Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Yet Again : "What President Obama Was Trying to Say..."
President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings -- and that could be dangerous for the security of the United States. This is the opinion of retired four-star US Air Force General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA, told Newsmax : "It opens you up." The Government Accountability Institute, a watchdog non-profit organization, released its finding after a study of Obama's 2,079 days in office through September 29, 2014. And the report came on the heels of an Obama "60 Minutes" interview on Sunday, in which the President blamed the rise of ISIS on faulty data from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. General Hayden's response to that was to say : "I was President Obama's CIA chief for three weeks waiting for Director Leon Panetta to be confirmed. He [Obama] had a different style than President George W. Bush. President Bush learned and developed his ideas in the exchange, in the conversation. President Obama just by personality and choice prefers to learn in the reading and in the reflection. "So just naturally you can tell early on that President Obama just wasn't going to do those morning briefings the way President Bush did religiously six days a week…That style does make the system, the President and the intelligence guy more vulnerable to what happened here." Hayden added that a President's style - and lack of participation - can cause problems. "What we have here is an example where the President's written intelligence reports could be read as reinforcing what it was he wanted to believe, which was these guys are still the JV and not as big a problem. Since you didn't have the human exchange, you could never break that cycle." ~~~~~ New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, says he was "disturbed" by President Barack Obama's "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night. Critics say Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus. Christie noted that Obama used the word "they" in the interview when referring to the intelligence community's underestimating the power of ISIS. "It should be 'we,' Mr. President," Christie told CNN's Dana Bash. "It's your administration, and when you're the leader, you have to be held accountable for what they do." Christie said the statement made the public less certain of Obama's "footing on these things." As President, Obama is accountable, Christie said. "I hope that he corrects what I hope was a misstatement, that it wasn't 'they' who underestimated, it was 'we' -- 'he' -- his administration who underestimated....But I think the jury's still out on ISIS because we shouldn't be in this position to begin with," Christie said. ~~~~~ The suggestion that it was not Obama himself but the intelligence community that underestimated ISIS angered congressional Republicans, and led Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to charge that "this was not an intelligence community failure, but a failure by policymakers to confront the threat." ~~~~~ And once more, America and the world hear the now familiar phrase -- "What the President was trying to say..." Yesterday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest tried to put a positive spin on what Obama actually said -- "Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria." Earnest explained the Obama statement by saying he was referring to James Clapper, director of national intelligence, noting that he was not blaming anyone as the US sought global cooperation in the airstrikes that seek to weaken ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq. "That is not what the President's intent was," Earnest said Tuesday. "What the President was trying to make clear" was "how difficult it is to predict the will of security forces that are based in another country to fight." ~~~~~ Got that? Once more, the President of the United States either meant what he said -- that he was not responsible for his failure to act in a timely and urgent fashion to destroy ISIS, as his military and Intel groups were urging him to do -- or that he is so inept in the use of the English language that someone must constantly clean up after his linguistic errors..."What the President was trying to say..." ~~~~~ But, whatever Obama's problems with English may be, there is no doubt that he has made major strategic blunders in Iraq and Syria, which cannot be blamed on his deficiencies in English. The result of Obama's strategic errors is that ISIS militants are reportedly within a mile of Baghdad despite the efforts of Iraqi forces and US-led airstrikes to stop them. Canon Andrew White, vicar of St George's Church in Baghdad, the only Anglican church in Iraq, told Sky News Tuesday that there is "immense fear among everybody. We are at a crisis point. People know ISIS are coming nearer....I've never known the city like it is at the moment. Streets which are usually choc-a-bloc with traffic, cars and people are almost empty. People are too fearful to even leave their homes." White's work is supported by the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, which said in a Monday Facebook posting : "The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad. They said it could never happen, and now it almost has. Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi army could do. Well, you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very very little." Canon White also told Sky News that US-led airstrikes against ISIS are doing little more than killing civilians : "People are being killed by the attacks of the coalition. This is horrendous. We have civilians being killed, yet ISIS is moving toward Baghdad." Sky News also reports that there is renewed fighting in such central Iraqi cities as Baquba and Ramadi. And The Daily Mail reports that weekend airstrikes seem to have halted ISIS militants' advance at Ameriyat al-Falluja, a small city about 18 miles south of Fallujah and 40 miles west of Baghdad, but that most of the ISIS fighters continue to advance toward the suburbs of Baghdad, according to The Daily Mail. In a Facebook posting earlier Monday, Canon White said : "Over 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed by ISIS yesterday, things are so bad. All the military airstrikes are doing nothing. If ever we needed your prayers, it is now." And ISIS fighters appear to have advanced to within 3 miles of Kobani, a critical town on the Syria-Turkey border, despite the airstrikes. The reports come as the White House remains focused on damage-control after Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that US intelligence officials had underestimated the ISIS threat. ~~~~~ Dear readers, there is a limit -- an ah-ha moment -- in every scam. Scam. I cannot find a better word for the inexcusable and indefensible attitude and inaction of President Obama. He has blamed everyone -- from President Bush for the economic mess that he has yet to do anything about -- to Speaker John Boehner for his own refusal to engage Congress in the way envisioned by the Constitution - to Secretary Sebelius for his own inattention to the implementation of Obamacare - to non-existent Benghazi rioters for the sacking of the US consulate and murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens -- you name the Obama failure and I will tell you who he blamed for it. And now -- as Baghdad is menaced by ISIS - Turkey's border is threatened by ISIS - the Free Syrian Army and Kurdish peshmerga continue to wait for equipment and arms promised but undelivered by Obama - his promised coalition is delivering few concrete results and none in Syria where US allies refuse to follow Obama -- and while for three year the US military and Intelligence services have been telling Obama to do what is required, now, Obama has decided that all along it was these very military and Intel communities who underestimated ISIS and the situation in Syria. Enough. Mr. President, you have failed at everything you have touched. For the first time, America's allies do not trust her President's promises. It is time to go. Make up any blame you like - it's one thing you're good at - maybe your health or a chronic depression or even concern for your family's safety, given the chaos you have permitted to overwhelm the Secret Service. Blame anyone or anything. Just blame something and go away - as far from Washington and the Oval Office as you can. And do it now. As Lady Macbeth said to the banquet guests when Banquo's ghost badly unnerved the already-mad King Macbeth : "Stand not upon the order of your going. But go at once."
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Why do any of us think that Barrack Obama will suddenly become a leader, a truthful individual , a person of honor, someone who respect us by telling us facts not stories?
ReplyDeleteMaybe we could trade Hime to another country, like sports teams trade players they no longer want ... and according to the resent polls America doesn't want him any longer!
In 2008, when he ran for president, Mr. Obama blamed President George W. Bush for believing bad intelligence about Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction. Members of the intelligence community quickly responded to Mr. Obama’s assertion that they got it wrong.
DeleteHarry S. Truman had a sign on his desk that said, “The Buck Stops Here.” With President Obama, the “buck” never gets to him, unless he can claim credit for something. Then he willingly and very publicly accepts responsibility and editorial kudos from friendly media. In such cases, it’s always “my” administration, and “I ordered.” But when something goes wrong — whether in domestic policy over the struggles with Obamacare, or in foreign policy with Russia and the war on terror — it’s someone else’s fault. He didn’t know about it. His underlings failed him. Bush is to blame. It’s those uncompromising House Republicans. It’s Fox News. It’s never him.
Following on the heels of a sobering speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the UN General Assembly about threats from ISIS, Hamas and Iran, Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, called Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb “a thousand times” more dangerous than ISIS. He’s right. Blaming others for one’s failure is not a strategy for victory. It’s what losers do.
It was always my understanding that lawyers, law professors, and authors were considered to be a “person of letters” (A man who is devoted to literary or scholarly pursuits.) Lawyers whole life is about words that explain the obvious in “Legalize” – which is the highest accurate use of words.
ReplyDeleteWell with Barrack Obama we have, the (self-proclaimed) smartest man in the world, a Constitutional lawyer, A law professor, as a law student an Editor of the Law Review, a published Author, serving President of the United Sates … and nearly every time he opens his mouth and speaks some underling has to rush to the podium and start with “WHAT PRESIDENT OBAMA MEANT TO SAY WAS” ?
Now I find that uniquely unbelievable that President Obama can never say exactly what he meant to say. Or is it that he does say just what he meant until his handlers hear the replay and rush to “stick a thumb in the dike” before the Land of Obama becomes flooded by his own stupidity?
Is he the smartest man alive, a scholarly Lawyer, an expert on the Constitution, an author or was the books the work of his “ghost writer?”
Couple this confusion about Obama along with his birth country, his education, his worldly ravel under an assumed name & passport, his entire life, and what do we come up with a “POOSER” ( an imposter in street talk)
“No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.” — Alexander Pope
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ReplyDeleteISIS captured Fallujah and Ramadi, two major cities in Iraq, eight months ago. Surely the president knew about that when it happened. He receives an intelligence briefing every day; more often than not, he prefers a written briefing rather than one where he and his briefers can zero in on problem areas in a face-to-face conversation.
If the president now believes we should fight ISIS because it killed two Americans and boasted about it, he woefully misunderstands his job, which is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, not every American everywhere on the planet. If he is convinced ISIS poses an imminent threat to the freedom of Americans and the security of our country, it is hard to believe that these two murders alone brought him to that conclusion. Does he genuinely believe that 25,000 ill-equipped fanatics 10,000 miles from here, with no navy or air force, could possibly be a clear and present danger to the U.S.? And if he does, when and how did he come to that belief if his intelligence team failed him?
Here is where his condemnation of Clapper comes in. Clapper is the senior intelligence officer in the federal government. Our entire civilian spies, domestic and foreign, indirectly report to him. His job is to steal and keep secrets within the boundaries of the Constitution, which he, like the president, has sworn to defend. Yet, if Clapper and his spies so miserably failed to educate the president about a threat he now claims is real, why do they still have their jobs? They have their jobs because if the president fires them, they might freely speak the truth, and the truth is the president’s enemy. They have their jobs because the president is so bad at performing his.
Is Obama's problem at being understood by what he says his problem or is it ours? Or does he not know what to say about any subject and therefore just rambles, and that is what makes his handlers come rushing front and center for a microphone to explain the wise one?
ReplyDelete"If you never tell a lie ... you never have to worry about what lie you told"