Tag Archives: foreign policy

Democrats and Security

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First there was Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s unsecured, personal and private email server on which she conducted official State Department business and which she used for handling over 2,000 classified emails—some of which also were marked classified.

Then there was the breathtakingly easy hack of Democratic National Committee email servers.

Then there was the similarly breathtakingly easy hack of Democratic National Convention Committee email servers.

Now there’s this.

[I]n 2009, Hillary Clinton’s top aide mistakenly left potentially classified papers in the front seat of the car she was traveling in.

Huma Abedin realized the significance of her error and sent an email to a fellow Clinton staffer asking that the papers be moved to the trunk.

“I’m going to have ambassador ride on next drive,” she wrote on July 20, 2009. “There’s a bunch of burn stuff in the pocket of my front seat.”

This displays an utter lack of concern by this highly experienced Clinton Aide for the classified documents with which care she’d been entrusted, both in her abandoning them on the front seat of her car and in her request to have them stored (however temporarily) in the unsecured trunk of her unsecured car rather than have them properly taken under control.

There’s also no indication Abedin gave any thought to whether her colleague had either the clearance or the need to know (both of which are necessary before an individual can be allowed to handle classified material) before she requested him to take possession of those abandoned documents.

Nor is there any indication that the unnamed staffer ever was debriefed on his handling of the documents.

There clearly were no sanctions applied to Abedin for her extreme carelessness in her handling of these classified documents.

It seems pretty evident that Democrats, at least senior Democrats, don’t understand security, or they don’t care about security.  Either way, our nation cannot afford such as these in our government.

Is the Arabian Gulf a Safe Space for Iranian Combat Ships?

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The US seems to think so.  Four Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps light attack vessels last Tuesday

carried out a “high-speed intercept,” with two of the vessels coming within 300 yards of the USS Nitze.

The US reacted without verve or élan.  The best “a US Navy official” could say was that the incident was

“unsafe and unprofessional,” adding that the Iranian ships “created a dangerous, harassing situation that could have led to further escalation.”

And then the Nitze backed down and changed course away from the IRGC’s naval vessels.  Plainly, the decision to escalate or not was given over entirely to Iran.

This display encouraged Iran’s next-day light attack vessels to approach within 200 yards of another US vessel, the USS Squall, which finally drew a warning shot response from the Squall.

This weakness only encourages Iran to push further.  The present feinting is beginning to look an awful lot like preparation for an attack of the type carried out against the USS Cole, wherein a similar small boat, whose intention was misread, was allowed to make physical contact with the Cole, upon which the boat detonated the bomb it was carrying, disabling the Cole and killing 17 American sailors.

This is one of the inevitable outcomes of the Obama administration’s timidity toward Iran.

Foundation Work

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Former President Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, plan to stop raising money for the Clinton Foundation and turn over operations to independent parties if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is elected president, according to people familiar with the plans.

The Clintons also plan to discontinue after this year one of the foundation’s signature events, the Clinton Global Initiative….

Sure they will.  Just like they said when HRC became Secretary of State that the Clinton Foundation would only accept donations from designated favored foreign governments rather than all governments seeking favor.

This time they’re being even more disingenuous: only Bill and Chelsea will stop (or so they say) fund-raising for the Clinton Foundation.  The Foundation itself will continue raising funds, and Bill and Chelsea will continue raising funds outside of the Foundation.

Maybe the Clintons know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe that they’d like to interest us in, too.

The Non-Ransom Ransom

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As part of the Iran nuclear weapons deal done by President Barack Obama (D) and his Secretary of State John “Motorboat Skipper” Kerry, the US ransomed four prisoners held by Iran.  Of course, Obama denies that the $400 million payment that…coincided…with the prisoner release was a ransom.

In fact, this part of the nuclear weapons deal was a carefully scripted exchange little different from any pirate’s ransom exchange.

US officials wouldn’t let Iranians take control of the money until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three freed Americans departed from Tehran on Jan 17. Once that happened, an Iranian cargo plane was allowed to bring the cash home from a Geneva airport that day.

And [emphasis added]

One of the Americans released in January as part of the prisoner exchange, a pastor named Saeed Abedini, said he and other American prisoners were kept waiting at Mehrabad airport from Jan 16 to the morning of Jan 17. He said in an interview that he was told by a senior Iranian intelligence official at the time that their departure was contingent upon the movements of a second airplane.

So—who are we to believe, Obama or Abedini’s lying ears?

Another Obama/Clinton Outcome

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Russia now is running airstrikes against Syrian targets from an airbase in Iran.  Russia also is making use of these missions to exercise its Cold War military assets in the process, running many of these strikes with one of its long-range bombers, a TU-22 variant.  Other runs are being made with its newer Su-34 tactical bomber, and all of them are being escorted by Russia’s newer Su-30 and Su-35 fighter aircraft, giving all those pilots valuable live fire, combat experience.

This isn’t just the fact of a few runs, either—it’s a broad range of aircraft, with a commensurately broad range of support crews, and with all of that, a broad range of compatibility training with their Iranian hosts.

Of as great importance as that use of Iranian basing facilities is the fact that those Russian striking aircraft have to overfly Iraq or Turkey to get to Syria, and Russia has been working cooperation deals with both of those nations—even after the kerfuffle involving Turkey’s shootdown of a Russian fighter.

President Barack Obama’s (D) and Democratic Party Presidential candidate and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s reset with Russia once again is proving enormously expensive.