Archive for April 2017

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Humor | An epidemic of TDS in the Marx Bros. media

April 7, 2017

An epidemic of TDS in the Marx Bros. media, Washington Times, Wesley Pruden, April 6, 2017

President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week’s gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Just about the time the fever on the nut left seems to be subsiding there’s another outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Normal-looking folk who sound like they escaped a Marx Bros. movie fall into a relapse.

The bombshell that Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s chief source of intelligence, was guilty of “unmasking” Trump campaigners identified in intelligence findings, unhinged several commentators on the television networks. Colleagues and bystanders couldn’t decide whether to call security or medics.

The Chicken Noodle Network demonstrated why it has fallen on hard times, saying it would not report bad news about its favorite political personalities. “Let us be very clear about this,” said Don Lemon, one of CNN’s star news readers and part-time house dick. “There is no evidence whatsoever that the Trump team was spied on illegally. There is no evidence that backs up the president’s original claim. And on this program tonight, we will not insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise, nor will we aid and abet the people who are trying to misinform you [with] a diversion.” Mr. Lemon’s viewers who want to know would have to go to another channel for another investigator.

At MSNBC, the leading television network on Planet Pluto, Chris Matthews was more than willing to talk about the bombshell but first he had to find someone to help him get a grip. The bug that crawls up his leg when he thinks about Barack Obama was biting again.

When he thought about it, he was sure that the Rice bombshell, with the implication that whatever U.S. intelligence sources had picked up about the Trump campaign had been passed on to the Insurrection, was fake news the new president was pushing to distract attention from the investigations into contacts, if any, between Mr. Trump and the Russians.

“Why is [the president] going after Susan Rice?” he demanded of no one present. “It’s like he pulls out — he’s like an old [disc jockey]. He pulls out old records from 20 years ago and plays them again.”

Then he played video clips from three Republican senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — raising questions about Miss Rice’s behavior, and read a tweet from Mike Huckabee speculating about Susan Rice in an orange prison jump suit. Sen. Cotton called her Typhoid Mary, for showing up every time there was a scandal or shame in the Obama administration.

“Oh, God,” cried David Corn, a guest panelist.

“I mean,” said Chris, “Huckabee has no shame. These guys are trooping along, like camp followers of Trump.”

Piped up another guest, one Simon Marks: “They’re looking for a pinata. They found one in Susan Rice. I do think — “

Chris allows no thinking on his show, so he cut him off in midsentence. “Notice it’s a female. Just a thought.” (Only Chris is permitted an occasional random thought.)

“Well, said Simon Marks, trying to get back in the conversation, “that’s true. That’s also true. But I do think she slightly played into her hand — into their hands.

“Typhoid Mary?” asked Chris.

Well, no. Mr. Marks was talking about Susan Rice. Chris does not always pay attention when someone else is talking. He interrupted again.

“Susan Rice’s job is to watch national security,” Chris said, apparently unaware that Susan Rice hasn’t had that job since America changed presidents. There’s not only a new president, but a new adviser with the job of “watching national security.”

But then Chris wanted to talk about the movies. He suggested that Susan Rice, or maybe it was Tom Cotton or Mike Huckabee, he wasn’t sure, had been living in the Bates Motel, with a deranged killer from the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie “Psycho.” Chris watches a lot of movies and sometimes has trouble keeping the characters straight.

Then it was off for a history lesson. The Trump family, particularly First Daughter Ivanka Trump Kushner, reminds him of the Romanovs, the Imperial Russian family slain by revolutionaries in 1917. Trump Derangement Syndrome apparently encourages fantasies about assassinations. A columnist for The Washington Post seemed to observe not long ago that assassinations often put an end to unhappy eras.

Treating Trump Derangement Syndrome is not easy. Dr. Quackenbush, the celebrated physician would tell you that we must be patient, because there will be episodes of intense derangement, and then the affliction subsides, only to flare again. The confirmation this week of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to unhinge Chris, David and Don again.

Dr. Quackenbush, who achieved celluloid immortality in the Marx Brothers movie “A Day at the Races,” was trained to doctor horses, and he would know which end of Chris and the guys to examine. If only he were here.

Categories: Humor, Intelligence community, Intelligence leaks, Media and Trump, Susan Rice, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Unmasking
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Trump Readies Executive Order To Open The Arctic, Atlantic Oceans To Drilling

April 7, 2017

Trump Readies Executive Order To Open The Arctic, Atlantic Oceans To Drilling,  Daily Caller, Michael Bastasch, April 7, 2017

(What will OPEC say? — DM)

Offshore oil rig drilling platform. (Credit: Kanok Sulaiman/Shutterstock)

The Trump administration is developing an order to open new areas to offshore oil and gas drilling, reversing former President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to lock up most of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, according to industry sources.

Industry sources familiar with the matter told Platts an executive order is in the works to rewind Obama’s decision to make large swaths of the Arctic and Atlantic off-limits to oil and gas drilling.

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke told industry representatives the new drilling plan would be signed soon, according to Bloomberg. However, he gave few details on what the order could include.

The Department of the Interior’s (DOI) new five-year offshore drilling plan could take years to develop and would replace the Obama administration’s five-year plan finalized in November.

President Donald Trump promised to end Obama-era restrictions on energy production in order to unlock revenue from natural resources and create jobs. DOI raised $275 million in bids in a recent lease auction for the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump is expected to sign the order by the end of April, and it’s sure to draw legal challenges from environmentalists who’ve argued Obama’s indefinite ban on Arctic and Atlantic drilling can’t be overturned.

Obama used Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a 1953 law governing offshore drilling, in an unprecedented way, blocking leases in the Atlantic Ocean and the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Obama’s order took 125 million acres in Arctic seas and four million acres in the Atlantic Ocean out of future lease sales indefinitely. Supporters said the former president’s actions “permanently” banned drilling in those regions.

But the drilling ban is only permanent if Congress doesn’t change the law or Trump doesn’t move to test it in court. Past presidents have reduced the size of Section 12(a) designations but never fully repealed them.

The U.S.-held portion of the Arctic Ocean is estimated to hold 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The oil and gas industry has struggled to access these vast energy reserves but new discoveries in northern Alaska have reinvigorated some interest in the region.

 

Categories: Arctic, Atlantic Ocean, Drilling for oil, Trump and oil drilling
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Syrian-American Reformer Commends Syria Strikes, Urges Vigilance

April 7, 2017

Syrian-American Reformer Commends Syria Strikes, Urges Vigilance, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, , April 7, 2017

By reducing a dictator’s capacity to kill, we have a chance of re-establishing America’s position in the world as a moral authority, and we can begin again to re-commit ourselves to the sacred commitment of ‘never again,’ something Barack Obama failed to do.”

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The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) welcomes the news of targeted strikes in Syria, meant to send a message to Bashar al-Assad and his allies that the use of chemical weapons will not stand. Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, the son of Syrians who fled the regime of Bashar al-Assad’s father, today said:

“When news broke that the United States had begun a narrow campaign of targeted strikes against regime targets in Syria, I felt immediate gratitude – on behalf of my family members there, and for our country, which has watched in horror for six long years as the Assad regime has carried out mass torture and murder of its civilians. While I am hopeful that these strikes are indicative of a bolder, firm Syria strategy – I am under no illusion that they will end Assad’s murderous rule, or that any transition in Syria will happen swiftly or easily. In many ways, we who have loved ones in Syria, and we who care about the human condition – are taking what we can get here – with hope that there will be more, even bolder action in Syria. What this action by President Trump does indicate is that the needle of American policy in Syria is moving closer to being on the right side of history. To secure our place there, however, we must remain vigilant, remembering that a conflict with Assad is necessarily a conflict with Russia, with Iran, and with Hizbollah. These limited, targeted strikes should continue, focused on reducing Assad’s access to resources, especially weapons. Every reduction in his assets is a reduction in his capacity to murder and maim civilians. By reducing a dictator’s capacity to kill, we have a chance of re-establishing America’s position in the world as a moral authority, and we can begin again to re-commit ourselves to the sacred commitment of ‘never again,’ something Barack Obama failed to do.”

Categories: AIFD, Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, Missile strike in Syria, Russia, Syria - chemical weapons, Trump's America, Zuhdi Jasser
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Senate confirms Gorsuch to Supreme Court

April 7, 2017

Senate confirms Gorsuch to Supreme Court, Washington Examiner, Ruan Lovelace, April 7, 2017

His swearing-in ceremony is expected to be held Monday.

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The Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday.

The Republican majority was joined in the 54-45 vote by a few Democrats in confirming the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals judge to the high court. Gorsuch’s success comes after the Senate killed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations on Thursday, effectively paving the way for Gorsuch to join the high court. After the Democratic minority mounted a successful partisan filibuster of Gorsuch, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell deployed the “nuclear option” to lower the vote threshold necessary to confirm Gorsuch from 60 to 51 votes. Gorsuch cleared that threshold Friday morning.

“The Supreme Court to me is a sacred institution,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who supported Gorsuch, said Friday. “We’ve had great Democratic justices. We’ve had great Republican justices. … Neil Gorsuch, I have every confidence, will be one of the all-time great justices for that court.”

Gorsuch, a Colorado native, is expected to be seated on the Supreme Court before oral arguments resume later this month. The newest justice is a self-identified originalist, a judicial philosophy popularized by the late Justice Antonin Scalia whose seat Gorsuch will fill. His addition to the high court is expected to restore the status quo that existed with Scalia on the bench in many cases with few anticipated deviations.

Conservative legal scholars cheering Gorsuch’s nomination have long cited his writing and record on the separation of powers and religious liberty issues as evidence that he may help move the court in their direction. As a former Supreme Court clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy, conservatives also have expressed optimism that he can build new coalitions with Kennedy to push the high court’s frequent swing vote to the right.

Friday’s victory for Gorsuch gives a win to President Trump and the outside conservative groups who have worked for months to ensure Gorsuch’s confirmation. The judge’s confirmation team included the White House counsel’s office, McConnell’s office, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican National Committee and outside conservative groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network and America Rising. Former New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Gorsuch’s former law clerks also assisted.

Democrats’ objection to Gorsuch largely focused on Republicans’ blockade of Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination by former President Barack Obama to fill the same seat. The Senate Democrats who took issue with Gorsuch himself focused on his performance during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, particularly his reluctance to answer questions involving cases and controversies that could come before him on the high court.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Whip Dick Durbin hammered Gorsuch repeatedly as a friend of the wealthy and foe of the “little guy,” and cited the “frozen trucker” case as an example where they believe harm came as a result of Gorsuch’s rulings. Durbin spoke ahead of Friday’s vote and criticized Gorsuch as a nominee handpicked by conservative activists.

“Where did the name Neil Gorsuch come from?” Durbin said. “He was the choice of the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. If you know these two groups, you know they’re Republican advocacy groups.”

The Judicial Crisis Network launched a $10 million campaign for Gorsuch with partners such as America Rising and Tea Party Patriots to mobilize conservative grass-roots supporters and pressure Senate Democrats to confirm Gorsuch.

“Congratulations to Judge Gorsuch on his confirmation, and to President Trump and [Senate Majority] Leader McConnell on this extraordinary achievement,” said Carrie Severino, Judicial Crisis Network chief counsel and policy director “Because of their leadership, and because of Judge Gorsuch’s commitment to judicial independence and the rule of law, Justice Scalia’s legacy will continue on the Supreme Court.”

Leonard Leo, an adviser to Trump for the Supreme Court nominaton, said that Gorsuch brings the nation “one step closer to seeing the preservation of [Scalia’s] legacy on the court.”

“Throughout his career, Judge Gorsuch has demonstrated his commitment to judicial independence and to deciding cases according to the law instead of political preferences. I applaud President Trump for choosing such an outstanding nominee, and Leader McConnell and his colleagues for defeating an unprecedented partisan filibuster.”

Gorsuch, whose Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearings lasted more than 20 hours, has been largely mum on the political process leading to his confirmation. Gorsuch said during the hearings there was “a great deal about the process I regret,” including putting his family through it. During his remarks on the night of his nomination Gorsuch, pledged to “do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country.”

His swearing-in ceremony is expected to be held Monday.

Categories: Neil Gorsuch, U.S. Senate, U.S. Supreme Court
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KLEIN – Iran Is the Wild Card Following U.S. Air Strikes In Syria

April 7, 2017

KLEIN – Iran Is the Wild Card Following U.S. Air Strikes In Syria, Breitbart, Aaron Klein, April 7, 2017

U.S. Navy/via AP

President Vladimir Putin cannot risk a military confrontation with Trump and Russia is already signaling willingness to abandon Assad to come to a larger regional accommodation.

Still, there is the possibility that Russia may quietly support action by others, especially agents of a very nervous Iranian regime that has been preparing proxies for years who can heat up Israel’s northern border and beyond.  Both Moscow and Tehran have reason for wanting Trump to pay a price for acting in their Syrian playground.  The question is whether they will dare to respond, even tacitly.

The next few days and weeks will be critical in determining Iran and Russia’s resolve in the face of an awakened America that has returned from its eight-year slumber.

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TEL AVIV – Following the U.S. launch of Tomahawk missiles targeting a strategic Syrian airfield on Thursday night, Iran must be monitored carefully for the possibility that it may use its proxies for retaliation, especially against Israel’s northern border.

Following eight years of inaction on Syria under the Obama administration, President Donald Trump demonstrated last night that he is willing to hold Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to account, this time by striking the Shayrat Airfield near the Syrian city of Homs that was believed to have been utilized to carry out a chemical weapons attack that killed scores of civilians.

The U.S. airstrikes signaled to Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers that Trump will act in Syria and the administration strongly supports the removal of the Syrian president – an important strategic ally of Moscow and Tehran. The U.S. military move demonstrates to Israel and the Sunni Arab bloc cast aside by Obama’s nuclear deal with the mullahs that American leadership has officially returned to the region.

Assad himself is unlikely to retaliate since the last thing he wants amidst a years-long insurgency attempting to topple his regime is to go to war with Trump or expand the battlefield to U.S. ally Israel.

Trump’s bold authority in Syria directly threatens Russian interests since it was Moscow that largely filled the security vacuum in that country when Obama repeatedly failed to take any meaningful action against Assad. However, Russia’s direct response will most likely be confined to vocal protestation, such as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the U.S. strikes “aggression against a sovereign nation” carried out on a “made-up pretext.”

President Vladimir Putin cannot risk a military confrontation with Trump and Russia is already signaling willingness to abandon Assad to come to a larger regional accommodation.

Still, there is the possibility that Russia may quietly support action by others, especially agents of a very nervous Iranian regime that has been preparing proxies for years who can heat up Israel’s northern border and beyond.  Both Moscow and Tehran have reason for wanting Trump to pay a price for acting in their Syrian playground.  The question is whether they will dare to respond, even tacitly.

And that brings us to Iran.  Trump’s embrace of America’s traditional Sunni Arab partners at the expense of Tehran and his strong positions against the disastrous international nuclear agreement have been deeply concerning to the expansionist, terrorist-supporting Twelvers in Tehran.  And while the removal of Assad from power would be a blow to Russia, depending on the ultimate outcome such a move could be disastrous for Iran’s position in Syria.  Iranian Revolutionary Guard units have been fighting the anti-Assad insurgents alongside the Syrian military and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.  Syria represents a key pawn in Iran’s geopolitical chessboard that stretches across the vital region.

In recent weeks, there have been strong indications that Iran has been seeking to arm its Hezbollah proxy with even more advanced weapons that can target the Jewish state. Last month, Israel took the unusual step of striking a Hezbollah weapons convoy near the city of Palmyra that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was transporting advanced weapons to the Iran-backed militia.

Israeli leaders and Hezbollah terrorists have in recent weeks ratcheted up war rhetoric, with Israeli officials warning that Hezbollah, which can only act at the direction of Iran, has been preparing for conflict.

Last Sunday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot warned the IDF would not hold back from striking Lebanese state institutions in a future conflict with Hezbollah. “The recent declarations from Beirut make it clear that in a future war, the targets will be clear: Lebanon and the organizations operating under its authority and its approval,” Eisenkot stated.

Hezbollah is not Iran’s only option. Breitbart Jerusalem has been reporting on the formation of a “Golan Liberation Brigade,” which was announced last month by the secretary-general of the Iraqi Harakat al Nujaba Shiite militia and is reportedly being trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.  The so-called militia is another Iranian front that could be used to target Israel’s Golan Heights at the behest of Tehran.

The next few days and weeks will be critical in determining Iran and Russia’s resolve in the face of an awakened America that has returned from its eight-year slumber.

Categories: Hezbollah vs Israel, Iran and Assad, Iran and Hezbollah, Iran and Israel, Iran and President Trump, Iran and Syria, Iranian proxies, Israel and Syria, Israeli security, Missile strike in Syria, Russia and Assad, Trump and Assad, Trump and Iran, Trump and Russia, Trump on the offensive
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Nikki Haley forces public UN meeting to put Assad’s defenders in ‘full public view’

April 7, 2017

Nikki Haley forces public UN meeting to put Assad’s defenders in ‘full public view’, Washington Examiner, Kyle Feldscher, April 7, 2017

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley refused to hold a closed session on Friday about the U.S. missile strike against Syria, and instead forced a public session to shame countries who might defend Syria’s chemical weapons attack.

“This morning, Bolivia requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting to discuss the events in Syria. It asked for the discussion to be held in closed session,” Haley said in a statement. “The United States, as president of the Council this month, decided the session would be held in the open. Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear.”

The meeting is scheduled to start at 11:30 a.m.

Haley made headlines earlier this week after making an impassioned speech about Syria President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own people. She ripped Russia’s support for Assad and showed pictures of the effects of the sarin gas that killed up to 100 people and injured hundreds more.

President Trump ordered 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at a Syrian air base in the central part of the country Thursday in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack. The base is thought to be the place from where the chemical weapons attack originated.

U.S. officials don’t believe the attack will cripple Assad’s ability to do future attacks, but it was a signal sent to both Syria and the Russians that chemical weapons attacks are unacceptable.

Categories: Missile strike in Syria, Nikki Haley, Syria - chemical weapons, UN Security Council
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US strikes Syrian military airfield

April 7, 2017

US strikes Syrian military airfield, DEBKAfile, April 7, 2017

(Please see also, Condemnation will not stop Assad’s chemical war. — DM)

The US military launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield late on Thursday, April 6, in the first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country’s civil war began six years ago. The operation, which the Trump administration authorized in retaliation for a chemical attack killing scores of civilians this week, significantly expanded US military involvement in Syria.

The missiles were launched from two Navy destroyers — the USS Ross and USS Porter — in the eastern Mediterranean. They struck an airbase called Shayrat in Homs province, the site from which the planes that conducted the chemical attack in Idlib are believed to have originated. Syrian military aircraft, infrastructure and runways were hit

“Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types,” president Donald Trump said to reporters from Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where he is hosting China President Xi Jinping and his wife…

“Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children,” he said. He acted because of a “vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”

DEBKAfile: Washington has no doubt that the Syrian SU-22 bomber which Tuesday dropped a sarin gas bomb on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, killing up to 100 people, was a joint Russian-Iranian-Syrian gambit to divert the Trump administration from a comprehensive plan for Syria. As US President and commander-in-chief he could not ignore this provocation.

Our sources report that the new US administration’s plans for Syria center on an offensive to evict the Islamic State from its Syrian capital, Raqqa, a mission for which US military preparations have been going forward for the past two weeks at five centers. To this operation Moscow, Tehran and Damascus were not averse. But that operation was also designed to rid Syria of Iranian and Hizballah forces – to which they were.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that despite previous agreements, Syria had not surrendered its chemical weapons stockpile, and accused Russia of “failing in its responsibility to deliver on its commitment” to supervise the surrender of those chemical weapons. “Either Russia has been complicit or simply incompetent in its ability to deliver,” Tillerson continued.

The question now is whether Vladimir Putin will decide to hit back at the US operation. Russia did not retaliate for the Israel air strike on March 17 over the northern Syrian T4 air base. If Putin chooses to sit on his hands once again, the same question may be addressed to Iran and Hizballah.

Very possibly, Trump and Putin reached accord on the limits of the US punitive attack in Syrian in long hours of debate during the day between the US State and Defense Departments and the Russian Foreign and Defense Ministries, which were first reported by DEBKAfile 24 hours ago. Pentagon sources report that Washington gave Moscow advance warning of the coming US attack on the Syrian Shayrat base where Russian air force units are also deployed.

Follow-up US military action may yet come after the US president asserted that for him, “many, many lines were crossed” by Assad’s chemical attack and his attitude towards Syria had changed..

Trump’s comprehensive plans for Syria our outlined in the latest DEBKA Weekly. If you are not yet a subscriber, click here for this and other exclusive revelations.

Categories: Assad, Iran and Syria, Missile strike in Syria, Russia - Syrian war, Russia and Iran, Syria - chemical weapons, Trump and Assad, Trump and Russia, Trump and Syria
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The Message in the Missiles

April 7, 2017

The Message in the Missiles, Power Line, Scott Johnson, April 7, 2017

Last night President Trump authorized the destruction of the air base from which the Syrian butcher Assad had launched insidious sarin gas attacks earlier this week. Our destruction of the air base was executed through the use of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. I strongly support President Trump’s authorization of the action. As the great William F. Buckley, Jr. used to say, herewith a few observations:

1. Asked about the gas attacks in a Rose Garden press conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Wednesday, President Trump had responded: “It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line. Many, many lines.”

Trump’s language harked back to President Obama’s bloviation on Syria, but he wasn’t done. He went on specifically to cite Obama’s empty threat regarding Assad’s use of chemical weapons. “I think the Obama administration had a great opportunity to solve this crisis a long time ago when he said the red line in the sand,” Trump said. “And when he didn’t cross that line after making the threat, I think that set us back a long ways, not only in Syria, but in many other parts of the world, because it was a blank threat. I think it was something that was not one of our better days as a country.”

I read President Trump’s statement as the predicate of some form of military reprisal by the United States against Assad. Thus it proved to be.

2. Like President Reagan when he fired the striking air traffic controllers in 1981, President Trump sent several messages with the action taken last night. Here are three of them. The Obama era in American foreign policy is over. He doesn’t issue empty threats.

3. President Obama sought to tie the United States down in the world like the Lilliputians did Gulliver. Among the instruments employed by Obama to restrain the United States was the United Nations. President Trump gave the United Nations the opportunity to weigh in yesterday. When it failed to act, Trump proceeded. Again, the Obama era in foreign policy is over.

4. Trump acted with decisive force to achieve a limited objective. He could have gone further to remove more of Assad’s assets. If the goal was limited to deter Assad from doing what he did again, however, I think it highly likely that the mission was accomplished.

5. President Trump also had an unstated messaged for Iran and North Korea. See note 1 above.

6. President Obama put us in bed with Putin and empowered Russia in Syria with the supposed object of removing Assad’s chemical weapons. The agreement entered into by Obama was a complete and utter fraud. One might think that we would revisit this chain of events and pronounce it a scandal and a disgrace. Apparently not.

7. One might think that the attack on Putin’s Syrian ally would put paid to the line of the Democrat/Media Axis that Trump is somehow Putin’s lapdog, but one might think wrong.

8. President Obama and Secretary Kerry entered into the agreement with Russia to remove Syria’s chemical weapons in September 2013, not even four years ago. Yet it has conveniently disappeared from our collective memory as completely as the Wilmot Proviso and the Bland-Allison Act.

9. President Trump had the lawful authority to do what he did yesterday without congressional approval. It was akin to President Reagan’s 1986 bombing of Libya. Obama’s war to remove Qaddafi in Libya — now that was a problem. Last night, however, Trump acted well within his authority.

10. The Trump crew made a mistake advertising their intent to indulge the continuation of the Assad regime’s before the chemical attacks. They may have contributed to Assad’s brazen crime. It should also be noted, however, that the timing coincided with the two-day summit in Brussels, Belgium where European Union leaders had assembled to discuss funding commitments to support war-torn Syria. One knowledgeable observer called the Assad’s chemical attacks “a direct insult” and warning from Assad: you will keep paying and I will keep killing.

 

Categories: Iran, Missile strike in Syria, North Korea, Syria - chemical weapons, Trump and Assad, Trump and Russia, Trump and Syria
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Trump strikes Assad and sends the world a message

April 7, 2017

Trump strikes Assad and sends the world a message, Israel National News, Jack Engelhard, April 7, 2017

(Chinese President Xi Jinping was honored with a huge fireworks display, setting the tone for his discussions with President Trump about such stuff as North Korea and the disputed islands in the South China Sea. Comrade Xi probably could not see it in far-away Syria, but if he didn’t get the message perhaps another fireworks display can be arranged in his honor just to the south of China’s border with North Korea. — DM)

Everything changed last night and the world will never be the same after President Donald Trump ordered the military to take action against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Two Navy warships fired 50 Tomahawk missiles upon a Syrian airfield from which chemical weapons were dropped on civilians, killing some 80, including children.

It was the slaughter of children that provoked Trump and led him to change his mind about interfering with force in the throes of Syria’s civil war – though he was critical of Obama for declaring a red line during a previous chemical assault but that saw no action from Obama.

Trump sent a message to Assad that indeed there’s a new sheriff in town. At the same time, Trump alerted the nations that this President means business and that the days of taking the United States for granted are over. His UN envoy Nikki Haley has been his voice of change at the UN – warning the nations that the United States has had its fill of Israel bashing while ignoring war crimes throughout the rest of the world.

In his message last night, Trump vowed to stop Assad and asked the civilized world to join him in eradicating terrorism everywhere.

He did not mention North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. But that is one Supreme Leader that got a wake-up call, as did every other tyrant.

World leaders everywhere will now have to think twice before going ahead rashly. This includes Putin.

Americans got the news at around 8 pm last night. Full coverage was immediate throughout the cable networks.

CNN bested Fox news with sharper and more immediate facts and analysis. Anderson Cooper was factual and let the experts speak.

Fox News’ Shepard Smith was unable to mask his disdain for the President and kept interrupting his analysts with critical and inappropriate asides.

This was no time for backstabbing, but there was more of it on MSNBC.

A time like this, our military in action, is no time for bickering. The news media, so hostile to Trump from day one, will have to find a new voice in which to speak to America, whether Trump speaks their political language or not. Americans won’t tolerate divisiveness while our servicemen are in hostile waters – and certainly not when the job is about putting a stop to the random killing of infants.

For Israel there is a dark undercurrent to Trump’s response. The Palestinian Arabs who’ve been waging terrorism against Israel throughout the years, namely the PA and Hamas, have surely taken note at Trump’s heightened sensibilities toward children – they watch and they learn.

They learn that harming infants is one way to get at Trump, and so Israel must be prepared for a Gaza war aimed not to defeat Israel by arms, but through bombing Israeli towns and villages, and creating terror on the streets, drawing the IDF into a conflict that leaves Israel no choice but to move in at all costs. Otherwise the risk to the Jewish State would be unbearable.

Hamas has perfected the use of human shields to wage warfare through soliciting sympathy…with the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas cheering on.

They did it three times previously – 2008, 2012, 2014.

Hamas and the PA care nothing for the number of children that get killed, Jewish children and even their own children – if it makes a point.

So that’s Israel’s challenge against this epidemic of terrorism that has spread throughout the world.

Trump’s world is a new world and we all better start getting used to it, for the best we trust, and so far, so good.

Categories: Children, Hamas, Israeli security, Missile strike in Syria, Palestinians, Syria - chemical weapons, Trump and Assad, Trump and Russia, Trump and Syria
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Iran Will Not Cancel The JCPOA – Because It Grants Iran Nuclear State Status And Is A Western Guarantee For The Regime’s Survival

April 7, 2017

Iran Will Not Cancel The JCPOA – Because It Grants Iran Nuclear State Status And Is A Western Guarantee For The Regime’s Survival, MEMRI, A. Savyon and Yigal Carmon* April 6, 2017

(Cf. The Real War in ‘Syria’ and the Strategy for Long-Term Victory. — DM)

Introduction

The JCPOA grants the Iranian regime two historic achievements – the status of a nuclear state and immunity against a Western attack due to its nuclear development. This is effectively a Western guarantee of the Islamic Republic regime’s survival. These achievements cannot be cancelled unless the agreement itself is declared invalid.

Iranian spokesmen have stressed that even if President Trump’s administration cancels the agreement, the agreement cannot be cancelled – because Iran, in its prescience, involved the EU and the UN in backing the agreement. Even if the U.S. alone were to cancel the agreement, it would still remain in force – that is, Iran’s status as a nuclear state would remain.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani stressed, for example, at a November 11, 2016 cabinet meeting, the day after Trump was elected president, that there was no way to cancel the agreement. He said: “Iran’s wisdom in the nuclear agreement was in the fact that it had the JCPOA approved as a UN Security Council resolution, and not as a [bilateral] agreement with a particular country or administration. Therefore, it will not be changed by any decision by a particular administration.”[1]

Following the JCPOA’s Implementation Day, in January 2016, and even previously, Iranian regime officials repeatedly warned that if the U.S. violated the agreement, and especially if more sanctions were leveled against Iran, Iran would cancel the agreement and revert to the status quo that existed before the agreement, and would even advance beyond it?

For example, an October 21, 2015 letter of guidelines from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to President Rohani constituting “conditional approval” for the agreement stated: “Throughout the eight-year period, any imposition of sanctions at any level and under any pretext (including repetitive and reiterated pretexts of terrorism and human rights) on the part of any of the countries party to the agreement will constitute a violation of the JCPOA and the [Iranian] government would be obligated to take the necessary action as per Clause 3 of the Majlis resolution and stop the activities mandated by the JCPOA.”[2]

Iran Is Changing Its Policy – From Threats To Cancel The Agreement To Threats Of A Parallel Response

However, after the U.S. leveled additional sanctions against Iran, during both the Obama and Trump administrations, it became clear[3] that Iran was not going to implement its threats. Instead, Iran presented a new formula that does not obligate it to abrogate the agreement, as it previously threatened. The new formula determined that the Iranian regime would respond to any U.S. violation of the agreement with its own parallel violation.

Indeed, on March 26, 2017, after the U.S. State Department’s March 24, 2017 announcement of new sanctions against companies and individuals connected to Iran’s missile program, Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced counter-sanctions against 15 U.S. companies. Additionally, in response to the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017, currently under consideration in the U.S. administration and the U.S. Senate designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, Majlis National Security Committee chairman Ala Al-Din Boroujerdi announced, on March 25, 2017, that the committee would present to the Majlis a plan to designate the CIA and U.S. Armed Forces as terrorist organizations, to be carried out after the March 21 Iranian Norouz holiday.[4]

On April 3, 2017, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reiterated: “If the moment comes that the Americans are not implementing the JCPOA, our reversion [to the pre-JCPOA situation] will be very swift, and we will arrive at even more than what we once had… We have enough guarantees for the day when the [Iranian] regime decides and feels that the level of America’s breaking of its promises is so high that we must revert to the pre-JCPOA [situation]. But it does not appear to me that this will happen.” [5]

It should be noted that in his threats about the possibility of Iran’s reversion to the status quo that existed prior to the agreement, Zarif does not set out any red line or specific condition whose violation will oblige Iran to cancel the agreement. Instead, he states that Iran will act “when it feels” that the U.S. is ratcheting up its level of violations against Iran. Furthermore, Zarif adds that such a situation, in his assessment, will not occur.

Iran’s backing down from its previous threats and warnings regarding the JCPOA’s continuing validity even if the U.S. cancels it is testimony to the agreement’s historic importance for the Iranian regime. In our assessment, Iran will not cancel the agreement even if the U.S. continues to level sanctions against the country, even if it is involved in military action against Iranian interests. Iran will not cancel an agreement that endows it with nuclear-state status and that constitutes a guarantee of the regime’s survival and provides immunity from a Western attack aimed at regime change. These historic achievements for Iran were granted to it by the Obama administration by means of the JCPOA.

Needless to say, the threat to revert to the pre-JCPOA situation is in itself an empty threat, because if the regime does this, it will bring itself back to a situation defined by then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as “a two-month [nuclear] breakout time.”[6] By doing so, it will bring closer the risk of attack by the West.

The JCPOA – A Tool To Ensure The Survival Of The Iranian Regime

The Iranian regime is clinging to the JCPOA because this agreement guarantees its survival. President Obama promoted the Iranian regime from the status of a “defendant state”, subject to Security Council sanctions for its nuclear program, to the status of a legitimate nuclear state that can negotiate with the rest of the world powers over upgrading its nuclear activity.

The existential threat that led Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to revive Iran’s nuclear project in 2002, (after the founder of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, stopped the country’s Shah-era nuclear project), was the threat to the regime’s survival. The regime was under threat both from being attacked directly by the West, with the aim of bringing about regime change, and indirectly by mobilizing opposition elements at home, which the regime labeled “fitna” – such as the fitna – i.e. civil unrest – following the 2009 presidential election, which it suppressed. For this reason, Khamenei, during the negotiations for the JCPOA, demanded that the U.S. stop the American broadcasts in Farsi to Iran, suspend its political and economic support for Iranian opposition groups, and stop criticizing Iranian censorship of the Internet – all three demands pertain to regime survival (see MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 837, Khamenei’s Aim at the Nuclear Talks – Securing the Survival of His Regime, May 15, 2012).

With the JCPOA, Khamenei gained a double achievement, assuring both the survival of his regime and Iran’s membership in the nuclear club. The Iranian regime’s original aim in pursuing the JCPOA was to guarantee the survival of the regime in the face of all the possible threats, from within and without – and was not intended to obtain massive economic aid nor to bring Iran into the Western economy in order to ease its people’s economic distress – which Khamenei intends to do with the “resistance economy,” the main thrust of which is self-reliance and rejection of economic cooperation with the West and foreign investment in Iran.

Iran’s nuclear status, promised to Khamenei by the Obama administration in the agreement that is backed by Europe, allows him to both continue to repress the Iranian people and to continue exporting the Iranian Revolution in the region.

*A. Savyon is Director of the MEMRI Iranian Media Project; Yigal Carmon is President of MEMRI.

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[1] ISNA (Iran), November 9, 2016.

[2] MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 1196, Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei’s Letter Of Guidelines To President Rohani On JCPOA Sets Nine Conditions Nullifying Original Agreement Announced July 14, 2015, October 22, 2015.

[3] Tasnim (Iran), March 26, 2017.

[4] IRIB (Iran), March 25, 2017.

[5] Farsnews (Iran), April 3, 2017.

[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-kerry-iran-israel_us_55b22b45e4b0224d8831d360

Categories: Iran scam, Regime change, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam
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