GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Is McMaster a disaster?

by

Mentions of National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, seem to be be boiling over. Time for a roundup.

  • A letter has leaked, saying that McMaster explicitly let Susan Rice keep her security clearance, despite her role in possibly-criminal actions in letting the Obama administration use the intelligence apparatus to spy on domestic political opponents (Trump campaign).
  • McMaster has purged key Trump aides. And defended Obama holdovers, which we call Deep State.

    An ongoing staffing purge being conducted by White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has thrown the West Wing into chaos, according to more than half a dozen Trump administration insiders who told the Washington Free Beacon that McMaster has been targeting long-time Trump loyalists who were clashing with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration…

    …sources… said that many of these actions against his supporters are being conducted without Trump’s knowledge…

    The Trump staffers fired by McMaster had repeatedly clashed with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration on issues as diverse as military strategies for Syria and Afghanistan, whether to tear up Obama’s landmark Iran deal, the controversial détente with Cuba, the U.S. role in confronting Islamic radicalism, and the Paris Climate Accord, according to these sources.

    More purges are said to be on the way…

    The article names people who have been fired, and continues:

    “McMaster’s agenda is different than the president’s,” said one administration source with knowledge of the situation…

    One of the central flashpoints in this internal battle has been Iran and the future of the nuclear accord, multiple sources independently confirmed to the Free Beacon.

    NSC officials such as Cohen-Watnick, Harvey, and others had been making the case that Trump should scrap the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal over increasingly aggressive Iranian ballistic missile activity and mounting evidence Tehran is breaching the accord. McMaster, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top Obama-era State Department officials who worked on the deal, have aggressively urged maintaining it.

  • One of the staffers forced out was Rich Higgins, who wrote a controversial memo charging “that globalists, Islamists, and other forces within and outside the government are subverting President Trump’s agenda.”.
  • Other staffers fired appear to be pretty much anyone who is pro-Trump, pro-Israel, or anti-Muslim Brotherhood.

    According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews…

    Finally, there is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara Lago for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.

    And who recommended McMaster? You won’t believe this.

    Senator John McCain.

These articles could all be part of someone’s campaign for forcing out McMaster. (Chief of Staff Kelly? Bannon? Jared/Ivanka?) I mean, if it gets to our level – visible to ordinary bloggers – then something’s up.

And – if the substance is correct – the “someone” could have good reason.

UPDATE: George Soros and David Brock are on McMaster’s side. That’s a bad sign for McMaster.

Also, more articles on McMaster at this later post.

How America armed terrorists in Syria (and ISIS)

by

I recommend Gareth Porter’s June 22 article on The American Conservative, How America Armed Terrorists in Syria. It tells a story that I already knew (at a high level) – supported by a wealth of details that I didn’t.

In the rest of this post, I’ll share my notes on that and some other articles, re-telling the story with many fewer details. But it will still be a long post. First, a couple of things to keep in mind:
[Read more…]

This is weird

by

Iran’s news agency, apparently with the support of some Iraqis, has been pushing a story that ISIS is a UK / US creation. They started pushing it in 2014, but the following is from Feb 23 of this year:

Iraqi Army Downs 2 UK Planes Carrying Weapons for ISIL

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iraq’s army has shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province, a senior [Iraqi] lawmaker disclosed on Monday.

“The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” Head of the committee Hakem al-Zameli said, according to a Monday report of the Arabic-language information center of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Obviously, I don’t want to quote the entire linked article; you can read it. It goes on for awhile, giving names of Iraqi lawmakers and their specific charges about the U.S.-led effort against ISIS being a mask for Western aid to ISIS, “as it does not want the ISIL crisis to come to an end.”

I do NOT automatically believe this story, because Iran’s news agency is hardly a reliable source. And because many Iraqi lawmakers are probably on Iran’s payroll; as fellow Shias, they would oppose ISIS – while preferring Iran to lead the effort.

Sad to say, I also can’t automatically disbelieve this story, for the following reasons:

  • *If* the Sunni-Shia divide really matters (and I’m not 100% persuaded that it does), we must grant at least a little sincerity to Iran’s opposition to ISIS.
  • We know that in Syria, the Obama administration supports Islamist, al Qaeda-type “rebels” who are much the same as ISIS. Even after we discard any notion that the US / UK created ISIS on purpose, we must still consider whether ISIS could be an *inadvertent* US / UK creation – as the well-supplied, Sunni Islamist “rebels” from one theater (Syria) simply drive a few hundred miles across the desert to their buddies in the other theater (northern Iraq).
  • And it would be just like the Obama administration to stumble into such a foolish, contradictory policy. We do know that ISIS has a lot of U.S. weapons; it’s just that they are normally viewed as captured weapons.

If you can shed any light on this, please post in the comments. I’d be looking either for some proof of the story that doesn’t merely come from an anti-U.S. mouthpiece (like Iran or Alex Jones) – or/and, for some disproof of the story that doesn’t merely come from a pro-Obama mouthpiece.

Strange doings in Argentina

by

This will take some explaining.

  • Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been Argentina’s President since the end of 2007. She is Peronist (Argentina’s version of national-socialist). Needless to say, her controversial policies have harmed Argentina’s economy.
  • Alberto Nisman was an Argentine federal prosecutor. He was long investigating an infamous 1994 car bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
  • In 2006, Nisman accused Hezbollah operatives of the 1994 bombing, and Iranian officials of having directed it (possibly over a nuclear deal that Argentina had suspended).
  • On 1/19/2015, Nisman was found dead in his home, just hours before he was to explain his allegations to Argentina’s Congress.
  • Government officials suggested it was suicide. Needless to say, Nisman hadn’t been suicidal, and had been living under constant death threats.
  • The journalist Damian Prachter helped to blow apart the suicide story. Within a few more hours, Prachter found himself tracked by Argentine security services and felt compelled to flee Argentina.
  • Wiki: “On Tuesday, 3 February 2015, Viviana Fein, the lead investigator into his death, announced that Nisman had drafted warrants for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister, before his death. The 26 page document was found in the garbage in Nisman’s apartment.”
  • The New York Times says that Nisman’s draft complaint against Mrs. Kirchner was about her efforts to protect Iran (or Iranian officials) from prosecution for the 1994 bombing. One analyst said that, had Nisman done his presentation to Congress, “It would have provoked a crisis without precedent in Argentina.”
  • It seems that Mrs. Kirchner and some key supporters will be investigated anyway, now.

All I can say is: WTF? Why does Argentina’s President care so much about protecting Iranian officials? Were they funding her career? Or going to bail out her country?

BONUS: In Venezuela, condoms are now $755 a pack. Unrelated, except to show what happens when socialists run wild.

Update: China-Russia’s open dollar bypass

by

While China, Russia and Iran may not be natural allies, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and they’re getting together to oppose the U.S. I’ve suggested before that President Obama’s efforts to isolate Russia are only goading these countries in their ongoing efforts to create a non-U.S. system for world trade and finance, a system that other countries (Germany, other BRICs, etc.) would come to do business with. Eventually bringing about the decline (or overthrow) of the U.S. dollar as the world’s key currency.

For my earlier posts on this, see here, here, here, here and here. The last was six weeks ago. What’s happened since?

The non-U.S. dominated world: bit by bit, it’s coming.

Hat tip to Zero Hedge, which has long covered this story and furnished several of the above links.

The dollar’s removal proceeds apace

by

Like aging, the overthrow of the U.S. dollar (as the key world currency) is a gradual process. In the last month, I’ve blogged on Russia as a U.S. financial opponent, growing ties among the BRICS nations, and growing Germany-China ties, all tending toward the decline (or eventual elimination) of the dollar from those countries’ relationships with each other.

Today it’s growing Russia-Iran ties (that remove the U.S. dollar from their partnership):

(Reuters) – Iran and Russia have made progress towards an oil-for-goods deal sources said would be worth up to $20 billion, which would enable Tehran to boost vital energy exports in defiance of Western sanctions, people familiar with the negotiations told Reuters.

In January Reuters reported Moscow and Tehran were discussing a barter deal that would see Moscow buy up to 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian equipment and goods…

[A] source said the two sides were looking at a barter arrangement that would see Iranian oil being exchanged for industrial goods including metals and food…

The Iranian official said missiles would also be part of the deal, together with Russia providing assistance with building two nuclear plants in Iran…

Missiles? Yikes! But this is what you can expect, with Jimmy Carter President Obama at the helm. He should have assisted Iran’s (aborted) Green Revolution back in 2009-10, when he had the chance.

Hat tip, ZH.

Well, They Did Warn Us (Repeatedly)

by

From the President of Iran, the same man the American Left embraced when he spoke at Columbia University: (h/t – The Corner)

“I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene,” he said.

“Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started.”

Since taking the presidency in August 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly provoked international outrage by predicting Israel is doomed to disappear.

“I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed,” he said to a group of foreign visitors ahead of the 19th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

What exactly would a President Obama talk to this guy about??  Oh, its okay.  No need to worry….. Let’s just get the child-raping, money-stealing, dictator-propping, resolution ignoring, Isreal-hating  United Nations on the case!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)