Semantics, Charade , Lying and Spying! Unasked Questions, Clinton History For Those Too Young To Know and Too Old To Remember!

I have just returned from a few days being with our Orlando family and I realize  this is a long memo.
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In case you missed the excitement of the recent "Climate Change Summit" in Paris!
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2016 is more critical than most elections because it will determine America's continuance or not. (See 1 below.)

A few questions for Hillarious which will neither be asked nor answered. (See 1a below.)
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How do you defeat an enemy you won't even define? (See 2 below.)
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Sowell: Sayonara 2015. (See 3 below.)
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While Palestinians kill, Israelis invent: http://youtu.be/20Zfk8uQXak
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Welcome to Hillarious' past for those too young to know and those too old to remember: http://youtu.be/kypl1MYuKDY

and

This is a bit of history about her husband - the former president, again for those too young to know and those too old to remember. (See 4 below.)

I have no respect for Bill Cosby but why is he being prosecuted and another Bill is allowed to roam the streets for much the same behaviour?

It is because one is politically powerful and the other is old, black and almost blind.
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Semantics. (See 5 below.)

 and

Now for a charade! (See 5a below.)

and

Finally breaking the law and lying.   (See 5b below.)
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Dick
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1)  Most Important Election 2016 Feature: Deep and Growing Ideological Divide

Conservative and liberal extremes dominate primaries, but then Republicans and Democrats face a shrinking center

By Gerald F. Seib

As the nation heads into what figures to be a dramatic election year, its defining political characteristic isn’t love or hate for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Instead, the most important feature of America’s political landscape is a deep and growing ideological divide.

This divide will be especially apparent early in the new year, when the most divided groups in America, the Republican and Democratic voters who show up for primary elections and caucuses, hold the keys to the presidential selection process. These folks disagree, deeply, on an array of social issues, on the nation’s top priorities, and on what kind of leader they are seeking in the next president.

Collectively, these voters are driving Republican candidates to the right and Democratic candidates to the left—and ensuring that the challenge of bringing the country together will be tougher after the election, regardless of who wins.

A clear picture of this divide emerges from the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, taken in mid-December. Consider:

— Almost 7 in 10 Republican primary voters describe themselves as strong supporters of the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. Among Democratic primary voters, the figure is just 25%.

— Among Democratic primary voters, 62% say they strongly back immediate action to combat climate change. Just 13% of Republican primary voters share that view.

— A new issue splitting the parties at their bases is the Black Lives Matter Movement. Almost half of Democratic primary voters call themselves strong supporters of the movement. Only 6% of Republican primary voters do so.

— The National Rifle Association drives one of the biggest wedges of all. Among Republican primary voters, 59% strongly support the NRA, while just 11% of Democratic primary voters are strong backers.

Republican primary voters put national security and terrorism at the top of their list of priorities for the government. Democratic primary voters put job creation and economic growth at the top of the priority list. About a third of Democrats say health care is a high priority; among Republicans, a comparable share worry about deficits and government spending.

Republicans are more likely to say they worry that the U.S. isn’t projecting a sufficiently tough image abroad; Democrats are more likely to say they think the U.S. should be focused on concerns at home.

When pollsters asked what voters are looking for in the next president, Republicans used terms like bold and a strong leader who could restore American strength abroad. Democrats were more likely to say they want a leader who is diplomatic and inclusive and who will preserve recent progressive gains.

These differences are why the country has two main political parties, of course, and they aren’t entirely new. But there is clear evidence that the ideological divides are bigger than they used to be.

That was shown starkly in a study by the Pew Research Center last year. Back in 1994, the study found, 70% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican, and 64% of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat. By last year, 94% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican, and 92% of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat.

There still is a political center, but those in the ideological center aren’t nearly as politically engaged as are those on the liberal or conservative flanks. In the center, it appears, disillusionment with the political system is taking its biggest toll.

In fact, increasing polarization seems to be creating a self-perpetuating downward cycle. On the left and right wings, the political paralysis created by the deepening ideological divide in Washington is generating anger. In the middle, it is creating disillusionment and apathy, diminishing the impact of those in the center and enhancing further the power of the ideological wings.

The Pew study concluded that “many of those in the center remain on the edges of the political playing field, relatively distant and disengaged, while the most ideologically oriented and politically rancorous Americans make their voices heard through greater participation in every stage of the political process.”

The effect of these trends is visible on the presidential campaign trail. On the Democratic side, Mrs. Clinton has moved away from some of the centrist tax and trade policies that once marked mainstream Democratic thinking. On the Republican side, Mr. Trump, hardly a movement conservative over the course of his peripatetic political history, now is trying to sound like one.

The challenge, though, comes after the primaries, when nominees have to try to activate that quiet political center for the general election—and when the next president has to do so to sell policies crafted by the next administration.

1a)   Subject:  Questions for Next Democratic Debate


Moderator: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Let's start the first question
with you Mrs. Clinton.

"When you left the White House after your husbands last term as president,
why did you steal $200,000.00 worth of furniture, china, and artwork that
you were forced to return?

Mrs. Clinton, when you were Secretary of State, why did you solicit
contributions from foreign governments for the Clinton foundation after you
promised President Obama you would not?

Mrs. Clinton, why do you and your husband  claim to contribute millions of
dollars to charity for a tax write off when it goes to your family
foundation that gives out less than 15% of the funds you collect and you use
the balance to support yourself tax free?

Mrs. Clinton, why are you unable to account for $6 billion of State
department  funds that seem to have disappeared while you were Secretary of
State?

Mrs. Clinton, as Secretary of State, why did you have a private email server
in your personal residence, and why did you really delete 32,000 emails that
were subject to review by the State Department and Freedom of Information
Act ?

Mrs. Clinton why did you say you were broke when you left the White House,
but you purchased a $2 million home, built an addition for the secret
service, and charge the tax payers of the United States rent in an amount
equal to the entire mortgage?

Mrs. Clinton why did you lie to the American people about the terrorist
attack in Benghazi but managed to tell the truth to your daughter the same
night it happened?

Mrs Clinton why did you lose your law license? Why did your husband lose
his?

Mrs Clinton, what really happened to Ron Brown when he was about to testify
against you and your husband?

Mrs. Clinton, what really happened to Vince Foster ?==================================================================================
2) Dispelling the ‘Few Extremists’ Myth – the Muslim World Is Overcome with Hate

By David French — December 7, 2015

It is simply false to declare that jihadists represent the “tiny few extremists” who sully the reputation of an otherwise peace-loving and tolerant Muslim faith. In reality, the truth is far more troubling — that jihadists represent the natural and inevitable outgrowth of a faith that is given over to hate on a massive scale, with hundreds of millions of believers holding views that Americans would rightly find revolting. Not all Muslims are hateful, of course, but so many are that it’s not remotely surprising that the world is wracked by wave after wave of jihadist violence.

To understand the Muslim edifice of hate, imagine it as a pyramid — with broadly-shared bigotry at the bottom, followed by stair steps of escalating radicalism — culminating in jihadist armies that in some instances represent a greater share of their respective populations than does the active-duty military in the United States.

The base of the pyramid, the most broadly held hatred in the Islamic world, is anti-Semitism, with staggering numbers of Muslims expressing anti-Jewish views. In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League released the results of polling 53,100 people in 102 countries for evidence of anti-Semitic attitudes and beliefs. The numbers from the majority-Muslim world are difficult to believe for those steeped in politically correct rhetoric about Islam. A full 74 percent of North African and Middle Eastern residents registered anti-Semitic beliefs, including 92 percent of Iraqis, a whopping 69 percent of relatively secular Turks, and 74 percent of Saudis.

The trend toward Muslim anti-Semitism continues even when Muslim nations are far removed from the Arab–Israeli conflict. A solid majority — 61 percent — of majority-Muslim Malays harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, while only 13 percent of neighboring majority-Buddhist Thais are anti-Jewish.

The next level of the pyramid is Muslim commitment to deadly Islamic supremacy. In multiple Muslim nations, overwhelming majorities of Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy or blasphemy. Collectively, this means that hundreds of millions of men and women support capital punishment for the exercise of the basic human rights of freedom of expression and free exercise of religion:

Moving beyond Islamic supremacy to the next step of the pyramid, enormous numbers of Muslims are terrorist sympathizers. It is still stunning to see how popular Osama bin Laden was early last decade, and even as his popularity plunged (as he grew weaker and more isolated), his public approval remained disturbingly high:

But what about ISIS — the world’s most savage and deadly terror organization? The latest polling data show that while a majority of Muslims reject ISIS, extrapolating from the populations of polled countries alone shows that roughly 50 million people express sympathy for a terrorist army that burns prisoners alive, throws gay men from buildings, and beheads political opponents. In Pakistan a horrifying 72 percent couldn’t bring themselves to express an unfavorable view of ISIS:

But sympathy for terror is different from active support, and here’s where the numbers are difficult to pin down. I know of no reliable database that shows how many Muslims give to jihadist charities, spread jihadist propaganda on social media, support radical preachers, or otherwise take concrete actions to advance the terrorists’ cause. We do know, for example, that anti-Israel terrorism is so popular in Saudi Arabia that a telethon once raised $100 million to support the 2002 intifada. Shows of support included this charming scene:

A 6-year-old boy, with a plastic gun slung over his shoulder and fake explosives strapped around his waist, walked into a donation center and made a symbolic donation of plastic explosives, according to Al Watan daily.

It is from this fertile soil that jihadists grow. And here the numbers decisively belie the “few extremists” rhetoric. In Iran alone, the Revolutionary Guard represents a proportionate share of the population similar to the combined strength of the active-duty Army and Marines here in the United States. Between Boko Haram, the Al-Nusra front, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Yemeni militias, Libyan militias, and many others, the number of active jihadists numbers in the hundreds of thousands; some estimates indicate that 100,000 are fighting in Syria alone.

To give a sense of proportion, the United States is a nation that honors military service, respects its veterans, and engages in a massive military recruiting effort that includes offering soldiers generous salaries, pensions, benefits, and the best military equipment in the world. Even then, only about 0.4 percent of the American population engages in active-duty military service at any given time.

Jihadists, by contrast, have low life expectancies, second-rate gear, low salaries, and often have to break domestic laws and journey across battlefields to join terrorist insurgencies, but still they join. In Britain, for example, more Muslims join ISIS than join the British army.

Simply put, America’s leaders actively deceive the American people about the sheer scale of Muslim hatred and commitment to jihad. Rather than tell us the truth, the Obama administration and the media aristocracy constantly lecture Americans about discrimination, apparently believing that only their scolding keeps the great redneck masses at bay.

Telling us the truth won’t send Americans on an anti-Muslim killing spree. Instead, it will make us no more radical than Egypt’s president, who briefly made headlines earlier this year after calling for a “revolution” in Islam and decrying faith traditions that he admitted had been “sacralized over the centuries.” Telling the truth can demonstrate the scale of the problem and at least begin the process of convincing the American people that there is no quick fix, that the defense of the nation will require courage and resolve over the long term.

Islam has a problem. It is Muslims’ responsibility to reform their own faith. It is America’s responsibility to defend itself and its citizens. Neither goal is advanced by telling convenient, politically correct lies. After 14 years of war, can we finally tell the truth?

==============================================================================

3) Remembering 2015

By Thomas Sowell |

How shall we remember 2015? Or shall we try to forget it?

It is always hard to know when a turning point has been reached, and usually it is long afterwards before we recognize it. However, if 2015 has been a turning point, it may well have marked a turn in a downward direction for America and for Western civilization.

This was the year when we essentially let the world know that we were giving up any effort to try to stop Iran -- the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism -- from getting a nuclear bomb. Surely it does not take much imagination to foresee what lies at the end of that road.

It will not matter if we have more nuclear bombs than they have, if they are willing to die and we are not. That can determine who surrenders. And ISIS and other terrorists have given us grisly demonstrations of what surrender would mean.

Putting aside, for the moment, the fateful question whether 2015 is a turning point, what do we see when we look back instead of looking forward? What characterizes the year that is now ending?

More than anything else, 2015 has been the year of the big lie. There have been lies in other years, and some of them pretty big, but even so 2015 has set new highs -- or new lows.

This is the year when we learned, from Hillary Clinton's own e-mails, after three long years of stalling, stone-walling and evasions, that Secretary of State Clinton lied, and so did President Barack Obama and others under him, when they all told us in 2012 that the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed the American ambassador and three other Americans was not a terrorist attack, but a protest demonstration that got out of hand.

"What difference, at this point, does it make?" as Mrs. Clinton later melodramatically cried out, at a Congressional committee hearing investigating that episode.

First of all, it made enough of a difference for some of the highest officials of American government to concoct a false story that they knew at the time was false.

It mattered enough that, if the truth had come out, on the eve of a presidential election, it could have destroyed Barack Obama's happy tale of how he had dealt a crippling blow to terrorists by killing Usama bin Laden (with an assist from the Navy's SEALS).

Had Obama's lies about his triumph over terrorism been exposed on the eve of the election, that could have ended his stay in the White House. And that could have spared us and the world many of Obama's disasters in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. That is why it matters, and will continue to matter in the future.

Lying, by itself, is obviously not new. What is new is the growing acceptance of lying as "no big deal" by smug sophisticates, so long as these are lies that advance their political causes. Many in the media greeted the exposure of Hillary Clinton's lies by admiring how well she handled herself.

Lies are a wall between us and reality -- and being walled off from reality is the biggest deal of all. Reality does not disappear because we don't see it. It just hits us like a ton of bricks when we least expect it.

The biggest lie of 2014 -- "Hands up, don't shoot" -- had its repercussions in 2015, with the open advocacy of the killing of policemen, in marches across the country. But the ambush killings of policemen that followed aroused no such outrage in the media as any police use of force against thugs.

Nor has there been the same outrage as the murder rate shot up when the police pulled back, as they have in the past, in the wake of being scapegoated by politicians and the media. Most of the people murdered have been black. But apparently these particular black lives don't matter much to activists and the media.

No one expects that lies will disappear from political rhetoric. If you took all the lies out of politics, how much would be left?

If there is anything that is bipartisan in Washington, it is lying. The most recent budget deal showed that Congressional Republicans lied wholesale when they said that they would defund Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, and other pet projects of the Democrats.

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4) A guide to the allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing

By Glenn Kessler

A photograph showing former White House intern Monica Lewinsky meeting President Bill Clinton at a White House function submitted as evidence in documents by the Kenneth Starr investigation and released by the House Judiciary Committee in 1998. (Getty Images)

On Twitter, Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner, lashed out at Hillary Clinton, directly attacking her husband, the former president, for what Trump called “his terrible record of women abuse.”

Trump is obviously referring to the sexual allegations that have long swirled around Clinton, even before he became president. We’d earlier explored this question in 2014 when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrongly claimed that a half dozen women had called Clinton a “sexual predator.” But for younger voters who may be wondering what the fuss is about, here again is a guide to the various claims made about Clinton’s sex life.

We will divide the stories into two parts: consensual liaisons admitted by the women in question and allegations of an unwanted sexual encounter.

Donald Trump takes on Bill Clinton

Play Video1:39

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised that "nobody respects women more than Donald Trump," as he slammed former President Bill Clinton's "situation." Trump has been attacking the Clintons for the allegations of sexual misconduct in Bill Clinton's past. (Reuters)

Consensual affairs

Gennifer Flowers — a model and actress whose claims of a long-term affair nearly wrecked Clinton’s first run for the presidency in 1992. (Clinton denied her claims at the time, but under oath in 1998 he acknowledged a sexual encounter with her.)

Monica Lewinsky — intern at the White House, whose affair with Clinton fueled impeachment charges. This was a consensual affair, in which Lewinsky was an eager participant; she was 22 when the affair started and Clinton was her boss.

Dolly Kyle Browning — A high school friend who said in a sworn declaration that she had had a 22-year off-and-on sexual relationship with Clinton.

Elizabeth Ward Gracen — a former Miss America who said she had a one-night stand with Clinton while he was governor — and she was married. She went public to specifically deny reports he had forced himself on her.

Myra Belle “Sally” Miller — the 1958 Miss Arkansas who said in 1992 that she had had an affair with Clinton in 1983. She claimed that she had beenwarned not to go public by a Democratic Party official: “They knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn’t guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs.”

Some might argue that because Lewinsky and Gracen had relations when Clinton was in a position of executive authority, Clinton engaged in sexual harassment.

Allegations of an unwanted sexual encounter

Paula Jones — A former Arkansas state employee who alleged that in 1991 Clinton, while governor, propositioned her and exposed himself. She later filed a sexual harassment suit, and it was during a deposition in that suit that Clinton initially denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky. Clinton in 1998 settled the suit for $850,000, with no apology or admission of guilt. All but $200,000 was directed to pay legal fees.

Juanita Broaddrick — The nursing home administrator emerged after the impeachment trial to allege that 21 years earlier Clinton had raped her. Clinton flatly denied the claim, and there were inconsistencies in her story. No charges were ever brought.

Kathleen Willey — The former White House aide claimed Clinton groped her in his office in 1993, on the same day when her husband, facing embezzlement charges, died in an apparent suicide. (Her story changed over time. During a deposition in the Paula Jones matter, she initially said she had no recollection about whether Clinton kissed her and insisted he did not fondle her.) Clinton denied her account, and the independent prosecutor concluded “there is insufficient evidence to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that President Clinton’s testimony regarding Kathleen Willey was false.” Willey later began to claim Clinton had a hand in her husband’s death, even though her husband left behind a suicide note.

Note that no court of law ever found Clinton guilty of the accusations.   

Peter Baker, in “The Breach,” the definitive account of the impeachment saga, reported that House investigators later found in the files of the independent prosecutor that Jones’s lawyers had collected the names of 21 different women they suspected had had a sexual relationship with Clinton. Baker described the files as “wild allegations, sometimes based on nothing more than hearsay claims of third-party witnesses.” But there were some allegations (page 138) that suggested unwelcome advances:

“One woman was alleged to have been asked by Clinton to give him oral sex in a car while he was the state attorney general (a claim she denied). A former Arkansas state employee said that during a presentation, then-Governor Clinton walked behind her and rubbed his pelvis up against her repeatedly. A woman identified as a third cousin of Clinton’s supposedly told her drug counselor during treatment in Arkansas that she was abused by Clinton when she was baby-sitting at the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock.” 

Update: We were focused on stories that emerged during Clinton’s presidency. But many readers have also urged us to include a reference to Clinton’s post-

presidential travels on aircraft owned by convicted pedophile Jeffery Epstein. Gawker reported that flight logs show that Clinton, among others, traveled through Africa in 2002 on a jet with “an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein’s address book under an entry for ‘massages.’”  Chauntae Davies, the actress, declined to discuss why she was on the flight. Clinton has not commented.

The Bottom Line

Trump’s claim is a bit too vague for a fact check. In any case, we imagine readers will have widely divergent reactions to this list of admitted affairs and unproven allegations of unwanted sexual encounters. But at least you now know the specific cases that Trump is referencing.

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5)COSTELLO:  I want to talk about the unemployment rate in Ontario.

ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It’s 5.6%.

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?

ABBOTT: No, that’s 23%. 

COSTELLO: You just said 5.6%.

ABBOTT:  5.6% Unemployed.

COSTELLO:  Right 5.6% out of work.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 23%.

COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 23% unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 5.6%.

COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 5.6% or 23%? 

ABBOTT: 5.6% are unemployed. 23% are out of work.

COSTELLO: If you are out of work you are unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, Congress/Ontario said you can’t count the “Out of Work” as the unemployed.  You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!!

ABBOTT: No, you miss his point.

COSTELLO:  What point?

ABBOTT: Someone who doesn’t look for work can’t be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn’t be fair. 

COSTELLO: To whom?

ABBOTT: The unemployed. 

COSTELLO: But ALL of them are out of work. 

ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work gave up looking and if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed. 

COSTELLO: So if you’re off the unemployment roles that would count as less unemployment?

ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down.  Absolutely!

COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don’t look for work?

ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down.  That’s how it gets to 5.6%. Otherwise it would be 23%.
COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you.  That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number?  

ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?

ABBOTT: Correct.

COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?

ABBOTT: Bingo. 

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to have people stop looking for work.

ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like an Economist. 

COSTELLO:  I don’t even know what the hell I just said!  

ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like a Politician!

5a)

Obama’s Iran Missile Charade

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN 

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department said it was prepared to impose sanctions on Iran for violating United Nations Security Council resolutions about its ballistic missile program. The proposed sanctions were a long-delayed response to Iran’s missile tests conducted in October and again in December that breached measures that were enacted by the world body specifically to work in conjunction with the nuclear deal conclude between the West and Tehran. In response, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani raged at the West and, as the New York Times notes today, denounced the sanctions and asserted that the Islamist regime would continue building and testing missiles. But anyone thinking the disagreement was a sign the Obama administration was genuinely prepared to try and hold Iran accountable for its behavior was soon disabused of the notion. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the White House is making clear it has no intention of imposing these sanctions or taking any action about this or any other Iranian breaches of its agreements.

Apparently the White House decision to indefinitely put off the imposition of any sanctions on Iran was made only hours after the Treasury Department spoke of them in the first place. They were actually scheduled to be announced on Wednesday before being pulled back. Is it possible that there are some in the administration that want to get tough with Iran after years of concessions that gradually eviscerated America’s previous tough stance aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear threat? Maybe. But perhaps it is also possible that what we have seen this week is just another version of the same tired show we’ve been watching throughout the course of President Obama’s term of office. The talk of more sanctions was clearly as insincere as President Obama’s 2012 campaign promises that said any deal with Iran would have to mean the end of its nuclear program.

Iran’s public anger over the possibility is just as cynical. By now, the Iranians know very well this administration is obsessed with the chimera of détente. From his first moments in office, the president has constantly spoken of wanting to enact an historic reconciliation between the two nations. In pursuit of that dubious goal, it didn’t merely initiate new negotiations but proceeded to discard previous consensus positions about the need for Iran to cease enriching uranium and keeping its nuclear infrastructure. It wound up agreeing to a deal that not only allowed the Iranians to keep their most advanced centrifuges, to continue research and also ultimately passed on any effort to make the regime come clean on their work on possible military dimensions of the nuclear project. The accord that was announced last summer also expires in a decade leaving Iran free at that point to proceed quickly to a bomb. In exchange for some Iranian concessions that don’t close the door to a weapon, the West is about to transfer as much as $100 billion in frozen assets to Tehran. It will also lift sanctions that will open the floodgates to international commerce ahead of schedule that will enrich the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and enable to give more aid to its Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist allies.

That last point is key to understand this week’s sanctions melodrama. The administration has consistently demonstrated that it is willing to ignore any Iranian behavior, no matter how egregious, so as to not be distracted from the goal of an entente with Tehran. That’s why it resisted any effort to include restrictions on Iranian funding of terrorism or its threats against both Israel and Arab states in the Middle East. Indeed, the president’s reluctance to take action against Iran’s ally, Bashar Assad, when it might have helped avert the current catastrophe in Syria and the rise of ISIS, can also be traced to his desire not to offend the Islamist regime.

Administration apologists claim that this is merely smart policy because the nuclear deal postpones the danger of an Iranian bomb and because Tehran can be a useful ally in dealing with ISIS and the worsening situation in Afghanistan. But Iran’s priority is consolidating its influence over governments in Iraq and Syria and eliminating their opponents, not in helping the U.S. fight a war with ISIS or the Taliban. Iran wants regional hegemony over the Middle East and its ongoing ballistic missile program — which makes little sense in the absence of an intent to build a nuclear weapon — is part of a posture in which it hopes to intimidate its foes.Even more to the point, were the U.S. serious about making Iran stick to even the terms of the weak deal it agreed to, Washington would be making clear that the missile violations is a very serious matter. If, Iran is prepared to flaunt its willingness to violate these restrictions in the weeks before the West is about to lift sanctions, why would anyone think they’ll observe any rules after they start receiving the rewards promised in the deal. The missile issue isn’t as critical as other possible breeches of the nuclear accord, but it is an all-too-obvious indication that the Obama administration will never hold Iran accountable on any issue.

Iran may be flexing its muscles about even the possibility of more sanctions but its leaders know they have nothing to worry about. The talk of sanctions that will never be imposed is a pointless charade that fools no one, least of all the ayatollahs. Unless or until Barack Obama is replaced in the White House by a president that Iranians respect and fear, all bets are off as far as compliance with the nuclear deal or any other issue.

5b)

U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress

National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders also swept up the content of private conversations with U.S. lawmakers

Adam Entous and Danny Yadron 

President Barack Obama announced two years ago he would curtail eavesdropping on friendly heads of state after the world learned the reach of long-secret U.S. surveillance programs.

But behind the scenes, the White House decided to keep certain allies under close watch, current and former U.S. officials said. Topping the list was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill.

The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears—an “Oh-s— moment,” one senior U.S. official said—that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.

White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

Stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.

Before former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed much of the agency’s spying operations in 2013, there was little worry in the administration about the monitoring of friendly heads of state because it was such a closely held secret. After the revelations and a White House review, Mr. Obama announced in a January 2014 speech he would curb such eavesdropping.

In closed-door debate, the Obama administration weighed which allied leaders belonged on a so-called protected list, shielding them from NSA snooping. French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders made the list, but the administration permitted the NSA to target the leaders’ top advisers, current and former U.S. officials said. Other allies were excluded from the protected list, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of NATO ally Turkey, which allowed the NSA to spy on their communications at the discretion of top officials.

Privately, Mr. Obama maintained the monitoring of Mr. Netanyahu on the grounds that it served a “compelling national security purpose,” according to current and former U.S. officials. Mr. Obama mentioned the exception in his speech but kept secret the leaders it would apply to.

Israeli, German and French government officials declined to comment on NSA activities. Turkish officials didn’t respond to requests Tuesday for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA declined to comment on communications provided to the White House.

This account, stretching over two terms of the Obama administration, is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. intelligence and administration officials and reveals for the first time the extent of American spying on the Israeli prime minister.

Taking office

After Mr. Obama’s 2008 presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials gave his national-security team a one-page questionnaire on priorities. Included on the form was a box directing intelligence agencies to focus on “leadership intentions,” a category that relies on electronic spying to monitor world leaders.

The NSA was so proficient at monitoring heads of state that it was common for the agency to deliver a visiting leader’s talking points to the president in advance. “Who’s going to look at that box and say, ‘No, I don’t want to know what world leaders are saying,’ ” a former Obama administration official said.

In early intelligence briefings, Mr. Obama and his top advisers were told what U.S. spy agencies thought of world leaders, including Mr. Netanyahu, who at the time headed the opposition Likud party.

Michael Hayden, who led the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency during the George W. Bush administration, described the intelligence relationship between the U.S. and Israel as “the most combustible mixture of intimacy and caution that we have.”

The NSA helped Israel expand its electronic spy apparatus—known as signals intelligence—in the late 1970s. The arrangement gave Israel access to the communications of its regional enemies, information shared with the U.S. Israel’s spy chiefs later suspected the NSA was tapping into their systems.

When Mr. Obama took office, the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, Unit 8200, worked together against shared threats, including a campaign to sabotage centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies targeted one another, stoking tensions.

“Intelligence professionals have a saying: There are no friendly intelligence services,” said Mike Rogers, former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Early in the Obama presidency, for example, Unit 8200 gave the NSA a hacking tool the NSA later discovered also told Israel how the Americans used it. It wasn’t the only time the NSA caught Unit 8200 poking around restricted U.S. networks. Israel would say intrusions were accidental, one former U.S. official said, and the NSA would respond, “Don’t worry. We make mistakes, too.”

In 2011 and 2012, the aims of Messrs. Netanyahu and Obama diverged over Iran. Mr. Netanyahu prepared for a possible strike against an Iranian nuclear facility, as Mr. Obama pursued secret talks with Tehran without telling Israel.

Convinced Mr. Netanyahu would attack Iran without warning the White House, U.S. spy agencies ramped up their surveillance, with the assent of Democratic and Republican lawmakers serving on congressional intelligence committees.

By 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies determined Mr. Netanyahu wasn’t going to strike Iran. But they had another reason to keep watch. The White House wanted to know if Israel had learned of the secret negotiations. U.S. officials feared Iran would bolt the talks and pursue an atomic bomb if news leaked.

The NSA had, in some cases, spent decades placing electronic implants in networks around the world to collect phone calls, text messages and emails. Removing them or turning them off in the wake of the Snowden revelations would make it difficult, if not impossible, to re-establish access in the future, U.S. intelligence officials warned the White House.

Instead of removing the implants, Mr. Obama decided to shut off the NSA’s monitoring of phone numbers and email addresses of certain allied leaders—a move that could be reversed by the president or his successor.

There was little debate over Israel. “Going dark on Bibi? Of course we wouldn’t do that,” a senior U.S. official said, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname.

One tool was a cyber implant in Israeli networks that gave the NSA access to communications within the Israeli prime minister’s office.

Given the appetite for information about Mr. Netanyahu’s intentions during the U.S.-Iran negotiations, the NSA tried to send updates to U.S. policy makers quickly, often in less than six hours after a notable communication was intercepted, a former official said.

Emerging deal

NSA intercepts convinced the White House last year that Israel was spying on negotiations under way in Europe. Israeli officials later denied targeting U.S. negotiators, saying they had won access to U.S. positions by spying only on the Iranians.

By late 2014, White House officials knew Mr. Netanyahu wanted to block the emerging nuclear deal but didn’t know how.

On Jan. 8, John Boehner, then the Republican House Speaker, and incoming Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed on a plan. They would invite Mr. Netanyahu to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress. A day later, Mr. Boehner called Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, to get Mr. Netanyahu’s agreement.

Despite NSA surveillance, Obama administration officials said they were caught off guard when Mr. Boehner announced the invitation on Jan. 21.

Soon after, Israel’s lobbying campaign against the deal went into full swing on Capitol Hill, and it didn’t take long for administration and intelligence officials to realize the NSA was sweeping up the content of conversations with lawmakers.

The message to the NSA from the White House amounted to: “You decide” what to deliver, a former intelligence official said.

NSA rules governing intercepted communications “to, from or about” Americans date back to the Cold War and require obscuring the identities of U.S. individuals and U.S. corporations. An American is identified only as a “U.S. person” in intelligence reports; a U.S. corporation is identified only as a “U.S. organization.” Senior U.S. officials can ask for names if needed to understand the intelligence information.

The rules were tightened in the early 1990s to require that intelligence agencies inform congressional committees when a lawmaker’s name was revealed to the executive branch in summaries of intercepted communications.

A 2011 NSA directive said direct communications between foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress should be destroyed when they are intercepted. But the NSA director can issue a waiver if he determines the communications contain “significant foreign intelligence.”

The NSA has leeway to collect and disseminate intercepted communications involving U.S. lawmakers if, for example, foreign ambassadors send messages to their foreign ministries that recount their private meetings or phone calls with members of Congress, current and former officials said.

“Either way, we got the same information,” a former official said, citing detailed reports prepared by the Israelis after exchanges with lawmakers.

During Israel’s lobbying campaign in the months before the deal cleared Congress in September, the NSA removed the names of lawmakers from intelligence reports and weeded out personal information. The agency kept out “trash talk,” officials said, such as personal attacks on the executive branch.

Administration and intelligence officials said the White House didn’t ask the NSA to identify any lawmakers during this period.

“From what I can tell, we haven’t had a problem with how incidental collection has been handled concerning lawmakers,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He declined to comment on any specific communications between lawmakers and Israel.

The NSA reports allowed administration officials to peer inside Israeli efforts to turn Congress against the deal. Mr. Dermer was described as coaching unnamed U.S. organizations—which officials could tell from the context were Jewish-American groups—on lines of argument to use with lawmakers, and Israeli officials were reported pressing lawmakers to oppose the deal.

“These allegations are total nonsense,” said a spokesman for the Embassy of Israel in Washington.

A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the intercepts said Israel’s pitch to undecided lawmakers often included such questions as: “How can we get your vote? What’s it going to take?”

NSA intelligence reports helped the White House figure out which Israeli government officials had leaked information from confidential U.S. briefings. When confronted by the U.S., Israel denied passing on the briefing materials.

The agency’s goal was “to give us an accurate illustrative picture of what [the Israelis] were doing,” a senior U.S. official said.

Just before Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress in March, the NSA swept up Israeli messages that raised alarms at the White House: Mr. Netanyahu’s office wanted details from Israeli intelligence officials about the latest U.S. positions in the Iran talks, U.S. officials said.

A day before the speech, Secretary of State John Kerry made an unusual disclosure. Speaking to reporters in Switzerland, Mr. Kerry said he was concerned Mr. Netanyahu would divulge “selective details of the ongoing negotiations.”

The State Department said Mr. Kerry was responding to Israeli media reports that Mr. Netanyahu wanted to use his speech to make sure U.S. lawmakers knew the terms of the Iran deal.

Intelligence officials said the media reports allowed the U.S. to put Mr. Netanyahu on notice without revealing they already knew his thinking. The prime minister mentioned no secrets during his speech to Congress.

In the final months of the campaign, NSA intercepts yielded few surprises. Officials said the information reaffirmed what they heard directly from lawmakers and Israeli officials opposed to Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign—that the prime minister was focused on building opposition among Democratic lawmakers.

The NSA intercepts, however, revealed one surprise. Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes

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