000 troops, and said that he’d probably be able to make do with 40,000.  Obama not only gave McChrystal the lowball commitment, but then proceeded to actually lowball the lowball commitment.  As it is, General Stanley McChrystal will only receive 3/4 of the minimum number of troops he told his president he would absolutely need.

McChrystal has been sitting on his hands since he had the report ready in August.  You should be able to see why he’s been impatient:

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

So Obama spends basically four months dithering, only to announce that he will lowball the lowball troop commitment.  It’s going to take several months to get the troops to Afghanistan and get them ready to fight.

There won’t be a whole lot of time left in McChrystal’s “next 12 months” to avoid the “outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

But Obama – the president who thinks of everything – has resolved this otherwise unresolvable dilemma by ensuring that we ultimately abandon the country we’ve been fighting to rid of the Taliban to the very Taliban we’ve been fighting.

Afghanistan and Iran: Weakling President Obama Confronted By ‘Strong’ Candidate Obama

Anne Bayefsky yesterday characterized Obama’s foreign policy as “the mouse who roared.”

Words don’t mean anything unless a leader has the character, integrity, courage, and resolve to stand behind them.

In July 15, 2008, candidate Obama roared regarding Afghanistan:

“I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. That’s what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this month,” Obama proclaimed in a major foreign policy address on July 15, 2008. “And that’s why, as president, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.”

In March 27, 2009, President Obama roared:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That’s the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just.

But now, just six months later, Obama is hiding from his generals and refusing to even LOOK AT his own General’s (Gen. Stanley McChrystal) troop request which will be necessary to carry out Obama’s own strategy.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Obama doesn’t even want to look at it yet.

Here’s the current situation:

Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal’s team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan:

“Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it.”

Here’s the current situation:

In interviews with McClatchy last week, military officials and other advocates of escalation expressed their frustration at what they consider “dithering” from the White House. Then, while Obama indicated in television interviews Sunday he isn’t ready to consider whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, someone gave The Washington Post a classified Pentagon report arguing more troops are necessary to prevent defeat.

Here’s the current situation:

Those officials said that taking time could be costly because the U.S. risked losing the Afghans’ support. “Dithering is just as destructive as 10 car bombs,” the senior official in Kabul said. “They have seen us leave before. They are really good at picking the right side to ally with.”

The roaring mouse has been replaced by a timid, weak, pandering, patronizing, appeasing – and most certainly DITHERING – president.

Bush used to talk to his troop commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq every week; Obama has spoken JUST ONCE with Gen. McChrystal in the last seventy days.

Obama has spent more time talking with David Letterman than he has his key general in Afghanistan!!!

Clear implication to McChrystal: Talk to the hand.

A recent article entitled, “Pentagon worried about Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan” ended with this assessment from a senior Pentagon official:

“I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier.  We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war.”

Which answers the question as to why our troops so overwhelmingly supported Bush, and sat on their hands when their new commander-in-chief addressed them.

Charles Krauthammer points out the sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party as regards Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to what the Democrats themselves said:

Bob Shrum, who was a high political operative who worked on the Kerry campaign in ’04, wrote a very interesting article in December of last year in which he talked about that campaign, and he said, at the time, the Democrats raised the issue of Afghanistan — and they made it into “the right war” and “the good war” as a way to attack Bush on Iraq.In retrospect, he writes, that it was, perhaps, he said, misleading. Certainly it was not very wise.

What he really meant to say — or at least I would interpret it — it was utterly cynical. In other words, he’s confessing, in a way, that the Democrats never really supported the Afghan war. It was simply a club with which to bash the [Bush] administration on the Iraq war and pretend that Democrats aren’t anti-war in general, just against the wrong war.

Well, now they are in power, and they are trapped in a box as a result of that, pretending [when] in opposition that Afghanistan is the good war, the war you have to win, the central war in the war on terror. And obviously [they are] now not terribly interested in it, but stuck.

And that’s why Obama has this dilemma. He said explicitly on ABC a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t even use the word “victory” in conjunction with Afghanistan.

And Democrats in Congress have said: If you don’t win this in one year, we’re out of here. He can’t win the war in a year. Everybody knows that, which means he [Obama] has no way out.

Reminds me of Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who said, “I believe myself that … this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything.”  Reminds me of Democrat House Majority Whip James Clyburn openly acknowledging the fact that good news for American troops in Iraq would actually be bad news for Democrats.

The party of cut-and-run is already preparing to cutand run.  On the war they said we needed to fight and win in their campaign rhetoric.

By the way, Obama’s refusal to use the word “victory” is right here.  Nearly a year to the day after Obama said “This is a war we need to win,” Obama said (you can go here for the interview):

I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

Well, first of all, Obama is factually wrong in his history: Hirohito didn’t sign the surrender to MacArthur.  Secondly, he is utterly morally wrong in his foreign policy.

Let’s compare Obama’s refusal to pursue victory with the strategic vision of a great president:

“Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.” – Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s America: winner; Obama’s America: loser.

Let’s turn now to Obama’s abject failure in Iran.

In his April 16th, 2008 debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama roared:

“I have said I will do whatever is required to prevent the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

But he did nothing.  NOTHING.  And now Iran already has them at their whim.

And  in The Jerusalem Post, we get a picture of the REAL Obama:

The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 26 this way: “[T]he Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran… They have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran… Their strategy consists of begging us to talk with them.”

Obama had a historic opportunity at the United Nations gathering: he was the first American president EVER to serve as the chair of the UN Security Council.  He had the power to shape the agenda, and confront Iran over its now overwhelmingly clear nuclear weapons program.

He pissed his opportunity away, and drove NOTHING.

Anne Bayefsky described how Obama utterly failed to force any kind of showdown with Iran – even when the opportunity was literally handed to him.  She concludes by saying, “There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.”

Remember that pandering, appeasing, pathetic weakness when Iran gets the bomb and the ballistic missile system to deliver it.  Remember that when they launch wave after wave of terror attack with impunity.  Remember that when they shut down the Strait of Hormuz and send the price of gasoline skyrocketing to $15 a gallon.

As for Israel?

Only a brain-dead and witless minority of 4% of Israelis believe Obama hasn’t sold them down the river; by contrast, 88% of Israelis believed Bush was pro-Israel.

Hearkening back to the Carter Administration which Obama’s frighteningly resembles, Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wants to make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

Apparently, Saudi Arabia is a better friend of Israel than the United States.

I believe God will supernaturally protect Israel when they are attacked by an enemy that will be emboldened because of American abandonment of Israel and a perception of American weakness.

Alas, America won’t be so fortunate.

I had crystal clear clarity when I heard that Barack Obama’s pastor of 23 years shouted:

“No, no, no!  Not God bless America, God damn America!”

And Barack Obama’s incredibly weak and pandering response was that:

Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.”

I believe that God WILL damn America under this President.  And I believe that that damnation has already began.

Harry Reid Calls George Bush AND His Mom A B*TCH

Let’s hear it for bipartisan unity and cooperation.

Well, how about let’s NOT and just say we did?  How about if Democrats are as nasty and vile as fermented pig manure instead?

Senate Majority Harry Reid – the man who bravely called for an American surrender even as George Bush was pushing for the strategy that would win the war in Iraq – demonstrated the Democratic standard of graciousness.

Harry Reid has his memoir out, entitled The Good Fight: Hard Lessons from Searchlight to Washington. Thank God, Mark Hemingway read it so no one else has to.

He notes one particular passage that leaps out within the first three pages:

While no one expects Reid to praise George W. Bush, the degree to which he is judgmental and catty regarding the former president pretty much speaks for itself. Three pages in, after lamely trying to establish his bipartisan bona fides by talking up George H. W. Bush, Reid shares this charming anecdote about his early days in the Senate: “[Former Texas senator and vice-presidential candidate Lloyd] Bentsen went on and on effusively about what a quality man President-elect [H. W.] Bush was. Then he paused and said, ‘But watch out for his wife; she’s a bitch.’ I have never had anything against Mrs. Bush, but guided by Bentsen’s crude advice, I’ve always said that our forty-third president is more his mother than his dad.”

What’s the purpose of recording for posterity a bit of hearsay defaming a woman Reid admits he has no cause to dislike? Is Reid really so petty as to insult someone’s mother? Why yes, yes he is.

Now THAT’S just truly classy coming from the leader of the United States Senate: “You’re mother is a bitch, and you take after her.”

I once had a guy try to goad me by calling my mother a bitch.  He got exactly what he wanted, if what he wanted was a trip to the emergency room on a stretcher with blood pouring out of his face and his neck in a brace.  There’s something called “fighting words.”  And what Harry Reid said – vicariously through the mouth of someone else like the coward and weasel he truly is –  is right at the top of the list.  Bentsen may or may not have told you in confidence that he didn’t like the first lady, Harry.  But you are the one who shared the statement that Barbara Bush was a bitch with everyone else.

Too bad George Bush probably won’t follow my example.

And just realize it’s people like Harry Reid who tell conservatives that we have to support Obama and not be divisive – not that calling a former Republican first lady and mother to another president is divisive or anything.

Now, it’s particularly ironic that a guy like Harry Reid would call a guy like George Bush “a bitch” by proxy would be particuarly ironic.  Hemingway continues:

Here’s another unintentionally revealing anecdote describing Reid’s relationship with Bush. In a passage describing a meeting the two men had at the White House on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Reid writes: “That day he wore on his face a look of bravado that we’ve all come to know, and said something I will never have the words to adequately describe. But to understand what he said is to understand something profound about the problem at the heart of the administration. Speaking of the fact that the war was being used by radical Islamists for jihadi recruitment, Bush said, ‘Of course, al Qaeda needs new recruits, because we’re killin’ ’em.’ He then gave a smirk — that ‘Bring ’em on’ smirk — that we’ve all come to know. ‘We’re killin’ ’em all,’ he said.”

Oh, the horror. Naturally, this comment of Bush’s is followed up with pages of Reid recollecting the perfectly composed monologue he gave in response. (It also helpfully explains in exacting detail why the surge plan then being considered wouldn’t work, with no acknowledgment in retrospect that it did.)

And here’s what happened two days later: “I publicly said that the war is lost.” Perhaps Reid should have worried that one of the United States’ most powerful politician’s declaring the war lost would be a ginormous jihadi-recruitment tool. But no, after pages of describing what a dangerous, shoot-from-the-hip, totally-unwilling-to-genuflect kind of guy George W. Bush is, Reid responds to the remark that will forever define his political career by reiterating that he won’t apologize for having said it.

Let’s see: one man whines, “This war is lost” and tries to surrender.  The other man – who stands up and stands behind a strategy that ended up reducing the number of American casualties even as it turns the tide – wants to stand up and fight the enemies of America who would murder her citizens and soldiers.   And the one that says, “This war is lost” is saying the guy who stood and fought is a bitch?

Perhaps Harry Reid’s next memoir can be entitled, The Manly Art of Surrendering To Terrorist Murderers.

You want to look at a “bitch,” Reid, find yourself a mirror.

If Obama Wins, Should Republicans Hope Democrats Win HUGE?

The polls are all over the place in the Presidential race.  I’ve had Democrats pointing to polls that have Obama up by as much as 14 points.  This morning I assumed I must have slept through Wednesday, because the crowd at ABC’s “This Week” were all talking about the election as though McCain had lost in a Iandslide.  Questions were phrased in terms of, “Is there anything that McCain could have done?”  “What did McCain do wrong that cost him this election?”  Personally, I still believe that McCain will eek out a victory, as voters who have no real inclination to support McCain will realize that they have very good reason to reject Obama.  I just can’t imagine that the country would decide to make the most inexperienced, most liberal, and most radical candidate in U.S. history our next President given our fragile state.

But I’ve got to face reality.  Maybe all those talking heads on “This Week” are right.  I frankly don’t know which polls are “most accurate” (if any), or who will surge or who will fade (although it seems to me – given their Iraq positions – that it be only fitting that McCain “surge” and Obama’s “victory” turn into a “cut and run” on him).  But regardless of what I hope will happen, or even what I think will happen, there’s always what might happen: Obama is clearly favored to win this election, and Democrats are clearly favored to win massive control of the House and the Senate under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The question is, if Obama does win, what should Republicans hope for about the Congressional elections?  What should we hope for during the course of the next two years?  During an Obama Presidency?  Should we want Republicans to do well enough to filibuster?  Or should we want to see Democrats do so well they destroy the country and destroy their own political futures in the process?  Should Republicans hope the economy recovers and hums along under Democratic leadership, or should we literally hope the economy tanks under the Democrats’ control?

You’ve got plenty of your ordinary, traditional conservatives out there.  They want what’s best for the country because they’ve always put country over party.  They want to see the economy pick up, they want to see the United States maintain and even expand its power and influence.  They want to see the country continue to remain great, because that’s what they’ve always wanted.

It’s what I always wanted.  At least up to now.  I was so proud to enlist in the United States Army with Ronald Reagan as my Commander-in-Chief.  I was proud to wear two Armed Forces Expeditionary Medals and the Combat Infantryman Badge on my chest.  And I continued to remain proud of my country after I left the Army.  During the Clinton years, I told more than a few bitter Republicans, “Whether you voted for him or not, he’s STILL your President!”  I didn’t vote for President Clinton, and was disappointed by his victory; but I was an American, and he was my President because my country voted for him.  I prayed for his wisdom and leadership.  Too bad so many Democrats never brought any similar bipartisanship with them.  They worked to undermine President Bush in every way they could.

But something happened to me.  Maybe I began to stop being proud of my country when Michelle Obama finally STARTED being proud of hers.  Maybe it was when I discovered that Barack Obama’s pastor and spiritual adviser for 23 years years said, “No, no, no!  Not God bless America.  God damn America!”  He called America “the US of KKK A.”  And Democrats didn’t care about this outrage.  Maybe it was when I found out that Barack Obama had partnered with a man who had bombed the Pentagon, the Capital, and New York Police headquarters, who said on 9/11/2001 that he not only didn’t regret setting bombs, he felt he didn’t bomb enough.  Finding out that Obama’s rat bastard pal dedicated a book to Robert Kennedy murderer Sirhan Sirhan sure didn’t help.  I suppose that I feel that if a man like this could actually be elected President of the United States, that there must be something profoundly wrong with the country and with the people who live in it.

I just cannot bring myself to support God Damn America.  Or even wish it well.  We have become so amoral that we easily support the death-by-mutilation of 50,000,000 babies.  In fact, we have become so immoral that we are prepared to make a man who voted to let babies who have been born alive be killed.  I find myself hoping that the economy goes down the tubes under the Democrats’ control, because that appears to be the only way that people will support traditional values or the party that seeks to uphold them.

If Barack Obama is elected President, I will quote the man he called his pastor and spiritual mentor for 23 years: GOD DAMN AMERICA!  THE U.S. OF KKK A!!!  And I will say my prayers accordingly: where I used to say, God, please don’t give us the judgment we deserve, I will say, “Lord, we voted for God damn America; go ahead and give it to us!”

I finally understand all the Democrats’ who expressed such vitriolic hatred of George Bush and the America that voted for him.  I love the America that the founding fathers envisioned; these Democrats repudiate that historic vision for America – and with their messiah – view our Constitution as having had an “enormous blind spot” which “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country.”  They think the Constitution and the country were deeply flawed; I think the flaw has always laid with the people who kept corrupting our system of government by imposing their will in place of our Constitution because they thought they knew better.

I loved the America of which Kennedy said, “Ask… what you can do for your country”; Today’s Democrats say, “Ask what your country can do for you.”  Or, to put it in Obama-Wright terms, Democrats hated the God bless America that we once were; I hate the God damn America that they promise to usher in.

I wonder how many conservatives will criticize me for my new feelings about Obama’s “new America.”  One thing is for certain: No one who votes for Barack Obama can criticize me; you can’t vote for ‘God damn America’ and then criticize me for saying the same thing.  I’ll bring up the last guy you Democrats nominated, and how John Kerry accused his fellow servicemen as a bunch of genocidal war criminals – before taking it back – and how he threw away his medals.  I won’t throw away my medals; they remind me of a country I loved, and was once so proud to serve and even shed my blood to defend.  I’ll bring up how Democrat after Democrat after Democrat justified the Iraq War until they cynically and cravenly repudiated that support for sheer political expedience.  Even though nearly 60% of Democratic Senators had voted for that war.  Even though the measure passed by wider margins in both branches of Congress than the 1991 war resolution.  I’ll bring up Rep. Jack Murtha, who accused innocent Marines of murderous war crimes before he accused his own Pennsylvanian voters of being racists.   I’ll bring up Sen. Dick Durbin, who compared U.S. servicemen to Nazis.  I’ll bring up Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was so quick to proclaim defeat for American soldiers while they were fighting on the battlefield.  I’ll bring up Democratic Whip James Clyburn, who said that success in Iraq “would be a real big problem for us, no question about that.”  I’ll bring up every single sermon that Barack Obama’s pastor for 23 years preached, right down to the last hateful word.  Right down to calling the United States “the US of KKK A.”  Hell, I could start bombing buildings like Barack Obama’s terrorist pal William Ayers and Democrats couldn’t accuse me of squat without being even bigger even hypocrites than they already are.

But I do wonder how conservatives – whose opinions I actually DO give a rip about – feel about my anger and bitterness over the prospect that half the country (or more, or less, as we’ll find out November 4) would elect such an un-American – or at least such a ‘God Damn America’ American – for President.  I feel like Dietrich Bonhoeffer must have felt as he watched his beloved Germany fervently embracing Nazism.  The German people in the 1920s wanted “change”, too: and Adolf Hitler gave them change in spades.

Right or wrong, this is how I feel: I actually hope that if Obama wins, Republicans lose HUGE.  You know how, when you realize that your professional sports team won’t make it to the playoffs, you come to start hoping they lose so many games that they’ll receive a high draft pick?  I’m kind of there in my politics, given an Obama win.  The fewer Republicans there are to blame for the disaster that is going to overtake this country, the better.  The whole charade that has led to such anti-Republicanism has been due to the demonization by Democrats and by the overwhelmingly biased liberal media.  Let Republicans be so utterly rejected that liberals have no one – and I mean absolutely no one – to blame but themselves so that their ideas and their candidates can be vilified for the next fifty years or so.

The media has been so blatantly biased that we are now in a propaganda state.  There is no possible way that Republicans can win in this media climate: whether you look at the Media Research Center, or at the Project for Excellence in Journalism (or again at their brand new study), or at the University of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Advertising Project, there is widespread agreement with one longtime ABC journalist that the media is dangerously biased.  Pew Research discovered that Americans believe by a 70% to 9% margin that the media is biased in favor of Obama and against McCain.  The media now represents a fifth column of government – a propaganda wing – that attacks conservatives and celebrates and defends Democrats.  Democracy is going extinct in the country that founded it, because no free society can survive a climate of propaganda.

The only way that America can turn around given the propaganda-dominated culture is if the media is utterly discredited, and Democrats lead the nation into calamity and despair.  It can happen in two ways:

The US economy – and in fact the world economy – are facing a crisis.  And while leftist media propaganda may be assuring you that Obama will be better for the economy, our investors and our business leaders most assuredly do not agree at all.  “Over 70% of CEOs fear an Obama presidency will be a disaster.”  And the financial market – which is already selling off in expectation of an Obama win – would face a “dramatic sell-off on Wall Street” if Democrats make the huge gains they are anticipated to win.  Wall Street is terrified of an Obama presidency.  Obama’s radicalism and socialistic redistribution policies, his doomed-to-fail massive health care plan, his steadfast refusal to exploit our domestic oil resources in favor of “alternative energy” sources that can’t possibly meet our energy needs, and the fact that his every move will be backed by tax-and-spend liberals hungry for power and a propagandist media – serving as apologists – will all come together to doom our economy.

Obama has promised $4.3 TRILLION in new spending, even as his tax redistribution plan is guaranteed to shrink the tax base as the wealthy shelter their assets.  Where are we going to get all that money?  Democrats believe their messiah can turn water into money.  But the people will ultimately come to see that they are wrong.  And no amount of media propaganda will ultimately be able to hide that reality.

I wonder what will happen when Americans discover that Democrats want to socialize their 401Ks?

The second way that America will recognize that they’ve been lied to by both Democrats and their media propaganda is if we are attacked again.

Personally, if Obama is elected to the White House, I would like to see conservatives leaving military service the way rats might leave a sinking ship.  Let them determine that they will not fight for God Damn America and leave the military in droves.  Let Democrats do all the fighting and suffering sacrificing and dying (or at least all the cutting and running that they prefer to fighting) for the next few years.  When 70% of the military is composed of McCain-supporting conservatives, something needs to change under a Commander-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama.  Joe Biden – the foreign policy “expert” on the ticket – flat-out guaranteed that Obama would be tested with an international crisis in the first six months of his Presidency.  Let the people who voted for him do all the dying for him, too.  That only seems fair.  I earlier suggested that we have a “Gay All The Way!” military.

The country that so totally rejects conservatives certainly doesn’t need their help.  At this point – with the voters demanding complete Democratic domination – building up country amounts to tearing down the conservative vision for the country.

We have totally turned Iraq around in the last couple years, but that is only because President Bush and his commanders in the filed refused to listen while the Democratic Senate Majority Leader proclaimed defeat, while Barack Obama vigorously opposed the surge that allowed us to finally gain the upper hand in the first place, with Democrats claiming that President Bush lied about Iraq from the outset, and with too many Democrats loudly and publicly calling our soldiers war criminals and Nazis.  Let’s see how President Obama fares against Iran.  Let’s see what happens when – as I believe – Israel attacks Iran to try to destroy its nuclear program because they don’t believe that the United States under President Obama will do anything.

When a weak, passive, appeasing Barack Obama allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons (because only the assurance of a massive attack will stop them at this point), they will be coming after the Great Satan both directly and indirectly through terrorist proxies – and be able to threaten a few mushroom clouds should the Great Satan directly threaten them in return.  That won’t look so good to the electorate, who will suddenly fondly remember that the Bush Presidency had actually managed to protect them from terrorist attacks.  But I will be loudly quoting Jeremiah Wright and how “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

We are one major terrorist attack – just ONE – away from an America that overwhelmingly realizes that Barack Hissein Obama is UNFIT to lead this country.  Don’t think for one nanosecond that the same fickle electorate that rejected Bush won’t reject Obama.  One attack, and they will remember all the many ways that Democrats left this country vulnerable to terrorism.

I believe that if the country wants to hop aboard a freight train that’s going to steam full speed off a cliff, then Republicans – if they’re smart – ought to get as much out of the way as they possibly can and be ready to pick up the pieces after the dust settles.  Vote against everything so its on the official record, but let the Democrats hang themselves.  If Republicans finally decide to be as cynical as Democrats have been for  years, they might even consider doing everything possible behind the scenes to sow havoc and discord both in domestic and international policy, so they can then turn around and blame the Democrats’ “failed policies” just like the Democrats did to them.  You can hardly blame them, once you get past that whole “But that would be un-American!” thing.  After all, that hardly stopped Democrats, and they’ve benefited mightily from doing it.  I mean, you’ve got Democrats agreeing with Republicans on the need to remove Saddam Hussein, only to despicably turn on them the moment it was to their advantage to do so.  You’ve got Charles Rangel comparing the US action in Iraq to the Holocaust; you’ve got Dick Durbin comparing American troops to Nazis;  you’ve got Barack Obama suggesting that our troops have to do more than just air raiding villages and killing civilivans.  You’ve got Democrats accusing innocent Marines of being murdering war criminals; you’ve got Democrats declaring defeat in Iraq while our troops were fighting in the field; you’ve got Democrats acknowledging that good news in Iraq was bad news for Democrats; you’ve got Democrats opposing the surge strategy that brought us to victory; you’ve got Democrats falling all over themselves to support the reasons for going to war against Iraq before they fell all over themselves to attack Republicans for going to war against Iraq.  If the American people approve of and vote for that kind of conduct, why shouldn’t Republicans look at the polls and follow suit?

Yes, in the short run, the Democrats would pass the fascist “Fairness Doctrine” to muzzle all opposition speech and run so completely wild on social godlessness that they will make decent peoples’ skin crawl.  But when they poison the nation against themselves do to their own rabid excesses – or if there is another major terrorist attack given the likely Democrat’s repeal of the Patriot Act, domestic surveillance of terrorists, the abandonment of Gitmo and its detention of our terrorist enemies, and their overall perception by terrorists as weakling cowardly retreating appeasers ripe for attack – there will be a conservative victory in two years that will be like nothing ever seen.  The only way Democrats can be seen as the incompetent fools they truly are is if they are actually allowed to run everything and they have no one to blame for the disaster but themselves.

Until then, I’m just going to spend the next four years reciting Democratic talking points: our country is evil; our President is evil; our soldiers are evil.  God damn America, also known as the U.S. of KKK A.  We’re immoral for doing every damn thing we do; Obama lied, people died.  That sort of thing.