Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Pass the buck presidency

BULLY BOY PRESS &    CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

FADED CELEBRITY BARRY O ENTERTAINED THESE REPORTERS LATE TONIGHT AS HE EXPLAINED HIS NEW POLICY WHILE SIPPING A SHIRLEY TEMPLE AND GETTING A PEDICURE.

"THE BUCK GETS PASSED HERE,"  BARRY O DECLARED WAVING HIS ARM FRANTICALLY AND POINTING TO HIMSELF.

"NOTHING IS EVER MY FAULT," HE CONTINUED.  "IT'S SO LIBERATING.  LIKE, THIS AFTERNOON, I TOOTED.  BUT I IMMEDIATELY HOLLERED AT NEW JAY" BARRY O THEN POINTED TO WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPERSON JOSH EARNEST WHO ROLLED HIS EYES "AND BEGAN ASKING NEW JAY WHY HE TOOTED.  'NEW JAY!' I YELLED, 'WHY DIDN'T YOU STEP OUTSIDE THE OVAL OFFICE TO TOOT?  YOU THINK WE'RE WANTING TO SMELL ALL THAT, NEW JAY? BECAUSE WE AREN'T!'"


BARRY O THEN CLAPPED HIS HANDS AND GIGGLED.


FROM THE TCI WIRE:



Who was it that claimed Barack Obama played three dimensional chess?


Whomever started that lie should step forward and take accountability for that outlandish claim.

Iraq?  His 'plan' is falling apart for anyone who wants to pay attention.



Lizzie Dearden (Irish Indpendent) reports:

According to the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, Isil was approaching the Iraqi capital yesterday morning.
"The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad," a spokesperson said.
"They said it could never happen and now it almost has. President Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very very little."



B-b-b-ut the plan!  The plan to bomb from the air!  That plan was foolproof, right?


Wrong.  We noted it would become normalized and it has.

The effectiveness would never last for weeks.  It only had an element of surprise for so long.

Kristina Wong (The Hill) reports:

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria militants are adjusting to U.S. airstrikes, making it more difficult to target them, an Air Force general said Monday.
ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria had previously traveled in columns of vehicles with flags, Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, Air Force assistant deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements, told reporters at a briefing Monday.
"They are now dispersing themselves to allow themselves situations to be more survivable, if you will, which requires us to work harder to locate them, and then develop the situation to appropriately target them," Harrigian said.


If only that could have been anticipated, if . . .

Wait.  We did anticipate it and we noted it here.

Is the US intelligence community really that stupid or is the person receiving the intel in daily briefings that struggles with comprehension?


Dearden noted that Barack admitted to faulty intel.

Wow.  So Barack might have overestimated the Iraqi military?

The Shi'ite militia is part of the Iraqi forces -- remains part.  Nouri brought them in -- Tim Arango broke that story in the fall of 2013.

There's been no effort by the new prime minister to address that even though these militias are seen as death squads -- by Sunnis, yes, but also by other Shi'ites.

Did Barack miss that fact in an briefing as well?

Realities like this matter.

They matter in terms of what any campaign or plan can accomplish, yes.

Ir matters for safety reasons, it also matters for financial reasons.  Kate Brannen (Foreign Policy) was noting last week that "$7 million to $10 million a day" was being spent by the Pentagon on Barack's 'plan' and that the figure was likely to rise and increase the Defense Dept's 2015 fiscal budget.  And, as Paul D. Shinkman (US News and World Reports) explains, Operation No Name still has no name and the Pentagon gets a bit testy when asked about that fact.


When asked about facts, Barack Obama just gets confused.



On Sunday's 60 Minutes, US President Barack Obama repeatedly demonstrated how little he understood of Iraq.  We focused on this section of the interview:

President Barack Obama: Well, I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria. Essentially, what happened with ISIL was that you had al Qaeda in Iraq, which was a vicious group, but our Marines were able to quash with the help of Sunni tribes. They went back underground. But over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swathes of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos, and attract foreign fighters who believed in their jihadist nonsense, and traveled everywhere from Europe to the United States to Australia to other parts of the Muslim world, converging on Syria. And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world. And they have been very savvy in terms of their social media. In some cases, you have old remnants of Saddam Hussein's military that had been expunged from the Iraqi military, which gave them some traditional military capacity, and not just terrorist capacity. And this is one of the challenges that we are going to have generally, is where you have got states that are failing or in the midst of civil war, these kinds of organizations thrive. That is why it's so important for us to recognize part of our solution here is going to be military. We just have to push them back and shrink their space and go after their command-and-control and their capacity and their weapons and their fueling, and cut off their financing, and work to eliminate the flow of foreign fighters. But what we also have to do is, we have to come up with political solutions in Iraq and Syria in particular, but in the Middle East generally, that arrives at an accommodation between Sunni and Shia populations that right now are the biggest cause of conflict, not just in the Middle East, but in the world.


In terms of facts, that's incorrect for a number of reasons including the Marines did not quash 'al Qaeda in Iraq.'
Sahwa/Awakenings/Sons Of Iraq and Daughters Of Iraq turned the tide and did so because they were paid to.  
Let's drop back to the April 8, 2008 snapshot.  And let's remember Barack had only been serving for three years as a US Senator at the time and had spent the previous year and 2008 campaigning so he missed a lot of hearings and the ones he showed up for in April of 2008?  He was late to them.  People like John Kerry and Joe Biden babied him, babied his little candy ass, let him show up late and immediately, even though it wasn't his turn and rules on seniority required he wait his term, would let him jump ahead of everyone so he could stumble through his questions -- with more unnatural pauses than Sandy Dennis managed in her entire acting career -- and then Barack would rush out of the hearing.  So he missed a lot, a whole lot.
From the April 8, 2008 snapshot:

Today The Petraeus & Crocker Variety Hour took their act on the road.  First stop, the Senate Armed Services Committee.  Gen David Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker are supposed to be providing a status report on the Iraq War.  They didn't.  In fact, Petraeus made clear that the status report would come . . . next September.  When the results are this bad, you stall -- which is exactly what Petraeus did. 
The most dramatic moment came as committee chair Carl Levin was questioning Petraeus and a man in the gallery began exclaiming "Bring them home!" repeatedly.  (He did so at least 16 times before he was escored out).  The most hilarious moment was hearing Petraeus explain that it's tough in the school yard and America needs to fork over their lunch money in Iraq to avoid getting beat up.  In his opening remarks, Petraues explained of the "Awakening" Council (aka "Sons of Iraq," et al) that it was a good thing "there are now over 91,000 Sons of Iraq -- Shia as well as Sunni -- under contract to help Coalition and Iraqi Forces protect their neighborhoods and secure infrastructure and roads.  These volunteers have contributed significantly in various areas, and the savings in vehicles not lost because of reduced violence -- not to mention the priceless lives saved -- have far outweighed the cost of their monthly contracts."  Again, the US must fork over their lunch money, apparently, to avoid being beat up. 
How much lunch money is the US forking over?  Members of the "Awakening" Council are paid, by the US, a minimum of $300 a month (US dollars).  By Petraeus' figures that mean the US is paying $27,300,000 a month.  $27 million a month is going to the "Awakening" Councils who, Petraeus brags, have led to "savings in vehicles not lost".  Again, in this morning's hearings, the top commander in Iraq explained that the US strategy is forking over the lunch money to school yard bullies.  What a proud moment for the country.
 I'm being kind right now and leaving it at that but we can quote people from Barack's administration and reveal not only how stupid and incorrect Barack's remarks were but how lunatic his supposed 'plan' is.  We'll probably save that for later this week.


 The White House had to announce that Barack's remarks about Clapper were not meant to imply that he no longer had faith in James I Lied To Congress Clapper.



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