ONE MORE MISSION: MARINE JIM WEBB TO TAKE ON HILLARY

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

by RICH TUCKER2 Jul 2015256

He’s served as a Marine in Vietnam, a citizen as Secretary of the Navy, and as a Virginian in the U.S. Senate. Now Jim Webb wants to serve his country again — as a presidential candidate.

He will challenge Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and Lincoln Chaffee in the Democratic primaries.

Webb admits it won’t be easy.

“I understand the odds, particularly in today’s political climate where fair debate is so often drowned out by huge sums of money. I know that more than one candidate in this process intends to raise at least a billion dollars – some estimates run as high as two billion dollars – in direct and indirect financial support,” he writes in a letter to supporters.

Webb vows to focus on restoring the military. He criticizes both of the last two administrations, saying he wouldn’t have intervened in Iraq (Bush) or Libya (Obama). “And today I would not be the President to sign an executive order establishing a long-tem relationship with Iran if it accepts Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons,” Webb adds. The Iran agreement could be signed later this month.

Webb also prescribes an aggressive domestic policy. “Let’s give our younger people a cause worth fighting for. Let’s clean out the manure-filled stables of a political system that has become characterized by greed,” he writes. “Let’s rebuild an educational system that gives everyone a fair chance. A democracy is only as strong as the promise it offers its young citizens through the public education system.”

He concludes his announcement with two promises:

The first is that every endeavor will be based on the premise that has been the foundation of our society from the day the United States Constitution was signed: that we are a nation of laws, not of specially privileged people, and that our greatest strength comes from the power of our multicultural heritage.

And the second is that I mean what I say, that if I make a promise I will keep it, and that outside my faith and my family, my greatest love will always be for this amazing country that for more than 200 years has given so many people the opportunity to have a good life, raise a family, live in freedom, and achieve their dreams.

Via: Breitbart

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Is Iran luring Obama into a trap in Iraq?

Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake and Josh Rogin recently reported that U.S. troops are sharing a base with Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, where Tehran’s notorious proxies are spying on U.S. operations and personnel at their leisure to prepare the ground for future crimes. This worrying revelation is the latest manifestation of a misconception about the Iranian regime’s nature and its intentions in Iraq -- an error that can prove to be fatal if not corrected.

In his interviews with different media outlets, U.S. President Barack Obama has made assertions about the Iranian regime being able to become a successful regional power and help stabilize the Middle East. Also, in his secret missives to the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Obama has promised that in the event of a final accord on Iran’s contested nuclear program, the U.S. is willing to cooperate with Iran in the fight against the Islamic State, an extremist group that is rampaging through the Middle East and has cut itself a caliphate out of territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

The assumption that Tehran can help in the fight to counter the advances of the IS stems from the shortsighted thinking that as a Shiite extremist powerhouse, the Iranian regime is the archenemy of the Sunni extremist Islamic State.

But a quick review of Iran’s actions in recent years proves that Tehran’s foreign policy in the region is not based on ideological tenets, but rather on setting up short-term -- and sometimes contradictory -- alliances to further its ultimate end: keeping the Middle East in a state of instability in order to remain the main power broker and hegemon of the region.

Via: American Thinker

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Charlie Daniels: ‘America Is in Decline’; Obama ‘Not Up to the Task or Simply Doesn’t Care’ By Charlie Daniels

One of two things is obvious about Barack Obama.

He is either a weak and incompetent man who hides from the truth and is afraid of confrontation or he is as naive as Neville Chamberlain.

His refusal to even identify the enemy America is fighting all over the world, his politically correct approach to rooting out the terrorists who walk among us, his abject failure to show any backbone in dealing with Vladimir Putin, his evident ignorance of a growing threat from China, his dismissal of our most experienced and battle-hardened military officers, his disrespect for the only ally we have in the Middle East, his imaginary red lines, and his total mishandling of the War in Iraq is evidence of a man totally out of his depth or a man who is and never was interested in being president for the right reasons.

I know that Obama did not start the war in Iraq. He inherited it, but his childish finger pointing and petulant attitude does not negate the fact that, in his rush to placate the left leaning voters, he pulled out too many American troops way too fast and created a perfect power vacuum for ISIS to move into.

Now, as ISIS continues to grow exponentially in numbers, territory and ruthlessness, capturing American war equipment left behind by the Iraqi army who ran away, Obama wants to leave the job of defeating them to a bunch of ragtag, poorly lead, unmotivated and terrified Iraqi soldiers who refuse to stand and fight despite their superior numbers and weapons. 

An able and pragmatic leader realizes when a policy is not working and quickly moves on until he finds one that does. Obama evidently refuses to face the fact that the Iraqi army is not up to the task of destroying ISIS and that other measures need to be taken now while the situation is still manageable.

It only takes a couple of minutes of watching the “valley girl” State Department spokesperson to realize the caliber of personnel who have been placed in sensitive positions in this administration. Obama has surrounded himself with inexperienced ideologues and political appointees.

The ramifications of this incompetence and its trickledown effect has made itself manifest in the

complete mess at the Internal Revenue Service, the fast and furious debacle Eric Holder left behind, the glaring mistakes the state department made in Benghazi, and the list goes on.

Via: CNS News

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Days After Obama Admin Asked Networks to Not Show ‘Inaccurate’ B-Roll of its Advances, Islamic State Seized Two Cities

Merely days after reports of the Obama administration asking networks to stop airing “inaccurate” B-roll of the Islamic State because it portrayed them advancing in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist group took down the cities of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria.

Islamic State took the occasion to film more propaganda footage of itself marching through the empty cities, with horrific images of its enemies’ corpses and destroyed buildings in its wake.

The Fox News talk show OutNumbered discussed Politico‘s report on the U.S. government’s efforts to quash what it deemed misleading footage May 15, and three days later, the fall of Ramadi, capital of the Anbar Province, was one of the lead stories on every network broadcast.

Politico reported May 13:

Senior State Department and Pentagon officials have begun contacting television network reporters to ask them to stop using “B-roll” — stock footage that appears on screen while reporters and commentators talk — showing ISIL at the peak of its strength last summer.

“We are urging broadcasters to avoid using the familiar B-roll that we’ve all seen before, file footage of ISIL convoys operating in broad daylight, moving in large formations with guns out, looking to wreak havoc,” said Emily Horne, spokeswoman for retired Gen. John Allen, the State Department’s special envoy leading the international coalition against ISIL.

“It’s inaccurate — that’s no longer how ISIL moves,” Horne said. “A lot of that footage is from last summer before we began tactical strikes.”

Via: WFB

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[VIDEO] US military pilots complain hands tied in ‘frustrating’ fight against ISIS

U.S. military pilots carrying out the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are voicing growing discontent over what they say are heavy-handed rules of engagement hindering them from striking targets.

They blame a bureaucracy that does not allow for quick decision-making. One Navy F-18 pilot who has flown missions against ISIS voiced his frustration to Fox News, saying: "There were times I had groups of ISIS fighters in my sights, but couldn't get clearance to engage.”

He added, “They probably killed innocent people and spread evil because of my inability to kill them. It was frustrating."

Sources close to the air war against ISIS told Fox News that strike missions take, on average, just under an hour, from a pilot requesting permission to strike an ISIS target to a weapon leaving the wing.

A spokesman for the U.S. Air Force’s Central Command pushed back: “We refute the idea that close air support strikes take 'an hour on average'. Depending on the how complex the target environment is, a strike could take place in less than 10 minutes or it could take much longer.

"As our leaders have said, this is a long-term fight, and we will not alienate civilians, the Iraqi government or our coalition partners by striking targets indiscriminately."

Via: Fox News

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Iraq’s Decline into Chaos Traces Back to 2011, Not 2003 by CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

State coalition so grandly proclaimed by the Obama administration is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s the defense minister of Iran who flies into Baghdad, an unsubtle demonstration of who’s in charge — while the U.S. air campaign proves futile and America’s alleged strategy for combating the Islamic State is in free fall. It gets worse. The Gulf States’ top leaders, betrayed and bitter, ostentatiously boycott President Obama’s failed Camp David summit. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief.

Note: “were,” not “are.” We are scraping bottom. Following six years of President Obama’s steady and determined withdrawal from the Middle East, America’s standing in the region has collapsed. And yet the question incessantly asked of the various presidential candidates is not about that. It’s a retrospective hypothetical: Would you have invaded Iraq in 2003 if you had known then what we know now? RELATED: Obama’s Ludicrous Middle East Policy First, the question is not just a hypothetical, but an inherently impossible hypothetical. It contradicts itself. Had we known there were no weapons of mass destruction, the very question would not have arisen. The premise of the war — the basis for going to the U.N., to the Congress, and, indeed, to the nation — was Iraq’s possession of WMD in violation of the central condition for the cease-fire that ended the first Gulf War. No WMD, no hypothetical to answer in the first place. Second, the “if you knew then” question implicitly locates the origin and cause of the current disasters in 2003. As if the fall of Ramadi was predetermined then, as if the author of the current regional collapse is George W. Bush.

Via: National Review

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Needed: A Different Sort of President

Charismatic career politicians don’t make the best commanders-in-chief. 

The second terms of the latest three presidents have not been successful. Bill Clinton was impeached after his infamous lie to Americans, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

George W. Bush was blamed for the postwar violence in Iraq.

Barack Obama’s scandals — with his accompanying “limited hangout” denials — are ruining his second term: the growing IRS messes, the Associated Press monitoring, the NSA embarrassments, the Benghazi killings, the Syria bluster and backdown, and, of course, the Obamacare fiasco and the misleading statements about it.

What are other common denominators of this collective tenure of our recent presidents?

After popular first terms and reelection, they seemed to have lost public confidence and the ability to continue an agenda.

Do two terms wear out a president?

Maybe the hubris of getting reelected convinces our commanders-in-chief that they are mostly beyond reproach. Overreach ensues. Then the goddess Nemesis descends in destructive fashion to remind them that they are mere mortals.

In addition, the more talented cabinet and staff appointees often bail out near the end of the first term. At best, they burn out from continuous 16-hour work days. At worst, they flee to leverage their former high-profile jobs through revolving-door influence-peddling, finding new work in media, lobbying, consulting, and on Wall Street.

Via: NRO

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Lesson of Navy Yard shooting echoes lessons of Camp Liberty, Fort Hood

Spree shooters at military installations prey on Americans serving America, disarmed by America—but, not in the heavily armed neighborhoods of Washington

Yesterday’s shooting spree at Washington’s Navy Yard reminds us that disarmed military personnel are made-to-order victims for spree shooters.

When Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire Nov. 5, 2009, on soldiers preparing to deploy overseas, I was at Camp Basra, Iraq, a combat historian mobilized with the Army Reserve.

To the soldiers in my circle, it was similar to the May 5, 2009 shooting spree at Camp Liberty, Iraq, when a joe burst into that camp’s combat stress center (!) and fatally shot five other soldiers

.

Understand: All military personnel in Iraq were armed, with either a rifle or a handgun, and sometimes both. Living in a universally armed society created an unspoken atmosphere of respect and caution in personal relationships. It also meant any spree shooter inside-the-wire was instantly surrounded by equally armed personnel.

Unless you went to a combat stress center, where the soldiers turned in their “pole” for their visit. There were other places one left their weapon at the door, such as the gym or chapel. But at the combat stress center, there was also a good chance that the guns belonging to the clients had their firing pins removed—a precaution that allowed the a soldier to go about his day as if he could be trusted with his weapon, as he sought help.

The Fort Hood victims were absolutely unarmed. This is normal for garrison life, even for soldiers deploying, who may have a weapon, but no rounds. It was also a certainty for Hasan, who would have known that Clinton-era rules severely restricted military personal carrying firearms on duty.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Syria crisis: The British public has its say as two-thirds oppose strikes

Exclusive poll for The Independent sends clear message as David Cameron resists pressure for second vote

The Iraq War has turned the British public against any military intervention in the Middle East, according to a ComRes survey for The Independent.

By a margin of two-to-one, the British people oppose President Barack Obama’s plan for military strikes against the Assad regime and say that the UK should keep out of all conflicts in the region for the foreseeable future.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg yesterday rejected growing all-party pressure from MPs and peers for another Commons vote on whether British forces should join air strikes in Syria, only four days after MPs rejected the Prime Minister’s plan to take part.

But Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, said the Government could revisit the question if circumstances changed “very significantly”.

Opinion at Westminster appears to be shifting in favour of action as the Obama administration produces more evidence about the horrific chemical weapons attack on a suburb near Damascus.

But Mr Cameron shows no signs of risking a second humiliating Commons defeat. Labour will not propose a second vote unless there is a “very significant” change, such as al-Qa’ida obtaining chemical weapons in Syria.

Via: The Independent

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Draw Down, Back Down Obama to push come-home foreign policy in debate

President Barack Obama is pushing an isolationist return-to-home foreign policy in his latest TV attack-ad, entitled “Rebuilding.”

Obama will likely push that theme during Monday’s foreign-policy debate, partly because support for the anti-jihad campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen further — especially among late-deciding swing voters — since Obama took office in 2009.

“Obama ended the Iraq war. Mitt Romney would have kept 30,000 troops there, and called bringing them home ‘tragic,’” says the 32-second ad.

“Obama has brought 30,000 soldiers back from Afghanistan, and has a responsible plan to end the war. … It is time to stop fighting over there, and start rebuilding here,” the ad concludes.

The ad does not say if the president wants to win the Afghanistan campaign, which began after al-Qaida’s jihadis used Afghanistan to launch the Sept. 11 attack on New York.

Obama pulled troops out of Iraq in 2011 after Iraq leaders declined a proposed long-term strategic deal. The draft deal, however, collapsed after Obama said the proposed U.S. back-force in Iraq had to be fewer than 4,000 troops.

The withdrawal came after U.S. forces had won a hard-fought to campaign to cripple the various groups that were attacking the elected Iraqi government.

Since then, Iraq’s government has come under increasing pressure from the radical leadership in neighboring Iran.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Coulter: Obama at Hofstra: Relatively Alert, Ergo Big Winner

The best question at the second presidential debate came from Michael Jones, an African-American who said: "Mr. President, I voted for you in 2008. What have you done or accomplished to earn my vote in 2012? I'm not that optimistic, as I was in 2008. Most things I need for everyday living are very expensive."

To which Obama said: "Are you my half-brother?"

Actually, all Obama could say was that he had ended the war in Iraq (while pointlessly escalating the war in Afghanistan) and that Osama bin Laden is dead (and so is our ambassador). Both of which must be a great comfort to Mr. Jones as he tries to pay his bills every month.

Jones was right: Since Obama has been president, everything you own -- your home, pension, savings accounts, weekly paychecks -- are all worth less.

Meanwhile, everything you need -- gas, food, and anything else that requires fuel to be transported to you -- costs more.

Obama can't talk his way out of his record. As Romney said in response to the president's allegation that he is gung-ho about drilling for oil to lower fuel prices: "But that's not what you've done in the last four years. That's the problem."

Obama also suddenly announced: "I'm all for pipelines. I'm all for oil production." But he vetoed the Keystone pipeline.

He explained that the price of gasoline was $1.80 when he took office because the economy was in the toilet. Apparently, prices have spiked to more than $4 a gallon because all Americans are back at work now and making big bucks!

Obama said the "most important thing we can do is to make sure that we are creating jobs in this country."

So now he's going to create jobs? Because, nearly four years into his presidency, 23 million Americans are out of work and more than half of recent college graduates can't find a job.

WH Aide Involved in Fast and Furious Was 'Suddenly' Transferred to Iraq; Issa Threatens Subpoena

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

(CNSNews.com) - Kevin O’Reilly, a member of the White House National Security Staff who regularly communicated about Operation Fast and Furious with the Arizona-based ATF agent responsible for running the operation that allowed guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, was suddenly transferred out of the White House and into Iraq in July 2011.

The transfer took place shortly after the ATF agent had testified in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the White House had provided the committee with a series of emails that O’Reilly and the agent had exchanged while Fast and Furious was underway.

Since then, the White House has declined to allow O’Reilly to be interviewed either by the committee or by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who conducted the administration’s internal investigation of Fast and Furious. The White House also refused to give the inspector general access to internal White House communications relating to Fast and Furious.

Under Fast and Furious, the ATF and the Justice Department deliberately allowed known straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels to buy about 2,000 guns at U.S. gun stores. In December 2010, two of these guns were found at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Many more of the guns were found at crime scenes in Mexico.

In Sept. 20 testimony before the Oversight Committee, Horowitz said that the White House’s refusal to let O’Reilly speak and to provide the IG’s office with access to relevant internal White House communications “made it impossible” to “pursue that aspect of the case.”

Via: CNS News

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Polls Show Romney Crushing Obama Among Veterans In Key Battleground States…

Veterans retreating from Barack Obama

President Barack Obama is trying hard to win veterans, but it looks like they’d prefer a new commander in chief.

The Obama campaign had been hoping that veterans and their families — especially among the post-Sept. 11 generation that served in Iraq and Afghanistan — would be part of their path to victory: They’re a high turn-out demographic and concentrated in battleground states, with nearly 1 million each in North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, and 1.6 million in Florida.

But recent polls make clear that the president’s campaign is losing the battle. Even as Obama leads in Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia, Mitt Romney is up by double digits among veterans in those states. Nationwide, he’s got a commanding 20-percentage-point lead over Obama and has even overtaken the president with younger veterans.

(Also on POLITICO: Mitt's transition efforts intensifying)

“It’s no contest,” said Maurice Tamman, a Reuters data news editor who has polled on veterans and the presidential campaign.

Obama’s campaign has been trying to improve on a historical Democratic disadvantage on national security and among veterans by touting the killing of Osama bin Laden, ending Iraq combat operations and winding down the war in Afghanistan. They’ve also been talking up the administration’s attention to veterans’ benefits and efforts spearheaded by first lady Michelle Obama, hoping to appeal not just to the troops but to the spouses and other military family members who have coped with long separations and multiple deployments.

(Also on POLITICO: Dan Senor: U.S. 'looks impotent')

Instead, even as Obama has been gaining in the overall polls, several NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls conducted from Sept. 9-11 had Romney well ahead of Obama among veterans in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. And in Colorado, a poll released Sept. 16 by SurveyUSA and the Denver Post found both veterans and military families supporting Romney over Obama 53 percent to 39 percent in a survey that included third-party candidates.

Via: Politico

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