It is as if you call an architect first to draw plans for a new building which is on fire rather than the fire department.
The world will soon be in flames not only in The Middle East but also in the Ukraine and Europe and all the parsimonious speechifying is not going to douse the inferno wrong headed and feckless behaviour has wrought.
This is why Obama is a danger to world stability and this is why we cannot wait two years to rectify his tragic miscalculations.
Like it or not, America must lead and when it does not the vacuum created is filled by dangerous radicals.
The problem we face is Obama will not act. He will talk, he will possibly implement ineffective half measures if pushed but he is not bold and he is not willing to go against fellow radical Muslims.
POGO was right with some variance - the enemy is not us, it is our president.
And if that is not enough we now have Hillary (our most charitable Sec. of State) and "Ole" Bill ( one of our most reprobate presidents) proving , once again, they never stop selling their influence. Now they are laundering it through a charitable vehicle. Can you imagine how Hillary will sell this country down the river for contributions from our so called friends if she is elected? Hard to believe but maybe Professor Gruber and Obama are right - Americans are dumb enough to elect her.
Somehow or other I believe Clinton Blind Trusts can see 20-20!
But then, 'what difference does it make' (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Ignatius explain Netanyahu's position and why he felt he had to break with Obama.
Once again we learn that what Obama says and what he actually does differ as wide as an ocean. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Hamas trains and arms its children.
I bet the press and media will really scream at Israel and accuse that nation of genocide when these "little Hamas terrorists' are killed in battle.
Fascinating investigatory article by my Palestinan Israeli friend Abu Toameh! (See 3 below.)
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Don’t wait for this Admiral’s appearance on Meet The Press.
Wattch him on this three-minute video**
<http://cp.mcafee.com/d/1jWVIe41ASyMCMCYMevvdTdEIzANNEVusdEIzANNEVu76Qn1NEVpjhodEIzCknPhPsSgrylY546UBvmSdaMFOVIwT4HWSNFm5endFLSgoZx_HYyCqenC6eLsKCCCqeujpd7arafbnhIyCGyyzOEuvkzaT0QSCrjdTVeZXTLuZXCXCM0hYzfD_FnBYcOYMiAsgJslhojp79ETjKrmGIIm4tI2JGvOVJ5BOX9Inc896y0nc96y0nc896y0gglB7jPh1rjPW6y0c4dlQQgbhGn6SW7OldIc6NbRfSnpd> (See 4 below.)
Dick
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1) Hillary Clinton’s Complex Corporate Ties
Family charities collected donations from companies she promoted as secretary of state
Among recent secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton was one of the most aggressive global cheerleaders for American companies, pushing governments to sign deals and change policies to the advantage of corporate giants such as General Electric Co. , Exxon MobilCorp. , Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co.
At the same time, those companies were among the many that gave to the Clinton family’s global foundation set up by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public and foundation disclosures.
As Mrs. Clinton prepares to embark on a race for the presidency, she has a web of connections to big corporations unique in American politics—ties forged both as secretary of state and by her family’s charitable interests. Those relationships are emerging as an issue for Mrs. Clinton’s expected presidential campaign as income disparity and other populist themes gain early attention.
Indeed, Clinton Foundation money-raising already is drawing attention. “To a lot of progressive Democrats, Clinton’s ties to corporate America are disturbing,” says Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College who once worked for congressional Republicans. Mrs. Clinton’s connections to companies, he says, “are a bonanza for opposition researchers because they enable her critics to suggest the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
The Wall Street Journal identified the companies involved with both Clinton-family charitable endeavors and with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department by examining large corporate donations to the Clinton Foundation, then reviewing lobbying-disclosure reports filed by those companies. At least 44 of those 60 companies also participated in philanthropic projects valued at $3.2 billion that were set up though a wing of the foundation called the Clinton Global Initiative, which coordinates the projects but receives no cash for them.
Mrs. Clinton’s connections to the companies don’t end there. As secretary of state, she created 15 public-private partnerships coordinated by the State Department, and at least 25 companies contributed to those partnerships. She also sought corporate donations for another charity she co-founded, a nonprofit women’s group called Vital Voices.
Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, says: “She did the job that every secretary of state is supposed to do and what the American people expect of them—especially during difficult economic times. She proudly and loudly advocated on behalf of American business and took every opportunity she could to promote U.S. commercial interests abroad.”
Corporate donations to politically connected charities aren’t illegal so long as they aren’t in exchange for favors. There is no evidence of that with the Clinton Foundation.
In some cases, donations came after Mrs. Clinton took action that helped a company. In other cases, the donation came first. In some instances, donations came both before and after. All of the companies mentioned in this article said their charitable donations had nothing to do with their lobbying agendas with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.
President Barack Obama ’s transition team worried enough about potential problems stemming from Clinton-organization fundraising while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state that it asked Mr. Clinton to quit raising money from foreign governments for the Clinton Global Initiative and to seek approval for paid speaking engagements, which he did. The transition team didn’t put limits on corporate fundraising.
The foundation resumed soliciting foreign governments after Mrs. Clinton left the State Department. The official name of the foundation was changed to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Mrs. Clinton became a director. All told, the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates have collected donations and pledges from all sources of more than $1.6 billion, according to their tax returns. On Thursday, the foundation said that if Mrs. Clinton runs for president, it would consider whether to continue accepting foreign-government contributions as part of an internal policy review.
“The Clinton Foundation has raised hundreds of millions that it claims is for charitable causes, but clearly overlaps with Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions,” said Tim Miller, director of America Rising PAC, a conservative group that has targeted Mrs. Clinton.
Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian says the group’s work helps millions around the world and its donors have a history of supporting such work. “So when companies get involved with the Clinton Foundation it’s for only one reason, because they know our work matters,” he says.
In her book, “Hard Choices,” Mrs. Clinton said one of her goals at the State Department was “placing economics at the heart of our foreign policy.” She wrote: “It was clearer than ever that America’s economic strength and our global leadership were a package deal.”
Matthew Goodman, a former Clinton State Department official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says Mrs. Clinton is the first secretary of state to make economics such a focus since George C. Marshall, who helped rebuild postwar Europe.
At the same time, those companies were among the many that gave to the Clinton family’s global foundation set up by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public and foundation disclosures.
As Mrs. Clinton prepares to embark on a race for the presidency, she has a web of connections to big corporations unique in American politics—ties forged both as secretary of state and by her family’s charitable interests. Those relationships are emerging as an issue for Mrs. Clinton’s expected presidential campaign as income disparity and other populist themes gain early attention.
Indeed, Clinton Foundation money-raising already is drawing attention. “To a lot of progressive Democrats, Clinton’s ties to corporate America are disturbing,” says Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College who once worked for congressional Republicans. Mrs. Clinton’s connections to companies, he says, “are a bonanza for opposition researchers because they enable her critics to suggest the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
The Wall Street Journal identified the companies involved with both Clinton-family charitable endeavors and with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department by examining large corporate donations to the Clinton Foundation, then reviewing lobbying-disclosure reports filed by those companies. At least 44 of those 60 companies also participated in philanthropic projects valued at $3.2 billion that were set up though a wing of the foundation called the Clinton Global Initiative, which coordinates the projects but receives no cash for them.
Mrs. Clinton’s connections to the companies don’t end there. As secretary of state, she created 15 public-private partnerships coordinated by the State Department, and at least 25 companies contributed to those partnerships. She also sought corporate donations for another charity she co-founded, a nonprofit women’s group called Vital Voices.
Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, says: “She did the job that every secretary of state is supposed to do and what the American people expect of them—especially during difficult economic times. She proudly and loudly advocated on behalf of American business and took every opportunity she could to promote U.S. commercial interests abroad.”
Corporate donations to politically connected charities aren’t illegal so long as they aren’t in exchange for favors. There is no evidence of that with the Clinton Foundation.
In some cases, donations came after Mrs. Clinton took action that helped a company. In other cases, the donation came first. In some instances, donations came both before and after. All of the companies mentioned in this article said their charitable donations had nothing to do with their lobbying agendas with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.
President Barack Obama ’s transition team worried enough about potential problems stemming from Clinton-organization fundraising while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state that it asked Mr. Clinton to quit raising money from foreign governments for the Clinton Global Initiative and to seek approval for paid speaking engagements, which he did. The transition team didn’t put limits on corporate fundraising.
“The Clinton Foundation has raised hundreds of millions that it claims is for charitable causes, but clearly overlaps with Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions,” said Tim Miller, director of America Rising PAC, a conservative group that has targeted Mrs. Clinton.
In her book, “Hard Choices,” Mrs. Clinton said one of her goals at the State Department was “placing economics at the heart of our foreign policy.” She wrote: “It was clearer than ever that America’s economic strength and our global leadership were a package deal.”
Economic Statecraft
That approach, which Mrs. Clinton called “economic statecraft,” emerged in discussions with Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker who has worked in Democratic and Republican administrations and became an undersecretary of state. “One of the very first items was, how do we strengthen the role of the State Department in economic policy?” he says.
The focus positioned Mrs. Clinton to pursue not just foreign-policy results, but domestic economic ones.
Early in Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, according to Mr. Hormats, Microsoft’s then Chief Research Officer Craig Mundie asked the State Department to send a ranking official to a fourth annual meeting of U.S. software executives and Chinese government officials about piracy and Internet freedom. Mr. Hormats joined the December 2009 meeting in Beijing.
Since 2005, Microsoft has given the Clinton Global Initiative $1.3 million, in addition to free software, according to the foundation.
In 2011, Microsoft launched a three-year initiative coordinated by the Clinton Global Initiative to provide free or discounted software and other resources to students and teachers—a commitment Microsoft estimated to be worth $130 million.
Mr. Hormats says there was no relation between Microsoft’s donations and the State Department’s participation in the China conference.
In 2012, the Clinton Foundation approached GE about working together to expand a health-access initiative the company had launched four years earlier, says a GE spokeswoman.
That same year, Mrs. Clinton lobbied for GE to be selected by the Algerian government to build power plants in that country. She went to Algiers that October and met with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. “I saw an opportunity for advancing prosperity in Algeria and seizing an opportunity for American business,” she explained in her book.
A month after Mrs. Clinton’s trip, the Clinton Foundation announced the health-initiative partnership with GE, the company’s first involvement with the foundation. GE eventually contributed between $500,000 and $1 million to the partnership.
The following September, GE won the contracts with the Algerian government, saying they marked “some of its largest power agreements in company history.”
Mrs. Clinton championed U.S. energy companies and launched an office to promote overseas projects. Many of those efforts were focused in Eastern and Central Europe, where she saw energy development as a hedge against Russia’s dominance in oil and gas. Companies that had interests in those areas included Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp.
One effort, the Global Shale Gas Initiative, promoted hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique perfected by U.S. companies. In 2010, Mrs. Clinton flew to Krakow to announce a Polish-American cooperation on a global shale-gas initiative, according to her book. At the time, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted abundant deposits of shale gas in Poland.
After pursuing shale-gas projects in Poland, Exxon Mobil gave up a few years later, and Chevron said late last month it would abandon its Poland project.
In 2012, Mrs. Clinton flew to Sofia, Bulgaria, and urged the Bulgarian Parliament to reconsider its moratorium on fracking and its withdrawal of Chevron’s five-year exploration license. A few months later, the government allowed conventional gas exploration, but not fracking. Chevron left Bulgaria in 2012.
Ben Schreiber of the environmental group Friends of the Earth says: “We’ve long been concerned about the ties that Hillary Clinton has to the oil-and-gas industry.”
Both Exxon and Chevron are supporters of the Clinton Foundation. Chevron donated $250,000 in 2013. A Chevron spokesman said the Clinton charity “is one of many programs and partnerships that the company has had or maintains across a number of issue areas and topics pertinent to our business.”
Exxon Mobil has given about $2 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, starting in 2009. Since 2007, Exxon Mobil also has given $16.8 million to Vital Voices, the nonprofit women’s group co-founded by Mrs. Clinton, according to the group’s spokeswoman.
An Exxon Mobil spokesman said the donations were made to support work on issues Exxon Mobil has long championed, such as programs to fight malaria and empower women. “That is the sole motivation for our support of charitable programs associated with the Clintons,” he said. “We did not seek or receive any special consideration on the Shale Gas Initiative.”
In October 2009, Mrs. Clinton went to bat for aerospace giant Boeing, which was seeking to sell jets to Russia, by flying to Moscow to visit the Boeing Design Center. “I made the case that Boeing’s jets set the global gold standard, and, after I left, our embassy kept at it,” she wrote in her book.
About seven months later, in June 2010, Russia agreed to purchase 50 Boeing 737s for $3.7 billion, choosing Boeing over Europe’s Airbus Group NV.
Two months later, Boeing made its first donation to the Clinton Foundation—$900,000 to help rebuild Haiti’s public-education system. Overall, Boeing has contributed around $1.1 million to the Clinton Foundation since 2010.
A Boeing spokeswoman said it is routine for U.S. officials to advocate on behalf of businesses such as Boeing. “U.S. businesses face fierce global competition, and oftentimes an unlevel playing field in the global marketplace,” she said in a written statement. “Secretary Clinton did nothing for Boeing that former U.S. presidents and cabinet secretaries haven’t done for decades, or that their foreign counterparts haven’t done on behalf of companies like Airbus.”
Early in Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, according to Mr. Hormats, Microsoft’s then Chief Research Officer Craig Mundie asked the State Department to send a ranking official to a fourth annual meeting of U.S. software executives and Chinese government officials about piracy and Internet freedom. Mr. Hormats joined the December 2009 meeting in Beijing.
Since 2005, Microsoft has given the Clinton Global Initiative $1.3 million, in addition to free software, according to the foundation.
Mr. Hormats says there was no relation between Microsoft’s donations and the State Department’s participation in the China conference.
That same year, Mrs. Clinton lobbied for GE to be selected by the Algerian government to build power plants in that country. She went to Algiers that October and met with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. “I saw an opportunity for advancing prosperity in Algeria and seizing an opportunity for American business,” she explained in her book.
A month after Mrs. Clinton’s trip, the Clinton Foundation announced the health-initiative partnership with GE, the company’s first involvement with the foundation. GE eventually contributed between $500,000 and $1 million to the partnership.
The following September, GE won the contracts with the Algerian government, saying they marked “some of its largest power agreements in company history.”
Mrs. Clinton championed U.S. energy companies and launched an office to promote overseas projects. Many of those efforts were focused in Eastern and Central Europe, where she saw energy development as a hedge against Russia’s dominance in oil and gas. Companies that had interests in those areas included Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp.
One effort, the Global Shale Gas Initiative, promoted hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique perfected by U.S. companies. In 2010, Mrs. Clinton flew to Krakow to announce a Polish-American cooperation on a global shale-gas initiative, according to her book. At the time, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted abundant deposits of shale gas in Poland.
After pursuing shale-gas projects in Poland, Exxon Mobil gave up a few years later, and Chevron said late last month it would abandon its Poland project.
In 2012, Mrs. Clinton flew to Sofia, Bulgaria, and urged the Bulgarian Parliament to reconsider its moratorium on fracking and its withdrawal of Chevron’s five-year exploration license. A few months later, the government allowed conventional gas exploration, but not fracking. Chevron left Bulgaria in 2012.
Ben Schreiber of the environmental group Friends of the Earth says: “We’ve long been concerned about the ties that Hillary Clinton has to the oil-and-gas industry.”
Both Exxon and Chevron are supporters of the Clinton Foundation. Chevron donated $250,000 in 2013. A Chevron spokesman said the Clinton charity “is one of many programs and partnerships that the company has had or maintains across a number of issue areas and topics pertinent to our business.”
Exxon Mobil has given about $2 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, starting in 2009. Since 2007, Exxon Mobil also has given $16.8 million to Vital Voices, the nonprofit women’s group co-founded by Mrs. Clinton, according to the group’s spokeswoman.
An Exxon Mobil spokesman said the donations were made to support work on issues Exxon Mobil has long championed, such as programs to fight malaria and empower women. “That is the sole motivation for our support of charitable programs associated with the Clintons,” he said. “We did not seek or receive any special consideration on the Shale Gas Initiative.”
In October 2009, Mrs. Clinton went to bat for aerospace giant Boeing, which was seeking to sell jets to Russia, by flying to Moscow to visit the Boeing Design Center. “I made the case that Boeing’s jets set the global gold standard, and, after I left, our embassy kept at it,” she wrote in her book.
About seven months later, in June 2010, Russia agreed to purchase 50 Boeing 737s for $3.7 billion, choosing Boeing over Europe’s Airbus Group NV.
Two months later, Boeing made its first donation to the Clinton Foundation—$900,000 to help rebuild Haiti’s public-education system. Overall, Boeing has contributed around $1.1 million to the Clinton Foundation since 2010.
A Boeing spokeswoman said it is routine for U.S. officials to advocate on behalf of businesses such as Boeing. “U.S. businesses face fierce global competition, and oftentimes an unlevel playing field in the global marketplace,” she said in a written statement. “Secretary Clinton did nothing for Boeing that former U.S. presidents and cabinet secretaries haven’t done for decades, or that their foreign counterparts haven’t done on behalf of companies like Airbus.”
Before every overseas trip, says Mr. Hormats, the former undersecretary of state, he helped prepare a list of U.S. corporate interests for Mrs. Clinton to advocate while abroad.
During Mrs. Clinton’s three trips to India, she urged the government to kill a ban on stores that sell multiple brands, a law aimed at department stores or big-box retailers such asWal-Mart Stores Inc.
“It wasn’t just Wal-Mart,” Mr. Hormats says. “It was the whole point of multibrand retail. Wal-Mart was, of course, the biggest.”
Mrs. Clinton served on the board of the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer between 1986 and 1992, when her husband was governor of that state, and the law firm she worked for at the time represented the company. Wal-Mart has donated nearly $1.2 million to the Clinton Foundation for a program that issues grants to student-run charitable projects. The company also has paid more than $370,000 in membership fees to the foundation since 2008, according to a Wal-Mart spokesman.
During Mrs. Clinton’s three trips to India, she urged the government to kill a ban on stores that sell multiple brands, a law aimed at department stores or big-box retailers such asWal-Mart Stores Inc.
“It wasn’t just Wal-Mart,” Mr. Hormats says. “It was the whole point of multibrand retail. Wal-Mart was, of course, the biggest.”
Trip to India
Before Mrs. Clinton’s official trip to India in 2012, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke joined her at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, to pledge $12 million to help women in Latin America. The donation included $1.5 million in grants to 55,000 women entrepreneurs through the International Fund for Women and Girls, one of the 15 public-private partnerships Mrs. Clinton created at the State Department, and $500,000 for Vital Voices, the charity she co-founded.
“We committed to helping women around the world live better,” Mr. Duke said at the time. “By working with leaders like Secretary Clinton, we’re bringing that mission to life.”
One month later, Mrs. Clinton traveled to India to make the case against the ban on retail stores such as Wal-Mart. Then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had proposed allowing companies such as Wal-Mart to invest up to 51% directly in local multibrand retailers, but one of his allies, Mamata Banerjee, a regional governor, opposed the idea. Ms. Banerjee’s support was key to Mr. Singh’s majority in Parliament.
Mrs. Clinton met with Ms. Banerjee to press the matter. She also said in a speech in West Bengal that U.S. retailers could bring an “enormous amount of expertise” to India in areas ranging from supply-chain management to working with small producers and farmers. Her lobbying was unsuccessful.
A Wal-Mart spokesman said the retailer had lobbied the State Department on the issue, which he said was one of dozens of topics important to the business.
After Mrs. Clinton’s India trip, her husband asked Mr. Duke, Walmart’s CEO, to change his schedule to appear at the opening panel of the Clinton Global Initiative. Mr. Duke agreed.
1a)The Clinton Foundation Super PAC
It’s past time to drop the fiction that the Clinton Foundation is a charity.
By Kimberley Strassel
Republican presidential aspirants are already launching political-action committees, gearing up for the expensive elections to come. They’ll be hard-pressed to compete with the campaign vehicle Hillary Clinton has been erecting these past 14 years. You know, the Clinton Foundation.
With the news this week that Mrs. Clinton—the would-be occupant of the White House—is landing tens of millions from foreign governments for her shop, it’s long past time to drop the fiction that the Clinton Foundation has ever been a charity. It’s a political shop. Bill and Hillary have simply done with the foundation what they did with cattle futures and Whitewater and the Lincoln Bedroom and Johnny Chung—they’ve exploited the system.
Most family charities exist to allow self-made Americans to disperse their good fortune to philanthropic causes. The Clinton Foundation exists to allow the nation’s most powerful couple to use their not-so-subtle persuasion to exact global tribute for a fund that promotes the Clintons.
Oh sure, the foundation doles out grants for this and that cause. But they don’t rank next to the annual Bill Clinton show—the Clinton Global Initiative event—to which he summons heads of state and basks for a media week as post-presidential statesman. This is an organization that in 2013 spent $8.5 million in travel expenses alone, ferrying the Clintons to headliner events. Those keep Mrs. Clinton in the news, which helps when you want to be president.
It’s a body that exists to keep the Clinton political team intact in between elections, working for the Clintons’ political benefit. Only last week it came out that Dennis Cheng, who raised money for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 bid, and then transitioned to the Clinton Foundation’s chief development officer, is now transitioning back to head up Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 fundraising operation. Mr. Cheng has scored $248 million for the foundation, and his Rolodex comes with him. The Washington Post reported this week that already half the major donors backing Ready for Hillary, a group supporting her 2016 bid, are also foundation givers.
How much of these employees’ salaries, how much of Mrs. Clinton’s travel, was funded by the Saudis? Or the United Arab Emirates, or Oman, or any of the other foreign nations that The Wall Street Journal Tuesday reported have given millions to the foundation this past year? How many voters has Mrs. Clinton wooed, how many potential donors has she primed, how many influential people has she recruited for her campaign via the Clinton Foundation?
The foundation claims none, but that’s the other Clinton stroke of brilliance in using a charity as a campaign vehicle—we can’t know. Poor Jeb Bush has to abide by all those pesky campaign-finance laws that require him to disclose exact donor names, and dates and amounts. And that also bar contributions from foreign entities.
Not a problem for Team Clinton. The foundation does divulge contributors—after a fashion—but doesn’t give exact amounts or dates. Did Mrs. Clinton ever take any oddly timed actions as secretary of state? Who knows? Not the Federal Election Commission.
The foundation likes to note that it adopted self-imposed limits on foreign contributions during the period when Mrs. Clinton was at the State Department. Which is nice. Then again, that ban wasn’t absolute, and it isn’t clear it encompassed nonprofits funded by foreign governments, or covered wealthy foreigners, or foreign corporations. Nothing is clear. This is the Clintons. That’s how they like it.
This is the baseline scandal of the Clinton Foundation—it’s a political group that gets to operate outside the rules imposed on every other political player. Then comes the ethical morass. Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short summed it up perfectly in a Wednesday WSJ story: “When that 3 a.m. phone call comes, do voters really want to have a president on the line who took truckloads of cash from other countries?”
The nation’s ethics guardians have gently declared the Clintons might clear this up with more disclosure, or by again limiting the foundation’s acceptance of foreign money. What about the amounts already banked? The damage is done. If this were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely GOP candidate, he’d be declared disqualified for office. The benefit of being a Clinton is that the nation expects this, and the bar for disqualification now sits in the exosphere.
Democrats might nonetheless consider how big a liability this is for their potential nominee. It’s hard to label your GOP opponent anti-woman when the Clinton Foundation is funded by countries that bar women from voting and driving like Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to call your GOP opponent a heartless capitalist—out of tune with middle-class anxieties—when you owe your foundation’s soul to Canadian mining magnates and Ethiopian construction billionaires. And it’s hard to claim you will fix a burning world when you owe foundation gratitude to countries holding the fossil-fuel blowtorches.
Mrs. Clinton won’t let that stop her. So Democrats have to decide if they want to once again put their ethics in the blind Clinton trust.
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2)
The public rift between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Iranian nuclear issue is often described as a personality dispute. But a senior Israeli official argued this week that the break has been building for more than two years and reflects a deep disagreement about how best to limit the threat of a rising Iran.
Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence, outlined his government’s view in an interview Wednesday. He said that the nuclear agreement contemplated by Obama would ratify Iran as a threshold nuclear-weapons state, and that the one-year breakout time sought by Washington wasn’t adequate. And he stressed that these views aren’t new.
“From the very beginning, we made it clear we had reservations about the goal of the negotiations,” he explained. “We thought the goal should be to get rid of the Iranian nuclear threat, not verify or inspect it.”
Steinitz, who helps oversee Iran strategy for Netanyahu, said he understands the United States wants to tie Iran’s hands for a decade until a new generation takes power there. But he warns: “You’re saying, okay, in 10 or 12 years Iran might be a different country.” This is “dangerous” because it ignores that Iran is “thinking like an old-fashioned superpower.”
Why Netanyahu broke publicly with Obama over Iran
By David IgnatiusThe public rift between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Iranian nuclear issue is often described as a personality dispute. But a senior Israeli official argued this week that the break has been building for more than two years and reflects a deep disagreement about how best to limit the threat of a rising Iran.
Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence, outlined his government’s view in an interview Wednesday. He said that the nuclear agreement contemplated by Obama would ratify Iran as a threshold nuclear-weapons state, and that the one-year breakout time sought by Washington wasn’t adequate. And he stressed that these views aren’t new.
“From the very beginning, we made it clear we had reservations about the goal of the negotiations,” he explained. “We thought the goal should be to get rid of the Iranian nuclear threat, not verify or inspect it.”
Steinitz, who helps oversee Iran strategy for Netanyahu, said he understands the United States wants to tie Iran’s hands for a decade until a new generation takes power there. But he warns: “You’re saying, okay, in 10 or 12 years Iran might be a different country.” This is “dangerous” because it ignores that Iran is “thinking like an old-fashioned superpower.”
Netanyahu’s skepticism reached a tipping point last month when he concluded that the United States had offered so many concessions to Iran that any deal reached would be bad for Israel. He broke with Obama, first in a private phone call Jan. 12, and then in his public acceptance of an offer by GOP House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress on March 3 and, in effect, lobby against the deal.
The administration argues that the pact taking shape, although imperfect, is preferable to any realistic alternative. It would limit the Iranian program and allow careful monitoring of its actions. Angered by what it sees as Netanyahu’s efforts to sabotage the agreement, the administration decided in early February to limit the information it shared with Israel about its bargaining with Iran.
The discord goes back to 2012, when the Obama administration began secret contacts with Iran through Oman. The Israelis were angry that they weren’t informed and insulted that the United States would think they wouldn’t find out through their intelligence channels. Netanyahu denounced the interim agreement, reached in November 2013, because it formally accepted that Iran could enrich uranium.
Despite Netanyahu’s view that it was a “great mistake” to accept any Iranian enrichment, Steinitz said that “we got the impression that it might be symbolic. The initial figure [discussed by the United States and its negotiating partners] was ‘a few hundred centrifuges.’ ” Now, he said, the United States is contemplating “thousands.” According to Israeli press reports, the United States has offered to allow Iran to operate at least 6,500 centrifuges.
Steinitz didn’t dispute the U.S. argument that what matters is a package that includes the number and performance levels of the permitted centrifuges, the extent of dismantlement of non-permitted centrifuges and the size of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. “Breakout time is an equation with four variables,” he said.
“The temptation [for Iran] is not now but in two or three or four years, when the West is preoccupied with other crises,” he added. Steinitz said that if Iran chose to “sneak out” at such a moment, it would take the United States and its allies months to determine the pact had been violated, and another six months to form a coalition for sanctions or other decisive action. By then, it might be too late.
Steinitz said the Israeli government understands the U.S. goal of a 10- to 15-year duration for the agreement, which would constrain Iran into what’s likely to be the next generation after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is 75. But here again, he dissented.
“I understand the logic, but I disagree,” Steinitz said. What the United States is saying to Iran, in effect, is “if you agree to freeze for 10 years, that’s enough for us.” But that won’t work for Israel. “To believe that in the next decade there will be a democratic change in leadership and that Iran won’t threaten the U.S. or Israel anymore, I think this is too speculative.”
Steinitz concluded the conversation with an emphatic warning: “Iran is part of the problem and not part of the solution — unless you think Iran dominating the Middle East is the solution.” People who think that a nuclear deal with Iran is desirable, as I do, need to be able to answer Steinitz’s critique.
2a) ANATOMY OF A BAD IRAN DEAL: A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT
Author: Dore Gold
The lead editorial of the Washington Post on February 5, 2015, expressed the growing concern in elite circles with the contours of the emerging nuclear accord between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany).1 Part of the concern emanates from the change in the goals of Western negotiators: rather than eliminate Iran’s potential to build nuclear weapons, they now want to restrict Iranian capabilities, which would leave Tehran in a position to break out of any restrictions in the future.2
The best way to evaluate the impending nuclear agreement is to look at the statements of high-levels officials who have been involved in the negotiations. While not all of the details of the agreement have been made public, elements have been disclosed in the international media that are deeply worrying.
For example, there is the issue of the number of centrifuges that Iran will be allowed to retain. A centrifuge is a machine that separates uranium gas into two isotopes: U-238, which does not release nuclear energy, and U-235, which, when split, can release the energy for either a nuclear reactor or an atomic bomb. The enrichment process involves producing uranium with increasing percentages of U-235. At 90 percent purity, the uranium is characterized as weapons-grade.
Iran currently has 19,000 centrifuges, 9,000 of which are running and 10,000 that are installed but not operating. Israel’s position is that Iran should have zero centrifuges. The reason is that if Iran truly needs enriched uranium for civilian purposes, it could import enriched uranium as do roughly 15 other countries, such as Canada, Mexico, and Spain. The Israeli position is in line with six UN Security Council resolutions that were adopted between 2006 and 2010, with the support of Russia and China. If Iran eliminated all of its centrifuges and then chose to build new centrifuges, the process would take four to five years. There would be ample time to detect Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium beyond what is needed for civilian purposes and to organize an international response.
According to Gary Samore, President Obama’s former non-proliferation adviser, at the beginning of the current round of negotiations, the United States was demanding that Iran significantly reduce its stock of centrifuges to 1,500, but in doing so dropped the longstanding U.S. policy that Iran eliminate its centrifuges completely.3
The numbers are important. In a scenario of “breakout,” in which the Iranians race to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for their first atomic bomb, the number of centrifuges largely determines the amount of time the Iranians will need to accomplish this goal.
In addition to the number of centrifuges that Iran has, there is also the issue of the amount of enriched uranium that Iran has already stockpiled. With enough low-enriched uranium, Iran can make a final push to weapons-grade uranium for an atomic bomb. Robert Einhorn, the former special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control during the Obama administration, has calculated that if Iran uses 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and inserts it into 2,000 centrifuges, Iran will have one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium in 12 to 14 months.4
But from what we know today about the impending nuclear deal, Iran will need much less time to “breakout” to a bomb. According to multiple press reports, Western negotiators have raised the ceiling for the number of centrifuges that Iran will be allowed to have: they have gone from 1,500 to 4,500, and they now appear to be ready to let the Iranians have 6,000 centrifuges.5 According to Einhorn’s calculations mentioned above, with 1,500 kilograms of enriched uranium and 6,000 centrifuges, Iran can produce enough weapons-grade uranium for an atomic bomb in six months.6
David Albright, formerly with the International Atomic Energy Agency, has estimated that with just 2,000-4,000 centrifuges Iran could achieve “breakout” in six months.7 Others suggest that the breakout timeline is even less than six months. For example, Congressman Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has warned that on the basis of expert testimony given to his committee, should Iran be permitted to keep just 4,000 centrifuges, it would have a breakout time of only three months.8
There are other factors that can shorten this breakout time even more. Iran has second-generation IR-2 centrifuges that are more sophisticated and powerful which have not been activated yet. The IR-5, with an even higher rate of enrichment, is in advanced stages of research and was already tested last fall.9 If these advanced centrifuges are activated, the Iranian breakout time will be cut precipitously.
Albright concluded that a six-month breakout time would be the minimum needed to allow for an effective international response – presumably U.S.-led – to an Iranian violation. Thus, the 6,000 centrifuge limit that the P5+1 negotiators are presently proposing will not allow sufficient time to respond to an Iranian breakout.
However, if the Obama administration decides to proceed, countries in the Middle East are likely to conclude that under these conditions, the United States has reached a bad agreement with Iran. The evaluation here is largely based on the number of centrifuges the agreement allows.
There are other dimensions to the nuclear deal with Iran that are no less important. Dennis Ross, who also served in the Obama administration and worked on the Iran file, co-authored an article on Jan. 23 expressing similar concerns. “During the course of the nuclear negotiations over the past year, Iran has been the beneficiary of a generous catalogue of concessions from the West,” Ross wrote. “The 5-plus-1 has conceded to Iranian enrichment, agreed that Tehran need not scale back the number of its centrifuges significantly or dismantle any facilities and could have an industrial-size program after passage of a period of time.”10
Undoubtedly, other countries in the Middle East will react to these concessions by accelerating their own nuclear programs. It was not surprising to see the news reports on Feb. 10 that Egypt was to procure a new nuclear reactor from Russia.11 Nuclear proliferation is likely to spread to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, and others. A multipolar Middle East, which is currently facing a radical Islamist wave, will have none of the stability of the East-West balance during the Cold War. A bad agreement with Iran, in short, will leave the world a much more dangerous place.
An Iranian Shahab-3 missile is launched during military maneuvers outside the city of Qom, Iran, June 28, 2011.
(AP Photo/ISNA, Ruhollah Vahdati)
An Iranian Shahab-3 missile is launched during military maneuvers outside the city of Qom, Iran, June 28, 2011.
(AP Photo/ISNA, Ruhollah Vahdati)
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Notes
1 “The Emerging Iran Nuclear Deal Raises Major Concerns,” Washington Post, Editorial, Feb. 5, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-emerging-iran-nuclear-deal-raises-major-concerns-in-congress-and-beyond/2015/02/05/4b80fd92-abda-11e4-ad71-7b9eba0f87d6_story.html
2 Ibid.
3 “Can Iran and the United States Make a Meaningful Deal?” Council on Foreign Relations, October 9, 2014, http://www.cfr.org/nonproliferation-arms-control-and-disarmament/can-iran-united-states-make-meaningful-deal/p33588
4 Robert J. Einhorn, “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran: Requirements for a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement,” Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Series, Paper 10, March 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2014/03/31%20
nuclear%20armed%20iran%20einhorn/31%20nuclear%20armed%20iran%20einhorn%20pdf.pdf
nuclear%20armed%20iran%20einhorn/31%20nuclear%20armed%20iran%20einhorn%20pdf.pdf
5 Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Lays Out Limits It Seeks in Iran Nuclear Talks,” New York Times, Nov. 20, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/world/middleeast/us-lays-out-limits-it-seeks-in-iran-nuclear-talks.html?_r=0; and Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim, “Iranian Website Reports U.S. Giving Ground on Nuclear Centrifuges,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 4, 2014, http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-nuclear-20141104-story.html
6 Ibid.
7 David Albright, Olli Heinonen, and Andrea Stricker, “Five Compromises to Avoid in a Comprehensive Agreement with Iran,” Institute for Science and International Security, June 3, 2014, http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Five_Bad_Compromises_3June2014-final.pdf
8 “Assessing a ‘Comprehensive’ Nuclear Agreement with Iran: Five Issues to Watch,” House Committee on Foreign Affairs, http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/sites/republicans.
foreignaffairs.house.gov/files/Iran%20Five%20Key%20Issues.pdf
foreignaffairs.house.gov/files/Iran%20Five%20Key%20Issues.pdf
9 Michelle Moghtader and Fredrik Dahl, “Iran Says Centrifuge Testing, but No Violation of Atom Deal with Powers,” Reuters, Nov. 12, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-iran-nuclear-centrifuges-idUSKCN0IW11O20141112
10 Dennis Ross, Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh, “Time to Take It to Iran: The Stalemate over Nukes, and Now a Tehran-Backed Coup in Yemen, Show that Obama Isn’t Tough Enough,” Politico, Jan. 23, 2015, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/iran-yemen-coup-114532.html#.VNyWSU0UG70
11 “Cairo, Moscow to Build 1st Nuclear Plant in Egypt,” Al Arabiya, Feb. 10, 2015, http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/02/10/Russia-s-Putin-in-Cairo-for-talks-with-Sisi-.html
Dore Gold is a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and served as an external advisor to the office of the Prime Minister of Israel. He is the author of the best-selling books: The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City (Regnery, 2007), and The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West (Regnery, 2009).
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3) HAMAS'S NEW ARMY OF CHILDREN
Author: Khaled Abu Toameh
For the past several months, Hamas leaders have been complaining that they do not have enough money to rebuild the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the last war with Israel.
However, it appears that Hamas does have enough funds to train, arm and indoctrinate thousands of young Palestinian men and boys.
While thousands of Palestinian families who lost their houses during the war continue to live in public shelters throughout the Gaza Strip, Hamas recently established 18 camps for military training.
The Hamas military training camps, under the motto “Vanguards of Liberation,” have attracted some 17,000 Palestinian males aged 15-21. The young recruits were trained how to use various types of weapons, including pistols, rifles and mortars. They were also “educated” about the need to eliminate Israel and “restore Palestinian rights.”
Samir Abu Aitah, a 15-year-old boy who joined the Hamas-run militia, said: “I now feel very happy because they trained me how to use weapons so that I could fight against the soldiers of the occupation. The Jews have killed thousands of innocent people and that's why I decided to join the path of jihad (holy war) and fight against them with weapons. We want to expel the Jews from our occupied country.”
Another 15-year-old boy, Mahmoud al-Kurd, said he really enjoyed being trained with weapons at Hamas's camps. “Our enemy understands only one language – the language of swords.”
Al-Kurd's friend, Ismail Elayan, who is also 15, told reporters who visited the training camps: “I decided to join the camp because this will pave the way for liberating all of our country. This is our major goal.”
Mohamed al-Najjar, 16, said he joined the training camps because he “loves martyrdom.” He added: “I want to pursue the path of resistance until I'm martyred.”
Hamas later held a “graduation ceremony” for the young recruits who are expected to serve in its future “Liberation Army.” And when Hamas talks about “liberation,” it means it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and replace it with an Islamic state.
Young Palestinians at one of Hamas's 18 new “Vanguards of Liberation” military training camps in Gaza sport face-paint symbolizng of the map of Palestine from the river to the sea, January 2015. (Image source: Paltimes)
Hamas is even boasting that the young Palestinians who have just been brainwashed and trained on weapons will participate in the next war with Israel.
Speaking at one of the graduation ceremonies, Hamas co-founder and senior official Mahmoud Zahar declared that some of the boys would be recruited to fire mortars and rockets at Israel. And, of course, he reiterated Hamas's true goal, namely the destruction of Israel.
“These young men will soon be standing behind the rockets, which they will fire at every inch of Palestine until it is completely liberated,” Zahar said. “These boys will liberate Palestine and the Aqsa Mosque. Hamas will continue to support the training camps and provide them with as much funds and weapons as they need. This will continue until we achieve our goal — the liberation of Palestine.”
So Zahar is actually admitting that Hamas is not facing a financial crisis, as it has no problem funding any program designed to poison the hearts and minds of Palestinian youths. Nor does Hamas have any problem supplying the youths with weapons, according to the Hamas leader.
If Hamas has the resources to fund and arm a new “Liberation Army” consisting of 17,000 fighters, why does it continue to demand that the international community allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip? The money that was spent on the “Vanguards of Liberation” training camps could have solved the problems facing thousands of Palestinian families who lost their homes during last summer's war.
(Operation Protective Edge).
(Operation Protective Edge).
But Hamas, which is first and foremost responsible for the tragedy of these families, is not interested in taking any part in the efforts to rebuild destroyed homes. Instead, Hamas seems to be more determined than ever to continue raising new generations of Palestinians on jihad and hatred.
Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into a huge training camp for jihadis and militiamen affiliated not only with it, but also with the Islamic State. By forming a new army that consists mostly of teenagers, Hamas is committing a crime against Palestinians in general and young people in particular.
This is all happening at a time when the Palestinian Authority [PA] in the West Bank continues with its threats to file “war crimes” charges against Israel. Obviously, the PA and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, do not see Hamas's cynical exploitation and abuse of Palestinian children as a war crime.
Hamas has made it clear that it plans to send the teenagers to launch rockets and mortars at Israel, with the hope that they would achieve “martyrdom.” But this does not seem to bother Abbas or the Palestinian Authority, or even the international community.
If and when the International Criminal Court convenes to consider “war crimes” in the Middle East, the first thing the judges should look into is how Hamas sent thousands of Palestinian teenagers to their deaths and, as that was happening, how Abbas and the Palestinian Authority looked the other way.
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4)Giuliani Under Fire From Right, Left Over Obama Comments
Democrats are slamming former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for questioning whether President Barack Obama "loves America," while several potential 2016 GOP candidates either distanced themselves from his statements or said they believe Obama loves his country but engaged in questionable policies.
While the firestorm was going on, the former mayor made the interview circuit, where he clarified his statements slightly but did not back down on what he'd said during a private Republican dinner event on Wednesday night at Manhattan's elite "21" Club.
At the dinner, Giuliani said that he knows "this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America ... he doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country."
Former lawmaker Joe Scarborough, on his MSNBC "Morning Joe" show Friday, said that Giuliani's comments left him wondering if the 2016 election will be another race full of such slurs.
Scarborough said in the 2012 election, he was critical of GOP nominee Mitt Romney because "people were going out and saying terrible things and calling the president racist, saying he hated all white people, and you could go down the list of things, that he was a Marxist, that he was a communist" and no one changed the conversation.
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4)Giuliani Under Fire From Right, Left Over Obama Comments
Democrats are slamming former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for questioning whether President Barack Obama "loves America," while several potential 2016 GOP candidates either distanced themselves from his statements or said they believe Obama loves his country but engaged in questionable policies.
While the firestorm was going on, the former mayor made the interview circuit, where he clarified his statements slightly but did not back down on what he'd said during a private Republican dinner event on Wednesday night at Manhattan's elite "21" Club.
At the dinner, Giuliani said that he knows "this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America ... he doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country."
Former lawmaker Joe Scarborough, on his MSNBC "Morning Joe" show Friday, said that Giuliani's comments left him wondering if the 2016 election will be another race full of such slurs.
Scarborough said in the 2012 election, he was critical of GOP nominee Mitt Romney because "people were going out and saying terrible things and calling the president racist, saying he hated all white people, and you could go down the list of things, that he was a Marxist, that he was a communist" and no one changed the conversation.
He said that he'd like to hear a candidate say he disagrees with the president, "economically, I think he has a disastrous economic policy, disastrous foreign policy, but let's agree on one thing, he loves this country."
Instead, Giuliani's comments left Scarborough wondering if the nation is "really going to go through another cycle where Republican candidates are too stupid to get out of the way of the stupidest people in their party, that keep them from winning presidential elections by spewing hatred, instead of telling people how they're going to get back to work," he said.
But Giuliani, while softening his comments, didn't back down, telling Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Thursday night that he felt his opinion was "perfectly reasonable," and that he wants to repeat that "all I've heard of him [Obama], he apologizes for America, he criticizes America."
"He sees Christians slaughtered and doesn't stand up and hold a press conference although we hold a press conference for the situation in Ferguson," Giuliani told Kelly. "He sees Jews being killed for anti-Semitic reasons. Doesn't stand up and hold a press conference.
"This is an American president I've never seen before."
He admitted that patriots are "allowed to criticize," but he doesn't feel Obama's "love of America ... if we look at his rhetoric, [he] has not displayed the kind of love of America ... the exceptionalism that other American presidents have displayed.
"This is an American president I've never seen before."
He admitted that patriots are "allowed to criticize," but he doesn't feel Obama's "love of America ... if we look at his rhetoric, [he] has not displayed the kind of love of America ... the exceptionalism that other American presidents have displayed.
"That he has gone abroad and criticized us over and over again, apologized for us. Every time he does it embarrasses me."
And Giuliani said he will not back down unless he hears the president make a speech praising the country and admitting that "Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is our enemy."
The former mayor also defended his comments about Obama not being brought up to love the United States, which some critics Thursday called racist.
"Some people thought it was racist — I thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools, and most of this he learned from white people," Giuliani told The New York Times. "This isn’t racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism."
Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that it is time for Republican leaders to "stop this nonsense" when it comes to comments like Giuliani's, and called on them to repudiate his statements, reports Time.
"One of the Republican frontrunners was sitting just feet away and didn’t say a word," she said, referring to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who was at the dinner. "I would challenge my Republican colleagues and anyone in the Republican Party to say: Enough. They need to start leading."
Giuliani stopped short of endorsing Walker at the dinner, held for the governor to meet key GOP donors. In his speech there, Giuliani also said he is looking for a candidate to express that the United States is the most exceptional country in the world, "and if it's you, Scott, I'll endorse you. And if it's somebody else, I'll support somebody else."
Walker, interviewed Thursday on CNBC, did not say if he agrees with Giuliani, reports Time.
"The mayor can speak for himself. I'm not going to comment on whether — what the president thinks or not. He can speak for himself as well," Walker said. "I'll tell you, I love America, and I think there are plenty of people, Democrat, Republican, independent, everywhere in between, who love this country."
Many Democrats, though, said they thought Giuliani's comments reflected badly on Walker.
Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that he heard a "deafening silence" from the Wisconsin governor, reports The Associated Press, and called on him to "disassociate himself immediately" from Giuliani's statements.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential GOP presidential candidate, though, said he backed Giuliani's statements, noting that the president had "obviously demonstrated for everyone is that he is incapable of successfully executing his duties as our commander in chief."
But others steered clear of the subject.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky did not comment.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he has no doubt that Obama loves America, "but I just think his policies are bad for our nation."
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