Hillary Attacks Her Former Friend and Boss! Whittle Whittles Away! More Obama Lies!

I am back but leaving again Thursday for another wedding.
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Is it possible we do not get objective press and media commentary because key members are captives of White House employment and marital connections?

ABC News executive producer Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice, National Security Adviser.

 President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications  

ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman is married to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

ABC News and Univision reporter Matthew Jaffe is married to Katie Hogan, Obama’s Deputy Press Secretary

ABC President Ben Sherwood is the brother of Obama’s Special Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood

CNN President Virginia Moseley is married to former Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Secretary Tom Nides

And now you know why it is no surprise the media is in Obama's pocket.

Ya think there might be a little bias in the news ... we're being fed bull doo-doo folks.
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Now that Hillary is blasting Obama so soon after her disastrous tenure as Sec. of State, perhaps I should just sit back and watch the two 'friends' duke it out!

 

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A good watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8GkE1EY_QA&sns=em
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For almost 6 years we have been living a lie and hearing them almost every time Obama opens his mouth.

I  just returned from a great wedding in north Georgia at a lovely mountain community - Big Canoe.

While there, I happened to catch Obama's appearance before he left for his vacation.

He lied again responding to a question 'did he have any regrets for taking our troops out of Iraq?'

His response was pure Obama and, while he responded, a light went on in my head which said 'man that guy is good' because he knows his brainless admirers will never know how he just twisted facts in order to blame G.W and Cheney, without actually saying their names, the intelligence community and his own previous bragging about how he brought our troops out of Iraq.  He even campaigned on that pledge stating Afghan was the war we should be fighting, not the one in Iraq.

When GW stated he relied on intelligence, Liberals went bezerk yet, they have said  nothing when Obama said ISIS advanced faster than the intelligence community thought blah, blah, blah. (See 1 below.)

Even the New York Time's resident apologist, Tom Friedman, is befuddled (See 1a below.)

and then this from Israel's Amb. to The U.N.(See 1b below.)
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Will the world community ever wake up to reality and act accordingly?  (See 2 and 2a below.)
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I love posting the "Darwin Awards" and I would venture most of those who were selected also voted for Obama.  (See 3 below.)

And then we have Jimmy Carter's recent comments! (See 3a below.)

Last week I posted an analysis about proportionality by the law professor Laurie Blank, daughter of friends who live here at The Landings. While away, I was sent this follow up article by another dear friend and fellow memo reader who brought the first article to my attention.  (See 3b below.)
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More support for why I believe UNRWA is to blame for much of the misery Palestinians continue to endure.  (See 4 below.)
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You can keep your health policy and your doctor but can you keep your vet?  (See 5 below.)
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Would it not be nice if the next president understood what Bill Whittle just told him about being president.

listen and watch Bill Whittle at the Horowitz Freedom Center (Palm Beach, FL):

 https://www.billwhittle.com/speaking/david-horowitz-freedom-center-palm-beach-fl

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Dick
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1) President Who Pulled U.S. Troops Out of Iraq Says Idea He Pulled Troops Out of Iraq is "Bogus"
By Katie Pavlich
In 2008 then Senator Obama campaigned on the promise of ending the war in Iraq and bringing combat troops home. In 2012, Obama touted that promise as complete (one of the only campaign promises he actually kept) and critics warned leaving Iraq without a residual U.S. force would result in a power vacuum and vulnerable state. Now as the country falls apart and the radical Islamic State army continues its march unchallenged in Iraq, Obama is claiming he wasn't the one who made the decision to pull U.S. combat troops out of the country and that claims to the contrary are "bogus and wrong."

 Q Mr. President, do you have any second thoughts about pulling all ground troops out of Iraq? And does it give you pause as the U.S. -- is it doing the same thing in Afghanistan?

THE PRESIDENT: What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.

And the Iraqi government, based on its political considerations, in part because Iraqis were tired of a U.S. occupation, declined to provide us those assurances. And on that basis, we left. We had offered to leave additional troops. So when you hear people say, do you regret, Mr. President, not leaving more troops, that presupposes that I would have overridden this sovereign government that we had turned the keys back over to and said, you know what, you’re democratic, you’re sovereign, except if I decide that it’s good for you to keep 10,000 or 15,000 or 25,000 Marines in your country, you don’t have a choice -- which would have kind of run contrary to the entire argument we were making about turning over the country back to Iraqis, an argument not just made by me, but made by the previous administration.

So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis were -- a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq.

Having said all that, if in fact the Iraqi government behaved the way it did over the last five, six years, where it failed to pass legislation that would reincorporate Sunnis and give them a sense of ownership; if it had targeted certain Sunni leaders and jailed them; if it had alienated some of the Sunni tribes that we had brought back in during the so-called Awakening that helped us turn the tide in 2006 -- if they had done all those things and we had had troops there, the country wouldn’t be holding together either. The only difference would be we’d have a bunch of troops on the ground that would be vulnerable. And however many troops we had, we would have to now be reinforcing, I’d have to be protecting them, and we’d have a much bigger job. And probably, we would end up having to go up again in terms of the number of grounds troops to make sure that those forces were not vulnerable.

So that entire analysis is bogus and is wrong. But it gets frequently peddled around here by folks who oftentimes are trying to defend previous policies that they themselves made.

Right, pulling all U.S. troops from Iraq had nothing to do with Obama's political aspirations and promises. Pretty incredible. On the issue of Obama claiming the Iraqi's and Maliki "not wanting U.S. troops there," and "wouldn't agree to a status of forces agreement," Obama hardly tried to get an agreement done in the first place. Obama took the easy way out on the agreement in order to fulfill a campaign promise and to satisfy his base.

Here's a flashback from 2010, when Obama took credit for the troop pull-out in Iraq.

Weird.. He took credit for that decision in an Oval Office address in 2010.

11:01 AM - 9 Aug 2014

But, the idea that Obama had anything to do with the troop pullout is totally bogus right?
And another from 2011:

Obama today: "As if this was my decision." Obama in Oct 2011: pic.twitter.com/fnTQSKxt7N A promise he kept, and he's running from it? #OwnIt

You get the point.

President Obama wants to be responsible for what makes him look good in a short term moment and conveniently shoves off the bad and real decision making on everything and everyone else.


1a)  Obama Doesn’t Worry About Israel’s Survival. That’s Why We Should.

By Jonathan S. Tobin 

In an interview with the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman, President Obama once again sounded the themes that have characterized his second term foreign policy: befuddlement and helplessness. But amidst the alibis for failure, the president also said something significant: He’s not worried about Israel’s survival but is concerned about its values. That’s exactly why the rest of us should be more worried about its security.

Here’s the quote:

I asked the president whether he was worried about Israel.

“It is amazing to see what Israel has become over the last several decades,” he answered. “To have scratched out of rock this incredibly vibrant, incredibly successful, wealthy and powerful country is a testament to the ingenuity, energy and vision of the Jewish people. And because Israel is so capable militarily, I don’t worry about Israel’s survival. … I think the question really is how does Israel survive. And how can you create a State of Israel that maintains its democratic and civic traditions. How can you preserve a Jewish state that is also reflective of the best values of those who founded Israel. And, in order to do that, it has consistently been my belief that you have to find a way to live side by side in peace with Palestinians. … You have to recognize that they have legitimate claims, and this is their land and neighborhood as well.”

It’s nice that the president admires Israel’s achievements. But his complacence about its military achievements combined with his patronizing concern about its democratic and civic traditions is the sort of left-handed compliment that tells us more about his animosity for the Jewish state’s government than his fidelity to the alliance between the two allies. You don’t have to read too closely between the lines to understand that the subtext of these comments—Hamas’s genocidal intentions and Iran’s nuclear ambitions—make Obama’s blasé confidence about Israel’s ability to defend itself deeply worrisome.

The president is, of course, right to note that Israel has a formidable military. In particular, Israel’s dedication to technological advances such as the Iron Dome missile defense system have both saved many lives in the last month’s fighting with Hamas and provided a substantial long-range benefit to its American security partner. But his complacency about its security situation is hardly reassuring.

Israel remains under siege by hostile neighbors in the form of terrorist states on both its northern (Hezbollah) and southern borders. Both remain committed not just to Israel’s destruction but also the genocide of its Jewish population. While Israel is in no current danger of military defeat, the spectacle of Hamas forcing the majority of Israelis in and out of bomb shelters for a month encouraged the Islamists and their supporters to believe their cause is not yet lost. The fact that their efforts are being cheered on by a worldwide surge in anti-Semitism fueled by hatred of Israel also ought to leave any true friend of Israel worried.

Even more to the point, the principal sponsor of those terror groups—Iran—is working hard to gain nuclear capability, a (to use Obama’s own phrase) “game changing” factor that could destabilize the entire Middle East, threaten the security of the U.S. as well as endanger Israel’s existence. But despite paying rhetorical lip service to the effort to stop Iran, Obama has spent the last years hell-bent on pursuing détente with Tehran. The weak interim nuclear deal signed by the U.S. last fall undermined the sanctions that had cornered the Iranians and discarded virtually all of the West’s leverage. If the Iranians are currently playing hard to get in the current round of negotiations (now in the equivalent of soccer’s injury time as the deadline promised by Obama for talks has been extended), it is because they know the president’s zeal for a deal (and an excuse to abandon his campaign promises to stop Iran) outweighs his common sense or his resolve.

The bulk of Friedman’s interview with Obama concentrated on the disaster in Iraq and related troubles. But here, as with many domestic problems and scandals, the president’s priority is to absolve himself and his policies. The world is, he seems to be constantly telling us, a complex and confusing place where all of our possible choices are bad. There’s some truth to that, especially in places like Syria and Iraq. But what comes across most in his account of America’s declining affairs is that this is a president who is overwhelmed by events and has little understanding of them. The best he can do is to spew clichés about his bad options and to blame others.

Obama’s chief whipping boy in the Middle East is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the world leader with whom he has quarreled the most in his years in office. Despite the events of the last month that have proved again that any territory Israel hands to the Palestinians will become a terror base, Obama continues to obsess about the need for Netanyahu to make territorial concessions that will create the possibility of, as the Israeli says, 20 Gazas in the West Bank. The overwhelming majority of Israelis reject such mad advice but Obama dismisses their common sense as merely being a case of a lack of vision. Despite his talk about supporting Israeli democracy he has been doing everything possible to thwart the will of Israel’s voters by undermining Netanyahu. Israelis want peace but understand that subjecting themselves to terror governments won’t bring the conflict to a close.

Obama also believes that the obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians isn’t Hamas. This conveniently ignores the fact that it is Hamas that plunged the region into war and whose hold on power there is being guaranteed by American pressure on Israel to restrain its counter-attacks on Islamist rocket fire and terror tunnels. The problem is, Obama says, that Netanyahu is “too strong” and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is “too weak.” That explains Obama’s constant attacks on Israel and his praise for the feckless—and powerless—Abbas. If he were serious about supporting democracy, he’d be wary of the autocratic Abbas and his corrupt PA gang and understand that asking Israel to further empower a Palestinian leadership that won’t make peace is not the act of a friend.

Even if we take the president’s assurances of his friendship for Israel at face value, this interview confirms what has been obvious since January 2009. This is a president who believes Israel’s security is not his priority or even a particular concern. Rather, he wants to save Israel from itself and acts as if it has not already made several offers of peace that have been consistently turned down by the Palestinians. Though Obama is right that Israelis won’t allow their country to be destroyed, his apathy about the deadly threats it faces from Iran and its terrorist proxies, cheered by a chorus of anti-Semitic haters, does nothing to inspire confidence in his leadership. The world has gotten less safe on his watch. The Israeli objects of his pressure tactics do well to ignore his advice. Friedman’s interview gives those who do care about the Jewish state’s future even more reasons to worry.

1b)  Amb Prosor addresses special UN General Assembly session on Gaza

Mr. President,

Winston Churchill, one of the great architects of this institution, is
remembered for his remarkable ability to perceive danger long before the
rest of the world had woken up to the fact. In 1935, four years before World
War II, Churchill criticized the international community for standing by as
Germany rapidly rearmed. In his words: "The family of nations suffered from
a want of foresight, an unwillingness to act when action would be simple and
effective, and a lack of clear thinking and confusion of counsel until the
emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong."

The international community is once again facing the severe lack of
foresight and unwillingness to see. Every day we are confronted by stories
of radical Islamic terrorism: ISIS is purging Iraq of Christians, Boko Haram
has kidnapped school girls in Nigeria, Al-Shabab gunmen are raiding fishing
villages on the Somali coast. And yet this Assembly does not utter a word. 
It can only muster its outrage when Israel acts to defend its citizens.

The double standards are absolutely appalling. In Iraq, over 1,600 people
were killed in July. In Libya, clashes between rival militias killed 200
people last month. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has slaughtered nearly 3,000
people this year. It may just be me, but I didn't hear the Arab group rally
to condemn these atrocities. Instead, this group gangs up against the only
democratic nation in the Middle East that is defending its citizens from the
totalitarian forces threatening every enlightened country in this Assembly.

It might be too much to ask you to stand on our side in this battle between
civilization and barbarism. But at least have the decency to swallow your
selective outrage as Israel wages war against the extremist groups, seeking
to eradicate the values that we all hold very dear.

Mr. President,

Israel is on the frontline of the war against radical extremism. The battle
we fight today is the same battle that you all will fight tomorrow. Hamas,
like ISIS and al-Qaeda, shares a disdain for democracy, a contempt for
modernity, and a willingness to target innocent civilians.

And yet, some of you have abandoned the only democracy in the Middle East
standing against the tide of terrorism. What does this say about your
values? What does it mean for the next generation? This institution is being
held hostage by some in this Assembly who are the worst human rights
abusers.

The Arab nations, backed by some members of the non-aligned movement, may
have the numbers, but they don't have the morals. They use the majority to
convene special sessions, issue condemnations, and push through resolutions
demonizing Israel. In fact, I won't be surprised if the Arab states pass a
resolution saying that the terror tunnels were actually simply an irrigation
system, and that the rockets were nothing more than shooting stars.

Few nations have the courage to admit that Hamas is committing a double war
crime, targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian
civilians. Fewer still have the courage to admit that Hamas is willing to
see its own children killed so it can build sympathy for its cause. By not
vocally and unequivocally condemning Hamas, you are condemning another
generation of Israelis and Palestinians to further suffering.

There is only one way to achieve sustained quiet in Israel and build a
peaceful and prosperous Gaza. Hamas must be disarmed, Gaza must be
demilitarized. And the international community must divorce itself from the
romantic notion of Hamas as 'freedom fighters'.

Seventy years ago Winston Churchill bemoaned what he saw as the inability of
mankind to act until the emergency comes. Today I am here to issue a
warning: Stand with Israel and stand against terror before it is too late,
before the danger lands on your doorstep and self-preservation strikes its
jarring gong.

Thank you Mr. President. 

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2)

Facing the Challenge of Hamas' Asymmetric Warfare
Targeting civilian lives must be made unacceptable

by Avi Jorisch
South China Morning Post

As the recent hostilities in Gaza demonstrate, Israel stands at the forefront of a new kind of warfare. Israel is not alone in the need to confront radical forces that include terrorist organizations and oppressive regimes who deliberately seek civilian casualties on all sides as the core element of their military strategy; this is a long-term battle that other liberal societies will ultimately have to fight. Sooner or later most free democracies will face the same challenge that Israel is struggling with today: how to defend themselves from ruthless, barbaric enemies who deliberately place civilians in harms way, without undermining the basic values upon which open societies are based.

Hamas' strategy is to force Israel into a lose/lose situation by rejecting the basic norms of warfare, which seeks to protect civilian populations. By indiscriminately firing rockets from heavily populated areas in Gaza into Israel's major cities, Hamas confronts Israel with a terrible choice: either allow rocket fire to continue and putting its civilians at risk, or attack Hamas' weapon depots which are deliberately placed in and around civilians. The first option is unacceptable to any democracy. But so is the second: military operations that result in the deaths of Palestinian civilians is morally heart-wrenching for the Israeli public and isolates Israel internationally. This is precisely why Hamas welcomes the death of its civilians by the Israeli military, which it uses to isolate Israel internationally, and demoralize it internally.

According to noted Haifa University Professor Dan Schueftan, the ideal Israeli military response to rockets targeting its cities has two components: The first is to gather accurate intelligence on where Hamas rockets are located. The second is to execute pinpoint attacks that target these weapons and Hamas' command and control structure – and to warn civilians in advance.

But because weapons are hidden in schools, mosques, hospitals, playgrounds and tunnels that run underneath residential buildings, and Hamas has threatened Palestinian civilians who flee targeted areas, it impossible for Israel to respond without incurring civilian deaths. This is a challenge any liberal society in this situation would struggle with.

​Hamas' deliberate efforts to erase the distinction between military and civilian targets depart from the methods of waging war to which democracies are accustomed. They are forced upon Israel for a basic reason: Hamas does not attach high value to the lives of the people they ostensibly govern. To the contrary, like other extremist groups, Hamas celebrates death because of the potential for triggering media images and outrage which undermine Israel. It is this asymmetry between free societies and terrorist organizations such as Hamas – the first values human life above all, the second actively seeks the death of people on both sides – that lies at the heart of this conflict and presents Israel with agonizing military choices.

​Israel's war with a terrorist organization committed to the death not only of its proclaimed adversaries but also of its own people has far reaching consequences. While Israel has reached peace accords with neighboring countries – Egypt and Jordan – and may be able to reach similar agreements with other sovereign neighboring states, the Arab world is currently convulsed with instability and radicalism that has given rise to a number of groups and regimes whose methods are rooted in inflicting terror.

In Syria, the government is gassing its people with chemical weapons. Over 50,000 Syrian civilians have been slaughtered in the past three years by government forces and radical fighters like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – which is ideologically similar to Hamas. In Iraq, ISIS has threatened Christians to convert to Islam or die – after proudly disseminating video footage showing them beheading thousands of Iraqi soldiers. As Israelis watch closely how this kind of barbaric violence is being inflicted on civilians throughout the Arab world, they can only imagine what fate Hamas, whose charter explicitly calls "the obliteration of Israel," has in mind for them when it built hundreds of tunnels leading into its territory.

It appears that Israel, and the region as a whole, is destined to cope with this type of challenge for the foreseeable future. And despite the complacency and even hostility to Israel on display in some democratically-governed countries, this danger will, sooner or later, confront other democracies, even those far from the Middle East. Hamas, Hizballah, their patron Iran, al Qaeda, and other jihad groups are sworn enemies of the West and liberal democracy. They are constantly seeking ways to undermine the strength of the free world. Forms of aggression first used against Israel have inevitably been turned against other countries: airline hijackings, suicide terrorism, and now the use of civilians as human shields.

Terrorists are watching the Gaza war closely to see whether Hamas' tactics are successful: if so, other radical organizations will employ them. Israel's challenge is to make this kind of war, with its deliberate effort to produce civilian casualties on both sides, unacceptable, while at the same time protecting the values it, along with other democracies, cherishes.

That is why the civilized world has a vested interest in the Israel's success - painful and difficult though it is.​


2a)  The Next War on Israel's Horizon
By Avi Davis

As Operation Protective Edge winds down, there is growing speculation about the next and far more serious military threat that the country may be forced to confront. On its northern border with Lebanon, the Israeli army is faced with the daunting prospect of 100,000 long-range rockets far more accurate and effective than the missiles used by Hamas in its recent confrontation and far more likely to cause damage to life and property than the former offensive.  

Hizb'allah, which launched a 34-day offensive against Israel in July, 2006, is the Hamas threat multiplied tenfold.

The former conflict is believed to have killed at least 1,191–1,300 Lebanese people and 165 Israelis. It severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and temporarily displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis

During that war, Hizb’allah fired close to 4,200 rockets at a rate of more than 100 per day, unprecedented in any military confrontation since the Iran-Iraq War. About 95% of these were 122 mm (4.8 in)  Katyusha artillery rockets which carried warheads up to 30 kg (66 Ib) and had a range of up to 19 miles. A minor percentage (22%) of these rockets hit cities and built-up areas across northern Israel, while the remainder hit open areas. The attacks in that conflict included the Fajr-3 and Ra'ad 1 rockets both liquid-fuel missiles developed by Iran. It is now known that Hizb’allah possesses the far more advanced  Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, with ranges of 27 and 45 miles; and a huge quantity of simpler 107mm and 122mm rockets with ranges up to 12 miles. These rockets are capable of striking many cities in northern Israel, such as Haifa, Tiberias, Afula, Nahariya, and Safed. In addition, Hizb’allah has a cache of sophisticated antiaircraft and antiship cruise missiles which can significantly impede reconnaissance and deter attack.

This is not to mention the labyrinthine network of tunnels and deep underground bunkers Hizb’allah has been constructing in the eight years since its last encounter with the IDF. The IDF believes it likely that tunnels, extending for several kilometers, have been burrowed deep into Israeli territory allowing a rapid strike force to mimic the planned Hamas Jewish New Year attack on Israeli settlements in the south. The rolling topography of the north is of course of no benefit to a potential large-scale attack, but the capture of even a handful of IDF soldiers or civilians will become a great boon to the Hizb’allah war effort.

To state that the recent military confrontations between Israel and the terrorist groups who occupy territory adjacent to it are mere proxy wars between Iran and the Jewish State is to underline the obvious but still bears repeating. Iran's geopolitical interests lie in establishing a military hegemony of the region, intimidating much lesser military powers -- Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan -- into effective neutrality, so as to free itself to deal with its only serious challenger to its regional supremacy. The ongoing development of Iran's nuclear arsenal  -- essentially unimpeded by negotiations with the West -- acts as a clever strategic wedge for the theocratic regime which allows it to build its deterrent capabilities while intimidating its neighbors into quiescence. Seen in this light, Hamas' recent confrontation with Israel may have been guided by Iran as a means of deflecting attention from its drive for status as a nuclear power and avoiding an eventual showdown with Israel. After all, Israel will be in no mood for another military confrontation so soon after its recent engagement with Gaza.

But if Hizb’allah, the far greater asset, remains so useful to the Iranians, why wasn't it then unleashed to wreak havoc on Israel's northern border while hostilities ensued in the south?

The answer may lie in the prospect of an imminent direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran. While Israel's plans to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities are cloaked in ambiguity, most Israeli leaders are resigned to the fact that they will have to act unilaterally and decisively to severely retard, if not eliminate, Iran's emerging nuclear clout. In the event of a strike against Iran, and threat to their own power, the mullahs may come to rely on Hizb’allah's arsenal's retaliatory capabilities and perhaps even believe it acts as a significant deterrent against such an eventual attack.

Yet the Iranian strategy is now deeply complicated by the destabilization of both Syria and Iraq. The growing strength of ISIS in Iraq and its threat to the Baathist regime in Syria has presented a new challenge to a key Iranian ally in Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who has proved himself indispensable to the fulfillment of Iranian objectives regarding Israel. If Assad in Syria falls, then the Iranian hold on Southern Lebanon and its ability to resupply its proxy Hizb’allah is compromised. Alarmingly for the Iranians, the Lebanese Republic itself may now have come into play with ISIS' taking of the Syrian/ Lebanon border town of Arsal on August 4th. Hizb’allah may well have its hands full in the coming months not only attempting to reinforce Assad in Syria, but keeping ISIS from control of Northern Lebanon.

Signs of a strange realignment of interests and forces in the Middle East are therefore evident. It should surprise no one that the Israelis have been engaged in secret negotiations with the Saudis for years over use of Saudi airspace in the event of an Israeli strike on Iran; Additionally, the palpable failure of any of the moderate Arab states to rise in support of Hamas's recent actions (in fact there were outright condemnations  in both the Egyptian and Saudi press) is another signal of a growing rapprochement between Israel and some of its former enemies.

Predicting the future in the foggy and endlessly complicated Middle East is a risky business, to be sure, but a clearer picture may now be emerging with Israeli interests aligning with those of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt -- and perhaps even Lebanon itself -- in some kind of awkward but coordinated confrontation with Iran.  In this confrontation, Israel may well need to prepare itself for a neutralizing, preemptive strike on Hizb’allah's military installations in Southern Lebanon -- just as the IAF is winging its way over Riyadh and into Iranian airspace.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles

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3)  2014 Darwin Awards 

  SIXTH PLACE: Goes to a San Anselmo , California man who died when he hit a lift tower at the Mammoth mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad.  22-year old David Hubal was pronounced dead at Central Mammoth Hospital .  The accident occurred about 3 a.m., the Mono County Sheriff's department said.  Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and removed some yellow foam protectors from lift towers, said Lt.  Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department.  The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit towers.  The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower.  It has since been investigated and determined the tower he hit was the one with its pad removed. 
  FIFTH PLACE: Goes to Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St.  Louis market.  When the clerk threatened to call the police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it into his mouth and walked out without paying.  Police found him unconscious in front of the store. 

Paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat where it had choked him to death. 
  FOURTH PLACE: Goes to poacher Marino Malerba of Spain, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock and was killed instantly when it fell on him. 
  THIRD PLACE: "Man loses face at party" A man at a West Virginia party (probably related to the winner last year, a man in Arkansas who used the .22 bullet to replace the fuse in his pickup truck) popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth, and tongue.  Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during the party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D.  Payne. 

 "Another man had a blasting cap in an aquarium hooked to a battery and was trying to explode it.  It wouldn't go off and this guy said," I'll show you how to set it off!" He put it into his mouth, bit down and it blew all his teeth out and his lips and tongue off, Payne said. 

Stromyer was listed in guarded condition Wednesday with extensive facial injuries, according to a spokesperson at Charleston Area Medical Division "I just can't imagine anyone doing something like that," Payne said.  (Note: Maybe that's why they call these the Darwin Awards) 

  SECOND PLACE: Doctors at Portland University Hospital said an Oregon man shot through the skull by a hunting arrow is lucky to be alive and will be released soon from the hospital.  Tony Roberts, 25, lost his right eye last weekend during an initiation into a men's rafting club, Mountain Men Anonymous (probably known now as Stupid Mountain Men Anonymous) in Grants Pass , Oregon .  A friend tried to shoot a beer can off his head, but the arrow entered Robert's right eye.  Doctors said that had the arrow gone 1 millimeter to the left, a major blood vessel would have been cut and Roberts would have died instantly.  Neurosurgeon, Doctor Johnny Delashaw, at the University Hospital in Portland said the arrow went through 8 to 10 inches of brain with the tip protruding at the rear of his skull, yet somehow managed to miss all major blood vessels.  Delashaw also said that had Roberts tried to pull the arrow out on his own he surely would have killed himself.  Roberts admitted afterwards that he and his friend had been drinking that afternoon.  Said Roberts, "I feel so dumb about this." 
  THIS YEAR'S WINNER: John Pernicky and his friend, Sal Hawkins, of the great state of Washington , decided to attend a local Metallica concert at the George Washington amphitheater.  Having no tickets (but having had 18 beers between them), they thought it would be easy to "hop" over the nine foot fence and sneak into the show.  They pulled their pickup truck over to the fence and the plan was for Mr.  Pernicky, who was 100 pounds heavier than Mr.  Hawkins, to hop the fence and then assist his friend over.  Unfortunately for (the late) Mr.  Pernicky, there was a 30-foot drop on the other side of the fence. 

Having heaved himself over, he found himself crashing through a tree.  His fall was abruptly halted (and broken, along with his arm) by a large branch that snagged him by his shorts.  Dangling from the tree with a broken arm, he looked down and saw some bushes below him. 

Possibly figuring the bushes would break his fall, he removed his pocket knife and proceeded to cut away his shorts to free himself from the tree. 
  

Finally free, Mr.  Pernicky crashed into holly bushes.  The sharp leaves scratched his ENTIRE body and now, without the protection of his shorts, a holly branch penetrated his rectum.  To make matters worse, upon landing his pocket knife penetrated his thigh. 
Hawkins, seeing his friend in considerable pain and agony, threw him a rope and tried to pull him to safety by tying the rope to the pickup truck and slowly driving away.  However, in his drunken haste, he put the truck into reverse and crashed through the fence, landing on his friend and killing him.  

Police arrived to find the crashed pickup with its driver thrown 100 feet from the truck and dead at the scene from massive internal injuries Upon moving the truck, they found John deceased under it half-naked, scratches on his body, a holly stick in his rectum, a knife in his thigh, and his shorts dangling from a tree branch 25 feet in the air. 

3a)

Carter wants U.S. to recognize Hamas as legit

Byron E. Small

Former President Jimmy Carter

Staff Atlanta Business Chronicle

Former President Jimmy Carter has criticized Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza and wants the United States to recognize terrorist organization Hamas as a legitimate political organization.

In an editorial written with former Ireland President Mary Robinson for foreignpolicy.com, Carter writes: “There is no humane or legal justification for the way the Israeli Defense Forces are conducting this war... Concurrently, the United States and EU should recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force.”

Carter claims peace can only come from the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel and wants the United Nations to limit the use of force by both sides.

3b) Laurie Blank follow-up on Gaza, proportionality, and the law of war

By Kenneth Anderson

Last week I posted an op-ed by Professor Laurie R. Blank, clinical professor of law and director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law, which discussed application of the law of war rule of “proportionality” in targeting in armed conflict and Gaza.  A number of readers offered thoughtful comments and questions, many of which caused me to realize that readers might benefit from a deeper introduction to proportionality, stepping back to situate it within the larger context of the law of war.  I’ve invited Professor Blank (whose op-ed, on which I commented last week, appeared in TheHill.com, “Asymmetries and Proportionalities”) to give Volokh readers a more extensive introduction to proportionality in the law of war and, I believe, answer some of the very good questions posed by readers in the comments last week.  Professor Blank is one of the leading scholars of the laws of war, including author of a fine textbook on this topic, International Law and Armed Conflict: Fundamental Principles (Aspen 2013), and our thanks to her for this comment:

Proportionality: Principle, Perception, and Process

What does it mean to say something is “proportionate” or “disproportionate”? We may feel we have an instinctive sense of what those words and concepts mean in every day life, but in the context of war, these terms have very specific meanings and purposes — with the starkest of consequences. To that end, thanks to Ken Anderson and the Volokh Conspiracy for this invitation to follow up on some key questions about proportionality in armed conflict.

A brief introduction: the law of war is the body of international law that governs the conduct of both states and individuals during armed conflict. It seeks to minimize suffering in war by protecting persons not participating in hostilities and by regulating how parties conduct hostilities. Other terms often used for this body of law are: the law of armed conflict, international humanitarian law, or jus in bello.

Another body of international law—the jus ad bellum—governs when it is lawful for a state to go to war, including in self-defense. These two legal frameworks, the law of war and the jus ad bellum, are independent of each other and international law steadfastly maintains this separation.

The law of war applies equally to both sides fighting in a conflict, regardless of why they are fighting, who claims to be right or just, who is a state, who is a terrorist group, or any other such considerations. This equal application is essential to ensure the protection of civilians and maximize the law’s effectiveness. As a result, the justness or unjustness of one side’s resort to force (ajus ad bellum question) does not change any obligations to follow the rules under the law of war. Imagine if it did: each side would simply justify any and all atrocities, including summary executions, indiscriminate attacks, even crimes against humanity, by saying it fights on the side of “right”. The result: an invitation to unregulated warfare.

II

With that as background, back to proportionality and its meaning and implementation during armed conflict.

Proportionality is a foundational principle of the law of war. It is defined as prohibiting attacks in which the expected civilian casualties will be excessive in light of the anticipated military advantage gained. As a first step, it is important to understand the difference between these two statements—the foundational principle and the specific operational definition—and what that means for understanding proportionality.

Proportionality as a principle is a manifestation of the law of war’s delicate balance between the military imperative of defeating the enemy as quickly as possible and the humanitarian imperative of mitigating suffering during war as much as possible. Parties to a conflict must not only refrain from attacking civilians and civilian objects deliberately, but they must also make extensive efforts to minimize the incidental harm from their attacks on lawful military targets.

That means that sometimes attacking even a lawful enemy objective is impermissible because the collateral consequences clearly outweigh whatever advantage would result from the attack. At the same time, the law accepts the inevitability of some civilian harm during war—the legal proscription on targeting civilians does not extend to a complete prohibition on all civilian deaths. Like the law of war overall, proportionality seeks to minimize civilian harm, not eliminate it altogether (an eminently laudable, although wholly unrealistic goal).

The definition of proportionality, in contrast, is about methodology and process. The definition thus puts the principle into practice. It is about how those who are fighting and their commanders implement this obligation to minimize incidental harm to civilians in the course of lawful military operations. Although media coverage and the public discourse creates the impression that proportionality is either impenetrable or a simple game of numbers, it is neither.

Rather, proportionality is one component of a comprehensive process to assess the lawfulness of an attack on a target or as part of a more complex mission. What does this part of the process require? Once a lawful target is identified, implementing proportionality requires an understanding of why a target is militarily valuable. How will destroying, capturing or neutralizing the target contribute to the tactical and operational goals? How will the use of suppressing fire or other fire support for ground forces, for example, contribute to those forces’ ability to fulfill the mission? How will any such actions weaken the enemy’s forces, and in what way? How will they strengthen the commander’s own forces, and in what way? That analysis is key to understanding the “anticipated military advantage gained” component of proportionality.

Careful consideration of the risk to civilians and the likely numbers of civilian casualties is equally essential—a commander must gather information regarding civilians who live and work in the area, their patterns of movement, whether they would be susceptible to the methods and means of attack under consideration, how many might be present at the time of and within the blast radius of the attack, and any other information relevant to understanding the potential consequences for civilians in the area. Based on all of this prospective information, the commander then makes a determination as to whether the attack can go forward.

Is this hard? In many cases, yes. But commanders do this every time they apply combat power with consequences for civilians, sometimes in a longer, deliberative process and sometimes in a split second. In addition, proportionality as a methodology helps commanders make these difficult decisions that may have tragic consequences for civilians.

III

It is therefore important to emphasize that proportionality is more than just a principle; it is a methodology for assessing lawfulness in advance through careful consideration of both the value of the military advantage and the likelihood of civilian casualties. The principle tells us what we are trying to achieve — a balance between military needs and humanitarian concerns that minimizes civilian harm as much as possible. The methodology provides guidance on how to achieve that goal — by gathering and analyzing information about both the military value of the target and the consequences to the civilian population and making choices among various operational alternatives to achieve the mission while minimizing harm to civilians.

What happens after the fact – how does any observer, whether the international community, the commander’s superiors, a court or international tribunal, assess this proportionality process? As I note in my earlier piece, “Asymmetries and Proportionalities,” assessing the legality of an attack that results in civilian casualties must be done prospectively, based on the information the commander knew or should have known at the time of the attack. The standard is “reasonableness” — whether a reasonable commander in the same position would determine, based on the information available at the time, that the expected civilian casualties would be excessive in light of the anticipated military advantage.

Key to this assessment is not whether the court, the media, or anyone else thinks the decision was right or would have actually made the very same decision. Nor is it whether any resulting casualties seemed or even were excessive afterwards. The controlling factor in assessing proportionality after an attack is whether the commander’s determination—that the likely civilian casualties in that operation would not be excessive—was reasonable. This reasonableness assessment can only be made with a full understanding of the situation and all relevant information at the time of the attack — and, just as important — an awareness of what is considered to be reasonable in light of general practice.

International tribunals have rarely undertaken this analysis. This may well be simply because they have no lack of much easier and obvious cases. Their dockets can easily be filled to overflowing with the staggering number of deliberate crimes against civilians that demand accountability—such as genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and a host of other categorical violations that require no difficult judgments about the reasonableness of a commander’s judgment. The difficulty in translating the proportionality rule from the operational dynamic of the battlefield and the fog of war to the evidence-bound confines of the courtroom is certainly another factor. The few instances of adjudication, however, consistently reinforce both the prospective approach and reasonableness as the touchstones of the analysis. Responsible militaries, for their part, investigate and review every incident involving civilian casualties to determine whether further investigation or prosecution is warranted—and simply to improve training and implementation to mitigate civilian harm in future missions. Both internal and international inquiries have often explored, or attempted to explore, proportionality with respect to specific incidents.

IV

Last, a note about another rule of proportionality. The international law governing when states may use force in self-defense (the jus ad bellum) also has a requirement of proportionality, but it is quite distinct (and serves a different purpose) from the law of war rule of proportionality discussed above. This jus ad bellum rule of proportionality mandates that a state acting in self-defense in response to an armed attack can only use force that is proportionate to the needs and goals of repelling or deterring the attack. This is not a “tit-for-tat” requirement, however, limiting the state acting in self-defense to only what its attackers did. There is no obligation of symmetry between the original attack and the force used in self-defense; indeed, the force needed to repel an attack may well be disproportionate relative to the the original attack, in order to stop it and deter continuing attacks. What it must be, instead, is proportionate to the ends of stopping and deterring the original attack and further attacks.

In the case of the current Israel-Hamas conflict, Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” seeks to repel and deter Hamas rocket and tunnel-borne attacks on Israel. Israel’s proportionate measure of force is not constrained to only rocket and tunnel attacks on Hamas; rather, international law assesses the lawfulness of Israel’s resort to force based on Israel’s goals of repelling the attack. Destroying rocket launchers, tunnels, weapons caches, Hamas command posts and bunkers — these objectives are directly proportionate to the need to repel the attacks.

Importantly, this rule of proportionality does not address civilian casualties. That is the task of the law of war principle of proportionality analyzed above. Unfortunately, these two concepts of proportionality are regularly conflated, leading to misunderstandings and ineffective legal analyses. First, if the bare fact of civilian casualties were to become the measure of whether the overall use of force in self-defense is lawful, the international legal framework governing the use of force in self-defense would be undermined. Any military operation causing civilian casualties would then be considered unlawful, even if a valid exercise of self-defense, emasculating state options for protecting their own civilians against attack.

Second, focusing on civilian casualties, without any legal analysis of proportionality, the targeting process or the nature of the objective attacked, simply incentivizes insurgent groups to co-mingle military personnel and assets within the civilian population and use civilians as a shield, thus causing greater and greater numbers of civilian casualties and louder claims of unjust war and war crimes. Facilitating the defending party’s exploitation of the law for its own defensive and propaganda purposes in this way gravely endangers the very persons the law of war seeks to protect—the civilians caught up in the combat zone—and thus undermines the essential fabric of the law of war.

V

At the same time, self-defense is not a trump card in the law of war proportionality analysis above. If the military advantage of every application of military combat power in a conflict were the overall self-defense of the nation in response to an attack, proportionality in the law of war would have no meaning. Few, if any, measures of civilian casualties would be considered excessive in such a framework. Military advantage must therefore be assessed in the context of the particular attack or operation at issue.

Observing and trying to understand proportionality from afar – through media reports and the blogosphere, for example – is fraught with uncertainty and ambiguity, because almost all of the information integral to the actual methodology and decision-making is not available or communicated to the public. The instinct to make judgments after the fact based merely on numbers of casualties or which side’s civilians were killed in greater numbers is thus strong, because it often is the only information at hand. But this is not the actual law of proportionality. Nor is it an effective way to maximize the law’s core purposes. The uncertainty and ambiguity does not mean that proportionality is not being applied or implemented in a lawful way – it merely means that we cannot peer into the processing factory to see how the sausage is made.

Kenneth Anderson teaches law at Washington College of Law, American University; he is also a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law, and senior fellow of the Rift Valley Institute.

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4)  This is an article called “The Palestinian Proletariat." It is quite startling and explains why the UN schools hid rockets etc.

 Arab states dropped leaflets in 1948 before they invaded Israel warning the Arab population to get out of the way of the war.  Subsequent to their defeat it is the UN that has kept Palestinians  in perpetual poverty, creating generational hatred of Israel.  THE UN !!!  The only nations to vote against this madness were the Soviets and the other Communist countries --- they knew what would happen.  Strange, eh?  And, this article is from 2010; it anticipates today’s headlines.

   Here’s just a few quotes to let you know how this worked out: 

These camps were established in 1949 and have been financed ever since by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Yet far from seeking to help residents build a new and better life either in Gaza or elsewhere, UNRWA is paying millions of refugees to perpetuate their refugee status, generation after generation….

. The chances of achieving peace and security in the Middle East will continue to be remote as long as UNRWA is, in effect, underwriting a self-destructive Palestinian cycle of violence, internecine warfare, and a perpetual war against Israel.

UNRWA is a supranational welfare state that pays its residents not to build their own nation-state, for, were they to do so, they would forfeit their refugee status and its entitlements of cash, housing, health care, education, credit, and other largesse.

UNRWA is unique by design. Whereas all other refugees and deportees fall under the jurisdiction and care of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Palestinians belong to UNRWA.

UNRWA’s mandate created, in effect, a multigenerational dependency of an entire people—a permanent, supranational refugee welfare state in which simply placing most Palestinians on the international dole has extinguished incentives for work and investment. It has succeeded with a vengeance. It has thwarted economic development, destroyed opportunities for peace in the Middle East, and created, along the way—both metaphorically and literally—a breeding ground for international terrorism.

   This should explain  why the UN always condemning Israel when it retaliates after a terrorist attack.  Palestinians are its clients. 

The same pattern of demand and demographic supply characterized the evolution of the U.S. welfare system’s Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

Senator Edward M. Kennedy described the mechanism: “We go to a young girl—a child of 18, or 16, or even younger—and this is what we say: Abandon all your hopes. You will never have a decent job. You will live in neighborhoods of endless unemployment and violence. And then we say to this child: Wait, here is a way, one way. We will give you an apartment and furniture to fill it. We will give you a TV set and a telephone. We will give you clothing and cheap food and free medical care, and some spending money besides. And in return, you only have to do one thing: Just go out there and have a baby.” It was not until the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 that this trend was reversed.

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5)     Subject: Tale of 2 Doctors

2  patients limp into two different  doctors' offices with the same
complaint:  Both have  trouble walking and may require hip surgery.
 
Patient  1. is examined  within the hour, is x-rayed the same day
and  has a time booked for surgery  the following week.
 
Patient  2. sees his  family doctor after waiting 3 weeks for an
appointment,  then waits 8 weeks to  see a specialist, then gets an x-ray,
which  isn't reviewed for another week  and finally has his surgery
scheduled  for 6 months from then,  pending  the review boards decision on
his  age and remaining value to  society.
 
Why  the different  treatment for the 2 patients?
 
The  FIRST is a Golden Retriever taken to a vet.
The  SECOND is a Senior Citizen on Obama care.
 In  November, if there  is no change in government, we'll all have to find  a good  vet.

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