Krauthammer: A new strategy for Iraq and Syria

Charles Krauthammer

 

. . . "What to do? Redirect our efforts to friendly forces deeply committed to the fight, beginning with the Kurds, who have the will, the skill and have demonstrated considerable success. This year alone, they have taken back more than 500 Christian and Kurdish towns from the Islamic State. Unlike the Iraqi army, however, they are starved for weapons because, absurdly, we send them through Baghdad, which sends along only a trickle.

"This week, more Kurdish success. With U.S. air support, Syrian Kurds captured the strategic town of Tal Abyad from the Islamic State. Which is important for two reasons. Tal Abyad controls the road connecting the terror group’s capital of Raqqa to Turkey, from which it receives fighters, weapons and supplies. Tal Abyad is “a lung through which [the Islamic State] breathed and connected to the outside world,” said Kurdish commander Haqi Kobane.
. . .
 "These [Kurdish] successes suggest a new U.S. strategy. Abandon our anachronistic fealty to the central Iraqi government (now largely under Iran’s sway anyway) and begin supplying the Iraqi Kurds in a direct, 24-hour, Berlin-style airlift. And in Syria, intensify our training, equipping and air support for the now-developing Kurdish safe zone. Similarly, through Jordan, for the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front. Such a serious and relentless strategy would not only roll back Islamic State territorial gains, it would puncture the myth of Islamic State invincibility.
. . . Kurdish women fight:

Kurdish women fighting ISIS

. . . Knowing they may die:

Note to Sally Kohn: Now this war on women is not some silly slogan.

"The Hillary Paradox"

 The Hillary Paradox consists of two perceptions that are irreconcilable. The first is that Hillary Clinton is a person of uncommon decency, compassionate and deeply committed to justice. The second is that many of her actions over many years are the work of a person who couldn’t possibly be uncommonly decent. How could someone with a wonderful reputation so often behave disreputably?

Read of the Day: The Hillary Paradox
"Andrew Ferguson, the witty and insightful senior editor of the Weekly Standard, has done one of those jobs Americans don’t want to do: he has re-read a shelf’s worth of admiring biographies of Hillary Clinton. The result is a wonderful and revealing article titled, “The Hillary Paradox,” a phenomenon that puzzles only her admirers.

The Hillary Paradox;  Pity the woman’s admirers  Excerpt below:

Donkey Hotey

. . ."And what had to be done? Gerth and Van Natta found a private memo written by Palladino to the campaign in 1992. In it he explained his goal in dealing with Gennifer Flowers: “to impeach her character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition.” That worked too. Flowers became a national joke. It was later reported that a former roommate who had confirmed Flowers’s account to reporters received a visit from Palladino. “Do you think Gennifer is the sort of person who would commit suicide?” he asked her. 

Palladino reported his progress to Betsey Wright, who passed the word to Hillary. And the other women on Wright’s list kept quiet. 

Some of the methods have been gentler, if no subtler. In 1994, an Arkansas state employee named Paula Corbin Jones insisted on pursuing her lawsuit against President Clinton, who she said had exposed himself to her in a hotel room when he was governor. Soon, nude photos of Jones taken by an estranged boyfriend mysteriously fell into the hands of the editors of Penthouse magazine, which rushed them into print. As anyone who saw the pictures knows, the intent was embarrassment, not prurience. 

Another woman, Kathleen Willey, accused the president of making a similar “pass,” this time in the Oval Office. “With Hillary’s go-ahead,” Gerth and Van Natta write, “the White House then released nine fawning letters that Willey had sent to Bill after the alleged incident.” The letters disproved Willey’s story, reporters concluded. 

Mrs. Clinton’s theory here, successful as it was, seems particularly old fashioned: If the survivor of a sexual assault speaks kind or forgiving words about her assailant, then either (1) the assault didn’t occur or (2) the victim agreed to it. The phrase “had it coming” may be too old-fashioned even for Hillary’s team. 

We’ve known about all this for a long time—about Hillary Clinton’s blistering campaign to discredit the women who wanted to tell the truth about her husband." . . .

Was Charleston shooter on powerful mind-altering drug?

The shooter was reported to be on Suboxone, which includes these possible side effects:

Psychiatric

Common (1% to 10%): Anxiety, depression, nervousness, abnormal thinking
Uncommon (0.1% to 1%): Abnormal dreams, agitation, apathy, depersonalization, drug dependence, euphoric mood, hostility
Frequency not reported: Restlessness, irritability
Postmarketing reports: Hallucination, attempted suicide, insomnia^[Ref]

 Cop who apprehended him in February found disturbing evidence

"While the Justice Department immediately confirmed it is investigating the Charleston church shooting as a “hate” crime and President Obama chose to focus on the need for more gun control, a less-publicized aspect of the Charleston church-shooting story is the role of a powerful drug that the 21-year-old suspect was known to be using.

"The picture beginning to emerge about the shooter, Dylann Roof, is one of a young man who was into long-term and hard-core drug abuse. He was apprehended at a mall in February by a police officer who made a startling discovery." . . .

"One patient named James posted his experience with Suboxone on Mental Health Daily:

“Man this is the toughest thing to go threw [sic] period. I’m about 3 weeks into it and I feel like hurting myself. I have been threw [sic] a lot of stuff in my life but this takes the cake,” he commented.

Another, Lana, posted, “I’m going insane!!” She added, “Suboxone increased my depression, I lack motivation, I was nauseous nonstop, I gained weight. … I lost all motivation and love for life.”

Kris posted, “My doc won’t refill my prescription. So I am sitting here, restless, irritable, mood swings, feeling like I am going to f*****g snap!!!”

Cartoonists reflect on the church massacre, including wise commentary from Stilton Jarlesberg of HopeNChange

..

..

Faceless Evil

HopeNChangeCartoons

. . .  But what he really wanted was for the world to know his name. To give him notoriety, even of the most heinous kind, because he believed it better than the nameless obscurity which he actually deserved.
Which is why you won't see his name or face here.  Fame is not a just reward for being a murderous loser.

The tragedy of what happened to those 9 victims is unfathomable. And there will certainly be a second tragedy when this horror is eagerly appropriated and manipulated for political purposes, because such is the sad nature of our times.

So Hope n' Change would like to preemptively clear the air by naming some of those who are not to blame for this massacre: Democrats or Republicans. White people or black people. Al Sharpton or Rush Limbaugh.

Neither the NRA nor the NAACP is to blame. Not Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or Instagram. This is not the fault of Barack Obama, movies, television, Rap music, violent video games, schools, religion or atheism.

The list could go on endlessly, because there is only one person at fault here. A nameless, faceless hate-filled punk who is certainly insane.

We only hope that our nation can maintain its own sanity enough to remember that simple fact over the next few days.

.

Obama so shaken by Charleston shootings, he attends only 2 fundraisers

Andrew Malcolm

 

. . . "As president -- heck, as a fast-food, burger flipper -- Obama has the right to speak out about anything he deems important. Many of us, in fact, feel Obama has spoken out on many more things than he needs to as a photo-op substitute for meaningful action or real leadership. And have tuned him out for these final 580 days of his Oval Office tenure.

That doesn't diminish the horrible, senseless South Carolina crime that offends the decency and values of virtually every American.

What also offends, however, is how this president behaves after he speaks out on awful tragedies as the nation's elected leader.

"Too many times" he bemoans the incident, then blithely goes off to political fundraisers collecting millions of dollars. Or he golfs. Or this weekend, he does both.  Read More At Investor's Business Daily:

A National Tragedy and a Partisan Response

 

Frontpage "Why do black lives only seem to matter when white people take them? Why does the president of the United States think it’s proper to take a horrible racial tragedy in Charleston South Carolina as an excuse to bash America as the violence capital of the “advanced” world, and a prop for Democrats’  lust for gun control legislation in a state that already has it?

"Last year 82 people were shot over the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago. 16 of them died. The victims and the shooters were black.

"Now two 15-year-olds have already been shot in a single Chicago neighborhood in two days.
. . . 
 "Chicago’s bloody weekends show us that the politicians and reporters haven’t turned their attention to Charleston because they care about dead black people.

"They are there for the psychotic killer, Dylann Storm Roof, not for his victims. They are there for a Southern state with a Republican governor who can be safely blamed the way that their Mayor of Chicago can’t. They are there to use the voiceless dead as convenient props in their campaign for gun control – in a state that already has some of the toughest gun control laws in the South. They don’t care about black people. They care about their political agendas." . . .
 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.


Obama's shameful, phony gun control rhetoric in the wake of Charleston massacre
"If access to firearms were as easy as President Obama insisted in the aftermath of the South Carolina church massacre, Carol Bowne would be alive today. The 39-year-old New Jersey woman with a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend was murdered by that boyfriend while she waited for her application for a gun permit to wind its way through a process that takes at least two months to complete. But it wasn’t completed soon enough" . . .

Standing on the backs of dead people to promote a political agenda 
. . . "But the biggest transgressors against respect for the dead and for the community that is suffering as a result of this tragedy are the racialists who are selling their own brand of hate by suggesting that virtually all white people are racist and potential murderers." . . .

 Read more of Rick Moran's fine article here

 

Donald Trump: Obama's Hair Apparent

bing.com/

Brian Williams to move from NBC to MSNBC (Average IQ at both channels to go up)

 

American Thinker 
 "In a move that will bolster the credibility level of both networks, Brian Williams reportedly is to move from NBC News, where he formerly was anchor, to MSNBC.  The New York Times:

NBC is planning to announce on Thursday that Brian Williams will not return to his position as the anchor of its “Nightly News” show, four months after the network suspended him for exaggerating his experiences during a helicopter attack in Iraq, according to two people briefed on the decision.

. . . "Williams has a $50-million contract with NBC, so using him at low-rated MSNBC is better than just paying him to do nothing.  But with a little imagination, perhaps pairing him with fellow fantasist Al Sharpton, the beleaguered cable net could turn to an explicit comedy/fantasy approach to programming." . . .

Can Brian Williams save MSNBC?
 "Is it any wonder, given the pathetic MSNBC line up:"

The church murderer and his victims

 

These Are The Victims Of The Charleston Church Shooting
"Susie Jackson, 87, was also a victim of the attack, the coroner confirmed. She was a member of the Eastern Light Chapter No. 360 Order of the Eastern Star, according to a community activist on Twitter."

  Chris Singleton tweeted: 

Something extremely terrible has happened to my mom tonight, please pray for her and my family. Pray asap

 Buzzfeed reported: "All nine victims of the Charleston church shooting have been identified; the youngest was 26, and the oldest was 87."

 Here Is What We Know About The Suspect In The Charleston Church Massacre
 . . . "Another friend of the shooter told the Associated Press he recently made surprising, racist comments.
"As the AP reported:

Meek says that Roof’s racial comments came completely out of the blue and that his friend had been nothing like that before he moved away.
Meek says he could tell something was troubling his friend recently, but he wasn’t able to find out what was bothering him before the shooting.

. . .  "A former roommate, Dalton Tyler, told ABC News he saw Roof last week.

“ 'He was big into segregation and other stuff,” Tyler said. “He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.”

"He also said Roof had an “on and off” relationship with his parents and that they bought him a gun.

"As Cowles told the New York Daily News:

Roof’s dad gave him a .45 caliber gun for his 21st birthday in April — a present that delighted the shy, quiet Roof. Cowles talked to him a day later.

 CNN’s Van Jones Insists Church Shooter Be Called ‘White Racist Terrorist’
. . . "Liberals are delighting in the church shooting because they say the killer was a racist right-wing radical and they think that proves how evil anyone who isn’t a lefty is. I’m a white conservative gun-owning man and I can tell you that I do not support what Dylan Roof did in any way. His actions are not based on anything I believe in and they do not reflect on conservatives, gun owners, or white people.

"Roof is not a right-wing warrior or a terrorist. He’s a very disturbed person that did a terrible thing and he deserves to be crushed under the hammer of justice."

 

Hate Motivated Killer, Not His Gun  . . . " The alleged gunman appears to have been filled with irrational hatred of African-Americans and reportedly uttered an old stereotypical canard about blacks before he opened fire. In doing so, he sent a chill down the spine of every decent American who not only despises the twisted ideology he espoused but also understand the way an attack on a black church calls up horrible memories of the struggle for civil rights. That ought to be enough to give us all plenty of food for thought about the persistence of hate even in an era in which America has overcome its past prejudices to the point where an African-American man is serving out his second term as president of the United States."

A Victim Of A Gang Shooting, Marcus Stanley, Wrote A Heartfelt Message On The Charleston Suspect’s Facebook Page

Buzzfeed    “I don’t look at you with the eyes of hatred, or judge you by your appearance or race, but I look at you as a human being that made a horrible decision.”

 "Stanley left a lengthy comment for Roof on the photo, saying he didn’t believe he was evil and asking him to ask for forgiveness."  
Then may God bless Mr. Stanley because he is handling this with more Christ-likeness than I have so far.
My main thought has been wanting to see this piece of racist refuse collected and injected.  The Tunnel Dweller.


 

More here.

Seeking an effective argument FOR gun control (Posted here after the terrible Sandy Hook massacre)

The Tunnel Wall; Tuesday, December 18, 2012
 Here, two respected writers discuss the case against taking away individual firearms from Americans. Yes, it is true that if guns did not exist everywhere in this nation those little children in Sandy Hook would be living right now and I only wish that were the case. But it is not and there are violent people out there in their thousands and they are armed; willing and lusting to watch innocent people die in bunches by their hands. How, exactly do you gun-control advocates plan to remove those weapons from their blood-thirsty hands?
I will honestly look for a reasoned argument FOR gun control that contains effective means for keeping us safe from those who carry weapons illegally and are willing to do us harm. Cartoons showing crazed, wild-eyed gun owners don't wash.
As yet, I have seen only politically correct, emotional responses to the issue that have no value other than simply making a politician look as if they are doing something. TD

Full post here with commentary from Alan Caruba in Warning Signs:  

"Among gun owners, the cliché is that “A gun in the hand is quicker than a cop on the phone.” "

 And from Thomas Sowell comes: How many times do the same arguments need to be refuted?

. . . There is innocent ignorance and there is invincible, dogmatic, and self-righteous ignorance. Every tragic mass shooting seems to bring out examples of both among gun-control advocates.

Hillary Charged Kids’ Charity $200,000 For Speech

Hillary Clinton told a crowd Saturday that as a teen in Park Ridge she volunteered at her Methodist Church to babysit for the kids of Mexican migrant workers working the fields. What an angel. She'd gather all the children into a circle for story time, and then charge them two hundred thousand dollars per story. Comedian Argus Hamilton

Daily Caller   "Hillary Clinton charged a kids’ charity $200,000 to speak — and she pocketed every dime.

"Clinton reportedly charged the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach $200,000 for a speech earlier this year, according to new speaking disclosures made available on the Clinton Foundation website.

Wouldn’t Interact With Kids

 When Condoleezza Rice headlined a 2009 fundraising luncheon for the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach, she collected a $60,000 speaking fee, then donated almost all of it back to the club, according to multiple sources familiar with the club’s finances.

Hillary Clinton was not so generous to the small charity, which provides after-school programs to underprivileged children across the Southern California city. Clinton collected $200,000 to speak at the same event five years later, but she donated nothing back to the club, which raised less than half as much from Clinton’s appearance as from Rice’s, according to the sources and tax filings.
Instead, Clinton steered her speaking fee to her family’s own sprawling $2 billion charity.

Full article