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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Bush</title>
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		<title>&#8216;The Great Betrayal&#8217; Defends Those Who Won’t Defend Themselves</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/j-christian-adams/the-great-betrayal-defends-those-who-wont-defend-themselves/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-great-betrayal-defends-those-who-wont-defend-themselves</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:58:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[J. Christian Adams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Great Betrayal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246521</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[David Horowitz’s new book unveils the Democrats' treachery in Iraq -- and the tragedy and bloodshed it spawned. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/gb.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-246525" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/gb-238x350.jpg" alt="gb" width="238" height="350" /></a><strong>To order &#8220;The Great Betrayal,&#8221; Volume III of David Horowitz&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="http://www.blackbookoftheamericanleft.com">Black Book of the American Left</a>,&#8221; click <a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/collections/books/products/the-black-book-of-the-american-left-volume-iii-the-great-betrayal">here</a>.<br />
</strong></p>
<p><em>Volume III: the Great Betrayal</em>, the latest installment of David Horowitz’s <em>Black Book of the American Left</em> (Second Thought Books, 2014), does what George Bush wouldn’t do: defend himself from a personalized left-wing onslaught. Horowitz’s book provides an understanding of the order of battle the Left used during the Bush administration to delegitimize Bush’s foreign policy and ultimately destroy Bush’s brand, and why it happened.</p>
<p>How this happened, and Bush’s ineffective response, isn’t just a nostalgic journey through the last decade. Bush’s ineffective response to the Left holds lessons for the incoming Republican congressional majority as well as GOP White House hopefuls who will face the same progressive buzzsaw. But <em>the Great Betrayal</em> also has tough lessons for American voters. Modern political debate isn’t conducted between two camps seeking the same goals through different means. It is a debate between two wholly opposed worldviews, and if Americans fail to realize the true nature of the Left, liberty is threatened. Will voters support candidates who understand this, or pick yet another nominee for President who seems not to understand?</p>
<p>As President Bush fought wars against Islamic terror from 2003-2009, first the institutional Left, and then the institutional Democratic Party fought a rhetorical war of destruction against Bush. “Yet the president has blundered in one particular way that cannot be attributed to internal foes,” Horowitz writes. “He has failed to sell the war adequately to the American people, and to answer the charges coming from his left flank. In the presidential television debates, for example, he chided Senator Kerry for saying the war in Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘This confuses people,’ the President said. It does more than that,” Horowitz chides.</p>
<p>Here we see classic Bush-clan caution with language. Deflecting Kerry’s charge with kind prose might be appropriate at the Kennebunk River Club, but in the modern national debate, something sharper is required. I encountered the same public relations strategy when I worked at the Justice Department during the Bush administration. One favorite tactic included – <em>Responding to the attack will just prolong the story</em>. That approach obviously failed because ten years later the story that President Bush was a failure is still going strong.</p>
<p>Another tactic was – <em>Responding will just lend legitimacy to the story</em>. The Bush administration failed to understand that the media environment was transforming in fundamental and permanent ways. The attack by a left-wing blog, purportedly not worthy of response, became a headline in the <em>New York Times</em> months later. Narrative was germinating amongst the activists on the far left, implanting among the many new left-wing blog sites, and eventually reaching full maturity in the papers and network media the Bush administration took seriously. Instead of confronting the leftist narrative in the seemingly outlandish blogosphere, the Bush administration allowed the attacks to mature unimpaired. What’s worse, when the attacks matured, as it did with Senator Kerry’s attack, Camp Bush seemed more comfortable debating intellectual points than responding with a mighty rhetorical fist in the nose.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the failure to fully comprehend the nature of the leftist attacks still haunts us. Those unrebutted attacks on Bush defined the 2008 election. “The domestic divisions over both wars were initiated by a radical left whose agendas went far beyond the conflicts themselves,” Horowitz begins <em>the Great Betrayal</em>. “[I]n 2008, the party nominated a senator from its anti-war ranks who became the 44<sup>th</sup> president of the United States.”</p>
<p>The history described in <em>the Great Betrayal</em> is particularly relevant over the next two years. Many in the Republican Party, particularly in Congressional leadership, seem not to understand the Left’s order of battle. Instead of recognizing the power of the new conservative media, they still seem to care what the <em>New York Times</em> says. Instead of recognizing the malignant pedigree of the current gang governing in Washington, some still use rhetorical slogans from a vanished time, such as making Washington “work” or “finding common ground.” Many in the GOP fully understand the new media battlespace and the genuine radicalism of the modern Democratic Party. Unfortunately, not everyone does, and <em>the Great Betrayal</em> documents the unashamedly radical anti-constitutional core of the modern Democrats.</p>
<p><em>The Great Betrayal</em> makes it clear that something more than differences of opinion characterize the dispute between left and right. Congressman Ron Dellums provides one example of many contained in the book. Horowitz takes readers back to the Reagan administration, when a communist regime, with Soviet oversight, was elongating runways on the Caribbean island of Grenada. The threat of a new Soviet client state able to launch bomber and fighter forces so close to America was too much for President Ronald Reagan. American military forces in 1983 invaded and extinguished the threat.</p>
<p>What the Marines found in Grenada is astonishing. Documents seized showed that Dellums had coordinated his domestic opposition to Reagan’s Grenada policy with the communist junta in Grenada, going so far as to provide draft reports for the regime to edit before being published by the House of Representatives. Horowitz describes the materials found on Grenada by the Marines, including a letter from Dellums’ chief of staff Carlottia Scott. The letter to the communist dictator said Dellums was “really hooked on you and Grenada and doesn’t want anything to happen to building the Revolution and making it strong.   . . . The only other person that I know of that he expresses such admiration for is Fidel.”</p>
<p>The emissary for these pro-communist efforts to undermine America? Current Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA). “Another document liberated by the Marines contained the minutes of a Politburo meeting attended by the Communist dictator and his military command. ‘Barbara Lee is here presently and has brought with her a report on the international airport that was done by Ron Dellums. They have requested that we look at the document and suggest any changes we deem necessary. They will be willing to make the changes,’” records <em>the Great Betrayal</em>.</p>
<p>There is no common ground to be found with someone like Barbara Lee. There is no language too strong to condemn the Left’s open collusion with the enemies of America, whether in 1983, 2004 or in the years ahead.</p>
<p>Dellums’ collusion with America’s enemies served as a taste of what was to come. Horowitz notes Dellums was “the first Sixties radical to penetrate the political mainstream.” After colluding with the communist enemies of America, Dellums went on to serve as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, complete with the requisite security clearances.</p>
<p>The Left is still playing the long game against America. Why? Horowitz:</p>
<blockquote><p>“America is revolutionary because it is a society based on institutions and values that are inclusive, tolerant, democratic, anti-authoritarian, libertarian, and conservative (skeptical of majorities, based on a deeply held moral individualism).”</p></blockquote>
<p>I would submit it is even worse. There is now a clear and undeniable correlation between secular hostility toward religion and political ideology, excluding the small Muslim population in the United States. Those who tend to believe (or respect) in universal religious truths, tend to be on the right side of the spectrum. Those who demean, attack and deny universal religious truths tend to be leftists. Because America was founded on universal truths regarding the dignity of man, our nation is in the crosshairs domestically, and around the world.</p>
<p>In the past, particularly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, these attacks were directed elsewhere, and not as directly at core American institutions like the Constitution, religious liberty or the family. “What has changed is that the enemy is so nakedly the aggressor against us and not, for example, a hapless Third World people like the South Vietnamese,” notes Horowitz. “What has changed is not that our declared enemy is more evil than the Soviet enemy, but that he is more <em>transparently </em>failing to pay even lip service to ‘social justice’ and other left-wing values as the communists did.”</p>
<p>Horowitz can decode the left in ways natural Republicans cannot. He was of the left. What are unrecognizable sounds to Republicans are familiar melodies from Horowitz’s youth. <em>The Great Betrayal</em> examines the unbroken pedigree of the modern Left, the radical Islamists, those who drove the anti-Bush narrative of the last decade, and the Soviet apologists of a generation ago. Unless conservatives, constitutionalists, and American voters understand what Horowitz describes in <em>the Great Betrayal</em>, a timid approach to this threat may produce disasters anew we can’t yet contemplate.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Why the World Did Not Know about WMD in Iraq</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/carter-andress/why-the-world-did-not-know-about-wmd-in-iraq/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-the-world-did-not-know-about-wmd-in-iraq</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2014 05:51:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Carter Andress]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245527</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The reason the Bush administration never crowed about the approximately 5,000 chemical munitions that U.S. forces uncovered throughout Iraq.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SuperStock_1792-80825.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245529" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SuperStock_1792-80825.jpg" alt="1792-80825" width="324" height="215" /></a>After U.S. Central Command called on us to help transport from Iraq enough yellowcake uranium to make several atomic bombs stored at Saddam’s nuclear weapons complex, I realized why neither the Pentagon nor the White House advertised the presence of this WMD precursor: safety and security.</p>
<p>Before the U.S. military moved in to secure the facility after the 2003 invasion, looters had been there first. Even though the universally recognized yellow-and-black radioactivity warnings were posted on the bunkers, locals had ripped open the storage areas and stolen casks of yellowcake with many sickened as a result. More importantly, we did not want the insurgents alerted to the exposed stockpile as they might attack the facility. This is also why the George W. Bush administration did not crow about the approximately 5,000 chemical munitions that U.S. forces uncovered throughout Iraq, as recently reported by the New York Times. That is a serious quantity of WMD, by any standard. Interestingly, the Bush team could have diluted near-uniform shock at the failure to find WMD by highlighting these discoveries instead of allowing the narrative we all know to solidify: “no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq found except a few dozen old, mustard-gas artillery shells left over from the 1980s Iran-Iraq War.” Yet President Bush and his advisors chose to protect the troops and the mission rather than score political points back on the war’s second front, the American body politic. (None of this, however, mitigates any unpreparedness by the Pentagon to treat service members exposed to chemical weapons.)</p>
<p>Before my company arrived to provide guards and to build and operate a base camp for U.S. Department of Energy scientists dissecting Saddam’s nuclear weapons facility, the American Army had occupied the site with almost a company of infantry. This was quite a bit of combat power tethered to a non-populated, static location when needed to actively defend the people against the elusive al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists and Iranian-allied militias rampant until early 2008 when the American Surge forces and the Sunni Arab “Awakening” had turned the tide delivering our victory in the Iraq War. The limited number of combat troops available did not permit fixing them at every site where WMD were found or might be found. Hence the requirement to not advertise that Saddam had left thousands of chemical weapons lying around, potentially under any mound in mostly flat Iraq. That would have set off a dangerous treasure hunt—and if found, a tremendous threat to American troops and everyone in Iraq especially if weaponized nerve gas had ended up with al-Qaeda.</p>
<p>We were able to move the yellowcake successfully because of our proven relationships with the tribes along our supply line to the nuclear weapons facility, located at the center of an area known as the “Triangle of Death,” due to extensive U.S. combat fatalities suffered there. Because of our and other U.S. government contractors’ employment of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, we helped drain the swamp (or “sea” in Maoist terms) whence the al-Qaeda insurgency sprung. The uranium operation caused us, as usual, to rent trucks from the surrounding tribes with comprehensive war-loss insurance (meaning if a truck got blown up then the owner took the loss). This in turn caused the tribes to look outwards on the convoy movements to protect their expensive tractor trailers instead of inwards—searching for a chance to attack. Doing business for the tribes with the American government, and then the Iraqi government, turned out to be safer than supporting the nihilistic, totalitarian jihadis and the traitorous Sadrists, minions of Iran.</p>
<p>Regardless of what position one takes on the U.S. invasion, the world could not abide by large quantities of nuclear weapons precursor in the hands of the genocidal tyrant in Baghdad. As we are seeing with the current, seemingly endless negotiations with Iran, the millionaire mullahs of Tehran are using the pretext of “peaceful” nuclear power generation in order to assert that the denial thereof is a direct assault on a nation’s sovereignty. Consequently, the concept that we could have gotten the yellowcake removed from Iraq as a part of lifting the rapidly degrading sanctions and truly certifying the country clean of all chemical weapons without the overthrow of Saddam defies logic and experience. The continued possession by Iraq of approximately 5,000 chemical warheads undiscovered after almost eight years of aggressive UN inspections along with the existence of enough yellowcake uranium to make 14 or so nuclear bombs with technology that the Iranians and Libyans already possessed calls for a new coda to replace “Bush lied, people died.” Certainly, we should look to the reinstatement of a principle justification for the American invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p><i>Carter Andress is president of AISG, Inc. (American-Iraqi Solutions Group) and the author, with Malcolm McConnell, of </i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Undone-Defeat-al-Qaeda-Resurrection/dp/1621572803"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Victory Undone: The Defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Its Resurrection as ISIS</span></a><i> (Regnery, October 2014).    </i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Salon.com’s Infantile Leftism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/salon-coms-infantile-leftism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=salon-coms-infantile-leftism</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2014 05:49:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244360</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A progressive decline.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/joan-walsh.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244361" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/joan-walsh-450x329.jpg" alt="joan-walsh" width="309" height="226" /></a>Joan Robinson was a famous Keynesian economist and also a not so famous Maoist. Nonetheless she had one shrewd observation about politics. People, she said, can no more see their own ideology than they can smell their own breath. The Internet magazine Salon, a large leftwing website for which I was a much unloved columnist fifteen years ago, provides an interesting case in point.</p>
<p>Joan Walsh was my editor at Salon, and soon became its editor-in-chief. Now she is described as “Editor-at-Large” but is more like its Matriarch-in-Residence. A recent election piece she wrote is titled, “America’s Nightmare Political Reality: Two Electorates Separate and Unequal.” In this, as in other similar articles, she displays the tawdry reality of her magazine’s current journalism. A teaser for the article explains the title: “Why conservatives prefer propaganda to reality.”</p>
<p>According to Walsh, Republicans have run their mid-term election campaigns against President Obama not because his feckless national security policies have left a power vacuum that terrorists have filled, not because his anti-military mania has helped to create 18 million refugees in the Middle East, not because he has run up a debt greater than that of all previous presidents combined, not because he has proudly violated the Constitution stripping congress of its authority and power, not because he has inflicted economic suffering on America’s minorities and poor, not because he has unleashed efforts by his administration to use the taxing power of government to crush his political opposition. Oh no. The Republican campaigns against Obama’s destructive agendas and incompetent performances are driven by hate, and racial hate at that.</p>
<p>According to Walsh,</p>
<blockquote><p>“The Republican Party is relying on Obama-hate to turn out its 96-percent-white, middle-class-to-wealthy base, while the Democrats, still trying to be a multi-racial party in a multi-racial country, are trying to court voters of every race and class.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Walsh is amazed at the extent to which the mainstream media clings to a reality that refutes this self-serving false narrative, which ignores how Democrat policies have hurt all economic classes but the wealthy, and in which the Republican Party is not 96 percent white and has a large working class and significant minority base. Here are Walsh’s own words:</p>
<blockquote><p>“It’s amazing the extent to which the mainstream media accepts that the GOP’s personalized, deeply disparaging campaign against Obama is just politics as usual.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Because, according to Walsh, Democrats and the media never treated George Bush this way.</p>
<blockquote><p>“While it’s true that dissatisfaction with President Bush helped Democrats ride back to controlling Congress in 2006, I’m hard-pressed to remember examples of Democrats campaigning against Bush so personally and gleefully.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Say what?!!! Has Walsh forgotten how Ted Kennedy described Bush’s invasion of Iraq &#8212; which was supported by the Democratic majority in the Senate before Democrats turned their backs on the war they had supported three months into the fighting – as a “fraud” concocted in Texas to serve Bush’s oil buddies? Has she forgotten how the Democratic National Committee launched a national television campaign to accuse Bush of lying to get authorization for the war, which became a vicious slogan “Bush lied, people died”? This was matched by another slogan based on the canard spread by Kennedy and Democratic leaders that it was all about Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton: “No blood for oil.” Actually America got no oil, but Bush got no apologies for these and other monstrous Democratic lies.</p>
<p>But how do Walsh and her crew observe her strictures about civility and honesty? Here are some headlines from her non-hatemongering magazine: “<a href="http://salon.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=71cb3e8a6e9639c81023cd427&amp;id=da04b106fa&amp;e=0123fa23b3">Iowa’s Tea Party disaster: Joni Ernst’s shocking ideas about the welfare state</a>. How the wingnut potentially on the verge of joining the Senate uses shoddy history to justify her radical beliefs.” (Her shocking idea: “We have fostered<em>…</em>a generation of people that rely on the government to provide absolutely everything.”)</p>
<p>And this: “The Republican Party’s electoral philosophy: Cheating wins”</p>
<p>And this: “Yeah, the GOP is evil and will win — but the midterms are meaningless”</p>
<p>In 2001, I conducted a one-man campaign against reparations for slavery, proposed 137 years after the fact to be paid by people who were never slave owners to people who were never slaves. My efforts created a firestorm, and my editor Joan Walsh defended me against loony leftists who could not handle the truth in an article titled, “Who’s Afraid of David Horowitz?” But that was then. Now she and the staff of <em>Salon</em> have joined them.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>We Drove Saddam’s Yellowcake to the Baghdad Airport</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/carter-andress/we-drove-saddams-yellowcake-to-the-baghdad-airport/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=we-drove-saddams-yellowcake-to-the-baghdad-airport</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2014 05:35:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Carter Andress]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244245</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I know Baathist Iraq’s WMD potential existed.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ert.jpeg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244250" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ert-450x301.jpeg" alt="ert" width="306" height="205" /></a>As someone who led the company that transported 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium—enough to make fourteen Hiroshima-size bombs—from Saddam’s nuclear complex in the Iraq War’s notorious “Triangle of Death” for air shipment out of the country, I know Baathist Iraq’s WMD potential existed. In early 2008, we secretly moved over several nights 140 truckloads carrying 5500 barrels of extremely heavy radioactive material provided to Iraq as part of the French-supplied Osiraq reactor destroyed by Israeli fighter bombers in 1981. The virulently anti-Semitic Saddam had announced “here begins the Arab bomb” and the Israelis took him at his word.</p>
<p>The recent article in the New York Times, however, caught us all by surprise. Random caches of old chemical weapons found post-invasion were old news, but not “roughly 5,000” warheads and bombs, many filled with still active, nerve agent. That’s an enormous quantity even if evidently left over from the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. Just “antiques,” as the Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung quaintly put it at a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum on Iraq.</p>
<p>At the least, this shocker (after so many years of repetitious “Bush lied [about WMD], people died”) further points to the world’s inability to trust that the UN inspectors could ever realistically certify Saddam clean of his nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. He had to be deposed, and the only way to do it was for us to invade and overthrow his dictatorship. Here was a genocidal, expansionist tyrant who had used chemical weapons on his own people and that of a neighboring nation (Iran), publically celebrated 9/11, and allowed a chemical weapons laboratory affiliated with al-Qaeda to operate within his security forces’ reach inside his country’s borders in contested Kurdistan (Khurmal).</p>
<p>The article in the Times references the Duelfer Report that summed up the official American investigation of Iraq’s WMD as definitive in that there were no ongoing WMD programs pre-invasion, yet fails to mention that every section of the report on the different types of weapons of mass destruction concluded that the evidence gathered by investigators clearly indicated that once sanctions were removed Saddam would reinstate his WMD programs. In addition, the article mentions that the chemical weapons program was not active for over ten years, but not the biological weapons program, which extended into 1996 and was only discovered because Saddam’s son-in-law defected, even after five years of aggressive UN inspections.</p>
<p>There’s no question in my mind, Saddamist Iraq would have reconstituted its WMD programs once UN sanctions faded away—a push Security Council veto-wielding members Russia and France were actively working toward because of oil field opportunities. (Petroleum companies from both countries signed huge, new contracts with Saddam pre-invasion.) And given the yellowcake inventory, nuclear weapons with available Pakistani and North Korean technology might not have been far off. After over ten years in effect, the sanctions system was actively degrading with banned flights landing in Baghdad, the Oil for Food program corrupted, and, as a result, would have collapsed if we had not invaded—thus leaving Saddam free to threaten the world again with WMD.</p>
<p>The greater problem, however, of significant quantities of chemical weapons hidden at some date prior to the US invasion points to a current and growing threat. The leader of the neo-Saddamists allied now with ISIS is Izzat al-Douri, a former Iraqi army general and last member of the senior Baathist leadership not executed or imprisoned. There is a distinct possibility that Saddam’s minions hid these munitions with the intention of disinterring them for deterrent use once again. And in fact, this is why Saddam’s military and secret police leaders never ceased to believe Iraq possessed WMD and could therefore project terror onto the Kurds and the rest of the region (Israel and Iran, specifically) until the end because Iraq did possess WMD, even after the dictator’s death by hanging. The Iraqi army and security services did not handle “special” weapons without the knowledge of the regime’s leaders. So to think that Saddam and his immediate circle, including al-Douri, did not know the locations of the WMD discussed in the Times article begs credulity.</p>
<p>Much of the area where the “antique,” yet still potentially potent chemical weapons discovered by US forces is now in the hands of ISIS, the forces of al-Douri, and their allied Sunni Arab tribes undergirding the “caliphate” occupying almost a third of Iraq. With hundreds of Western passport holders fighting in Syria and Iraq, the most immediate threat to the United States is the spread of jihadi terrorism to Europe now that ISIS has a border with Turkey, a gateway to the EU.</p>
<p>Can one even imagine the impact of a weaponized sarin-gas attack in Paris?</p>
<p><strong><em>Carter Andress is president of AISG, Inc. (American-Iraqi Solutions Group) and the author, with Malcolm McConnell, of </em>Victory Undone: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Undone-Defeat-al-Qaeda-Resurrection/dp/1621572803">The Defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Its Resurrection as ISIS</a><em> (Regnery, October 2014).  </em></strong></p>
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		<title>Bill Whittle: Obama Is Bush Lite</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/bill-whittle-obama-is-bush-lite/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bill-whittle-obama-is-bush-lite</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 04:50:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[TruthRevolt.org]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[boots on the ground]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241471</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #000000;"><strong>He&#8217;s launched airstrikes and is threatening ground troops but IT&#8217;S NOT WAR. He took a victory lap for Osama bin Laden but opposed the means that got his location. He&#8217;s broken every Progressive policy and gospel on the books, and he&#8217;s doing the same things for the same reasons his predecessor did, only he&#8217;s doing them late, doing them badly and blaming everyone else. In his latest Firewall Bill Whittle shows why Barack Obama is nothing more than Bush Lite. See the video and transcript below:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JUFIy_o1Lv0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">TRANSCRIPT:</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">BUSH LITE</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">President Obama, when told that airstrikes alone very likely would not be enough to stop the murderous scythe of ISIS, as it destroys entire ethnic populations on his watch, has told his Joint Chiefs that he would make a decision about deploying US ground forces “on a case by case basis.”</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">What does that mean? Nobody really knows. He doesn’t really know either. But what it sounds like is that we may need to send troops on specific missions against specific targets – as in a police raid &#8212; but this is in no way to be construed as “boots on the ground.”</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">If Barack Obama has to deploy US Marines to Iraq wearing flip-flops so that he can claim he didn’t put boots on the ground, then that is what he is going to do: anything other than admit that an ongoing campaign of airstrikes and troops on the ground is, in fact, war.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Because Barack Obama is against war. He is launching airstrikes and deploying soldiers and killing people – but this is not war. Any questions?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Yeah, I have a question. Is there anybody left out there who doesn’t see this Progressive president doing the exact same things as that swaggering Texas cowboy, George W. Bush – and not only doing them, but not doing them nearly as well? Is there anybody out there who once voted for Captain Hopenchange who doesn’t see that he has broken not just every progressive promise but every progressive gospel – and done it late, and done it badly? Anybody who doesn’t see this empty suit for what he is: namely, Bush Lite?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Where do we begin?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">How about Executive Order 13492 &#8211; Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities. Barack Obama was sworn into office on January 20th, 2009. Two days later, on January 22, 2009, he signed the executive office ordering the closure of the detention base at Guantanamo Bay. President Bush understood the need for such a secure facility, far from American soil because of the dangers of a large-scale rescue attempt of so many high-value terrorists. Bush Lite called it “a stain on America’s honor.” It’s still open though. You know why? Because as it turns out, there is a need for such a secure facility, far from American soil because of the dangers of a large-scale rescue attempt of so many high-value terrorists. So Bush Lite keeps it open in violation of his own order.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Hey, speaking of Gitmo…</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">President Bush assumed the responsibility – and the concomitant waves of criticism – of ordering the extraordinary rendition – waterboarding – of a very small number of top terrorists. One of these – the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – KSM &#8212; who not only admitted to but in fact bragged about the murder of more than 3000 American civilians – broke under waterboarding; a procedure which, I might add, our own special forces warriors volunteer to endure at part of their POW training.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Senator – later candidate – Obama denounced this as torture. But it was the waterboarding of KSM that gave us the name of the courier who revealed the location of Osama bin Laden. After dithering and worrying about the possibility a failed mission for at least 100 days, Bush Lite took time from the links to take credit for getting Bin Laden, a victory given to him by his predecessor’s moral courage and for whom not a word of thanks was uttered.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">One more thing: President Bush declared early that he was going to focus on destroying Al Qaedas ability to strike, rather than chasing one single man. That’s why the man that Bush Lite bragged about killing was not connected to the levers of power, moving his chess pieces against the Great Satan through a series of secret conduits. He was a beaten, bitter old man, who sat in a shawl, watching porn and speeches of himself back in his days of glory, before President Bush broke those levers and scattered those pieces by killing Al Qaeda in the sands of Iraq. Bush Lite, bungling a routine Status of Forces Agreement, told the few survivors – actually, he promised them – that we were getting out; those survivors are now known as ISIS.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">President Bush occasionally left the Oval Office for a round of golf. Bush Lite occasionally leaves a round of golf for the Oval Office. And while President Bush, certainly, was not without his faults – they were the faults of a man facing difficult decisions who made them and then owned up to them in the face of merciless political and personal criticism from people like Bush Lite, who now are forced by the same circumstances to make the same decisions, but who makes them late, and makes them badly, and who then blames anyone but himself.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Perhaps President Bush was not, in fact a bad man who just liked killing people for fun. Bush Lite is doing the exact same things he did: is he a bad man who likes killing people for fun too? Or is it that the job may be a little harder than it looks from the outside? That maybe there aren’t good choices; just a bad choice and a worse choice?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Finally – heresy of heresies! – I think that not only is President Bush a better man than Bush Lite… I think he’s a far smarter man as well.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">WHAT?!!! Obama went to Harvard!</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Bush went to Harvard too. And Yale. He went to both.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">BUT BUSH WAS A C STUDENT!!!</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">True. And Bush Lite on the other hand…</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">…Well, no one knows what kind of student Bush Lite was, because he has, at great expense, kept his records sealed. We do know that when he was elected President of the Harvard Law Review, Harvard Law Review President Lite never wrote a single law review.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">That seemed odd to me for the longest time, until it finally dawned on me: of course Bush Lite wrote law reviews. He just never had any law reviews PUBLISHED. Must be because he was so brilliant, right? That’s why they never published any of the President of the Harvard Law Review’s Law Reviews? Ort is it because once they read one or two of them they realized – as the rest of us are realizing just today! – that the fabled intellect is as dull and mundane as the fabled savvy and fabled strength and fabled everything.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">So do I really think President Bush is smarter than Bush Lite?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Hell yes I do! Absolutely!! President Bush was an instrument-rated, supersonic fighter pilot. Barack Obama handed out forms. Which one do you think is easier?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">That’s how Bush Lite likes things though: easy. Relaxed. Let men make the decisions to win wars. The women in his life will tell Bush Lite when it’s safe to grab the credit.</p>
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		<title>Andrew Klavan: Democrats at War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/andrew-klavan-democrats-at-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=andrew-klavan-democrats-at-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:57:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[TruthRevolt.org]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239286</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>In this special episode, our host Andrew Klavan discusses the lies, double-speak, failures and foibles of Democrats at War. See the video and transcript below:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JlW52HhA_48" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">TRANSCRIPT:</p>
<blockquote><p>RT &#8211; DEMOCRATS AT WAR!</p>
<p>I’m Andrew Klavan and this is the Revolting Truth!</p>
<p>Today, in a Revolting Truth special, we bring you a story so uplifting it’ll remind you of one of those Victoria Secret models&#8230;  I never look at pictures of&#8230;  Yes, today, we’re going to recount the glories of Democrats at War!</p>
<p>The year is 2002 — In the wake of the horrific Islamist murder of 3,000 people on American soil, President Bush moves to drain the cesspool of tyranny that is the Muslim Middle East!  After our troops chase the monstrous Taliban back to their caves in Afghanistan, our decisive commander-in-chief turns to Iraq where the brutal oppressor Saddam Hussein has consistently destabilized the region and is now, according to all reliable intelligence, building weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>Bush’s fear of WMD is shared by the best people the Democrat party has to offer, including serial adulterer Bill Clinton, liar and hypocrite Hillary Clinton, mistress killer Ted Kennedy, horse-faced dunderhead John Kerry, and environmental flimflam man Al Gore&#8230;  Wait, those are the best people the Democrat party has to offer?</p>
<p>Anyway, when W asks for authorization to use force against the tyrant Hussein, Democrats vote to approve, including Hillary Clinton:</p>
<p>Hillary:  If left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.   So I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog t&#8230;</p>
<p>Ahem&#8230; well, she really did say the first part.</p>
<p>2003 — President W orders the invasion of Iraq.  Democrats are standing behind him — always a dangerous situation.</p>
<p>Desiccated opportunist Harry Reid chimes in:  “I think the president is approaching this in the right fashion&#8230;  my precioussssss.”</p>
<p>December of that year, Saddam Hussein is captured, and Democrats celebrate.  Here’s then Senator Joe Biden</p>
<p>Biden:  Gawrsh, Mickey, this is a great day!</p>
<p>By 2006, however, with Bush mistakenly listening to advisors who tell him not to deploy more troops, Al Qaeda invaders help send Iraq spiraling into a bloody civil war&#8230;  Democrats bravely standing directly in front of television cameras, heroically pretend they never supported the war in the first place&#8230;</p>
<p>Hillary:  If I had been president&#8230; I would have never asked for authority to divert our attention from Afghanistan to Iraq and I certainly would never have started this war.</p>
<p>2007 — In one of the most impressive acts of political courage in living memory, W defies his advisors, the polls, the media and most other politicians, and decides to try to stem the Iraq violence with a surge of more than 20,000 troops.  Democrats give the president the kind of support only Democrats can give:</p>
<p>Obama: We can not impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war.</p>
<p>Biden:  The President’s surge is not a solution, it’s a tragic mistake.</p>
<p>Reid:  This war is lost, my preciousss&#8230;</p>
<p>The surge works.  Just as Bush predicted, the heightened presence of U.S. troops inspires cooperation from Iraqis.  A U.S. troop drawdown is negotiated.  In the month before Bush leaves office, there are no U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.  The war there is effectively won.</p>
<p>2009 &#8211; President Obama takes office&#8230;  and his administration tries to take credit for the Iraq peace and the drawdown of troops that Bush negotiated:</p>
<p>Biden:  Gawrsh, I’m very optimistic about Iraq.  I think it’s going to be one of the great achievements of this administration.</p>
<p>2010 &#8211; Now commander-in-chief, Obama surges more than 30,000 troops into Afghanistan.  Twice as many U.S. soldiers die there as during the Bush era, and the surge ends two years later having had little effect.  Too moral to order harsh interrogation techniques against a handful of known terrorists, Obama instead uses drones to kill more than 2,000 people only suspected of terrorism, as well as any man, woman or child standing nearby.</p>
<p>He reportedly tells a staffer, “I’m really good at killing people!”</p>
<p>2011 &#8211; Bobbling the Bush agreements, Obama fails to negotiate a continued U.S. presence in Iraq and instead triumphantly announces the withdrawal of all U.S. Troops.</p>
<p>Obama:  “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.”</p>
<p>The President even brags during his reelection campaign that Al Qaeda is dead.</p>
<p>Which it’s not.</p>
<p>2014 — Al Qaeda affiliated ISIS reverses all the victories of Bush and his military and institutes a campaign of Islamic slaughter that makes the Taliban say, “Wow, those guys are mean.”  ISIS promises that as soon as it’s finished committing genocide, rape and mass murder at home, it’s coming after the United States.</p>
<p>Barack Obama immediately disavows his part in the U.S. Troop withdrawal:</p>
<p>Obama:  That wasn’t a decision made by me that was a decision made by the Iraqi government.</p>
<p>The war we won in Iraq is lost. The sacrifices we made in Afghanistan are rendered useless. With hellacious bloodshed engulfing the entire Middle East, Obama orders a half-hearted U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq that’s likely to accomplish nothing.</p>
<p>And that’s today’s episode of Democrats at War!  Stay tuned next time for the rousing tale of how the Democrat congress withdrew American funding from Viet Nam and Cambodia in 1975, ending the truce Nixon had negotiated there and leaving those nations open to the Communist slaughter of two and a half million people.</p>
<p>Yes, Democrats at War:  a story so patriotic and inspiring it’ll pierce your heart like&#8230; a knife in the back.</p>
<p>I’m Andrew Klavan with the Revolting Truth.</p></blockquote>
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		<title>How Can Anyone Continue to Support Obama?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/how-can-anyone-continue-to-support-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-can-anyone-continue-to-support-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 04:51:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[blame]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238308</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Three words – it’s Bush’s fault.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/o3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238352" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/o3-333x350.jpg" alt="President Obama Makes Statement On The Sequestration" width="272" height="286" /></a>The left’s kneejerk propensity for blaming George W. Bush for every disaster, from the Lincoln assassination to a bad hair day, has long served as comedy fodder among conservatives. But the serious psychological disorder known as BDS – Bush Derangement Syndrome – is no joke among President Obama’s faithful, who six years later still cling to the notion that Bush is the reason Obama hasn’t yet shown us the promised land and healed the planet as he promised in his 2008 nomination speech.</p>
<p>Last Tuesday, a bipartisan <a href="https://time.com/3084270/obamas-approval-rating-at-all-time-low-in-new-poll/">poll</a> found that Obama’s approval rating has hit an all-time (for him) low of 40%, with his handling of foreign policy at a dismal 36%. And yet, for those of us who consider his presidency to be an unmitigated disaster, it’s difficult to comprehend why his approval rating at this point isn’t at <em>zero</em>. In all seriousness, how is it possible that 40% of Americans can still be giving him a thumbs-up? Obviously there is a variety of explanations: low-information voters, willful blindness, progressive brainwashing, or just plain stubbornness among those who can’t admit that their Messiah is a false prophet. And of course there are those radicals who are simply in ideological lockstep with his agenda. But BDS threads throughout it all; “it’s Bush’s fault” remains an unassailable article of progressive faith – and a very convenient excuse.</p>
<p>In a Fox News <a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/162698-fox-news-asked-average-americans-obamas-leadership-one-comment-turned-jerry-springer/">segment</a> recently on Obama’s leadership, pollster Frank Luntz spoke with about thirty average citizens, half of whom had been Obama voters, about the President’s sagging numbers in terms of favorability and job approval. The bloom was off the rose for some of the disillusioned participants who had previously supported him, but others among the studio audience still stood by their man. A hardcore supporter with the nametag “Shelton” said he believes Obama “is doing an excellent job, considering the circumstances in which he took the office, and all the things piled on his desk.” In other words, as Shelton put it later, “he’s cleaning up George Bush’s mess.”</p>
<p>Even conceding that GWB did leave behind some serious fires to put out, it’s unclear how creating entirely <em>new</em> conflagrations – encouraging a southern border invasion, imposing upon us a health care leviathan, directly contributing to the “Arab Spring” chaos, alienating our allies and empowering our enemies, exacerbating race relations, dismantling our military, turning the IRS into a political weapon, to name some (but by no means all) – can be considered “cleaning up.” Almost six years into the Obama era, he hasn’t even begun to fix “Bush’s mess” – if anything, he has exacerbated it by overloading our national debt and expanding the NSA surveillance state. Obama isn’t cleaning up the Bush legacy – he is burdening us with his own.</p>
<p>Shelton disagreed: “He’s keeping the country out of war, he’s keeping the economy stable –” At that point Luntz interrupted him to turn to another participant who had been shaking his head in disagreement. When that man pressed him to name even one Obama accomplishment, Shelton again responded, “He’s keeping us out of war! Isn’t that enough?” Well, no, especially considering that he hasn’t done even that. Obama didn’t end the war in Iraq – the troop drawdown was scheduled under Bush, although Obama took credit for ending it <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/its-bushs-fault-that-obama-pulled-out-of-iraq/">until</a> he began to be blamed for leaving a vacuum there for ISIS to fill. And Obama increased the number of our troops in Afghanistan where they are still dying (including a brigadier general, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/05/world/asia/afghanistan-us-death/">the highest ranking officer</a> to die there); <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/74-us-afghan-casualties-came-after-obama-ordered-troops-increased">as of last year</a>, we still have nearly twice as many there as when he took office. This is to say nothing of the <em>future</em> wars Obama is courting because he has demonstrated to the world that America under him is weak. This has not gone unnoticed by an empowered, resurgent Russia, China, Iran, and our non-state Islamic enemies. But in Shelton’s mind, Obama ended Bush’s illegal wars and so now “war is over,” as John Lennon <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=4&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CDQQFjAD&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FHappy_Xmas_(War_Is_Over)&amp;ei=ttjnU5CPC9LzoATOjYCwBg&amp;usg=AFQjCNGBDLgSWrIlqL-NfT7EXjLb_R71_g&amp;sig2=CXWX2jXc0dcS4xFFRgqfog&amp;bvm=bv.72676100,d.cGU">sang</a>.</p>
<p>Then a woman in the group urged, “Let’s bring back George Bush. Let’s have a great leader.” The suggestion was like a bomb going off in the studio. “It’s George Bush’s fault!” shouted one man. Shelton jumped in with, “George Bush lied about the Iraq War. He lied, and Barack Obama is getting us out of a mess!” This was the same man who moments before had said that Obama hadn’t lied about Obamacare or Benghazi.</p>
<p>Another woman agreed with Shelton, claiming that “[Obama] can’t clean this up in 10 years, 12 years, 14 years. This takes time. He’s just prepping the next President.” One man who didn’t vote for Obama pointed out, however, that “when Reagan took over from Carter it took him three years, but he solved it. When Clinton took over, he took two years, but he solved it.”The Obama fans didn’t respond – evidently, rather than expect their man to solve problems, they just plan to keep blaming Bush indefinitely, or at least for the next 14 years.</p>
<p>In closing the segment, Luntz asked why we stop being civil with each other when Bush’s name comes up, and one gentleman complained that it’s because the left “keeps going back to Bush” instead of moving forward and taking responsibility for the current state of affairs. But of course that’s the whole point: without clinging to their delusional rationalization about Bush, how else could so many Americans convince themselves that nothing in the current state of affairs can possibly be Obama’s fault?</p>
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		<title>The Era of Spiraling Debt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-era-of-spiraling-debt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-era-of-spiraling-debt</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-era-of-spiraling-debt/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2014 04:50:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[7 trillion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Federal]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237820</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How long will the scheme last? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Money_Black_Hole.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237827" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Money_Black_Hole.jpg" alt="Money_Black_Hole" width="277" height="203" /></a>To the surprise of absolutely no one, the nation’s debt has skyrocketed during President Barack Obama’s tenure. In a little over five and a half years, the Obama administration has <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/706025967449751-federal-debt-7t-under-obama"><span style="color: #1255cc;">added</span></a> more than $7 trillion to the total, a number that represents more debt accumulation than the administrations of George Washington through Bill Clinton combined. At the close of business on July 31, the nation’s debt was $17.6 trillion, with $7.06 trillion of it accumulated since Obama was inaugurated in 2009.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">CNS News offers some gut-wrenching perspective regarding the numbers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">As of June, there were 115,097,000 households in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The $17,687,136,723,410.59 in debt the federal government had accumulated as of the end of July equaled $153,671.57 per household.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The $7,060,259,674,497.51 in new debt that the federal government has taken on during Obama’s presidency equals $61,341.82 per household.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The median household income in the United States in 2012 (the latest year estimated) was $51,017. Thus, President Obama has increased the federal debt by more than the typical household’s annual income.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">There is bitter irony and hypocrisy attached to these numbers. &#8220;The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents –number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back&#8211; $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic,” said presidential candidate Barack Obama, at a 2008 campaign event in Fargo, ND.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Bush was indeed nearly as irresponsible as Obama, <a href="http://useconomy.about.com/od/usdebtanddeficit/p/US-Debt-by-President.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">adding</span></a> $5.849  trillion in eight years to the national IOU, an increase of 101 percent over the $5.8 trillion in debt America owed at the end of Clinton&#8217;s last budget in FY 2001.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet it is worth noting two salient facts: the <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/image/federal-debt"><span style="color: #1255cc;">largest</span></a> accumulation of debt on Bush’s watch occurred after Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress in 2006; and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Bush signed into law in 2008, accounting for a large part of his administration&#8217;s debt accumulation, was supported by a majority of Democrats in both the <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/110-2008/h681"><span style="color: #1255cc;">House</span></a> and <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/110-2008/s213"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Senate</span></a>, while a majority of Republicans opposed the measure. Furthermore, Democrats have had majority control of the government, including total control for the first two years of the Obama administration, for the last eight years.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">None of this should be seen as an excuse to mitigate the economic irresponsibility wrought by Bush and his “compassionate conservative” agenda that represented nothing more than &#8220;tax-and-spend liberalism&#8221; by another name. But apparently once our current Redistributionist-in-Chief entered the Oval Office, taking out a credit card for the Bank of China in the name of our children was no longer considered irresponsible or unpatriotic.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Americans will never know with absolute certainty whether bailing out the banks was necessary. On the other hand, they are certain about a number of other things. They know there wasn&#8217;t a single resignation demanded from those who engineered the crisis in return for that bailout. They know the Federal Reserve policies emanating from the crisis, including multiple rounds of Quantitative Easing (QE), coupled with the Fed’s Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), have precipitated both the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/08/01/plosser-says-fed-well-behind-on-rate-setting/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">weakest recovery</span></a> since WWII, and a financial bonanza for the top 1 percent of Americans, who have <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/13/obama-economic-policies-fail-to-turn-trends-hurtin/?page=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">garnered</span></a> 90 percent of the income gains since the so-called recovery began in 2009. They know the Fed’s policies were so egregious, that Andrew Huszar, who helped engineer the Central Bank&#8217;s bond-buying spree, offered up a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579183680751473884"><span style="color: #1255cc;">public apology</span></a> in the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> for &#8220;the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But there is something most Americans <i>don’t</i> know. In 2011, in one of the most under-the-radar financial stories in the history of the nation, Bloomberg News <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported</span></a> that the Federal Reserve made <i>$7.7 trillion</i> available to the banking industry, completely in secret. &#8220;The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day,” the article revealed. &#8220;Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thus while ordinary Americans struggled through the worst recession since the Great Depression, those partially responsible for it were taken care of. The other bad actor in this fiasco was the federal government itself, which turned owning a home into a de facto entitlement program, forcing the banks to offer mortgages to minority applicants with shaky credit, lest they be accused of racism and subject to the attendant federal penalties.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Keynesian economists who currently run the show continue to insist all the “pump-priming” that precipitated the $7 trillion in additional debt—and counting—accrued during the Obama administration, was a necessary tradeoff for our current recovery.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is a “recovery&#8221; in which 11.4 million Americans have <a href="http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/080414-711620-obama-new-jobs-numbers-tell-another-tale.htm?p=2"><span style="color: #1255cc;">left</span></a> the workforce since 2009, and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/part-time-job-creation_n_3788365.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">75 percent </span></a>of the jobs created last year were part-time. As of last month the part-time labor force still contained <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/08/01/337094697/as-labor-market-advances-millions-stuck-in-part-time-jobs"><span style="color: #1255cc;">7.5 million</span></a> Americans who want full-time employment. The labor-force participation rate remains at its lowest level since 1978, and shows few signs of <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/07/17/white-house-economists-see-few-labor-force-dropouts-returning/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rebounding</span></a> any time soon. Record numbers of Americans remain on <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/hhs-report-percentage-americans-welfare-hits-recorded-high"><span style="color: #1255cc;">welfare</span></a> and <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/10962532-us-disability-beneficiaries-exceed-population-greece"><span style="color: #1255cc;">disability</span></a>. Most of the jobs being created are low-paying and <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/18845-july-bls-jobs-report-the-sound-of-one-hand-clapping"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insufficient in number</span></a> to keep up with population growth. And while the <i>initial</i> estimate of GDP growth for the 2nd quarter was 4 percent, it was offset by a negative 1st quarter. Moreover, most economist expect the nation&#8217;s annual growth rate to come in at under 3 percent, &#8220;not high enough to break us out of the wage-stagnating &#8216;new normal&#8217; of the Obama era,” as the <i>New York Post’s</i> Charles Gasparino <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/08/03/obamas-hollow-economic-boasts/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">put</span></a> it.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Through it all, the debt keeps climbing. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the total amount of publicly-held federal debt is now 74 percent of the economy’s annual output (GDP) &#8220;a higher percentage than at any point in U.S. history except a brief period around World War II and almost twice the percentage at the end of 2008.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In short, we remain on an <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/15/americas-unsustainable-long-term-debt-tr"><span style="color: #1255cc;">unsustainable</span></a> debt trajectory with no end in sight, during a flaccid economic recovery sustained only by saddling future generations of Americans with the burdens of our unconscionable economic recklessness.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The late Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Nixon and Ford, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/467811-if-something-cannot-go-on-forever-it-will-stop"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterized</span></a> the ultimate consequences of such recklessness. “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” he said. One is left to wonder whether that stoppage will be abrupt, or simply an <a href="http://money.msn.com/investing/15-disappearing-middle-class-jobs"><span style="color: #1255cc;">incremental</span></a> ratcheting down of economic expectations, along with many others that comprise the foundation of American exceptionalism. Perhaps that’s what the “fundamental transformation” of the United States is <i>really</i> all about.</p>
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		<title>Don’t Blame Bush for Al Qaeda in Iraq, Blame Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/dont-blame-bush-for-al-qaeda-in-iraq-blame-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dont-blame-bush-for-al-qaeda-in-iraq-blame-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2014 04:56:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[It’s the Arab Spring, not the Iraq War, that empowered Al Qaeda.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/lk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234686" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/lk-450x337.jpg" alt="lk" width="322" height="241" /></a>Like Birkenstocks and ironic t-shirts, blaming Bush has never gone out of style on the left. When Al Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq became so obvious that even the media, which had been pretending that Obama’s claims about a successful withdrawal were true, could no longer ignore them, their talking points were all lined up and ready.</p>
<p>It was all Bush’s fault.</p>
<p>Defenses of the war by pivotal figures like Dick Cheney and Tony Blair only enraged them further. “Why wouldn’t they admit it was all their fault?”</p>
<p>But the left’s lazy talking points about Iraq, like their talking points about the economy, ignore everything that has happened since 2008.</p>
<p>The leading factor behind the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t come from Iraq. It came from Syria.</p>
<p>From the “Islamic State of Iraq” under Bush to the ”Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” under Obama, it’s all in the name. The variations of ISIS and ISIL show a regional shift toward Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a vicious terrorist organization before the Arab Spring, but it was not capable of menacing Baghdad with a sizable army while crushing numerically superior forces along the way.</p>
<p>That didn’t happen in Iraq. It happened in Syria.</p>
<p>If you believe liberal supporters of Obama and opponents of the Iraq War, regime change in Iraq disastrously destabilized the region, but regime change in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria didn’t.</p>
<p>But the theory that turned Al Qaeda into a regional monster didn’t come from Dick Cheney. It came from Obama’s <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/muslim-brotherhood-reveals-obama-ordered-shift-of-support-from-us-allies-to-islamist-groups/">Presidential Study Directive 11</a> which helped pave the way for the Arab Spring. The definitive speech that opened the gates of hell wasn’t Bush’s speech on Iraq, but Obama’s Cairo speech.</p>
<p>That speech and the policy implemented with it led to the fall of allied governments and the rise of Islamist militias aligned with Al Qaeda. The Arab Spring was a regime change operation on a much larger scale than the Iraq War. Unlike the Iraq War, it was completely unsupervised and uncontrolled.</p>
<p>And it favored America’s enemies from the very outset.</p>
<p>ISIS picked up its weapons and manpower as a consequence of the conflicts in Libya and Syria. Obama chose to fight on the side of Al Qaeda in Libya. That led to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi after Islamic militias took over major cities.</p>
<p>Obama chose to facilitate the smuggling of weapons to Islamic militias by Qatar and other Gulf states. The White <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/obama-administration-oversaw-arms-shipments-to-al-qaeda-in-libya/">House endorsed the weapons smuggling</a>, but then claimed to be surprised that the weapons were going to “more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam” fighters.</p>
<p>The White House didn’t shut down the smuggling operation. Instead a senior official claimed not to be able to control the Qataris; not to mention the Saudis, Kuwaitis and the rest of the state-sponsored terrorism gang.</p>
<p>After Libya many of the fighters and weapons went to Syria where different factions of Al Qaeda were battling it out with the Syrian government and each other. And some of those weapons didn’t just end up in Syria.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/06/08/how-the-taliban-got-their-hands-on-modern-us-missiles/">US chopper was shot down in Afghanistan</a> using Qatari weapons supplied to the Libyan Jihadists that ended up in the hands of the Taliban.</p>
<p>Despite supposedly learning a lesson from Libya, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/kerry-endorses-qatars-gun-running-to-syrian-jihadistsal-qaeda/">Kerry announced last year</a> that he supported efforts by the same bad actors to arm the Syrian rebels. Occasional noises were made about seeing to it that the weapons ended up in the hands of the “moderates”, but there was an extensive track record showing that such distinctions meant nothing and that the Gulf states would go on arming terrorists.</p>
<p>Even when the weapons didn’t go directly to Al Qaeda, its various affiliates were able to capture them anyway through defections, deals or outright attacks.</p>
<p>Obama failed to crack down on the weapons smuggling that armed ISIS because it was being carried out by “allies” like Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda would be in no position to menace Baghdad if its flow of weapons and recruits had been aggressively cut off.</p>
<p>There were two paths that led to this current crisis. One was from the Gulf and the other from Iran.</p>
<p>Obama failed to check Iranian power which emboldened Maliki to crack down on Sunnis. The Gulf Sunni states were busy financing the armed and political Jihads of everyone from the Muslim Brotherhood to Al Qaeda. The intersection of these two paths led to the current civil war.</p>
<p>The “Blame Bush” crowd insists that if Saddam had not been overthrown, none of this would be happening. Except that Assad, Saddam’s fellow Baathist dictator, wasn’t overthrown by Bush and he’s still having trouble holding his own against Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Saddam Hussein might have been less threatened by a Sunni insurgency, but that’s because Al Qaeda in Iraq is allied to and fighting alongside the current head of the Baath Party.</p>
<p>Saddam had supported a number of terrorist groups. Al Qaeda had operated under Saddam Hussein as Ansar Al-Islam and had a Saddam man in its ranks. Today Saddam’s Baathist successors have their own man in ISIS <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/saddam-husseins-son-in-law-and-head-of-baath-party-may-be-behind-al-qaeda-in-iraq/">who chose its current leader</a>.</p>
<p>Saddam and Al Qaeda being on the same team is not some new phenomenon. Saddam helped fund and <a href="http://www.nysun.com/foreign/report-details-saddams-terrorist-ties/72906/">plan operations with Egyptian Islamic Jihad</a> which eventually merged into Al Qaeda and took over its leadership. They both had a common interest when it came to the United States and to Shiites.</p>
<p>If Saddam had not been overthrown, he would probably have become a much more active state sponsor of Al Qaeda once the Arab Spring rolled around.</p>
<p>Obama could have kept Iran and its Shiite allies from pushing the Sunnis into the Baath/Al Qaeda corner by standing up to Iran. Instead he disengaged and pretended that everything was going to be fine. He didn’t believe that, but he didn’t care either. Democrats had been vocal critics of Maliki. Obama repeatedly told Maliki to govern more inclusively as if mere words would somehow change anything.</p>
<p>Power in the Middle East is based on strength, not on teleprompters.</p>
<p>Obama’s withdrawal only meant that everyone would choose a stronger horse. The Shiites chose Iran. The Sunnis chose Al Qaeda. Obama’s failure to do anything about Iran led the Gulf states to require a Salafist horde to keep it at bay. Al Qaeda is their response to the military gap between them and Iran.</p>
<p>Iraq would not have fallen apart nearly as badly without the Arab Spring. Al Qaeda would have gone on killing dozens of people in car bombings, but it wouldn’t have been moving on Baghdad. It wasn’t the Iraq War that turned Al Qaeda in Iraq into a monster that could menace two nations.</p>
<p>It was the Arab Spring.</p>
<p>Obama chose to execute regime change on a much larger scale than Iraq. Al Qaeda’s dominance in Syria and Iraq is only one of the consequences of that disaster.</p>
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		<title>Hope and Change Has Crashed and Burned</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/hope-and-change-has-crashed-and-burned/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hope-and-change-has-crashed-and-burned</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:50:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[approval rating]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234391</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama’s approval rating nosedives.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/110905_obama_approval_ap_328.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234392" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/110905_obama_approval_ap_328.jpg" alt="Obama" width="288" height="227" /></a>A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News <a href="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/A_Politics/14463%20JUNE%20NBC-WSJ%20Poll%20(6-18%20Release).pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">poll</span></a> reveals that President Obama’s overall approval rating has cratered to 41 percent, tying the low-water mark of his presidency. Moreover, only half of those polled consider the president to be competent, a lower percentage than that accrued by George W. Bush following the pounding he and his administration took for its response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One year later, Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. Whether the 2014 election will produce similar results remains to be seen.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Chuck Todd, Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News, <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/about-that-wall-street-journal-poll-is-the-public-saying-obamas-presidency-is-over/article/2549878"><span style="color: #1255cc;">minced</span></a> no words assessing the results. “This poll is a disaster for the president,&#8221; Todd said. &#8220;You look at the presidency here: Lowest job rating, tied for the lowest; lowest on foreign policy. His administration is seen as less competent than the Bush administration, post-Katrina.” Todd then addressed the leadership issue. “And then the issue of do you believe he can still lead? A majority believe no. Essentially the public is saying your presidency is over,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Todd is referring to the 54 percent of respondents who said Obama is no longer able “to lead the country and get the job done” compared to only 42 percent who thought he could. That pessimism is buttressed by the 41 percent who believe his performance has gotten worse over the past year, compared to only 15 percent who thought it had improved.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The economy is another sore spot for the president, with 54 percent of the respondents disapproving his handling of it, compared to only 41 percent who think he’s doing a good job. This suggests Americans are very much aware that the current <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">6.3 percent</span></a> unemployment rate cannot obscure the reality that more than 92 million Americans have <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/372-percentage-not-labor-force-remains-36-year-high"><span style="color: #1255cc;">given up</span></a> looking for work, dropping the labor force participation rate to its lowest level in 36 years. That economic discontent was reinforced in an <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/18/obama-hits-new-low-in-poll/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">April poll</span></a> conducted by the WSJ revealing that 55 percent of registered voters believe “the economic and political systems in the country are stacked against people like me,” versus only 39 percent who disagreed with that statement.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">By a massive 57-37 percent margin, Americans disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy and national security decisions. Despite such a dismal spread, Obama may have actually caught a <i>break</i> with regard to polling on this subject. Because the nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 adults was <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-polling-lower-than-george-w.-bush-on-competency/article/2549877"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conducted</span></a> between June 11-15, it occurred largely before the consequences of his decision to prematurely withdraw from Iraq in 2011 was thrust front and center by the media.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">NBC News contends the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/middleeast/us-captures-benghazi-suspect.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">capture</span></a> of primary Benghazi suspect Ahmed Abu Khattallah might be an offsetting factor. But one suspects that when the public becomes fully aware that Khattallah had <a href="http://www.kgns.tv/home/headlines/Captured-Benghazi-suspect-an-enigma-263573411.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">remained</span></a> out in the open and conducted several news interviews over the past year and half, the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/25/obama-poll_n_4337643.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">majority</span></a> of Americans polled last November who said the president is neither honest nor trustworthy may see this as another effort to distract from the numerous scandals surrounding his administration. The public did get a chance to weigh in on the prisoner swap of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five imprisoned Taliban fighters. A plurality of Americans disapproved, by a margin of 44 percent to 30 percent. Furthermore, Americans disagree with the real impetus behind Bergdahl’s release: despite Obama’s determination to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, 59 percent of Americans want it kept open.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Democrat Peter Hart, one of the three pollsters who ran the survey, along with fellow Democrat Fred Yang and Republican Bill McInturff, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/18/obama-hits-new-low-in-poll/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contends</span></a> the president’s ratings are tanking because “whether it’s Putin, Ukraine, the VA hospitals, Bowe Bergdahl, the events have controlled Obama, rather than Obama having controlled the events,” and while the public supports him on some issues, “he’s losing the political debate because they don’t see him as a leader,” Hart added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">There are bright spots for Obama in the data as well. Sixty one percent of the respondents said they believe climate change is either &#8220;a serious problem&#8221; requiring &#8220;immediate action&#8221; or a big enough concern that &#8220;some action should be taken,” and 57 percent would favor curbing greenhouse gases, even if it meant an increase in their electricity bills. On the education front, 59 percent of Americans support the implementation of Common Core standards in their respective states, a number likely driven by the 61 percent who believe America’s public schools need “major changes” or a “complete overhaul.” Obama gets a pass on the VA scandal as well with six-in-ten blaming it on long-term bureaucratic issues, compared to only 14 percent who blame the Obama administration. And while only 27 percent of respondents believe the war in Afghanistan was worthwhile, one is left to wonder whether that percentage would have been if this poll had been taken after Americans were fully aware of the bloody chaos a complete and scheduled withdrawal of American forces actually leads to.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">With regard to immigration, 47 percent of the respondents believes it helps the nation, compared to 42 precent who believe it hurts the nation. But the question made no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. That is unsurprising since both NBC and the Wall Street Journal favor comprehensive reform. Thus while both entities characterize it as an advantage for Obama, reality may be quite different.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">So who gets the edge in the 2014 elections? Most <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-midterm-elections-democrats-can-have-some-hope-of-retaining-control-of-senate/2014/05/11/560476c6-d913-11e3-8009-71de85b9c527_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">pollsters</span></a> concede that the House is not in play, since Democrats would have to overcome a 17-seat deficit. Thus the focus has been on the Senate, where Republicans need a pickup of six seats to gain control of that chamber.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What happens there remains highly uncertain. While Obama remains unpopular, the GOP remains more so: 45 percent of the respondents held an unfavorable view of Republicans compared to only 29 percent who favor them. Democrats favorable/unfavorable ratings were less ominous, at 38 percent positive, and 40 percent negative. Those numbers correlate to 45 percent who prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, versus 43 percent who want Republicans in control. Furthermore, while 34 percent say their vote will signal opposition to the president compared to 24 percent who say it will signal support, 41 percent say it won’t signal anything about the president. There is also historical data that point to the reality that while the party of two-term presidents gets hit hard in one mid-term election, they <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/05/01/congressional_elections_and_the_sixth-year_myth_118199.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">almost never</span></a> get hit hard twice.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On the other hand, other historical <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/15/why_obamas_job_approval_will_matter_in_2014_120676.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">data</span></a> show a president’s plunging job approval ratings correlate to gains made by the opposition party. And a Pew Research/USA Today poll <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/17/a-dug-in-electorate-bodes-poorly-for-the-democrats-in-november/#utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=a-dug-in-electorate-bodes-poorly-for-the-democrats-in-november"><span style="color: #1255cc;">taken</span></a> in April indicates largely negative public perceptions of ObamaCare, the economy and the president &#8220;have to move in a clearly positive direction for the Democratic Party to avoid a drubbing in the congressional elections.” The poll further noted that as of two months ago, &#8220;the indications for that are not so good.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Two other factors <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fivethirtyeight-senate-forecast-toss-up-or-tilt-gop/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">favor</span></a> the GOP’s chances as well: one, in the 10 most competitive Senate races, eight are in states currently held by Democrats; and two, Democratic incumbents are retiring in South Dakota, West Virginia, and Montana. Uber pollster Nate Silver gives Republicans an 80 percent chance of making a pick up as a result.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perhaps the brightest spot for the GOP concerns what the <i>WSJ</i> characterizes as Obama’s loss of &#8220;significant altitude among core constituencies such as Hispanics and younger Americans,” in an election that “tends to swing on turnout.” Among Hispanics, Obama’s approval rating has nosedived from 67 percent in January 2013, to 44 percent in the latest poll. Younger Americans, who have been <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/scotterickson/2014/06/16/as-millennials-struggle-through-obama-economy-president-offers-pledges-not-jobs-n1852130"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hammered</span></a> by ongoing high unemployment, have long been abandoning the president, with only 41 percent <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/harvard-poll-millennials-abandon-obamacare-would-vote-to-recall-obama/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">approving</span></a> his job performance as of last December. Moreover many of them have “buyer&#8217;s remorse” with regard to casting their votes for him in 2012. Neither of these developments bode well for Democrats.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Neither does one last unmentioned fact about the poll itself. The percentage of respondents who are “strong,” not very strong,” or “lean” Democrat is 41 percent, versus 36 percent of those who are “strong,” not very strong,” or “lean” Republican. Fifteen percent self-identified as strictly independent.” That most of the media apparently consider a five point advantage in favor of Democrats unworthy of mentioning is hardly surprising.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Neither is Obama’s fall from grace. Fox News contributor James Pinkerton <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/06/16/will-media-hold-obama-admin-accountable-iraq"><span style="color: #1255cc;">illustrated</span></a> why in one searing sentence. “As Iraq is falling apart, the president is in California fundraising and talking about climate change of course, and playing golf,” he said. Even before Iraq spiraled out of control, Americans apparently noticed such a stunning lack of leadership. It appears Hope and Change has finally crashed and burned.</p>
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		<title>Obama Lost the War on Al Qaeda, While Claiming to Have Won It</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-lost-the-war-on-al-qaeda-while-claiming-to-have-won-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-lost-the-war-on-al-qaeda-while-claiming-to-have-won-it</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2014 04:44:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225787</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Instead of fighting to defeat Al Qaeda, he was working to defeat Bush’s policies.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/alqaeda.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225794" alt="alqaeda" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/alqaeda.jpg" width="336" height="224" /></a>Last year Obama delivered his own “Mission Accomplished” speech at the National Defense University. Its broad theme was that the War on Terror was over; it was time to shut down Guantanamo Bay and stand down from a war footing.</p>
<p>Obama claimed credit for putting “the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan” on the “path to defeat” with his disastrous Afghan strategy which cost 1,600 American lives while letting the Taliban take over the country. He did not acknowledge that the so-called core Al Qaeda had stopped being relevant even before he was elected.</p>
<p>1,600 Americans died chasing a political slogan that existed only in the heads of his speechwriters.</p>
<p>In 2009, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/president-obamas-secret-100-al-qaeda-now-afghanistan/story?id=9227861">the CIA determined that</a> there were at most 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Next year his own CIA director admitted that <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/06/cia-at-most-50100-al-qaeda-in-afghanistan/">there were at most 50-100</a> Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>That same year 499 Americans were killed in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Obama had declared victory against an enemy that the United States wasn’t fighting while losing a war to an enemy that the United States was fighting.</p>
<p>Meanwhile his own people were telling him that Al Qaeda had not been defeated.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/intelligence-leaders-al-qaida-is-not-on-path-to-defeat-20140211">National Intelligence Director James Clapper</a> said, in response to a question about whether Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, &#8220;No. It is morphing and franchising itself, not only here but in other areas of the world.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;They are not,&#8221; Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn added.</p>
<p>These two men were not telling the Senate Armed Services committee anything they had not already told Obama. But their boss was choosing not to listen.</p>
<p>By narrowly defining Al Qaeda as a small number of leaders and fighters in pre-existing war zones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, he and his White House staffers were making it easier to claim victory while ignoring the threat from expanding groups such as Boko Haram and Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>Obama’s policy snapshot of Al Qaeda in which Osama bin Laden was still a menace and Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan were the biggest threat to America was a decade out of date.</p>
<p>In his Mission Accomplished speech, Obama said that the core of Al Qaeda was no longer a threat.”They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston.”</p>
<p>Al Qaeda’s core might not have directed either attack, though it’s possible it did, but both attacks emerged from its strategy of building up local franchises and training lone wolf attackers over the internet.</p>
<p>What Obama was celebrating as proof of his victory over Al Qaeda actually reflected his failure to understand and prepare for Al Qaeda’s next move.</p>
<p>He was using the fact that Al Qaeda had outmaneuvered him twice, and carried out devastating attacks, as proof that he had defeated Al Qaeda and that we no longer had to worry about Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>It was a moment of supreme cluelessness.</p>
<p>In the speech, Obama warned against “a boundless global war on terror’”, but a boundless global war had been Bin Laden’s strategy all along. Al Qaeda was never meant to be a bunch of fighters running around caves in Afghanistan. It was and is an international network of cells, militias and individuals financed by international donors. Bin Laden’s money and fame only got the ball rolling.</p>
<p>And it’s still rolling.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda was never bound by Obama’s insistence on limiting the war to the same locations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Al Qaeda could and would spring up anywhere there was an opportunity. While Obama was losing to the Taliban in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was rising in its hometowns in the Middle East and its old stomping grounds in Africa.</p>
<p>Boko Haram <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/11/boko-haram-s-bin-laden-connection.html">was one of the many dragon’s teeth</a> sown by Osama bin Laden. The delay in making that connection and putting Boko Haram on the terror list was caused by a White House which insisted on the distinction between core Al Qaeda and everything else. Meanwhile US intelligence agencies were warning that Al Qaeda was a global network that was no longer dependent on a central leadership.</p>
<p>Obama’s rigid focus on core Al Qaeda made it difficult to understand and prevent what was happening in Syria, Libya and Mali. It was only French intervention that prevented Al Qaeda from seizing Mali, but it was Obama’s intervention that allowed Al Qaeda to seize portions of Libya, murder four Americans and attempt to seize Mali. Obama’s confused and incoherent policy in Syria, where Al Qaeda dominates the opposition, nearly led him to engage in another disastrous regime change intervention that would have turned over a country with WMDs and the remnants of a recent nuclear program to Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Obama tried to limit the scope of the War on Terror by maintaining rigid boundaries between core Al Qaeda and its affiliates and between its open affiliates and its covert affiliates. This served his political purposes by allowing him to declare victory, but his word games did not change the nature of Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>It only blinded the United States to its next move.</p>
<p>To claim victory, Obama had to define Al Qaeda as narrowly as possible, while Al Qaeda was defining itself as broadly as possible in order to actually win on the battlefield.</p>
<p>Obama saw the war as tying up old business. He pivoted to Afghanistan to finish what he claimed Bush had left undone. He went after Bin Laden to arrest him and try him in a civilian court in order to end the military tribunals. Instead of fighting to defeat Al Qaeda, he was working to defeat Bush’s policies.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda was not viewed as a cunning opponent following a larger plan, but a blowback, an unintended consequence of the bad foreign policy and unthinking imperialism of his predecessors. Like most critics of American foreign policy, Obama found it difficult to take Al Qaeda seriously on its own terms. Instead he viewed Al Qaeda as extremists who could only be defeated by isolating them with a more understanding foreign policy that would address Muslim grievances and empower political Islam.</p>
<p>But the Arab Spring didn’t shrink Al Qaeda. It expanded it into a major force capable of overrunning entire nations.</p>
<p>Even after all that, Obama insisted in his speech that “the next element of our strategy involves addressing the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism”. Like many leftists, Obama conflated Islamic grievances with Islamic ambitions and by addressing them, he empowered them.</p>
<p>Before his speech, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/23/obama-al-qaeda-is-on-a-path-to-defeat/?page=all">an official stated</a>, “The president has indicated and will indicate again that he rejects the notion of global war on terrorism, which is an amorphous definition that applies to a tactic.”</p>
<p>Terrorism is a tactic, but means are often indicative of ends. The alternative to defining the war in terms of means would have been to define it in terms of ends. Al Qaeda’s goal, like those of the political Islamic parties that Obama was empowering, was Islamic rule. And a war on Islam was off limits.</p>
<p>In its obsession with root causes, the left refused to deal with either means or ends. It bypassed what Al Qaeda was or wanted and instead focused on a root cause explaining how it was our fault.</p>
<p>And so instead of defeating Al Qaeda, Obama helped it achieve its goals.</p>
<p>The distinction between political Islam and Islamic terrorists, like the distinction between core Al Qaeda and its affiliates or between its open affiliates and fellow Jihadists, was always fluid. Obama’s insistence on the absoluteness of these distinctions is why he lost and why Al Qaeda is winning.</p>
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		<title>How Blaming Bush Led to the Ukraine Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/how-blaming-bush-led-to-the-ukraine-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-blaming-bush-led-to-the-ukraine-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2014 04:58:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224275</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left's obsessive hatred of America and its disastrous consequences for global security. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1393712507000-AFP-527606986.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224276" alt="1393712507000-AFP-527606986" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1393712507000-AFP-527606986-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>For the Democratic Party, history began and ended with the election of George W. Bush. Nothing had happened before him. Every world crisis began with him and would only come to an end when the Democratic Party finally squeezed one of its own into the White House.</span></p>
<p>If there was a problem, Bush had caused it. If another country hated America, it was Bush’s fault. Bush alienated Europe, Russia, Asia, the Middle East and even parts of Antarctica.</p>
<p>It was all his fault, the media, academia and angry Trotskyite grandmothers marching for peace and tyranny in San Francisco agreed. Books were written and movies were made. Cartoons were scrawled and songs were written.</p>
<p>It was all Bush’s fault.</p>
<p>It never occurred to the Democrats, even as they were making excuses for every tyrant from Saddam to Putin to Ahmadinejad, that the sum of all evil might not be George W. Bush.</p>
<p>When Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a misspelled Reset Button, it wasn&#8217;t the Russian end of the arrangement that was being reset.</p>
<p>Putin had been running the country through various offices all along. Despite his change of title, nothing significant was going to change in Moscow. It was the United States that was being reset.</p>
<p>The Obama campaign was a giant reset button. Among all its other resets, resetting the economy, resetting welfare, resetting the ocean levels and resetting the military, it was also going to reset America&#8217;s relationship with the world. Obama promised to &#8220;rebuild&#8221; American alliances in keeping with the leftist theme that everything wrong with the world could be blamed on President Bush&#8217;s alienation of the international community by riding through Baghdad like a unilateral cowboy on a pale horse.</p>
<p>When Putin invaded Georgia, the <i>New York Times</i>, among other mainstream media outlets, blamed President Bush. The Times collected negative quotes about &#8220;Bush’s aggressive response to the Russian incursion into Georgia.&#8221;</p>
<p>A year earlier however it had accused Bush of responding to Putin&#8217;s provocations with &#8220;timid equanimity.&#8221;</p>
<p>The men and women of the <i>New York Times</i> might not have been able to decide whether Bush was too soft or too tough on Putin, whether he was provoking him too much or not standing up to him enough, but they could say with certainty that whatever President Bush was doing had to be wrong.</p>
<p>It was wrong because Bush was doing it. Obama and Hillary however would get it right.</p>
<p>Instead of holding Putin accountable, the Reset Button was another piece of Blame Bush theater which sent the message that Obama and Hillary were blaming Bush for the breakdown of ties, instead of Putin.</p>
<p>Putin&#8217;s invasion of Georgia was forgotten. His international assassination of dissidents, the radioactive trails through the United Kingdom, his ties to terrorist regimes and his support for Iran were all swept into a big red folder marked &#8220;Bush&#8217;s Fault.&#8221; The folder was dumped into a deep drawer at the offices of the <i>New York Times</i> and no one looked it at again until Putin &#8220;unexpectedly&#8221; invaded Ukraine.</p>
<p>There was nothing unexpected about the invasion.  Just as there was nothing unexpected about Iran developing nuclear weapons even when their apologists in the media and the government said that it couldn’t possibly be taking place.</p>
<p>The unexpected in foreign affairs is the intrusion of reality into the leftist narrative. It’s the brick through the window and the mugging in broad daylight. A little time passes and everyone gives in to the leftist narrative and forgets until it happens all over again because reality is surprisingly persistent.</p>
<p>The Blame Bush caucus needed to believe that Putin’s behavior was Bush’s fault instead of Putin’s fault. They needed to believe that Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and countless other citizens of the world were reacting to Bush, instead of acting the way that they normally would.</p>
<p>Blinded by their hatred for Bush, they assumed that the world’s worst villains also hated Bush. It didn’t occur to them that they might hate America. Instead Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad became extensions of their political grudge match with the President of the United States. Their petty geopolitical view reduced the affairs of the world to a world that shared their hatred for Bush.</p>
<p>And that made it impossible for them to predict the actions of America’s enemies.</p>
<p>When Solidarity was in crisis in Poland, President Reagan didn&#8217;t wait for Russian tanks to show up in Warsaw; instead he took preemptive steps to avert a Russian invasion. Obama never even saw the invasion coming. Why would he? The last time Putin invaded a country, it had been Bush&#8217;s fault.</p>
<p>Putin&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine shouldn&#8217;t have come as a surprise. But days before the invasion, the mainstream media was claiming that it would never happen even though everyone from the President of Georgia down to Khrushchev&#8217;s great-granddaughter had predicted that it would.</p>
<p>While the Democrats couldn&#8217;t see past Bush, Putin was acting on centuries&#8217; worth of grudges and ambitions. Blaming Bush for everything had freed Putin to act. It erased his past track record and assigned the blame for it to Republican cowboy diplomacy. It gave him the element of surprise and it&#8217;s no surprise that he used it to invade Ukraine and humiliate Obama.</p>
<p>The Democrats had damned Reagan as a warmonger, but he was actually a realist. He understood what the USSR might do when it saw Poland slipping away and took steps to avert it.</p>
<p>Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party lacked any similar ability to soberly assess Russia’s motives.</p>
<p>Had the Democrats been able to let go of their obsession with Bush, they would have been able to head off the crisis in Ukraine. Instead they assumed that their relationship with Putin was going well, not because it was, but because the only reason it had ever been bad was because of George W. Bush.</p>
<p>The Russian government understood this dynamic and exploited it. It knew that Hillary didn’t come bearing a Reset Button because she wanted to improve relations with Russia. Instead she needed a tangible demonstration of how she was reversing Bush’s foreign policy failures to prep for her own presidential campaign.</p>
<p>And the Russians played along. They understood that to the Democrats they were only counters in a domestic political campaign and that Washington, D.C. had become a thoroughly unserious place.</p>
<p>And they weren’t the only ones making that assessment.</p>
<p>China’s escalating militarism and Iran’s nuclear manipulations exploit a profoundly unserious White House less interested in keeping America safe than in blaming Bush.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Mideast Nightmare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-mideast-nightmare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-mideast-nightmare</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-mideast-nightmare/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Apr 2014 04:55:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[al qaeda in iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How the Radical-in-Chief isolated America in the Middle East.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ali.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222392" alt="ali" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ali.jpg" width="343" height="193" /></a>A man sits holding a cup of coffee in a restaurant. He drops the cup and it cracks. Everyone around him berates him for his thoughtless stupidity.</p>
<p>Then a second man enters and after delivering a fine speech on the virtues of making this into the best restaurant that it can be, begins smashing all the cups and then the plates. He overturns the tables, tears down the curtains, breaks the lights, tumbles all the food to the floor and sets the whole place on fire.</p>
<p>The first man was named George. The second man was named Barack.</p>
<p>During George W. Bush’s last month in office, thirty-one Americans had died in Iraq and Afghanistan. By June, the month of Obama’s infamous Cairo speech, that number had climbed to forty. And by that same time next year, it was at sixty-eight.</p>
<p>When Bush left office at the end of his second term, the region was mostly stable aside from Iran’s nuclear program. By the time Obama had finished his first term, it was in a state of endless war.</p>
<p>It is still in a state of war today.</p>
<p>While Bush only overthrew Saddam, Obama overthrew Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi and Saleh. The difference lay not only in the scale of their respective regime change operations, but in their relative impacts on regional stability.</p>
<p>Saddam had invaded other countries and cultivated terrorists, while the governments that Obama helped overthrow, aside from Gaddafi, were not expansionistic, were not obsessed with building up WMD’s and had helped maintain regional stability,.</p>
<p>Bush had sought to stabilize the Middle East by removing Saddam. Obama instead destabilized it by trying to remove every government that was in any way friendly to the United States and was not covered by the umbrella of the Saudi GCC.</p>
<p>Bush’s Axis of Evil had consisted of “rogue states”. Obama’s Axis was made up of allied governments. Bush had set out to stabilize the Middle East by clearing out rogue states while Obama set out to empower rogue states by clearing out stable allied governments… which left the rogue states in charge.</p>
<p>The fall of more modern pro-Western governments left the Middle East divided sharply between Sunni and Shiite Islamists in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Democratic Party’s sabotage of Bush’s efforts to stop Iran had created a regional power imbalance. The Sunnis had numbers, but the Shiites were going nuclear. And a nuclear bomb is a blunt instrument for reducing population numbers by the millions.</p>
<p>Obama’s abandonment of Iraq had pushed it through another violent sectarian split that revived Al Qaeda and combined with his Arab Spring, consumed Syria.</p>
<p>Unable to match Iran on purely military terms and with the United States unwilling to do anything about its nuclear program, the Sunnis turned to insurgency. The Arab Spring had been disastrous for Sunni military powers like Egypt, but helped revive Sunni insurgencies. Syria, with a Sunni majority, was a perfect platform for taking on the Shiite axis and alienating it from the rest of the region.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia tied down Obama’s “regional reforms” in a civil war exchanging his vision of populist Islamist regime change for violent sectarian conflict and killing his “Arab Spring”. Then killing a second bird with that same stone, it dragged Iran into a brutal insurgency, doing to Iran, what it and the Saudis had done to the United States in Iraq.</p>
<p>Except that it was no longer just about Syria. Syria had become a Sunni-Shiite fracture point stretching into Iraq and Lebanon.</p>
<p>Obama’s abandonment of Iraq led to a comeback for Al Qaeda in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq had always been the most feral Middle Eastern franchise in the Al Qaeda family. The most brutal, the most senselessly violent and the likeliest to kill just for the sake of killing; its members seemed sociopathic even to hardened Al Qaeda leaders. And Bush had succeeded in burying it until Obama dug it up again.</p>
<p>The sectarian split in Iraq and Syria turned Al Qaeda in Iraq from a defeated footnote to a resurgent army with tens of thousands of fighters and a grip on two major countries.</p>
<p>When Obama boasts that the core of Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, he neglects to mention that the most dangerous part of Al Qaeda is now more powerful than it ever was before. Or that Al Qaeda now has more numbers, more territory and more experience than ever before.</p>
<p>Obama could do nothing meaningful about Al Qaeda in Syria because he feared empowering Assad. And he couldn’t do anything about Assad because he feared alienating Iran. It was a Catch 22 situation forcing him to choose between the Arab Spring and outreach to Iran.</p>
<p>After a long midnight struggle of the soul, he chose Iran.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring had been Obama’s international ObamaCare. It was the project that he was most identified with and the one that he could most take credit for. But by the time the Arab Spring had come down to bombing Syria, it was about as popular as ObamaCare. Russia, Iran and Syria offered Obama a way out. A new, new beginning to replace the old new beginning that had gone wrong in Cairo.</p>
<p>Having sold out Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia, Obama finished the job by dumping the rest of his Sunni allies and taking a ride on the Shiite nuclear express.</p>
<p>Bush had often been blamed for isolating the United States, but it was Obama who thoroughly isolated the United States in the Middle East.</p>
<p>The United States had set out to isolate Iran, but Obama’s nuclear pandering to Iran instead allowed Iran to isolate the United States from its allies. No country in the Middle East still trusts the United States. Egypt despises Obama. The Saudis insult him. The rest don’t even bother to do that much. The Israeli Defense Minister talks of dealing with Iran alone.</p>
<p>The United States has become a fading shadow in the Middle East; a power vacuum waiting to be filled by a nuclear arms race and battlefields of the dead.</p>
<p>Obama inflicted severe damage on American influence and interests, and on the Middle East, with nothing but an inchoate notion that the Islamists who would take over when he was done would embrace democracy over terrorism.  Instead there is less democracy and more terror than ever before.</p>
<p>Obama’s foreign policy was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The left had insisted for decades that the Arab Street was angry because of the damage wrought by our interference in their domestic politics. And he attempted to “right that error” by interfering so much that the accusation was finally proven true.</p>
<p>The one thing that all the parties in Egypt, that Sunni and Shiite from Syria to Iraq to Lebanon, that Christian, Jew and Muslim can agree on, is that the Middle East would have been better off if Obama had kept his mouth shut and stayed away.</p>
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		<title>The False Iraq-Crimea Analogy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-false-iraq-crimea-analogy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-false-iraq-crimea-analogy</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:55:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[crimea]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Who's playbook is Putin really following? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/140303155802-ukraine-military-armed-men-story-top.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222289" alt="&gt; on March 3, 2014 in Perevalne, Ukraine." src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/140303155802-ukraine-military-armed-men-story-top-442x350.jpg" width="309" height="245" /></a>Of all the strained analyses offered by the Left on the Crimea crisis, none is quite so ludicrous as the comparison of Putin&#8217;s invasion of the former Soviet territory to the 2003 Iraq War. As the Atlantic&#8217;s Peter Beinart </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/vladimir-putin-russian-neocon/284602/">put it</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Putin is just like &#8220;the American hawks who hate him most</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.&#8221;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> This sentiment was vocally </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/opinion/confronting-putins-russia.html?_r=1">seconded</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by Michael McFaul, a former Obama administration official who served as a special assistant to the president at the National Security Council and as ambassador to the Russian Federation. &#8220;As ambassador, I found it difficult to defend our commitment to sovereignty and international law when asked by Russians, &#8216;What about Iraq?&#8217;” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Defending America&#8217;s commitment to sovereignty and international law vis-à-vis Iraq isn&#8217;t difficult at all, if one chooses to examine the facts, as opposed to the American left&#8217;s historical revisionism. To begin with, President Bush asked for and </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002-10-10-house-iraq_x.htm">received</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> authorization for the use of force in Iraq from Congress. Both chambers approved the measure with overwhelming majorities. On Oct. 10, 2002 the House voted 296-133 in favor, followed by the Democratic-led Senate&#8217;s vote of 77-23 a day later. &#8220;I believe it is important for America to speak with one voice,&#8221; said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) at the time. &#8220;It is neither a Democratic resolution nor a Republican resolution. It is now a statement of American resolve and values.&#8221; That sentiment was echoed by then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who called her vote &#8220;the hardest decision I&#8217;ve ever had to make, but I cast it with conviction. I want this president, or any future president, to be in the strongest possible position to lead our country, at the United Nations or at war.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The resolution authorized the president to defend America against the threat posed by Iraq and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs). It also required that all diplomatic efforts be exhausted prior to the use of force and that reports to Congress be made every 60 days once action was undertaken.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The key element here is the authorization to enforce the relevant UNSCRs. Beginning in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/State/state-iraqres-032003.htm">began</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> serially dismissing UNSCRs, ignoring more than 17 of them and remaining in material breach of Iraq&#8217;s disarmament obligations. The last one in that regard, Resolution 1441, authorized on November 8, 2002, gave Iraq a &#8220;final opportunity to comply.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Bush also established a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100233454/barack-obama-is-proving-an-embarrassing-amateur-on-the-world-stage-compared-to-george-w-bush/">coalition</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of 40 nations to depose Hussein, including Great Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, 16 members of the NATO alliance, Japan, South Korea, and a total 12 of 25 EU nations. France and Germany sat on the sidelines, as did Russia, but the &#8220;nobility&#8221; of their position was </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/10/28/over-2000-companies-paid-oil-for-food-bribes/">belied</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by the oil-for-food scandal, in which a U.N investigation revealed that the three nations had paid a total of $1.8 billion in kickbacks and illicit surcharges to the Iraqi strongman.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Another inconvenient reality is that, left-wing mythology not withstanding, WMD possession was not sole premise of the Iraq War. While WMDs were one concern, many other activities of the Hussein regime posed extreme threats to international security, as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.rightwingnews.com/column-2/what-about-the-weapons-of-mass-destruction-2/">articulated</a> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">by Bush in his Sept 12, 2002 speech to the U.N</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Aside from WMDs, Bush made clear that if Hussein wanted to avoid war he must &#8220;immediately end all support for terrorism,&#8221; &#8220;cease persecution of its civilian population,&#8221; &#8220;account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown,&#8221; and &#8220;immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet the comparison between Putin&#8217;s seizure of Crimea and Bush&#8217;s liberation of Iraq ultimately falls apart based on the simplest of realities. America invaded Iraq, disposed of a bloodthirsty dictator, did our best to establish a provisional and democratic government, and </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">withdrew</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Nor did we seek anything in the way of reparations: China has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.rte.ie/blogs/business/2012/12/04/how-china-won-the-iraq-war/">become</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the largest recipient of Iraqi oil, with India coming in second. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Putin, however, is not at all interested in global security or bringing an internally recognized criminal to justice. Since 2008, Putin has engaged in invasions of two countries &#8212; Georgia and Ukraine &#8212; and many of Russia&#8217;s neighbors are now fearing the same fate awaits them. That fear is driven by the reality that Putin has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050426/news_1n26russia.html">characterized</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the breakup of the Soviet Union as &#8220;the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,&#8221; and is </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/27/us-ukraine-crisis-centralasia-idUSBREA2Q0BP20140327">eyeing</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> other conquests in his determination to build a Eurasian Union of former Soviet states. Fear of Russian expansionism is further exacerbated by Obama&#8217;s killing of the missile defense systems that were to be installed in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2009, which were aborted in exchange for a &#8220;reset&#8221; in bilateral relations between the U.S. and Russia.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Rather than Iraq, a far better comparison to Crimea is a more recent war, which the left was hypocritically silent to: Libya. From the very beginning, Putin has used appeals to humanitarianism as the pretext for his invasion of Crimea. He has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html">cast</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> himself as the &#8220;guardian&#8221; of the Russian-speaking people, even those residing in neighboring countries, such as Ukraine. For example, citing threats of violence toward the Russian-speaking citizens in the Ukraine, Putin said, &#8220;[I]f we see such uncontrolled crime spreading to the eastern regions of the country, and if the people ask us for help, while we already have the official request from the legitimate president, we retain the right to use all available means to protect those people. We believe this would be absolutely legitimate.”</span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 2011, Obama used similar justifications for the U.S.-led NATO intervention in Libya, which at the time was in the midst of a chaotic civil conflict, not unlike that of Ukraine. &#8220;I have&#8230; stated that it is U.S. policy that Qaddafi needs to go,&#8221; Obama </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-qaddafi-must-go-but-current-libya-mission-focused-on-humanitarian-efforts/">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of the situation. &#8220;But when it comes to our military action, we are doing so in support of U.N. Security resolution 1973. That specifically talks about humanitarian efforts, and we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.&#8221; </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The mission began as a no-fly zone over Libya, for the purpose of protecting civilian populations, but quickly escalated into </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/joseph-klein/nato-aims-to-kill-qaddafi/">unauthorized</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> targeted air strikes and a manhunt for Qaddafi. While </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Obama and NATO were carrying out these </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">strikes, which destroyed schools and non-governmental buildings such as the Libyan Down&#8217;s Syndrome Society, the president steadfastly maintained that intervention was </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">necessary</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to pre-empt an imminent massacre by the Libyan regime. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Notably, the intervention in Libya proceeded without the permission of the U.S. Congress in violation of the War Powers Act. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the background of the Libyan war was a philosophy that is currently in vogue in the left-wing foreign policy establishment &#8212; and in the Obama administration in particular. The </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.globalr2p.org/about_r2p">responsibility to protect doctrine</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, known as R2P, is a pet doctrine of UN Ambassador and Samantha Power and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. The philosophy of R2P codifies the justification of military intervention on the basis of humanitarian reasons and rejects absolute rights of sovereignty. It sanctions &#8220;appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner&#8221; with regard to nations that fail to protect its populations from &#8220;genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.&#8221; Power even once envisaged </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/israeli-newspaper-focuses-on-samantha-powers-remarks-in-2002/">invading</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Israel based on this principle.</span></p>
<p><span><span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">What Power, Rice and Obama are no doubt learning from the Crimea episode is that rejection of the premise of absolute </span>sovereignty<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and using humanitarian reasons for </span>the bases of invasion and war is a double-edged sword. There will always be malignant state actors who will exploit the &#8220;responsibility to protect&#8221; for their own purposes. Indeed, Putin appears to have taken a page out of the Obama administration&#8217;s playbook &#8212; not George W. Bush&#8217;s. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</span></span></span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Lying Liberal Liars</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/lying-liberal-liars/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=lying-liberal-liars</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/lying-liberal-liars/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2013 04:35:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Care]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211148</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Obama’s lie proves liberals can’t be trusted.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/n-HEALTH-CARE-OBAMA-large570.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211239" alt="Barack Obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/n-HEALTH-CARE-OBAMA-large570.jpg" width="270" height="211" /></a>Every morning the media paws through a dictionary looking for the most innocuous ways to describe Obama&#8217;s big health care lie.</p>
<p>According to the <i>New York Times</i>, Obama &#8220;misspoke&#8221; when he said over and over again that if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. But unlike the times that the smartest man to ever put up his feet on the table in the Oval Office thought that Austrian was a language or that the United States had 57 states, he wasn&#8217;t misspeaking.</p>
<p>44, as Politico likes to call him, was doing what 1 wouldn&#8217;t do after he chopped down a cherry tree. And to call a lie, misspeaking, is itself a lie.</p>
<p>Rob Ford didn&#8217;t misspeak when he claimed not to be on crack, despite being on crack. Barack Obama didn&#8217;t misspeak when he promised to let you keep your health plan, when he had no intention of letting you do any such thing. And the <i>New York Times</i> didn&#8217;t misspeak when it tried to pass that lie off as a mere slip of the tongue.</p>
<p>The <i>New York Times</i>, which never hesitated to call George W. Bush a liar, switched up its euphemisms and began calling Obama&#8217;s lie an &#8220;incorrect promise&#8221;. <i>NBC News</i> called it a &#8220;promise they couldn&#8217;t keep.&#8221; The <i>Associated Press</i> called it an &#8220;inflated promise.&#8221;</p>
<p>A few of their more honestly dishonest colleagues in the media argued that Obama did the right thing  because he could never have pried the health plans of Americans out of their grubby little hands if he hadn&#8217;t promised them that his government takeover of healthcare wouldn’t affect them. Some of the pundits making that argument included those on Obama&#8217;s regular reading list.</p>
<p>The excuse that Obama lied blatantly about the impact of a law he wanted to pass in order to pass it will no doubt be a great comfort to those gun owners who were willing to trust that his crusade against gun rights would stop where he told them it would and those Republican supporters of amnesty for illegal aliens who believed that he really would secure the borders once he got his millions of newly minted Democratic Party voters.</p>
<p>If Obama lied to pass one law, what sensible argument can any of his supporters make for believing him the next time he promises, “If you like your guns, you can keep your guns” or “If you like your borders, you can keep your borders”?</p>
<p>Obama wasn&#8217;t the first politician to lie. He won&#8217;t be the last. But most politicians who lie don&#8217;t have an army of reporters swarming around them to explain that they didn&#8217;t lie, but just inflated their misspeaking. One man did not get up in front of the microphones and cameras and lie over and over again. The entire liberal establishment lied. And it&#8217;s still lying.</p>
<p>The media’s lies and excuses, even more than the original Obama lie, reveal why liberals can never be trusted.</p>
<p>If Obama had only lied about being on crack or with an intern, that might be an impeachable act, but an understandable human failing. But he wasn&#8217;t lying to cover up something shameful that he did. He lied because he didn’t think Americans deserved to keep their health plans… or the truth.</p>
<p>Obama lied because he is a liberal.</p>
<p>That Obama would lie was an inevitable as the sun rising in the morning and the taxman coming in the spring. The lie was baked into the nature of the progressive movement that he identified with and its social experiments with human lives for the greater good that he participated in.</p>
<p>Lying isn&#8217;t incidental to a liberal. Liberal is another word for liar. Someone who believes, as Obama and his media cronies do, that Americans are too stupid and ignorant to be trusted to choose their own health care, isn&#8217;t about to trust them with the truth.</p>
<p>Liberals don&#8217;t believe that the people they lie to are their equals. If they did, not only wouldn&#8217;t they lie to them, but they wouldn&#8217;t subscribe to a skewed leftist take on liberalism that compels them to take away choices from people for their own good.</p>
<p>You don&#8217;t take away someone&#8217;s right to choose unless you think that they are inferior to you.</p>
<p>If you think that the next person over can run his life just as well as you run yours, then there&#8217;s no reason to take over his life and to lie to him about it. But if you think that he’s probably a racist moron who worships the flag and clings to his gun and bible and can&#8217;t be trusted to buy a car, raise his kids, drink a large soda and see a doctor; then you&#8217;re probably a liberal.</p>
<p>And a liar.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives respect people&#8217;s choices. Liberals don&#8217;t. And if you don&#8217;t respect someone&#8217;s choices; you don&#8217;t respect them.</p>
<p>If you think that the average person is a moron, then the only answer is to set up to a totalitarian system to nudge the marching morons into the death panels for their own greater good while lying to them that the death panelists are really the judges for the next hot talent competition.</p>
<p>If ordinary people don&#8217;t deserve the basic decency of being allowed to make decisions about their own health care, then they also don&#8217;t deserve the basic decency of not being lied to their faces about those decisions being taken away from them.</p>
<p>If Obama had trusted and respected Americans, he wouldn&#8217;t have lied to them about ObamaCare. But if he had really trusted and respected them, he wouldn&#8217;t have inflicted ObamaCare on them.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s crime isn&#8217;t the lie. The lie is the cover-up of the crime. The crime is that Obama packaged a tax, a welfare program and a government takeover of health care together and called it reform.</p>
<p>The media has shown that Obama&#8217;s lie was no isolated incident by lying about the lie for the same reason that he told the lie. The health plan lie wasn&#8217;t the lie of one politician protecting his reputation; it was the big lie of a liberal establishment protecting its agenda.</p>
<p>The liberal media manipulates its readers, listeners and viewers the same way that liberal governments manipulate their citizens. Unlike Clinton&#8217;s lie, Obama&#8217;s lie was not one man&#8217;s mistake, but a movement&#8217;s arrogance. And not only hasn&#8217;t Obama stopped lying about his lie, but the media and the rest of his movement haven&#8217;t stopped lying about his lie.</p>
<p>Obama’s big health care lie shows why liberals can&#8217;t be trusted. Any movement that believes its members are superior to ordinary people cannot be trusted to represent them or to tell them the truth.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong></strong> <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> about Obama&#8217;s Destructive Agenda, his Muslim Brotherhood Romance, the Anthony Weiner-Huma Abedin saga, and much, much more:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hpyoCFF-iL8" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Can You Hear Me Now?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/can-you-hear-me-now/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=can-you-hear-me-now</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/can-you-hear-me-now/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 04:22:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saddam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204523</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Remember when President Bush said Saddam sent Iraq's chemical weapons into Syria?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/syr.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-204526 aligncenter" alt="syr" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/syr.jpg" width="400" height="552" /></a></p>
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		<title>9/11: Twelve Years Later</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/911-twelve-years-later/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=911-twelve-years-later</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/911-twelve-years-later/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 04:18:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[9/11]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twelve years]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203706</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A moment of utter moral clarity that has been succeeded by over a decade of moral chaos.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>9/11 was a moment of utter moral clarity that has been succeeded by twelve years of moral chaos. Twelve years of duplicity, flim-flam, double-dealing, humbug. Twelve years of timorousness, incompetence, impotence.</p>
<p>Thousands of lives have been sacrificed in vain; inconceivable amounts of money have gone to waste. America&#8217;s financial security and its international standing have been imperiled. And all for one simple reason: because, from the very beginning, the powers that be, in both political parties, chose to lie about the nature of the enemy we were up against.</p>
<p>In the years before World War II began, Winston Churchill spoke up again and again in the House of Commons about the danger that the Nazis represented. His colleagues responded to his eloquent, passionate warnings with ridicule. He was considered a bore, a nag. Some of his fellow Tories viewed his preoccupation with Hitler as an embarrassment. But he didn&#8217;t waver. He knew whereof he spoke, he saw what was coming, and he did what he saw as his duty.</p>
<p>On September 11, 2001, only a couple of hours after the planes struck the World Trade Center, President Bush went on TV and promised the nation that we&#8217;d get the “folks” who did this. “Folks”? Would Churchill ever have called the Nazis “folks”? The tone was wrong, right from the start. Tone matters.</p>
<p>In the same TV address, Bush asked everyone to join him in a moment of silence. But it was not a time to bow one&#8217;s head in silence. It was a time to be enraged, to speak the facts firmly and clearly, and to plan appropriate retributive action. It was time for a moment of truth.</p>
<p>But nobody wanted to speak the truth.</p>
<p>Three days later, Bush was at the National Cathedral for an “interfaith service of prayer and remembrance” that had been jointly planned by the Cathedral and the White House. An <a href="http://www.nationalcathedral.org/pdfs/PrayerBooklet2001.pdf">account</a> of the service at the Cathedral&#8217;s website recalls that the participants “spoke English, Hebrew, and Arabic” and “stood side by side—Jew, Muslim, Christian.” At the service, the Dean of the Cathedral offered up a prayer to “God of Abraham and Mohammed and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” Muzammil H. Siddiqi of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) said a prayer. “Today,” pronounced Bush, in his comments at the service, “we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called the warm courage of national unity. This is a unity of every faith, and every background.”</p>
<p>And there, in that service, just a few days after 9/11, you can see it all – the seeds of everything that has been so terribly, tragically wrong about the last twelve years. I remember watching Siddiqi pray on TV that day and thinking: “OK, who is this guy?” The Investigative Project on Terrorism has since <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/171">answered</a> that question at length. Siddiqi&#8217;s group, the ISNA, is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, and his mosque hosted a lecture by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the man behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In a 2000 speech, Siddiqi said that “America has to learn that because if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come.” In 1996, he told followers that “Allah&#8217;s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.” He&#8217;s also praised jihad as “the path” to “honor” and expressed support for the death penalty for gays in Muslim countries.</p>
<p>And yet there he was, in that pulpit, at that service. His presence there was an obscenity; to invite his participation was an act of either utter ignorance or sheer dhimmitude. But it was only the first of many such acts. It was the template for the post-9/11 era, the new American order, during which we were told by everyone, from our president on down, that the 9/11 terrorists had hijacked not only airplanes but their religion as well, which, of course, was a religion of peace. That, we were told, was what Islam means: peace. Those of us who knew better and who dared to say so were vilified as bigots, even as the likes of Saddaqi were celebrated as noble bridge builders.</p>
<p>Before too long, the all-important goal of seeking out and destroying the people who had carried out the 9/11 attacks – and sending a lesson to any others who might be tempted to mount similar operations – morphed into a dubious effort to democratize the Muslim world. For a time, Osama bin Laden himself got lost in the shuffle. In the immediate wake of 9/11, Bush committed the U.S. to capturing him “dead or alive”; just a year later he said offhandedly that getting bin Laden really wasn&#8217;t a priority.</p>
<p>Meanwhile much of the political left, driven not by a reasoned critique of the administration&#8217;s arguments for war but by a fierce partisan animus that in some cases seemed to border on psychosis, made fools like Cindy Sheehan their spokespeople and equated Bush with Saddam Hussein himself.</p>
<p>The brief interlude of national unity on 9/11 soon became a distant memory. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad spoke at Columbia University in 2007, the audience of PC students and professors cheered him, a bloodthirsty tyrant – partly to prove that they weren&#8217;t Islamophobes, and partly because he was the enemy of their enemy, Bush, and thus, presumably, their friend. Many antiwar groups were little more than fronts for jihadist organizations.</p>
<p>In the name of wartime security, a massive national surveillance apparatus was put in place, and airports were staffed with TSA screeners whose solemn task it was to make sure we weren&#8217;t carrying fingernail clippers or overly large tubes of toothpaste. Yet while these clowns were busy patting down wheelchair-bound octogenarians from rural Vermont and babies in diapers, Army officials were issuing commendations to a major at Fort Hood who&#8217;d made clear his jihadist sympathies and who, in 2009, ended up slaughtering 13 people in a clear-cut act of Islamic terrorism. Major Hasan explicitly affirmed that he was a jihadist – but his superiors, the media, politicians, and ultimately the judge and lawyers at his trial refused to treat him as one, insisting instead on characterizing his massacre as workplace violence. This sort of Orwellian lie was not the exception but the rule: in 2013, even John McCain was capable of saying, with a straight face, that “Allahu akbar” means “Thank God.”</p>
<p>The antiwar movement was ardent, vehement, cutthroat – and evaporated almost instantly the moment Obama succeeded Bush. (“A lot of people,” Ed Asner said the other day, by way of explaining the disappearance of so many Hollywood celebrities from the antiwar ranks since 2008, “don’t want to feel anti-black by being opposed to Obama.”) Meanwhile, the level of disinformation about Islam intensified. Bush, while seeking to strengthen America&#8217;s ties to its allies, had massaged the Muslim world with insipid rhetoric about our shared heritage as “people of faith”; Obama, while kicking our allies in the teeth, spun outrageous fantasies about Islam, transforming, in his famous 2009 Cairo speech, fourteen centuries of primitive brutality into a glittering parade of moral, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual triumphs.</p>
<p>As the years after 9/11 went by, other major acts of jihadist terrorism occurred around the world. Each time, the mantra from on high was the same: these crimes had nothing to do with Islam. Government officials, military leaders, authors, filmmakers, journalists, teachers, professors – all played their part in obscuring the truth about Islam. When the “Arab Spring” came along, only the systematically enforced ignorance about Islam made it possible for so many Americans to respond enthusiastically to the overthrow by religious fanatics of relatively secular, America-friendly regimes.</p>
<p>Most disgraceful of all is the fact that even American servicemen and women were lied to. Many of those who were sent to Afghanistan and Iraq thought they were going there to protect good Muslims, who embodied the innate peacefulness of Islam, from bad Muslims, who had betrayed the faith of their fathers by claiming to kill in Allah&#8217;s name. These soldiers thought they were going to bring freedom, equality, and secular government to people who truly wanted those things and who would be grateful for them. These soldiers went into harm&#8217;s way unaware of the vast gulf between their own Western mental world and the Islamic mental world of the individuals, both “friends” and “enemies,” with whom they&#8217;d be dealing. That was the greatest crime of all: keeping the soldiers on the ground in the dark about the true nature of the enemy.</p>
<p>During the Cold War, America was governed by men who&#8217;d fought in World War II and who thus knew how fragile freedom is and how serious their task was. American voters, who had also lived through World War II, got it as well. They understood responsibility. Too many Americans today, alas, live in a historyless, present-obsessed fog of peace, privilege, and prosperity. Some of them barely grasp the difference between voting for president and voting for the People&#8217;s Choice Awards. And more than a few are driven by a concept of morality that isn&#8217;t about making tough decisions in the name of what&#8217;s right but is, rather, about doing whatever makes them feel non-racist, non-judgmental, non-prejudiced. It&#8217;s all about image – the way they appear to others, and the way they appear to themselves.</p>
<p>9/11 was a day of heroes and of villains, of stark contrasts between good and evil. Yet how quickly the politicians, journalists, and others in positions of power managed to make a muddle of it all. Instead of witnessing a democratization of the Middle East, we experienced a steady Islamization of the West. Instead of seeing freedom bloom in the Islamic world, we saw a rise in Western censorship and self-censorship on the subject of Islam. Some high-profile figures in the West have been put on trial for speaking the truth about Islam, while others have made sophisticated arguments for limiting freedom of expression and for introducing sharia law into Western courts.</p>
<p>When Osama bin Laden finally was taken out in 2011, almost ten years after 9/11 – an event that one might have expected to restore at least some degree of the national unity we experienced that day – it just brought on more fractiousness. Some on the left thought it had been criminal to kill bin Ladin (or, at least, unseemly to celebrate his demise); some on the right complained that Obama had taken too much credit for the Navy SEALs&#8217; work.</p>
<p>The last twelve years have underscored the vital importance of real leadership. It&#8217;s impossible not to compare the leaders we have had during these years to Churchill – and impossible not to dream of what might have been. Even now, Americans in positions of authority are still telling lies about Islam. As a result, millions of Americans still don&#8217;t understand the meaning of what happened that day. For many of them, a mere ten-minute lesson in the basics would make a huge difference. But they&#8217;ve never had that ten-minute lesson. Instead they&#8217;ve been inundated with untold thousands of hours of disinformation. It doesn&#8217;t just hamper their understanding of 9/11; it renders them incapable of fully comprehending, and intelligently addressing, every new challenge that comes along in the Muslim world, such as the question of whether the U.S. should bomb Syrian government installations – thus effectively allying itself with some of the very people who attacked us on 9/11 – or should, rather, focus its energies on trying to protect what is left of the free West from the ever-spreading toxin of Islamic rage.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s one thing to say “never forget.” But unless you have some sense of the strong, deep ideological roots of what happened<i> </i>on 9/11, remembering the horrific images themselves doesn&#8217;t, practically speaking, really amount to much. Rarely, if ever, has the truth of Santayana&#8217;s sober warning about knowing the past or being condemned to repeat it been so starkly manifest.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Coalition of the Unwilling</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamas-coalition-of-the-unwilling/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-coalition-of-the-unwilling</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Sep 2013 04:30:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The president and Kerry lose Europe. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Kerry.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202863" alt="Kerry" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Kerry-450x322.jpg" width="270" height="193" /></a>In 2004 and 2008, John Kerry and Barack Obama ran for office on a platform of repairing our diplomatic relations with Europe that they claimed George W. Bush had shattered with his unilateral cowboy antics.</p>
<p>Fast forward nine and five years respectively and the diplomatic dream team of Kerry and Obama, one of whom even speaks French, has assembled a Coalition of the Unwilling that mostly consists of France.</p>
<p>Obama and Kerry may have gained France, whose loss under Bush occasioned much agonizing from the Democrats, but they lost the United Kingdom, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland the Ukraine and the Czech Republic; all members of Bush’s Coalition of the Willing in Iraq.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Cameron lost a vote in the House of Commons over Syria; a defeat that the British paper <i>The Telegraph</i> blamed directly on Obama’s failures of international leadership.</p>
<p>George W. Bush, that rogue cowboy, had gone to the United Nations and reached out to his European allies to encourage them to stand with the United States. Faced with the need to rally Europe, Obama went to play another few rounds of golf and counted on his ambassador to do the work for him. That ambassador, an obnoxious creature named Matthew Barzun whose only qualification for the posting was the amount of money he raised for Obama, was too busy offending the Brits to be of much help.</p>
<p>Obama and Kerry made it clear that they would not bother with the United Nations; dramatically reversing their old position. They assumed that Europe would follow them. They were wrong.</p>
<p>The European elements of Bush’s Iraq Coalition of the Willing appear to be unenthusiastic about Obama’s latest war and are holding out for United Nations approval.</p>
<p>Italy has not only stated that it will not join up without United Nations approval, but Foreign Minister Emma Bonino warned that the strikes were a bad idea. &#8220;From a dramatic and terrible conflict, we run the risk of even a global conflagration,&#8221; she said. &#8220;This is how it always begins. Limited strikes without a U.N. mandate.&#8221;</p>
<p>“If the United Nations doesn’t back it, Italy won’t participate,” Prime Minister Enrico Letta said.</p>
<p>Italy had joined Bush’s Coalition of the Willing and dispatched 3,200 troops to Iraq in response to a good faith effort from President Bush at the United Nation, who worked with American allies instead of deciding that he wanted to bomb a country at the last minute while expecting our allies to go along.</p>
<p>Norway had joined Bush’s Coalition of the Willing, but opted out of Obama and Kerry’s Coalition of the Unwilling. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg wants to give diplomacy a chance while Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has said that he thinks the strikes will only destabilize Syria further.</p>
<p>The Netherlands has said that it will wait for a UN decision on Syria. Denmark has said that if the UN track fails, it may be willing to consider alternative options and that’s about as good as it gets for Obama. Bush’s Coalition of the Willing had included over 1,300 troops from the Netherlands.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland has said that he does not believe that a strike will stop the killings and that his country &#8220;does not plan to participate in any kind of intervention in Syria.&#8221; At its peak, there were 2,500 Polish soldiers in Iraq.</p>
<p>Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych had said that he opposes trying to solve problems in Syria using the military. Ukraine had contributed 1,650 troops in Iraq.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Jiří Rusnok said, “There are no legal grounds for an air strike against Syria; that is the beginning and the end of it for us.” The Czech Republic had been a member of the Coalition of the Willing.</p>
<p>Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius said that the decision should be made at the level of the United Nations. After meeting with Obama, Estonia has shown some signs of wanting to get on board, but considering that it contributed 40 soldiers to the Iraq mission, Obama shouldn’t get too excited.</p>
<p>Obama appears to still be waiting for Hungary to even condemn the use of chemical weapons; a basic first step before moving on to more serious action. But he can hardly blame Eastern Europe for a lack of enthusiasm after he showed far too much flexibility to Vladimir Putin over the Missile Shield.</p>
<p>Whatever coalition will be scraped together out of Europe will be a poor shadow of the much-mocked Bush Coalition of the Willing. And its strongest partner will be the French, whose contribution will be somewhat limited by their lack of ship based missiles.</p>
<p>Beyond Europe the situation is not much better. South Korea and Japan are frightened enough of China to stick close to America. That’s not a triumph of diplomacy. If Obama announced tomorrow that he wanted to bomb Hawaii or Mars, Japan and South Korea would cheerfully nod along because the Yankees are the only thing standing between them and the People’s Republic of China.</p>
<p>New Zealand had been a part of Bush’s coalition in Iraq. But this time around, Prime Minister John Key said that the decision to intervene in Syria should be left to the United Nations.</p>
<p>Obama stabbed Britain in the back while pandering to Argentina. Despite that, Argentina’s treacherous Cristina Fernandez showed that she was still in the pocket of the Iranian-Venezuelan alliance by strongly condemning any military action. Not only did Obama not gain Argentina, but he also lost the UK.</p>
<p>El Salvador, which contributed 380 men in Iraq, has issued a statement also condemning any foreign intervention.</p>
<p>Senator John Kerry began his career aiding Communist Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. Now as Kerry runs around trying to find a coalition for Syria, Ortega repaid Kerry’s favor by urging against further escalation of the conflict. Under Bush, Nicaragua had been a member of the Coalition of the Willing.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Honduras, a country that Obama alienated early on in his first term during the Zelaya Crisis by attempting and failing to impose a leftist leader on its government against the will of the country’s Supreme Court, signed on to a UNASUR declaration written by Venezuela  rejecting foreign intervention and calling for a peaceful solution in Syria.</p>
<p>Honduras had been a member of the Coalition of the Willing and had contributed 368 troops.</p>
<p>Obama and Kerry had both run for office promising to repair our diplomatic ties with Europe. Instead they shattered them as for the first time in a long time the United Kingdom chose to abandon the United States.</p>
<p>The media clamored that Obama and Kerry would achieve diplomatically what Bush could not. Instead they couldn’t even achieve a fraction of what Bush’s team did as the men of nuance proved to have less of it than the swaggering Texas cowboy.</p>
<p>Not only did Obama and Kerry lose the Middle East, but they also lost Europe and Latin America.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>252 Examples of Obama’s Lies, Lawbreaking &amp; Corruption</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tim-brown/252-examples-of-obamas-lying-lawbreaking-corruption/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=252-examples-of-obamas-lying-lawbreaking-corruption</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tim Brown]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The dirty dealings of the White House. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/barack-obama-195.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-201298 alignleft" alt="barack-obama-195" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/barack-obama-195-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>(Hat tip: Aaron Shuster.)</strong></p>
<p>The following is a contribution from <a href="http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/">Dan from Squirrel Hill</a>. The original title of the article is “<a href="http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/">Obama supporters will go hysterical over this well sourced list of 252 examples of his lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, etc.</a>” it’s lengthy, but is a ‘one-stop shop’ for all the dirty details on the Obama presidency.</p>
<p>Every President, every politician, and every human being tells lies and engages in acts of hypocrisy. But Barack Obama does these things to a far greater degree than anyone else that I have ever known of. His campaign promises were so much better sounding than anyone else’s – no lobbyists in his administration, waiting five days before signing all non-emergency bills so people would have time to read them, putting health care negotiations on C-SPAN, reading every bill line by line to make sure money isn’t being wasted, prosecution of Wall St. criminals, ending raids against medical marijuana in states where it’s legal, high levels of transparency. Obama’s promises of these wonderful things sounded inspiring and sincere. They sounded so much better than the promises of any other President. So when Obama broke these promises, it felt so much worse than when other Presidents broke their promises.</p>
<p>In the 2008 United States election, I wrote in Ron Paul for President. In the 2012 election, I voted for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Those who are of a more leftist persuasion than myself might want to consider voting for the Green Party in future elections.</p>
<p>Some of the things on this list are major events that should scare the daylights out of any true liberal who cares about civil liberties.</p>
<p>Other things on this list are medium things that some Obama supporters may dislike, but would be willing to overlook in light of the things that Obama has done which they like.</p>
<p>And some of the things on this list may seem trivial, but I still think they are an interesting reflection of the kinds of policies that Obama supports.</p>
<p>Every claim that I make in this list is sourced. Click on the blue text to see the sources. I have cited a wide variety of sources, from right wing, to left wing, to middle of the road.</p>
<p>I welcome any comments and criticisms that you may have. If you say my list is wrong, please back up your claim by citing specific examples.</p>
<p>And now, on with the list:</p>
<p>1) <b>Carried out military interventionism in Libya without Congressional approval</b></p>
<p>In June 2011, U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said that Obama had violated the Constitution when he launched military operations in <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/166577-kucinich-jones-sue-white-house-over-libya-war">Libya</a> without Congressional approval.</p>
<p>2) <b>Gave a no-bid contract to Halliburton – just like Bush did</b></p>
<p>In May 2010, it was <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/13/obamas-mounting-hypocrisy/">reported</a> that the Obama administration had selected KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, for a no-bid contract worth as much as $568 million through 2011, just hours after the Justice Department had said it would pursue a lawsuit accusing the Houston-based company of using kickbacks to get foreign contracts.</p>
<p>3) <b>Has an administration full of lobbyists, after promising he wouldn’t have any</b></p>
<p>While running for President, Obama had promised that, unlike Bush, he would not have any lobbyists working in his administration. However, by February 2010, he had more than 40 <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2010/02/04/has-obama-really-excluded-lobbyists-from-his-staff/">lobbyists</a> working in his administration.</p>
<p>4) <b>Has close ties to Wall St., but pretends to support Occupy Wall St.</b></p>
<p>Although Obama claims to support the Occupy Wall St. movement, the truth is that he has raised <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/10/obama-attacks-banks-while-raking-in-wall-street-dough/">more</a> money from Wall St. than any other candidate during the last 20 years. In early 2012, Obama held a fundraiser where Wall St. investment bankers and hedge fund managers each paid <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-14/obama-returns-to-nyc-for-first-wall-street-fundraiser-of-year.html">$35,800</a> to attend. In October 2011, Obama <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/25/obama-defies-base-hires-wall-street-lobbyist-for-re-election-campaign/">hired</a> Broderick Johnson, a longtime Wall Street lobbyist, to be his new senior campaign adviser. Johnson had worked as a lobbyist for JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, Comcast, Microsoft, and the oil industry.</p>
<p>5)<b> Broke his promise to close Guantanamo Bay</b></p>
<p>Obama <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/guantanamo-bay-open-promises/story?id=16698768">broke</a> his promise to close Guantanamo Bay.</p>
<p>6) <b>Supported the $700 billion TARP corporate-welfare bailout just like Bush</b></p>
<p>While Senator, Obama <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&amp;session=2&amp;vote=00213">voted</a> for the $700 billion TARP bank bailout bill. The bailout rewarded irresponsible and illegal behavior. It redirected resources from more productive uses to less productive uses. It punished the hard working taxpayers who had played by the rules and obeyed the law. It created horrible incentives, and sent the wrong message. The bailout was evil because it rewarded the bad people and punished the good people. No society that does this can expect to remain free or prosperous. Instead of bailing out these corrupt corporations, we should have let them cease to exist, like we did with Enron.</p>
<p>7) <b>Waged the biggest war against medical marijuana of any president, which was the opposite of what he had promised</b></p>
<p>In May 2008, Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/12/MNKK10FD53.DTL">said</a> that Obama would end DEA raids on medical marijuana in states where it’s legal. Also in 2008, Obama <a href="https://www.thcfarmer.com/community/threads/obamas-pot-promise-a-pipe-dream.47950/">said</a> that he supported the “basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs” and that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws.”</p>
<p>However, in February 2010, DEA agents <a href="http://www.9news.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=132606">raided</a> a medical marijuana grower in Highlands Ranch in Colorado, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Also in February 2010, DEA agents <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/02/federal-agents-raid-marina-del-rey-marijuana-dispensary.html">raided</a> a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City in California, a state where medical marijuana is legal. In July 2010, the DEA <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/02/federal-agents-raid-marina-del-rey-marijuana-dispensary.html">raided</a> at least four medical marijuana growers in San Diego, California. Also in July 2010, the DEA <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/09/in-the-obama-age-of-no-more-fe">raided</a> a medical marijuana facility in Covelo, California. Then in September 2010, the DEA conducted <a href="http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=6115">raids</a> on at least five medical marijuana dispensaries in Las Vegas, Nevada, where medical marijuana is legal. In 2011, the DEA conducted <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/07/12/137791944/obama-cracks-down-on-medical-marijuana%20Obama%20Cracks%20Down%20On%20Medical%20Marijuana%5D,%20NPR,%20July%2012,%202011%3C/ref%3E">raids</a> on medical marijuana in Seattle, Washington, West Hollywood, California, and Helena, Montana, all places where it is legal. In April 2012, the DEA carried out several <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/02/BABJ1NTK9T.DTL&amp;tsp=1">raids</a> on medical marijuana in Oakland, California.</p>
<p>In February 2012, Rolling Stone magazine <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-war-on-pot-20120216">wrote</a> that Obama’s war against medical marijuana went “far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush.” In April 2012, Mother Jones magazine <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/federal-raid-oaksterdam-oakland-marijuana">wrote</a>: “The president campaigned on the promise that he’d stop federal raids on medical marijuana operations that were in compliance with state laws, a vow that Attorney General Eric Holder repeated after the election. But then the Obama administration raided more than 100 dispensaries in its first three years and is now poised to outpace the Bush administration’s crackdown record.” In May 2012, the Washington Post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/medical-marijuana-meets-hostility-from-obama-administration/2012/05/04/gIQA80GK2T_story.html">wrote</a>: “Obama has become more hostile to medical marijuana patients than any president in U.S. history.” In May 2012, U.S. Congressperson Nancy Pelosi (D-California) <a href="http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Pelosi-Questions-Obama-Marijuana-Policy-150252035.html">said</a> she had “strong concerns” about Obama’s forced closure of five medical marijuana facilities in Pelosi’s congressional district. In April 2012, commenting on Obama’s crackdown on medical marijuana, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) <a href="https://www.thcfarmer.com/community/threads/obamas-pot-promise-a-pipe-dream.47950/">said</a>, “I’m very disappointed… They look more like the Bush administration than the Clinton administration.”</p>
<p>In July 2012, federal prosecutors <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/12/us-usa-marijuana-california-idUSBRE86B02I20120712">filed</a> civil forfeiture actions against  Harborside Health Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland, CA, which claims to be the world’s largest, and which claims to serve more than 100,000 medical marijuana patients. In April 2012, federal agents <a href="http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oaksterdam-University-Raided-by-Feds-145765015.html">raided</a> Oaksterdam University, an educational institution in Oakland, CA, which teaches people about medical marijuana. In April 2012, federal agents <a href="http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/lake-elsinore/lake-elsinore-headlines-index/20120404-lake-elsinore-medical-marijuana-dispensary-raided.ece">raided</a> a medical marijuana facility which had been serving 1,500 patients near Lake Elsinore, CA. In June 2012, the Obama administration <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/14/us-usa-marijuana-landlords-idUSBRE85D0JA20120614">filed</a> asset-forfeiture lawsuits against two landlords who rented their buildings to medical marijuana stores in Santa Fe Springs, CA. The Obama administration also sent warning letters which threatened similar legal action to dozens of other, nearby landlords. During the first seven months of 2012, the DEA <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/07/19/obamas_pot_problem/">shut down</a>40 medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado, all of which had been operating in compliance with state and local law.</p>
<p>In July 2013, the DEA conducted multiple medical marijuana <a href="http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/3e3b3bb3811441e0acf07bd73b10dcd6/WA--Marijuana-Dispensaries-Raids/">raids</a> in Washington state, including the cities of Olympia, Tacoma, and Seattle.</p>
<p>In May 2012, ABC News <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-and-his-pot-smoking-choom-gang/">reported</a> that during Obama’s youth, he often smoked large quantities of recreational marijuana.  Obama’s marijuana smoking wasn’t even medical – it was recreational. And yet now, he is taking large scale, widespread action to prevent people with AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, and other illnesses, who have prescriptions from their doctors, from using their prescription medicine – how cold hearted can a person be?</p>
<p>8) <b>Nominated a six-time tax cheater to head the government agency that enforces the tax laws</b></p>
<p>Obama nominated Timothy Geithner, a repeat <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/18/AR2009011802070.html">tax cheater</a>, to head the government agency that enforces the tax laws.</p>
<p>Prior to his nomination, Geithner had:</p>
<p>1) Illegally failed to pay more than <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/us/politics/15tax.html?_r=1&amp;">$34,000</a> in social security and Medicare taxes</p>
<p>2) Illegally declared the cost of his children’s <a href="http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1872925,00.html">summer camp</a> as a form of day care.</p>
<p>3) Illegally failed to pay the early withdrawal <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123187503629378119.html">penalty</a> when he took money out of his retirement plan</p>
<p>4) Illegally declared non-eligible items as a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123187503629378119.html">charitable</a> deduction</p>
<p>5) Illegally declared something which was ineligible as a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123187503629378119.html">small business</a> deduction</p>
<p>6) Illegally declared <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123187503629378119.html">utility expenses</a> which had actually been for his personal use</p>
<p>9) <b>Gave tax dollars to AIG executives, then pretended to be outraged about it</b></p>
<p>Obama <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/17/aig.bonuses.congress/">signed</a> a stimulus bill that spent money on bonuses for AIG executives. Prior to signing this bill, Obama had <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/512/go-line-line-over-earmarks-make-sure-money-being-s/">said</a>, “when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” However, after reading “line by line” and signing the stimulus bill that protected the AIG bonuses, Obama <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/politics/17obama.html?fta=y">pretended</a> to be shocked and outraged at the bonuses, and said, “Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay… How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” and also said that he would “pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses.”</p>
<p>10) <b>Expanded Bush’s unconstitutional government faith based programs</b></p>
<p>Obama <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/obama-calls-for-expansion-of-faith-program/">expanded</a> the federal government’s faith based programs which had been started by President George W. Bush.</p>
<p>11) <b>Supported Bush’s unconstitutional Patriot Act</b></p>
<p>In May 2011, Obama <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/patriot-act-extension-signed-into-law-despite-bipartisan-resistance-in-congress/2011/05/27/AGbVlsCH_story.html">signed</a> a renewal of the Patriot Act.</p>
<p>12) <b>Increased the national debt more in one term than Bush did in two</b></p>
<p>The national debt <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/">increased</a> more during Obama’s first three years and two months than it did during all eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.</p>
<p>13) <b>Agrees with Bush’s support of unconstitutional, indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without filing any charges</b></p>
<p>In December 2011, ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero criticized Obama for signing a bill that gave the U.S. government the power to<a href="http://www.aclu.org/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-law">indefinitely detain</a> U.S. citizens without any charges being filed or any trial taking place.</p>
<p>14) <b>Agrees with Bush’s support of unconstitutional, warrantless wiretapping</b></p>
<p>President Obama has <a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_Administration_quietly_expands_Bushs_legal_0407.html">defended</a> warrantless wiretapping.</p>
<p>15) <b>Avoided prosecution of Wall. St criminals</b></p>
<p>Although Obama had <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-can-t-obama-bring-wall-street-to-justice.html">promised</a> to prosecute Wall St. criminals, during <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-wall-street-execs-werent-prosecuted-2013-1">his entire first term</a>, his administration did not file any criminal charges against any of the top financial executives.</p>
<p>16) <b>Had four U.S. citizens killed without judicial process</b></p>
<p>Obama had <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-acknowledges-killing-of-four-us-citizens-in-counterterrorism-operations/2013/05/22/7a21cf84-c31d-11e2-8c3b-0b5e9247e8ca_print.html">four</a> U.S. citizens killed without judicial process.</p>
<p>The ACLU <a href="http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/aclu-lens-american-citizen-anwar-al-aulaqi-killed-without-judicial-process">accused</a> Obama of violating the U.S. Constitution for doing this.</p>
<p>U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65035.html">said</a> that Obama’s actions might be an impeachable offense.</p>
<p>17) <b>Ordered private company to fire 1,000 employees</b></p>
<p>In 2011, after Boeing had hired 1,000 new employees to work at its new factory in South Carolina, the Obama administration ordered Boeing to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/business/21boeing.html?_r=2">shut down</a> the factory, because the factory was non-union.</p>
<p>18) <b>Stole money from retired teachers and police officers</b></p>
<p>During the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama violated the Fifth Amendment and more than 150 years of bankruptcy law by illegally treating secured creditors <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32074">worse</a> than unsecured creditors. Some of these secured creditors were retired teachers and police officers from Indiana. Richard A. Epstein, a law professor at New York University School of Law, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/11/chrysler-bankruptcy-mortgage-opinions-columnists-epstein.html">wrote</a>, “Upsetting this fixed hierarchy among creditors is just an illegal taking of property from one group of creditors for the benefit of another, which should be struck down on both statutory and constitutional grounds.” Todd Zywicki, Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-auto-bailout-and-the-rule-of-law">wrote</a> that Obama’s treatment of secured creditors was “dangerous to the rule of law.” The Economist <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/13610871?story_id=13610871">wrote</a> that Obama’s actions could “establish a terrible precedent. Bankruptcy exists to sort legal claims on assets. If it becomes a tool of social policy, who will then lend to struggling firms in which the government has a political interest?” Francis Cianfrocca, the CEO of Bayshore Networks, <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/wealth-creation-under-attack/">wrote</a> that Obama’s actions were “an astonishingly reckless abrogation of contract law that will introduce a new level of uncertainty into business transactions at all levels, and make wealth generation more difficult going forward… An extraordinary uncertainty has been created when the most powerful man in the world can rewrite contracts and choose winners and losers in private negotiations as he sees fit. Since this is an unquantifiable uncertainty, and not a quantifiable risk, its effect on business and investor confidence will be large and unpredictable. As in the 1930s, a time when government also cavalierly rewrote private contracts, the prudent approach for business will be to invest minimally and wait for another administration.”</p>
<p>19) <b>Supported release of convicted mass murderer</b></p>
<p>In 2010, Obama supported <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/white-house-backed-release-of-lockerbie-bomber-abdel-baset-al-megrahi/story-e6frg6so-1225896741041">releasing</a> Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi (who had been <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/airplane_accidents_and_incidents/pan_am_flight_103/index.html">convicted</a> of murdering 270 people) from prison.</p>
<p>20) <b>Illegally put thousands of guns into hands of criminals</b></p>
<p>In Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2011/09/28/fast-and-furious-just-might-be-president-obamas-watergate/">ordered</a> gun storeowners to illegally sell thousands of guns to criminals.</p>
<p><em><strong>Read more at <a href="http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/08/252-documented-examples-of-barack-obamas-lying-lawbreaking-corruption-cronyism-etc/#ixzz2cQcqrrrw">FreedomOutpost.com</a>.</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>What Terrorists Want</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/what-terrorists-want/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-terrorists-want</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:36:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Appeasement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War on Terror]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200206</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Romancing jihadists -- the liberal way.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/militantes.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200210" alt="militantes" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/militantes.jpg" width="255" height="209" /></a>Freud famously said that what women want was the one question that he was never able to answer. The modern liberal, having abolished gender and the family, no longer worries about what women want. Instead he worries what the terrorists, who despite his best efforts to appease them, to respect their culture and religion keep blowing him up, want.</p>
<p>Recently it came out that the creative director of the September 11 Museum opposed including the famous photo that shows New York City firefighters raising the flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center. When reached for comment, the creative director said that he did not want to simplify 9/11.</p>
<p>&#8220;Its simplicity,&#8221; he said, &#8220;would actually distort the complexity of the event, the meaning of the event.&#8221;</p>
<p>Liberals are great lovers of nuance. Ask an ordinary New Yorker who saw the planes hit the towers what the terrorists want and he will say, “To kill us all.” But to the left that is an excessive simplification that leaves out such key elements as American foreign policy, the role of automation in a global economy and the price of tea in China.</p>
<p>The great critique of the Bush years was that the Texas cowboy lacked nuance. He saw people who were killing us, instead of people aggrieved by our carbon crimes, our support for governments that terrorists don’t like and our undercutting of the Beijing tea market.</p>
<p>Out went the cowboy on his steed and in rode the diplomat on his ass. Reset buttons were pushed, and pushed again, speeches were given and concessions were made.</p>
<p>The left got its way with a foreign policy based on nuance and giving the terrorists what they want by empowering political Islam. And the Middle East has never been more unstable, more dangerous or more on the verge of exploding than in the Age of Nuance.</p>
<p>To understand how we got here, it’s instructive to look at a book that was typical of the left’s Bush-era terrorist revisionism.</p>
<p><i>What Terrorists Want</i> by Louise Richardson attempted to do for terrorists what Freud could not do for women. And despite her impressive credentials as a former IRA member and Harvard executive dean of Advanced Study, she got terrorists as wrong as Freud got women.</p>
<p>Richardson’s ideas weren’t unique. They were part of the dominant liberal critique of the Bush years. And since then, their false assumptions have become bad policy. Terrorists couldn’t be defeated. Instead they had to be isolated through complex programs of appeasement. America had to prioritize its alliances and liberal values over the messy bloody act of actually killing terrorists.</p>
<p>The ex-terrorist and Harvard faculty member suggested that the United States negotiate with Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. And if negotiating with the leader of Al Qaeda in order to isolate and defeat Al Qaeda isn’t nuance, what is? What is the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound? If we appease Al Qaeda to defeat Al Qaeda, do our nuanced one-handed handshakes with our new pal Ayman make a squishing noise?</p>
<p>Back in 1998, Ayman Al-Zawahiri had proclaimed in a fatwa with Bin Laden, &#8220;We, with Allah&#8217;s help, call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah&#8217;s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.&#8221;</p>
<p>It would take a river of denial the size of the one in Al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian homeland to find any nuance in that, but Richardson wasn’t just swimming in a river of denial; she and her agreeable liberal readers and reviewers were drowning in an ocean of the stuff.</p>
<p>&#8220;Its [Al Qaeda's] interest in weapons of mass destruction was driven more by a desire to intimidate us and defend itself against us than by the desire to deploy them in the United States,&#8221; Richardson wrote. That statement would have been bad enough in 1998; it was downright criminally inexcusable after September 11. Any book that contained the claim should have been laughed off the lowest shelves.</p>
<p>And yet Richardson’s thesis was widely accepted. If only we would talk to the terrorists, find some common ground, convince them to run for office, then the problem would be solved.  The terrorists don’t want to kill us. Even if they’re brandishing a dirty bomb, it’s only in self-defense.</p>
<p>Six years later, the experiment was attempted. Obama threw everything America had into “smart” programs for “Countering Violent Extremism.”</p>
<p>A “Hearts and Minds” program was deployed in Afghanistan that cost the lives of countless American soldiers. In the Middle East, friendly governments were edged aside to make way for the political Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood who were meant to serve as moderate role models for Al Qaeda by showing them that terrorist groups can take over a country by winning elections … instead of planting bombs. At home, every arm of the government, including NASA, was retasked to handle the formidable challenge of enhancing Muslim self-esteem to keep Muslim teenagers from becoming surly acne-ridden suicide bombers.</p>
<p>The liberal prescription of defeating Muslim terrorists by isolating them through the appeasement of every other Islamist group was and is the single most insane foreign policy ever perpetrated. And it has now culminated in arms being sent to Muslim Brotherhood terrorists.</p>
<p>The withdrawal of American support didn’t lead to friendly Islamist rule, but political civil wars between the Islamists and the liberals with both sides blaming and hating America more than ever. Domestically, pandering to Muslims did not stop the “Lone Wolf” attacks perpetrated by Muslims in America.</p>
<p>Six years later, Louise Richardson hasn’t written a sequel to “What Terrorists Want.” There is no, “What Terrorists Want Even More,” “50 Shades of Terrorism” or “Chicken Soup for the Terrorist Soul.” It’s doubtful that this is because Richard knows that she was wrong. More likely it’s because she has nothing more to add.</p>
<p>Obama, Inc. doesn’t appear to have carried out some of Richardson’s wilder proposals, such as negotiating with Al Qaeda, but the general outline of his program is the one that liberals, including Richardson, were calling for.</p>
<p>But what do terrorists really want? They want to win, while we seem to want to lose. The foreign policy prescriptions of liberal experts like the idea of us losing.</p>
<p>&#8220;The way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently,&#8221; the creative director of the September 11 museum said.</p>
<p>There’s no way that we can stop being Americans, but we can start feeling bad about that. We can stop thrilling at the sight of an American flag rising over the rubble of Ground Zero and learn to feel bad about it. We can stop wanting to win and start trying to lose.</p>
<p>And then maybe we’ll finally understand what the terrorists want. What they really, really want.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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