Daily Archives: 11 October 2016

Another Memory Failure

Posted on by
Reply

Sunday’s townhall debate between Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump was memorable for a lot of exchanges, but this one may be symptomatic of a larger medical problem of Clinton’s.

When Trump brought up President Barack Obama’s (D) red line about Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s chemical weapon use and then proceeded to retreat from it when al Assad called his bluff, he said Clinton played a role in that failure through her position as Secretary of State at the time.

Clinton responded by saying that she was not Secretary of State at that time; she’d already left the office.

I was gone.  At some point, we need to do some fact-checking here.

Indeed.

However, Clinton, in fact, ran the State Department for Obama from 2009 until 2013, during which time Assad continued to use chemical weapons.

This kind of memory lapse isn’t useful for our President to be having, nor is the rate at which she’s experiencing them.

Taking Orders?

Posted on by
1

Is that what Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is doing with his just-acquired colonial master?  Or is this just another outcome from President Barack Obama’s (D) trailing along leading from behind?

The Philippine defense chief said Friday that he had suspended participation in any joint patrols with the US of the disputed South China Sea, the first concrete sign of a crack in the military alliance following the election of President Rodrigo Duterte.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana also said he also would ask a small detachment of American troops providing counterterrorism assistance on the southern island of Mindanao to leave as the president requested.

That last comes with Duterte’s proviso that our troops would not be asked to leave until the Philippine military can carry out its own counterterrorism operations.  That’s a judgment, though, that Duterte can make at any time.  Or when the PRC is ready to make its next move vis-à-vis the Philippines and leading us from the region.

Duterte’s rationale for halting the joint patrols is a reflection of the PRC’s growing influence over him:

Mr Duterte has said he wanted the patrols halted to avoid antagonizing Beijing….

Indeed.