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New Pant Suit!
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What's new? Hillary was engaged in felonious activity throughout White Water.
I admit I despise the Clintons'. Their conduct has been and remains appalling. "Old" Bill lied and besmirched The Oval Office. Yes, he was not the first president to do so.
Hillary cannot tell the truth because she is paranoid. It would be a tragedy following an eight year disaster were she to become president.
Only the most partisan can excuse her high and mighty and probably illegal activities. There may not be a law against soliciting funds for your Charitable Foundation while Sec. of State but honorable people do not need laws to tell them right from wrong. They know it instinctively. (See 1 below.)
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America has been supplanted by Iran - Obama's friend and America's enemy! This is what happens when you abdicate and create vacuums! Maybe that has been Obama's intention all along. Withdraw and allow radical Islamists and America's enemies to fill the void. Obama's pay back to avenge America's bad behaviour. You decide. (See 2 below.)
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Is this op ed author nuts or on to something profound? You decide and time will tell. (See 3 below.)
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Is the Middle East nuclear Geni out of the bottle? (See 4 below.)
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Off to Orlando for Dagny's 3rd birthday!
Dick
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1)
Rep. Trey Gowdy to Newsmax: Issuing Subpoena for Hillary Is an Option
If former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refuses to voluntarily comply with requests from the Select Committee on Benghazi, committee chair Trey Gowdy will have no choice but to subpoena her, he said Thursday on Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
"You hate that it gets to that point," said Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who is a former district attorney. "You ought to be able to make a request of a former cabinet level official. You shouldn't have to resort to legal process. But certainly, the committee can subpoena people and subpoena documents. Our committee cannot subpoena personal property like cars and boats and servers."
"But yes, we need to talk to her. And I plan on talking to her, and I hope it's something that we can work out with her lawyer," he said. "I cannot do the job that I was asked to do with respect to Benghazi in Libya without talking to the secretary of state."
Revelations that Clinton exclusively used her personal email account to conduct State Department business has added yet another hurdle to clear in the ongoing investigation into exactly what Clinton knew, and when, as it relates to the killing of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
"I cannot ask her about Benghazi until there is a level of assurance that we have everything that we are legitimately entitled to with respect to Benghazi," Gowdy said.
But Clinton, insisting that she has turned over all correspondence that she is legally required to, has said she will not allow an independent third party to review some 30,000 emails contained on her home server because they are "personal."
"What really caught my attention is when she said, 'we,'" he said. "'We' went through the documents and sorted out what was public and private. Who is 'we?'
"If you're talking about your lawyer doing it, how can we have any assurance that your lawyer negotiated or resolved or reconciled any close questions in favor of the public as opposed to his client, which would be you?"
Gowdy acknowledged that Clinton is "a very distinguished person with a very distinguished career," but said that she is not an expert on the Federal Records Act.
"So someone had to be involved in the conversation to determine, you know, this is more public than personal," he said. "And I'll give you an example: let's assume that you emailed Secretary Clinton and said, 'Looking so forward to going to Chelsea's wedding, thank you for the invitation. If I catch you at the reception, I'd like to ask you about Paraguay and what's happening there.' Is that personal or is that public? Or is it a mixture? And if it's a mixture, how do you resolve that?"
Her explanation for having a private server in lieu of using the government's is also curious, he said.
"The whole notion that it was done for convenience — I'm not an expert on cellphone technology, but I can tell you in 2010 I was able to put two email accounts on one Blackberry. And the president, who's a really, really busy guy, manages to comply with the records act using a Blackberry," said Gowdy.
"To me, what is inconvenient is setting up your own server. It'd be much easier to carry another phone or, heaven forbid, have two email addresses on one."
Gowdy reiterated that he and the committee have no interest in emails about Clinton's "yoga practice schedule or the color of the bridesmaids' dress," a reference to Chelsea Clinton's wedding, but maintained that he does want everything he's legitimately entitled to with respect to Libya and Benghazi.
"And the media has requests that were outstanding and there are other committees, so it's bigger than just our committee and what we want to ask her," he said. "I can't ask her about Benghazi until I satisfy myself that we are in a position to have access to every document we're entitled to."
The State Department has also not been forthcoming, according to Gowdy, who said that "they never once told us that [Clinton] only used a personal email account."
The committee, he said, was not notified until the Friday before The New York Times broke the story the following Monday that they didn't have Clinton's email records.
In August, the State Department turned over to the select committee eight emails, all of which came from Clinton's private email address. That address was something committee members made note of during their pursuit of other things with the State Department, such as access to witnesses and other issues relating to Benghazi, Gowdy said.
He has since learned that in October, the State Department sent a letter to former secretaries of state asking them to produce emails for archiving.
"So fast forward to February and, oh by the way, in December, we wrote her personal attorney, David Kendall, and said, look, can you help us with this personal email address? And he referred us back to this State Department," Gowdy said.
"So we're thinking the whole time, well, State Department has all these emails, we just got to hurry them up.
"They gave us another production in February," he said. "It was about 800 pages but 300 emails, all of them were personal accounts, no official account.
"When The New York Times broke their story is the first time that I learned that the only reason we're getting a personal account is that's all she has and, oh by the way, she kept her records when she left the State Department. That never was shared with us by the State Department, despite multiple opportunities for them to do so."
Gowdy said he and his committee have been diligent about keeping all information gleaned during the investigation confidential in order to keep from the appearance that it's "a political exercise and not a serious investigation."
"I did not sign up for a political exercise," he said. "I signed up to try to bring some comfort and some justice to my fellow citizens and four people who were murdered. So I take this very seriously and I don't like leaks and I don't like selective releases, and The New York Times knows full well no one on our committee was the source of that information.
"I learned it when I read the story. Did I know she had a personal email account? Absolutely," he said. "Did I know that's all she had? Did I know that the State Department didn't have all of her records until she gave them back?
"Not until I read Mr. Schmidt's article," Gowdy said. "He's got better sources at the State Department than I do."
The lawmaker hopes Clinton will reconsider what he characterizes as a "very reasonable request."
"Turn the server over to an independent, neutral, detached third party. Let that person determine what's personal, what's public — let that person determine what's related to Benghazi and Libya. You keep all the rest of it, Mr. Neutral Referee or Mrs. Neutral Referee. Just give me what I'm entitled to," Gowdy said.
"I do need to talk to her about how she handled records before I talk to her about Benghazi. But as soon as those conversations can take place, I would be thrilled to have her before the committee.
"We can ask her the questions we have, and we will continue interviewing eyewitnesses and we will continue interviewing other principles and witnesses with respect to Libya," he said. "We're going to write a really good report at the end of our investigation. How quickly she comes and goes from Capitol Hill is, frankly, solely in her power."
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2)
Iran Occupies Iraq
As the U.S. leads from behind, Tehran creates a Shiite arc of power.
Photo: Getty Images
While Washington focuses on Iran-U.S. nuclear talks, the Islamic Republic is making a major but little-noticed strategic advance. Iran’s forces are quietly occupying more of Iraq in a way that could soon make its neighbor a de facto Shiite satellite of Tehran.
That’s the larger import of the dominant role Iran and its Shiite militia proxies are playing in the military offensive to take back territory from the Islamic State, or ISIS. The first battle is over the Sunni-majority city of Tikrit, and while the Iraqi army is playing a role, the dominant forces are Shiite militias supplied and coordinated from Iran. This includes the Badr Brigades that U.S. troops fought so hard to put down in Baghdad during the 2007 surge.
The Shiite militias are being organized under a new Iraqi government office led by Abu Mahdi Mohandes, an Iraqi with close ties to Iran. Mr. Mohandes is working closely with the most powerful military official in Iran and Iraq—the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran’s official news agency last week confirmed Western media reports that Gen. Soleimani is “supervising” the attack against Islamic State.
This is the same general who aided the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq. Quds Force operatives supplied the most advanced IEDs, which could penetrate armor and were the deadliest in Iraq. One former U.S. general who served in Iraq estimates that Iran was responsible for about one-third of U.S. casualties during the war, which would mean nearly 1,500 deaths.
Mr. Soleimani recently declared that Islamic State’s days in Iraq are “finished,” adding that Iran will lead the liberation of Tikrit, Mosul and then all of Anbar province. While this is a boast that seeks to diminish the role of other countries, especially the U.S., it reveals Iran’s ambitions and its desire to capitalize when Islamic State is pushed out of Anbar province.
The irony is that critics long complained that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 created a strategic opening for Iran. But the 2007 surge defeated the Shiite militias and helped Sunni tribal sheikhs oust al Qaeda from Anbar. U.S. forces provided a rough balancing while they stayed in Iraq through 2011. But once they departed on President Obama’s orders, the Iraq government tilted again to Iran and against the Sunni minority.
Iran’s military surge is now possible because of the vacuum created by the failure of the U.S. to deploy ground troops or rally a coalition of forces from surrounding Sunni states to fight Islamic State. With ISIS on the march last year, desperate Iraqis and even the Kurds turned to Iran and Gen. Soleimani for help. The U.S. air strikes have been crucial to pinning down Islamic State forces, but Iran is benefitting on the ground.
The strategic implications of this Iranian advance are enormous. Iran already had political sway over most of Shiite southern Iraq. Its militias may now have the ability to control much of Sunni-dominated Anbar, especially if they use the chaos to kill moderate Sunnis. Iran is essentially building an arc of dominance from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut on the Mediterranean.
This advance is all the more startling because it is occurring with tacit U.S. encouragement amid crunch time in the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, competed last week with Gen. Soleimani’s anti-ISIS boasts by touting U.S. bombing. But this week he called Iran’s military “activities” against ISIS “a positive thing.” U.S. civilian officials are publicly mute or privately supportive of Iran.
While Islamic State must be destroyed, its replacement by an Iran-Shiite suzerainty won’t lead to stability. Iran’s desire to dominate the region flows from its tradition of Persian imperialism compounded by its post-1979 revolutionary zeal. This week it elected hardline cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi to choose Iran’s next Supreme Leader.
The Sunni states in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf are watching all of this and may conclude that a new U.S.-Iran condominium threatens their interests. They will assess a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal in this context, making them all the more likely to seek their own nuclear deterrent. They may also be inclined to stoke another anti-Shiite insurgency in Syria and western Iraq.
All of this is one more consequence of America leading from behind. The best way to defeat Islamic State would be for the U.S. to assemble a coalition of Iraqis, Kurds and neighboring Sunni countries led by U.S. special forces that minimized the role of Iran. Such a Sunni force would first roll back ISIS from Iraq and then take on ISIS and the Assad government in Syria. The latter goal in particular would meet Turkey’s test for participating, but the Obama Administration has refused lest it upset Iran.
The result is that an enemy of the U.S. with American blood on its hands is taking a giant step toward becoming the dominant power in the Middle East.
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3)
Why China Will Lose the War It is Planning
How do we know the war is coming in the first place? Because the advertising for it is out. Amongst plenty of other evidence, one Chinese front organisation conducted a poll on Australian attitudes to the ANZUS treaty and a Chinese attack on Japan. Why would they conduct such a poll unless they are going to attack Japan? Not that they were interested in the results as such. They just wanted to be able to publicize the poll in order to try to keep Australia on the sidelines of their war.
The war will have two functions for China. Firstly, it will provide legitimacy for the regime as economic growth stalls. Secondly, the Chinese will have pride in humiliating their neighbouring countries, and the United States, by defeating them in battle and creating no-go zones in the oceans which other countries won’t be able to enter without Chinese permission. The war will have nothing to do with oil and gas resources under the seabed and securing sea-lanes. The Chinese have never offered those excuses for their behavior themselves. The excuses are the creation of Western pundits for something that otherwise is stupid, destructive, and primitive.
Some have seen this war coming well in advance. In 2005, Robert Kaplan wrote an article entitled How We Would Fight China. In it he notes that China will approach the war “asymmetrically, as terrorists do. In Iraq the insurgents have shown us the low end of asymmetry, with car bombs. But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art.”
To win the war, China has to seize territory and then hold it against the US/Japanese counterattack. There will be two main theatres of operation -- the Senkaku and Yaeyama island chains in the East China Sea and the Paracel and Spratly Islands south of Hainan Island in the South China Sea. In the East China Sea, China claims the uninhabited Senkaku Islands and has made noises about being the rightful owners of the Ryuku and Yaeyama Island Chains. This part of the world is complicated for China in that there are US bases on Okinawa in the Ryukus.
They could leave the US bases out of their attack in the expectation that President Obama will renege on his commitment to come to Japan’s aid if China attempts to seize the Senkaku Islands. More likely they will attack US bases in the region at least as far out as Guam on the basis that the United States will be entering the war anyway and they are better off getting a surprise attack in first. Also, they can’t be number one on the planet until they have defeated the United States. So their pride will be a big part of it.
If China is going to seize the Senkaku Islands, it would take only a little bit more effort, morally and militarily, to seize the Yaeyama Islands at the same time. Part of the preparations for this operation includes building the Shuimen airbase on a ridge on the mainland at 26° 56’ N, 120° 05’ E. More recently an expeditionary base for helicopters is under construction in the Nanji Islands at 27° 27’ N, 121° 04’ E. China has been conditioning the Japanese by having their fishing vessels run incursions into Japanese territory with each incursion lasting two hours. In late 2014, the fishing transgressions extended to the Osagawa Islands further east.
In the East China Sea, China is likely to start the war off with helicopters landing troops on the Senkaku and Yaeyama Islands quickly followed by a swarm of coast guard and commercial vessels to dilute the targeting of the naval vessels among them. They may also use fishing vessels to land Special Forces further east in the Osagawa Islands. These troops would be used sacrificially to dilute the response to the main thrust. That would be why China is conditioning Japan to get used to fishing vessels making incursions in the Osagawas. China would also be attacking US and Japanese bases with intermediate range ballistic missiles -- everything that would throw the Japanese off balance and make the problem of the Chinese attack seem overwhelming.
The US Marines are confident that they could recapture the Senkaku Islands once control of the sea and air was assured. Japanese and US forces would have no desire to set foot on Chinese territory. After the initial Chinese onslaught, the campaign would settle down to a blockade of shipping to China conducted beyond the reach of Chinese aircraft. China wouldn’t run out of oil because they are building a large stockpile and they could easily cut consumption down to the level of domestic production of 4 million barrels per day. But 26% of the economy is export-related and so economic activity would collapse. The effect of the blockade in the rest of the world would be a major boost to economic activity as companies tried to make good the loss of Chinese supply.
In the South China Sea, China would declare an Air Defence Identification Zone and enforce it using the airbase they are currently building on Fiery Cross Reef. They may attempt to seize other countries’ bases in the Spratleys or they might just sink their ships and starve them out. The problem for China is that the South China Sea is a natural kill box for Chinese shipping. On the western side, Vietnam has upgraded its radars (with assistance from the French company Thales) and has an inventory of about 500 anti-ship missiles. Singapore’s air force is likely to assist Vietnam and stage through Cam Ranh Bay with their 36 F-15s.
On the eastern side, the US has plenty of basing opportunities in the Philippines. Once the airfield on Fiery Cross Reef was degraded, Chinese shipping would have to rely upon air cover coming from bases 1,000 km to the northwest. Eventually the Chinese air defences will be worn down and the Chinese ships will be defenseless. Then will come bombardment of the bases they have built and it will be all over. The US Marines now have a base at Oyster Bay on the western side of Palawan Island in the Philippines in preparation for this battle. If the Chinese are particularly intractable, then the US might go on to capture Woody Island in the Paracel Group. That will be a lot tougher in that it is only 300 km from Hainan Island and the depth of Chinese basing behind it on the mainland.
What if you don’t like the idea of the US being involved in a war with China? Well stop buying anything made in China. The US takes 17% of China’s exports and if that dried up, the Chinese economy would shrink by 4.5%. The social dislocation that would cause might be enough to topple the warhawk who is driving the Chinese aggression, President Xi Jinping. Until President Xi is gone, prepare for war.
David Archibald, a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014)
4)
Saudi Nuclear Deal Raises Stakes for Iran Talks
Fears of Mideast arms race heighten as Riyadh secures nuclear deal with South Korea
Saudi Arabia's King Salman greeted South Korean President Park Geun-hye in Riyadh last week. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Reuters
By Jay Solomon and Ahmed Al Omran
WASHINGTON—As U.S. and Iranian diplomats inched toward progress on Tehran’s nuclear program last week, Saudi Arabia quietly signed its own nuclear-cooperation agreement withSouth Korea.
That agreement, along with recent comments from Saudi officials and royals, is raising concerns on Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies that a deal with Iran, rather than stanching the spread of nuclear technologies, risks fueling it.
Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family, has publicly warned in recent months that Riyadh will seek to match the nuclear capabilitiesIran is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel.
Several U.S. and Arab officials have voiced concerns about a possible nuclear-arms race erupting in the Middle East, spurred on by Saudi Arabia’s regional rivalry with Iran, which has been playing out in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen in recent months.
“The proliferation of nuclear technologies is a nightmare the White House would like to discount rather than contemplate,” said Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington think tank. “This is more than just an imaginary threat.”
The memorandum of understanding between Saudi Arabia and South Korea includes a plan to study the feasibility of building two nuclear reactors worth $2 billion in the Arab country over the next 20 years, according to Saudi state media.
Current and former U.S. officials said there is particular concern about Saudi Arabia’s decadeslong military alliance with Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with a history of proliferating military technologies.
A number of senior Arab officials have warned the White House in recent months the Saudi government could seek Pakistan’s aid in developing nuclear technologies—or even buy an atomic bomb—if it sees an agreement with Iran as too weak. Saudi officials have told successive U.S. administrations they expect to have Pakistan’s support in the nuclear field, if called upon, because of the kingdom’s massive financial support for the South Asian country.
“The Saudis privately say they can get help from Pakistan,” said Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, who took part in negotiations with Iran. “I’ve never seen evidence, though, that there is a formal understanding.”
A U.S. diplomatic cable from December 2007, published by WikiLeaks, quoted Pakistan officials saying it was “logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical ‘protector’ ” of Sunni countries in response to the threat posed by Iran, a Shiite-majority nation. Saudi Arabia, unlike Egypt, another Arab power, has the finances to develop a nuclear-weapons arsenal, the Pakistanis argue.
“Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are friends of last resort,” said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., now at Washington’s Hudson Institute. “And while there is nothing in the public domain to document Saudi Arabia’s and Pakistan’s cooperation, it wouldn’t be something beyond the breadth of the relationship.”
Members of the Saudi royal family and government have been critical of the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran that are aimed at concluding a deal to constrain Tehran’s nuclear program by a late March deadline.
U.S. officials say Tehran will be allowed to maintain the technologies to produce nuclear fuel as part of any agreement, though in a limited capacity and under strict international monitoring. The enrichment of uranium can be used by a country both to create fuel for a nuclear reactor, but also the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
Administration officials said they are in close consultations with Saudi Arabia and other leading Arab states about the Iran diplomacy. “Given Iran already has the technical capability, our goal has always been to get to the one-year breakout time and cut off the four pathways under a very constrained program,” said a senior U.S. official. “That is much less of a proliferation risk than not getting to a negotiated agreement where we do all those things.”
Secretary of State John Kerry visited Riyadh last week and met the foreign ministers of the six Arab states who make up the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The White House says a deal with Iran will place the first significant restraints on Iran’s nuclear program, which has been on the verge of producing weapons-grade uranium. They said theU.S. is seeking to guarantee Tehran remains at least a year away from having enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon.
Saudi Arabia’s agreement with South Korea—signed last week during a visit by President Park Geun-hye—marked Riyadh’s latest push to develop civilian nuclear power.
In 2010, Saudi Arabia established the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, commonly known as K.A. Care, to develop alternative energy sources as the kingdom attempts to diversify its energy mix. Both the late King Abdullah and Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman, have pledged to move their country away from a dependence on oil.
K.A. Care, a government agency, says on its website that it aims to generate 17.6 gigawatts of electricity using nuclear power by 2032, through up to 16 new reactors.
“Saudi Arabia will only deploy the most advanced and thoroughly tested technologies paying maximum attention to safety, security and safeguards of the highest international standards when installing its planned nuclear reactors,” K.A. Care says on its website.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia has also signed nuclear cooperation agreements with China, France and Argentina.
Riyadh and Buenos Aires formed a joint-venture company, called Invania, specifically focused on developing nuclear power. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have also held talks on signing their own agreement that would allow American companies to sell nuclear reactors and fuel to the Arab state. But these negotiations stalled due to the tough terms the Obama administration has been trying to enforce, according to officials involved in the diplomacy.
The White House signed a nuclear-cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates in 2009 that explicitly bans the country from developing the technologies needed to enrich uranium and reprocess spent reactor fuel. The deal was seen as a major step in advancing U.S. efforts to stop the spread of these dual-use technologies.
Saudi Arabia, however, has so far balked at accepting similar terms. “We’ve been pressing them to agree not to pursue a civilian fuel cycle, but the Saudis refuse,” said Gary Samore, who was the White House’s top official working on nuclear issues during President Obama’s first term.
Current and former U.S. officials stressed Saudi Arabia would face significant technical and legal barriers if it attempted to either buy or develop the technologies required to produce weapons-usable fuel.
Saudi Arabia isn’t believed to have significant numbers of nuclear scientists. And American allies, such as South Korea and France, are prohibited from selling enrichment and reprocessing equipment to Riyadh because of their own cooperation agreements with Washington.
Saudi Arabia would also likely face stiff Western sanctions if it attempted to amass equipment seen as usable in developing atomic weapons.
“Saudi Arabia lacks the technologies and bureaucratic wherewithal” to develop the nuclear fuel cycle “any time in the foreseeable future,” wrote Colin Kahl, Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, in a paper he published in 2013, before joining the White House.
Pakistan, in this context, could emerge as Saudi Arabia’s most important strategic ally, said U.S. and Arab officials.
Riyadh and Islamabad have developed close military and economic ties over the past four decades: Pakistan has previously deployed soldiers inside Saudi Arabia to bolster the kingdom’s defenses. And the Saudis have provided Pakistan with billions of dollars in financial aid both through subsidized energy shipments and direct budgetary support.
Pakistan has a history of selling nuclear technologies. The black market network developed by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was shut down in the early 2000s after it was discovered selling centrifuge equipment to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Saudi officials declined to comment through their embassy in Washington. Pakistan’s government denied any nuclear cooperation with Riyadh. “These are all speculative media reports. No such discussions took place and the Saudi government has no such expectations from us,” said a government representative.
Current and former U.S. officials said they remained skeptical that Pakistan would directly sell or transfer atomic weapons to Saudi Arabia in response to the perceived threat of Iran. But they said they couldn’t discount Islamabad deploying some of its weapons in the kingdom, or establishing a nuclear-defense umbrella.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com and Ahmed Al Omran at Ahmed.AlOmran@wsj.com
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