Obama advisor: Yep, Hagel sounded like a complete buffoon!

Via NRO

The Obama administration, it seems, is not pleased with former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel’s performance during yesterday’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The New York Times quotes an underwhelmed member of the president’s foreign-policy team: 

“It’s somewhere between baffling and incomprehensible,” a member of Mr. Obama’s own team of advisers on Iran said on Thursday night when asked about Mr. Hagel’s stumbling performance on the question during the all-day hearing. The worry was evident in the voice of the official, who would not speak on the record while criticizing the performance of the president’s nominee. For those who question whether the no-containment cornerstone of the Obama approach to Tehran is for real, or just diplomatic rhetoric, Mr. Hagel clearly muddled the message, he said.

The account refers to Hagel’s response to a question posed by New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, who asked Hagel whether he stood by remarks he delivered to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2007, in which he said that, with regard to American policy toward Iran, “The strategy of containment remain[s] relevant today” and that “this is how we should have handled Saddam Hussein.” 

Asked if he still believes containment is an option for dealing with Iran, Hagel said, “No, I don’t now.” The administration’s answer to that question has been “no.” According to theTimes, ”either no one explained that to Chuck Hagel . . . or he forgot it.”

Just what we need another mentally vacuous member of Obama’s cabinet. 

 

RIP General Norman Schwarzkopf

An American legend, he was 78

Truth is, retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf didn’t care much for his popular “Stormin’ Norman” nickname.

The seemingly no-nonsense Desert Storm commander’s reputed temper with aides and subordinates supposedly earned him that rough-and-ready moniker. But others around the general, who died Thursday in Tampa, Fla., at age 78 from complications from pneumonia, knew him as a friendly, talkative and even jovial figure who preferred the somewhat milder sobriquet given by his troops: “The Bear.”

That one perhaps suited him better later in his life, when he supported various national causes and children’s charities while eschewing the spotlight and resisting efforts to draft him to run for political office.

He lived out a quiet retirement in Tampa, where he’d served his last military assignment and where an elementary school bearing his name is testament to his standing in the community.

Schwarzkopf capped an illustrious military career by commanding the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991 — but he’d managed to keep a low profile in the public debate over the second Gulf War against Iraq, saying at one point that he doubted victory would be as easy as the White House and the Pentagon predicted.

Schwarzkopf was named commander in chief of U.S. Central Command at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base in 1988, overseeing the headquarters for U.S. military and security concerns in nearly two dozen countries stretching across the Middle East to Afghanistan and the rest of central Asia, plus Pakistan.

RIP

Did Saddam Hussein ship his WMDs to Syria?

Is the WMD/Iraq War fixing to come full circle? There was a belief that Hussein had sent his stash to Syria, and now, Syria is threatening to use chemical weapons against those seeking to unseat Bashar Assad. At The ClashDaily with Doug Giles there is news that these weapons are those WMDs that Sadam Hussein had, and then, suddenly did not have.

As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein’s air force says they were the WMDs we didn’t find in Iraq.

King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida.

“One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands,” he said.

The irony here is that the chemical weapons stockpile of Syrian thug Assad may in large part be the legacy of weapons moved from Hussein’s Iraq into Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If so, this may be the reason not much was found in the way of WMD by victorious U.S. forces in 2003.

Much more at Investors Business Daily

In 2006, former Iraqi general Georges Sada, second in command of the Iraqi Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book, “Saddam’s Secrets.”

It details how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria in advance of the U.S.-led action to eliminate Hussein’s WMD threat.

As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with chemical weapons materials.

There were 56 flights disguised as a relief effort after a 2002 Syrian dam collapse.

There were also truck convoys into Syria. Sada’s comments came more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”

Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.

According to Shaw, ex-Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, went to Iraq in December 2002 and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Anticipating the invasion, his job was to supervise the removal of such weapons and erase as much evidence of Russian involvement as possible.

This story might shed new light on the “Bush Lied” mantra the Left has been pushing for a decade now. Of course, they will not change their message if these weapons are proven to be Saddam’s stockpile. Of course, I am sure MSNBS will lead the charge to report this news, right after Hell freezes over the third time.

Irony defined, Muslims rally against freedom speech

 

So, these buffoons are going to use the First Amendment to protest against the First Amendment? I wonder if that irony ever dawned on them?

Muslim Americans in Michigan, including a local newspaper editor, will be rallying Friday in Dearborn to protest the YouTube film, “Innocence of Muslims” and advocate for blasphemy laws. Here’s an image of a poster advertising the rally

That’s courtesy of the Detroit News, which writes:

Nearly a decade after Dearborn’s streets celebrated America for bringing down Saddam Hussein and opening a door to democracy in the Mideast, the same city will be the epicenter today of calls to squelch free speech. Protesting the film, “Innocence of Muslims,” that has sparked protests in the Mideast, rally organizer Tarek Baydoun says that so-called blasphemy laws are necessary to prevent speech that hurts the “the religious feelings of Muslims.”

This assault on the First Amendment in the name of the prophet Mohammed is a sad day in America – and confirms fears that Muslim-American activists do not understand the fundamental separation of church and state in the American Constitution.

“There is a need for deterrent legal measures against those individuals or groups that want to damage relations between people, spread hate and incite violence,” said Arab-American News publisher Osama Siblani, a self-proclaimed “moderate” who is apparently oblivious to how gutting the First Amendment would affect his own business.

Also I must note the multi-ton slab of irony in  Osama Siblani’s statement “There is a need for deterrent legal measures against those individuals or groups that want to damage relations between people, spread hate and incite violence,” Hmmmm, I wonder what group of people, maybe a certain religion that might just run afoul of such a law. HMMMMMM

 

The Boston Globe takes President Bambi to task

Via Aleister comes this!

bama should have obtained Congress’ approval on Libya IN HIS remarks last Friday announcing the new military campaign against Libyan ruler Moammar Khadafy, President Obama stressed that the United States would not be acting unilaterally. “In response to a call for action by the Libyan people and the Arab League,’’ he said, “the UN Security Council passed a strong resolution. . . with an explicit commitment to pursue all necessary measures to stop the killing’’ of civilians. [SNIP]

But while Obama was appropriately mindful of obtaining international approval, he should have followed legal procedures at home and obtained the approval of the US Congress. [SNIP]

(MONEY SHOT)

Like many Americans, Obama was scathing in his criticism of George W. Bush’s stewardship of the war in Iraq. But not even Bush’s most strident foes could claim that he acted without congressional approval: Legislation endorsing military operations against Saddam Hussein was approved by the House and Senate in October 2002, months before the invasion actually began. In 1991, the first President Bush likewise sought a congressional resolution before using military force to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

Ah, I thought Obama was a Constitutional scholar. HMMMMMM