Free Republic

The mediasphere is boiling after the New York Times ran a piece on Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy guru, a failed writer who openly boasted about manipulating the media. It was full of quotes like this... Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we...

How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age. Picture him as a young man, standing on the waterfront in North Williamsburg, at a polling site, on Sept. 11, 2001, which was Election Day in New York City. He saw the planes hit the towers, an unforgettable moment of sheer disbelief followed by panic and shock and lasting horror, a scene that eerily reminded him, in the aftermath, of the cover of the Don DeLillo novel “Underworld.”

When it comes to foreign policy, President Obama has spent more than seven years now living the dream. And I mean dream, as in fantasy -- a trip to an alternate universe. Never mind the dangerous and in some cases deadly realities that increasingly beset the rest of the planet. For the White House, it's been one glorious fiction after another. Russia was a "reset." Libya was a success. So was the pivot to Asia. The tide of war is receding. There was a red line in Syria (until there wasn't). The Iran nuclear program is now "exclusively peaceful." America's...

President Obama vigorously defended his nuclear negotiations at the end of a summit of Persian Gulf state leaders and a rocky visit to Saudi Arabia aimed at reassuring the anxious ally and seeking more support for the fight against the Islamic State. While the president acknowledged Saudi concern that the United States should not be "naïve" when dealing with Iran, he cited previous presidents' willingness to engage in talks with Russia during the height of the Cold War as models to follow. "John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan still negotiated with the Soviet Union even when the Soviet Union was...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered his country's nuclear weapons made ready for use at a moment's notice, the country's official state news agency reported Friday. Kim also said his country will ready its military so it is prepared to carry out pre-emptive attacks, calling the current situation very precarious, according to the Korean Central News Agency. The threats in the statement are part of the authoritarian nation's regular propaganda effort to show strength in the face of what it sees as an effort by its enemies South Korea and the United States to overthrow its leaders; it follows...

Obama Invites Enemy Spies to U.S. Military Brainstorming Sessions One catastrophic intelligence flap after the next. February 15, 2016 Humberto Fontova This very week General James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, testified that Castro's spies remain a serious security threat to the U.S.: "The threat from foreign intelligence entities...is persistent, complex, and evolving. Targeting and collection of US political, military, economic, and technical information by foreign intelligence services continues unabated. Russia and China pose the greatest threat, followed by Iran and Cuba..." (General James Clapper, Washington D.C. Feb 9, 2016.) But two weeks ago (Jan. 26-29th) when the U.S....

New details about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s latest military plans. Will those plans destabilize one of the United States’ most important military alliances? Putin appears to be flexing his muscle and his missiles. In a briefing with the Russian news media, Putin’s defense minister boldly declares his military will create three new divisions on Russia’s western flank with Europe, and will make five nuclear missile regimens ready for combat duty this year. U.S. and NATO officials tell CNN they’re monitoring this, assessing the impact on western security.

Think of a wonderful thought, any merry little thought. Think of Christmas, think of snow, think of sleigh bells, off you go, like reindeer in the sky! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!, 1953 In July, I used that Peter Pan quote to describe Donald Trump's impossible Neverland. Yet having digested the Obama administration's 2015 foreign-policy review and its Twitter hashtag (#2015in5words), I conclude that the quote is equally applicable to American foreign policy. After all, the administration's review actually claims that 2015 was a successful year. These successes apparently include establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba (freedom...

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas argued Monday that one line from President Barack Obama encapsulated both Obama's foreign policy and that of his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.Cruz, a Republican presidential candidate, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that Obama's statement was a "stunning indictment" of the president's policies after last week's terrorist attacks in Paris.Obama made the remark at a news conference in Turkey earlier in the day:What I'm not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of 'American leadership' or 'America winning,' or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to...

Obama Plans Takedown of Another U.S. Ally Cliff Kincaid President Obama failed to take out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but now he’s going after Canada’s Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a big supporter of Israel and opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s a story the U.S. media won’t cover. But Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press has been documenting how Obama is planning the “fundamental transformation” of Canada by taking down Harper’s government and bringing to power a progressive majority assembled from Canada’s Liberal Party and New Democratic Party (NDP), an affiliate of the Socialist International....

The emerging reports indicate the U.S. team, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, gradually backed down over the course of the talks as Iran's delegation dug in. The Wall Street Journal, citing current and former U.S. representatives at the discussions, claimed the White House had initially hoped to persuade Iran to dismantle much of the country's nuclear infrastructure when talks started in late 2013, only to be told categorically that Iran would not do so.

Secretary of State John Kerry said today he stands by his statement that Americans are facing fewer daily threats, even though he's received heavy criticism for his remarks. In an exclusive interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz on "This Week," explained the rationale behind his claims to Congress earlier this week, which came at the same time Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said this has been the most lethal year for global terrorism. "Well, I understand," he said. "Of course I understand it, Martha, because people are thinking about the day-to-day vision of what is happening on the...

Two days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to speak to a joint session of Congress, Secretary of State John Kerry said the prime minister is welcome to speak in the U.S. but worries it injects far too much politics into the relationship. “The prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously,” Kerry said today in an exclusive interview on ABC’s "This Week." “I talk to the prime minister regularly, including yesterday." But, Kerry added, "we don't want to see this turned into some great political football.” Kerry echoed frustrations expressed by the...

US Names First Global Envoy for Homosexual Agenda By Julio Severo The United States is naming its first international envoy for homosexual rights. This is a historic event, because no nation, even the United Nations, has ever appointed a homosexual ambassador for global homosexual rights. Every single major news outlet in the U.S. is covering this historic event. In a press release, the U.S. State Department said Randy Berry, an openly homosexual diplomat, will be its special envoy to promote homosexual rights. State Department Secretary John Kerry said, “We’re working to overturn laws that criminalize consensual same-sex conduct in...

Everyone from Jon Stewart to Ted Cruz has mocked President Obama for not flying to France last weekend. And rightly so. It should have been a no-brainer for any American president to want to be seen by the whole world leading a massive unity march against terrorism in response to what is being called France's 9/11. Obama had a great chance to show America's solidarity with the latest victims of Islamist extremism and stand up for a fundamental Western value like free speech. But he blew it. Many of Obama's most faithful allies are still shocked by his clumsy blunder...

I see where everyone is getting all wee-weed up about Big Guy missing 60% of his daily intelligence briefings – what gives? It hasn’t been August for over a month now. Anyway, it sounds like much ado about nothing, right? I mean, just because he missed the meeting that discussed the double-agent status of Anwar al-Awlaki before ordering his whacking-by-drone doesn’t mean that Awlaki didn’t deserve to be whacked. (Sorry about the collateral damage butt you know, you have to break a few eggs…)And besides, just because Barry skips 60% of the briefings doesn’t mean that he misses anything important: “You...

On this somber anniversary the NY Times has the entire above the fold section of the front page devoted to Barack Obama. Among them is the expected sycophantic plug from Gail Collins: "A Man with a Plan" But then we come to a article that purports to be serious but either was written by a 12 year old or someone for whom history began on January 21, 2009- Mark Landler. He opens: President Obama on Wednesday authorized a major expansion of the military campaign against rampaging Sunni militants in the Middle East, including American airstrikes in Syria and the deployment...

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S acknowledgment that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in Syria understandably attracted the most attention after his perplexing meeting with reporters Thursday. But his restatement of the obvious was not the most dismaying aspect of his remarks. The president’s goal, to the extent he had one, seemed to be to tamp down all the assessments of gathering dangers that his own team had been issuing over the previous days. This argument with his own administration is alarming on three levels. The first has to do with simple competence.

Challenging times call for extraordinary courage. But at the risk of sounding indelicate, the only cojones associated with President Obama are the ones lined up on the putting green, where his frequent appearances have given rise to a new meaning of the term “stay the course.” You’d think the so-called leader of the free world would at least sound courageous. But at recent press conferences, Mr. President has sauntered in, often late, leaned nonchalantly on the podium, and delivered a lackluster “lecture” in a tone of voice more peremptory than somber. His record for ambiguity and dullness reached a nadir...

By PETER BAKERAUGAugust 15, 2014 WASHINGTON — In this summer of global tumult, the debate in Washington essentially boils down to two opposite positions: It is all President Obama’s fault, according to his critics; no, it is not, according to his supporters, because these are events beyond his control. Americans often think of their president as an all-powerful figure who can command the tides of history — and presidents have encouraged this image over the years because the perception itself can be a form of power. But as his critics have made the case that Mr. Obama’s mistakes have fueled...