“… the most significant threat to our national interests.”
by Yochanan Visser, WESTERN JOURNALISM
This has been another bad week for the Obama administration’s Middle East policy.
First, as Western Journalism reported Tuesday, Obama was caught red-handed lying about money transfers to Iran.
The president had always defended the transfer of $1.7 billion cash to Iran in three installments as inevitable because the U.S. could not wire the money due to sanctions levied on the regime.
But last week, a U.S. Treasury spokesman revealed the administration had wired almost $10 million to Iran on two occasions over the last 14 months.
Then there was the collapse of the new Syrian ceasefire agreement that had been negotiated with Russia by Secretary of State John Kerry that should have paved the way to renewed peace negotiations in Geneva.
However, despite Kerry’s claims to the contrary, the ceasefire never materialized and was finally blown to smithereens by U.S. warplanes that incidentally bombed a Syrian airbase in eastern Syria and by a brutal airstrike on a UN humanitarian aid convoy near Aleppo by what appeared to be Russian and Syrian airplanes.
Twenty UN aid workers were killed in the two-hour bombardment on the convoy that was on its way to the besieged city and had UN marks on all of the trucks.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Russians, who Obama and Kerry were increasingly treating as partners in the Syrian war, spat in the face of the administration by sending their only aircraft carrier to Syria the moment Kerry demanded a no-fly zone in the war-torn country to save the “ceasefire.”
What happened next would have been unthinkable in the United States before Obama.
During a hearing Thursday on the U.S. security problems, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced the U.S. military would refuse to execute a central element of the administration’s new Syria policy.
Dunford was talking about U.S. intelligence sharing with the Russian Central Command in Syria.
That would be a bad idea, the general said.
“The U.S. military role will not include intelligence sharing with the Russians,” Dunford told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
“I do not believe it would be a good idea to share intelligence with the Russians,” Dunford, who was accompanied by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, added.
The Pentagon has been opposed to the idea of intelligence sharing with the Russians from the outset when Kerry was pushing hard to make a deal on cooperation with Russia in the war against ISIS and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.
Dunford now told lawmakers that Russia posed “the most significant challenge” to the U.S. national interests and said Russia is carrying out military operations not seen “in 20 years.”
“When I look at Russia’s nuclear capability, when I look at their cyber capability, when I look at their developments in undersea warfare, when I look at their patterns of operations — how often they’re operating, the locations they are operating in — these are kinds of operations that we haven’t seen in over 20 years,” Dunford told the committee.
“When I look at Mr. Putin’s activities in Ukraine, in Crimea, in Georgia, that causes me to say that a combination of their behavior as well as their military capability would cause me to believe that they pose the most significant challenge, potentially the most significant threat, to our national interests,” he added.
Dunford also contradicted the State Department’s assessment that the Syrian ceasefire was “very fragile” but had not collapsed.
When he was asked if the ceasefire was holding, Dunford responded, “That would not appear to be the case over the last 48 hours.”
Dunford’s statements during the hearing marked the first time a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed Congress that he would not carry out the stated policy of the government he is serving, according to Liberty Unyielding analyst Jennifer Dyer.
“I don’t think even MacArthur did this. He exceeded his authority and complained publicly about Truman’s policy, and ended up being fired for it. But he didn’t inform Congress in advance that he had no intention of executing the policy the administration was working to implement,” Dyer told Western Journalism.
In 1951, President Harry Truman fired Mac Arthur after he repeatedly made statements that contradicted the administration’s policies.
Bear Klein Said:
All yawls all, are my honey sweet drones.
@ Austin:
@ honeybee:
No apologizes needed. The Bee is always ahead of us.
@ Austin:
rolling in a muddy spot, eh.
@ Bear Klein:
@ Bear Klein:
I guess that I fell into it. Should have known better, apologies.
@ Bear Klein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFl2a0-qr24
@ Austin:
ya think !!!!!!!!!!
@ Austin:I know she was being sarcastic. I was trying to be funny.
Certainly I did not succeed with you (my bad). My guess is Honeybee gets me after years of Bear to Bee and visa versa comments.
@ Bear Klein:
She was being sarcastic..I think.
why assume that because president hussein said he was going to cooperate with the russians that he actually would? This whole arab spring, libyan, syrian scenario has been fraught with false flags from the beginning. It has always been my opinion, in spite of background noise for the street, that the whole operation consists of the west, the GCC and their gallery of rainbow jihadi proxies to have always been on the same side. That IS was raised because obama had to back off from invading syria on the pretext of the chem weapons especially after having been caught at benghazi shipping arms through turkey to the jihadis. Fighting IS then became the false flag pretext to introduce troops, weapons, missions to the area to fight their “terrorism” because western nations would not have allowed it against Assad. All the jockeying is because a deal with the russians has not been reached. If a deal is not reached to the satisfaction of the GCC, I have said for years, that they will proceed to move the jihadis towards Iran while simultaneously activating all the ethnic minorities in Iran. In my view what we see is a negotiation not completed on the future of syria and Obama “working with russia” is fake just like russia is faking. Russian and their allies perceive themselves to be winning and therefore have not bent enough to satisfy the west and the GCC on the specific deal.
Israel is dangerously caught in the middle and may end up in skirmishes with Russia over the syrian golan. Hezbullah, Iran and Assad wish to provoke Israel whereas Russia wishes to obtain results for his proxies without Israel entering. Israel likely would want Assad to lose sovereignty to the gcc proxies to reduce claims on Israeli golan while appearing to have no dog in the fight.
Bear Klein Said:
Oxes are morons cause they are castrated.
@ honeybee:You said the Dems and integrity that is an oxymoron as Hillay is their candidate.
@ Bear Klein:
No , the Dems have to integrity to do such an under handed thing.
@ honeybee:You think the Dems would call the GOP racists?
@ Austin:
Because he’s the first black president !!!!!!!!
@ Austin:Obama could have been charged in the House but the Senate never would have convicted him. This would have been straight party line votes.
So the GOP would have looked real bad. That is my educated guess. Also Bohner was the Speaker of the House and his MO was to try and get along with Obama. Hence Ryan is now the speaker of the House.
@ Bear Klein:
What I just cannot understand is WHY….WHY has Obama not been impeached a dozen times over. There is some crookery in the highest places of the United States Government, the Dept. of Justice, and the State Department…Not to mention the F.B.I.
Is this a country upon which Israel can rely to help defend her or to supply needed weaponry at the right time.
Israel’s only hope is that Trump is elected.
Obama is either very confused at best or an Iranian agent at worst. He gave Iran a path to nukes plus the money to expand terrorism and their weapons development. In the interim Iran is working with North Korea to expand missile and nuclear technology. The currency comes from Iran to this. Thank Obama for this!
He is using US troop now about 6000 to help the Iraqi Shia Militia’s capture the rest of Iraq. They are Iraq’s ally. They are helping the Russians/Iranians/Assad Syrian capture chunks of Syria. These people will end up on Israel’s doorstep.
@ ebyjeeby:
I’m not so sure that Obama will do nothing. He is with us for another 3 months, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t do or try to dp something punsihing to the CCOS. MacArthur was fired “by return post” soto speak, it Doesn’t take long.
@ yamit82:
Perhaps the age old idea of
“keep your frieds close and your enemies even closer” as being practiced by Trump, is the way to go.
wow, USA military standing up to their fool of a CIC. Will they start saying he has no clothes?
yamit82 Said:
ruling out a military coup!!!!!!!!!
obama has only a few more months to serve so there won’t be any immediate or dire cosequenves for Gen Dunford. That said Putin knows the same and feels free to do what he wants with little worry about immediate moves by Obama. NOT A GOOD SITUATION FOR AMERICA AND VERY BAD FOR ISRAEL.