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Ruth King

OBAMA RESCUES ASSAD: The President Lets Putin Outmaneuver Him

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324094704579066774128762480.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

What could be worse for America’s standing in the world than a Congress refusing to support a President’s proposal for military action against a rogue regime that used WMD? Here’s one idea: A U.S. President letting that rogue be rescued from military punishment by the country that has protected the rogue all along.

That’s where President Obama now finds himself on Syria after he embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to take custody of Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons. The move may rescue Mr. Obama and Congress from the political agony of a vote on a resolution to authorize a military strike on Syria. But the diplomatic souk is now open, and Mr. Obama has turned himself into one of the junior camel traders.

What a fiasco. Secretary of State John Kerry, of all people, first floated this escape route for Assad on Monday in Europe where he was supposed to be rallying diplomatic support for a strike. The remark appeared to be off-the-cuff, but with Mr. Kerry and this Administration you never know. In any case before Mr. Kerry’s plane had landed in the U.S., Russia’s foreign minister had leapt on the idea and proposed to take custody of Assad’s chemical arsenal to forestall U.S. military action.
The White House should have rebuffed the offer given Russia’s long protection of Assad at the United Nations—a fact noted with scorn on Monday by Mr. Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice. Instead Mr. Obama endorsed the Russian gambit as what “could potentially be a significant breakthrough.” The Senate immediately called off its Wednesday vote on the military resolution. By Tuesday Assad had accepted the offer that he hopes will spare him from a military strike.

OBAMA TO PUTIN: YOUR MOVE CAROL E. LEE And JANET HOOK

Obama Holds Fire on Syria, Waits on Russia Plan
President Presses Case for Syria Strikes but Asks Congress to Delay Votes

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067002690675662.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama told Americans Tuesday he would pursue a newly energized diplomatic course to try to resolve the standoff with Syria, but he insisted that the U.S. must conduct military strikes, if needed, in response to the Assad regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

Mr. Obama said in a televised address that he asked Congress to postpone a vote on a resolution to authorize military force, which he looked likely to lose. Instead he said he would reserve the option of military strikes while pursuing a Russian proposal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons under an international agreement.

“It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed,” Mr. Obama said, “and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments.”

Mr. Obama’s address, which showed no immediate sign of changing minds in Congress, came on a day of fast-moving developments in which U.S. lawmakers and officials from France, Russia and other nations scrambled to develop proposals under which Syria would relinquish its chemical weapons.

Syria for the first time directly admitted that it possesses chemical weapons and said it would cease their production and disclose the locations of the stockpiles to the international community, including the United Nations and Russia, which is at the center of the negotiations.

Original Thinking: Will Israel Be in Close Combat With al-Qaida in 2014? By BARRY SHAW

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/09/jihadism-resurgent/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=2e3e8bd7a8-Mosaic_2013_9_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-2e3e8bd7a8-41165129 “I didn’t join the navy to fight for al-Qaida in a Syrian civil war,” read one sign posted on Facebook. US servicemen are being photographed holding signs to hide their faces. This new form of Anonymous protest is addressed to their president. “I didn’t join the navy to fight for al-Qaida in a Syrian […]

DIANA WEST: THE REBUTTAL PART 3 SEE NOTE PLEASE

AFTER TAKING DOWN A POSITIVE REVIEW OF DIANA WEST’S BOOK, FRONTPAGE POSTED A SNARLING AND VICIOUS “REVIEW” BY RON RADOSH. THIS IS A REBUTTAL, BUT THE FRONTPAGE/RADOSH FATWAH AGAINST DIANA CONTINUED.

http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/Diana-West

PART ONE: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/05/The-Rebuttal-Part-One

PART TWO: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/07/The-Rebuttal-Part-Two

CHAPTER 3

THE AGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL #2: URANIUM

The next aggressive attack on detail is plucked from the colossal Lend-Lease program the US created to supply allies during World War II. Supplying the Soviet Union was a bitter pill for the American people to swallow. FDR whoppers–such as declaring religious freedom existed in the USSR–didn’t help. But supply “Uncle Joe” we did–and to a needlessly dangerous extreme, I conclude from the sources contained in my book.

From American Betrayal, p. 43:

War supplies didn’t just “flow” to the Soviet Union, they flooded it, with over half a million trucks and jeeps, nearly $1 billion worth (1940s dollars) of ordnance and ammunition, thousands of fighter aircraft, bombers, and tanks, 13 million pairs of winter boots, 1.7 million tons of petroleum products, a merchant fleet, 1,000 steam locomotives, 581 naval vessels including minesweepers, landing craft, submarine chasers, frigates, torpedo boats, floating dry docks, pontoon barges, river tugs, and a light cruiser. There were also icebreakers, which were essential to keep the northernmost ports of the Gulag Archipelago supplied with fresh slaves, another “lost” fact. American Lend-Lease didn’t just keep the Soviet police state humming along internally, either. As Nikita Khrushchev would say to Life magazine in 1970 of those half a million trucks and jeeps, “Just imagine how we would have advanced from Stalingrad to Berlin without them!”

Radosh, of course, doesn’t mention any of that. He writes:

West also insists that Lend-Lease aid was a crucial “rogue operation” orchestrated by Hopkins and the NKVD for the purpose of getting not only war supplies to the Russians, but “the materials that go into making an atomic bomb…up to and including uranium. (Her emphasis.)

This, of course, is supposed to sound appropriately “unhinged” if not “crackpot”–just so many more “yellow journalism conspiracy theories.”

ZIONISM 101: THE REVIVAL OF HEBREW..****

http://zionism101.org/NewestVideo.aspx

A new video has gone up.

“Revival of Hebrew” is now available.

You can see it directly via the following link:

http://zionism101.org/NewestVideo.aspx

Or log in at www.zionism101.org

“Revival of Hebrew” tells the story of how an ancient language used only for study and prayer once again became the common tongue of the Jewish people. Even the father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, did not think it possible.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man who did more than any other to make the renaissance of Hebrew possible, wrote:

“It flashed before my eyes like lightning… I heard a strange voice calling within me: ‘The resurrection of Israel and its language in the Land of Our Fathers!'”

We encourage you to share information about “Zionism 101” with your friends, family, and co-workers, plus anyone else who is interested in learning about the most important development in modern Jewish history.

If you haven’t already, please watch our completed video series: “Founding Fathers,” “Origins of Zionism,” “Rivals to Zionism,” “Christian Zionism,” and “Early Zionist Settlement.”

If you would like to donate to Zionism 101, please visit http://zionism101.org/donate.aspx

FRANK SALVATO: BE HONEST AND DISPENSE WITH THE SPIN

http://www.newmediajournal.us/ On this observance of the “September 11ths,” I stand unashamed to say, I know who the enemy is…both inside and outside the gates.  As we consider the anniversary of September 11th – now, both 2001 and 2012, it is important to consider some simple truths. These truths eluded our government and the nation in […]

The West Abolishes Itself by Derk Jan Eppink

http://londoncenter.org/2013/09/west-abolishes/?utm_source=Weekly+Commentary+%289-10-13%29&utm_campaign=weekly_commentary&utm_medium=email In 2008 Obama, presidential candidate at the time, spoke in Berlin to the “citizens of the world”. As the intended successor George Bush he wanted to make America popular again. America avoided power politics and became a glorified spectator. Obama has been overtaken by events. In the Middle East he created a void that […]

ROGER KIMBALL: FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMING AMERICA

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/09/08/fundamentally-transforming-the-united-states-of-america/?print=1 Remember when candidate Barack Obama promised his acolytes that they were only “five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America [1]”? That was back in October 2008, when the hectic flush of Obamamania was at its peak.  To be fair, it’s taken a bit longer than five days, but here we […]

P.DAVID HORNIK: ISRAEL-LEPER OR LIGHT UNTO THE NATIONS PART 5

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/09/01/israel-leper-or-light-unto-the-nations-part-5-whichever-it-is-ive-married-it/?print=1 See the previous installments of P. David Hornik’s fascinating series: Israel: Leper or Light Unto the Nations? Part 1: The Whole World Against Us Israel: Leper or Light Unto the Nations? Part 2: That Bird Could Be a Mossad Agent! Israel: Leper or Light Unto the Nations? Part 3: From Woodstock to the Promised […]

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:Obama’s Farce He Sold His Plan for Bombing Syria on Flawed Political Assumptions.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/358048/print

To support the president’s enforcement of his red line in Syria requires suspensions of disbelief. Here are several.

I wish it were not true, but there is scant evidence that the world, led by the U.S., went to war in the past over the use of weapons of mass destruction — whether by Gamel Nasser in Yemen or by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds and the Iranians. Understandably, the current West’s reaction, including Obama’s, to possible Syrian WMD use is calibrated mostly on the dangers of intervention, not the use of WMD per se. Thus Obama is now focusing on Syria in a way he is not, at least overtly, on Iran, the far greater WMD threat, because he believes the former could be handled with two days’ worth of Tomahawks and the latter could not. That would be understandable pragmatism if it were not dressed up in the current humanitarian bluster about red lines and the “international community.”

Obama, I think, is inadvertently doing the terrible arithmetic that the last 1,000 Syrians killed by the Assad regime pose a humanitarian crisis that demands his intervention in a way that the first 99,000 did not — on the theory that WMD represent an existential threat. (In fact, from the trenches of World War I to Hiroshima, WMD have never killed more than contemporary horrific conventional weaponry has.) So far Obama has not made that case. We can only wonder whether the forgotten hundreds of thousands butchered from Rwanda to Darfur — without so much as one Tomahawk or Hellfire launched on their behalf — might have been saved had only their killers begun their devilry with sarin gas.

Obama, as senator and presidential candidate, made the serial argument that U.S. military interventions, barring an “imminent threat” to our national security, are both illegal and immoral unless they have the triad of U.S. congressional support, U.N. approval, and American public support.