Tag Archives: Appeasement

News

Leak of top secret Stuxnet program could provide grounds for impeachment

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The left-leaning Washington Post explains.

Excerpt:

Imagine if The Post broke a story about the biggest scandal of the Obama-era — and Washington responded with a collective yawn?

That’s precisely what happened recently when The Post reported on its front page that senior Obama administration officials were being investigated by the FBI and Justice Department for the leak last summer that the president had personally ordered cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear program using a computer virus developed with Israel called Stuxnet.

The Post quotes a source who says that FBI agents and prosecutors are pursuing “everybody — at pretty high levels.” The paper further reports that investigators “have conducted extensive analysis of the e-mail accounts and phone records of current and former government officials” and that some have been confronted “with evidence of contact with journalists.”

This is big. And former senior government lawyers I spoke with recently explained why it could get a whole lot bigger:

The leaks clearly came from someone in the president’s inner circle. As The Post explains, “Knowledge of the virus was likely to have been highly compartmentalized and limited to a small set of Americans and Israelis.” Moreover, whoever leaked the information was present when the president discussed this covert action program in the Situation Room. There is a tiny universe of individuals who could have shared the details of President Obama’s personal deliberations on the covert program with the press.

[…][T]he Stuxnet leak was incredibly damaging. It exposed intelligence sources and methods, including the top secret codename for the program (“Olympic Games”). And it exposed the involvement of a U.S. ally, Israel. At one point in the New York Times story, a source says the Israelis were responsible for an error in the code who allowed it to replicate itself all around the world. The Times directly quotes one of the president’s briefers telling him “We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,” adding that “Mr. Obama, according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed. ‘It’s got to be the Israelis,’ he said. ‘They went too far’” (emphasis added).

So a person who was “in the room” when the president and vice president were briefed publicly confirmed Israeli involvement in a covert action against Iran. The damage this did — both to the operation and the trust between our two countries — is incalculable.

There are no credible national security grounds for such a disclosure. The only person whose interests could possibly be served by such a disclosure was Obama. The leak appeared six months before the president stood for reelection and was clearly intended to make Obama appear strong on foreign policy and counterterrorism. (One anonymous senior official is quoted by the Times as saying “From his first days in office, he was deep into every step in slowing the Iranian program — the diplomacy, the sanctions, every major decision.”)

If the president authorized the disclosure of national security secrets that exposed a covert action and undermined a U.S. ally in an effort to gain a political advantage in his reelection campaign, that would be a scandal of gigantic proportions. As one former top Justice Department official told me “if done for political gain, rather than for a bona fide purpose advancing the public interests of the United States, it could be grounds for impeachment.”

I wouldn’t put it past Obama to leak sensitive data to help his election campaign. If you check the related links below, you’ll see that the Obama administration is just awful at national security.

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News

Chuck Hagel hammered for pro-Iran, anti-Israel statements

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(Video H/T American Power Blog)

Fox News reports on the Senate hearings to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

Excerpt:

Defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel endured a barrage of criticism Thursday during his all-day confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, challenged repeatedly by Republican lawmakers about his past positions on Israel, Iran, Iraq and other issues he’d be sure to confront at the helm of the Pentagon.

The former Nebraska Republican senator was compelled under questioning to walk back a series of past statements, including one in which he complained about the “Jewish lobby.” He had several sparring partners throughout the day, but was questioned perhaps most aggressively by fellow Vietnam War veteran Sen. John McCain and freshman Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, both Republicans.

Hagel was caught by surprise when Cruz played two tapes from appearances on Al Jazeera — one of which showed him not challenging a caller who accused Israel of war crimes, another in which he appeared to agree with the assertion that America is “the world’s bully.”

Of the Israel interview, Cruz said: “The caller suggests that the nation of Israel has committed war crimes, and your response to that was not to dispute that characterization.” He then asked Hagel directly whether he thinks Israel has committed war crimes.

“No, I do not,” Hagel said, while saying he wanted to see the “full context” of the interview.

Cruz called the war-crimes suggestion “particularly offensive given that the Jewish people suffered under the most horrific war crimes in the Holocaust.”

“I would also suggest,” he continued, “that for … a prospective secretary of Defense not to take issue with that claim is highly troubling.”

Cruz then played the tape of Hagel being asked about the perception and “reality” that America is the world’s bully. Hagel could be heard calling the point a “good one.”

Cruz said the answer is “not the conduct one would expect of a secretary of Defense.”

At other times in the hearings, Hagel was also asked about his previous opposition to sanctions against Iran, his desire to let Iran have nuclear weapons and then “contain” them, and his support for eliminating nuclear arms (note that ours are the only ones he could eliminate). In short, the man is a naive left-wing radical who makes Neville Chamberlain look like George S. Patton. Why would anyone vote for him to have control of our military?

News

Hysterical Hillary Clinton shrieks out her victimhood over Benghazi cover-up

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It’s all a vast right-wing conspiracy:

Who cares about whose fault it is that four Americans are dead? Not her. Stop asking her questions, she has a headache!

Here’s the UK Telegraph assessment of Hillary’s performance at the hearings.

Excerpt:

It was not exactly a bravura performance today from the Secretary of State, who testified this morning before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Hillary Clinton came across as defiant, evasive, blasé,and at times hugely unconvincing when answering questions from Republican Senators about the death of four Americans at the hand of Islamist terrorists in Benghazi last September, including the assassination of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. After listening to several hours of Mrs. Clinton defending her administration’s handling of the Benghazi debacle, including UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s preposterous suggestion on Sunday morning talk shows that this might not have been a terrorist attack, the American public will only be left with the impression that this is a presidency that doesn’t take any responsibility for its actions, is highly incompetent, and remains firmly in denial over the scale of the al-Qaeda threat.

[…]With an eye on a possible 2016 presidential bid, Hillary Clinton did herself no favours with today’s testimony, just a few days before she steps down from high office. It underscores the fact that Clinton has been a less than impressive Secretary of State, whose leadership on an array of foreign policy matters, from Syria to Egypt and Iran, has been underwhelming. Some of her initiatives have been disastrous, including the much-hyped and weak-kneed Russian “reset,” which now appears to have sunk without a trace after Moscow decided not to cooperate. And who can forget Mrs. Clinton’s decision to stand alongside Cristina Kirchner in Buenos Aires, and support the Argentine president’s call for UN-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falklands? Or her department’s extraordinary attempts to intervene in the internal British debate over membership of the European Union.

The last four years have been a period of marked U.S. decline, coupled with a sneering disregard for America’s key allies such as Britain and Israel. The Secretary of State floundered today before the Senate, struggling to defend a feeble foreign policy that has undercut American leadership and projected weakness in the face of America’s adversaries. The Obama administration’s blundering response to Benghazi is symbolic of its wider failure in the Middle East and beyond, one that does not bode well for the next four years.

Remember, Hillary’s focus as Secretary of State is not what you would expect.

She has other priorities:

 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  said last week that she has stood up for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and and Transgender rights all around the world.

“Memories are short, and we can’t afford to rest on the laurels of the past,” Clinton said Thursday at an event co-hosted by the State Department and Foreign Policy Magazine. “So it’s our job to reintroduce a post-Iraq generation of young people around the world to principled American leadership.”

“That is part of why I’ve logged so many miles over the last four years going to something on the order of 112 countries, holding town hall meetings with young people from Tunis to Tokyo, shining a spotlight on the concerns of religious and ethnic minorities from the Copts in Egypt to the Rohingya in Burma, putting down a clear marker on internet freedom, going to the UN Human Rights Council to stand up for the rights and lives of the LGBT people around the world, advancing a new approach to development that puts human dignity and self-sufficiency at the heart of our efforts, and pushing women’s rights and opportunities to the top of the diplomatic agenda,” Clinton continued.

National security? What’s that? The State Department’s job is to promote abortion and gay rights.

Rand Paul sums up my response to our affirmative action Secretary of State:

The question that this shrill shrieking suggests to me is this: is the feminist “blame men for the glass ceiling” attitude compatible with competence and accountability? Should you put a feminist in charge of something and then expect her to take responsibility for mistakes and be transparent?

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