Showing posts with label Clinton Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clinton Administration. Show all posts

Sunday, June 7, 2015

What Do You Mean "Former"?

June 07, 2015 Benghazi , Clinton Administration 0 Comments
Sidney Blumenthal, Former Bill Clinton Aide, Set To Testify Before Benghazi Panel 

Getty / Politico
By Kellan Howell, Jun. 6, 2015, Washington Times

Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and a key ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will testify before the House select Committee on Benghazi on June 16, the panel announced Friday.

Mr. Blumenthal will answer questions about memos he drafted on Libya when Mrs. Clinton ran the State Department, Politico reported Friday.

“This appearance before the Select Committee on Benghazi involves a witness deposition, which is typically done in private,” an advisory from the committee states, Politico reported.

The session will be closed to the media and the public.

Committee Chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, raised questions about Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement in the State Department’s response to the Benghazi attacks on Sept. 11, 2012. The Republican lawmaker did so after reviewing thousands of documents, which showed Mr. Blumenthal and the secretary traded frequent emails on the security and diplomatic climate in Libya before the attacks.

Read the full story: www.washingtontimes.com

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Monday, June 16, 2014

FLASHBACK: Did GWBush 'Squander' The 9-11 Unanimity? By Larry Elder --Even Bill Maher was pulling for Iraq

June 16, 2014 al Qaeda , Articles by Larry Elder 0 Comments
By Larry Elder, Sep. 15, 2014

Sept. 11 unified America. But President George W. Bush "squandered" this shared sense of purpose.

We still hear this drivel, mostly from the left, 10 years after the terror attacks. But how did Bush blow this alleged consensus, this shared sense of purpose presumably expected to last, well, forever?

Bush's critics pretty much give the same three reasons.

First, "America was ready to sacrifice," they say, but Bush made no demands. "Go shopping," Bush urged Americans, a comment that somehow came to symbolize Bush's alleged wrong-footedness as commander in chief. He blew it! Why, he should have convened a joint session of Congress, asked for network airtime, stared sternly at his teleprompter and barked: "All you American men and women between the ages of 18 and 45, hit the floor and gimme 25 push-ups. I got all your names. I got your addresses! So move those fannies, America!"

Bush wanted the 9/11 Islamofascists to understand that they did not and would not succeed in decapitating the country by attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and our seats of government. His message to the terrorists: Americans do not cower behind closed doors and would not be intimidated. And we intend to take the fight to you.

Second, Bush "divided America" in how he chose to fight the war on terror. Well, yes, figuring out exactly how to fight this war did, indeed, cause a rift or two. Imagine that. Yet the now controversial and much-criticized decision to invade Iraq received broad public support. At the beginning of the Iraq War, over 70 percent of Americans supported it. Seventy-seven members of the Senate voted for the Iraq war resolution. This included several Democrats who ran for president in 2008: Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton -- all of whom later renounced their vote and blamed it on everything from "having been misled" to bad sushi.

Biden even co-wrote a pre-invasion op-ed piece explaining his support for the war. He warned that while toppling Saddam Hussein would be easy, it would then take about 10 years to stabilize Iraq. Then, the war, pre-surge, went south. Things turned bleak. Biden pivoted. He suggested a dividing of Iraq into three parts. Then he pivoted again. Alas, he admitted, he erred in voting for the war. Now vice president, Biden pivoted again, calling Iraq, in February 2010, "one of the great achievements of this administration." Don't ask. Just Joe being Joe.

The New York Times editorialized, on March 20, 2003, against the Iraq War. But the paper said it respected the administration's position and wanted success. Even pathological anti-Bush critic Bill Maher, who disagreed with the invasion, seemed almost impressed by Bush's vision in deciding to invade Iraq.

Maher, shortly after the war started, told CNN's Larry King: "I always said I did not think going after a country that was not directly involved in 9/11 ... was not the approach. ... But you know what? The idea that Bush has -- and it is a big idea, I got to give him that. He's a guy with big ideas. The idea of transforming the Middle East and fighting this in a long-range way by having democracy in Iraq is not the worst idea I could think of, and I'm rooting for that plan." Yes, that Bill Maher.

Third, Bush supposedly "squandered" the post 9/11 bipartisanship by finding no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, shattering the rationale for the war, and thus making many Americans feel "lied to."

Lied to? Bush retained the same CIA director, George Tenet, as served under Bill Clinton. Months after the start of the Iraq War, former President Bill Clinton visited Portugal. The Portuguese prime minister later said, "When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime."

Kenneth Pollack, Clinton's Iraq expert, long opposed an Iraq war, believing the U.S. should use sanctions and inspections. But he insists that the intel unanimously supported the assumption that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD: "The intelligence community convinced me and the rest of the Clinton Administration that Saddam had reconstituted his WMD programs following the withdrawal of the U.N. inspectors, in 1998, and was only a matter of years away from having a nuclear weapon. ... The U.S. intelligence community's belief that Saddam was aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction predated Bush's inauguration, and therefore cannot be attributed to political pressure. ... Other nations' intelligence services were similarly aligned with U.S. views. ... Germany ... Israel, Russia, Britain, China and even France held positions similar to that of the United States. ... In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." So much for "lied to."

Ten years after 9/11, we have not suffered another successful major attack on our soil. That Bush did the right thing is evidenced by his successor's reluctant embrace of nearly all his predecessor's policies that -- along with a little luck -- have kept us safe for 10 years. And counting.

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Thursday, April 24, 2014

John Paul Stevens: Fix 2nd Amend to Remove 'Any Limits' on Gov't Power--A Nat'l Gun Ban Would Be OK --The end game

April 24, 2014 2nd Amendment , ABC News 0 Comments


Read the full story:  www.nationalreview.com

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Sunday, April 20, 2014

Newly Released Clinton Document Calls Internet A ‘Right Wing’ Tool Of ‘Conspiracy Commerce’ --Blame the Koch bros.

April 20, 2014 Clinton Administration , Clinton Presidential Library 0 Comments
Source:  Daily Caller
By Giuseppe Macri, Apr. 18, 2014

A previously unreleased White House document among the 7,500 published by the Clinton presidential library Friday warns that the burgeoning Internet of 1995 is being “seized” by the “right wing” and turned into a “communication stream of conspiracy commerce.”

The 1995 report, titled “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce,” describes the Internet as a new method of communication ”employed by the right wing” and used to “convey their fringe stories into legitimate subjects of coverage by the mainstream media.”

Among those “fringe stories” were the now-infamous reports and lawsuits alleging extra-martial affairs with the president, including accusations from model and actress Gennifer Flowers, and murmurings about former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, Mashable reports.  

Read the full story:  www.dailycaller.com
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Friday, April 18, 2014

FLASHBACK: Who Thought Iraq Had WMD? Most Everybody

April 18, 2014 Articles by Larry Elder , Bush Administration 0 Comments
Credit:  AP
By Larry Elder, May 25, 2006

As Memorial Day approaches, 51 percent of Americans, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, think the commander in chief "deliberately misled" us about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. "Deliberately misled"? Once again, let's go to the videotape:

Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, February 1998: "Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."

Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, February 1998: "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983."

Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, October 2003: "When [former President Bill] Clinton was here recently he told me was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime."

French President Jacques Chirac, February 2003: "There is a problem -- the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right . . . in having decided Iraq should be disarmed."

President Bill Clinton, December 1998: "Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them, not once, but repeatedly -- unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade-long war, not only against soldiers, but against civilians; firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. Not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. . . . I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again. . . . "

Clinton, July 2003: " . . . [I]t is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons. We might have destroyed them in '98. We tried to, but we sure as heck didn't know it because we never got to go back there."

Gen. Wesley Clark, September 2002, testimony before the House Armed Services Committee: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat. . . . Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. . . . He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks, as would we."

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean [D], September 2002: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies."

Dean, February 2003: "I agree with President Bush -- he has said that Saddam Hussein is evil. And he is. [Hussein] is a vicious dictator and a documented deceiver. He has invaded his neighbors, used chemical arms, and failed to account for all the chemical and biological weapons he had before the Gulf War. He has murdered dissidents and refused to comply with his obligations under UN Security Council Resolutions. And he has tried to build a nuclear bomb. Anyone who believes in the importance of limiting the spread of weapons of mass killing, the value of democracy and the centrality of human rights must agree that Saddam Hussein is a menace. The world would be a better place if he were in a different place other than the seat of power in Baghdad or any other country."

Dean, March 2003: "[Iraq] is automatically an imminent threat to the countries that surround it because of the possession of these weapons."

Robert Einhorn, Clinton assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, March 2002: "How close is the peril of Iraqi WMD? Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missile attacks with chemical or biological weapons against its neighbors (albeit attacks that would be ragged, inaccurate and limited in size). Within four or five years it could have the capability to threaten most of the Middle East and parts of Europe with missiles armed with nuclear weapons containing fissile material produced indigenously -- and to threaten U.S. territory with such weapons delivered by nonconventional means, such as commercial shipping containers. If it managed to get its hands on sufficient quantities of already produced fissile material, these threats could arrive much sooner."

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and others, in a letter to President Bush, December 2001: "There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. . . . In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., December 1998: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., ranking minority Intelligence Committee member, October 2002: "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years."

Any questions?

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Tuesday, March 18, 2014

The Weekly Standard: Obamacare vs. Medicare

March 18, 2014 Andy Griffith , Clinton Administration 0 Comments
Source:  The Weekly Standard
By Jeffrey H. Anderson, Mar. 10. 2014

One of President Obama’s greatest political challenges has been hiding the fact that Obamacare is largely financed by siphoning huge sums of money out of Medicare. In particular, Obamacare cuts—or guts—Medicare Advantage, the popular program that allows seniors to get their Medicare benefits through private insurers. In fact, it’s only these Medicare Advantage cuts that allow the Congressional Budget Office to pretend that Obamacare won’t raise deficits—an implausible notion that polling indicates only a very small percentage of particularly credulous citizens believe.
Late on Friday, February 21, in a 148-page, after-hours communication, the Obama administration declared that cuts to Medicare Advantage, long put off, will finally take effect in 2015. Predictably, and understandably, many conservatives responded by criticizing the announcement.
The cuts are bad in and of themselves, but cuts to the program have been a part of Obamacare’s written text from day one. So the real question is not whether Obamacare will cut Medicare Advantage; it’s whether the Obama administration—which doesn’t want those cuts to become evident when Medicare’s open-enrollment period begins on October 15, less than three weeks before Election Day—will take unilateral, lawless executive action to stop the cuts from taking place. That’s what has happened to date.
In the lead-up to Obama’s reelection, he and his administration weren’t satisfied with having mailed out full-color, taxpayer-funded propaganda brochures and run millions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded TV ads featuring Andy Griffith, all touting Obamacare to seniors. They knew that such nonsense would quickly be exposed if Obamacare’s prescribed Medicare Advantage cuts were to take effect: Seniors would have started noticing those cuts on October 15, 2012.
To avoid that, the Obama administration launched an $8.3 billion “demonstration project.” The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services say such projects are meant “to test and measure the effect of potential program changes.” This one, though, was a shameless and almost certainly illegal effort to hide Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts from seniors until they could no longer express their displeasure at the ballot box. How big a tally is $8.3 billion? It’s about seven times what Obama’s campaign raised in total.


Read the full story:  www.weeklystandard.com


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