Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed the Ukrainian government Monday for an uptick in violence in eastern Ukraine, saying Kiev’s forces were apparently preparing for a fresh offensive, as Ukraine blamed Russia-backed separatists for the escalation.
Never mind that, were it true that Ukraine is readying an offensive, it would only be true because the Ukrainian government has a right—a duty—to drive the Russian troops from Ukrainian soil and to bring the “separatists” to justice.
Here’s Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s view of “politics:”
I won’t pretend that this [homemade email server/classified email scandal] is anything other than what it is—the same old partisan games we’ve seen so many times before.
It’s not about Benghazi. And you know what? It’s not about emails or servers, either. It’s about politics. I will do my part to provide transparency to Americans[.]
Because it’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors regarding using homemade email servers to conduct State Department official business.
It’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors involving her handling of classified information via those servers.
It’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors involving her disingenuousness in claiming no emails passed through her servers that had classified markings on it, knowing that’s not the problem: having classified information, regardless of markings, is.
It’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors involving withholding such official records from State and from the National Archives in contravention of the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
It’s only politics.
This is the level of integrity and moral judgment that wants to be President of the United States. We already will have had eight years of that sewage by the time our next President is inaugurated. We can’t afford any more; our nation and our society have been damaged badly enough.
Over two decades U.S. federal courts have found the Iranian government liable for orchestrating or supporting the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers U.S. Air Force facility in Saudi Arabia, and multiple shootings and suicide bombings in Israel, among other attacks. Judges have awarded some $45 billion in damages to hundreds of plaintiffs such as Embassy bombing survivor Anne Dammarell and the widow and orphaned children of Hamas bombing victim Ira Weinstein.
Naturally, the men governing Iran think these murdered victims of Iranian terrorism are legitimate targets and the terrorism entirely jake, and these men have refused to pay a penny of the judgment.
President Barack Obama and his henchman, John Kerry, don’t care, either. The money from which those judgments would have been paid was $100 billion to $150 billion prior administrations had seized from Iranian (largely oil sales) accounts. But that’s the same money Obama and his have promised Iran in return for their “promise” to stop developing a nuclear weapons capability. For a while.
So much for what the Progressive movement in the Executive Branch thinks of justice.
This one is by Patrick O’Connor in Wall Street Journal Washington Wire piece.
Senator and Presidential candidate (R, FL) spoke to the Foreign Policy Initiative in New York City last Friday, and he decried President Barack Obama’s nuclear weapons “deal” with Iran and Obama’s decision to resume ties with Cuba and reopen an embassy there.
Mr Rubio outlined those positions in a Friday speech in New York hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative, further casting himself as the candidate most eager to reignite tensions with two longtime adversaries.
Reignite? Reignite!? Those tensions remain, in spades; they’ve not at all been abated by Obama’s moves. Aside from Iran still being on a path to getting nuclear weapons, it remains sworn to the extermination of Israel and to the death of America. Cuba, far from relaxing, is demanding millions of dollars from us in “reparations.”
The WSJ should know better.
Pierre Atlas, in Real Clear World had one.
…the accord is meant to keep it from building [a nuclear weapon], at least for the next 10 years. The question that the deal’s opponents, such as the Republican presidential candidates or Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, must answer is this: what is the realistic, plausible alternative to JCPOA that will achieve the same goal, short of going to war?
No, first Atlas and his fellow apologists for this “deal” must first establish that the arrangement will prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Along with that, Atlas and his fellows must demonstrate how we’ll know Iran has reneged on this arrangement before they explode a test article, since both the arrangement and Iranian government officials, from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on down, say they will not allow inspections at their nuclear development facilities that are housed in military bases and the arrangement explicitly allows Iran to delay inspections at civilian nuclear facilities for weeks at a time before the first inspector can walk through the front door.
Next he and his must provide a plausible plan of action for the period beginning at the end of his 10 years—granting for the sake of his argument that Iran will not sooner build a nuclear bomb—when Iran will be free of restraints and can build to its heart’s content.
Then Atlas undermined his argument by offering one version of an alternative:
Congress could instead offer legislation to shore up JCPOA and give American diplomacy a coercive edge. It could pass a bill authorizing the use of military force by the current and future presidents should Iran renege on its commitments. It could pass a resolution offering US support to any country that might be attacked by Iran.
Of course, he elided the fact that Congress can—and should—do this while rejecting the arrangement.
And he carefully ignored the value of that support to an Israel not merely “attacked” by Iran, but obliterated by them with at most four nuclear devices.
Isn’t Atlas’ alternative “going to war,” though? Only later, maybe, when Iran’s program is farther along and facilities better hardened. A military strike now, properly constructed, would eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program without war, since it would leave Iran without the means to prosecute their war, other than the way they’re fighting their already in progress war: funding and arming their terrorist clients.