Obama Refuses To See His Legacy Go (Ezekiel 17)

Obama orders review of election-season hacking

FOX

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review of election-season cyberattacks, including the email hacks that rattled the presidential campaign and raised fresh concerns about Russia's meddling in U.S. elections, the White House said Friday.

The review, led by intelligence agencies, will be a "deep dive" into a possible pattern of increased "malicious cyber activity" timed to the campaign season, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. The review will look at the tactics, targets, key actors and the U.S. government's response to the recent email hacks, as well as incidents reported in past elections, he said.

The president ordered up the report earlier this week and asked that it be completed before he leaves office next month, Schultz said.

"The president wanted this done under his watch because he takes it very seriously," he said. "We are committed to ensuring the integrity of our elections."

U.S. intelligence officials accused Russia of hacking into Democratic officials' email accounts in an attempt to interfere with the presidential campaign. The Kremlin rejected the accusations.

In the months leading up to the election, email accounts of Democratic Party officials and a top Hillary Clinton campaign aide were breached, emails leaked and embarrassing and private emails posted online. Many Democrats believe the hackings benefited Republican Donald Trump's bid. Trump has downplayed the possibility that Russia was involved.

Schultz said the president sought the probe as a way of improving U.S. defense against cyberattacks and was not intending to question the legitimacy of Trump's victory.

"This is not an effort to challenge the outcome of the election," Schultz said.

Obama's move comes as Democratic lawmakers have been pushing Obama to declassify more information about Russia's role, fearing that Trump, who has promised a warmer relationship with Moscow, may not prioritize the issue.

Given Trump's statements, "there is an added urgency to the need for a thorough review before President Obama leaves office next month," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee. If the administration doesn't respond "forcefully" to such actions, "we can expect to see a lot more of this in the near future," he said.

The White House said it would make portions of the report public and would brief lawmakers and relevant state officials on the findings.

It emphasized the report would not focus solely on Russian operations or hacks involving Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and Democratic National Committee accounts. Schultz stressed officials would be reviewing incidents going back to the 2008 presidential campaign, when the campaigns of Sen. John McCain and Obama were breached by hackers.

Intelligence officials have said Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney were targets of Chinese cyberattacks four years later.

The Scarlet Woman And Nuclear War (Rev 17:4)

"Hillary is the candidate of an endless war"

Former U.S. diplomat James Jatras warns that Hillary Clinton will start numerous “regional wars” if she is elected, including a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia, China or both.

“Hillary has never met a war she does not like. She is a true believer in the idea that the US can, as this vanguard of all progressive humanity, use military force to transform the world. We are looking at numerous regional wars and very possible at nuclear war with Russia or China, or both,” Jatras told Sputnik Radio.

Jatras, who worked for 18 years as a foreign policy advisor to Senate lawmakers, said that Hillary is the candidate of “endless war” and has surrounded herself with like-minded hawks.

“Look at the people surrounding her: Mike Morell, acting former director of the CIA who wants to assassinate Russians in Syria; you have Michele Flournoy, (the former Defense Department official) who wants to start bombing in Syria as soon as Hillary takes office, when she becomes secretary of defense,” he said.

Jatras remarked that Hillary was the hand-picked candidate for the “deep state,” but the oligarchy had planned to have her run against Jeb Bush so that Americans were stuck with “Tweedledee – Tweedledum” choices like we usually get.”

According to Jatras, having succeeded in sinking the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the elite were shocked that another insurgent candidate – Donald Trump – was able to become the Republican nominee.

As we reported earlier this month, during a speech, Hillary openly threatened to use military power against Russia if Moscow is merely suspected of being involved in hacking or cyberattacks.

George’s comments on why the leftist establishment in America has aggressively pushed anti-Russian sentiment are also extremely interesting.

“A lot of progressives really-really-really hate Russia. They look at it as at almost a failure that ruined this “great progressive experiment” called communism and they really resent it and hate it. So you actually find much more Russophobia in the US on the progressive side today,” the former diplomat said.

He also noted that progressives are antagonistic towards Russia because its leaders have not stopped the Church from playing a strong role in public life and the country is now very conservative.

“The Russians don’t go along with a lot of the things here like same sex marriage, transgenderism and all the other silliness we see in America and Europe today,” said George, adding that Russia is no longer a communist country.

Killary Clinton: The Scarlet Woman (Rev 17:4)

President-select Killary: 'We are looking at nuclear war with Russia or China'

© REUTERS/ Brian Snyder

The US Democratic Party continues to play the "Russian scare card" as part of its election campaign, criticizing Republicans for merely making positive remarks about Russia and its leader; former US diplomat and advisor to the US Senate's Republican leadership James George Jatras tells Sputnik what rationale lies behind the Russophobic rhetoric.

"It would be much nicer if this card played a positive role," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, when asked about US presidential candidates' statements regarding Russia.

According to the spokesman, Kremlin still witnesses manifestations of "frequent blatant Russophobia."

The comment comes in the follow up to the most recent example of such rhetoric, when Barack Obama harshly criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over his positive remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The statements were made during his Tuesday's campaign speech for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In particular, the US President did not think twice before calling Putin "Donald Trump's role model" and lambasting the tycoon for trying to "curry favor with Vladimir Putin."

Former US diplomat and advisor to the US Senate's Republican leadership James George Jatras provided his own rationale behind the remarks when discussing the issue with Radio Sputnik.
"The immediate one, of course, is that [Obama] is going to go out there as surrogate-in-chief and fill in a place while Hillary is convalescent somewhere, I guess, from whatever her health issues are that they continue to lie about," he said. "

Plus she is recovering politically, if she can, from that ridiculous comment a few days ago, calling essentially a quarter of the American electorate 'deplorables'. So, she's got some real problems," the former diplomat explained.

"So I think [Obama] is going out there with this whole "Russophobic meme" to try to distract from that and go on the offensive while they figure out how to get her back on her feet," he further suggested.

James George Jatras however explained why such rhetoric could not be called a wise pattern of the US foreign policy.

"Let's put it in the context of the American history, going back to the Cold War with the Soviet Union: Roosevelt and Stalin, Eisenhower and Khrushchev, Nixon-Brezhnev, Reagan-Gorbachev — it was always a priority in the American foreign policy to get along with leaders of the Soviet Union back when the USSR was communist," he said.

"But now, when Russia is not communist, it has not been for a quarter of a century, it is somehow "over the top" to suggest: hey, maybe we should begin getting along with these guys," he noted.

The advisor explained that many people mistakenly believe that anti-Russian sentiment in the US is just the "Cold War hangover" from anti-communism. There is some of that, including on the Republican side, he acknowledged.

However what is interesting is that now Russia is not communist anymore and in many respects it is a rather conservative country where the Church plays a strong role in public life.
"The Russians, he noted, don't go along with a lot of the things here like same sex marriage, transgenderism and all the other silliness we see in America and Europe today," he noted.
"A lot of progressives really-really-really hate Russia. They look at it as at almost a failure that ruined this "great progressive experiment" called communism and they really resent it and hate it. So you actually find much more Russophobia in the US on the progressive side today," the former diplomat said.

James George Jatras also explained the rationale behind the harsh comments about Trump from the Democratic camp and the overall attitude towards the Republican nominee.
Hillary is the candidate of the "deep state", of the oligarchy, he said. In effect. the way the script was supposed to run was that the corresponding co-candidate should have been Jeb Bush so that "we have "Tweedledee - Tweedledum" choices like we usually get."
However there were "insurgencies" in both parties. Bernie (Sanders) on the democratic side and Trump on the Republican side.

"Bernie was stump through the rigged system. However Trump somehow, nobody quite understands how, managed to beat the oligarchy in the Republican party. And that is why you see so much in the establishment, not just in the Democratic party, but a lot of the Republican establishment plus all the media and all the people connected with all the big money and politics are all against Trump and for Hillary," he said.

'Hillary has never met a war she does not like'
Commenting on the health issues of the Democratic nominee and the prospects of her further participation in the presidential race, the former diplomat noted that "Hillary, unless she actually dies, will hang on with her fingernails to the very last minute and she will probably succeed in remaining the nominee."
He also pointed out one reason why people are really concerned about Hillary's political and physical viability and might not want to see her go is that they realize there will be "blood bath in the Democratic party while deciding who succeeds her."

The Scarlet Woman Looks Forward To Pressing The Button

Fingers on the Button: “First Use” and US Nuclear Weapons

Binoy Kampmark

Do you wait till the prospect of obliteration is upon you? Or initiate, blithely, a nuclear holocaust upon your enemy as a matter of what is termed “first use” by the nuclear weapon high priests? Neither prospect is particularly attractive, for each assumes the unthinkable made possible, madness made real.

In one way, even articulating a policy on first use or otherwise is a shoddy way of earning plaudits in the game of annihilation. The logic of obliteration remains. In any case, this was a debate that has transfixed the inner circles of Washington.

The latest fuss largely centres on revising the long held position in US strategic “thinking” that using nuclear weapons first should never be taken off the table. President Barack Obama, in the remaining months of his administration, is attempting to ruffle a few feathers in the strategic outlook in Washington on the use of nuclear weapons.

Keeping the first use option available became a critical feature of deterrent plans against a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe, where its calamitous promise would hopefully chill the prospect of any such move. Such weapons would also come into play in potential actions in the Asian theatre, notably focused on North Korea and China.

Such murmurings from the Obama administration on a possible “No First Use” declaration caused shudders among some allies late last month – notably those taken with the shibboleth of Washington’s nuclear umbrella.

While scant on precise details, The Washington Post did suggest that Japan, South Korea, France and Britain had send urgent notes of concern to the administration feeling that such a move would be unwise and unnecessarily disruptive.[1]

The message of concern from Japan came straight from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, conveyed directly to Adm. Harry Harris Jr., head of US Pacific Command, while Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, reiterated his understanding that the diplomatic wires had been particularly hot on the subject. “The allies lobbying against [adopting no-first use] are nervous nellies.”
Such nervous nellies can also be found closer to home. Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz can be counted amongst them. Their concerns became clear at a National Security Council meeting in July.[2] Carter’s gripe was that having a no first use posture would risk fostering insecurity within US allied circles and dirtying the sacred notion of deterrence.

The central fallacy to such opposition lies in the self-deluding notion that nuclear deterrence has any genuine credibility. To keep that delusion alive entails staying firm on the issue of obliterating your enemy even as a matter of first course. The finger must be ever hovering above the button.

Such a stance does not convince the secretary-general of an A-bomb survivors group, Kazuo Okoshi, who has been particularly aggravated at Japanese opposition to the new slant in Washington. “North Korea repeatedly conducts nuclear tests. Deterrence is not working.”[3] Clearly.

James E. Cartwright, formerly a vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Bruce G. Blair, founder of the Global Zero Commission on Nuclear Risk Reduction, writing in the New York Times (Aug 14), made their pitch that nuclear weapons, in the post-Cold War thaw, served no other purpose “beyond deterring the first use of such weapons by our adversaries.”[4]

The United States, with its alliances, diplomatic and economic might, “our conventional and cyber weaponry our technological advantages, constitute a global military juggernaut unmatched in history.” If Washington’s adversaries refrain from using nuclear weapons, the US has no need to even consider the prospect.

While the authors do slip into the imperial-speak typical of such pronouncements (we have power far superior to others and all that), they make obvious points. Using such weapons against Russia and China would entail global death; employing such weapons against non-state actors would be “gratuitous”.

The more telling point here is that ditching first use would provide reassurances across the globe while saving oodles of money (less need for a strategic nuclear missile strike force, housed in expensive silos; a leaner force).

This giant, in short, will not act unless provoked, and if so, the results will be catastrophic to all concerned. This assumption is as much grounded in false assessment as it is in optimism, the ultimate point being that if you have such entities at hand, you will use them.

The normalisation such weapons of mass murder has exerted a numbing effect on the strategic establishment. Even Cartwright and Blair, both having been connected with the nuclear establishment in some way, never countenance a world free of nuclear weapons. They are in the business of risk reduction and norm creation, hoping that Obama’s embrace of a no-first use policy would cause other states to follow.

States in possession of them may well make superficial gestures: the odd promise to cull a certain type of delivery weapon; a scant reduction of warheads. Others will wheeze their way in response. None of this ultimately helps with the prospect of abolition – the mere existence of one such weapon is one too many.

Notes.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/allies-unite-to-block-an-obama-legacy/2016/08/14/cdb8d8e4-60b9-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html?utm_term=.faebaf5801d3
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/no-first-use-nuclear-policyproposal-assailed-by-u-s-cabinet-officials-allies-1471042014
[3] http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/16/national/politics-diplomacy/abe-tells-u-s-japans-concerns-obama-mulled-no-first-use-nuke-policy/#.V7O6m1t97Mw
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/opinion/end-the-first-use-policy-for-nuclear-weapons.html?_r=0

Babylon The Great And The Scarlet Woman (Rev 17)

“What Would She Do in Iraq?”: As Clinton Slams Trump for ISIS Speech, We Look at Her Own Positions
 
On Monday, while Trump was speaking in Youngstown, Ohio, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden held a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Scranton is Biden’s hometown. During her speech, Hillary Clinton slammed Trump’s foreign policy positions on Syria and fighting ISIS. But what about her own positions? For more, we speak with Phyllis Bennis, author of “Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror.” We also speak with co-founder of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York Linda Sarsour.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to turn to Hillary Clinton, who spoke alongside Biden in Scranton, Pennsylvania, just as Donald Trump was giving his major foreign policy address in Youngstown.
HILLARY CLINTON: He talked about letting Syria become a free zone for ISIS, a major country in the Middle East that could launch attacks against us and others. He’s talked about sending ground troops, American ground troops. Well, that is off the table as far as I am concerned. So, we’ll wait and see what he says today. But, you know, sometimes he says he won’t tell anyone what he’ll do, because he wants to keep his plan, quote, “secret.” And then, it turns out, the secret is he has no plan.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Hillary Clinton. Phyllis Bennis, your response?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: You know, this is a serious challenge when we’re talking about the strategy for these wars. The notion that Hillary Clinton is saying, “That’s off the table,” I’d like to know if she’s opposed to the thousands of U.S. troops that are now officially, openly in Iraq, the hundreds that are officially, openly in Syria. She hasn’t said whether she would call them back, whether she would simply not escalate. So her own position here is very unclear.

One of the things that Trump had said about Iraq, which was quite extraordinary, was this notion that as he was against nation building, he said what we should have done in Iraq was keep control of the oil, because that would have, on the one hand, kept the money from the oil out of the hands of ISIS, and, on the other hand, it would mean that we would, of course, have soldiers on the ground to protect that oil. So he was calling for a permanent deployment of troops, a permanent occupation of Iraq.

Hillary Clinton’s position is very unclear. What would she do in Iraq? And the problem is, it’s—the critique that she’s making is fine, but she has no answer for it herself. She has called for an escalation in Syria, for the creation of a no-fly zone in Syria. No one is asking her whether she believes that her former colleague on the—in the Obama Cabinet, the then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said he was against a no-fly zone in Syria—sorry, in Libya, because the first act of a no-fly zone is an act of war, to take out the antiaircraft system. Now, Libya hardly had an antiaircraft system. Syria has a very developed, first Soviet-installed and Russian-supplied, antiaircraft system. So, is Hillary Clinton saying it’s OK to go to war against Russia? Is she calling for that? No one is pressing her on that question. No one asked her that question after her own speech. So, her position of saying how outrageous the positions of Donald Trump is accurate, in its own right, but doesn’t take into account the uncertainty of her own position, whether she would support more ground troops, whether she would support a so-called no-fly zone that would immediately be extended to a regime change action, as it was in Libya. These are all uncertainties that we still have no answers to.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Donald Trump talking about Iran
.

DONALD TRUMP: Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, is now flush with $150 billion in cash released by the United States, plus, if you remember from two weeks ago, another $400 million in actual cash that was obviously used for ransom. Worst of all, the nuclear deal puts Iran, the number one state sponsor of radical Islamic terrorism, on a path to nuclear weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: Phyllis Bennis, your response?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: Well, first of all, I mean, where to start in that? The notion that Iran is the leading state sponsor of what he calls radical Islamic—Islamist terror, which—by which he means primarily ISIS and al-Qaeda, who are sworn enemies of Iran—they have both theological, sectarian, as well as national fights, and Iran is one of the greatest enemies of both ISIS and al-Qaeda. You could start there with what’s wrong with this.

The notion that the Iran deal has put Iran on a path to a nuclear weapon, not even the critics of the deal claim that. The critics of the deal said it didn’t go far enough, it didn’t impose enough sanctions, something like that. That was sort of the Hillary Clinton critique and the critique of others, but none of them said that this deal puts Iran on a path towards a nuclear weapon. All 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have consistently agreed—and they don’t agree on a lot—but they have consistently agreed that Iran not only has not made a nuclear weapon, is not trying to make a nuclear weapon, but that it had not even reached the decision that it wanted to make a nuclear weapon. So this is simply created whole cloth.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we end, I wanted to get to what happened here in New York. Hundreds gathered here in New York Monday for the funeral of Imam Maulama Akonjee and his assistant Thara Uddin, who were shot in the back of their heads while walking home from prayer in broad daylight Saturday. On Monday, a suspected shooter, Oscar Morel, was charged with two counts of second-degree murder. Authorities said it’s not clear whether the attacks were targeted as a result of their faith. This is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who spoke at Monday’s funeral.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: And we know there are voices all over this country who are spewing hate, trying to create division, trying to turn one American against another. I look around at all my brothers and sisters here, I see proud Americans, I see proud New Yorkers. And I will never let us be torn apart, and we will not let each other be torn apart.

AMY GOODMAN: That was New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Linda Sarsour, your final comment?

LINDA SARSOUR: I mean, just an outrageous and traumatic experience. And we may never know the motive. The two victims are dead and can’t speak for themselves about what happened. But it still validates why, in this climate, the Muslim community is on edge and very afraid. And we should be able to live freely and safely, and walk home from our mosque without being targets of murder in our streets.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there, continue this discussion, of course. Linda Sarsour, thanks for being with us, head of MPower Change and co-founder of Muslim Democratic Club of New York. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, we will link to your pieces, the latest, “The Summer of the Shill.” And Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

Hillary the Scarlet Hawk Woman (Revelation 17)

Hillary the Hawk: A History

From Haiti to Syria, the Democratic candidate’s long record suggests she’s looking forward to being a war president on day one.

BY MICAH ZENKO JULY 27, 2016

Whoever is elected on Nov. 8 will be a war president on day one, with the power and autonomy to undertake destabilizing shows of force, drone strikes, special operations raids and ever-deepening military interventions. Today, combat troop deployments are routinely made by executive branch spokespeople, decisions to back open-ended air wars in places like Yemen by “partners” like Saudi Arabia are announced via press release, and congressional oversight hearings largely boil down to legislators pleading with commanders to ask for more troops and looser rules of engagement.And much of this probably suits Hillary Clinton just fine.

Unlike Donald Trump, who has wildly shifting positions and alleged “secret” plans to defeat the Islamic State, Clinton has an extensive track record upon which one can evaluate her likely positions. By any reasonable measure, Clinton qualifies as a hawk, if a nuanced one. Though she has opposed uses of force that she believed were a bad idea, she has consistently endorsed starting new wars and expanding others.Consider seven prominent situations in which she has had to decide whether to support the use of American military force:Haiti: In 1994, Clinton opposed intervening in Haiti to reinstate the Jean-Bertrand Aristide government. As historian Taylor Branch recounted in his diary of interviews with Bill Clinton: “I asked him what Hillary thought. He said the pell-mell rush to invade was crazy to her. Reacting against the pressure, the lack of options, and his sense of being trapped, she said he was badly served by his foreign policy staff.” This was an astute judgment by the then-first lady, as the options developed by the U.S. Southern Command and Joint Chiefs were poorly conceived and often logistically impossible to carry out. Fortunately, a 25,000 U.S. troop invasion was avoided after Jimmy Carter brokered a last-minute agreement with Raoul Cédras that assured he would step down from power.

Iraq: In 2002, as a senator for New York, Clinton voted for the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq. In her accompanying floor statement, she claimed it was to ensure President George W. Bush was “in the strongest possible position to lead our country in the United Nations or in war” and to show Saddam Hussein that the country was united. After initially defending the vote, she later adjusted, variously declaring she “thought it was a vote to put inspectors back in,” it was “based on the facts and assurances that I had at the time,” and ultimately “it was a mistake to trust Bush.” Clinton also justified the 2002 vote as simply one for compelling compliance, proclaiming, “I believe in coercive diplomacy,” in a January 2008 presidential debate. Regardless of the reasons or excuses behind her vote, the Iraq War was a foreign-policy and geopolitical disaster.Pakistan: In 2007 and 2008, Clinton strongly disagreed with then-Sen. Barack Obama about striking al Qaeda targets inside of Pakistan. Obama called such attacks “just common sense” if there were “actionable intelligence.” Clinton referred to the 1998 cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan that failed to kill Osama bin Laden and warned that “we have to be very conscious of all the consequences,” particularly anything that would destabilize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Obama would go on to authorize 407 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing 3,089 people. Nearly 300 of these occurred while Clinton was secretary of state, during which time U.S. diplomats opposed only one or two of the strikes. Whatever hesitation Clinton once had in attacking militants in Pakistan vanished upon being confirmed as secretary of state.

Afghanistan: In 2009, Clinton supported three-quarters of the Afghanistan surge. When Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, requested four brigades of additional U.S. troops in the summer of 2009, Clinton endorsed deploying three of them (equaling roughly 30,000 troops). Reportedly, “Clinton usually favored sending even more [troops] than [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates did.” Obama eventually deployed 33,000 extra troops. It is hard to identify any enduring political or security gains in Afghanistan that have resulted from the surge. Moreover, more than

Libya: In 2011, Clinton was a strong proponent of regime change in Libya (as was Trump). It is forgotten today that a primary justification she offered for the U.S. military role in Libya was to pay back allies for Afghanistan. As she stated in late March 2011: “We asked our allies, our NATO allies, to go into Afghanistan with us 10 years ago. They have been there, and a lot of them have been there despite the fact they were not attacked.… When it comes to Libya, we started hearing from the U.K., France, Italy, other of our NATO allies. This was in their vital national interest.” Academic research shows that great powers enjoy freedom of action to avoid becoming dragged into wars involving allies, but the Libya regime change intervention was, unfortunately, one that the Obama administration chose to fully support, despite misleading the American people at the time that it was not the goal. Obama correctly labeled not planning for the postwar scenario his “worst mistake” and correctly described Libya as a “mess.”

Osama bin Laden: In 2011, she endorsed the Navy SEAL raid into Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden, even while recognizing that it would likely poison diplomatic relations with Pakistan for a short time. According to Vice President Joe Biden — who opposed it — every other official (including Clinton) was “51-49” in supporting the raid. Before the news broke, Obama called Bill Clinton (who, as president, signed three covert findings authorizing bin Laden’s killing) to let him know the al Qaeda leader was finally dead. “I assume Hillary’s already told you,” Obama said to an unaware Clinton. As Hillary Clinton later wrote in her memoir: “They told me not to tell anyone, so I didn’t tell anyone. Bill later joked with me, ‘No one will ever doubt you can keep a secret!’”
Syria: In 2012, she reportedly proposed to the White House — along with CIA Director David Petraeus — a covert program (apparently larger than the one later authorized) to provide arms to vetted Syrian rebel groups fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government. Obama opposed this proposal on the grounds that there could be no guarantees of where the weapons would ultimately end up and that CIA analysts determined they would not have “materially” hastened the removal of Assad from power. It is difficult to assess the CIA-led train-and-equip program’s effectiveness, compared to larger Defense Department-led efforts, but there remains no collection of U.S.-backed rebel groups that has threatened the existence of the Assad government, which is now backed by indiscriminate Russian air power.Outside of specific interventions, Clinton also supported muscular shows of force as secretary of state. New York Times reporter Mark Landler describes a July 2010 White House debate about rerouting the USS George Washington aircraft carrier from its normal cruise into the Yellow Sea. Adm. Robert Willard, the head of U.S. Pacific Command; Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Secretary of Defense Gates all agreed on this aggressive maneuver. “Clinton strongly seconded it. ‘We’ve got to run it up the gut!’ she had said to her aides a few days earlier,” Landler writes. But Obama refused the request, declaring, “I don’t call audibles with aircraft carriers.” It bears noting that determining the aggressiveness by which the United States conducts freedom of navigation operations in maritime waters claimed by China will be a consequential call for the next president.Finally, Clinton has had an unusual exposure to the military from multiple civilian positions, which may make her far better prepared to serve as commander in chief than her husband was in 1993, when he had a notoriously difficult start leading the military.
As first lady, Clinton was routinely exposed to military intervention debates among senior officials, including over Haiti, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, and later served six years on the Senate Armed Services Committee and four as secretary of state. She also has developed close relations with retired military officers like Gen. Jack Keane, who has rarely seen a country that cannot be improved with U.S. ground troops and airstrikes. As Bob Woodward wrote of a 2009 meeting between the two to discuss the Afghan surge: “Clinton greeted Keane with a bear hug, astonishing [U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard] Holbrooke because—and he should know—Hillary rarely bear-hugged anyone.”I have spoken about Clinton with a handful of military officers, then stationed in Islamabad and Kabul, who were routinely involved in video teleconferences with her as secretary of state. They all described her as being, by far, the best-prepared senior participant in meetings and having read all the memos or briefing books that were sent as preparatory material. They relayed that Clinton has an intimate understanding of military doctrine, Pentagon acronyms, and military planning principles and was not afraid to press senior commanders to clarify the “courses of action” and the intended “end state” of any given military intervention.

Should Hillary Clinton win the White House, the United States, already at war for 15 years, would be led by a president deeply aware and comfortable with the military. It’s impossible to know which national security crises she would be forced to confront, of course. But those who vote for her should know that she will approach such crises with a long track record of being generally supportive of initiating U.S. military interventions and expanding them.Photo credit: JILL M. DOUGHERTY/Getty Images

Obama Hands The Scarlet Woman The Baton

Embracing Clinton, Obama says she’ll ‘finish the job’

Gregory Korte | USA TODAY11 minutes ago

PHILADELPHIA — President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton as the woman to finish the job he started eight years ago, calling on Americans to “reject cynicism” and elect Clinton to “show the world we still believe in the promise of this great nation.”

Embracing his former rival to thunderous applause from the convention hall, Obama thus passed the Democratic party’s baton to the first woman ever nominated for president by a major American political party.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton on stage during the 2016 Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center.

“I’m here to tell you that yes, we still have more work to do,” Obama told delegates at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, implicitly arguing for a third term for his policies by citing unfinished work on the economy, public safety and civil rights. “My time in this office hasn’t fixed everything; as much as we’ve done, there’s still so much I want to do.”

Of that unfinished work, nothing is more important than national security. And there, he argued that no candidate was more prepared than his former secretary of state and first lady to President Bill Clinton. “No one. Not me, not Bill, not nobody,” he said.

“I know Hillary won’t relent until ISIL is destroyed. She’ll finish the job – and she’ll do it without resorting to torture, or banning entire religions from entering our country. She is fit to be the next commander in chief,” Obama said.

Touting Clinton’s experience and judgment, Obama’s speech was a direct rebuttal to one Trump’s most incisive attacks at last week’s Republican convention in Cleveland. Trump said Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State was marked by “death, destruction and weakness.”

“You know, nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office. Until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis or send young people to war,” Obama said. “But Hillary’s been in the room. She’s been part of those decisions.”

Acknowledging that the two were once bitter rivals for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Obama said he came to admire Clinton’s tenacity. “No matter how daunting the odds; no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.”

Obama’s enthusiastic endorsement anchored a Wednesday night lineup that also featured Vice President Biden and his would-be successor, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Echoing a theme throughout the convention, they all spoke of the Clinton they know personally — as opposed to the cartoon version she’s portrayed as by her Republican critics.

“She’s been caricatured by the right and by some folks on the left; accused of everything you can imagine – and some things you can’t,” Obama said. “But she knows that’s what happens when you’re under a microscope for 40 years. She knows she’s made mistakes, just like I have; just like we all do.”

“Even in the middle of crisis, she listens to people, and keeps her cool, and treats everybody with respect,” Obama said. “That’s the Hillary I know. That’s the Hillary I’ve come to admire. And that’s why I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”

“Everybody knows she’s smart. Everybody knows she’s tough,” Biden said. “But I know what she’s passionate about. I know Hillary.”

After walking out on the Philadelphia stage to the theme from the movie Rocky, Biden urged the crowd not to boo or cheer while he delivered an indictment of Donald Trump. He said the GOP nominee’s “cynicism is unbounded” and his commitment to the middle class was “malarkey.” The crowd cheered anyway. When Biden said the billionaire Trump didn’t have a clue about the middle class, the crowd chanted, “Not a clue!”

Obama’s prime-time speech in Philadelphia capped a 12-year career in national politics as he attempts to pass the baton to the former first lady and senator from New York. Twelve years ago to the day, a then-unknown state senator from Illinois took to the convention stage in Boston to declare a “politics of hope,” laying the groundwork for his own 2008 election to the White House.

“I was so young that first time in Boston, maybe a little nervous addressing such a big crowd,” he said. “But I was filled with faith — faith in America,the generous, bighearted, hopeful country that made my story – that made all of our stories – possible.”

Obama continued that hopeful tone as he returns to the Democratic National Convention podium for the fourth time, but infused it with the themes of some of his most important speeches of his career. He spoke of building “a more perfect union” and the “audacity of hope,” and urged on the crowd as it chanted “Yes, we can!”
“The America I know is full of courage, and optimism, and ingenuity. The America I know is decent and generous,” he said.

He even quoted Ronald Reagan, calling America “a shining city on a hill,” and contrasted it with Trump’s pessimism.

But Obama also acknowledged that Americans have “real anxieties” about jobs and security. “We get frustrated with political gridlock, worry about racial divisions; are shocked and saddened by the madness of Orlando or Nice,” he said. “There are pockets of America that never recovered from factory closures; men who took pride in hard work and providing for their families who now feel forgotten.”

Trump is not the answer to those anxieties, Obama said. “He’s not really a plans guy. Not really a facts guy, either. He calls himself a business guy, which is true, but I have to say, I know plenty of businessmen and women who’ve achieved success without leaving a trail of lawsuits, and unpaid workers, and people feeling like they got cheated.”

When the crowd booed, he repeated a line that’s become a staple of his stump speeches. “Don’t boo. Vote,” he said.

The Scarlet Woman Truly Is A Hawk (Revelation 17)

Fact check: Clinton’s record at State Department during Middle East chaos

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY1 hour ago

Hillary Clinton’s tenure as President Obama’s first secretary of State from 2009 through January 2013 was marked by extreme turmoil in the Middle East. It included the Arab Spring protests, Iranian nuclear brinksmanship and withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq. Republican rival Donald Trump said her tenure at State left a legacy of “death, destruction and weakness.”

Here is what Trump said, plus events before, during and after her time as secretary:
ISLAMIC STATE (ISIS or ISIL):

Trump said: “In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map. … ISIS has spread across the region, and the world. ”

Before Clinton: ISIS was al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which launched a bloody campaign against Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority and U.S. troops. AQI faded into obscurity after an increase in U.S. troops in 2007 teamed up with Sunni Arab tribes to combat the group.

Clinton’s role: Obama’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 and the start of the Syrian civil war that same year created turmoil that allowed AQI to re-emerge. Obama rejected Clinton’s advice to take a more aggressive approach toward Syria to protect civilians and empower moderate and secular rebels to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutal regime. She also saw the war as an opportunity to sever Syria’s close alliance with Iran. It’s not clear if Clinton’s approach would have prevented AQI from re-emerging and later branding itself as the Islamic State.

After Clinton: Over the next three years, ISIS took advantage of growing instability in Syria to seize territory there, but it did not gain international notoriety until it occupied portions of neighboring Iraq in June 2014, more than a year after Clinton left State. The group has since plotted or inspired followers to launch terrorist attacks around the world.

LIBYA

Trump said: “Libya was cooperating. … Libya is in ruins, and our Ambassador and his staff were left helpless to die at the hands of savage killers.”

Before Clinton: Libya and its strongman leader, Moammar Gaddafi, renounced the country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 and allowed the United States and Britain to destroy its nuclear weapons infrastructure. Libya earlier renounced terrorism as well, turning over terror suspects and paying compensation to the victims of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing all 259 aboard.

Clinton’s role: When the Arab Spring uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt spread to Libya in 2011, Gaddafi sought to put the revolt down by force. Clinton helped develop the NATO campaign to stop him. Libya’s rebels gained momentum and overthrew Gaddafi. The ensuing power vacuum gave rise to militias, including al-Qaeda, which launched a terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. In the following days, Clinton and the White House wrongly blamed the attack on a protest over an anti-Islam video, and only later acknowledged there was no protest and it was a planned terrorist attack. Obama and Clinton had a plan for stabilizing Libya after Gaddafi’s fall, but Libya’s transitional government rejected any role for foreign troops.

After Clinton: Multiple investigations by Clinton’s State Department and congressional panels found that State did not provide enough security at the diplomatic post in Benghazi, but little more could have been done to protect the Americans once the attack began. Libya’s warring factions formed a government this year, opening the door to U.S. assistance to defeat the Islamic State, which took advantage of the chaos to grab territory in parts of the country.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Jan. 23, 2013.

EGYPT

Trump said: “Egypt was peaceful. … Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control.”

Before Clinton: Egypt had been ruled for almost 30 years by President Hosni Mubarak, a former general who crushed opponents but cooperated with the United States and its ally Israel on counterterrorism and other regional issues.

Clinton’s role: When the Arab Spring spread to Egypt in 2011, Mubarak was ousted by his military. Clinton said in her memoir, Hard Choices, that she counseled Obama to proceed with caution toward Egypt, but he was swayed by idealism to support the democratic movement that unseated Mubarak. Under her leadership, the State Department sought to work with various post-Mubarak political parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood, a previously outlawed group that tried to impose hard-line Islamic rule in a country used to a secular government. In 2012, the first democratic elections brought to power a political party that represented the Muslim Brotherhood.
After Clinton: In July 2013, five months after Clinton’s departure, the Egyptian military, backed by millions of demonstrators and the political opposition, overthrew the government of Mohamed Morsi and installed a new general who was later elected president in voting that international monitors considered rigged.

IRAQ

Trump said: “Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence. … Iraq is in chaos.”

Before Clinton: Four years after President George W. Bush ordered the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the presence of 145,000 U.S. troops finally reduced violence from an anti-U.S. insurgency. Obama pledged during his 2008 presidential campaign to bring the troops home, and he did in 2011.
Clinton’s role: Clinton sought unsuccessfully to mediate between the Baghdad government and opposition groups to head off sectarian divisions. The State Department also failed to reach an agreement with Iraq’s government on a law that would provide legal protection for a small contingent of U.S. forces that would remain to help keep the peace. Violence flared again, as Iraq’s elected government, dominated by the country’s Shiite majority, pursued policies that alienated the country’s Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities.

After Clinton: As a result, Sunni tribes that had helped the U.S. military defeat al-Qaeda welcomed the Islamic State fighters when the fellow Sunnis swept into Iraq from neighboring Syria in 2014.
Obama then agree to send military trainers and advisers back to Iraq. More than 4,000 are there now.

IRAN

Trump said: “Iran was being choked by sanctions. … (Now) Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons.”
Before Clinton: Iran was selling oil at a relatively steady rate and pursuing a nuclear weapons research program during the George W. Bush presidency, according to the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency.

Clinton’s role: Obama and Clinton pursued a dual-track policy of strengthening international sanctions against Iran, while secretly pursuing a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear threat. New U.S. sanctions imposed by Congress and European sanctions urged by Clinton created severe economic hardship in Iran. China and Russia joined the international sanctions, removing huge markets for Iranian petroleum. Iran expanded its nuclear program during this time, but its crude exports dropped in 2012 to their lowest level since 1986.

After Clinton: Secret and overt overtures by Obama and Clinton began soon after Obama became president. Formal negotiations under Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, led to a final agreement between Iran and six world powers in July 2015. It called for limits on Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions. Implementation began in January, and Iran has kept its nuclear program peaceful — so far, according to the U.N.

Sanctions relief has made tens of billions of dollars available to fund the political agenda of Iran’s anti-U.S. leaders, but Iran has yet to enjoy the economic relief it had hoped for because many U.S. sanctions remain in place, and international businesses remain wary of doing business with Iran.

SYRIA

Trump said: “Syria was under control. … Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis that now threatens the West.”

Before Clinton: Syria was a brutal dictatorship led by Assad, the president belonging to a minority Shiite sect and a close ally of Iran.

Clinton’s role: The Arab Spring uprising in Syria led to civil war in 2011 after Assad’s military opened fire on unarmed democracy demonstrators. Clinton saw the uprising as an opportunity to disconnect Syria from the destabilizing influence of Iran. The U.S. ambassador to Syria encouraged democracy protesters. Clinton and other top advisers urged Obama to increase U.S. support to moderate, secular Syrian rebel groups and to impose a no-fly zone in Syria to prevent Assad’s air force from targeting civilians. But Obama rejected the advice. The precursor to the Islamic State first formed as a militant army that took control of areas in Syria vacated by retreating Assad troops.
After Clinton: The Islamic State grew exponentially after Obama failed to follow through on his 2012 “red line” warning to Assad not to use chemical weapons. Assad used them against rebels in 2013, but the United States did not retaliate, a signal to the rebels that the U.S. would not come to their aid. After Clinton left office, Obama agreed to help train Syrian rebel groups to fight the Islamic State but not Assad.

The civil war continues, with 250,000 to more than 400,000 people dead so far, according to varying estimates, most at the hands of Assad and his allies. About half of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million fled to neighboring countries, and hundreds of thousands entered Europe, creating a migrant crisis along with fears that a wave of Islamic State-inspired terrorism in Europe could worsen.

Scarlet Woman Makes HiStory (Revelation 17:4)

Historic nomination: Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to lead a major-party ticket


LA Times

Hillary Clinton made history Tuesday night, becoming the first woman ever nominated to lead a major-party ticket into the fall campaign for president.

Cheered instead of booed, as she was Monday, Clinton officially claimed the Democratic nomination  after a suspense-less 90-minute roll call vote at the party’s national convention.

The result was preordained when Clinton’s chief rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, abandoned his candidacy and gave an enthusiastic endorsement, then followed up Tuesday by urging his backers to end their rowdy resistance.

“It is easy to boo, but it’s harder to look your kids in the face who would be living under Donald Trump,” Sanders said of the GOP nominee at a breakfast with California delegates. “Trump is the worst candidate for president in the modern history of this country.”

South Dakota’s votes delivered the prize that eluded Clinton eight years ago when she first ran for president.

But in a bit of stagecraft to promote the image of Democrats united, an announcement of the tally was delayed until Vermont — which passed on its turn in the alphabetical order — concluded the roll call by casting 22 of its 26 votes for Sanders.

He then immediately rose to his feet, took the delegation microphone and moved that the vote be made unanimous. As his wife, Jane, briefly embraced him, a sea of blue and gold Clinton signs blossomed on the convention floor and delegates, on a voice vote, roared their approval.

Several dozen Sanders delegates marched out of the hall to the media filing tents nearby, where they chanted, “This is what democracy looks like!” then sat down in silent protest.

The state-by-state balloting, traditionally a chance for local boosterism and some good-natured bragging — the birthplace of pizza, the home of tax-free shopping — briefly turned emotional when Sanders’ brother, Larry, cast his ballot as a delegate for Democrats living abroad.

A politician in Britain, Larry Sanders’ voice grew thick as he discussed his parents, their hard life and how proud they would be of “Bernard,” the candidate for president.

Bernie Sanders teared up as he watched.

Still, despite her triumph, Clinton still faces considerable remedial work.

The program for Tuesday night was devoted to a series of testimonials, being capped by former President Bill Clinton, designed to cast a more fully rounded and flattering light on the presumptive nominee, whose decades in public life have been a marriage of high achievement and serial scandal.
Opinion polling over the years has found Clinton, a former first lady and New York senator, to be one of the most admired women in the country and also, more recently, one of the most mistrusted.
A series of speakers from the worlds Clinton has inhabited — politics, women’s advocacy, child welfare, education reform — were on tap to deliver a series of flattering portraits.

The state-by-state roll call was a concession to Sanders and his supporters and an effort to help unify Democrats after they carried the fractious primary fight into the opening day of the convention.
The anger that suffused the proceedings seemed to fade some, at least inside the hall.

In contrast to Monday, when the mere mention of Clinton’s name drew a cascade of boos and jeers, Sanders supporters seemed more interested Tuesday in delivering one last hurrah for their candidate, cheering lustily when his name was formally placed into nomination. When it was their turn, Clinton supporters responded in kind.

That was due in no small part to Sanders.

Hours after delivering a wholehearted pro-Clinton speech in Monday night’s finale, he paid an unexpected breakfast call on the California delegation, a hotbed of resistance to the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“As goes California, so goes America, so I know that you know that you have an enormous responsibility,” the Vermont senator said, urging resistors to lay down their grievances and rally behind Clinton as he had.

Not everyone was convinced.

Victoria Thompson, 56, a Sanders delegate from Citrus Heights, outside Sacramento, welcomed Sanders’ visit but said she was not moved to overcome her resistance to Clinton.

“I can’t vote for her. I will not vote for her,” Thompson said. “If Bernie’s not an option, I’ll vote Green” Party.

But there were unmistakable signs that the stop-Clinton effort was in its final throes, even before the roll call formally installing her as the party’s presidential standard-bearer.

A group of delegates backing Sanders but unaffiliated with the campaign abandoned a threat to put forward a vice presidential candidate to challenge Clinton’s pick, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.

A more unified party was just one of the goals for Clinton entering the convention.

Speaking with reporters, the chairman of her campaign, John Podesta, frankly acknowledged the need to overcome voters’ deep-seated doubts about Clinton and her character by moving beyond matters such as her use of a private email server when she was secretary of State — which led to scolding from the head of the FBI — or the response to the attack on U.S diplomats in Benghazi, Libya.
“She doesn’t like hearing it, but she hears that people have issues with her,” Podesta said at a lunch hosted by the Wall Street Journal. “What we’re going to do is lay out in our convention why people can trust her to do what she’s been doing her whole life, which is to fight for women and families.”
He acknowledged the difficulty of running against a showman such as Trump, but insisted the qualities that made Trump a successful reality TV star, performing as boardroom impresario on “The Apprentice,” where not those voters seek in a president.

“Having a temperament that is quick to anger, discounts study, is impetuous, [has] probably never been thought of before as a qualification for putting your finger on the nuclear codes,” Podesta said. “While it has certain appeal for certain people who are entertained by him, I think it is quite dangerous.”

Times staff writers Evan Halper and Sarah D. Wire contributed to this report.

mark.barabak@latimes.com and chris.megerian@latimes.com

Bad Blood Between Putin And The Scarlet Woman

Vladimir Putin’s Bad Blood With Hillary Clinton
Simon Shuster / Berlin @shustry
7:03 PM ET SHARE

The Russian President has long held a grudge against Clinton for trying to weaken his rule when he was most vulnerable

In December 2011, Vladimir Putin came closer than he’s ever been to losing his hold on power. His decision that year to run for a third term as Russia’s President had inspired a massive protest movement against him. Demonstrations calling for him to resign were attracting hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Some of his closest allies had defected to the opposition, causing a split in the Kremlin elites, and Russian state media had begun to warn of a revolution in the making.

At a crisis meeting with his advisers on Dec. 8 of that year, the Russian leader chose to lay the blame on one meddling foreign diplomat: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“She set the tone for certain actors inside the country; she gave the signal,” Putin said of Clinton at the time, accusing her of ordering the opposition movement into action like some kind of revolutionary sleeper cell. “They heard this signal and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, started actively doing their work.”

Five years later, the U.S. presidential elections may have given Putin his chance for getting even. According to Clinton’s campaign staff and a number of cyber-security experts, Russian hackers in the service of the Kremlin were behind last week’s leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee. The hacked messages appeared to show DNC officials, who are meant to remain neutral during the Democratic Party’s primary race, favoring Clinton over her then-rival, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Reactions to the leak so far, including from Clinton’s campaign managers, have focused on what Russia would have to gain from helping Donald Trump win the Presidency. Trump’s flattering remarks about Putin in the past, as well as his recent equivocating about whether the U.S. should defend NATO allies in case of a Russian attack, would seem to support the notion that Trump is Russia’s favored candidate.

If the Kremlin has indeed begun interfering in the presidential race on Trump’s behalf, the bad blood between Putin and Clinton would seem like enough of a motivation. Putin’s list of grievances goes back a lot further than Clinton’s alleged support for the Russian protest movement.
In 2009, soon after President Obama took office, his newly appointed Secretary of State initiated what the White House called a “reset” in relations with Russia. At the time, Putin had already positioned himself as an adversary to the U.S., or at least a check on American influence in the world, and he showed no inclination for making friends with Obama. But constitutional term limits had forced Putin to switch to the less powerful role of Prime Minister the previous year, and his younger protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, then took over the presidency. In sharp contrast to his mentor, Medvedev began to cast himself as a liberal Westernizer with a particular affection for high-tech American gadgets.

That presented Washington an opportunity and, in the first year of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. tried to sidestep Putin and build better relations with Russia through Medvedev. As Secretary of State, Clinton oversaw these efforts, which saw the two Presidents visit each other’s countries—Obama in 2009, Medvedev in 2010—and establish a range of bilateral commissions to cooperate on everything from counter-terrorism to the tech economy.

But among Kremlin hardliners, who have since come to dominate Russian politics, Clinton’s efforts to flatter and befriend Medvedev all seemed like part of a scheme to undermine Putin and subvert his role as a counterweight to U.S. dominance in world affairs. One incident in particular drove home that perception.

In the spring of 2011, the U.S. and its allies began pushing for a military intervention in Libya to prevent the regime of Muammar Ghaddafi from massacring rebel forces and their civilian supporters. But without Russia’s acquiescence, the West could not pass a resolution in the U.N. that would provide a legal basis for the intervention. So Clinton and Obama began pressuring Medvedev to play along, and he ultimately agreed not to veto the resolution in the U.N. Security Council.

Putin was furious. The resolution, he said, resembled “the medieval calls for a Christian crusade,” one that Clinton, as the top U.S. diplomat at the time, helped to orchestrate. Later that same year, when Russia’s flawed parliamentary elections set off a season of street protests, Clinton spoke up in support of the demonstrations. “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” Clinton said. “And that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”

It was a fairly tame statement of support for the Russian opposition movement. But Putin took it as a personal affront against his leadership, as well as a sign that Clinton was intent on manipulating the Russian presidential elections that were then just a few months away.

With a campaign based on Cold War rhetoric against the conniving West, Putin won that vote handily, and it is easy to see how he would relish the chance to manipulate the U.S. presidential elections in return.

At least in his public statements, he has tried not to take sides between Clinton and Trump too overtly. Asked during a panel discussion in June about his statements that Trump is a “colorful” politician, Putin said that Russia “never interferes in the internal political processes of other countries, especially the United States.”

Regardless of whom the U.S. electorate chooses as its leader in November, Putin said, Russia would work with the new American President in the hope of restoring constructive ties. “The world needs a strong country like the U.S., and we need it, too,” he said. “What we don’t need is for them to constantly interfere in our business and tell us how to live.” Considering his experience with Clinton’s supposed meddling in Russian affairs, it seems clear which candidate he would trust not to interfere in the Kremlin’s business.

Scarlet Woman Takes Huge Lead (Revelation 17)

Poll: Support for Trump plunges, giving Clinton double-digit lead

Support for the GOP candidate has plummeted as he alienated fellow Republicans and large majorities of voters overall in a month of self-inflicted controversies. The Democrat has jumped ahead, 51 percent to 39 percent, in a national Washington Post-ABC News poll.

By Scott Clement and Philip Rucker3 hours ago

Republicans and Democrats alike are slamming Donald Trump for his comments about a federal judge. Here are six times something Trump said made sparked a huge backlash from critics. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
Support for Donald Trump has plunged as he has alienated fellow Republicans and large majorities of voters overall in the course of a month of self-inflicted controversies, propelling Democrat Hillary Clinton to a double-digit lead nationally in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey finds sweeping unease with the presumptive Republican nominee’s candidacy — from his incendiary rhetoric and values to his handling of both terrorism and his own business — foreshadowing that the November election could be a referendum on Trump more than anything else.
Roughly two in three Americans say they think Trump is unqualified to lead the nation; are anxious about the idea of him as president; believe his comments about women, minorities and Muslims show an unfair bias; and see his attacks on a federal judge because of his Mexican American heritage as racist.
A slimmer majority say they disapprove of the way Clinton has handled questions about her use of a personal email server while she was secretary of state, and half of Americans are anxious about the prospect of a Clinton presidency, underscoring the historic unpopularity of the two major-party candidates.
In fact, so strong is many Americans’ opposition to Clinton and desire for a change in Washington that even some registering their disapproval of Trump say that as of now they feel compelled to vote for him.
Nevertheless, in a head-to-head general election matchup, Clinton leads Trump 51 percent to 39 percent among registered voters nationwide, the poll found. This is Clinton’s largest lead in Post-ABC polling since last fall and a dramatic reversal from last month’s survey, which found the race nearly even, with Trump at 46 percent and Clinton at 44 percent.
As the hard-fought general election gets underway, Trump’s political standing is on dangerous ground. Fifty-six percent of the public at large say the celebrity business mogul stands against their beliefs, while 64 percent say he does not have the necessary credentials to be president. Fifty-six percent feel strongly that he is unqualified.
Nearly one-third of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Trump is unqualified for office, and 18 percent say he does not represent their beliefs, exposing deep fissures in the GOP base as Trump struggles to unite conservatives going into next month’s national convention in Cleveland.
Then there are the Americans who plan to vote for him despite their disapproval. For instance, 18 percent of people who found Trump’s comments about the judge racist, 15 percent of those who think his comments generally are biased against women, minorities or Muslims, and 11 percent of those who think he is unqualified say they support Trump over Clinton.
Trump enjoys a big lead with those who want a new direction for the country, 64 percent to Clinton’s 26 percent. After eight years of President Obama, a majority of Americans, 56 percent, say they want to elect a president who can set the nation in a new direction. Forty-seven percent say they feel so strongly.
The poll, conducted in the immediate aftermath of a massacre in Orlando that was perpetrated by a man who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, showed Obama’s approval rating at 56 percent — its highest level in Post polling since May 2011, after the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Obama is more popular now than Republicans George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush in the waning months of their presidencies. Although Obama’s approval rating has not reached the level of former Democratic president Bill Clinton’s in 2000, his standing suggests that he could be a relatively effective surrogate for Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.
The survey of 1,001 randomly selected adults found a slight uptick in the share of people who identify as Democrats, from 33 percent in May’s poll to 36 percent this month. Self-described Republicans accounted for 24 percent of those polled this month, ticking down from 25 percent in May, while independents made up 33 percent. This shift in party identification, however, accounts for less than half of Clinton’s gains in the new poll.
In May, Trump was more competitive with Clinton because he had just secured the Republican nomination and the party’s electorate was coalescing around his candidacy. Clinton’s unfavorable ratings among registered voters tied their record high last month, matching Trump’s at 57 percent and weighing her down.
But that dynamic reversed over the past month, with Democrats unifying behind Clinton and Republicans expressing fresh doubts about Trump. While 88 percent of Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents say they support Clinton, a smaller 79 percent of Republican-leaning voters back Trump.
And there is evidence in the poll that the emergence of Trump as the Republican Party’s standard bearer has pushed some GOP voters out of the fold. Just 69 percent of self-identified Republicans who supported a candidate other than Trump in the primary say they now support Trump; 13 percent say they back Clinton, while 11 percent volunteer “neither.”
There is also little evidence that Trump is winning over Democratic primary voters. On the campaign trail in recent weeks, Trump has made direct appeals to disaffected supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). But the poll finds that just 8 percent of voters who backed Sanders in the primaries say they support Trump, down from 20 percent in May.
A 61 percent majority of all Americans say Clinton is qualified to serve, while Clinton maintains a 2-to-1 advantage on which candidate has the best personality and temperament to be president.
The poll finds that 66 percent saying Trump’s controversial comments about women, minorities and Muslims show an unfair bias; 68 percent say Trump’s criticisms of Judge Gonzalo Curiel were racist; and 85 percent say the comments were inappropriate.
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 36 percent say Trump’s comments show he is unfairly biased toward certain groups while 39 percent say the Curiel comments were racist and 71 percent say they were inappropriate.
With such broad public disapproval of Trump’s controversial comments, Republican elected officials have awkwardly tiptoed around their likely nominee. Trump has chastised fellow party leaders when they have distanced themselves or denounced his comments.
The poll found that 62 percent of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents want GOP leaders to speak out against Trump when they disagree with his views, while 35 percent think they should avoid criticizing him.
The June 12 shooting rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando, which killed 49 people and the gunman, tested both Clinton and Trump, who took divergent approaches with their responses, both temperamentally and substantively.
By a margin of 18 percentage points, more Americans say Clinton had the better overall response than Trump, though a significant share, 26 percent, had no preference. The survey found no increase in support for temporarily banning Muslims who are not U.S. citizens from entering the United States, one of Trump’s signature proposals. Forty-three percent of Americans support the Muslim ban while 52 percent oppose it.
Clinton’s support has risen significantly among male registered voters, jumping 11 percentage points since May to tie with Trump’s at 45 percent. Trump’s support fell by 11 percentage points among men overall and by 10 percentage points among white men specifically, a bloc with which he still enjoys a substantial advantage over Clinton.
Although Trump leads Clinton among white voters overall, 50 percent to 40 percent, he trails her badly among nonwhite voters, 77 percent to 15 percent. His is the smallest Republican advantage with whites for a Republican presidential candidate since 1996, when Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton in a rout.
Clinton leads Trump among voters of all age groups, but the poll shows her with her greatest advantage, 54 percent to 34 percent, among those ages 18 to 39.
The Post-ABC poll was conducted June 20-23 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults reached on cellular and landline phones. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Emily Guskin contributed to this report.

The Danger Of The Scarlet Woman (Revelation 17)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gives an address on national security, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Diego, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher)

We can’t have more of the same: The very real dangers of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy
Trump may well be dangerous. But know what you’re getting with Hillary: American hegemony that’s hated worldwide

Patrick L. Smith

Hillary Clinton gives an address on national security, June 2, 2016, in San Diego. (Credit: AP/John Locher))

Just what we needed: another foreign policy speech from Candidate Clinton. This one arrived last Thursday in San Diego—well-chosen ground, given the Navy’s immense base on the city’s shore and the Marine Expeditionary Force garrisoned at Camp Pendleton. It has a long military tradition, San Diego, and the projection of American power is what drives the local economy. Perfect for Clinton. Her speech to this crew-cutted, right-wing town was, of course, “major”—as all of her speeches on the foreign side cannot help but be.

Clinton’s people advised the press beforehand that, major or not, this presentation was not intended to break any new ground—no new positions, no new policy initiatives or ideas. This hardly had to be explained, of course: Hillary Clinton has no new ideas on American foreign policy. That is not her product. Clinton sells continuity, more of the same only more of it because it is so good. In continuity we are supposed to find safety, certainty and security.

I do not find any such things in the idea that our foreign policy cliques under a Clinton administration will simply keep doing what they have been doing for many decades. The thought frightens me, and I do not say this for mere effect. In my estimation, and it is no more than that, the world is approaching maximum tolerance of America’s post–Cold War insistence on hegemony. As regular readers will know, this is why I stand among those who consider Clinton’s foreign policy thinking, borne out by the record, the most dangerous thing about her. And there are many of us, by the evidence.

Nominally, as advertised in the advancers published before Clinton spoke, Clinton’s speech was a rolling barrage against Donald Trump’s various assertions on foreign policy questions. It was that. She hacked into Trump’s “America First” stance and a few of his specific positions. But I question whether this was her true point. I find evidence in her remarks to suggest Clinton’s more fundamental intent was to counter all the talk of “Hillary the hawk” and “Killary.” It is catching up on her; the givenness to invasions, bombing campaigns, “regime change” and conjured-from-nothing hostility may well prove a serious burden as she tries to line up the Sanders people—that vast segment of the Democratic Party she has so thoroughly alienated—behind her.

Clinton’s tactic was to go long on her claim to gravitas. She is for a “smart and principled” foreign policy that preserves American primacy. She favors maintaining Washington’s network of global alliances—with friends, clients and those in between—and avoiding any temptation to lapse into isolation. She spoke in such terms as “the stakes in global statecraft” to evoke complexities that only a closed coterie of mandarins could possibly understand. Interestingly, she promised to reduce income inequality at home and rebuild domestic infrastructure, which is fine, but note why: We must do these things because America cannot lead the rest of world if its own people are falling down holes.

“I’m going to keep American security at the heart of my campaign,” Clinton asserted. Just the thing in a military town, of course. And Clinton’s people are right to surmise that global disorder is starting to get on many American voters’ nerves.

On offer in San Diego, then, was a comforting—if this is your flavor—defense of “the bipartisan pillars of American diplomacy that every president has adhered to since World War II,” as The New York Times put it in last Thursday’s editions.

Wow. That is a rich phrase. It seems intended to confer some historical legitimacy on the Clinton record, some foreign policy lineage, and to arouse in us some confidence in the tried-and-true of our nearby ancestors—nostalgia, even, for the supposed wisdom of our supposedly “greatest generation.” People who listen to too much NPR will buy into this as “sensible.” But it requires exploration beyond this kind of dim silliness, surely.

One, we have suffered as against benefited from bipartisan consensus in the foreign policy sphere since 1945. Even the Democrats’ very late opposition to the Vietnam War was rooted not in its immorality, racism, inhumanity and illegality but in the judgment that we could not win it.

One can say now that foreign policy thinking in Washington is ossified only by risking the assumption that anyone is doing any serious thinking. In consequence, there are no alternative perspectives in the foreign policy space. People who entertain them can generally forget about eating lunch in our nation’s capital. There is no comfort to be found in this. It is, rather, the source of very large problems—problems Clinton effectively proposes to prolong rather than address.

Two, continuity in American foreign policy is the last thing Americans need now for a few reasons.
It is time now to recognize that the incessant crises that rattle our window sashes ever more loudly result often—though not always, of course—from the global ambitions American policies express. We Americans ought to travel more for the sake of seeing more clearly. Polls in Europe and elsewhere taken by Pew and other such organizations show that majorities in many places identify America as the primary cause of global disorder. Hillary Clinton is a million miles from grasping this point.

Finally, she is equally far from acknowledging the intimate connections between foreign and domestic policy. She has no intention of reversing the flow of power to the military within the policy-planning elites and no intention of challenging the Pentagon’s voracious appropriation of the resources needed to underwrite even a domestic program as pitifully modest as hers. A little more philosophically, when are we Americans going to wake up to the fact that the violence-as-first-resort now embedded in our foreign policy process cannot be understood separately from the violence that plagues us at home? Do these two not arise from the same culture—our unconscious but prevalent belief in “regeneration through violence,” as Richard Slotkin titled his examination of the phenom back in the 1970s?

There are times in history when the continuity card is the right one to play. As a value, continuity cannot be judged except in historical context, which ought to be obvious. Hillary Clinton now flings this card face-up on the table. It is a lurch rightward, which can surprise us in only one way: Wasn’t she going to wait at least until Sanders exited stage left?

My conclusions: One, Clinton’s operatives and advisers now conclude there is richer political ground to be plowed over her right shoulder than there is over her left. There is evident concern that the Sanders wing is not going to come her way.

Two, in her remarks Thursday Clinton asserted that electing Trump would be “an historic mistake.” This it may be, but in the San Diego context it was mere rhetoric with an odd irony in it: Clinton betrays a very poor understanding of what time it is in history. The world spins into a new era, no matter whether anyone wants it to, making this a truly awful moment to talk about continuity in foreign policy. It is what we might call “reactionary,” is it not—a recidivist lunge into a past that cannot be reconstructed but in the dreams of conservatives? Autumn of the matriarch: Is this what awaits us?

It is interesting to consider the term “conservative” in the context of Clinton’s attack in San Diego on Donald Trump’s ideas, or instincts, or impulses, or passing thoughts—whatever they are—on foreign policy. You have a figure who calls herself “progressive,” if only when it suits her, berating a conservative because he thinks our foreign policy needs to be rethought.

Clinton singled out a number of Trump’s positions—the banning of Muslims from American soil, a risky assertion of military force against the Islamic State—but hitting The Don on these points is like shooting at the side of a barn. These things will never come to be and are meant only to project the tough, Jacksonian affect his supporters like. I do not take them as serious, thought-through positions. Only two of Clinton’s policy critiques are interesting enough to consider briefly, in my read.

One concerns NATO. Clinton went full-tilt at Trump’s suggestion that the organization is outmoded and requires a reinvention if it is to survive sensibly. In such a case, Trump has said on numerous occasions, the U.S. cannot continue paying more than a fair share of its costs. Three transgressions, in the Clintonian view.

I have taken up the NATO question previously in this space and will reiterate the established only briefly. NATO spent its first post–Cold War years wandering in the desert, bereft of purpose, and has now settled on Russia’s “aggressions” as its enduring raison d’être. Fine, except there are none other than those NATO and Washington have provoked. Never forget the gem John Kirby, the State Department’s latest spokesman, delivered a few months ago: Russia, he explained to The AP’s ever-dogged Matt Lee, is simply too close to NATO to be tolerated. That is where this line of logic leads you.

The part that interests me now is the question of funding. It is against the orthodoxy to raise the question of who pays what in the NATO budget. The U.S. does indeed shoulder far and away more of the organization’s costs than any other member. Why should this not be raised? Why not corrected? This is Trump’s question, and he is probably the only one around who does not know the answer.

Because NATO is a creature of the Pentagon and the American defense industries and the Europeans are force-marched members—this is why. No other member, at least among the original signatories in Western Europe, would consider contributing a eurocent more to this wasteful paranoia factory than it absolutely must to keep the peace with Washington.

Press the Continentals on this and you lift the lid on the fragility of an alliance for which they have long had only an attenuated enthusiasm. The French, as an interesting piece in the Times noted the other day, are subtly reverting to the Gaullist position: NATO’s an infringement on sovereignty and we are thinking about stepping out altogether.

Second issue: Trump also asserted recently that he would talk to Kim Jong–un to persuade him to abandon North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Talk to Kim Jong–un? This is another faux pas in Clinton’s book. Same question: Why would this be?

Since we Americans are such accomplished forgetters, best to recall a little of the past. It is only since the Bush II years as they unfolded after the 2001 attacks that refusing to talk to adversaries has been elevated into one of the stupidest principles ever to be enshrined in official Washington.

Bill Clinton ended an 18-month standoff with Pyongyang in 1994 by negotiating what was called the Agreed Framework, alert readers will recall. Kim Jong–un’s father, Kim Jong–il, consented to freeze nuclear development and construction of reactors that might have been capable of weaponizing enriched uranium. Remember when the North blew up a reactor on television? It was during this period. In exchange, the U.S. agreed to supply the North with shipments of fuel oil while it developed alternative sources of energy.

The regrettable ending here is that the Agreed Framework came undone in 2003 amid mutual recriminations. Washington asserted that Pyongyang was not living up to its obligations, and Pyongyang asserted the reverse. The net of it is North Korea withdrew from the Non–Proliferation Treaty that year. Read the fine print in the 139^th paragraph of the historical accounts and you find that the U.S. never delivered an ounce of oil. I know: I covered this affair at close range.

After the framework agreement collapsed, what are known as Six-Party Talks commenced. These had the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia and Japan sitting across the mahogany table from North Korea to negotiate the nuclear question in another format. There were six rounds of talks, with intermittent signs of promise, before they ended under none other than Barack Obama in 2009. Resuming the talks remains the only serious way to address Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions effectively.

Now think again about Hillary Clinton’s shrill blasts at Trump for his willingness to talk to the North’s new leader.

One cannot sign on to the idea that Trump brings a fresh, imaginative voice to American foreign policy debates. No. This is not the point. Know what you are buying when you buy into Hillary Clinton’s ripostes. This is the point.

Patrick Smith is Salon’s foreign affairs columnist. A longtime correspondent abroad, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker, he is also an essayist, critic and editor. His most recent books are “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” (Yale, 2013) and Somebody Else’s Century: East and West in a Post-Western World (Pantheon, 2010). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is patricklawrence.us.