FLASHBACK: Tony Blair Testimony Before the Chilcot Inquiry in 2010 (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "U.K. Chilcot Report Offers Devastating Critique of Tony Blair and the Iraq War."

It turns out Tony Blair gave a public speech today, and he apparently got choked up. I'll look for the video clip shortly and update.

Meanwhile, here's his initial testimony to the committee of inquiry, at ODN, "The day Tony Blair gave evidence to the Iraq war inquiry."

U.K. Chilcot Report Offers Devastating Critique of Tony Blair and the Iraq War

I'm just reading, soaking this in.

And of course folks have long known where I stand. Indeed, the Iraq war's the main reason I started blogging. (See, "The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths," and "Judith Miller, 'I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me...'")

At the Telegraph UK, "Chilcot report: 2003 Iraq war was 'unnecessary', invasion was not 'last resort' and Saddam Hussein was 'no imminent threat'."

And at the Guardian UK, "Chilcot report live: Blair says report clears him of 'bad faith' but Iraq inquiry says he exaggerated case for war."

Also, at London's Daily Mail, "BREAKING NEWS: Chilcot's damning verdict on Blair's Iraq War: 'WMD threat was NOT justified', military action 'was NOT a last resort' and invasion was based on 'flawed intelligence'."

And at the Wall Street Journal, "U.K.’s Long-Awaited Chilcot Report into Iraq War Criticizes Legal Basis for Invasion":

LONDON—The U.K. government under former Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Parliament to vote in favor of joining the Iraq war when the legal basis for U.K. military action was “far from satisfactory,” according to the findings of a high-profile inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the war.

The roughly 6,000-page report released Wednesday, which comes seven years after the inquiry was launched, also said policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments, according to John Chilcot, the retired civil servant who led the inquiry.

The assessments “were not challenged, and they should have been,” Mr. Chilcot said.

The long-awaited report is the culmination of the inquiry launched in 2009 by the then-governing Labour Party to address public criticism of the case made for the war and preparation for reconstruction in Iraq, among other issues.

The report also said that planning and preparation for Iraq after Saddam Hussein was deposed were “wholly inadequate.”

In response, Mr. Blair defended his decision to take military action, saying he did what he thought was the right thing and that the inquiry didn’t find otherwise.

“The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit,” he said in a statement. “Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein; I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country.”

Some 179 British military personnel died in the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, which Mr. Blair at the time justified with assertions that the regime had weapons of mass destruction—a claim that turned out to be false.

Britain’s role in the 2003 Iraq invasion continues to shape the British public’s appetite for military involvement in foreign wars and comes as the U.K. reassesses its role in the world following the vote to leave the European Union...

More.

Fascinating politics of this. See how the report damages the "neoliberal" Blairite faction of the U.K. Labour Party, and then strengthens the neo-communst Corbyn partisans? It's almost too pat. And of course we'd never be having a vigorous debate in the U.S. on the origins of the war --- a relitigation of the war, in the parlance --- because Hillary Clinton, the Democrat Party nominee, was one of the war's biggest boosters in the Senate in 2002.

I love it!

Expect updates on this throughout the day. Leftists want a criminal indictment for Tony Blair. It's freakin' amazing. Oh, the vindictive hatred is just seething. The issue's a classic polarizer of our times.

Iraqi Forces Engage in Largest Battle Yet Against Islamic State (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Iraqi Special Forces Launch Ground Assault on Fallujah (VIDEO)."

Here's the update, from last night's CBS Evening News:

Iraqi Special Forces Launch Ground Assault on Fallujah (VIDEO)

At WSJ, "Iraqi Forces Begin Ground Assault on Fallujah":

BAGHDAD—Iraqi special forces advanced to the edge of Fallujah on Monday but struggled to enter the city, where Iraqi and U.S. officials said Islamic State extremists were amassing civilians to serve as human shields.

The offensive against Fallujah, Islamic State’s second-biggest urban stronghold in Iraq after Mosul, aims to dislodge the Sunni extremists from the Iraqi city they have occupied the longest.

If successful, it could significantly weaken them ahead of an advance on much-larger Mosul, long planned by the government and the U.S.-led coalition supporting its fight against Islamic State.

The Fallujah operation, led so far by Shiite militias and army and police forces, has almost completely cleared the city’s perimeter of Islamic State fighters since it was launched a week ago. But the next, crucial stage of that operation, led by Iraq’s U.S.-trained counterterrorism forces, got off to a fitful start Monday...

Continue reading.

Plus, an update, "Iraqi Forces in Fallujah Face Islamic State Counterattacks":

BAGHDAD—Iraqi special forces battling their way into Fallujah faced fierce counterattacks by Islamic State, with commanders of the operation warning that heavily booby-trapped streets in and around the city were hindering the advance.

A day after applauding the beginning of a risky ground assault into the militant-held city, commanders struck a more cautious public tone Tuesday.

The joint-operations center coordinating the government offensive warned about the mines and other explosive devices planted around the city—a tactic commonly used by Islamic State.

The counterattacks took place on Fallujah’s southern edge, Nuaimiya, where counterterrorism forces advanced Monday following a weeklong offensive to surround the city. The U.S.-trained units repelled the two attacks, which included suicide bombers and snipers, said Lt. Gen. Abdelwahab al-Saadi, commander of the operation.

Gen. Saadi said Islamic State was using every possible method it could to slow the government offensive, including flooding farmland.

Fallujah, where aid agencies and Iraqi officials estimate at least 50,000 civilians are trapped, is expected to be a tough and unpredictable urban battleground, even for the elite fighters leading the government push.

While counterterrorism units have battled Islamic State militants inside cities before, including in Ramadi last year, Fallujah is more complicated because of the large numbers of civilians who have been unable or unwilling to flee.

The Sunni city also has long been a stronghold for Sunni extremists, including al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL...

Keep reading.

Disclaimer: I Hate WikiLeaks

Just because I'm posting on the Panama Papers leak, which is a WikiLeaks-style operation being promoted by WikiLeaks and the far-left Guardian newspaper, doesn't mean that I've caved to depraved leftist Anonymous-style hysteria and propaganda.

I hate WikiLeaks. I hate what they stand for. But every now and then these ghouls highlight an issue that deserves attention nevertheless; and greater governmental transparency doesn't necessarily have to be a leftist issue, particularly when the left's fundamental problematique isn't actually transparency but anarchist revolutionary politics. Frankly, WikiLeaks is a criminal enterprise and always has been.

I wrote a lot on the group, and its leader Julian Assange, back in 2010. Here's a refresher, "Exposing the WikiLeaks/Communist/Media Alliance."

Also, flashback, to My Pet Jawa, "59 Seconds of Crucial Reuters 'Murder' Video."



So, yeah. I freakin' hate these people.

Even a broken clock's right twice a day, so now and then I'll give CWCID.

London Antiwar Protest Against Syria Airstrikes (VIDEO)

At the Guardian UK, "Syria airstrike protesters rally across UK - as it happened."

The World Will Blame President Obama If Iraq Falls

At National Journal.

Via Instapundit, "NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: U.S. ‘Direct Action’ Against the Islamic State."

Yes, I keep repeating this stuff. Because it bears repeating. In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him. Whenever you see anyone in the media bringing up 2003, you will know that they are serving as palace guard, not as press.

A great post.

Read the whole thing, and click around at the links.

Joshua Muravchik, Heaven on Earth

Following-up from earlier today, "The Execution of Che Guevara."

At Amazon, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism.

 

The Execution of Che Guevara

The left's communist hero was executed October 9th, 1967, in La Higuera, Bolivia. He cowered like a cornered rat and begged for his life like a child.

At the Washington Post, "New (and disturbing) pictures of Che Guevara right after death resurface."

Foreign Affairs commemorates his death by posting Raymond Garthoff's essay, "Unconventional Warfare in Communist Strategy":

Very simply, "internal," "unconventional," "irregular"-"class"-war is of the essence of Marxist-Leninist theory, hence at least theoretically at the base of Communist strategy. We became so accustomed to Stalin's reliance on the Red Army and the Soviet intelligence services as the most conspicuous elements of force in international politics that it takes a moment to place in focus the older-and newer-more fundamental Communist reliance on man?uvring and manipulating power on an indigenous political fulcrum. This is my first proposition.

Unconventional warfare-our very use of this expression jars one by its contrast to the Marxist-Leninist conception of the conventional nature of internal warfare-may assume various forms, depending on the concrete situation, its opportunities and constraints. Although in other areas the Communists may resort to rigid design or overcentralized planning, when it comes to the application of force they show an acute awareness of the wide range of kinds of unconventional warfare available to them. This is the second proposition I would raise. To rephrase the point: Communists are flexible in waging varied forms of internal war, and irregular warfare is but one of the means.

Not all activity of Soviet, Chinese or indigenous Communists should be considered a form of internal war-though one can define the term broadly enough to encompass most of it. But the Communist leaders do assign a major role to active civil violence at a certain stage of development of the class conflict. For such countries as the United States, that stage may be seen only very dimly-or perhaps merely assumed-in a vague and distant future. But in volatile and unstable societies emerging from colonial rule or undergoing modernization without adequate tools for the job, internal war is expected to have a future-if it is not already present. Thus my third proposition is that the Communists expect, plan and wage internal war as the final stage of class struggle leading to the seizure of power. Internal unconventional war is above all revolutionary war.

III

Bolshevism arose as a revolutionary movement with international pretensions; its fundamental outlook was hostile to the existing international order. None the less, after a number of unsuccessful attempts to wage revolutionary war beyond the borders of the old Russian Empire, in the period from 1918 to 1923, Soviet leaders began to recognize the need to be more selective in choosing the time and place to conduct revolutionary war. Also, as the years went by, they directed their energies increasingly to internal matters. The building of "socialism in one country" marked an indefinite extension of the original compromise by which the Soviet Union proposed to coexist with the outside world. The avowed revolutionary ends have continued unchanged, but means have become increasingly important in themselves. As occasions arose calling for sacrifice either by the Soviet State or by the forces of the Revolution abroad, Moscow's decision has invariably been at the expense of the latter. The subordination to Moscow of Communist Parties everywhere meant that the suitability of local internal war was defined in terms of the prevailing foreign policy objectives of the Soviet Union. And as a consequence, for over two decades Communist "internal war" boasted few campaigns and no victories. Only in China did an active revolutionary war even stay alive, and it did so by liberating itself from Moscow's strategic direction.

World War II brought new opportunities for building undergrounds and waging partisan warfare in many countries occupied by an alien invader. Local Communists (as well as other resistance elements), aided by the Allies, established strong forces in several countries. The Soviets themselves built up sizable guerrilla forces on their own German-occupied territory. At the close of the war, the Jugoslav and Albanian partisans were able to seize power with little opposition. The Chinese Communists were also immeasurably aided by the course and outcome of the war.

In the early postwar period, the sudden shift in the balance of power in areas on the Soviet periphery, and the not accidental projection of the Red Army into many of these areas, led to new opportunities for expansion of Communist rule by various means including internal war. Where Soviet occupation was prolonged, political and subversive techniques were used effectively to establish puppet Communist régimes. But beyond the shadow of the Soviet Army the story was quite different. A wave of attempts at subversion, rebellion and revolution struck in 1948-1949. Success in Czechoslovakia by subversive coup was not matched in Finland, and not even tried in France and Italy. In China, the Communists-against Stalin's advice- pushed on to take all continental China. But the revolutionary guerrilla campaigns in Greece, Malaya, Burma, the Philippines and Indonesia ended in failure; only in Viet Nam did such a campaign drag on to an important partial victory in 1954. Causes of failure varied, but one important general one was that the balance of power in the world had become stabilized anew.

In the current phase, since about 1960, there has been a new wave of Communist guerrilla efforts in Laos and South Viet Nam, a failure in the Congo, and a seizure from within of the successful guerrilla movement in Cuba. Similar efforts to take over other native, non-Communist rebel forces, for example in Angola and Colombia, are at present under way.

In summing up this brief historical review, we reach a fourth proposition: One of the key conditions for resort to revolutionary war, in Communist eyes, is the general world situation (as well as the local situation). And as a related fifth proposition: While the general strategic balance of terror today increases the dangers to the Communist bloc of resorting to direct aggression and creating Soviet-Western military confrontations, it reduces the risks involved in indirect, unconventional war.

IV

Communist strategies for waging revolutionary warfare place a high premium on the political content and context of a campaign. Some strategies, beyond the purview of this article, involve exclusively political action. Others involve infiltration and subversion, where the political vulnerability of the opponent is of cardinal importance. Subversion (which should be distinguished from agitation, propaganda, trouble-making and other overt or underground Communist activities) can be either a substitute for a revolutionary war or a complementary tactic in it, but in general it has not proven nearly as versatile a Communist tool as many of us tend to think. Subversion is usually directed against existing governments, but it may be directed against indigenous revolutionary movements, as in the Cuban case. Infiltration and subversion, political isolation and manipulation, and economic penetration all ultimately should-in the Communist strategy- lay the groundwork for the seizure of power either by coup d'état or by revolutionary war.

As my sixth proposition, I would advance the hypothesis that the Soviet leaders generally prefer the use of subversion, or other non-violent means, to the use of guerrilla war, because the seizure of power by indigenous revolutionary forces tends to make local Communist rulers too independent of Moscow's control. The only countries other than Russia where local Communist forces fought and won their own victories are China, Jugoslavia, Albania and Viet Nam (with Cuba as a quasi-fifth). All, with the uncertain exception of North Viet Nam, are today serious problems for the Soviet Union.

The Chinese-absorbed by their own internal problems and struggles with the Russians, smarting over the frustration of continuing irredentist claims, and "on the make"-have not developed the qualms or subtle calculations which mark the Soviet attitude toward the means of extending Communist power. Maoism as an export item has done well in Indochina; a number of other Communist Parties-especially, but not only, in Asia-are turning to China in the course of the growing division within the Communist movement. The Soviet leaders do not, of course, turn their backs on the theory or even the practice of national-liberation revolutionary war. None the less, my seventh proposition-companion to the sixth-is that the Chinese Communists are likely in the future to be the guiding spirit in most Communist revolutionary guerrilla wars.

Keep reading.

Garthoff continues with quotes from Che Guevara's, Guerrilla Warfare, a "guidebook for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world."

And see also, by Jorge Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara.

FLASHBACK: "Che Guevara: Superstar Revolutionary."

Labour Leader Candidate Jeremy Corbyn Compared U.S. Troops to Islamic State on Vladimir Putin's Propaganda Mouthpiece 'Russia Today' in 2014 (VIDEO)

Oh boy, this is going to inflame some passions.

See Louis Mensch on Twitter (for example, here and here).

And at Britain's Channel 4, "Jeremy Corbyn appears to equate Isis and US military actions":

In an appearance on a Russian-owned news channel in 2014, the Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn compared the actions of US forces during the Iraq war to those of Islamic State militants.

The Democrats' Great Betrayal on Iraq

At FrontPage Magazine:

Editor's note: GOP presidential primary candidate Jeb Bush is once again boldly telling the truth about the Iraq War and putting the focus on those who sabotaged it: President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. In recent remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Bush not only highlighted the Democrats' indefensible abandonment of a once-stabilized Iraq, but explained how this disastrous decision gave rise to a new, formidable terror threat: The Islamic State. In light of Bush's statements, Frontpage is publishing David Horowitz's introduction to his book "The Black Book of the American Left, Vol. III: The Great Betrayal," which lays out the true history of the Iraq War and the Democrats' policy of defeat. Read the introduction below.

*****

The Great Betrayal is the third volume of my collected writings that make up The Black Book of the American Left. Its chapters focus on events beginning with the Islamic attacks of 9/11 and culminating in the Iraq War. They describe what can now be seen as a tragic turn in our nation’s history that has already profoundly and adversely affected its future.

The effort to remove the Saddam regime in Iraq by force was initially supported by both major political parties. But in only the third month of fighting the Democratic Party turned against the war it had authorized for reasons unrelated to events on the battle- field or changes in policy. This political division over the war fractured the home front with crippling implications for the war effort itself and, beyond that, America’s efforts to curtail the terrorist activities of other regimes in the Middle East, most pointedly Syria and Iran. The internal divisions were greater than any the nation had experienced since the Civil War, and the betrayal by the Democrats of a war policy they had supported was without precedent in the history of America’s wars overseas.

The internal divisions at the end of the Vietnam War were not at all commensurate with those over Iraq. The 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, which called for an American retreat from Vietnam, was launched after ten years of fighting with no result, when both parties had already conceded the war could not be won. The conflict between the two major parties was over how to end the war and over what the war had become, not—as in Iraq—over whether the war was illegal and immoral to begin with and should never have been fought. The Democrats’ opposition to a war they had authorized, represented a betrayal of the nation and its men and women in arms that has no equivalent in American history.

The domestic divisions over both wars were initiated by a radical left whose agendas went far beyond the conflicts themselves. In the decades that followed their efforts to bring the Vietnam War to an ignoble end, the left had made ever deeper inroads into the Democratic Party until, in 2008, the party nominated a senator from its anti-war ranks who became the 44th president of the United States. Of far greater significance than the successful candidacy of one anti-war spokesman, however, was the path the entire Democratic Party took in first abandoning a war its leaders had approved, and then conducting a five-year campaign against the war while it was still in progress.

I have written two previous books about this defection and its destructive consequences. The first, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And the American Left (2004), documented the emergence of the post-9/11 anti-war movement, its tacit alliance with the jihadist enemy and its malign influence on the Democratic Party’s fateful turn. The second, Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America's War on Terror Before and After 9-11 (2008), was written with Ben Johnson and focused on the sabotage of the war effort by leaders of the Democratic Party, by progressive activists and by a left-leaning national media. This chorus of opposition took advantage of American missteps to conduct a no-holds- barred propaganda campaign worthy of an enemy, even going so far as to leak classified information that destroyed vital national secu-rity programs and put all Americans at risk. Political opponents of the war attacked the moral character of the commander-in-chief and the mission both parties had endorsed. This assault on America’s role in the war dealt a devastating blow to American power and influence from which they have yet to recover.

It is customary and natural for human beings to identify with the communities they inhabit, and on whose health and security their lives depend. This is the foundation of all patriotic sentiment. But once individuals become possessed by the idea that political power can be “transformative” and create a fundamentally different human environment, they develop an allegiance to the idea itself and to the parties and entities in which they see it embodied. Such individuals come to feel alienated from the societies they live in but are determined to replace, and finally to see their own country as an enemy because it is the enemy of their progressive dreams. This is how generations of leftists came to identify with the Communist adversary and its cold war against the democracies of the West. When the Communist empire collapsed, I was curious to see whether this progressive reflex would survive the fall. Lacking the real world instantiation of their dreams Soviet Russia had provided, would progressives continue to volunteer as frontier guards for America’s enemies, even the most reprehensible among them? The answer was not long in coming.

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, liberating hundreds of millions of captive people from their Soviet prison. The following August, Iraq’s sadistic dictator ordered his armies into Kuwait and erased that sovereign nation from the political map. Unlike the Soviet rulers who paid lip service to progressive ideals, Saddam Hussein was a self-identified fascist who did not pretend to advance the cause of “social justice” or liberal values. Even by 20th-century standards, Saddam was an exceptionally cruel and bloody tyrant. But he was also an enemy of the United States, and that proved enough to persuade progressives to lend him a helping hand. When America organized an international coalition to reverse Iraq’s aggression, the progressive left opposed the action as though America rather than the Saddam regime were at fault.

At the time, the only reason there were no large protests against the war over Kuwait was because progressives were freshly demoralized by the Soviet debacle and still in disarray. But their mood changed over the course of the next decade. As the millennium approached, leftists began to regroup, organizing a series of large and violent demonstrations against “globalization,” the term with which they re-labeled their old nemesis “international capitalism.” When Islamic fanatics attacked New York and Washing- ton in 2001, leaders of the globalization protests re-positioned their agendas to focus on the new American “imperialism” in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Eventually, millions of leftists at home and abroad participated in protests to prevent America and the coalition it led from removing Saddam Hussein. Without overtly supporting the Saddam regime as they had the Kremlin, progressives resumed their role as frontier guards for the enemies of the United States...

The New Israeli Government's War on BDS

From Caroline Glick, at FrontPage Magazine:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government is less than a month old, but it’s already apparent that it is different from its predecessors. And if it continues on its current diplomatic trajectory, it may do something that its six predecessors failed to accomplish. Netanyahu’s new government may improve Israel’s position internationally.

The stakes are high. Over the years, Israel has largely concentrated its efforts on developing the tools to contend with its military challenges. But as we have seen over the past decade and a half, Israel’s capacity to fight and defeat its enemies is not limited principally by the IDF’s war-fighting capabilities.

Israel’s ability to defend itself and its citizens is constrained first and foremost by its shrinking capacity to defend itself diplomatically. Its enemies in the diplomatic arena have met with great success in their use of diplomatic condemnation and intimidation to force Israel to limit its military operations to the point where it is incapable of defeating its enemies outright.

The flagship of the diplomatic war against Israel is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Participants in the movement propagate and disseminate the libelous claim that Israel’s use of force in self-defense is inherently immoral and illegal. Over the years BDS activists’ assaults on Israel’s right to exist have become ever more shrill and radical. So, too, whereas just a few years ago their operations tended to be concentrated around military confrontations, today they are everyday occurrences. And their demands become greater and more openly anti-Semitic from week to week and day to day.

Consider the events of the past seven days alone.

Late last week Israel fended off a major international effort led by Palestinian Authority Soccer Federation chairman and former terrorist chief Jibril Rajoub to expel it from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association. Not only is Rajoub a man with blood on his hands. The Fatah luminary is admired by the Israeli far-Left while also being a favorite of Qatar, the chief state sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

Rajoub is sympathetically inclined toward enabling Hamas in Gaza to expand its presence in Judea and Samaria.

Before the government had a chance to sigh in relief that FIFA was settled, Britain’s National Union of Students voted to join the BDS movement. This means that the anti-Israel demonstrations and assaults that take place several times a week at Britain’s universities will now take place under the NUS banner.

Also Wednesday, the French telecom giant Orange’s CEO Stéphane Richard told reporters in Cairo that he wishes to cut off his contract with Israel’s Partner telecommunications company, one of Israel’s largest cellular telephone services providers.

Richard was apparently coerced into making his statement by the Egyptian BDS movement which has threatened to boycott Orange’s subsidiary in Egypt due to its contract with Partner.

Tuesday it was reported that last month the Dutch government issued a travel advisory to its citizens traveling in Israel. In an act of anti-Jewish inversion now common in the Western discourse about Israel and its enemies, the Dutch government warned that Jews in Judea and Samaria constitute a threat to Dutch travelers because they throw stones “toward Palestinian and foreign vehicles.”

In the US, the Anti-Defamation League reported that this past academic year there was a 38 percent rise in anti-Israel events on college campuses over the previous year. The number of BDS campaigns doubled over the previous academic year.

By ADL’s count, there were 520 anti-Israel events on campuses. BDS campaigns were initiated on 29 campuses.

At the UN, Tuesday “The Palestinian Return Center,” Hamas’s European chapter, was granted official status as a recognized nongovernmental organization by the UN’s Commission on NGOs. Now, thanks to the commission, Hamas terrorists can participate in UN meetings, have full access to UN facilities and wear their new, official UN badges.

Incidentally, the same commission rejected a request by ZAKA to receive the same status. ZAKA is an Israeli NGO that provides first aid and handles the remains of terrorism victims and victims of major disasters in Israel and worldwide.

Also at the UN, Leila Zerrougui, the envoy for children in armed conflicts, is pushing to get the IDF added to the blacklist of groups that harm children.

Boko Haram, Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban are among the current names of the list.

Wednesday Republican Sen. Ted Cruz sent a pointed letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemning Zerrougui’s actions. Cruz threatened, “Congress will have no choice but to reassess the United States’ relationship with the United Nations and consider serious consequences if you choose to take this action.”

In contrast to Cruz’s position, in his interview with Channel 2 broadcast Tuesday, US President Barack Obama indicated that due to the rising tide of anti-Israel sentiment and campaigns, if Israel doesn’t make unreciprocated concessions to the PA then the administration will have no choice but to join the anti-Israel UN bandwagon.

The time has come, then, for Israel to take the wheels off the wagon.

It's a Holocaust of moral inversion, yet still, Israel will win the BDS leftist-terrorists will lose. Thank God.

More.

Megyn Kelly Eviscerates Obama for Shameful 'No Major Ground Wars' Memorial Day Comments (VIDEO)

Megyn Kelly is the freakin' best!

Background at Gateway Pundit, "In Memorial Day Speech Obama Brags About ‘Ending’ War in Afghanistan … (No One Applauds)."

Watch, "Reaction to President Obama's Memorial Day Remarks - The Kelly File."

Leftists Disgrace Memorial Day

From Kurt Schlichter, at Town Hall:

Liberal denies being liberal as he liberals. Also anger & frustration that liberals no longer control the discourse. https://t.co/UqvhEaAfMG

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 25, 2015

Oh stop. You libs hold our warriors in contempt and then you get all pissy when we return the favor. @autlog #caring

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 25, 2015

I so called it. Fore! http://t.co/A8TndO6xEH https://t.co/0oJvel1A49

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 25, 2015

This is still annoying liberals. Savor. ===>>> Liberals Disgrace Memorial Day http://t.co/A8TndO6xEH

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 25, 2015

Progressivism is like herpes without the upside | Liberals Disgrace Memorial Day http://t.co/A8TndO6xEH

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 25, 2015

As ISIS continues its orgy of rape and beheadings in Ramadi, perhaps our president could show a rare flash of dignity by simply slipping out the back door of the White House and down the road to the links instead of putting on his annual farce of “honoring” the sacred dead at Arlington. If he gave one half a damn about those who gave their lives for this country, the black flag wouldn’t be flying over the cities and towns purchased with the blood of so many valiant warriors.

But Barack Obama, like the rest of the liberal elite, cares nothing for our soldiers or our veterans, or the fact that hundreds of thousands of them died for the rights he treats like a rash – the right to speak freely, the right to worship as we please, the right to have our voices heard through our elected representatives instead of having our voices suppressed by neo-fascist bureaucrats and our representatives bypassed by a would-be strongman who wishes he could rule by decree.

Like everything about the Community Organizer-In-Chief and his cronies, everything about the carefully choreographed charade we’ll see this Memorial Day is a lie.

It is a lie when Obama and his liberal pals claim the dead inspire them.

It is a lie when Obama and his liberal pals claim the dead have their respect.

It is a lie when Obama and his liberal pals claim the dead are anything more to them than a photo op designed to fool low-information voters into thinking those who temporarily lead this country actually love this country and its citizens.

It’s a pose, an act, a scam. You can see it in the faces of the liberal politicians as they are forced to stand there onstage each last Monday of May, pretending they wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world than in the sun listening to people talk about what, at best, liberals consider suckers, and more often consider outright babykillers.

Look at Obama’s face as he walks behind the floral tribute in front of the cameras at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Tell me he’s thinking about the men who stormed ashore at Normandy and not about getting out of there and teeing up.

He’ll talk a good game – they all will, but it’s all a lie. If he cared, he wouldn’t have squandered the victory in Iraq to satisfy his America-hating pals on the left. ISIS, the JV team? Obama lied, and tens of thousands died – and those were the lucky ones...

More.

Islamic State Bombs Saudi Arabia Mosque, Targeting Shiite Muslims

It's a Shiite mosque.

It's an Islamic civil war fanning across the region, and the Obama administration's inaction fans the flames.

At the New York Times, "ISIS Claims Responsibility for Bombing at Saudi Mosque." (Via Memeorandum.)

Also at the Washington Post, "Islamic State claims responsibility for Shiite mosque blast in Saudi Arabia":

CAIRO — The Islamic State said Friday that it was behind a blast that killed or wounded scores of worshipers at a Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia, marking the first time the militant group has claimed an attack in the oil-rich kingdom and raising fears of an expanding sectarian conflict in the region.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi authorities on the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility, which was carried in both written and audio statements distributed by accounts linked with the Islamic State on Twitter.

The Islamic State communique said that a “martyrdom-seeking brother” set off an explosive belt during a gathering of “impure” Shiites, according to the SITE Intelligence group, which monitors militant postings on social media and elsewhere.

The Sunni extremist group views Shiites as Muslim heretics and opposes the Saudi leadership’s ties with the West. The same statement called the attack a “unique operation” and referred to the group’s newly formed “Najd Province,” which encompasses central Saudi Arabia and includes the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The Saudi monarchy presides over Islam’s two holiest sites, making the kingdom a hugely symbolic target for Islamist militants.

In a statement also posted Friday on Twitter, the Saudi Health Ministry said 21 people were killed and 123 wounded in the blast.

The suicide bomber targeted worshipers at a mosque in the village of Qadeeh in the province of Qatif, part of a mostly Shiite enclave about 240 miles northeast of the capital.

An activist, Naseema al-Sada, told the Associated Press that a suicide bomber detonated explosives as worshipers marked the birth of the 7th century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein. The official Saudi News Agency reported an explosion at the mosque but had no further details. The report said authorities launched an investigation into the attack.

Saudi Arabia’s eastern region, which is the heartland of the kingdom’s Shiite minority, has been the scene of sporadic unrest and violence for years. Shiites, who account for an estimated 12 percent of the Saudi population, say they face widespread discrimination from the kingdom’s Sunni leaders. And Shiite protesters have clashed with Saudi security forces during demonstrations for greater rights in the past...

More.

Also at Euronews, "ISIL to blame for Saudi Arabia Shi'ite mosque suicide attack."

And at Reuters, "Suicide bomber strikes Saudi Shi'ite mosque," and Russia Today, "Dozens dead after suicide bomber strikes Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia."

How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America's War on Terror Before and After 9/11

With Obama's capitulation to Islamic State in Iraq, this book is more relevant than ever.

From David Horowitz and Ben Johnson, Party of Defeat.

Fall of Ramadi is Military Humiliation and Humanitarian Disaster

A blistering editorial, at the Wall Street Journal, "Losing in Iraq Again":

No matter how much the Pentagon and White House downplay it, the fall of Ramadi to Islamic State on Sunday shows that President Obama’s strategy is failing. The question now is whether Mr. Obama has the political courage to change or watch Iraq descend into more chaos and perhaps a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

For now U.S. officials prefer the sunny days school of military analysis. “Regrettable but not uncommon in warfare,” says Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secretary of State John Kerry added that “I am absolutely confident in the days ahead that [Ramadi’s fall] will be reversed.” This recalls the generals who said in 2006 that Iraq was making progress even as hundreds turned up in the morgues each night.

In reality, the fall of Ramadi is a military humiliation and humanitarian disaster with large political consequences. The city is the provincial capital of Anbar province, Iraq’s Sunni heartland. U.S. forces waged a block-by-block battle to reclaim Ramadi from insurgents during the 2007 surge because it is crucial to the sectarian geography of Iraq. Winning there proved that the U.S. could prevail anywhere, and it provided the psychological momentum to swing the Sunnis to America’s side.

So much for that. The Obama Administration strategy has rested on a plan to arm Sunni tribesmen friendly to the government in Baghdad to fight ISIS. That’s a good idea in theory, since the Iraqi army has proved mostly ineffective against ISIS while Iraq’s Shiite militias answer to Iran and are brutal and unwelcome in Anbar.

But wars aren’t waged in theory, and the effort to arm and train the tribes has foundered on Shiite resistance in Baghdad and America’s lack of commitment and urgency. A serious training program began only days ago and Mr. Obama refused to deploy U.S. combat troops to bolster vulnerable Iraqi positions. In Ramadi, ISIS took advantage of a sandstorm that prevented the U.S. from supporting the Iraqis with air strikes. But that only underscores the limitations of relying on air power alone.

The larger problem is that Mr. Obama wants to wage a de minimis campaign against an enemy with maximalist ambitions. The Administration often insists that Iraqis must defend their own country, which is true. But after making the ouster of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a condition of U.S. support, the least the U.S. can do is provide meaningful support to his successor, Haider al-Abadi.

That hasn’t happened. “Until now our feeling is that the international support is not convincing,” Selim al-Jabouri, the speaker of Iraq’s parliament, told Reuters in January. Mr. Obama promised Mr. Abadi no new weapons when they met last month in Washington. The number of air sorties flown by the U.S. and its coalition partners—about 3,800 in all since September—averages about 14 a day. The U.S. flew some 47,000 sorties in the first month of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

The White House and its military commanders have also grossly underestimated the resilience of Islamic State. “The enemy is now in a defensive crouch and is unable to conduct major operations,” U.S. Centcom Commander Lloyd Austin told Congress in March, sounding like White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

U.S. attempts to stand up a dependable Sunni fighting force have been seriously damaged. Ramadi’s fall has humiliated Mr. Abadi and discredited his strategy of trusting the U.S. Mr. Maliki and his Iranian backers are angling to return to power—and unleash Shiite militias armed and trained by Iran. The danger is that on present trend the country will soon be divided into a Shiite east dominated by Iran and a Sunni west controlled by Islamic State.

All of this matters far beyond Iraq, or even the Middle East. ISIS is a global threat, attracting more than 22,000 foreign fighters, including 3,700 from the West. A recent recording from ISIS leader Abu-Bakr Baghdadi, released in English, Russian, Turkish, German and French, called on Muslims to “migrate to the Islamic State or fight in his land.” Nearly all of the “lone wolf” terrorists in the West—including the May 3 attack in Garland, Texas—were inspired by ISIS.

The best way to diminish Islamic’s State appeal is to drive it as quickly as possible from the territory it holds...

Pathetic. The fruits of Democrat Party foreign policy. A disaster all around. And all the left can do is blame the evil BOOOSSHHH!

More.

#WHCD is a Celebration of a System of Access Journalism That Enables Democrat Lawbreaking and Treason

Actually, I changed the headline above from that seen at Mediagazer, "WHCD is a celebration of a system of access journalism that failed to detect a phony war."

I obviously don't believe the Iraq war was a "phony war," especially since the Democrats and the entire international community considered Saddam Hussein's Iraq to be a threat to international security, as demonstrated by numerous U.N. resolutions and the continuance of economic sanctions and the no-fly zone right though the decade of the 1990s, until President George W. Bush took office. But Jay Rosen's a leftist. I give him that. All he had to do is add a couple of more paragraphs to his essay and he wouldn't have been able to avoid discussing the institutional press corp's guilt in enabling the current crimes of Washington, D.C., from Benghazi to Bowe Bergdahl to Russia securing massive strategic mineral deposits on U.S. soil. The Clinton Foundation violating U.S. law by taking foreign donations while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state? We're only now seeing the beginning of the biggest political lie of the 21st century.

But then, even people like Jay Rosen can't follow their otherwise immaculate logic to the very end.

At Pressthink, "On the deep grammar of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner":

“The Washington press corps is like that big extended family with a terrible secret that cannot be confronted because everyone knows how bad it would be if the discussion ever got real.”

Have you ever come to know members of a family who collaborate in staying silent about something bad that happened in the past, something no one wants to talk about because to talk about it would probably tear the family apart?

The innocent would have to accuse the guilty. The guilty to defend themselves would find a way to spread responsibility around— or just lie about what happened. Which would then enrage people who were there because it rewrites history and erases their experience. If you have ever come to know such a family — or been part of one, as I have — then you know how participants in the conspiracy share a signaling system that can instantly warn an incautious member: you are three, four hops away from violating the pact of silence… if you don’t want to bring the whole structure down, then I suggest you change the subject… or switch to one of the harmless work-arounds we have provided for the purpose of never getting too close to the source of our dread.

None of that has to be said, of course. It’s all done by antennae. The result is that serious talk about certain subjects is off limits. Key routes into that subject are closed off, because the signaling system activates itself three or four rings out from dread center. To an outsider this manifests itself as an inexplicable weirdness or empty quality, difficult to name. To insiders it becomes: this is who we are… the people who route around—

I mention this because I think it helps in interpreting a bizarre event that unfolds tonight in Washington and on many a media platform: the White House Correspondents Association dinner. How bizarre? Well, look at the evidence of compulsion:

entering #WhiteHouseCorrespondentsDinner weekend. We all hate it; it's antithesis of journalism; but everyone goes to every party they can.

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) April 24, 2015

It’s not like they don’t realize it. This is from Politico, house organ for the insider class in DC.

Everyone knows the White House Correspondents Association dinner is broken. What started off decades ago as a stately formal celebration of the best of presidential reporting has morphed into a four-day orgy of everything people outside the Beltway hate about life inside the Beltway— now it’s not just one night of clubby backslapping, carousing and drinking between the press and the powerful, it’s four full days of signature cocktails and inside jokes that just underscore how out of step the Washington elite is with the rest of the country. It’s not us (journalists) versus them (government officials); it’s us (Washington) versus them (the rest of America)

“Everything people outside the Beltway hate about life inside the Beltway.” True! And yet they keep doing it. Why?

I’m sure you have your ideas. Here is mine. I know it will sound crazy (and provide a few chuckles) to those in the room tonight at the Washington Hilton, but I don’t care because the event is itself one gigantic neurotic symptom that begs for some interpretation...

Keep reading at the top link.

The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths

Interesting, although of course a true accounting of the rush to war is the last thing the left wants --- for good reason, since the Democrats were the original warmongers pushing regime change in Iraq all along.

From Judith Miller, at WSJ, "Officials didn’t lie, and I wasn’t fed a line, writes Judith Miller":

I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me.

OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.

None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired.

There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war. Before the 2003 invasion, President Bush and other senior officials cited the intelligence community’s incorrect conclusions about Saddam’s WMD capabilities and, on occasion, went beyond them. But relying on the mistakes of others and errors of judgment are not the same as lying.

I have never met George W. Bush. I never discussed the war with Dick Cheney until the winter of 2012, years after he had left office and I had left the Times. I wish I could have interviewed senior officials before the war about the role that WMDs played in the decision to invade Iraq. The White House’s passion for secrecy and aversion to the media made that unlikely. Less senior officials were of help as sources, but they didn’t make the decisions.

No senior official spoon-fed me a line about WMD. That would have been so much easier than uncovering classified information that officials can be jailed for disclosing. My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer.

In 1996, those same sources helped me to write a book about the dangers of militant Islam long before suicide bombers made the topic fashionable. Their expertise informed articles and another book I co-wrote in 2003 with Times colleagues about the danger of biological terrorism, published right before the deadly anthrax letter attacks.

Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it.

The 2005 commission led by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb and conservative Republican Judge Laurence Silberman called the estimates “dead wrong,” blaming what it called a “major” failure on the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good information…serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions.” A year earlier, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence denounced such failures as the product of “group think,” rooted in a fear of underestimating grave threats to national security in the wake of 9/11.

A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted...

More.

The Dangerous Lie That 'Bush Lied'

From Judge Laurence Silberman, at the Wall Street Journal, "Some journalists still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country":

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.

Recall that the head of the intelligence community, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, famously told the president that the proposition that Iraq possessed WMD was “a slam dunk.” Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication that anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings. As our commission reported, presidential daily briefs from the CIA dating back to the Clinton administration were, if anything, more alarmist about Iraq’s WMD than the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

Saddam had manifested sharp hostility toward America, including firing at U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly zone set up by the armistice agreement ending the first Iraq war. Saddam had also attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush —a car-bombing plot was foiled—during Mr. Bush’s visit to Kuwait in 1993. But President George W. Bush based his decision to go to war on information about Saddam’s WMD. Accordingly, when Secretary of State Colin Powell formally presented the U.S. case to the United Nations, Mr. Powell relied entirely on that aspect of the threat from Iraq.

Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media.

Granted, there were those who disagreed with waging war against Saddam even if he did possess WMD. Some in Congress joined Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and former national security adviser, in publicly doubting the wisdom of invading Iraq. It is worth noting, however, that when Saddam was captured and interrogated, he told his interrogators that he had intended to seek revenge on Kuwait for its cooperation with the U.S. by invading again at a propitious time. This leads me to speculate that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003 and Saddam had remained in power, the U.S. might have felt compelled to do so once Iraq again invaded Kuwait.

In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.

I recently wrote to Ron Fournier protesting his accusation. His response, in an email, was to reiterate that “an objective reading of the events leads to only one conclusion: the administration . . . misinterpreted, distorted and in some cases lied about intelligence.” Although Mr. Fournier referred to “evidence” supporting his view, he did not cite any—and I do not believe there is any...

Keep reading.