Thursday, January 23, 2014

Zakaria: US/Iran Nuclear Deal a "Train Wreck"

Obama Advisor Fareed Zakaria interviewed Iranian Rouhani and came back with the strong impression that Iran and the US have two entirely different outcomes in mind as a goal of the agreement on nuclear management.

Leave it to the amateur "Red Line" Obama and his grandiose spokes boy John Kerry to botch up another relationship in the Middle East.

Read the Washington Beacon article above because you won't read it in the Obama-worshipping Mainstream Media.

State Department Malfeasance Bordering on Treason

Patrick Kennedy is Undersecretary of State for Management and a nasty littles specimen ever since I clashed with him decades ago in my decade-long FSO career.

The WSJ has an article by the DCM of the Embassy in Libya Gregory Hicks pinning the blame on Kennedy for replacing diplomatic security [Americans] with Libyan mercenaries, a disastrous outsourcing in a flammable environment. At the first outbreak on Sept 11th, they disappeared.

Of course, had Kennedy ever served overseas in a dangerous environment, as I had in Vietnam and Beirut and Saudi Arabia, this career desk jockey would have had a sense of the undependability of local militias. But Kennedy knew better, of course.

Don't expect this expert in equivocation to suffer any punishment. He and his feckless boss Hilary have a future to protect. Ditching Kennedy would implicitly confer some sense of accountability to a silly collection of affirmative action diplomats which make the US the laughingstock of the planet as Obama messes up sixty years of success with his amateur hour diplomacy. The Vietnam war hero [!] Kerry will continue the cover-up.

The cover-up of Benghazi will make Watergate look like the burglary it was. Nobody died at Watergate.

And the fact that the Benghazi cover-up was instrumental in getting Obama elected to a second term makes this a crime against the US Constitution.

Not that the Democratic tabloids like the NYT and the WaPo have any respect for the Constitution…!

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Bashir sends FonMin to Lie for Sake of Country

Bashir al Assad continues his genocide of Sunnis in Syria---60% of the population ruled by a nasty Alawite minority of 15%. Meanwhile in Montreux in Switzerland Foreign Minister Moallem ranted on for a half-hour past his allotment about "terrorists." A 'terrorist' appears in his vocabulary to be anyone opposing Bashir's tyrannical regime.

As one who has been to Syria half-a-dozen times, I remember the kind and hospitable Syrian people who Bashir's gunsels are killing at a rate of a thousand a day with his Russian arms.

The Russians want their warm water base in Latakia so desperately that they will allow the last Syrian to die before they leave their port.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Persian Version

Robert Graves poem about the other side's perceptions comes in handy when it comes to World War I, whose centenary we are "celebrating" this year. I'm trudging through Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers, a handy guide for the dishonesty of the British Foreign Office under the tutelage of Earl Grey and the duplicity of the French as well.

I'm also reading the horrendous propaganda of The Literary Digest history, a massive 10 volume collection of aspersions against the Germans and the "imbecile" Austro-Hungarians [a sample of Francis Whiting Halsey's objectivity.

I first broached the Literary Digest version over 60 years ago, when I first learned to read. It was a gift from my Grandma Mangan, who always badgered me to be a doctor.