HILLARY CLINTON - ANOINTED DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT?

President Obama has long ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion.
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Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.

While there's much to admire about Hillary Clinton, she made several statements in her recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic that worry me.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.

I remember my doubts about the suggestion to arm "vetted rebels" in Syria. What could possibly go wrong?

As I see it, Clinton is not wise to so quickly distance herself from President Obama. As you may recall, Al Gore hardly, if ever, mentioned President Clinton during his campaign to succeed him, nor did he allow Bill Clinton to campaign on his behalf, even in carefully chosen locations where Clinton was quite popular. Still, the president was always the ghost on the stage of every campaign event. I've always believed that Al Gore would have won by a large and indisputable margin, had he not run such a poor campaign and had he not so obviously run away from Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton ought perhaps to take a lesson.

Of course, Clinton had many kind words for the “incredibly intelligent” and “thoughtful” Obama, and she expressed sympathy and understanding for the devilishly complicated challenges he faces. But she also suggested that she finds his approach to foreign policy overly cautious, and she made the case that America needs a leader who believes that the country, despite its various missteps, is an indispensable force for good.

How's that for damning with faint praise?  Au contraire, Madame Secretary, the president is wise to step away from the fantasy of American exceptionalism in which we bear the burden of setting the world to rights, as we see the right.  Also, for a Democratic would-be candidate to criticize the Democratic president in these difficult and tumultuous times seems disloyal.  I realize that she will inevitably differentiate her policies from those of the president, but she seems to be making serious mistakes in her statements in the interview.

If Clinton is the candidate, I believe she could lose the election by taking the anti-Obama track.  She cannot win without an enthusiastic turnout by African-American voters, and Obama still retains a fair amount of support among Democrats of all colors. She appears opportunistic, and, even worse, ruthless in her ambition.

Clinton takes a harder line against Iran than Obama, but negotiations require some wiggle room unless one's position is, "My way or the highway."

HRC: I’ve always been in the camp that held that they did not have a right to enrichment. Contrary to their claim, there is no such thing as a right to enrich. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no such right. I am well aware that I am not at the negotiating table anymore, but I think it’s important to send a signal to everybody who is there that there cannot be a deal unless there is a clear set of restrictions on Iran. The preference would be no enrichment. The potential fallback position would be such little enrichment that they could not break out. So, little or no enrichment has always been my position. 

Not much wiggle room there.

Clinton's seemingly unreserved support for the policies of the present Israeli government is worrisome, too.

Much of my conversation with Clinton focused on the Gaza war. She offered a vociferous defense of Israel, and of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well. This is noteworthy because, as secretary of state, she spent a lot of time yelling at Netanyahu on the administration's behalf over Israel’s West Bank settlement policy. Now, she is leaving no daylight at all between the Israelis and herself.

“I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets,” she told me. “Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command-and-control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult.”

While it's true there is wrong on both sides, Israel's response seems disproportionate, as is indicated by a comparison of the numbers of Palestinians and Israelis killed and wounded.  Also, if the Israeli government truly wants peace, perhaps the leaders might consider a bold, unilateral, admittedly risky move to lift the blockade of Gaza, remove the checkpoints which make travel so difficult for the Palestinians, and stop the spread of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.  So long as Israel's neighbors in Gaza live in miserable conditions, Israel will not have peace.

Note: To disagree with the present policies of the Israeli leadership does not make me antisemitic any more than disagreement with the policies of my own government makes me un-American.

If the interview is Clinton's pre-season launch of her candidacy for the presidency, and I think it is, then she's made several missteps, and, I hope she sets herself aright.  I don't think any candidate, except in certain circumstances, a sitting president, is entitled to anointment as the chosen candidate for a political party, but I fear the stage is being set for anointing Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate.  I hope other prominent Democrats in the party rise to challenge Clinton, so we have a real contest and open discussions of various policies for moving the country forward and winning the election in 2016.

NEGOTIATIONS RATHER THAN ATTACKS? WHAT IS HE THINKING?

Why did 16 Democratic senators sign on to legislation-in-waiting that would increase sanctions on Iran for non-compliance in the deal to cease their nuclear weapons programs? Why now, at this time of delicate negotiations with the leadership in Iran about the programs, are the senators not willing to wait and see how the agreement plays out? Doesn't the bill send a message to Iran and the world that they have no confidence that the agreement will have a positive outcome?

The time is long past for the leaders in the US to seriously consider negotiations, rather than a rush to war, as the better way to solve international problems. Are we back to "Bomb Iran" if increased sanctions don't work? What's wrong with these people? What good is a Democratic majority in the Senate if a sufficient number, less one, of Democratic senators are willing to undermine the Democratic president's policies and possibly join with Republicans to override a presidential veto?

Many questions, no real answers.  A number of the senators in the list are up for reelection next year, and may have made the decision to support the bill for - Gasp! - political purposes.  Since the Supreme Court ruled in "Citizens United" that corporations, organizations, and unions are people and entitled to spend unlimited funds on political campaigns, the senators keep in mind fund-raising for the next election.

Throwing down the gauntlet:

"If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so," Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman, said in a statement. "Otherwise, it’s not clear why any member of Congress would support a bill that possibly closes the door on diplomacy and makes it more likely that the United States will have to choose between military options or allowing Iran’s nuclear program to proceed."

Bravo!

The list of renegade Democratic senators with check marks by those whose present terms end in January 1915:

Mark Begich - Alaska ✓
Michael Bennet  - Colorado
Richard Blumenthal - Connecticut
Cory Booker - New Jersey ✓
Ben Cardin - Maryland
Bob Casey, Jr. - Pennsylvania
Chris Coons - Delaware ✓
Joe Donnelly - Indiana
Kirsten Gillibrand - New York 
Kay Hagan - North Carolina ✓
Mary Landrieu - Louisiana ✓
Joe Manchin - West Virginia
Bob Menendez - New Jersey
Mark Pryor - Arkansas ✓
Chuck Schumer - New York
Mark Warner - Virginia ✓

IRAN'S NUKE ACCORDING TO BIBI

Did anyone in the audience at the UN laugh out loud?  How could they contain themselves upon seeing Netanyahu show a bomb right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon?  My first thought was of Wile E. Cayote.

The Israeli Likud Party’s cover story for why it wants to draw the United States into a war with Iran makes no real sense. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been predicting an Iranian nuclear bomb since 1992 (a time when Iran had no nuclear program at all), and he has been wrong for 15 years in a row. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and other Israeli officials have said publicly that Iran has not decided to go for a nuclear weapon. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given more than one fatwa or formal religious ruling that making and stockpiling nuclear weapons are forbidden in Islamic law. Netanyahu is in a position similar to that of someone who wants to argue that Pope Benedict XVI secretly has a condom factory operating in the Vatican.

Bibi makes the case for war with Iran on the same bases that he made the case for war in Iraq.  By changing only one letter in the name of the country and using pretty much the same pattern of lies and misinformation which were successful in persuading Cheney/Bush to launch a war in Iraq, Bibi's script promoting an attack on Iran was written.  Check out the 2002 video of Bibi's testimony before Congress, explaining the dangers of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which were later proved to be non-existent.

Check out the winners of  the caption contest of the photo above at The New Yorker.

AUGUST 6, 2001 PDB "A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT"?

I watched Condoleezza Rice's appearance before the 9/11 Commission in growing amazement at her pathetic attempt to justify the inaction of the White House in the face of the President's Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US".  Kirk Eichenwald, the author of an opinion column in yesterday's New York Times titled "The Deafness Before the Storm", allows that Rice's contention that the PDB was "a historical document" may have contained a kernal of truth, simply because for months the White House had been receiving warnings even more dire than the August 6 PDB.  Remember the the words of National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism,  Richard Clark?

Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration, most famously writing that Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet was running around with his "hair on fire".

So yes.  In the sense that intelligence and security officials in the government had warned of an '"imminent attack" for months, and the Bush administration paid little heed, the August 6 PDB, the sole PDB declassified for the commission, could be labeled "a historical document". 

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it. 

By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

Neocons in the White House advised that Bin Laden was only pretending that he was planning an attack on the US, and Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. chose to believe them rather than the intelligence and security experts.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda...what is point of the reminder on the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and another intended target in Washington DC, which was prevented when passengers attacked the hijackers on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania, that the intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration for months prior to September 11, 2001, that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US?  I'm not sure, except to point out once again the incompetence of the Bush administration in its response to intelligence information.  Could it be because the Neocons had an agenda before they reached the White House, and the intelligence had to be twisted to fit the agenda, the agenda being to launch an attack against Iraq?

Now the Neocons, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have another agenda.  They are beating the war drums for an attack on Iran, and, once again, the intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities is in dispute.  Obama will be more than cautious about an attack on Iran for a number of reasons, including the  possibility of destabilizing further the already unstable situation in the Middle East.

But what about Romney?  From his own website: "U.S. policy toward Iran must begin with an understanding on Iran’s part that a military option to deal with their nuclear program remains on the table. This message should not only be delivered through words, but through actions."

And what would be the effect of an attack on the price of oil?  Do the warmongers, with their macho chest-pounding, who clamor for or threaten a pre-emptive attack on Iran think through to the consequences of a rise in oil prices on the world economy or to any of the negative consequences at all of launching an attack?

I watched with dismay and disbelief as the administration began its inexorable procession to the invasion of Iraq to protect the US and the rest of the world against Saddam's fast-moving development of nuclear weapons and his vast store of chemical weapons, which he could loose on the world at any moment, both of which turned out to be non-existent.  The reason I write is that I don't want our government to undertake this sort of deadly experiment again on the basis of junk intelligence.  I realize that it's quite likely that what I write here will make no difference at all, except, at best, to perhaps remind a voter or two in a swing state about what a vote for Romney might mean with regard to future military actions by the US.