MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Trying to Derail Obama. Again

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There have been political cartoons and breathless stories, including blatantly false ones by Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for President of the United States, about how President Obama paid ransom to get the Iran nuclear deal.

Now, along comes a corrective story in the form of a New York Times editorial:

The first thing to know about the latest controversy over the Iran nuclear deal is that the Obama administration did not pay $400 million in “ransom” to secure the release of three American detainees. Yet that’s the story critics are peddling in another attempt to discredit an agreement that has done something remarkable — halted a program that had put Iran within striking distance of producing a nuclear weapon.

The truth is that the administration withheld the payment to ensure Iran didn’t renege on its promise to free three detainees — a Washington Post journalist, a Marine veteran and a Christian pastor. That’s pragmatic diplomacy not capitulation.

A graphic accompanying the editorial in the New York Times

A graphic accompanying the editorial in the New York Times

“U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed” The Wall Street Journal first blared two and half weeks ago (the story is behind a pay wall), peddling a gotcha that the “Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom.”

A shame that Rupert Murdoch has turned a once-principled newspaper into another of his disreputable propaganda organs.

Please read rest of the Times editorial to get the background and full story of what happened in this case.

August 23, 2016
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. . . and, War Starts?

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Remember, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in December no less, President Barack Obama spelled out the conditions under which and reserved for himself the right to wage “Just Wars.”[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3uU_mCNcKM[/youtube]

Has Iran, by its nuclear recalcitrance, tripped a condition?

This story out of Scotland said some very big munitions are on their way to a place not too far from where they could be delivered to Iran at a moment’s notice:

Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.

Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.

The story continued here.

In Oslo, Norway, on December 10, President Obama said this:

War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease — the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

And over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers and clerics and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a “just war” emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

With Iran’s continuing nuclear folly, are we about to see the terrible things Obama talked about just a few months ago when he declared himself a man of peace who would wage war if he had to?

March 15, 2010
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“Enemies of freedom”

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Gaza Needs a George Orwell Now

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By Jim Sleeper – January 11, 2009, 12:48AM

Israel is barring independent journalists from Gaza, but The New York Times, relying on Palestinian correspondents there, reports that “Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.”

The Times account of how cruelly both sides are fighting underscores how badly we need reporting like George Orwell’s from the bloody Spanish Civil War in 1936. Orwell joined and fought for the democratic left against the fascist Franco, but he quickly found something his leftist readers didn’t want to know: Franco wasn’t the only evil enemy of freedom in Spain.

If a new Orwell informs us that Israel, although it’s hideously cruel and wrong, isn’t the only evil enemy of freedom in Gaza, will anyone want to know?

Continue . . .

January 12, 2009
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A perspective on Obama’s election

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The Central Virginia Progressive-The DAVISReport sends us The Ethnicity of our President Elect and how it changes the paradigm

A friend sent me the essay below and when I read it I knew I had to share it on this blog. The author, Mr Robert J. House, in his 70’s, is a retired professional man of Black African descent,who came of age before, during, and through the civil rights 1960’s.
His thoughts on the election of Barack Obama and how it changes the paradigm:
Some have asked what I think, so I thought I would add my two cents worth. I’m amazed at how calm I was when at 11PM election night, MSNBC made the announcement.
Of course there was a great sense of pride, but true to my nature after a pause, the wonderment came, what will it all mean? When Barack Obama walked out with his family, my emotions were a misting in my eyes, and a chill, followed by a warm glow of fulfillment. I was amazed at how much he has aged, coupled with the sadness etched on his face by the loss of his grandmother.
Women shaped his life, as is the reality for many of the black men of our generation who “amounted to anything” . I know that was the case for me – it has been both a blessing and a challenge.
For America, and the world, his election is a daunting task. We all know about the Two Wars, the economy, failing education, crumbling infra-structures and a health care system that borders on genocide for the poor and disenfranchised.
All this coupled with our damaged reputation around the world. My question is, will America “step up” and support this new young president and begin to seriously address and fix these problems or will some Americans, particularly those out of power,or those possessed with racial and cultural hatred coupled by fear and fueled by lack of economic opportunity, rather see this country fail than give this “n***** ” a chance to succeed?
The thing is, those who would strongly withhold their support fail to take into consideration that when they had power and access, they failed, because they could not or were not equipped to handle the issues.

For we Americans of “Black African descent”, the days coming are going to be particularly challenging and life altering times. I’m reminded of Tavis Smiley’s annual forum on the “State of Black America” and how last year, he got “pissed” because Obama would not attend. My thoughts are that that forum dwindled in effectiveness (other than a place to complain) because the lack of jobs, poor education, poor infrastructure, the cost of energy and the overall economy now affected all ethnicity.

Our task will be to understand our particular place in American society and our responsibility to that place and ourselves. Unlike other “minorities” we are unique in that we do not have a typical ancestral and cultural core that we can identify and cling to.

The Latinos (not to be confused with Hispanics), Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc) Eastern Europeans, Middle Eastern (Iran, Iraq, Egyptians, Laotians, Syrians, etc) all have their separate cultural identity from dress, language, food, religious worship, role of women, etc. These immigrant minorities came here of their own free will. Whereas our ancestors, for the most part, came here against their will.
This stripped from us ancestral and cultural identity, aspects that would sustain us though generations. The vast majority of us cannot identify what country or continent we came from and only assume we must come from one of the west African countries. But we do have a uniqueness that sets us apart and makes us “first among equal” of the immigrant groups.
Our african ancestors built this country and we have the blood, sweat, tears and the scars to prove it. For me, for all of us, this is the country of our ancestors and Barack Obama’s election as it’s Chief Executive is the manifestation of our ownership, our pride of ownership, our inclusion.

With his election to the presidency, Barack Obama has shone the bright light on our ownership and it is our responsibility to do all that we can to protect and enhance it. We cannot, with any conviction, no longer say that we cannot succeed, not be responsible for and to our families (particularly our children), not be stewards of our communities, not establish meaningful and worthwhile relationships because “the man won’t let us”.

Truth be told, we are “the man” and it is past time (particularly for our men) to prepare and act like it!

Not all of us will go to college, achieve noteworthy status, or get rich, but all of us have something to offer.

It’s only when we fail to try and take our place in ensuring our ownership that we tear down those who work hard, sacrifice, get knocked down and get back up and keep on trying. In God’s time he sent the world Barack Obama, loaded his back like a country mule and told him to keep stepping. We can do no less.
The DAVISReport

Posted by www.EileenDavis.blogspot.com The Davis Report – The Voice of Central Virginia and the Capital City

November 22, 2008
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That hero, McCain

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The New York Times published a story on Sunday that had me scratching my head.

Timesman David D. Kirkpatrick’s piece, Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine, is not quite like the usual admiring pieces that we’ve come to expect from the mainstream media about McCain, explaining away obvious and prodigious faults while pumping up questionable actions as valorous. This piece contained actual criticisms of McCain, including from a retired general who was a former supporter of the Arizona senator before before breaking with him over the Iraq war.

Kirkpatrick, nevertheless, coated McCain in a heroic sheen. John McCain got to his Senate office in Washington, D.C. late on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, moments after terrorists flew the first plane into the World Trade Center.

McCain, that old warrior (at least, as the story would have you believe) immediately recognized this for what it was:

“This is war,” he was quoted as murmuring to aides, as the sound of scrambling fighter planes rattled windows and sent panic through the room.

I’m sure Mccain was not rattled. He is a war hero, remember?

“Within hours, Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Kirkpatrick wrote this entire passage almost approvingly. He does not point out that none of the alleged 9/11 terrorists were Iranian, Iraqi, or Syrian, or that 14 or 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, and that the financing for this “Attack on America” was wholly from the Saudi coffers.

That McCain was wrong in his analysis of every aspect of the situation, that he was wrong on the prescription to remedy the situation, was also not part of the story. It was just another mainstream media piece that took pains to mention that McCain was “Vietnam War hero.”

“Now, as Mr. McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief. Like many, he immediately recalibrated his assessment of the unseen risks to America’s security. But he also began to suggest that he saw a new “opportunity” to deter other potential foes by punishing not only Al Qaeda but also Iraq.

“Just as Sept. 11 revolutionized our resolve to defeat our enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to secure and expand our freedom,” Mr. McCain told a NATO conference in Munich in early 2002, urging the Europeans to join what he portrayed as an all but certain assault on Saddam Hussein. “A better world is already emerging from the rubble.”

To his admirers, Mr. McCain’s tough response to Sept. 11 is at the heart of his appeal. They argue that he displayed the same decisiveness again last week in his swift calls to penalize Russia for its incursion into Georgia, in part by sending peacekeepers to police its border.

His critics charge that the emotion of Sept. 11 overwhelmed his former cool-eyed caution about deploying American troops without a clear national interest and a well-defined exit, turning him into a tool of the Bush administration in its push for a war to transform the region.

“He has the personality of a fighter pilot: when somebody stings you, you want to strike out,” said retired Gen. John H. Johns, a former friend and supporter of Mr. McCain who turned against him over the Iraq war. “Just like the American people, his reaction was: show me somebody to hit.”

I mean this is a nightmare. Would America really let this happen? Elect McCain, a man even more unsuitable than George W. Bush, to the presidency?

The Obama campaign seized on a motif early in the campaign, saying that a vote for John McCain would be a vote for a third term for George W. Bush.

Let me offer another scenario: Karl Rove’s brass knuckle attack on McCain–you know, the one about him fathering a child with a black prostitute–did not work (after which Rove would have rolled out the crazed Manchurian candidate attack–they had already questioned Mccain’s patriotism, although not quite loudly yet; I would have loved to see what Karl Rove would have done to McCain’s hero status up close, in a hard-fought contest that the 2000 election would have been) and McCain emerged with the nomination and occupied the White House the last seven plus years.

What this Times story told me is that–and hard as this may be to imagine–America with McCain as president would have made all of the same mistakes that the administration of George W. Bush made in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Our foreign policy would have been just as bellicose, if not more so. A president McCain would still have countenanced torture, shredded the Constitution, violated civil liberties, would have run just as inept a federal bureaucracy, betrayed the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and been just as befuddled a steward of the economy.

The polls say McCain is within a striking distance of winning the presidency, an event that I find alarming.

August 19, 2008
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A Clear Voice

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The United States is not speaking with a forked tongue about Russian atrocities in Georgia before the United Nations Security Council.

Russia and the U.S. traded hot accusations at the Security Council over Moscow’s aggressive handling of its military operation in Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia and the bombing of Georgia proper.

Georgian diplomats at the U.N. asked for “immediate diplomatic and humanitarian intervention to protect georgian from russian ongoing aggression.” A U.S.-European resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire is pending but Russia is certain to veto it.

I am not sure how much U.S. Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad was freelancing before the Security Council on Sunday and how much administration policy he was voicing:

“We must condemn Russia’s military assault on the sovereign state of Georgia, the violation of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including the targeting of civilians and the campaign of terror against the georgian population,” Khalilzad told the council.

Which brought an angry retort from Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin:

“This statement, ambassador, is absolutely unacceptable, particularly from the lips of the permanent representative of a country whose actions we’re aware of, including with regards to civilian populations . . .”

Churkin was obviously about to discuss U.S. atrocities in Iraq, including indiscriminate bombing of civilian population in that country over the course of the last several years. But, as we know that American ears are too delicate for truth about their own country, CNN U.N. Correnspondent Richard Roth broke in at this point, speaking over Churkin’s voice, with a useless observation about this being the most heated confrontation between the two superpowers since the cold war.

It is a useless observation because it sought to obscure how the Iraq war has degraded America’s moral standing the in the world. In the past, America could speak with moral authority on an issue such as this, and have the world pay attention. No more. Russian laughed in our face and told us to butt out.

It did not stop Khalilzad, of course, from speaking out forcefully. Khalilzad was famously reprimanded by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for appearing on a panel alongside the Iranian foreign minister at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland at a time when the Bush administration was not talking to Iran.

Rice has contented herself with working in the background on the Russian-Georgian crisis. George W. Bush, meanwhile, has been strangely mealy-mouthed in public statements about the crisis.

Khalilzad told the Security Council on Sunday that the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told Sec. of State Rice in a phone conversation that Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, must go. He then turned to ambassador Churkin and, dramatically, asked:

“Is the goal of the Russian Federation to change the leadership of Georgia?”

Churkin waved away the question inside the council but told journalists outside the chamber that some leaders, meaning Saakashvili, should contemplate how useful they’ve become to their people.

“Regime change is purely an american invention, purely an American invention,” Churkin, nevertheless, insisted. “We never apply this terminology in our political thinking.”

Khalilzad persisted that Russia’s overreach in Georgia could undermine the relationship of the two powers

“We want to make sure our Russian counterparts to understand that the days of overthrowing leaders by military means in europe, those days are gone,” he said.

Churkin, sly and charming, told reporters the truth:

“I don’t think we’re in danger of somehow jeopardizing our relationship with the United States.”

He is right.

No one, not the U.S., not the Europeans, will do a damn thing to help Georgia. Georgia is dead and gone, hors d’oeuvre, to Russia’s insatiable appetite for territory. In a time not too far in the future, all that will remain of the nation we now know as Georgia will be comprised of a desert, a couple of gas pumps, and oil pipelines leading out to the Black Sea.

Who will stop Russia?

August 11, 2008
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'Integrity' update

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I mean, did John McCain really just try to pass off as a joke his crack about killing Iranians?

Are they responding to news of Iranian missile tests? Has no one been listening, or reading the news lately?

File photo of an Israeli fighter jet taking off from an air force base.

Hasn’t Israel been making noise about attacking Iran? The George W. Bush administration giving hints that it may well attack Iran?

An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks “unavoidable” given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, a deputy to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said recently.

What is Iran supposed to do? Stand pat?

A photograph released by the news website of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards shows four of the nine missiles test-fired on Wednesday.

It’s leaders would be negligent if, in the face of such threats, they do nothing to show that such an attack on their nation would not be cost-free.

The Times story, by Alan Cowell and William J. Broad, began this way:

Iranian Revolutionary Guards practicing war-game maneuvers test-fired nine missiles on Wednesday, including at least one the government in Tehran describes as having the range to reach Israel.

The tests drew sharp American criticism and came a day after the Iranians had threatened to retaliate against Israel and the United States if attacked.

State-run media said the missiles were long- and medium-range weapons, and included the Shahab-3, which Tehran maintains is able to hit targets up to 1,250 miles away from its firing position. Parts of western Iran are within 650 miles of Tel Aviv.

The tests, shown on Iranian television, coincide with increasingly tense exchanges with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Iran says is for civilian purposes but which many Western governments suspect is aimed at building nuclear weapons. Iran’s military display came just a day after the United States and the Czech Republic signed an accord to allow the Pentagon to deploy part of its contentious antiballistic missile shield, which Washington maintains is designed to protect in part against Iranian missiles.

If we’re going to go around threatening war, we should not be surprised that the target of our threats show some spine, instead of cowering. We would ask no less of our country. Why do we expect different from Iranians?

July 9, 2008
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Mr. Integrity

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(AP Photo) Republican candidate John McCain has some lipstick wiped from his face after a peck from wife Cindy in Denver.

He’s a guy who has gotten by on the barest minimum effort as others have paved the way for him. What he’s best at is posturing as a patriot, war hero, moderate, blah, blah, blah.

He gives the term shape-shifting a bad name. Whatever shape you want him to conform to, he’ll do it, no matter how hypocritical he looks doing it.

He was deep in the pocket of Charles Keating, vacationig at Keating’s resort homes while carrying water for him on Capitol Hill. He’s a philanderer who abandoned the wife and children who stood by him when he was a war prisoner because of disabling injuries she suffered in an accident.

Yet, he enjoys the best of reputations in Washington.

How does a man who is so utterly corrupt manage to convince everyone he’s Mr. Clean without ever changing his ways?

You’ll need a gullible press for that and that is, as he has bragged himself, his “base.”

In this alleged joke, this man who aspires to lead our nation expresses his genocidal thoughts about the people of another nation. I mean, already in this campaign season, we’ve talked about “bomb, bomb” Iran and “obliterating” Iran. Meanwhile, the current administration beats the war drums, threatening to attack Iran.

Is it that far-fetched to think that McCain would not give a second thought before nuking Iran, gassing its people?

July 9, 2008
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'Obliterat'*ing Iran

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That’s what Darth Vader, er, Dick Cheney and Hillary Rodham Clinton would like to do.

But a couple of people says Iran’s alleged nuclear capability and intentions are not so clear cut. Why the hurry?

Because, in Cheney’s case, he wants to start something while the getting is good. How many months, weeks and days left in the Bush-Cheney era? Until the very last day they leave office, you cannot count them out from lobbing something nuclear at Iran.

Clinton is just posing, trying to show steel.

Sen. Barack Obama, my assumption is that some voters, Republicans and Hillary supporters think all he wants to do is have scented tea with the Iranians while the world (Israel) burns.

Col. Lang does not buy some of the more alarmist news reports.

The mainstream media, or MSM, cannot really be trusted to provide accurate on-the-ground reporting on the insurgency. Which is why Nir Rosen is so important because he reports from the Middle East from inside the insurgency. He wrote for the Washington Note blog that he also does not buy America’s sales job on a war with Iran. Here’s how he opened the piece:

In June of 2003, two months after the United States conquered Iraq, I sat in on a briefing given by US Army intelligence officers in that most Sunni of Iraq’s cities, Tikrit, to a couple of officers visiting from Baghdad. One of the American intelligence officers based in Saddam’s famous hometown explained that they were worried about “Shiite fingers” from Iran “creeping” up to Tikrit to establish an Iranian style government.

At a time when the mostly Sunni Iraqi resistance had already established itself and its ability was improving, I was astounded by how stupid the notion of an Iranian threat in Tikrit was. I have remained shocked, like many journalists and academics familiar with the region and its languages, that the Americans have shown no improvement in their understanding of the Muslim world with which they are so deeply engaged militarily and as an imperial power.

Even Congress is susceptible to the misinformation on Iran, even when they readily have the correct information at hand, said Rosen, who testified before Congress and gave then information that he hoped would help them frame better questions to Gen. David Petraeus during his recent dog and pony show before them. To no avail.

Petraeus came, did his tap dance and got a promotion. War with Iran is still on cause. Meanwhile, America’s sons and daughters continue to get killed and wounded in Iraq.

May 5, 2008
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