Is Michael Bloomberg slated to be the Democratic Parties nominee?

Is Michael Bloomberg Slated to be the Democratic Party’s Nominee? by James Perloff Link And Possibly on a Ticket with Hillary? Although he is ranked as the twelfth richest man in the world (with a net worth of over $60 billion), I didn’t pay much attention to Michael Bloomberg until this January. Guns rights activists in Virginia have denounced him for funding Democratic legislators there as well as Virginia’s controversial gun control laws, which resulted in the huge Virginia gun rights rally on January 20. Then I noticed the name of Bloomberg—who didn’t launch his campaign until last November—starting to appear in election coverage more and more. On February 13, Trump called him “Mini Mike” in a Tweet (Bloomberg is 5 feet 7 inches tall). Since Bloomberg cannot do anything about his height, the mainstream media rushed to his defense over this insult. Inadvertently or not, Trump had given Bloomberg a publicity boost. Bloomberg is behind in the polls, but his numbers are rising. Could he rise fast enough to secure the nomination? Historically, it’s occurred fairly often. In 1976, according to a Gallup poll taken just seven months before the Democratic National Convention, less than 4 percent of Democratic voters had favored Jimmy Carter for President. What happened? Carter was anointed by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had invited him to join their then-new Trilateral Commission. As Lawrence Shoup noted in his 1980 book The Carter Presidency and Beyond: What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance and support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months.1 The media blitz included adulatory pieces in the New York Times, and a Wall Street Journal editorial declaring that Carter was the best Democratic candidate. Before the nominating convention, his picture appeared on the cover of Time three times, and Newsweek twice. Time’s cover artists were even instructed to make him look as much as possible like John F. Kennedy.2 The major TV networks inundated the public with his image. The same process has happened with Republicans. Go back to 1940. Seven weeks before the GOP Convention, a poll showed only three percent of Republicans favored candidate Wendell Willkie, who, prior to that year, had been a registered Democrat. But, as if by magic, Willkie won the nomination. Ten-term Congressman Usher Burdick of North Dakota said of this: We Republicans in the west want to know if Wall Street and the international bankers control our party and can select our candidate? I believe I am serving the best interests of the Republican Party by protesting and exposing the machinations and attempts of J.P. Morgan and the New York utility bankers in forcing Wendell Willkie on the Republican Party. . . .There is nothing to the Willkie boom for President except the artificial public opinion being created by newspapers, magazines, and the radio. The reason back of all this is money. Money is being spent by someone, and lots of it.3 If anyone can spend money today, it’s Michael Bloomberg. Recently, with a sense of déjà vu, I’ve noticed that he is getting mainstream media headlines every day. Here’s a screen shot of AOL’s lead news story on February 17: The next day, February 18, here’s AOL’s lead news story: (The “good news” was that Bloomberg would be appearing for the first time in the Democratic Party’s Presidential debates.) On February 15, major news outlets noted that the Drudge Report claimed that Bloomberg was interested in having Hillary Clinton as his Vice Presidential candidate. Two days later, Business Insider reported: “Hillary Clinton 'wants back in' as Bloomberg campaign tries to quiet speculation she could be his VP.” These announcements appear to have been pre-planned and well-coordinated. (Is it even conceivable that, behind closed doors, Hillary was promised a Vice Presidency as a consolation for 2016?) Some doubt the reports altogether, saying that Hillary would regard a Vice Presidency as a snub. But whether the story materializes into reality or not, for Bloomberg, this hint of a move toward Clinton could sweep him to the top of the Democratic polls. Hillary’s many supporters, still stinging from 2016, might switch allegiance from other Democratic contenders to Bloomberg, just for a chance to see Hillary in the White House, a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Hillary’s participation in the Goldman Sachs groundbreaking ceremony quickly became tranformed into an iconic meme during the last Presidential election; that’s Bloomberg at the opposite end. On February 17, the Bloomberg campaign began running an ad featuring former President Obama. Although it is older footage of Obama praising Bloomberg as mayor of New York City, the ad subliminally creates an impression that Obama is endorsing Bloomberg for President: If Bloomberg secures the nomination, these tactics will become self-fulfilling, because Clinton and Obama will assuredly endorse the Party’s nominee. And let’s face it. While Bloomberg himself lacks charisma, the Democratic Party’s other leading contenders don’t generate much excitement either. Bernie Sanders appears to be typecast as a perpetual runner-up. Joe Biden is the current poll leader, but could easily be discredited if the mainstream media catches up with alternative media and suddenly decides to showcase all those photos of “creepy Uncle Joe” fondling children. A Bloomberg-Clinton ticket would not be without its handicaps. Both are from New York—America's abortion capital—and tickets usually do better by representing diverse regions of the nation; this is a major reason why, for example, John F. Kennedy (Massachusetts) picked Lyndon Johnson (Texas) as his running mate. In fact, Drudge reported there may also be constitutional issues involved in a Bloomberg-Clinton matchup, which would force one of the two candidates to change their official residence (not a big deal for people who own multiple homes). If nominated, Bloomberg, paired with Clinton or not, would easily win “blue” states like Massachusetts, but lose in red states like North Dakota. So it would be a matter of tipping the scales in important “swing” states like Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. Could Bloomberg win in 2020? Aside from vote fraud, if the House of Rothschild is determined to have a Bloomberg victory, it would be easy to collapse the economy just before the election. The stock market has been steadily ballooning, which many Trump supporters have taken as proof of a healthy economy, whereas it is primarily the result of the Federal Reserve pumping billions of fiat dollars into the markets. All the Fed has to do is pull the plug, and the Wall Street orgy will be over. A market collapse would set Trump back on his heels going into the election. Bloomberg, in the meantime, could claim that he, like Trump, is a savvy “New York businessman,” and tout his personal wealth as proof that he knows how to fix the economy. Now I have to preface my next remarks by pointing out that I am half-Jewish on my father’s side; I mention this because of the recklessness with which charges of “anti-Semitism” are getting made these days. If victorious, Bloomberg would become America's first overtly Jewish President. I say “overtly” because some have argued that a few Presidents were of partial Jewish descent. In any event, none were ever publicly perceived as Jewish. But a “President Bloomberg” would certainly represent a feather in the cap for the House of Rothschild, long the world’s leading power brokers, and who have historically been very tribal about their ethnicity. The crucial question: Would the Rothschilds prefer Bloomberg over Trump? This requires elaboration. After Mitt Romney was allowed to steal primaries from Ron Paul in 2012, and deny Paul the nomination bid he had earned at the GOP Convention, many conservative and libertarian activists gave up on Presidential elections. The cry was: ”The system is rigged!” And of course, it always had been. But then Donald Trump came along. He certainly had the right sound bites. I voted for Donald Trump. He made it appear that an “outsider” could win a Presidential election—so maybe they weren’t rigged after all? But contrary to what is believed by Trump’s “Deplorables” (people whose basic values I share and respect), Donald has in reality turned out to be “Israel First,” not “America First.” I strongly recommend Pastor Chuck Baldwin’s article summarizing Trump’s many broken promises. Just like globalism and communism, Zionism has always been Rothschild-funded and a cornerstone of the New World Order agenda. Trump, the guy who Tweeted (before the election) that we should stay out of the Middle East and fix America, has turned out to be our most pro-Israel President ever, continuing and expanding the same neocon foreign policies of Bush, Obama, McCain, and yes, Hillary Clinton. And he was able to continue them far more effectively than Hillary could have, because war-exhausted Americans perceived him as new, patriotic, and an outsider to “the Swamp.” Trump • appointed pro-occupation hardliner David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel; • attacked Syria with cruises missile—twice—over false reports of chemical weapons attacks; • concluded an arms deal with Saudi Arabia—which supports ISIS—worth up to $350 billion; • has extended and expanded the 19-year-old war in Afghanistan; • dramatically increased drone strikes; • recognized Jerusalem as solely the capital of Israel, not Palestine; • moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a major step in the Rothschild-Luciferian scheme of “building the Third Temple”; • completely exceeded his Presidential authority by proclaiming that Syria’s Golan Heights belong to Israel; • recognized all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as no longer violating International Law; • last December, in a strike against the BDS movement, issued an executive order equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism; • ordered the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, nearly bringing on a World War. On a personal level, his daughter Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism in order to marry Trump’s meddling son-in-law Jared Kushner. One doesn’t get much more Zionist than Donald Trump. On the other hand, the Zionist Deep State might prefer a switch to Bloomberg, who is also (not surprisingly) very pro-Israel. In 2013, Bloomberg was chosen to receive Israel’s annual Genesis Prize. He has stated, ““I strongly oppose the BDS movement.” And: “As president, I will always have Israel’s back. I will never impose conditions on our military aid, including missile defense—no matter who is prime minister.” “And I will never walk away from our commitment to guarantee Israel’s security.”4 If the House of Rothschild decides that Bloomberg can satisfactorily continue Trump’s foreign policy objectives, it might favor him. After all, a Bloomberg Presidency, especially if paired with Hillary, could more swiftly advance the Deep State’s nightmarish domestic agenda for a Bolshevized America. A few weeks ago, Bloomberg appeared to be making gun control the centerpiece of his campaign (see, e.g., Poliitico’s December 2019 article “Bloomberg Unveils Sweeping Gun Control Plan”). Just recently he seems to be toning his rhetoric down, probably due to negative reactions from Second Amendment defenders. But there is no doubt that, if elected, Mike would be the biggest gun confiscator in American history. Even though Donald Trump has said “Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Bloomberg could seize guns without alienating his own base of supporters. During 2020, an upsurge in orchestrated gun violence could be used to further advance Bloomberg’s poll ratings. And a market crash could not only sweep Bloomberg into the Presidency, but give the Democrats strong control of both houses of Congress, meaning easy passage of harsh gun control legislation. In addition, a Bloomberg Presidency would mean a huge slide to the left, with a full-blown push toward more socialism, abortions, transgenderism, mandatory vaccination, “drag queen story hours,” etc. Of course, Bernie Sanders is also Jewish and pro-socialist; however he has made remarks critical of Israel and supportive of the Palestinians, and is unfriendly toward Wall Street. And unlike Bloomberg and Hillary, Bernie lacks the cold-blooded temperament suited to ushering in a Trotskyite police state. I know that with the potential for Hillary on the ticket, some people are already making jokes about Hillary later “suiciding” Bloomberg. That would never happen. Even Hillary knows where the line is drawn. NOTES 1. “Jimmy Carter,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter. 2. Gary Allen, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter (Seal Beach, Calif.: ‘76 Press, 1976), 139. 3. Congressional Record, June 19, 1940, Vol. 86, p. 8641. 4. “Views on Israel of U.S. Presidential Candidates 2020: Michael Bloomberg,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/views-on-israel-of-u-s-presidential-candidates-2020-michael-bloomberg. James Perloff | February 19, 2020 at 8:20 am | Tags: 2020 Presidential election, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Israel, mainstream media, Michael Bloomberg | Categories: Current events, Politics | URL: https://wp.me/p4dmyu-1tE

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Hillary Clinton hacked by Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear

By Simon Black

December 13, 2016
Santiago, Chile

If there’s one thing that’s certain in the intelligence business, it’s that there’s rarely any certainty.

That’s pretty much the first thing they teach you at spy school.

Back in the early days of my intelligence career, I had one instructor who explained it in a way that I’ll never forget.

“If you present your analysis as if it’s fact, instead of conjecture, the person who’s relying on your intelligence could end up making a bad decision that gets people killed.”

Intelligence is not about definitive conclusions. It’s about gathering data and coming up with plausible theories that connect the dots.

Sadly, sometimes those theories are influenced by personal or political agendas.

Back in 2002-2003, the Bush White House had a pretty clear predisposition that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

Miraculously, the intelligence reports conformed to that narrative.

And America went to war based on an “unassailable conclusion” from the intelligence community that Iraq had WMDs.

The facts were largely bogus, circumstantial at best. But this became the rallying cry behind every politician and media outlet’s patriotic bloodlust.

How quickly they all forget.

Here we are today with a new assertion: those dastardly Russians hacked Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

I read it in the New York Times, so it must be true.

Once again there is a chorus of condemnation from the intelligence community and political establishment based on supposed rock-solid conclusions.

Yet once again the assertions are nothing more than theories that connect some very circumstantial dots.

Here’s the actual evidence:

The hacks were executed using two types of malware known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear.

(Yes that’s what they’re actually called.)

Fancy Bear is malware that takes a conventional “phishing” approach.

A phishing attack is when a hacker creates a web page that’s almost an exact copy of one that you’re used to.

For example, they’ll create a website that looks like your bank’s login page.

So if you click on a malicious link in your email that takes you to the fake page, you’ll inadvertently supply a hacker with your bank username and password.

They’ll then use that information to compromise your bank account.

Fancy Bear allowed hackers to gain access to private emails… primarily because the users at the DNC got duped into providing their login credentials.

Cozy Bear is the second piece of malware that installs itself on a computer, typically after a user clicks on a malicious web link.

One installed, the Cozy Bear malware deploys Remote Access Tools (known as RATs), providing a remote hacker access to the machine and its files.

If, however, Cozy Bear finds that the machine has advanced security software that could detect the malware and cause problems for the RATs, Cozy Bear will self-terminate.

So the first thing to point out here is that the DNC (and potentially the people who were administering Hillary’s private email server) weren’t maintaining the latest security patches and updates on their systems.

Someone at the DNC clicked on a malicious web link that installed the malware, and it didn’t self-terminate because they weren’t bothering to use advanced security software.

Duh.

This is a simple competence issue, and I’m surprised it never came up in the news.

More importantly, Cozy Bear was used against the DNC as far back as summer 2015... as in just before, or right after, Donald Trump entered the race.

So it’s hard for me to believe that Vladimir Putin was actively hacking the DNC to support a candidate that had barely (or not even yet) materialized.

Most importantly, just because cybersecurity experts detected Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear doesn’t mean that the Russians were behind the attacks.

These assertions aren’t based on concrete facts; they’re just speculating that Colonel Mustard did it in the library with the candlestick.

(Apologies to our readers who are too young to have played Clue.)

But facts (or lack of facts) don’t matter.

Whenever something bad happens, the US government blames Russia… and everyone believes it without taking any time to question the evidence.

It’s as if we’re living in some lame espionage movie from the 1980s where the Russians are always the bad guys.

Look, I have absolutely zero regard for the Russian government (as is the case with just about every country’s government).

But I find it almost hilariously short-sighted how quickly everyone rushes to judgment against the Russians. Or the Chinese. Or the North Koreans.

Sure, maybe the Russians did it. And I’m happy to believe that’s the case once clear evidence is presented.

But it’s worth acknowledging right now that their assertions are nowhere near conclusive.

It’s not like this is the first time in US history that the federal government or one of its intelligence agencies could be wrong… or… <shudder> have a reason to lie.

It’s notable that last week President Obama ordered the entire intelligence community to investigate the Russian hacks.

Given the Obama administration’s numerous statements about the Russians’ complicity, and the nonstop media coverage about the “conclusive” evidence, it’s pretty clear that the outcome of the report is already pre-determined.

Just like the Iraq/WMD analysis back in 2002-2003, this investigation is biased by the boss’s predisposition that the Russians are guilty.

What I find most disturbing, though, is how they can’t let it go that the Russians influenced the election and manipulated voter sentiment.

I’m sure we can all appreciate that the hacks, no matter who perpetrated them, constitute criminal activity.

But the information that was released as a result of the hacks shined a painful and embarrassing spotlight on the inner workings of the corrupt political establishment.

So when the papers and politicians complain that the hacks influenced the election (as if the US government has never tried to influence a foreign election), they’re really just whining that voters found out the truth.

They have that little respect for your dignity.

Until tomorrow,

Simon Black

Founder, SovereignMan.com

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News Media Yet Again Misreads America’s Complex Pulse

Jim Rutenberg, NY Times, Nov. 9, 2016

All the dazzling technology, the big data and the sophisticated modeling that American newsrooms bring to the fundamentally human endeavor of presidential politics could not save American journalism from yet again being behind the story, behind the rest of the country.

The news media by and large missed what was happening all around it, and it was the story of a lifetime. The numbers weren’t just a poor guide for election night–they were an off-ramp away from what was actually happening.

No one predicted a night like this–that Donald J. Trump would pull off a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton and win the presidency.

The misfire on Tuesday night was about a lot more than a failure in polling. It was a failure to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery, betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs and disrespected by establishment Washington, Wall Street and the mainstream media.

Journalists didn’t question the polling data when it confirmed their gut feeling that Mr. Trump could never in a million years pull it off. They portrayed Trump supporters who still believed he had a shot as being out of touch with reality. In the end, it was the other way around.

It was just a few months ago that so much of the European media failed to foresee the vote in Britain to leave the European Union. Election 2016, thy name is Brexit.

Election Day had been preceded by more than a month of declarations that the race was close but essentially over. And that assessment held even after the late-October news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reviewing a new batch of emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s private server.

Mrs. Clinton’s victory would be “substantial but not overwhelming,” The Huffington Post had reported, after assuring its readers that “she’s got this.” That more or less comported with The New York Times’s Upshot projection early Tuesday evening that Mrs. Clinton was an 84 percent favorite to win the presidency.

Then came a profound shift, as mainstream media organizations scrambled to catch the bus that had just run them over. By 10:30 p.m., the Upshot projection had switched around, remarkably, to 93 percent in favor of Mr. Trump.

Other major sites also flipped from a likely Clinton victory to a likely Trump victory. John King of CNN proclaimed to his huge election night audience that during the previous couple of weeks, “We were not having a reality-based conversation” given the map he had before him, showing Mr. Trump with a clear opportunity to reach the White House.

That was an extraordinary admission; if the news media failed to present a reality-based political scenario, then it failed in performing its most fundamental function.

The unexpected turn in the election tallies immediately raised questions about the value of modern polling: Can it accurately capture public opinion when so many people are now so hard to reach on their unlisted cellphones?

“I think the polling was a mess,” Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, told me Tuesday night. “But I think a lot of it was interpretation of the polls.”

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, said on MSNBC, “My crystal ball has been shattered into atoms” because he predicted the opposite outcome. “Tonight data died,” he added.

Regardless of the outcome, it was clear that the polls, and the projections, had underestimated the strength of Mr. Trump’s vote, and the movement he built, which has defied all predictions and expectations since he announced his candidacy last year.

And that’s why the problem that surfaced on Tuesday night was much bigger than polling. It was clear that something was fundamentally broken in journalism, which has been unable to keep up with the anti-establishment mood that is turning the world upside down.

Politics is not just about numbers; data can’t always capture the human condition that is the blood of American politics. And it is not the sole function of political reporting to tell you who will win or who will lose. But that question–the horse race–has too often shadowed everything else, and inevitably colors other reporting, too.

What’s amazing is how many times the news media has missed the populist movements that have been rocking national politics since at least 2008. It failed to initially see the rise of the Tea Party, which led to the Republican wave of elections of 2010 and 2014, which was supposed to be the year the so-called Republican establishment regained control over its intraparty insurgency.

Then, of course, there was Mr. Trump’s own unexpected rise to the nomination. And after each failure came a vow to learn lessons, and not ever allow it to happen again. And yet the lessons did not come fast enough to get it right when it most mattered.

In an earlier column, I quoted the conservative writer Rod Dreher as saying that most journalists were blind to their own “bigotry against conservative religion, bigotry against rural folks, and bigotry against working class and poor white people.”

Whatever the election result, you’re going to hear a lot from news executives about how they need to send their reporters out into the heart of the country, to better understand its citizenry.

But that will miss something fundamental. Flyover country isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind–it’s in parts of Long Island and Queens, much of Staten Island, certain neighborhoods of Miami or even Chicago. And, yes, it largely–but hardly exclusively–pertains to working-class white people.

They think something is so wrong that all the fact-checking of Mr. Trump this year, the countless reports of his lies–which he uttered more than Mrs. Clinton did–and the vigorous investigation of his business and personal transgressions, bothered them far less than the perceived national ills Mr. Trump was pointing to and promising to fix.

In their view the government was broken, the economic system was broken, and, we heard so often, the news media was broken, too.

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The Hillary Clinton Takeover of the United States

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Khadaffi’s Murder

Eric Margolis, October 22, 2016

“We came, we saw … he died” boasted a beaming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, speaking of the 2011 western overthrow of Libya’s leader Muammar Khadaffi.

She was, of course, shamelessly paraphrasing Caesar’s famous summary of his campaign around the Black Sea. Mrs. Clinton, who seems ordained to be America’s next president, should have been rather more cautious in admitting to murder.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of Khadaffi’s grisly death. The Libyan leader was fleeing in a motor convoy to reach friendly tribal territory when French warplanes and a US drone attacked and destroyed the vehicles. Wounded, Khadaffi crawled into a culvert where he was captured and killed by French and US-backed rebels.

Thus ended the colorful life of the man who wanted to be the second Nasser and leader of a united Arab world. His death was a warnings to others trying to challenge the Mideast status quo I call the American Raj.

I was invited to interview Khadaffi in 1987 at his Tripoli headquarters in the Bab al-Azizya barracks. This was on the one year anniversary of 1986 US air attacks on the barracks that sought to assassinate Khadaffi, described by US President Ronald Reagan as the “mad dog of the Mideast.” But that night, the ‘Leader,’ as he liked to be called, went to his Bedouin tent in the courtyard and thus escaped death–for a time.

A US 2,000lb bomb came crashing through the roof of the barracks right onto the bed where Khadaffi usually slept, often with his two-year old adopted daughter. The girl died.

Khadaffi led me by the hand through the ruined building, asking me “why Mr. Eric did the Americans try to kill me?” I explained to him: his support of the Palestinians, Nelson Mandela, the Irish Republican Army, and Basque separatists. For Khadaffi, they were all legitimate freedom fighters.

Khadaffi or at least his intelligence chief, the sinister Abdullah Senussi, was accused of being involved in the downing of a French UTA and US Pan Am airliner. Libya financed anti-French movements in Paris-dominated West Africa and the Sahel.

Chad became a flash-point between Paris and Tripoli. The former head of French intelligence, Count Alexandre de Marenches, told me France’s president, Francois Mitterand, ordered him to bomb Khadaffi’s personal jet, then changed his mind. The British also tried to kill Khadaffi by means of a large car bomb in Benghazi.

Eventually, Libya managed to bury the hatchet with its western foes, though Khadaffi remained highly annoying to the former colonial powers and a fierce critic of the Saudis whom he denounced as thieves of Arab resources and betrayers of the Palestinians.

I’ve often been asked what Khadaffi was like. He was a simple Bedouin born in a tent. Khadaffi was disgusted by the poverty and corruption of the Arab world, and its domination and exploitation by the Americans, French and British. He saw himself as a champion of Palestinian rights, and Libya, with only 6 million people, as the leader of modernized Africa.

But he was also a dreamer who often had fanciful schemes, like the Great Manmade River to draw artesian water from the Sahara. He loved to insult his fellow Arab leaders, branding them cowards, thieves and liars. Khadaffi was theatrical and flamboyant and loved to show off.

After spending an evening with Khadaffi in his Bedouin tent, I told him, tongue in cheek, “Leader, we may bomb you but I must confess our women think you are the most handsome and dashing Arab leader.” He beamed and showed me some of his Italian-tailored faux combat wear and kid-skin jump boots. At times he seemed like a kid in a toy store–zany but also serious and determined. According to his many critics, Khadaffi was a dangerous, anti-western megalomaniac.

He was also vilified and demonized by the western media, a process that happened to all third world leaders who refuse to accept western dictates.

Khadaffi was quietly cooperating with the US when the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia. Secretary Hillary Clinton and her neocon advisors decided to seize advantage of Mideast turmoil and overthrow Khadaffi.

A new ‘color revolution’ was unleashed by the western powers. Protests were organized in Benghazi, always an anti-Khadaffi stronghold, by CIA, French intelligence and Britain’s MI6. Western special forces attacked Libyan military positions. The UN was gulled into calling for ‘humanitarian intervention to supposedly save civilian lives.’

France led the military intervention. Khadaffi’s son, Seif, had claimed that his father had helped finance French president Nicholas Sarkozy’s election. The vindictive Sarkozy intended to shut up the Khadaffis.

Western special forces intervened behind the cover of a popular uprising. Khadaffi’s ragtag forces quickly collapsed and rebel groups seized power, murdering Khadaffi in the process.

The west got Libya’s high grade oil and was rid of a thorn in its side. Khadaffi told me that if he were overthrown, Libya would splinter into its tribal mosaic–which is just what has happened. Chaos reigns as warlords backed by the US, France, Britain, Italy and Egypt–and a small ISIS contingent–fight over bleeding Libya. Decades of development that made Libya Africa’s leader in health care and education were wiped away.

Interestingly, the template for the western overthrow of Khadaffi–aka “regime change”–was next employed in Syria, with vastly more destructive results but less success. Expect to see more color revolutions when Mrs. Clinton takes over the White House.

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Rigging the Election

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Roger Stone: Hillary In Meltdown Mode,

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The Fall of Hillary Clinton

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Video of Hillary Collapsing That Is Being Censored

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Hillary Clinton’s health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign

By Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, September 11, 2016

Hillary Clinton falling ill Sunday morning at a memorial service on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks will catapult questions about her health from the ranks of conservative conspiracy theory to perhaps the central debate in the presidential race over the coming days.

“Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen,” spokesman Nick Merrill said. “During the ceremony, she felt overheated, so departed to go to her daughter’s apartment and is feeling much better.”

What that statement leaves out is that a) it came 90 minutes after Clinton left the ceremony b) reporters–or even a reporter–were not allowed to follow her and c) the temperature in New York City at the time of Clinton’s overheating was in the low 80s. (A heat wave over the eastern United States broke last night/this morning.)

She later left her daughter’s apartment, saying she was “feeling great” and waving at the crowd, per the Associated Press.

Whether Clinton likes it or not, her “overheating” episode comes at a very bad time for her campaign. Thanks to the likes of Rudy Giuliani and a small but vocal element of the Republican base, talk of her health had been bubbling over the past week–triggered by a coughing episode she experienced during a Labor Day rally.

That talk was largely confined to Republicans convinced that Clinton has long been hiding some sort of serious illness. I wrote dismissively of that conspiracy theory in this space last week, noting that Clinton had been given an entirely clean bill of health by her doctors after an episode in which she fainted, suffered a concussion and then was found to have a blood clot in late 2012 and early 2013.

Coughing, I wrote, is simply not evidence enough of any sort of major illness that Clinton is assumed to be hiding. Neither, of course, is feeling “overheated.” But those two things happening within six days of each other to a candidate who is 68 years old makes talk of Clinton’s health no longer just the stuff of conspiracy theorists.

Whereas Clinton and her campaign could laugh off questions about her health before today, the “overheating” episode makes it almost impossible for them to do so. Not only has it come at a time when there was growing chatter–with very little evidence–that her health was a problem but it also happened at a 9/11 memorial event–an incredibly high-profile moment with lots and lots of cameras and reporters around.

Her campaign may well try to dismiss this story as nothing more than an isolated incident, meaning nothing. (Democrats were already pushing the story of George W. Bush fainting in 2002 after choking on a pretzel, via Twitter.)

But the issue is that Clinton kept reporters totally in the dark for 90 minutes after her abrupt departure from the 9/11 memorial service for a health-related matter. No reporter was allowed to follow her. (Clinton has resisted a protective pool for coverage because Donald Trump refuses to participate in one.) This is, yet again, the Clinton campaign asking everyone to just trust it. She got overheated! But she’s fine now!

Clinton may well be totally fine–and I certainly hope she is. But we are 58 days away from choosing the person who will lead the country for the next four years, and she is one of the two candidates with a real chance of winning. Taking the Clinton team’s word for it on her health–in light of the episode on Sunday morning–is no longer enough. Reasonable people can–and will–have real questions about her health.

Sunday morning changed the conversation in the race about Clinton’s health. Or rather it will force Clinton to have a conversation about her health in the race.

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Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ remark sums up a deplorable election season

By Dan Balz, Washington Post, September 10, 2016

If Campaign 2016 needed some shorthand to capture the way many Americans see the competition between the two major-party candidates, Hillary Clinton may have unintentionally supplied it this weekend. For much of the electorate, this could be remembered as a deplorable election.

Candidates are often stamped by seemingly offhand statements. Mitt Romney never escaped his “47 percent” comment in 2012, and President Obama found the same when he said many culturally conservative voters “cling” to their guns and religion. Donald Trump has a laundry list of them. After Friday, Clinton now has hers to regret.

Clinton stumbled as Romney and Obama did, seemingly with her guard down and before the friendliest of audiences, an LGBT fundraiser in New York. If there isn’t a page in campaign manuals labeled “Beware of Fundraisers,” there should be. It’s where mistakes are easily made and not so easily undone.

Unlike Romney and Obama, Clinton spoke at a fundraiser that was open to the media, which should have made her more careful. Although she has said similar things in the past, she clearly went further than before, raising the question of whether this was intentional.

Here’s what she said that caused the uproar: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic–you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”

She went on to talk about others who support Trump, saying they are worthy of empathy and understanding. She described them as people who feel “that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re desperate for change.”

That latter characterization aptly captures an important part of the dynamic of the 2016 campaign, and it is one important reason Trump became the Republican nominee and remains competitive in the general election. But Clinton so muddied the focus on the grievances of many Americans who feel left behind with the first part of what she said that she has landed on the defensive, and understandably so.

The word “deplorable” no doubt captures how many Americans see the overall competition between Clinton and Trump. Last week’s 50-state survey by The Washington Post and SurveyMonkey underscored the concerns that voters have about both major-party candidates. Nationally, 55 percent of registered voters say Clinton would threaten the country’s well-being, while 61 percent say Trump would threaten the country’s well-being. Overall, 95 percent say either Trump or Clinton–or both–would do so.

These attitudes come after a campaign of insults and petty, personal attacks as well as a clash over some of the most fundamental questions facing the country. This is a campaign that could be about big issues but instead often has been fought at the most base level.

Clinton has sought to make Trump an unacceptable candidate, arguing that his temperament and views should disqualify him in the eyes of a majority of voters. Those attacks have been tough and relentless and unsurprising.

Why Clinton concluded there was something to be gained by shifting her focus from Trump to some of his supporters with her shorthand characterization is inexplicable. Attacking symptoms is one thing, but branding an entire class of voters is another, as Romney and Obama learned.

This was a self-inflicted wound. Her supporters might cheer her, and those at the fundraiser laughed as she made her comment. Ultimately it might have little effect on the polls. But it is a damaging moment that Republicans will use to sow even more distrust about her candidacy.

Eventually, one of these two candidates will be elected president. Unifying the country will be exceedingly difficult, to say the least. Clinton has talked about wanting to find common ground with Republicans where possible. She also has been urged repeatedly to find a more positive message, to give people an affirmative reason to vote for her.

In her Saturday statement, Clinton focused again on Americans left out or left behind and said, “I’m determined to bring our country together.” But her comments Friday have provided her opponents with fresh ammunition to distrust her desire to work across party lines and could cause them to resist those overtures in the future. If she becomes president, she has made the job of governing all the more difficult.

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Libya: Unified Against ISIS, Fragmented After

By Rod Nordland and Nour Youssef, NY Times, Sept. 3, 2016

CAIRO–Martin Kobler, the United Nations envoy to Libya, used to regularly joke that the only functioning government in Libya was the Islamic State. Unlike the country’s other three governments, it not only held territory but ran the courts, provided services to the public and ensured security–however harsh its rule.

Fortunately, Mr. Kobler said recently, his joke is now out of date, with the Islamic State reduced to three neighborhoods in the coastal city of Surt, and its headquarters in the hands of militias supporting the new United Nations-backed government. “This is over now,” he said.

The problems of governing Libya, however, are far from over, particularly as its many remaining factions try to figure out what comes next at a potential second round of talks this month, presided over by the United Nations. Surt’s future will loom large in the discussions.

Ever since Libya’s longtime ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was deposed and killed in Surt in 2011, the country has been divided by tribal and militia rivalries. With a population slightly larger than that of Miami, Libya has no clear central government and scant possibility of exploiting its enormous oil reserves, the ninth largest in the world.

That a United Nations-backed government in Tripoli was able to dispatch a militia force to subdue the Islamic State in Surt was the first piece of good governance news in five years of vicious internecine fighting.

But even victory in Surt remains worrisome. First of all, the militias have to finish clearing out remnants of the Islamic State from the three city neighborhoods. The militias are reported to be close to accomplishing that, which will then raise the question of what they will do next.

They are from Misurata, a coastal city seen as a rival of Surt. While they were nominally doing the bidding of the new, United Nations-backed Government of National Accord, or G.N.A., it is not at all clear that they will continue to accept its authority.

Then there are Libya’s other factions. The government in the eastern city of Bayda, with its Parliament in Tobruk, once enjoyed international support but now relies mostly on Egypt and some Persian Gulf allies. It is also suspicious of the intentions of the Misuratans, and angry about United Nations backing of the G.N.A.

The country’s most powerful military leader, Gen. Khalifa Hifter, based in Benghazi, has almost entirely cleared that city, the east’s biggest, of the Islamic extremists who once held sway there. But he, too, is deeply suspicious of the Misurata militias, because they are dominated by Islamists. While General Hifter has been named the Libyan National Army commander, politically he operates independently.

That is true as well of the third faction claiming to rule Libya, a Tripoli-based Islamist militia grouping that has a Parliament separate from that of the G.N.A.

“The government has to implement state authority over who dominates this area,” Mr. Kobler said. That the Misurata militias were acting on behalf of the G.N.A. when they ousted the Islamic State from Surt was a very positive sign, he said.

“It shows the strength of the G.N.A.,” he added. “The other two governments do not exist. A government should provide security, basic services. That is not the case from those two governments.”

It is important as well, he said, that an international consensus is building to support the G.N.A., with the Arab League and the African Union calling on their members not to back other factions’ claims to legitimacy; the success in Surt bolstered that consensus.

The same consensus does not seem to exist in many parts of Libya. The government based in Bayda has denounced the G.N.A. In Benghazi, General Hifter has boycotted the meetings that the United Nations has convened to bring all of the factions together, and he is by far the strongest military player.

When Surt finally falls, said Ahmed el-Mesmari, the spokesman for the Libyan military in the east, the militias there will abandon the new Tripoli government.

“We don’t think anyone can control these forces,” Mr. Mesmari said. “They are anarchists and extremists. They are closer to Qaeda than they are to anyone else. They would be very hard to tame.”

Even internationally, the picture can be confusing. Special Forces troops from the United States and Britain were advising the militias in Misurata in the fight against the Islamic State, and American air power was decisive in their advances against the extremists. Italy sent its own secret service operatives to Tripoli to work with the G.N.A., according to Italian news reports.

Tripoli itself is fragmented by numerous militias with shifting alliances, not all of them supporting the United Nations-backed government.

“By our count, there are 40 militias and gangs in Tripoli,” Mr. Mesmari said. “The city is a barrel bomb waiting to drop.”

His criticism is common among Libyan politicians in the east.

“It is a stillborn government bound to fail,” said Abu Bakr Buera, a member of the Tobruk Parliament. The problem would be easy to solve, he added. “We just need to put everyone in one room, and it would take just a few hours,” he said. “The problem is getting everyone in one room.”

Mr. Kobler said the confused state of Libya’s military and political factions was not surprising, but was a legacy of its history.

“This country never had strong institutions, even during the time of Qaddafi,” he said. “It’s tough to do this because it’s being done for the first time, and it’s a long and protracted process. “

If what is happening in Libya is hard to follow, Mr. Kobler said, there is a simple explanation underlying everything: “It’s all about power and oil and money. That’s all you have to know.”

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Even with U.S. airstrikes, a struggle to oust ISIS from Libyan stronghold

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, August 7, 2016

SIRTE, LIBYA–The black flag of the Islamic State flutters above a two-story house that serves as a sniper’s nest. The deserted street is under its control, as are all the nearby buildings. The banner and the occasional crack of the marksman’s bullet are the only signs of the militants on this afternoon.

Two blocks north, less than a football field away, Libyan militiamen are gathered with handheld rocket launchers and Mad Max-style pickup trucks mounted with large machine guns. Since last Monday, U.S. airstrikes have pounded Islamic State targets in this battered seaside city, the stronghold of the Middle Eastern militants’ Libyan affiliate. Yet the pro-government militia forces have not crossed this front line.

“If we move forward, their snipers will be firing at us like hell,” said Suleiman Shwairf, a pro-government fighter, peering at the flag from behind a wall Friday.

The American air intervention has altered the military equation on the ground and given a much-needed boost to the morale of the fighters battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But in a densely packed urban environment, where territory is seized street by street and house by house, eradicating the militants from Sirte remains a formidable struggle, illuminating the limits of the U.S. air campaign.

The fall of Sirte could be a major setback to the ambitions of the Islamic State. But since May, when the campaign to liberate Sirte began, the militias have been confronted with a sophisticated and coordinated strategy used by Islamic State fighters to protect their bastion in Sirte’s urban center. Hundreds of pro-government fighters have been killed or wounded by buried mines, explosive-laden doors, tripwire bombs, suicide attackers and snipers. The Islamic State remains in control of roughly 70 percent of the city’s urban area over a stretch of four miles.

In their first week, U.S. airstrikes mostly targeted Islamic State tanks and armored personnel carriers, as well as mobile ammunition depots and rocket launchers. Now, the Islamist fighters are altering their tactics to counter the air assault, hiding their military vehicles, moving command posts frequently, and staying out of sight during the day, according to pro-government commanders.

“The armored personnel carriers, the tanks are not their strongest weapons, anyway,” said Mohamed Darat, 45, the top commander for the largest front line in the city. “Their strongest weapons are the land mines, booby-traps and the snipers. Those are the biggest problems we face.”

Still, of the several thousand Islamic State militants initially in the city, most have either fled or been killed. Only an estimated 500 to 1,000 remain, and they are surrounded–by pro-government forces on land and by Libyan vessels patrolling the sea. Add the American air support, and a long-term hold on Sirte by the militants seems implausible.

The questions many Libyans ask: When will the city fall? And at what human cost?

In early 2015, the Islamic State seized parts of this sprawling metropolis in the heart of Libya’s oil crescent, home to most of its petrochemical resources. The birthplace of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, the city was the last major stronghold of his loyalists during the revolution five years ago that toppled his regime. Gaddafi was killed here by rebel fighters in October 2011.

The Islamic State within a few months swiftly consolidated its grip on Sirte, using it as a base to stage attacks on oil facilities and other targets. With pressure growing on the militants’ parent body in Syria and Iraq from U.S. airstrikes and attacks by Iraqi forces, Sirte was viewed as a possible fallback capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.

It was those ambitions that triggered the current fighting here. When Islamic State fighters advanced west up the coast in May, militia brigades from the nearby city of Misurata counterattacked. Within days, they had pushed the militants back inside Sirte, retaken the outer suburbs of the city and moved into the urban zones. Small groups of American and British elite troops helped target Islamic State positions with surveillance drones and other technology.

Then their advance into the city center slowed.

The Islamic State forces, a mix of foreigners and Libyans, were pummeling the brigades with tank and artillery fire. The land mines and snipers were planted on streets and at hospitals, universities and other large complexes. The militants had cached weapons, as well as supplies of food and water, in different parts of their territory.

The militants also are using creative ways to kill. They have jury-rigged refrigerators to blow up when militia fighters search houses. Bombs are planted inside bags of bread and left in visible places for their enemy to pick up. They have transformed baby monitors into voice-activated bomb triggers, and used paper clips touched together to ignite explosives.

“They are using the most devious and inhuman ways to kill our fighters,” said Darat, a former civil engineer.

In the past three months, some 400 militiamen have died, with more than 2,000 injured, according to doctors at a military field hospital outside the city. There was also anger and frustration among the fighters, who had felt that the United States and the West had abandoned them by not taking stronger actions to help them combat the Islamic State.

The mounting casualties and military stalemate in the city prompted Libya’s Western-backed national unity government to request the U.S. airstrikes last week.

But on the front lines, the U.S. intervention, while welcome, remains bittersweet.

“It’s a little late,” Darat said. “If the Americans started supporting us from the beginning, we would have saved so many lives.”

The road into Sirte from the west is littered with the debris of war. Charred cars from a suicide bombing. Aging Soviet-made tanks, some stalled in the sand. Walls covered with the graffiti of myriad militias.

Inside, Sirte is a ghost city.

Nearly its entire population of 80,000 has fled. Buildings are pocked with grapefruit- size holes from artillery rounds. Houses have been shattered by crossfire. Locked-up shops and businesses have black stamps on their walls reading in English and Arabic: “Office of General Services.”

The stamps are from the Islamic State tax collection department.

In one neighborhood, pro-government fighters took down a large iron frame at a traffic circle where the militants used to execute residents, hanging them up as in a crucifixion and then shooting them. In another enclave, they found an Islamic State prison where detainees were tortured and a grave that contained nine bodies, Darat said.

The militants are now entrenched in several large urban neighborhoods and in the Ouagadougou conference center, which Gaddafi once used to host African Union meetings and other international summits.

Al-Dollar, a residential enclave so named because of its opulent mansions, has become the primary front line. Militia fighters have taken over the empty houses, moving in mattresses and supplies, and setting up rooftop firing positions.

Roads are blocked by stacked shipping containers that mark the boundaries between the Islamic State and the militiamen. Signs read: “Danger. There are snipers.” And two days before the U.S. airstrikes began, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a house, steps from Darat’s command center. On Friday, pieces of the assailant’s body were still on the ground.

The U.S. airstrikes have helped Darat’s men to some degree. He said that last Monday, he coordinated with the Misurata military operations room working with the U.S. forces to call in a strike on an Islamic State sniper’s nest in a house. And on Wednesday, he asked for an attack on an antitank gun. In both cases, he said, “our American friends” struck the targets.

Only 10 mortar rounds have landed in al-Dollar since the U.S. campaign began. The week before, the enclave was regularly struck by tank fire, rockets and other artillery. Now that has all disappeared. The Islamic State fighters are keeping a low profile, apparently waiting out the air campaign, Darat said.

Still, on Thursday, a militant sniper killed a militia fighter here. And on Friday, a bullet from an Islamic State position hit a nearby mosque, prompting the militia fighters to return fire with heavy machine guns.

What Darat wants most is to cross the main road, less than 200 feet from his command center, and push farther into Islamic State territory. On the other side of the road, the militants control a hospital complex and a hospitality center once used by Gaddafi to host dignitaries.

But the area is sown with land mines and booby traps.

And Darat is running out of mine specialists. His best engineer was killed recently when he tried to move a corpse. Islamic State fighters had planted a bomb under the body. Many of Darat’s remaining mine specialists are either traumatized or unwilling to push forward into Islamic State territory.

He recently considered sending 1,000 sheep across the road to get blown up by the mines–and clear the way. But he decided that would be too brutal, he said.

And as U.S. airstrikes keep targeting Islamic State weaponry, there could be an unexpected consequence. Darat’s intelligence operatives have noticed more militant fighters moving at night. And that, he fears, could make his goal of crossing the road more complicated.

“Now, Daesh knows they can’t use so many heavy weapons against us without the Americans attacking them,” Darat said, using the Arabic acronym for the group. “They will plant even more land mines. They are running out of options.”

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Stay Out of Libya

By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, August 4, 2016

We’re back in Libya, with US warplanes bombing targets in the city of Sirte, on a mission that, according to the Pentagon, has “no endpoint at this particular moment.” And that statement sums up perfectly the Sisyphean task that presented itself to US policymakers when the Terrible Triumvirate–Hillary Clinton, national security honchette Susan Rice, and UN ambassadress Samantha Power–prevailed on President Obama to overthrow the regime of Libyan despot Moammar Ghaddafi.

Take a look at what we’re getting ourselves into: with no less than three governments, lawless Libya is a perfect example of Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum that “government is the problem, not the solution.” Yes, that’s right, the former domain of Ghaddafi has three rival “governments.” Go ahead and count ‘em:

The General National Congress (GNC), headquartered in Tripoli, is controlled by Islamist militias and backed by Turkey, Qatar, and Sudan.

The Council of Deputies, located in Tobruk, is basically the instrument of Gen. Khalifa Hiftar, a known CIA asset who used to live a few miles from the Agency’s headquarters.

The UN-appointed “government of national unity,” which was never elected by anyone and had to be shipped into the country by boat because the Tripoli authorities wouldn’t let their plane land.

While the ostensible reason for the US air strikes is the elimination of ISIS from the country, there is no escaping the “nation-building” aspect of Washington’s mission. For the logic of the mission means ISIS must be replaced with something, and that something is bound to be the UN-approved “government.” Yet this is likely to provoke further conflict, as the Islamists in Tripoli and the followers of Gen. Hiftar in the east are not likely to be pushed aside so easily.

The divisions that ensure a future of perpetual conflict are rooted in the history of a country that isn’t really a country at all.

The fiction that is the nation-state of “Libya” was only maintained by the brute force of Ghaddafi’s military: when that was defeated and dissolved, the “Libyans” rallied around what have always been their authentic allegiances: tribe and faith. Indeed, “Libya” has only existed since the end of World War II, when the UN moved in and forcibly joined together three regions that had no common history or culture: Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east, and the southern Fezzan area, a desert mostly inhabited by Tuareg and Tebu tribes. The UN was merely replicating the plan carried out by Mussolini, and his Italian predecessors, who colonized the region and sought to abolish tribal boundaries. When King Idris I, installed by the UN, protested that he didn’t want to rule over Tripolitania, and preferred to extend his domain only over Cyrenaica, he was ignored. With the fall of Ghaddafi, the country has reverted to its natural state–and now, once again, the UN is coming in the “fix” the ‘problem.”

The age-old scam of governments creating problems that they then use as an excuse to increase their powers so they can “solve” them is on full display in Libya–and Syria, and Iraq. All these countries had secular governments where not a trace of Islamist radicalism could be found. Their “liberation” by the Western powers, who launched regime change operations in the name of “democracy,” gave rise to ISIS–and created the rationale for yet more destructive intervention.

All three disasters can be properly laid at Hillary Clinton’s doorstep, but GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is no rational alternative. While rightly averring that Western meddling created the Libyan miasma in the first place, he wrongly says “We have no choice” but to intervene once again. This is arrant nonsense: we are sliding down a slippery slope in Libya, and soon will be faced with the problem of how to prevent ISIS from popping up once again. Trump says he’s against “nation-building” but you can’t just drop bombs and then fly away–once you intervene, then you own the country, like it or not.

Do we want to own Libya?

Here Trump is faced with the inevitable contradiction at the heart of his foreign policy views: he wants to appear “tough” without getting his hands dirty. This marriage of rhetorical bellicosity and instinctual anti-interventionism can only end in divorce. Instincts aren’t enough: what’s required are principles–a concept entirely alien to Trump.

Hillary, on the other hand, does have principles–the wrong ones. She’s a liberal internationalist and serial regime-changer who, once in power, will take us into conflicts ranging from North Africa to Eastern Europe and into the steppes of Central Asia. Trump may stumble into trouble–she’ll take us there by the express route.

The only candidates for President who want us to stay out of Libya are the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson. But since neither of them are going to wind up in the White House, it’s certain we’ll be sinking into the Libyan quagmire no matter which major party wins in November.

This is a recipe for disaster. As the Russians continue to pound ISIS in Syria with air strikes, and the government of Bashar al-Assad makes gains on the battlefield, the international jihadist movement will increasingly transfer its attention to Libya, where they have a real chance of establishing a “caliphate” in alliance with the very forces Mrs. Clinton enabled by overthrowing Ghaddafi. When she visited Libya to celebrate her “victory,” she infamously declared: “We came, we saw, he died”–and, with those words, sealed the fate of a nation.

We can follow the Islamists around the globe, playing whack-a-mole unto eternity: our interventions only make them stronger, and us weaker. This is what Osama bin Laden gleefully predicted when he said:

“All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies. All Praise is due to Allah. So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

Terrorism is like scabies–the more you scratch it, the more it spreads. We are seeing this truism play out as terrorist attacks are now becoming a weekly occurrence in Europe. How long before the same condition afflicts us in North America?

When we invaded Iraq we opened Pandora’s box–as I warned so long ago. Now the same people who brought us that disaster have the nerve to counsel patience when the demons they unleashed are harrying us at every turn.

As the playwright Tennessee Williams put it in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:

“There’s nothing more powerful than the odor of mendacity.”

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