Tag Archives: foreign policy

Obama Calls for Military Strike Against Syria—But Only if Congress Votes for It

by olikellopas Posted on August 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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In a tough-worded statement delivered in the Rose Garden this afternoon, President Barack Obama made a case for launching a limited military strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack mounted presumably by regime forces near Damascus earlier this month. “This menace must be confronted,” Obama declared. This was no surprise. The Obama administration has clearly been heading toward such a decision. But in an unexpected move, Obama said that it was not necessary to rush into such an attack—his military advisers had assured him that such an assault could be effective even if taken weeks from now—and that he would seek authorization from Congress before ordering an attack on the Syrian regime.

With these remarks—the president took no questions—Obama has put Congress on the hot seat. In the years since a Vietnam-shocked Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, members of Congress have often eagerly ducked taking a vote on military actions launched by a president. Routinely, congressional leaders have complained about a lack of consultation from the president without demanding a hard-and-fast chance to accept joint responsibility for a military action. (See Libya.) In recent days, while House and Senate leaders have called for consultation, none have said they must be allowed to vote on strike (while some back-benchers have indeed demanded a vote.)

So Obama is now saying, you want consultation, I’ll see you on that and raise you a full (and apparently binding) vote. Some folks—particularly hawks and neocons yearning for a strike—will, no doubt, blast the president for wimping out on executive privilege. Others will see this as a historic moment, when the president rejiggered the constitutional balance on power. But this quasi-decision certainly will lead to a robust debate on not only what to do in Syria but also the fundamental question of who is responsible for waging acts of war within a democracy.

(UPDATE) Here is the full transcript of Obama’s remarks:

Good afternoon, everybody. Ten days ago, the world watched in horror as men, women and children were massacred in Syria in the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century. Yesterday the United States presented a powerful case that the Syrian government was responsible for this attack on its own people.

Our intelligence shows the Assad regime and its forces preparing to use chemical weapons, launching rockets in the highly populated suburbs of Damascus, and acknowledging that a chemical weapons attack took place. And all of this corroborates what the world can plainly see — hospitals overflowing with victims; terrible images of the dead. All told, well over 1,000 people were murdered. Several hundred of them were children — young girls and boys gassed to death by their own government.

This attack is an assault on human dignity. It also presents a serious danger to our national security. It risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. It endangers our friends and our partners along Syria’s borders, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.

In a world with many dangers, this menace must be confronted.

Now, after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope. But I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.

Our military has positioned assets in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has informed me that we are prepared to strike whenever we choose. Moreover, the Chairman has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now. And I’m prepared to give that order.

But having made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I’m also mindful that I’m the President of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. I’ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that’s why I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress.

Over the last several days, we’ve heard from members of Congress who want their voices to be heard. I absolutely agree. So this morning, I spoke with all four congressional leaders, and they’ve agreed to schedule a debate and then a vote as soon as Congress comes back into session.

In the coming days, my administration stands ready to provide every member with the information they need to understand what happened in Syria and why it has such profound implications for America’s national security. And all of us should be accountable as we move forward, and that can only be accomplished with a vote.

I’m confident in the case our government has made without waiting for U.N. inspectors. I’m comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that, so far, has been completely paralyzed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable. As a consequence, many people have advised against taking this decision to Congress, and undoubtedly, they were impacted by what we saw happen in the United Kingdom this week when the Parliament of our closest ally failed to pass a resolution with a similar goal, even as the Prime Minister supported taking action.

Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective. We should have this debate, because the issues are too big for business as usual. And this morning, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell agreed that this is the right thing to do for our democracy.

A country faces few decisions as grave as using military force, even when that force is limited. I respect the views of those who call for caution, particularly as our country emerges from a time of war that I was elected in part to end. But if we really do want to turn away from taking appropriate action in the face of such an unspeakable outrage, then we just acknowledge the costs of doing nothing.

Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

So just as I will take this case to Congress, I will also deliver this message to the world. While the U.N. investigation has some time to report on its findings, we will insist that an atrocity committed with chemical weapons is not simply investigated, it must be confronted.

I don’t expect every nation to agree with the decision we have made. Privately we’ve heard many expressions of support from our friends. But I will ask those who care about the writ of the international community to stand publicly behind our action.

And finally, let me say this to the American people: I know well that we are weary of war. We’ve ended one war in Iraq. We’re ending another in Afghanistan. And the American people have the good sense to know we cannot resolve the underlying conflict in Syria with our military. In that part of the world, there are ancient sectarian differences, and the hopes of the Arab Spring have unleashed forces of change that are going to take many years to resolve. And that’s why we’re not contemplating putting our troops in the middle of someone else’s war.

Instead, we’ll continue to support the Syrian people through our pressure on the Assad regime, our commitment to the opposition, our care for the displaced, and our pursuit of a political resolution that achieves a government that respects the dignity of its people.

But we are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus. Out of the ashes of world war, we built an international order and enforced the rules that gave it meaning. And we did so because we believe that the rights of individuals to live in peace and dignity depends on the responsibilities of nations. We aren’t perfect, but this nation more than any other has been willing to meet those responsibilities.

So to all members of Congress of both parties, I ask you to take this vote for our national security. I am looking forward to the debate. And in doing so, I ask you, members of Congress, to consider that some things are more important than partisan differences or the politics of the moment.

Ultimately, this is not about who occupies this office at any given time; it’s about who we are as a country. I believe that the people’s representatives must be invested in what America does abroad, and now is the time to show the world that America keeps our commitments. We do what we say. And we lead with the belief that right makes might — not the other way around.

We all know there are no easy options. But I wasn’t elected to avoid hard decisions. And neither were the members of the House and the Senate. I’ve told you what I believe, that our security and our values demand that we cannot turn away from the massacre of countless civilians with chemical weapons. And our democracy is stronger when the President and the people’s representatives stand together.

I’m ready to act in the face of this outrage. Today I’m asking Congress to send a message to the world that we are ready to move forward together as one nation.

Thanks very much.

For more coverage on the developing situation in Syria, read Mother Jones’ explainer on whether chemical weapons are reason enough to go to war, how the neocons are pushing Obama to go beyond a punative strike, and Obama’s conundrum on Syria.

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Obama Calls for Military Strike Against Syria—But Only if Congress Votes for It

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GOP Congressman Endorses Bogus Theory That Syria Got Its Chemical Weapons From Saddam

by Jane Adams Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Obama administration released its assessment of last week’s chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. The US government “assesses with high confidence” that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad carried out the attack, and that the Syrian government has a stockpile of sarin and other chemical agents. (UN chemical weapons experts are still working to confirm details regarding the attack.) This declassification was accompanied by Secretary of State John Kerry’s public statement, in which he called the attack a “crime against conscience” and “crime against humanity.”

Something of this magnitude will always provoke a stream of conspiracy theories, some wilder than others. In a radio interview on Thursday, Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) seemed to endorse one of them.

The Huffington Post reports:

“The theory then and the evidence was that Iraq was an enemy of the United States and had direct plans in either support of Al Qaeda and/or with other weapons that we found out weren’t there—which I still think they were moved to Syria,” said Terry. “And it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the chemical weapons that have been used by Syria actually came from Iraq.”

…

When Becka asked whether Terry’s claim about the transfer of weapons was based on information he had received as a member of Congress, Terry replied, “Gut feeling…”

This theory isn’t new. Senior Bush administration officials publicly flirted with the idea that Iraq transferred weapons to other nations. The claim has been promoted on conservative media and Fox News many times over the years. In 2007, Mitt Romney said that it was “entirely possible” that weapons of mass destruction were moved from Iraq to Syria during the run-up to the Iraq war. The thing is that there is absolutely zero credible evidence that this was ever the case. I called up the State Department to ask about the theory the congressman rehashed. The first spokesperson I talked to simply laughed. The second could only say that the State Department doesn’t “have any information on that.”

For a firmer rebuttal, here’s an AP report from January 2005:

Intelligence and congressional officials say they have not seen any information—never “a piece,” said one—indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria, Jordan or elsewhere…The Bush administration acknowledged…that the search for banned weapons is largely over. The Iraq Survey Group’s chief, Charles Duelfer, is expected to submit the final installments of his report in February. A small number of the organization’s experts will remain on the job in case new intelligence on Iraqi WMD is unearthed.

But the officials familiar with the search say U.S. authorities have found no evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein transferred WMD or related equipment out of Iraq.

A special adviser to the CIA director, Duelfer declined an interview request through an agency spokesman. In his last public statements, he told a Senate panel last October that it remained unclear whether banned weapons could have been moved from Iraq.

“What I can tell you is that I believe we know a lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria. There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points,” he said. “But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say.”

Last week, a congressional official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said suggestions that weapons or components were sent from Iraq were based on speculation stemming from uncorroborated information.

After the subsequent report was released, Duelfer gave an interview to PBS NewsHour in which he expressed doubt that Iraq transferred WMDs to Syria prior to the US-led invasion. “Syria, we had some intelligence that perhaps some materials, suspicious materials, had been moved there,” he said. “We looked as closely as we could at that, there were a few leads which we were not able to fully run down, largely because of the security situation, but it’s my judgment that had substantial stocks, important stocks been moved to Syria, someone would have told something to us about that.”

And in the years since, no new evidence has come to light suggesting otherwise. This all seems to conflict with Rep. Terry’s “gut.”

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GOP Congressman Endorses Bogus Theory That Syria Got Its Chemical Weapons From Saddam

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Obama’s Big Syria Conundrum

by Freince Charles Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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Just because you should do something doesn’t mean you ought to.

That might sum up one way of thinking about whether the United States should bomb Syria in response to the horrific chemical weapons attack presumably launched by regime forces against civilians earlier this month. The assault, which led to the deaths of 1,400 Syrians, including children, was a dramatic step over President Barack Obama’s “red line” and prompted the administration to move toward a punitive strike that would be designed not to affect the ongoing balance of power in the continuing Syrian civil war but to deter President Bashar al-Assad and his military forces from further use of chemical weapons. Immediately, a trans-Atlantic debate ensued over whether such military action would be appropriate, effective, and wise. And this afternoon—as the White House released a four-page unclassified assessment declaring that Assad regime officials “were witting of and directed the attack on August 21″—Secretary of State John Kerry made a public statement presenting the case for a limited attack.

In the face of public opinion overwhelmingly opposed to US military action in Syria, Kerry argued that the United States had a humanitarian obligation to respond to Assad’s use of chemical weapons and a duty to preserve America’s credibility and that of the civilized world:

It matters to our security and the security of our allies. It matters to Israel. It matters to our close friends Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon, all of whom live just a stiff breeze away from Damascus. It matters to all of them where the Syrian chemical weapons are—and if unchecked they can cause even greater death and destruction to those friends. And it matters deeply to the credibility and the future interests of the United States of America and our allies. It matters because a lot of other countries, whose policy has challenged these international norms, are watching. They are watching. They want to see whether the United States and our friends mean what we say.

Killing people—no doubt, some civilians would perish in a limited strike—to demonstrate credibility and toughness is not the most high-minded of arguments. Should innocents die because Obama (perhaps in a misguided move) drew a line in the sand? But there is some merit to the contention that a tyrant should not be permitted to deploy unconventional weapons with impunity.

A few days ago, I asked David Kay, the former UN weapons inspector who led the search for the nonexistent WMD in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, why he supported an attack on Assad in response to the chemical weapon massacre. He noted:

It is a terror weapon of extraordinary power…I believe if Assad gets away with showing other regimes how they can use CW to gain the upper hand in a conflict…it is something we should not want. Imagine if the Libyan rebellion had not occurred first, but were to be about to start. In this interconnected world we should want to maintain a ban on the use of weapons that can have large and sudden impacts. To kill 100,000 has taken Assad more than a year…Unless we now take action the wrong lesson is likely to have been learned.

It is hard to watch the videos of the victims of the chemical weapons attack and shrug. But all actions have their costs—even justifiable actions. And the question here is this: Can Obama mount a limited, targeted, and effective strike that will indeed deter Assad without drawing the United States deeper into the ongoing civil war, causing unacceptable unintended consequences (say, a high number of civilian casualties), and/or further inflaming conflicts within the region? That’s a tall order. Perhaps he and his military aides can devise such an assault and thread this needle. But Kerry, who took no questions after delivering his statement, neglected to discuss various options. Which was natural, for the administration understandably has no desire to telegraph the specifics of what apparently now is an inevitable strike (with or without any explicit approval from Congress, which is hardly rushing to vote on the matter).

In his tough-worded statement, Kerry, the onetime anti-war activist, resorted to a familiar rhetorical device. “What is the risk of doing nothing?” he asked. (George W. Bush repeatedly used similar language in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.) Yet decrying doing nothing does not justify a specific action. The Hippocratic Oath counsels: First, do no harm. A military strike would do some harm. Will the gain outweigh the harm? Obama is often adept at working through complicated calculations. But in war—and in the Middle East—intelligent calculations can look rather different after the fact.

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Obama’s Big Syria Conundrum

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Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq War Architect, Is Skeptical of Intervening in Syria

by cuppyteen Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Donald Rumsfeld weighed in yesterday on the Obama administration’s possible plans to intervene militarily in Syria. He is skeptical and expressed confusion about the whole situation during an interview with Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto:

There really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation.

You remember Donald Rumsfeld. He was the 13th and 21st United States Secretary of Defense, first under President Gerald Ford and then President George W. Bush. His hobbies include playing squash and roping cattle. He has championed wrestling as an Olympic sport. He is one of the greatest unintentional poets of the 21st century. And he tweeted this last March:

There are, in fact, many reasons to be skeptical and cautious about bombing Syria; even if many of Rumsfeld’s neoconservative brothers in arms haven’t gotten that memo, yet. US intervention in the bloodshed in Syria may or may not work out, but Rumsfeld has zero credibility here. As a member of the Bush administration, Rumsfeld gave strong indication that it was in our, and everybody else‘s, national interest to—because of those weapons of mass destruction, of course—send ground troops to Iraq.

Right… That. Staff Sgt. Sean A. Foley/US Army

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Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq War Architect, Is Skeptical of Intervening in Syria

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Why Air Strikes Against Syria Probably Won’t Work

by Felixqq9pd Posted on August 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over at WorldViews, Max Fisher provides the nickel arguments for and against air strikes against Syria. The case against is pretty straightforward: Air strikes won’t change much of anything; there will be civilian casualties; and it’s almost certain to lead to escalation. That’s a pretty good case! So what’s the case for strikes? Here it is:

1) A “punishment” strike against Assad’s forces for this month’s suspected chemical weapons attack would make him think twice before doing it again….2) The international norm against chemical weapons matters for more than just Syria….When the next civilian or military leader locked in a difficult war looks back on what happened in Syria, we want him to conclude that using chemical weapons would not be worth the risk. 3) Even just the (apparently earnest) threat of U.S. strikes could change Assad’s behavior.

This is basically a single argument dressed up three different ways: air strikes will deter future chemical attacks. The problem is that I don’t believe it unless the strikes are absolutely devastating. Assad is plainly in a fight for his existence, and under circumstances like that nothing is likely to stop him except the certain knowledge that US retaliation would make his position worse than if he had done nothing in the first place. Air strikes might be defensible if we’re willing to act on a scale that large, but make no mistake: we’d basically be committing ourselves to full-scale war against Assad.

It’s possible that enforcing international norms against chemical attacks is important enough to make that worth it. But that’s the question we should be asking ourselves. A “punishment” air strike is a joke, little more than a symbol of helplessness to be laughed off as the nuisance it is. If we want to change Assad’s behavior, we’ll have to declare war against him.

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Why Air Strikes Against Syria Probably Won’t Work

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60 Years Later, CIA Admits Role in Iran Coup Everyone Knows It Orchestrated

by Susie Quan Posted on August 19, 2013

Mother Jones

The Central Intelligence Agency, via declassified documents, has acknowledged its central role in the subversion of democracy in Iran. The coup took places six decades ago, so better late than never:

The newly declassified material is believed to contain the CIA’s first public acknowledgment of its role in deposing democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized the country’s oil industry. The move—and Iran’s broader lurch to the left under Mossadegh—infuriated Great Britain and the United States, which pressed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to depose him in 1953.

…

Mossadegh was sentenced to three years of solitary confinement in 1953 and remained under house arrest until his death in 1967. The U.S.-British plot to overthrow him served as a rallying point for the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah, and Mossadegh remains a popular figure in Iran today despite his secularist politics.

For decades, it’s been no secret—nor has it been at all ambiguous—that the CIA helped orchestrate the coup d’état. In fact, President Obama talked publicly about the CIA-backed coup during his widely covered 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt: “For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us,” Obama said. “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known.”

Part of this well-known history includes CIA operatives bribing Iranian street thugs to riot against the elected government. Following the victory of coup leaders, a lot of pro-Mossadegh citizens were detained, tortured, and/or murdered. This was merely one episode in the long-running series of “CIA Does Messed-Up Thing Around The World.”

The declassified material (you can read key excerpts here) were made available thanks to the efforts of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The Archive also recently published, as a result of their public records request, CIA history on Area 51.

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60 Years Later, CIA Admits Role in Iran Coup Everyone Knows It Orchestrated

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Time to Pull the Plug on Egypt

by Jimmy Charles Posted on August 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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America’s $1.5 billion annual aid to Egypt is supposed to give us a bit of leverage in high places. But in the wake of yesterday’s massacre by the military—in direct opposition to repeated appeals from the U.S.—that leverage seems to be pretty much nonexistent. For that reason, Marc Lynch thinks it’s finally time to pull the plug. Here’s the conclusion of an interview over at Wonkblog between Lynch and Brad Plumer:

BP: Is it possible to envision how the current crisis in Egypt might get resolved at this point?

ML: Honestly, I think things are going to get a lot worse, not better. The military’s rationale for moving in on the protester camps was that this was a festering wound, we just need to clear it out, do a surgical operation, end this, and move on. I think it’s clear that this is not what’s happening. The streets are incredibly polarized right now, and I think it’ll be extremely difficult to calm things down and get people back on the table.

For the past few years I’ve been one of the more optimistic people that Egypt would work things out. It just seems like there were enough state institutions, enough political consensus, enough of a robust civil society to keep things going.

Now I’m not so sure. I think what we’ve got now is a fairly transparent attempt by the military at Mubarak’s restoration, except without Mubarak. I’ve called it “High Mubarakism.”You’ve got a state of emergency, lots of anti-American propaganda. Sissi is a bit more popular, but I don’t think it will work. Mubarak failed for a reason.

BP: And at this point there’s not much the U.S. can do but watch?

ML: The problem is pretty much everyone is hostile to us at this point. The U.S. tried to take the stance of not supporting a particular group. But the more polarized Egypt got, the more everyone thought we were against them. All the liberals thought we were on the Brotherhood’s side. All the Brotherhood thought we were on the liberals side. So now you’ve got antipathy from every player in Egypt. And it’s being fed by a really malicious and malevolent anti-American propaganda campaign in the state media and in the pro-coup independent media. That just creates a really toxic atmosphere.

So America’s ability to do things like being evenhanded broker or try to mediate the conflict is just infinitely harder in that kind of situation.

I think it’s been fairly clear for over a month that the Egyptian military began planning all of this in the spring, possibly even earlier. It was rolled out very carefully, very strategically, and very ruthlessly. And while Mohamed Morsi may have been no saint, it probably didn’t matter. The military never had the slightest intention of allowing true civilian rule, whether from the Muslim Brotherhood or anyone else.

All the too-clever questions over the past few weeks from reporters trying to get Obama spokesmen to commit to calling the military action a coup was always silly. Everyone knew perfectly well why they didn’t, and everyone knew it made perfect sense for them to leave their options open as long as there was any hope of influencing the course of events. At this point, though, there pretty obviously isn’t, so there’s no longer much point to holding back. Lynch is right: you can’t just ignore the massacre of 500 people. It’s time to pull the plug.

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Time to Pull the Plug on Egypt

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Stephen Colbert Dances With Henry Kissinger

by Margherit Posted on August 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Stephen Colbert—Comedy Central host, ex-presidential candidate, and fierce critic of President Obama’s targeted killing policy—was recently snubbed by Daft Punk. The French electro-pop duo was supposed to perform on The Colbert Report for “StePhest Colbchella ‘013,” but was forced to cancel due to contractual obligations with Comedy Central’s sister network MTV.

So on Tuesday’s show, Colbert spent much of the program taking lighthearted swipes at the electronic music stars and debuted a comedic dance-party clip set to Daft Punk’s hit song “Get Lucky.” In the video, Colbert gleefully dances with Matt Damon, Jeff Bridges, Bryan Cranston, Hugh Laurie, and… Henry Kissinger:

The Colbert Report
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At the 2:44 mark, Colbert enters Kissinger’s office and proceeds to groove around his desk. Kissinger’s segment ends with the former secretary of state and national security advisor picking up the phone and calmly calling “security” on the dancing comedian.

The video is, of course, all in good fun, and many American political figures (some of whom have appeared on The Colbert Report) are criticized for US foreign policy decisions. But Kissinger’s reputation is unique, and now is a good time to revisit why. Here are just some of the reasons why Colbert and Co. should have thought twice before making Kissinger seem like an aging teddy bear in a five-minute dance video:

Various human rights groups and journalists, including Amnesty International and the late Christopher Hitchens, have highlighted Henry Kissinger’s alleged complicity in major human rights violations and war crimes around the globe, in Chile (murder and subversion of democracy), Bangladesh (genocide), and East Timor (yet more genocide), to name a few. Perhaps his most notorious alleged act was taking part in the sabotage—on behalf of the Nixon presidential campaign—of the 1968 Vietnam War peace talks (secret diplomacy that quite possibly constituted a violation of the Logan Act). Subsequently, the Vietnam War was prolonged well into the Nixon years, allowing the US ample opportunity to do things like carpet-bomb eastern Cambodia.

Kissinger’s lesser offenses include venting about “self-serving” Jewish “bastards” who were trying to escape persecution and cultural eradication in the Soviet Union. (Kissinger is Jewish, and his family fled from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s.)

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning statesman has previously appeared on The Colbert Report, including in this clip with Eliot Spitzer and guitarist Peter Frampton. Comedy Central did not respond to a request for comment regarding Kissinger’s multiple appearances, and Colbert’s personal publicist could not be reached for comment. I will update this post if that changes.

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Stephen Colbert Dances With Henry Kissinger

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The Latest Republican Talking Point on Al Qaeda Is Spectacularly Wrong

by 2lgax8lh Posted on August 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Obama administration announced the temporary closure of more than 20 embassies and consulates, and the State Department issued a global travel alert warning of potential terrorist attack, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. The closures and warning were prompted by intercepted communications indicating an Al Qaeda threat linked to Yemen.

“This is probably one of the most specific and credible threats I’ve seen, perhaps since 9/11—and that’s why everybody’s taking this so seriously,” Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), House Homeland Security chairman, said on Face the Nation on Sunday. Other Republicans, however, took things a step further during the Sunday talk shows.

“This is a wake-up call,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said on This Week. “Al Qaeda is in many ways stronger than it was before 9/11, because it’s mutated and spread, and can come at us in different directions.” Jim DeMint, Heritage Foundation president and former tea party senator, made similar comments on Fox News Sunday: “Well, it’s clear that Al Qaeda may be more of a threat to us than they were before 9/11 now. And the perception of weakness in this administration is encouraging this kind of behavior.”

There is virtually no evidence that this is true. Yes, the group maintains some frightening affiliates in Yemen, parts of North Africa, and elsewhere. But Al Qaeda’s leadership has been severely crippled by the Obama administration’s aggressive and controversial anti-terror operations abroad. Under Obama, there has been a noticeable uptick in the number of Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives and suspected extremists taken off the battlefield.

Also, Osama bin Laden was very much alive pre-9/11 attacks. He was killed during President Obama’s first term. So there’s that.

Furthermore, the embassy closures and travel alert have inspired another round of conservative media personalities taking shots at the Obama administration over last year’s deadly attack on the US compound in Benghazi—an obvious tragedy, and an obvious nonscandal. “If you’re looking at it from a terrorist perspective, you say, ‘Well, here’s an administration that’s pulling back, that’s timid, and an opportunity to go after additional embassies,'” Rick Santorum, former Republican senator and 2012 presidential candidate, said on Meet the Press on Sunday. To that, here is a chart demonstrating the overall decline in attacks on American diplomatic targets since 1970:

Just another reminder that there are some talking points out there that just might verge on hyperbolic and gratuitously scary-sounding.

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The Latest Republican Talking Point on Al Qaeda Is Spectacularly Wrong

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Groundswell: A Secret Tape Reveals How It Lobbied Boehner and Issa on Benghazi

by tobedzieto123 Posted on July 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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As Mother Jones revealed last week, Groundswell, the hush-hush right-wing strategy group partly led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, wanted to hype the Benghazi tragedy into a full-fledged scandal for the Obama administration, as part of its “30 front war” on the president and progressives. A secret audio tape of one of Groundswell’s weekly meetings shows that prominent members of the group pressed House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chair of the House oversight committee, to expand the Benghazi investigation and make this supposed scandal a top-priority for congressional Republicans. This recording indicates Groundswell’s mission extends beyond message coordination to scandal-stoking.

MoJo’s full coverage of Groundswell.


Inside Groundswell: Read the Memos of the New Right-Wing Strategy Group Planning a “30 Front War”


Groundswell’s Secret Crusade to Crush Karl Rove


Is Ginni Thomas’ Expanding Activism a Problem for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?


PHOTOS: Meet Groundswell’s Major Players


Groundswell: A Secret Tape Reveals How It Lobbied Boehner and Issa on Benghazi

The tape has been posted at Crooks and Liars, a progressive web site, and it captured the first 20 minutes of Groundswell’s May 8 meeting. (The site does not say how the recording was obtained.) The meeting opened with a prayer (“Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather here as free Americans”), and a roll call was taken. Among those present were former GOP Rep. Allen West, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News, and Ginni Thomas. Catherine Engelbrecht, a founder of True the Vote, led the meeting, and the first order of business was a report on the Benghazi controversy from Boykin and Gaffney.

The pair reported on meetings they had held the previous night with Boehner and Issa. The two Groundswellers had encouraged the lawmakers to set up a special committee to investigate the attacks on the US facilities in Benghazi. Boykin, according to the recording, noted that Boehner had said he wanted the process “to play out” first, apparently meaning that he wasn’t yet ready to step up the GOP Benghazi campaign. Boehner, Boykin recounted, had expressed the concern that were he to create such a committee, the media would cover it as a political stunt designed to bring down Obama.

Boykin, a retired general and Christian fundamentalist who caused a dust-up in 2003 when he gave a speech (while still on active duty) saying that his god was “a real god” and Allah was an “idol,” told the Groundswellers that he expected the Benghazi matter to blossom into a full-blown scandal: “We’ve got an ugly baby here and it’s going to get uglier.” He maintained that “we’re going to find…a huge deception.”

Gaffney, a birther who has been booted out of several conservative outfits for his fiercely anti-Islam views and who has accused Obama of “submission to Islam,” added, “I’m somewhat encouraged that they’re taking this thing very much to heart and we really impressed upon Boehner that there’s a lot of restiveness on the part of folks like us, and some of their donors as a matter of fact, about what’s happening here.” In other words, Boykin and Gaffney were issuing something of a warning to Boehner and Issa: Go hard on Benghazi or risk losing financial and grassroots support.

After the two were done, Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, counseled fellow Groundswellers on how they should handle the Benghazi controversy. Don’t mention impeachment of Hillary Clinton, he cautioned, for that would only politicize the issue and “hurt the goal” of establishing a special congressional committee. Then Engelbrecht added, “I think they have all the notes on Benghazi. Let’s move ahead.”

As of yet, Boykin, Gaffney, and the other Groundswellers have not gotten the special Benghazi committee they wanted. But the recording shows that Groundswell has access to the top leaders of the GOP, and its reps are not reluctant to pressure those pols.

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Groundswell: A Secret Tape Reveals How It Lobbied Boehner and Issa on Benghazi

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