Hillary Clinton Sugarcoating Her Disastrous Record
By Ralph Nader | February 12, 2016
Bernie Sanders is far too easy on Hillary Clinton in their debates. Clinton flaunts her record and experience in ways that Sanders could use to expose her serious vulnerabilities and disqualifications for becoming president. Sanders responds to Clinton’s points, but without the precision that could demolish her arrogance.
For example, she repeatedly says that Sanders has not levelled with people about the cost of full Medicare for all, or single-payer. Really? In other countries, single-payer is far simpler and more efficient than our present profiteering, wasteful, corporatized healthcare industry. Canada covers all of its citizens, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, for about $4,500 per capita, compared to the over $9,000 per capita cost in the U.S. system that still leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured.
Detailed studies in the New England Journal of Medicine show big savings from a single-payer system in our country.
It is Hillary Clinton who is not levelling with the people about the costs of maintaining the spiraling U.S. costs of drugs, hospital stays and insurance premiums that are the highest in the world. The costs include: 1) the waste of well over $1 trillion a year; 2) daily denials of coverage by the Aetnas of the corporate world; 3) about forty thousand Americans dying each year, according to a peer-reviewed Harvard Medical School study, because they cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time; and 4) daily agonizing negotiations over insurance company denials, exclusions and bureaucratic paperwork that drive physicians up the wall.
Clinton hasn’t explained why she was once for single-payer until she defined her “being practical” as refusing to take on big pharma, commercial hospital chains and the giant insurance companies. She is very “practical” about taking political contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street and the health care industry.
As one 18 year-old student told the New York Times recently about Clinton, “sometimes you get this feeling that all of her sentences are owned by someone.”
This protector of the status quo and the gross imbalance of power between the few and the many expresses perfectly why Wall Street financiers like her so much and prove it with their large continuing monetary contributions.
Hillary Clinton is not “levelling with the American people,” when she keeps the transcripts (which she requested at the time) of her secret speeches (at $5,000 a minute!) before large Wall Street and trade association conventions. Her speaking contracts mandated secrecy. Clinton still hasn’t told voters what she was telling big bankers and many other industries from automotive to drugs to real estate developers behind closed doors.
She has the gall to accuse Bernie Sanders of not being transparent. Sanders is a presidential candidate who doesn’t take big-fee speeches or big donations from fat cat influence-peddlers, and his record is as clean as the Clintons’ political entanglements are sordid. (See Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.)
But it is in the area of foreign and military affairs that “Hillary the hawk” is most vulnerable. As Secretary of State her aggressiveness and poor judgement led her to the White House where, sweeping aside the strong objections of Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, she persuaded President Obama to bomb Libya and topple its dictatorial regime.
Gates had warned about the aftermath. He was right. Libya has descended into a ghastly state of chaotic violence that has spilled into neighboring African nations, such as Mali, and that opened the way for ISIS to establish an expanding base in central Libya. Her fellow hawks in Washington are now calling for U.S. special forces to go to Libya.
Whether as Senator on the Armed Services Committee or as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton has never met a war or raid she didn’t like, or a redundant, wasteful weapons system she was willing to aggressively challenge. As president, Hillary Clinton would mean more wars, more raids, more blowbacks, more military spending and more profits for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so prophetically warned about in his farewell address.
So when Bernie Sanders properly chided her for having as an advisor, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, she bridled and tried to escape by asking Sanders to name his foreign policy advisors.
In fact, Kissinger and Clinton do have much in common about projecting the American Empire to brutal levels. Kissinger was the “butcher of Cambodia,” launching an illegal assault that destabilized that peaceful country into the Pol Pot slaughter of millions of innocents. She was the illegal “butcher of Libya,” an ongoing, unfolding tragedy whose blowbacks of “unintended consequences” are building by the week.
In a devastating recounting of Hillary Clinton’s disastrous war-making, Professor of Sustainable Economies at Columbia University, Jeffrey D. Sachs concludes that Clinton “is the candidate of the War Machine.” In a widely noted article on Huffington Post Professor Sachs, an advisor the United Nations on millennium development goals, called her record a “disaster,” adding that “Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens U.S. security.”
The transformation of Hillary Clinton from a progressive young lawyer to a committed corporatist and militarist brings shame on the recent endorsement of her candidacy by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC.
But then, considering all the years of Clintonite double talk and corporate contributions going to the Black Caucus PAC (according to FEC reports January through December, 2015), and the Black Caucus conventions, why should anybody be surprised that Black Lives Matter and a growing surge of young African Americans are looking for someone in the White House who is not known for the Clintons’ sweet-talking betrayals?
See Michelle Alexander’s recent article in The Nation, “Hillary Clinton Does Not Deserve Black People’s Votes” for more information on this subject.
Giving Peace Very Little Chance
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | February 5, 2016
After nearly 15 years of Mideast war – with those conflicts growing ever grimmer – you might expect that peace would be a major topic of the 2016 presidential race. Instead, there has been a mix of warmongering bluster from most candidates and some confused mutterings against endless war from a few.
No one, it seems, wants to risk offending Official Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment that is ready to castigate any candidate who suggests that there are other strategies – besides more and more “regime changes” – that might extricate the United States from the Middle East quicksand.
Late in Thursday’s Democratic debate – when the topic of war finally came up – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued toeing the neocon line, calling Iran the chief sponsor of terrorism in the world, when that title might objectively go to U.S. “allies,” such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of whom have been aiding Sunni jihadists fighting to overthrow Syria’s secular regime.
Israel also has provided help to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which has been battling Syrian troops and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters near the Golan Heights – and Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians has played a key role in stirring up hatred and violence in the Middle East.
But Clinton has fully bought into the neocon narrative, not especially a surprise since she voted for the Iraq War, pushed the disastrous Libyan “regime change” and has sought a limited U.S. military invasion of Syria (to prevent the Syrian army from securing its border with Turkey and reclaiming territory from jihadists and other rebels).
Blasting Iran
In Thursday’s debate – coming off her razor-thin victory in the Iowa caucuses – Clinton painted Iran as the big regional threat, putting herself fully in line with the neocon position.
“We have to figure out how to deal with Iran as the principal state sponsor of terrorism in the world,” Clinton said. “They are destabilizing governments in the region. They continue to support Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon against Israel. …
“If we were to normalize relations right now [with Iran], we would remove one of the biggest pieces of leverage we have to try to influence and change Iranian behavior. … I believe we have to take this step by step to try to rein in Iranian aggression, their support for terrorism and the other bad behavior that can come back and haunt us.”
Iran, of course, has been a longtime neocon target for “regime change” along with Syria (and before that Iraq). Many neocons were disappointed when President Barack Obama negotiated an agreement to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program remained peaceful (an accord reached after John Kerry replaced Clinton as Secretary of State). The neocons had been hoping that the U.S. military would join Israel in an air war to “bomb-bomb-bomb Iran” — as Sen. John McCain once famously declared.
Yet, there were other distortions in Clinton’s statement. While it’s true that Iran has aided Hezbollah and Hamas in their resistance to Israel, Clinton ignored other factors, such as Israeli acts of aggression against both Lebanon, where Hezbollah emerged as resistance to an Israeli invasion and occupation in the 1980s, and the Palestinians who have faced Israeli oppression for generations.
Silence on the ‘Allies’
In the debate, Clinton also avoided criticism of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey for their military and financial assistance to radical jihadists, including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and Al Qaeda’s spinoff, the Islamic State. At the urging of Clinton, the Obama administration also approved military shipments to Syrian rebels who then either turned over or sold U.S. weapons to the extremists.
Iran’s role in Syria has been to help support the internationally recognized government of Bashar al-Assad, whose military remains the principal bulwark protecting Syria’s Christian, Alawite, Shiite and other minorities from possible genocide if Al Qaeda-connected jihadists prevailed.
Clinton also ignored her own role in creating a haven for these terror groups across the Middle East because of her support for the Iraq War and her instigation of the 2011 “regime change” in Libya which created another failed state where Islamic State and various extremists have found a home and started chopping of the heads of “infidels.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who battled Clinton to a virtual tie in Iowa, took a somewhat less belligerent position at Thursday’s debate, repeating his rather naïve idea of having Sunni states lead the fight against Sunni jihadists. On the more reasonable side, he indicated a willingness to work with Russia and other world powers in support of an anti-jihadist coalition.
“It must be Muslim troops on the ground that will destroy ISIS, with the support of a coalition of major powers — U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Russia,” Sanders said. “So our job is to provide them the military equipment that they need; the air support they need; special forces when appropriate. But at the end of the day for a dozen different reasons … the combat on the ground must be done by Muslim troops with our support. We must not get involved in perpetual warfare in the Middle East.”
Sanders continued, “We cannot be the policeman of the world. We are now spending more I believe than the next eight countries on defense. We have got to work in strong coalition with the major powers of the world and with those Muslim countries that are prepared to stand up and take on terrorism. So I would say that the key doctrine of the Sanders administration would be no, we cannot continue to do it alone; we need to work in coalition.”
Sounding Less Hawkish
While Sanders clearly sought to sound less hawkish than Clinton – and did not repeat his earlier talking point about the Saudis and others “getting their hands dirty” – he did not address the reality that many of the Sunni countries that he hopes to enlist in the fight against the jihadists are already engaged – on the side of the jihadists.
Clinton, as she seeks to cut into Sanders’s lead in New Hampshire polls, has been stressing her “progressive” credentials, but many progressive Democrats suspect that Clinton could become a neocon Trojan Horse.
Arch-neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, has praised Clinton’s aggressive foreign policy.
Kagan, who was made an adviser to Clinton’s State Department (while his wife Victoria Nuland received big promotions under Clinton), said in 2014: “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.” [For more, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Is Hillary Clinton a Neocon-Lite?”]
Not only did Clinton vote for the Iraq War – and support it until it became a political liability during Campaign 2008 – but she rejoined the neocon/liberal-hawk ranks as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. She routinely sided with neocon holdovers, such as Gen. David Petraeus, regarding Mideast wars and Israel’s hardline regime in its hostilities toward the Palestinians and Iran.
In 2011, Clinton pushed for “regime change” in Libya, chortling over Muammar Gaddafi’s torture-murder in October 2011, “We came. We saw. He died.” Since then, Libya has descended into a failed state with the Islamic State and other jihadists claiming more and more territory.
Clinton also favored an outright (though limited) U.S. military invasion of Syria, setting up a “safe zone” or “no-fly zone” that would protect militants fighting to overthrow the secular Assad government. Over and over again, she has adopted positions virtually identical to what the neocons prescribe.
But Sanders, although he opposed the Iraq War, has hesitated to challenge Clinton too directly on foreign policy, apparently fearing to distract from his focus on income inequality and domestic concerns. He apparently has chosen fuzziness on foreign policy as the better part of political valor.
GOP Neocons Score
On the Republican side, the first week of the presidential delegate-selection process saw two candidates who mildly questioned the neocon conventional wisdom face reversals. Billionaire Donald Trump was upset in the Iowa caucuses and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul shut down his flailing campaign.
Trump has noted his opposition to the Iraq War and his willingness to cooperate with Russia in the fight against jihadist terror, while Paul pushed a libertarian-style approach that questioned neocon interventionism but not as aggressively as his father did, apparently hoping to avoid Ron Paul’s marginalization as “an isolationist.”
While Trump and Paul stumbled this week, neocon favorite Marco Rubio surged to a strong third-place finish, catapulting past other establishment candidates who – while largely me-too-ing the neocon orthodoxy on foreign policy – are not as identified with pure neoconservatism as the youthful Florida senator is.
However, even the non-neocons have opted for visceral warmongering. Tea Party favorite and winner of the Republican Iowa caucuses, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, has vowed to “carpet bomb” Islamic State strongholds and promised to see “if sand can glow in the dark,” as he told a Tea Party rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The phrase “glow in the dark” popularly refers to the aftermath of a nuclear bomb detonation.
However, as hardline as Cruz is, he still received a tongue-lashing from the neocon-flagship Washington Post for not doing a “full-neocon” when he suggested that the United States should not focus on “regime change” in Syria. Cruz has worried that overthrowing Assad’s government might pave the way for a victory by the Islamic State and other Sunni jihadist terrorists.
In a Dec. 31, 2015 editorial, the Post’s editors instead hailed neocon favorite Rubio for arguing “forcefully” for Assad’s removal and castigated Cruz for saying Assad’s ouster was “a distraction at best – and might even empower the jihadist.”
A Beloved ‘Group Think’
It is one of Official Washington’s most beloved “group thinks” that Syrian “regime change” – a neocon goal dating back to the 1990s – must take precedence over the possible creation of a military vacuum that could bring the Islamic State and/or Al Qaeda to power.
After all, it won’t be the sons and daughters of well-connected neocons who are sent to invade and occupy Syria to reverse the capture of Damascus by the Islamic State and/or Al Qaeda. So, the Post’s editors, who in 2002-03 told the American people as flat fact that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was hiding WMD, engaged in similar exaggerations and lies about Assad in demonizing Cruz for his apostasy.
“Mr. Cruz is arguing for a stridently anti-American and nakedly genocidal dictator who sponsored terrorism against U.S. troops in Iraq and serves as a willing puppet of Iran,” the Post wrote.
That is typical of what a politician can expect if he or she deviates from the neocon line, even if you’re someone as belligerent as Cruz. Any apostasy from neocon orthodoxy is treated most harshly.
There is, by the way, no evidence that Assad is “nakedly genocidal” – his largely secular regime has never targeted any specific ethnic or religious group, indeed his government is the principal protector of Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other minorities that have been targeted by Sunni extremists for death.
Nor did Assad sponsor “terrorism against U.S. troops in Iraq.” By definition, terrorism is political violence against civilians, not against a military occupation force. Assad also sought to collaborate with the Bush-43 administration in its “war on terror,” to the point of handling torture assignments from Washington.
But distortions and falsehoods are now the way of the modern Washington Post. The newspaper will say anything, no matter how dishonest or unfair, to advance the neocon cause.
But the most dangerous outcome from these pressures is that they prevent a serious debate about a most serious topic: what the next president must do to bring the costly, bloody and endless wars to an end.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
George Soros, Haim Saban give $12 million to Clinton campaign
Hillary Clinton has written a letter to Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban (left), pledging to speak out publicly against the BDS campaign aimed at Israel
Press TV – February 1, 2016
American billionaire George Soros donated $6 million to a super-PAC financing US Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton last month, a report says.
Soros has now provided a total of $7 million in this election cycle to Priorities USA Action, a super-PAC which raised $41 million on behalf of Clinton in 2015, according to the committee’s statement issued on Sunday.
The super-PAC raised $25.3 million during the last 6 months, and Soros’s contribution accounted for almost a quarter of its funding haul.
Haim Saban, an Israeli-American media tycoon, and his wife Cheryl have contributed a total of $5 million to Clinton’s super-PAC.
Clinton has written a letter to Saban, pledging to speak out publicly against the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign aimed at Israel.
Wealthy individuals, who are restricted by law from giving large amounts directly to candidates’ campaigns, donate to political action committees, commonly known as super-PACs.
American billionaire George Soros has contributed a total of $7 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign so far
In the 2010 Citizens United case ruling, the US Supreme Court allowed unlimited independent spending by corporations in elections.
According to a study published by the New York Times, wealthy individuals and corporations have begun to replace powerless people as direct beneficiaries of the US political system and the Constitution.
Clinton is maintaining a slim lead over Senator Bernie Sanders in Iowa, according to a poll released on Saturday.
Clinton beat out rival Sanders in the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll. She has 45 percent support, with Sanders at 42 percent.
On Saturday, The New York Times endorsed Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination, a potential boost for the candidate two days before the Iowa caucuses.
Times editors wrote that they chose Clinton over her main rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, due to her experience and policy ideas.
The editorial board described Clinton as “one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.”
Hillary’s Corporate Democrats Taking Down Bernie Sanders
By Ralph Nader | January 29, 2016
Before announcing for President in the Democratic Primaries, Bernie Sanders told the people he would not run as an Independent and be like Nader—invoking the politically-bigoted words “being a spoiler.” Well, the spoiled corporate Democrats in Congress and their consultants are mounting a “stop Bernie campaign.” They believe he’ll “spoil” their election prospects.
Sorry Bernie, because anybody who challenges the positions of the corporatist, militaristic, Wall Street-funded Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, in the House and Senate—is by their twisted definition, a “spoiler.” It doesn’t matter how many of Bernie’s positions are representative of what a majority of the American people want for their country.
What comes around goes around. Despite running a clean campaign, funded by small donors averaging $27, with no scandals in his past and with consistency throughout his decades of standing up for the working and unemployed people of this country, Sanders is about to be Hillaried. Her Capitol Hill cronies have dispatched Congressional teams to Iowa.
The shunning of Bernie Sanders is underway. Did you see him standing alone during the crowded State of the Union gathering?
Many of the large unions, that Bernie has championed for decades, have endorsed Hillary, known for her job-destroying support for NAFTA and the World Trade Organization and her very late involvement in working toward a minimum wage increase.
National Nurses United, one of the few unions endorsing Bernie, is not fooled by Hillary’s sudden anti-Wall Street rhetoric in Iowa. They view Hillary Clinton, the Wall Street servant (and speechifier at $5000 a minute) with disgust.
Candidate Clinton’s latest preposterous pledge is to “crack down” on the
“greed” of corporations and declare that Wall Street bosses are opposing her because they realize she will “come right after them.”
Because Sanders is not prone to self-congratulation, few people know that he receives the highest Senatorial approval rating and the lowest disapproval rating from his Vermonters than any Senator receives from his or her constituents. This peak support for a self-avowed “democratic socialist,” comes from a state once known for its rock-ribbed conservative Republican traditions.
Minority House Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi has unleashed her supine followers to start wounding and depreciating Sanders. Pelosi acolyte Adam Schiff (D. California) tells the media he doubts Sanders’s electability and he could have “very significant downstream consequences in House and Senate races.”
Mr. Schiff somehow ignores that the House and Senate Democratic leadership repeatedly could not defend the country from the worst Republican Party in history, whose dozens of anti-human, pro-big business votes should have toppled many GOP candidates. Instead, Nancy Pelosi has led the House Democrats to three straight calamitous losses (2010, 2012, 2014) to the Republicans, for whom public cruelties toward the powerless is a matter of principle.
Pelosi threw her own poisoned darts at Sanders, debunking his far more life-saving, efficient, and comprehensive, full Medicare-for-all plan with free choice of doctor and hospital with the knowingly misleading comment “We’re not running on any platform of raising taxes.” Presumably that includes continuing the Democratic Party’s practice of letting Wall Street, the global companies and the super-wealthy continue to get away with their profitable tax escapes.
Pelosi doesn’t expect the Democrats to make gains in the House of Representatives in 2016. But she has managed to hold on to her post long enough to help elect Hillary Clinton—no matter what Clinton’s record as a committed corporatist toady and a disastrous militarist (e.g., Iraq and the War on Libya) has been over the years.
For Pelosi it’s bring on the ‘old girls club,’ it’s our turn. The plutocracy and the oligarchy running this country into the ground have no worries. The genders of the actors are different, but the monied interests maintain their corporate state and hand out their campaign cash—business as usual.
Bernie Sanders, however, does present a moral risk for the corrupt Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee, which are already turning on one of their own leading candidates. His years in politics so cleanly contrasts with the sordid, scandalized, cashing-in behavior of the Clintons.
Pick up a copy of Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash, previewed early in 2015 by the New York Times. Again and again Schweizer documents the conflicted interest maneuvering of donors to the Clinton Foundation, shady deals involving global corporations and dictators, and huge speaking fees, with the Clinton Foundation and the State department as inventories to benefit the Clintons. The Clintons embody what is sleazy and harmful about corporate political intrigues.
If and when Bernie Sanders is brought down by the very party he is championing, the millions of Bernie supporters, especially young voters, will have to consider breaking off into a new political party that will make American history. That means dissolving the dictatorial two-party duopoly and its ruinous, unpatriotic, democracy-destroying corporate paymasters.
Hillary Clinton’s Own Petard
By Bart Gruzalski | Consortium News | January 29, 2015
Journalist Robert Parry in a recent piece on Hillary Clinton shows us that she has moved to the right of President Barack Obama and is actively courting the support of neocons while operating within the Beltway’s foreign policy consensus:
“Clinton is rolling the dice in the belief that most Democrats won’t think through the fallacious ‘group thinks’ of Official Washington – or will at least be scared and confused enough to steer away from [Sen. Bernie] Sanders. That way, Clinton believes she can still win the nomination.”
Not that this is entirely new. Clinton’s attempts to project a commander-in-chief toughness began during her 2008 primary fight against Obama, but her own famous ad from eight years ago gives us a criterion for POTUS that she fails to satisfy.
To underscore doubts about Obama’s readiness to be president, Hillary Clinton’s team created an ingenious ad that played on the fear factor while emphasizing her experience with military issues and with foreign leaders. As a phone rings in the background, we hear a male voice:
“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call: Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military – someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?”
The visuals begin with the image of a suburban middle-class house, then quickly fades to images of one child after another asleep. A parent opens a door and looks down as the male voice ends with the question above: “Who do you want answering the phone?” The final image is Hillary Clinton wearing a brown business-suit and glasses, picking up the phone: “I’m Hillary Clinton and I approve of this message.”
That ad is not running this election cycle, perhaps for good reason. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated that she is not a person with good enough judgment to answer a 3 a.m. phone call.
Administrative Bad Judgment
For instance, Hillary Clinton has told us that none of her Secretary of State emails were classified. Yet on Jan. 19, the intelligence community’s inspector general Charles McCullough responded to inquiries from Senate committees overseeing intelligence matters, saying that some of Clinton’s emails contained sensitive information above “top secret.”
“Several dozen additional classified emails have been found,” he reported, “including ones containing information from so-called ‘special access programs.’” The emails about special access programs were so sensitive that “McCullough and some of his aides had to receive clearance” to review the material.
Hillary Clinton’s hair-splitting distinction between what was labeled or marked “classified” at the time and what was in fact so sensitive that it deserved a “top secret” stamp (or higher) is irrelevant, for negligence is not a defense when it comes to national security information.
As Secretary of State, Clinton should have realized that some emails sent to her would contain highly sensitive information, even when it was not labeled that way. Her failure to use a secure government server reflects very bad judgment for a person wanting to make decisions about how the U.S. government should respond to 3 a.m. crises “happening in the world.”
Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for the Clinton campaign in November, inadvertently confirmed her boss’ lousy judgment. Palmieri appeared on Bloomberg TV and said “that Clinton ‘didn’t really think it through’ when she decided to use her personal email account for State Department business.”
Political Bad Judgment
But the email brouhaha is not the only significant example of Clinton showing poor judgment. (Arguably far worse, she has admitted to a “mistake” in voting for the Iraq War, which some foreign policy analysts consider the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history).
Also, on a personal level, seeking to burnish her image as a tough and seasoned player on the world stage, she began a foreign policy address at George Washington University on March 17, 2008, by describing her landing in Bosnia during that country’s civil war:
“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base. … There was no greeting ceremony, and we were basically told to run to our cars. Now, that is what happened.”
Clinton later said she misspoke after CBS released the video of her, with daughter Chelsea, greeting dignitaries, receiving flowers, and visiting with a little girl on the tarmac. For Clinton to tell her dramatic tale about her Bosnian tarmac experience when she should have realized that major news agencies had visual records is another instance of very bad judgment.
This also was not a one-off slip-up that Bill Clinton blamed on her being 60 years old and tired (which should raise another red flag since she is now eight years older). She had been repeating versions of the story since December 2007.
So who should answer that urgent 3 a.m. White House phone call? Should it be someone who has exercised seriously bad judgment as a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State as well as verifiably bad judgment in the political arena? Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s war candidate, has hoisted herself on her own petard.
Bart Gruzalski, Professor Emeritus Northeastern University Boston, has published three books, over 50 articles, as well as articles online.
The Iowa Speech Bernie Sanders Never Delivered
By John V. Walsh | CounterPunch | January 19, 2016
Good evening. I have purchased this television time tonight on every available media outlet here in Iowa, just days in advance of the 2016 caucuses. I address you, because the choice you make in a few days time could well determine whether we live in peace or go to war, possibly nuclear war. The very survival of humanity could hang in the balance. And it hinges on whether you vote for me or for my principal opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Let us be blunt, she has never seen a war she did not like. And looking at the wars of the last 25 years, she has been an ardent supporter in every case and a principal architect of most of them.
This campaign in Iowa has a bit of déjà vu to it. In 2008, Iowans gave a victory to Barack Obama in the caucuses, the first step in derailing the Clinton presidential candidacy back then. You did so because Obama presented himself as the peace candidate whereas Hillary Clinton was already known as an implacable hawk. You voted for peace. Unfortunately, Obama let you down and pursued a more warlike course, in no small part due to pressure from then Secretary of State Clinton and her allies in and out of government. I do not intend to let you down. I want to make that crystal clear tonight.
My new view of America’s place in the world in the 21st Century, which I wish to enunciate this evening, is a further development of my vote against the Iraq War. In short I now commit myself to a principled anti-interventionist stand. Let us have no more wars. That is within our power. My present view results from an intense discussion with activists in my campaign and more importantly from progressives who refused to join the campaign because of my earlier weak stance on interventionism. I thank them. I owe far more to them than those who simply went along to get along. I hope that those who refused to sign on to the campaign will do so now. I welcome them in advance and congratulate them on their integrity.
Perhaps the shortcomings of my earlier views had to do with my devotion to Israel. But we must face facts: Israel is an apartheid state, as former President Jimmy Carter so forcefully and eloquently demonstrated in his book, “Palestine. Peace Not Apartheid.” We can no more claim to be just in supporting Israel than we could when we supported apartheid South Africa. I now repudiate my earlier defense of Israel’s barbaric bombing of defenseless Gazans. I was wrong to defend that criminal action. And I commit myself to ending apartheid in historic Palestine in a decisive way.
Perhaps I have also been too committed to the idea of a campaign that is polite. But that too has been wrong. By any reasonable standard Mrs. Clinton is a war criminal and mass murderer. And no war criminal deserves to be treated with kid gloves. To do so is to disrespect the thousands of American lives unnecessarily lost because of her policies. And it is to disrespect the millions of Muslims and others in the Middle East and North Africa who have lost lives, families, loved ones, home and hearth. She criticizes Donald Trump for his statements about some Muslims. But her charge rings hollow when there is so much Muslim blood on her hands. Killing is worse than slandering by far.
But let me be more specific. The Clinton administration of the 1990’s enjoyed the benefit of the end of the Cold War. It could have opened an era of peace. Instead of treating Russia with respect and taking a stance of peace, the Clintons repeated the error of the Treaty of Versailles, lording it over Russia and beginning the expansion of NATO to the East. That expansion has culminated in the coup and crisis in Ukraine engineered by a protégé of both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Cheney, the arch neoconservative Victoria Nuland. And that action has pushed us deep into a new Cold War with Russia, which according to former Secretary of Defense in the Clintons’ administration, William Perry, makes nuclear war a greater threat today than in the first Cold War! That is the precipice to which Mrs. Clinton and other neoconservatives and “humanitarian” warriors have driven us.
Ms. Clinton has not been satisfied with the development of a Cold War in Europe alone. She has also, along with President Obama, set us on a course of conflict with China, with her so-called “pivot to Asia,” using Japan as the cat’s paw for new anti-China confrontations.
The Chinese idea of a win-win interaction among nations, indeed the plea for it by China, has fallen on deaf ears in our media and has been firmly rejected by Ms. Clinton and her cabal in the Obama administration.
With regard to China I must ask: What is she thinking? For over a year now, China now has been the number one economy in the world in Purchasing Power Parity terms according to the IMF. It is now building up its arms at a more rapid pace in response to our threats. The antagonism of our government to China in an attempt to weaken it and bring it down is a futile course and a dangerous one. It needs to be reversed at once, as does our bellicosity to Russia.
I also note in fairness to Barack Obama, that his administration, since the departure of Secretary Clinton, has moved, however gingerly, into more peaceful waters where she did not wish to sail. The opening to Cuba and then to Iran and some signs of a developing détente in the meetings of Secretary Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov are testimony to that. They did not occur while the belligerent Hillary Clinton was at the helm of State.
Let me finally say something about the emails on Benghazi that Ms. Clinton decided to hide in her secret server, illegally I might say. I have tried to be gallant on this issue, not least because some in Congress have used it in a trivial and partisan way. That was wrong of me, because Ms. Clinton like the rest of us should not be above the law. But focusing on the crime of hiding the emails may distract from greater crimes in the actual content of the emails.
Seymour Hersh has laid out the case that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was the site for a gun running operation to jihadists in Syria. This is what the CIA calls a “rat line,” a term we should all be familiar with and consign forever to the past. The late U.S. Ambassador who served under Mrs. Clinton was most likely involved in implementing that “rat line.” Of course that gun running and destabilization of both Libya and Syria on Mrs. Clinton’s watch has resulted not only in hundreds of thousands of dead but has also precipitated the massive immigration crisis engulfing Europe. We need a full investigation of the intervention in Libya, the illegal gun running, including Mrs. Clinton’s role in it. Her illegally hidden emails may well contain crucial information on this matter. We need to see them, all of them, before the Democratic Party makes its choice of a candidate for President.
Thank you for listening to this message. I hope you will vote for me in the caucuses coming up in just a few days. The avoidance of nuclear catastrophe and perhaps the very survival of the human race may well depend upon the rejection of those, like Mrs. Clinton, who would lead us down a road to more wars and conflict.
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com
It’s Wrong to Take Clinton’s Claim of Possible US-Russia ‘Reset’ Seriously
Sputnik – January 18, 2016
MOSCOW – A possibility of “a reset” in the Russian-US ties voiced by US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cannot be taken seriously, experts told Sputnik Monday, stressing that the statement was a tactical ploy by an “opportunistic” politician.
Earlier in the day, former US Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said a hypothetical “reset” of Russia-US relations is possible, but would depend on what Washington obtained from it.
“It would be a mistake to place any hope in Hilary Clinton,” John Laughland, the director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, said, adding that she is “a very opportunistic woman who will say anything without thinking about it very much.”
Under Clinton, the idea of “a reset” was inconsistent, Laughland highlighted, citing as an example the appointment of Michael McFaul as US Ambassador to Russia, who in fact was “one of the most catastrophic ambassadors that America has ever sent anywhere I would say.”
“Clinton’s comment clearly is an electoral gimmick meant to present her as a realist ready to constructively re-engage with Russia. But after the failure of Obama’s earlier reset, and given Clinton’s record as a hardliner, Moscow is not going to be in the least impressed,” Vlad Sobell, a professor of politics at New York University in Prague, told Sputnik.
He also reminded of the failure of a previous “reset,” in which Clinton even pressed “a reset button” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and which resulted in Washington’s “multifaceted aggressive campaign against the Russian Federation.” A new “reset” would require almost impossible conditions and circumstances, and the essential thing for Washington to revise and renew contacts with Moscow is dropping its exceptional idea, a political analyst on Russia outlined.
“A fundamental reset would be possible only when the US elite gives up on its quest to establish absolute world hegemony,” Jon Hellevig noted.
Meanwhile, Laughland called the process “a reality check,” which envisaged the need for Washington to understand that the world was composed of other states with different and sometimes conflicting interests, and those interests could not be overruled by US exceptionalism.
The United States needs to stop thinking that its power and leadership are the necessary ingredients for the world peace, he noted, adding, nevertheless, that those passages have been an integral element of all the US strategic documents.
Looking at the future of Russian-US ties, the experts appear to be quite pessimistic regardless of who is elected the US president.”It is now beyond doubt that US policy is not driven by the White House but by the military-industrial complex, or the so called deep state. And this uncontrollable monster is demonstrably hell-bent on deepening the US-Russia confrontation,” Sobell suggested.
Hellevig pointed at Donald Trump as “the one that offers a hope for a real change in America and its relations to the rest of the world.”
If Trump stands for what he has said during his campaign, he could pose a threat to the present US elite, the political analyst said.
“But it is difficult to see how a mere president of the United States could in reality stand against those interest groups,” Hellevig admitted.
Russia-US ties have been strained since 2014, when Washington, as well as the European Union and their allies, introduced several rounds of sanctions against Moscow over its alleged involvement into an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, and what the Western officials and media described as “annexation” of Crimea.
The Black Sea peninsula reunified with Russia in March 2014 following a political referendum in the region, in which 96 percent of the population voted in favor of joining Russia.
Moscow has repeatedly insisted that the vote was held in full compliance with democratic procedure and international rule of law.
Hillary Clinton calls for new Iran sanctions due to missile test
RT | January 17, 2016
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called for new sanctions on Iran over its recent ballistic missile test. Her comments come as earlier economic sanctions are being partly lifted, after Iran fulfilled measures set by the nuclear deal.
“Iran is still violating UN Security Council resolutions with its ballistic missile program, which should be met with new sanctions designations and firm resolve,” Clinton said in a statement.
The former US secretary of state stressed that if she is elected president this year, she will take on Iran with a “distrust and verify” attitude.
Clinton also applauded Iran’s release of US citizens. “I am greatly relieved by the safe return of American prisoners from Iran.”
Latest media reports indicated that a detained American student, Matthew Trevithick, has already left Iran, while “logistical steps” are in process to send four other prisoners, including the jailed Tehran bureau chief for the Washington Post, Jason Rezaian, home.
While lashing out at Iran for its missile tests, Clinton has apparently been fine with weapons being sent to some of its Middle Eastern neighbors, despite them being criticized for dismal human rights records.
Amid Clinton‘s presidential campaign, media reports have surfaced claiming that regional players, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have donated billions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. At the same time, those same nations had weapons deals approved by the US State Department when it was headed by Clinton.
“Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents,” International Business Times wrote in May 2015, citing a review of available records.
Meanwhile, US Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal joined Clinton’s call for more sanctions on Iran on Saturday, arguing its missile tests violated UN resolutions.
“Without delay, the United States should enforce sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program,” Blumenthal said.
Both Clinton’s and Blumenthal’s statements come as international economic sanctions imposed on Iran earlier due to suspicions that its nuclear program was being used to develop atomic weapons were formally lifted after the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – released a statement saying Iran has fulfilled all of the measures required under its deal with six world powers.
“The report was submitted to IAEA board of governors and to the United Nations Security Council,” IAEA director general Yukiya Amano said on Saturday, adding that “it was issued after agency inspectors on the ground verified that Iran has carried out all measures required under the JCPOA to enable implementation day to occur.”
The JCPOA, known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed between Tehran and six world powers (the so-called P5+1 group comprised of China, France, Russia, the UK, the US and Germany) on July 14, 2015. The deal entailed Iran shrinking its atomic program in return for the US, EU and UN lifting economic sanctions.
Hillary Clinton flip flops, attacks Sanders on healthcare
RT | January 13, 2016
Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton joined her mother, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail this week to attack the single-payer healthcare plan proposed by opponent Bernie Sanders.
Even though Hillary asked “since when do Democrats attack one another on universal health care?” during a 2008 speech in response to a mailer from her opponent at the time, Barack Obama, she called the Sanders plan to cover everyone regardless of their ability to pay as a “risky deal”.
The Sanders plan would destroy private insurance and drug companies, who have donated millions of dollars to Hillary’s campaigns for senate and president.
Clinton famously told candidate Obama “shame on you” in 2008, but now she’s defending his legacy healthcare program dubbed Obamacare, which delivered millions of new customers to for-profit insurance companies through its mandatory coverage clause.
Mother Jones described the new attacks as “an abrupt shift” with just a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
Chelsea falsely claimed that millions of people would lose coverage under the Sanders plan during a campaign stop on Tuesday in New Hampshire, where Sanders is now leading in the polls.
“Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,” she said. “I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we’ll go back to an era – before we had the Affordable Care Act – that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”
In fact, not only would those Americans currently covered by Obamacare continue to be protected by the Sanders plan, but it would also cover the millions of Americans who still can’t afford insurance under the so-called “Affordable Care Act”.
Sanders believes healthcare should be a human right and available to all, regardless of wealth or income.
Chelsea, on the other hand, married a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, lives in an expensive New York City condo, serves on several boards including her father’s controversial Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative, and previously worked at a hedge fund.
Sanders voted for Obamacare, but believes it has not gone far enough to provide adequate care for all.
“Deductibles remain much too high for people,” Sanders explained on the MSNBC program Morning Joe. “The question we have to ask is, why are we paying almost three times more per capita than the folks in the UK, 50 percent more than the French, and they guarantee health care to all of their people?”
Sanders proposes Medicare for all, which he says will save taxpayers about $500 billion per year including the initial costs of transitioning from Obamacare.
He also wants to tackle pharmaceutical companies who have been accused by doctors of letting patients die for the sake of profit and donated more money to Clinton’s campaign than any other candidate from either party.
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Bernie gains double-digit lead on Hillary in New Hampshire – poll
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel
- US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops
- What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say
- ‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz
- Pakistan Throws Open Its Gates for Iran’s Transit Trade to Third Countries
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 