RUTHFULLY YOURS

If Donald Trump weren’t a clown, he’d apologize for saying that John McCain isn’t a war hero.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a long-abiding dislike for McCain. It’s not just that he’s tied with Joe Biden for getting the most things wrong on foreign policy and defense for the past four decades. It’s not just that his politics are abhorrent to conservatives, which McCain proved for all time in 2007 when the Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty for illegal aliens bill was his highest priority.

It’s not even his comprehensive arrogance, which helped sink his amateur hour (e.g., Sarah Palin) presidential campaign. It’s the fact that the Republicans can never have sensible defense and foreign policies as long as he’s the chief architect of the Party’s positions. He needs to be retired, and quickly.

But to say, as Trump did, that McCain isn’t a war hero is so absurd, Trump managed to reach a low usually achieved only by the likes of Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark and John Kerry.

My proof is very simple. In 2004, when Kerry was running for president, I sought and spoke to four former residents of the “Hanoi Hilton,” the infamous POW camp in North Vietnam. Two had been held for up to eight years, the other two for less time.

They all said many of the same things. Among them were that they were all brutalized, beaten and tortured almost every day. Another was that they’d not be alive today if it hadn’t been for the heroism of John McCain.

So who are you going to believe? Donald Trump, or men such as Air Force pilots Tom Collins and Dick Vaughn and Navy aviators Jack Ensch and Doug Clower?
Chattanooga Killings Tie Back to Bill

In 1993, Bill Clinton signed an order forbidding US military members from bearing arms domestically, on or off-base. We’ve seen the effects of this order before, as when Army Major Nidal Hassan slaughtered 13 and wounded 32 military members at Fort Hood in 2009 before being shot and subdued by a police woman.
Hassan’s allegiance was never in doubt. This is a man whose business card said “Soldier of Allah” on them.

The killing this week of four marines and a sailor by another jihadi, Mohammed Abdulazeez, is the latest product of the anti-gun movement. The five were killed after Abdulazeez shot up a recruiting center in a shopping mall which is a gun-free zone. He killed the five at a Navy operations support center in another civilian area.
We can – and should – have serious conversations about our inability to spot jihadis like Abdulazeez, who apparently traveled to Jordan and may have met with other jihadis there. And we can – and should – talk about immigration of Muslims who may have ties to terrorism.

But before all that, we have to make sure that those who are sworn to protect us against foreign and domestic threats have the means to do so.
Cong. Duncan Hunter (R-Cal), himself a Marine veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, is introducing a bill to revoke Clinton’s order and ensure that our military can and will arm themselves while serving domestically.

The idea that Marines, soldiers and sailors – except for military police – aren’t armed while serving in the US is incredibly stupid. We should all be calling our congressmen and senators this week to demand they pass Hunter’s bill forthwith. Heaven knows they aren’t doing anything else constructive.
Such as Defeating the Iran Deal

Today President Obama’s UN ambassador will vote a resolution of the UN Security Council that will endorse the Iran nuclear arms deal and make it, in effect, international law. The resolution will say that the sanctions will be lifted as soon as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s purblind watchdog on nuclear proliferation which – under its former head Mohammed el-Baradei was an apologist for Iran – says Iran is abiding by the deal Obama just negotiated. The arms embargo will be supposedly be retained (wink, wink) for five years.

Obama’s actions have raised the hackles of some senate Republicans. For example, 82-year old Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) who – like McCain – is long overdue to be put out to pasture. Hatch bewailed Obama’s insult to the senate in bypassing it and not waiting for the senate to act on the Corker bill, which gives it sixty days to review the deal.

Just what the hell else did he expect? Obama’s abiding disregard for congress and the Constitution has been demonstrated so many times that it’s a given.

As I wrote when the Corker bill was being passed, it turns the Constitution on its head. Instead of Obama having to get a 2/3 vote in the Senate to ratify it as a treaty (which every other nuclear deal has had to be) the Corker foolishness allows it to be disapproved on a regular majority vote, allows Obama to veto the disapproval and then requires a 2/3 vote in both the House and the Senate to override the veto. Instead of imposing the burden on Obama to get a 2/3 vote in the senate to ratify it, it imposes the burden on the opponents to get a 2/3 vote in both the House and the Senate to kill it.

That’s above and beyond capitulation to Obama. There’s zero chance that Pelosi and Reid won’t be able to prevent the 2/3 vote to kill the deal.

The senators and congressmen who voted for the Corker bill are simply reaping what they sowed. American national security – and the national security of Israel and our allies in Europe – is thus forfeited to congress’ violation of its duty.