Why Isn't Michael Moore In Obama's Cabinet? Even Tom Friedman Gets It! Netanyau, Nisman and Iran's Tentacles!

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More commentary on SOTUS!

Tobin sees a gap between Obama's rhetoric and reality. I wrote as much several memos ago. The one point I would make is that Obama's rhetoric , though surreal, is actually fairly straight forward because it aligns with his desire to radically transform our nation and make sure The Democrats stay far left..

He is doing so under the umbrella of claiming his policies are designed to improve the lot of the downtrodden with appeals to fairness, wealth transfer, populist nonsense and class warfare.

Obama also wants our borders porous, he wants to deny we are at war with those of his background and yet he realizes he has to respond  consequently, he does so with ineffective half measures.

He has surrounded himself with ideologues who have a big bone to pick when it comes to America because they feel aggrieved.

Frankly, I am surprised Michael Moore is not a member of Obama's Cabinet! (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Even Tom Friedman gets it and he does not receive my memos.  (See 2 below.)
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Netanyahu will address Congress on Iran.

Netanyahu has nothing to lose because his relationship with Obama is at a frosty low and with Congress and Obama locking horns regarding Iran, Netanyahu has to be seen as sticking his finger in Obama's eye. Furthermore, If Netanyhau  is not re-elected he, at least, will have the opportunity to issue a swan song warning to The West regarding Iran.  (See 3 below.)

Meanwhile Iran's tentacles extend far and wide and reach deeply into South America.

Our State Department remains asleep at the switch. (See 3a below.)
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Dick
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1)  The Gap Between Obama’s SOTU Rhetoric and Reality

By Jonathan S. Tobin 

The most interesting aspect of President Obama’s State of the Union speech was not the triumphalist tone with which he trumpeted the recent better economic news or his call for higher taxes, more spending or his threats to veto any bills passed by a Republican Congress that he didn’t like. All that was expected as the president tacked hard to the left as he began his final two years in office. The most interesting things about the speech were the items that were left out of it. It was those absent acknowledgements of facts that gave the annual example of presidential theater a tone that was so divorced from the reality of Obama’s six years in office.

The most important omission was the fact that there were 83 fewer Democrats in the chamber this year than the last time he gave a State of the Union speech. The historic rejection of both the president’s party and his policies in last November’s midterm elections was treated in the speech as if it had never happened. Though this is the same man who was fond of telling his Republican opponents that elections have consequences, as far as he was concerned, the midterms were not only were irrelevant to his assessment of the issues of the day, he spoke as if the GOP had not only increased their majority in the House and taken back the Senate.

While this may be taken as a quibble, it is actually an important point since rather than take into account the fact that a more conservative Congress was now in session, the president spoke as if he was addressing a Democratic-run legislative branch. He set forth a laundry list of liberal agenda items that not only hadn’t a prayer of being passed. Indeed, he had not even consulted Congressional leaders to try to get them to consider his ideas but just put them forward as if the views of both his opponents and the voters who had sent them to Washington were unworthy of his notice.

This is significant not just because his presentation of a populist program seemed more about winning the news cycle than passing laws. A willingness to speak of something as true irrespective of its actual connection to truth was the primary characteristic of a speech that at times lost all touch with reality.

All presidents treat anything positive that happens on their watch as being the product of their genius. So we can perhaps forgive the same president whose policies lay behind the slowest and most anemic recovery since World War Two to treat the recent uptick in the economy as solely the result of his heretofore-unsuccessful policies. We may also forgive him for taking credit for lower oil prices that are entirely the result of foreign regimes rather than U.S. policy.

Less forgivable were his boasts of the work of his administration to help veterans since he also omitted the fact that he had spent years ignoring warning signs of corruption and scandal at the Veterans Administration on his watch that led to the death of vets. So too was his bragging about the wonders of ObamaCare while failing to mention the millions who lost coverage or had their premiums skyrocket as well as the prospect of far worse problems in 2015 once the government mandates that he had previously postponed are implemented. His claim that his program to promote community colleges would lower the costs for it to zero only count as truthful if you ignore the fact that the taxpayers will be paying through the nose for a plan with dubious benefits to the country.

Abroad, he paid lip service to the struggle against anti-Semitism and for freedom of speech even though he conspicuously stayed away from the Paris unity march after the Charley Hebdo terror attack. He claimed to have isolated Russia’s Putin regime after its aggression against Ukraine even though invasions of that country’s territory continue with Moscow rightly believing Obama to be a paper tiger that can be ignored with impunity. He said he had stopped the ISIS terrorists in their tracks when in fact the desultory American bombing campaign has done nothing to turn the tide in a war that the Islamists are clearly winning.

Even worse was his claim that he had halted the Iranian regime’s progress toward a nuclear weapon. The weak interim deal he concluded with Tehran in November 2013 did nothing of the kind. Instead it gave the Islamists a seal of international approval for holding on to their nuclear infrastructure and discarded the economic leverage the West had over them. In a manipulation of language that was Orwellian in scope he asserted that an attempt by a bipartisan coalition in Congress to pass sanctions that would strengthen his hand in the next round of talks (that he has allowed to be extended twice in violation of past pledges) would hurt diplomacy. Understandably Iran doesn’t wish to be pressured by the West to give up its nuclear ambitions. What is not understandable is Obama’s support for that demand. Unmentioned was a clear push for détente with Iran that extends to support for its Syrian ally Bashar Assad that has clear priority over the nuclear issue.

Also not mentioned in the speech was the spread of Boko Haram Islamist terror in Africa, an issue that at least for a few days seemed to have the interest of his wife.

But perhaps the worst aspect of the speech was its conclusion in which the president disingenuously called for a new politics in which partisan passions would be put aside as both sides worked for the betterment of the country. These lines came only minutes after the president threatened to veto any bill he didn’t like and derided his opponents as straw men with questionable motives.

This is the administration that likened Tea Party supporters in Congress to terrorists. This is also the president that used his State of the Union to concentrate on partisan talking points rather than suggestions that had a chance of passage in a Congress that is now controlled by the other party.

For the same man to then pose as the avatar of compromise is more than disingenuous. It speaks to a credibility gap that is as wide as the Grand Canyon. In that context Obama’s mention of his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention in which he sought to portray himself as a post-partisan was equal parts nostalgia and satire.

In this day and age what matters about the State of the Union address is not so much its specifics but whether it helps the president gain a point or two in the polls. Since Obama’s numbers have gone up recently due to the economy, he may judge his speech a success. But if anyone really wants to know why Washington is so dysfunctional, a look at a speech that was equal parts partisan demagoguery and fiction, speaks volumes about everything that is wrong with contemporary American politics.


1a) Obama Abandons the Real World
Dick:

The media broadly praised President Obama’s sixth state of the union address last night as a “confident” and “ambitious” speech. But even his traditional allies in the press could not ignore the fact that it was a confident speech completely disconnected from the real world.

Here is NBC's Andrea Mitchell, the network’s senior foreign policy correspondent, on last night’s speech: "I think that on foreign policy, his projection of success against terrorism and against ISIS, in particular, as I said, is not close to reality."

Chris Matthews, the adoring Obama supporter who once said Mr. Obama’s charisma made him feel “this thrill going up my leg,” commented after last night’s speech, "I keep thinking tonight that there is a world out there that he didn’t really talk about.” That’s putting it gently.

Richard Engel, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, delivered the most devastating analysis of the President’s claims:

“It seems that the rose-colored glasses through which [President Obama] was viewing the foreign policy were so rose-colored that they don’t even reflect the world that we’re living in...ISIS is doing very well, and the strategy is completely disjointed...To sell that as a success, I think was missing the point, maybe even disingenuous.”

Engel elaborated:

“It sounded like the President was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in but is very different from the world [described in the news], with terror raids taking place across Europe, with ISIS very much on the move. One thing the President said was that ‘American leadership, including our military power, is stopping ISIL’s advance.’ That just isn’t the case...”

“He talked about building support for the moderate Syrian opposition. That effectively isn’t happening. There is no real support for the moderate Syrian opposition. In fact, one military official told me that they are calling the moderate Syrian opposition the ‘unicorn’ because they have not been able to find it. So there was a general tone, maybe even suspended disbelief, I think when he started talking about foreign policy. There’s not a lot of success stories to be talking about in foreign policy right now.”

Even senior members of the President’s own party have been unable to stomach some of the President’s claims. Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this morning described the President’s quotes on Iran as “sound[ing] like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”

What was striking about President Obama's speech was his inability to describe radical Islamism as a movement.

He continues to focus on geography instead of ideology. He refers only to “violent extremism."

He continues to bounce from terror group to terror group as though they’re distinct threats. The current conversation is about ISIL (or ISIS) in Northern Syria and Iraq.

The President failed to mention Boko Haram, however, which last year killed more people in Nigeria (10,000) than Ebola did in all of Africa (8,000). To her credit, Senator Joni Ernst, in a very short reaction speech, did mention Nigeria as a trouble spot.

Ironically, the front pages of today's newspapers report the State of the Union on one side and the battle in the capital of Yemen on the other side. Yemen is a country President Obama had cited as a model of how we are making progress against “violent extremists”. Today the Yemeni president “cannot leave his house,” according to the Associated Press, because Islamist rebels are holding him “captive” in his home. The country got no mention last night.

The state of the union, on national security matters at least, is a disaster. A president who tries to hide from the threats we face--or worse, to construct his own world in which they don’t exist--is making the planet a much more dangerous place. One with “confidence” disconnected from reality isn’t showing leadership. He’s showing pure foolishness.

Your Friend,
Newt

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2)  Say It Like It Is

By Thomas L. Friedman

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this?

When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in Pakistan, by Al Qaeda in Paris and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We’ve entered the theater of the absurd.

Last week the conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay in Politico Magazine that contained quotes from White House spokesman Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they were made up. But I checked the transcript: 100 percent correct. I can’t say it better than Lowry did:

“The administration has lapsed into unselfconscious ridiculousness. Asked why the administration won’t say [after the Paris attacks] we are at war with radical Islam, Earnest on Tuesday explained the administration’s first concern ‘is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’

This makes it sound as if the Charlie Hebdo terrorists set out to commit a random act of violent extremism and only subsequently, when they realized that they needed some justification, did they reach for Islam.

The day before, Earnest had conceded that there are lists of recent ‘examples of individuals who have cited Islam as they’ve carried out acts of violence.’ Cited Islam? According to the Earnest theory ... purposeless violent extremists rummage through the scriptures of great faiths, looking for some verses to cite to support their mayhem and often happen to settle on the holy texts of Islam.”

President Obama knows better. I am all for restraint on the issue, and would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few. But it is not good for us or the Muslim world to pretend that this spreading jihadist violence isn’t coming out of their faith community. It is coming mostly, but not exclusively, from angry young men and preachers on the fringe of the Sunni Arab and Pakistani communities in the Middle East and Europe.

If Western interventions help foster violent Islamic reactions, we should reduce them. To the extent that Muslim immigrants in European countries feel marginalized, they and their hosts should worker harder on absorption. But both efforts will only take you so far.

Something else is also at work, and it needs to be discussed. It is the struggle within Arab and Pakistani Sunni Islam over whether and how to embrace modernity, pluralism and women’s rights. That struggle drives, and is driven by, the dysfunctionality of so many Arab states and Pakistan. It has left these societies with too many young men who have never held a job or a girl’s hand, who then seek to overcome their humiliation at being left behind, and to find identity, by “purifying” their worlds of other Muslims who are not sufficiently pious and of Westerners whom they perceive to be putting Muslims down. But you don’t see this in the two giant Muslim communities in Indonesia or India.

Only Sunni Arabs and Pakistanis can get inside their narrative and remediate it. But reformers can only do that if they have a free, secure political space. If we’re not going to help create space for that internal dialogue, let’s just be quiet. Don’t say stupid stuff. And don’t hold airy fairy conferences that dodge the real issues, which many mainstream Muslims know and are actually starved to discuss, especially women.

The Arab journalist Diana Moukalled, writing in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat last week, asked: “Don’t all these events now going on around us and committed in our name require us to break the fear barrier and begin to question our region and our societies, especially the ideas being trafficked there that have led us to this awful stage where we are tearing at one another’s throats — to mention nothing of what as a result also happens beyond our region?”

And a remarkable piece in The Washington Post Sunday by Asra Q. Nomani, an American Muslim born in India, called out the “honor corps” — a loose, well-funded coalition of governments and private individuals “that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam.” It “throws the label of ‘Islamophobe’ on pundits, journalists and others who dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion. ... The official and unofficial channels work in tandem, harassing, threatening and battling introspective Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere.  ... The bullying often works to silence critics of Islamic extremism. ... They cause governments ,writers and experts to walk on eggshells.”

I know one in particular.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to address Congress on February 11, a congressional source tells CNN's Dana Bash. 

Boehner invited Netanyahu to speak on the issue of Iran. Congressional leaders are considering a proposal to increase sanctions while international negotiators try to reach an agreement on Iran's nuclear program.

CNN reports Benyamin Netanyahu accepted an invitation to talk about Iran in a joint session of Congress on February 11, the anniversary of the fall of the Shah of Iran. More at the Weekly Standard.

It’s going to be really, messy affair, because A)Obama and Congress are at odds over Iranian sanctions, B) Bibi and Obama already have a testy relationship, and C) the speech comes five weeks before Israel’s elections.

3a)  Alberto Nisman's Warning About Iran

by Claudia Rosett

Beyond puzzling over the circumstances, is there any response the U.S. can make to the sudden death this past weekend of Argentine special prosecutor Alberto Nisman?

Nisman spent the past decade seeking justice for the victims of the 1994 terrorist bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center, which killed 85 people and wounded many more. Nisman compiled a massive case, accusing Iran and its Lebanese terrorist affiliate, Hezbollah, of the attack. He indicted a member of Hezbollah and a number of former high-ranking Iranians officials. And he found himself increasingly at cross-purposes with the machinations of Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner.

Last week, Nisman filed a criminal complaint almost 300 pages long, accusing Kirchner, her foreign minister Hector Timerman, and a number of others, of orchestrating a cover-up of Iran’s responsibility for the 1994 attack. A summary of the complaint, sent out last week by Nisman’s office, accused Kirchner of secretly cutting a deal with Iran to concoct a story that would exonerate Iran and its fugitives from the 1994 bombing, thus opening the way for Argentina to trade grain for Iranian oil, at the cost of “sacrificing a lengthy and legitimate quest for justice.”

Nisman was due to testify Monday to Argentina’s Congress about his allegations. He never made it. On the eve of his testimony, the 51-year-old Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment, shot in the head.

Argentine officials swiftly declared that Nisman’s death looked like suicide. There’s plenty of skepticism about that. But with the case under Argentine jurisdiction, there may be little that Americans watching from afar can do. It is telling, perhaps, that even when Nisman was alive, the U.S. couldn’t do much on his behalf. In 2013, U.S. lawmakers invited Nisman to come to Washington, to testify about his findings at a House hearing on “Threat to the Homeland: Iran’s extending influence in the Western Hemishere.” Nisman wanted to go testify. But Argentina’s chief public prosecutor denied him permission, on grounds that it had nothing to do with the mission of the Argentine attorney general’s office.

At the hearing, panel chairman Rep. Jeff Duncan expressed his regret that Nisman could not come. Duncan noted that based on information that omitted Nisman’s findings, the State Department had recently reported that Iranian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean was “waning.” Duncan added: “In stark contrast to the State Department’s assessment, Nisman’s investigation revealed that Iran has infiltrated for decades large regions of Latin America through the establishment of clandestine intelligence stations and is ready to exploit its position to ‘execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides to do so.’ “

What America can do — and should do — is pay much closer heed to Nisman’s urgent warnings. For years, while laboring at an investigation that amassed more than a million pages of documents, he sounded the alarm over Iranian terror networks which he found extended way beyond Argentina — and in some cases all the way to the U.S.

Nisman’s investigation began with the Buenos Aires bombing, also known as the AMIA case (AMIA being the Spanish acronym for the Argentina Israelite Mutual Association). But as he dug deeper, he found that the techniques Iran used to infiltrate agents into Argentina and set the stage for the Buenos Aires attack were part of a network that was replicating itself in such countries as Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana.

The Guyana network had a major link to the man alleged by Nisman to be the main architect on the ground of the Buenos Aires AMIA bombing, the Iranian embassy’s cultural attache at the time, Mohsen Rabbani. The Guyana network also become involved in a 2007 terrorist plot in the U.S. — foiled in time by U.S. authorities — to blow up fuel lines and tanks at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. The man in the middle was a former member of the Guyana parliament, Abdul Kadir, who in 2010 was convicted in Brooklyn federal court of conspiring to commit a terrorist attack at JFK Airport, and sentenced to life in prison.

Nisman, in a 2013 indictment, as summarized in English by his office, described Rabbani as an important Iranian agent not only for the AMIA bombing, but as a pivotal figure in a general Iranian scheme of “infiltrating Latin-American countries” and “building local clandestine intelligence stations designed to sponsor, foster and execute terrorist attacks.” In detail, citing Iranian officials themselves, Nisman explained how this is part of Iran’s methods meant to “export the Islamic revolution.”

Nisman visited the U.S. a number of times during the many years of his investigation, and in March, 2009, I had the first of several chances to interview him in person. We met at a cafe in lower Manhattan. He had just come from talking with New York federal prosecutors about what he described as common concerns in investigating terrorist attacks. He was full of energy; young, dapper, wearing a red and silver tie, with a tie pin. He spoke some English, but was making the rounds with the help of an interpreter. I asked him if he had any worries about his own security. He replied that if he focused on that, he couldn’t do his job.

Over coffee, he detailed how the initial investigation into the 1994 AMIA bombing had been a fraud, and when he was assigned to the case in 2004 he had started all over again, working with a team of 40 people. He said that after the first two years of work, they had been able to prove that “the attack was organized, perpetrated and paid for by the higher authorities of Iran.” The decision to carry out the bombing, he said, was “made almost a year before the attack” — in 1993, in Iran.

He said his investigation had uncovered evidence that back in the 1980s, shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran’s regime had targeted Argentina as its main point of entry into Latin America. He said there were big two attractions for the Iranian regime: “Anti-semitism is part of the culture,” and Argentina in those days was willing to provide Iran with some nuclear technology. It was when Argentina, under pressure from the U.S., became less forthcoming on nuclear matters that Iran turned to terrorist attack.

He said that though many Iranians were sent as secret agents, they were assigned to particular ways of life, to settle in. “Some were just taxi drivers. Others went to university, especially in medicine.” He noted that medicine is a long-term career, and in Argentina, with free education, you could be a student for life. Still others came as businessmen. “These businesses did not sell any products, but they had lots of employees” he added.

Nisman also warned that when Iran’s regime is planning operations in a country, it uses the Iranian embassy as a spy center. That may sound unsurprising. But with Iran fielding a large diplomatic mission to the United Nations in New York, as well as a large Iranian Interests Section inside the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, Nisman’s observation deserves wide attention in the U.S. — especially in light of some items in testimony to Congress on March, 2012, by Mitchell D. Silber, former director of intelligence for the New York City Police Department. Silber in his written testimony stated: “We believe this is neither an idle nor a new threat. Between 2002 and 2010, the NYPD and federal authorities detected at least six events involving Iranian diplomatic personnel that we struggle to categorize as anything other than hostile reconnaissance of New York City.”

Silber then detailed half a dozen episodes involving Iranian diplomatic personnel caught photographing or videotaping railroad tracks inside Grand Central Station, subway tracks, bridges and the landing pad of the Wall Street heliport.

Iran, for its part, has repeatedly denied Nisman’s allegations, saying it is innocent of any involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. A typical statement, part of a series, can be found in a letter dated Oct. 6, 2010, from Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., to the president of the U.N. General Assembly. The ambassador, at some length, denounces Nisman’s investigation as “entirely faulty”; then adds that Iran stands ready, nonetheless, “to hold a constructive dialogue with the Argentine Government in a spirit of mutual respect in order to develop a clear understanding of each other’s positions, and seeks to find viable solutions for the misunderstandings arising from this case.”

Argentina no longer has Alberto Nisman to testify to what that jargon might mean. But with his courage and years of toil in quest of justice, he has bequeathed us all a warning about where it goes.

Ms. Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.

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