Posted on 05/28/2015 6:34:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As the various candidates made the media rounds this week, there was one interview which jumped out at me. It was Carly Fiorina sitting down with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC and taking one of the tougher questions facing every White House aspirant… if elected, what do you plan to do about ISIS? The answers we frequently get are disappointing at best – if there’s an answer given at all – but this time the reporter almost seemed shocked to have somebody lay out numerous elements of a plan in plain, clear language.
Before we get to the specifics, check out the brief video and the transcript.
Andrea Mitchell: “What would you do now against ISIS?”
Carly Fiorina: “I would do very specific things. First, instead of having a Camp David conference to talk our Arab allies into a bad deal with Iran, I would have had a Camp David conference to talk with our Arab allies about how we can support them to fight ISIS. Let me give you very specific examples. The Kurds have been asking us to arm them for three years – we still have not. The Jordanians have been asking us to provide them with bombs and material. We know King Abdullah of Jordan – I’ve known him for many years – he took the appropriate leadership steps when a Jordanian pilot was burned alive. He was here in this country asking us for bombs and material. We haven’t provided him with any of them. He’s now looking to China for that. The Egyptian president, a very brave and pious Muslim, who has said there is a cancer in the heart of Islam, has asked us to share intelligence. We are not. The Turks have asked us to help them topple Bashar al-Assad. We are not. There are a whole set of things we’ve been asked to do by our allies who know this is their fight, and we’re not doing any of them. So I would hold a Summit and talk with them about that.”
There are two things to touch on relating to this exchange. First there is the obvious matter of what the plan is. Honestly, I had some questions about it myself as I heard Fiorina explaining it. From the 10,000 foot level there’s nothing wrong here. Getting the actors in the affected region more involved on the side of the good guys (or the least bad guys that can be found in this case) is a necessity. Offering requested aide to any marginally trustworthy leaders who are willing to take sides against ISIS is a win for us. But we also can’t afford to be unrealistic in terms of just how active Jordan and Egypt will be. Their plates are rather full of terrorist badness at the moment and they’re just not going to be sending huge ranks of troops into Syria or Iraq no matter who is leading the charge. But they can still provide some help, and if we have the resources they need it’s worth looking at. As for the Turks… well, I’ve given up on them for the time being in terms of helping anyone but themselves. The Kurds, on the other hand, are ready to fight. In fact, they are already fighting, and could probably do a lot more if we supported them more completely. I think Fiorina is on the right track there.
The second element of this interview, though, could serve as the next installment of our series on This Is How You Do It. Too many candidates – particularly Hillary Clinton – fail to answer this question in a concrete fashion. They’re happy to cast blame on those who came before and run down the ideas of their competitors, but they rarely lay out any concrete steps for fear of being criticized or proven wrong later. This doesn’t do much to inspire confidence. Whether you agree with her plan or not, at least Fiorina was willing to answer the question and demonstrate that she’s been considering the crisis and is forming a plan for how to deal with it. And if you disagree with her, well… isn’t that the point of having a primary? We’re supposed to be getting all the plans out there so the voters can decide which ones sound best and toss their support to the candidates they agree with.
I’m still not signing on as a committed supporter of Carly, or any other candidate for that matter. But watching the way she deals with both the media and Hillary Clinton, I do like the cut of her jib. A few more interviews such as this from the rest of the field – or candidates on the debate stage showing the intestinal fortitude to put their specific plans forward for consideration – could make for a more productive political atmosphere. More like this please.
What do the ‘good guys’ there have to say about going against the commands of their Koran about infidels?
You can trust words. Taquuya says they can lie. I don’t trust their words.
LOL She wants to help the Turks topple Assad... How clueless... The Turks have a huge stake in creating ISIS.
You're dead wrong. She botched the HP/Compaq "merger" (really an acquisition of Compaq by HP) which cost thirty-thousand of HP and Compaq employees their jobs.
Both HP and Compaq were Enterprise Class Leading vendors in their space. Fiorina decided that wasn't good enough, and changed their focus to consumer products, mostly pc's, printers, and digital camera's. She spun off the Medical Devices unit (which was WILDLY profitable for HP) and then ran that into the ground too. How bad was her performance? Things got so bad for H-P that in 2002, Arianna Packard, granddaughter of founder David Packard joined with Bill Hewlett, Walter Hewlett’s son, in a proxy fight to oust Fiorina. That moved failed, but in 2005, Fiorina was finally fired, and given a $20-million dollar settlement to just go away. In response H-P’ stock price bounced back by 10% in a single day. About Fiorina’s service at H-P Arianna Packard wrote, “I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded.”
Would you like to hear about how she wrecked Bell Labs Research Laboratory before she wrecked HP? Sure, I knew you would!
For those unfamiliar with the Bell Labs, it was Ma Bell's gift to America, a place where monopoly telephone service was offset by a research business that employed over 25,000 scientists, engineers, mathematicians and researchers.
At the Bell Labs, research was considered an end unto itself, where, according to one executive, “you did something useful or you do something very beautiful.” The realm of the former included such immensely important breakthroughs as the transistor, the silicon microprocessor, the laser, fiber optics, the communications satellite, the UNIX and C++ computer operating systems. In the pursuit of improved communications, serendipity occurred such as in the form of the confirmation of the “Big Bang” theory which won physicist Arno Penzias a 1977 Nobel Prize. Penzias, the retired Bell Labs vice-president for research, put it best when he said that “one of the great luxuries of the Bell Labs is that we don’t always need to get it right.” The Labs did get it right enough to amass more than 25,000 patents.
That all began changing in 1995 when a corporate team that included Carly Fiorina descended on the Bell Labs and began to pull the plug on pure research. According to Penzias, then clearly on the way out, “today we have an environment of interaction, while it is still collegial you now live with business-people.”
A key member of that latter group was Carly Fiorina who lead the housecleaning which let the scientists at Lucent know that they had better start looking for ways to “productize” their research. In 1997, Fiorina was appointed group president for global services and two years later, joined Hewlett-Packard.
What she left behind at Lucent/Bell Labs was a smoking ruin of what had been the world’s most important and productive research lab, an entity largely responsible for giving America the post-World War II boost that helped make the nation the world technology leader, contributing mightily to the prosperity that Americans took for granted but which came in no small measure from the pure research as practiced at the Bell Labs. By insisting that every piece of research be tied to a product, Fiorina and her ilk helped prevent a new generation of scientists from looking out over the far horizon and bringing back the kind of benefits that have come from such then-seemingly useless technologies including the transistor, laser, fiber optics.
It is not "rubbish" that she "took the hit" as CEO -- SHE DID THE DAMAGE. When you're paid $20 million to "just leave" that's not because you did a good job. That was the price for HP to get rid of Carly Fiorina and her incompetence.
HP was dead when she arrived
“I don’t know why others on here don’t like her.”
She is GOPe. She was on team Romney, a co-Chair of his campaign, saying only he could beat Obama etc...She’s a former RNC finance Chair. She was the Rove candidate in her 2010 Senate campaign.
Did you know these things?
I don’t dislike what she is doing so far, but I have no illusions that she is not in the race as a GOPe RNC team player.
Born September 6, 1954 in Austin, TX (Meets the Jus Soli Requirement)
Parents were
Joseph Tyree Sneed, III, born in TX
Madelon Montross Juergens, born in OH
Both parents were US Citizens at the time of her birth (Meets the Jus Sanguinis Requirement)
Cara Carleton Fiorina is a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN
Read Post #43,specifically about the damage she did to Bell Labs and try telling me that again.
Well the president of Egypt called for a reformation of Islam and Egypt just sentenced that lunatic Morsi to death
So I would say the Egyptians have been and should continue to be people we can work with
Besides they thwarted obama ‘s plan for a jihadist Egypt and caused untold heartburn to the sweet mint tea drinkers at our department of state- so. OOO RA for Egypt
Ditto with the Kurds and I’ll give Abdullah a pass too as a pragmatist not a western hating goathumper
Yea but their book commands them to lie to the infidel in order to become strong and defeat them.
So there ya go.
All true. Here's what else is true: She's in this race to be a foil against Hillary Clinton.
That's it. She has no illusions she can win, so what's in all this for Carly Fiorina?
That's the question. What's her payoff?
Also agree that Fiorina is very unlikely to get the nomination, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
The problem here is the drumbeat that is being stirred up to put squishy RINOs like Fiorina in a cabinet post or a heartbeat away from the presidency in the veep slot. I think THAT is a very likely scenario and my response would be hell no to either scenario. Fiorina wouldn't be helpful on the ticket and the number of conservatives who are unfamiliar with her past and see her as some type of female Rush Limbaugh is disturbing. I remember the ridiculous "Demon Sheep" ad in her Senate race, the "FioRINO" stuff when more conservative candidates were forced out of the race, and her being tied to the hip of McCain & Romney. All that is being whitewashed from history in favor of a new, media-created image of her as a "fearless conservative" savior.
If the only thing she does in this campaign is "attack Hillary" I have no objection. Go for it, Carly!
But the purpose to get her into a major government post she doesn't deserve is far more troubling.
Abortion +
Climate Change +
Immigration +
Economy +
Same sex marriage and LGBT rights +
Unabashed Christian +
I am finding more positives than negatives.
Rove candidate in California means little to me. Not likely many republicans could have even made it a race.
Again, I’ll admit that I don’t know much about her. I was leaning Cruz but the TPP thing has me a little upset with him.
She did that well. I don’t know if its off the cuff or talking points but her delivery was right on the mark.
“was leaning Cruz but the TPP thing has me a little upset with him.”
You don’t know much about her then. She very much supports globalization, outsourcing jobs etc...
And she did it as CEO of a multi-national.
I’m not arguing pro or con on that issue, but if that is an issue that bothers you, she would not be your candidate.
VP, I agree, I don’t want her there. And ultimately I don’t think she’s a likely choice.
Cabinet post like Sec of Commerce or something, meh, I don’t see that as being harmful. Sec of Commerce doesn’t do anything.
Sec of Treasury OTOH, she has mused about that job (back in ‘12). She wouldn’t be on my shortlist for that position. We desperately need a top notch operator in that spot, after Obama’s minions and the liberal scuzz that Bush put in there, O’Neil, shudder.
HP's board of directors pushed the Compaq merger. I was there. The board told that to us in company meetings. They made it very clear it was there intention to do so before they hired Carly. She was brought in to make it happen.
It was the dot-com bubble, everyone in the industry was shedding jobs, the ones that didn't, disappeared. She had the guts to lay people off, and that is BADLY needed at the White House. And HP is still going.
BTW Poltics1 is reporting that Trump is serious (not series, serious) this time. That he will run, for real.
Somehow I still don’t believe it.
So which infidel weapons would you prefer they have to kill isis?
Ours? Russia’s? Or China’s?
“Carly is a fool. And she ran HP into the ground.”
I second that... I wouldn’t vote for her as dog catcher. (I worked for her BTW)
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