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"My time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience." It was close to midnight on Jan. 20, 2009, and I was about to go to sleep when my iPhone beeped. There was a new text message. It was from Richard Holbrooke. It said, "Are you up, can you talk?" When I called, he told me that Barack Obama had asked him to serve as envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He would work out of the State Department, and he wanted me to join his team. "No one knows this yet. Don't tell anyone. Well, maybe...

In the last few days, Obama administration officials have frequently faced the question: Is the fighting in Libya a war? From military officers to White House spokesmen up to the president himself, the answer is no. But that leaves the question: What is it? In a briefing on board Air Force One Wednesday, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at an answer. "I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone," Rhodes...

‘A decade of war is now ending,” President Obama declared in his inaugural address a few weeks ago. That was an odd statement, considering that we have entered a second decade of war. In the same speech, the president referred to having won “peace in our time.” Neville Chamberlin said something similar. Wars are not ended by historically tone-deaf rhetorical flourishes.Two weeks ago in Algeria, Islamist terrorists conducted their bloodiest raid in years. The attack came only a few months after President Obama proclaimed that al-Qaeda had been “decimated.” The Algerian government launched an immediate counterattack, refusing to consult...

Obama Fires Top General Without Even a Phone Call Daniel Halper January 25, 2013 10:26 AM President Barack Obama fired General James Mattis, the head of Central Command, without even calling the general to let him know he was being replaced. "I am told that General Mattis was travelling and in a meeting when an aide passed him a note telling him that the Pentagon had announced his replacement as head of Central Command. It was news to him -- he hadn't received a phone call or a heads-up from anyone at the Pentagon or the White House," Thomas E....

Two days ago we posted a discussion around a newly released photo from the White House. The picture was taken in the oval office on Sept 11th 2012: (Snip) The picture was taken at exactly 7:28:16pm DC time. It was dusk outside, and President Obama had just completed a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Why is this important? Because we know the conversation lasted an hour. (Snip) So this phone call between Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama started three hours after the attack began.

November 2, 2012 The Smoking Gun of the Benghazi Cover-up By Pat Buchanan 11/2/2012   On June 6 of this year, a bomb planted at the U.S. compound in Benghazi ripped a 12-foot-wide hole in the outer wall. On June 11, the British ambassador's motorcade was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, wounding a medic and doctor. The next day, the ambassador was gone and the British Benghazi post was closed. At the same time, the Red Cross, after a second attack, shut down and fled the city. "When that occurred," says Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who headed the military...

Current and former intelligence officials tell Fox News that a classified State Department cable sent Aug. 16 -- and which said the Benghazi consulate could not defend against a "coordinated attack" -- would certainly have gone to the White House National Security Council staff. "The National Security Council sees everything," a former senior intelligence official told Fox News. "The staff are sitting on top of all the cable traffic which means the national security advisor (Tom Donilon) and deputy national security advisor (Denis McDonough) have some explaining to do. If Libya was of interest to this administration, the national security...

Via the Daily Caller, Newt Gingrich thinks that the Benghazi scandal might blow wide open over the next two days, thanks to e-mails that he claims two networks now possess from the office of the National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon. According to a "reliable Senator" who tipped him to the information, Gingrich says that the e-mails came in response to the request to aid the consulate in Benghazi after the attack began, and asserted that the attack wasn't a terrorist action and therefore didn't need a response:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “There is a rumor — I want to...

Pic courtesy another major Japanese national TV network, TBS For those who have been following this, the Japanese press is filled with snippets, chortling and stories and about the keystone-cop-ish US White House (specifically the National Security Council under Tom Donilon) and the White House website, which mistakenly listed the first name of Japan's Prime Minister (the third largest economy in the world you recall) as a common Japanese "female first name", "Yoshiko" (sic), and now the Chunichi Shimbun News off a Kyodo News Agency story (which is the blue ribbon equivalent of AP), has run an article saying...

Obama aide tells Israel of Iran attack plan: paper ReutersReuters – 3 hrs ago JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's national security adviser has briefed Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a U.S. contingency plan to attack Iran should diplomacy fail to curb its nuclear program, an Israeli newspaper reported on Sunday. The Haaretz newspaper said that the U.S. adviser - Thomas Donilon - had described the plan in talks with Netanyahu earlier this month. A senior Netanyahu aide, Harel Locker, refused to comment on the report when asked about it in an interview with an Israeli radio station. Another...

< The Japanese major television network JNN (and others) reported on its national news today as well as website a hefty diplomatic faux pas by the Obama White House and national security team in advance of White House's National Security Advisor Tom Donilon's trip here to Tokyo.The gaffe is referred to in this short video clip (at link) of JNN Network News today.Go to link, hit white arrow in center of photo to stream; stream may be up one more day and may not work on all systems. Hilarious.

U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon shared Washington's contingency plans for a possible attack on Iran with Israel's PM, according to a senior American official. The U.S. national security adviser has shared with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the United States' contingency plans for a possible attack on Iran. According to a senior American official, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon briefed Netanyahu on the plans during Donilon's visit to Israel two weeks ago. According to the official, who requested anonymity, Netanyahu hosted Donilon at a three-hour dinner. For part of the time, Israel's national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, was on hand....

REPORT: Lieberman and McCain out the leaker... Developing...

By opening an investigation into the leaks of classified information, the Obama White House appears to be entering the kind of perilous Fill-In-The-Blank-Gate terrain that has eventually engulfed most administrations in the modern era. The pattern: an initial investigation launched to relieve mounting political pressure snowballs into a much larger scandal, leaving a trail of broken careers in its wake. And the beginnings of that pattern are in place: Attorney General Eric Holder Friday appointed two federal prosecutors to oversee multiple FBI investigations into leaks involving stories in recently published books and articles in the New York Times, AP, and...

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," June 11, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. "..PAT CADDELL, FORMER DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: I'll make news -- the culprit is clear. It's Tom Donilon, the National Security adviser. Tom Donilon is a political hack. He was a political operative. He was the delegate counter for Carter and then Mondale. And he is now running around -- he was also the guy working with Jim Johnson, corrupting Fannie Mae. And somehow, he is National Security adviser and he is known in Washington as the leaker in...

Democratic activist Pat Caddell told Sean Hannity tonight that he definitively knows former political hack and current National Security Advisor Tom Donilon was the source of the White House security leaks.

Interesting stuff!!! Interview done by Stephen K. Bannon.

Pakistani chutzpah By JPOST EDITORIAL 05/10/2011 22:13 Pakistan, like Israel, was created as a result of the disintegration of British colonialism, is, unlike Israel, turning out to be a failure Pakistan was created in 1947 as an Islamic state for the Muslims of India. But it is the Yiddish word chutzpah that best describes what seems to the country’s scandalous behavior. For those with a grasp of Pakistan’s history – in particular the self-defeating penchant by Pakistanis for blaming the country’s many failures on its perceived deviance from the most extreme, reactionary version of Islamic faith – it came as...

Years before Fannie Mae foundered amid a massive accounting scandal, President Obama's choice for national security adviser oversaw an office inside the mortgage giant that orchestrated a negative publicity blitz to fight attempts by Congress to increase government oversight, records show. Thomas E. Donilon, who won the job as national security adviser this month, worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005 at a time the company's officials insisted finances were sound. He also earned more than $1.8 million in bonuses before the government took over the troubled company in the wake of an accounting scandal....

The National Security Advisor of the President of the United States is a really important job – for NATO and the West, not just for America. Whoever holds it has to ensure (among many other responsibilities) that the efforts of the the Pentagon and the State Department are coordinated towards a strategic end. Of all the posts in government, this one is supposed to be apolitical. Until last week, General Jim Jones, a retired marine with an extensive strategic resume, held the post for Obama. Now he has been replaced by a pure political hack: Thomas E Donilon. As my...