Deception: Situation Room Photo Staged

May 06 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

AIM on Facebook | Twitter From Accuracy in Media ‘s Don Irvine: The photo of President Obama’s national security team watching the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound isn’t all that it appears to be. According to the Telegraph , CIA director Leon Panetta admitted that there was no live video footage of the raid as the specially mounted helmet cameras had been cut off. In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: “Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information. “We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound.” If that was the case what was the national security team looking at? As it turns out it was just another photo op staged by the White House for dramatic effect and it resonated around the world. Women’s Wear Daily was duly impressed by the photo and asked other photographers for their reactions: Here, photography editors and designers explain why the picture is destined to be one for the history books: Richard Turley, creative director, Bloomberg Businessweek “I don’t think it’s something that you would look at as an incredible piece of photography, but as a moment of time captured, it’s very powerful.…It’s quite a human picture isn’t it: The way Obama kind of tucked himself into the corner, the body language on everyone.…It’s weight is in your own baggage of the picture, your own prior knowledge about what’s going on and what they’re looking at.” Dora Somosi, director of photography, GQ “It really is the two faces, between Obama’s intensity and Hillary Clinton’s surprise and shock, or whatever the hand covering the mouth is. That’s where your eye goes. She may not have had her hand over her mouth a second later, but [the photographer] did catch a moment. I think it’s about those two people and catching their unguarded reaction.…I think it’s further validated by the document that’s in front of Hillary that’s been wiped out a bit because it’s classified information. That makes you feel that you have an insider view.” Kira Pollack, director of photography for Time “The Hillary Clinton expression is the one that holds the photograph fully. The reaction of her hand over her face. Her eyes. Clearly, she’s reacting to something she’s watching. She’s very unaware she’s being photographed. To me, the whole image is about Hillary. In some ways, she holds the image. You look at her first, and then you look at everyone else. That instinctive reaction that must have happened for her hand to go over her mouth like that? There must be something powerful on that screen.…The other thing about this picture that we all find fascinating is that the document that is blurred. It’s one more element of what’s in that room. How extraordinary is it that we’re seeing inside that room?” History book alright. The book of fake photos. And as for that dramatic reaction by Hillary Clinton, New York magazine got the real scoop: “I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs,” she said . “So, it may have no great meaning whatsoever.” Powerful  indeed. Next time bring along some cough drops.

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5 Questions our Beaming President Needs to Answer on the Death of Osama bin Laden

May 04 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

President Obama is basking in the after-glow of the successful operation that led to the demise of Osama bin Laden. As I have said previously, he deserves credit for making the gutsy decision to use a Navy SEAL team to take Bin Laden down. Of course, the lion’s share of the credit belongs to the special operations forces themselves, who overcame immense odds to mount the incredibly risky attack ordered by their commander-in-chief. However, as President Obama savors the high point of his time in office to date, there are some questions that he needs to answer to the American people. Here are just a few of them. 1. Does the president have any change of heart about the harsh criticisms he leveled at his predecessor for using renditions of suspected terrorist detainees and enhanced interrogation techniques in light of the crucial information they yielded on the identity of bin Laden’s trusted courier, which in turn led us to locate Bin Laden himself? Since taking office, President Obama has largely followed the counter-terrorism policies of President George W. Bush, despite criticizing them while campaigning to succeed Bush. Guantanamo remains open. Military commissions are still being used by the Obama administration to try some detained terrorist suspects. Renditions and indefinite detentions of high risk suspects without trial have continued. It’s time for President Obama to admit that he was wrong in castigating the Bush administration during the campaign and acknowledge the continuity of Bush’s policies that are necessary to fight an evil foe determined to kill as many Americans as possible. 2. Why have there been so many conflicting reports on what happened during the mission? First we were told by the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser , John O. Brennan , who reportedly observed the mission in real time from a live feed transmitted by the Navy Seals as it went down, that Bin Laden had a firearm which he was using when confronted and shot. Brennan said in his initial account that Bin Laden was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in We were also told that he used one of his wives as a human shield. The next day we learned that Bin Laden was not carrying a weapon when he was killed by our forces, but was somehow resisting arrest. We also learned that Bin Laden had not used any human shield. Given the fog of war in a fast-moving operation, why did Brennan speak with such certainty in the first place on what happened when apparently he did not know the whole story? Was there an attempt to justify killing Bin Laden, rather than taking him into custody, in order to satisfy international law sticklers including President Obama himself?  Will the Obama administration, in its usual deference to the United Nations, comply with the request from the UN’s senior human rights official, Navi Pillay , for detailed information on the operation to confirm its ‘legality?’ 3. Why did the Obama administration show such concern in handling and disposing of bin Laden’s body to make sure it conformed to Islamic law? President Obama said in his speech to the nation on Sunday night that “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. If Bin Laden represented a perversion of Islam, why obsess that he be buried within 24 hours and cleansed in accordance with Islamic law? Why not bury him in an unmarked grave or drop him into the sea to live with the fishes after making absolutely sure that we have confirmed his identity? 4. What are we going to do about double-dealing Pakistan where al Qaeda terrorists are finding sanctuary? Shouldn’t we re-focus our efforts in the region from counter-insurgency, nation-building in Afghanistan to more limited counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan and Yemen where our enemy is now concentrated? The Obama administration wisely left Pakistan in the dark about the Bin Laden mission until it was completed. Elements of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have a record of working with the Taliban and al Qaeda. There is no way that bin Laden could have been hiding in a town filled with Pakistani military facilities and within yards of Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point without the knowledge and support of members of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service. Advance information about the operation in the wrong hands would have ensured the failure of the mission and could well have brought about significant casualties to our forces. After initially praising the killing of Bin Laden as a “major setback to terrorist organizations around the world,” the Pakistan government issued a statement yesterday complaining that the United States had undertaken an “unauthorized unilateral action.” It’s time for a major push back against this fair weather, duplicitous ‘ally.’ Is the Obama administration planning to revisit the billions of dollars Pakistan receives each year from our country? Will we continue, and even expand our counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan, including continued drone attacks and commando raids, without seeking Pakistan’s permission as their treacherous government demands? And aren’t we wasting billions of dollars and sacrificing the lives of our soldiers trying to re-build Afghanistan when the global terrorist networks threatening America are now operating out of Pakistan and Yemen, not Afghanistan? 5. Finally, will the Obama administration continue to mistakenly look at radical Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and their U.S. affiliates such as the Council of American Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America benignly, distinguishing them from al Qaeda, even though they are using more stealth means towards the same Islamic supremist agenda to impose sharia law as broadly as possible? President Obama can take pride in his accomplishment of ridding the world of Osama bin Laden. But the American people deserve answers to these and other difficult questions in the days, weeks and months to come. Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

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Spread-The-Wealth Obama: Take More From The Job Producers And Give More To The Free-Riders

Apr 21 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

Kicking off his 2012 re-election campaign, President Obama has been going around the country in the last few days spewing class warfare vitriol. He believes that it is the duty of the dwindling base of income tax payers to provide even more support for the ballooning base of non-income tax payers. It’s not enough for this spread-the-wealth demagogue-in-chief that the top 10 percent of earners in this country pay nearly 3/4 of the income taxes collected by the federal government while the bottom 40 percent of American households, on average, get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in income taxes. Obama wants even more pounds of flesh from the so-called “wealthy” Americans to spend on his pet projects like high-speed rail: We can’t just tell the wealthiest among us, you don’t have to do a thing. You just sit there and relax, and everybody else, we’re going to solve this problem… We’ve got to have the quickest trains In reality, Obama is castigating the job producers in the private sector, most notably small businesses earning more than $200,000 a year whom he thinks are not paying their fair share. In reality, it is these job producers who are the locomotive for the increasing number of Americans who are getting a free ride. For the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930′s, U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes. According to a Fox Business report citing an analysis by Fiscal Times , households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010, including expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending. Those benefits exceed the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes. Here are some more disturbing statistics. An estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get at least one federal benefit, according to the Census Bureau, based on 2009 data. Yet about 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. In 2009, a family of four making as much as $50,000  owed no federal income tax, as long as there were two children younger than 17 in the household. This is a sick, unsustainable system, which President Obama is doing everything he can to make even worse. Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

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Blaming the Tea Party? Stop the Political Games

Apr 09 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections, Senate

Visit Deneen Borelli’s blog here . After years of trying to label the Tea Party movement as extremist, liberals now hope that shuttered museums, national park closures and concerns about grandma not getting her Social Security check next month, will turn public opinion against the social movement responsible for ending liberals’ virtual monopoly on political power in Washington. With the potential loss of the Senate and executive branch next year, liberals are looking for the political equivalent of kryptonite to weaken the relative superpower of the Tea Party movement. Given the high stakes of a government slowdown and an opportunity to exploit the crisis for political gain, it was not shocking to hear about the liberal’s strategy to blame the Tea Party coming straight from the mouth of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. For more on this please read my entire commentary at Fox News Opinion . Visit Deneen Borelli’s blog here .

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The New Obama Doctrine: Arming Our Enemies?

Mar 30 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections, Senate

The Obama administration is reportedly actively considering arming the Libyan rebels without even knowing for certain who they really are. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who met on Tuesday in London with a senior rebel leader and made clear that Col. Qaddafi must go, admitted that: We don’t know as much as we would like to know. However, what we do know at this point is alarming enough to stop any Commander-in-Chief with America’s best interests in mind from even considering providing arms to these rebels. But not necessarily our current Commander-In-Chief, heralding his new Obama Doctrine of deferring to international consensus on how far we go in fulfilling internationally defined ‘humanitarian’ military missions. A senior administration official is quoted in the New York Times today  as saying: Al Qaeda in that part of the country is obviously an issue. The military commander of NATO, Adm. James G. Stavridis, told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were “flickers” in intelligence reports about the presence of al Qaeda and Hezbollah members among the rebels. Flicker is defined as an “inconstant or wavering light.” We know from a West Point report and the admission of a leader of the rebels himself that some of the rebels have al Qaeda sympathies and were sent to Iraq for the purpose of killing our soldiers fighting the insurgency there. We’re obviously dealing with more than just a “flicker. ” But, in any case, shouldn’t even a flickering light bulb go off in President Obama’s head that it is reckless to provide any arms to people who could very well be Islamic terrorists, and who will most likely turn around and use them against Americans? The Times reported that the French government, which had tried under a different administration to block any military action at all to remove the genocidal dictator Saddam Hussein, is now placing mounting pressure on the United States to provide greater assistance to the rebels. According to the previously mentioned  Times article, a European diplomat said: France was adamant that the rebels be more heavily armed. If the French feel so strongly, then let them arm the rebels themselves. Is Obama so intent on making France and other members of the “international community” happy that he is willing to potentially sacrifice the national security of the United States and the lives of our soldiers by arming rebels who might very well be aligned with al Qaeda?  Despite promising to the American people that our military objective was limited to protecting innocent civilians from imminent mass slaughter, is Obama now willing to entangle the United States in a protracted civil war and provide advisors on the ground to train the rebels in how to use the weapons we supply? If Obama listens to French President Sarkozy and the Libyan hawks within his own administration such as radical Leftist Samantha Powers and provides arms directly or indirectly to the rebels, he would be knowingly providing military aid that could well end up in the hands of enemies of the United States. Has taking the substantial risk of arming our enemies in the service of an amorphous international “humanitarian” mission become the new Obama Doctrine? If so, Obama is violating his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. And that’s not even to mention his paramount duty to protect the security of the American people. Readers can decide whether knowingly risking the arming of even a “flicker” of our enemy with a track record of trying to kill American soldiers  is tantamount to treason. Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

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The New York Times Praises Obama’s Confusing Libyan Speech

Mar 29 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

Not surprisingly, the New York Times lead editorial today praised President Obama’s speech Monday night on Libya. The editorial claimed he made a “strong case” for America’s military intervention. For the reasons I describe in more detail in my Front Page article today , Obama’s speech did little to dispel the fog surrounding his objectives and endgame. But I want to focus here on two themes the Times emphasized in its laudatory review of Obama’s speech. First, the Times bought Obama’s argument that if we had not intervened in Libya other dictators would conclude that violence is the best strategy to cling to power Iran has long since reached that conclusion, bolstered by the Obama administration’s passivity while dissenters were being killed or beaten in the streets of Tehran and other cities. Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad , whom the Obama administration has tried to court as a potential ‘reformer,’ has drawn the same lesson from Obama’s passivity in the face of the Syrian regime’s slaughter of its own people. Some dictators have also concluded from Qaddafi’s experience, in giving up his nuclear weapons program and finding himself under attack by the West, that they need nuclear weapons to deter such an attack against their own regimes. Perhaps the Times ‘ editors should have more carefully considered this report about North Korea’s reaction to the Libyan intervention appearing in the Times on March 24th: A North Korean statement that Libya’s dismantling of its nuclear weapons program had made it vulnerable to military intervention by the West is being seen by analysts as an ominous reinforcement of the North’s refusal to end its own nuclear program. Second, the Times bought Obama’s argument that, while handing over command responsibility to NATO and allowing the war to be “run internationally,” the United States must continue to remain involved in the fight against Qaddafi. The Times editors, like Obama himself last night, say that the looming humanitarian catastrophe in Benghazi we went into Libya to prevent has been successfully averted: Mr. Obama could report encouraging early progress on the military and diplomatic fronts. Washington and its allies have crippled or destroyed Colonel Qaddafi’s anti-aircraft defenses, peeled his troops back from the city of Benghazi — saving potentially thousands of lives — and allowed rebel forces to retake the offensive. Why, then, can’t we simply declare victory and withdraw? The Times ‘ answer: To hold their ground and protect endangered civilians, let alone advance, the rebels will likely need air support for quite some time. Mr. Obama was right not to promise a swift end to the air campaign. In other words, the New York Times accepts the unstated premise of the ‘Obama War’ – that the rebels’ fight against Qaddafi is our fight. Without actually coming out and saying so, the Obama administration is choosing sides in a civil war, which may go on for some time without toppling Qaddafi. Moreover, we are helping an opposition reportedly made up of troops who had fought against our own soldiers in Iraq and are aligned with al Qaeda. When Barack Obama won the presidential election, the Times editors crowed that Obama’s victory represented a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies Now the Times defends Obama’s war of choice in Libya, which has a shifting mission, no clear endgame and puts us into bed with an opposition that had send its forces to kill American soldiers not too long ago. The Times will do virtually anything to prop up their deliverer. Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

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President Obama Delivered A Moving Speech In Tuscon But Will He Live Up To Its Message?

Jan 13 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections, Congress

In what I think was his best speech by far during his presidency, President Barack  Obama spoke movingly last night at the memorial service for the victims of last Saturday’s shooting massacre.  He touched on the lives of each of the slain and talked about how we can honor them by not using the tragedy to turn on each other. Perhaps the high point of Obama’s speech was when he broke from his prepared remarks to share the news that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes Wednesday for the first time since Saturday’s shooting massacre. Gabby opened her eyes for the first time. Gabby opened her eyes. Gabby opened her eyes, so I can tell you, she knows we are here, she knows we love her, and she knows that we are rooting for her through what is undoubtedly going to be a difficult journey. We are there for her. One could not help but feel the emotion of that moment. And the president reached another emotional high point when he asked the country to live up to the imagination and ideals of the nine-year-old girl, Christina Taylor Green, who lost her life while going to meet Congresswoman Giffords. In a pointed rebuke to some members of his own party and others on the Left who have been exploiting the shooting for political gain , President Obama made clear his belief that political rancor did not cause the tragedy. Nor should it be turned into a political wedge to further divide us: For the truth is, none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind. Yes, we had to examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future. But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together. While acknowledging the reality of evil in this world which we cannot stop altogether, President Obama tried to summon the better angels of our nature, as Abraham Lincoln had put it in his first Inaugural Address. Obama said: We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. Obama pointed, as examples, to the acts of heroism by ordinary Americans such as the intern who helped to save Rep. Gifford’s life and those who may have saved other lives including the two men who wrestled Jared Loughner to the ground and the woman who seized his ammunition.

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Time Magazine’s Joe Klein Sums Up 2010 As Not Much – A More Accurate Description Of His Own Opinions

Dec 30 2010 Published by under 2010 Elections, Congress, Senate

My namesake Joe Klein wrote in his latest Time Magazine column that nothing much happened in 2010. If he meant to say that the progressives did not achieve their agenda of fundamentally transforming America into a European-style democratic socialist welfare state, I think he is right. But in this case less is more. The Republicans played good defense and prevented the creeping government take-over of key parts of our economy under President Obama from becoming a catastrophic rout of our free market capitalistic system . Fueled by the historic groundswell of the Tea Party movement, voters in the midterm elections restored some needed balance to our government – 63 House seats, 6 Senate seats, 5 governorships, 20 state legislative Houses, some 700 seats in state legislatures nationwide. Klein pooh-poohed the Republican victories, calling them the inevitable reaction to a bad economy. In this, as in so many things, he has his facts wrong. The average first midterm loss for a president’s party has been less than twenty House seats and around 3 Senate seats. In 1982′s midterm election during Ronald Reagan’s first term when the economy was as bad as it was at the same point in Obama’s term, Republicans gave back 26 House seats, and actually gained a Senate seat. As a consequence of what Obama himself called a “shellacking,’ he was forced to accept a supply-side, across the board extension of the Bush tax-cuts. Chastened by the shellacking, Obama is at least pretending to pivot towards the center, declaring that jobs and deficit reduction will be his top domestic priorities in 2011. We’ll see, but at least he is starting to talk the talk. With his usual arrogance, Klein characterized the opposition to the Obama-Pelosi-Reid progressive agenda as “putrid,” ” half-crazed,” and “screechy.” And he could not resist taking another of his trademark shots at Fox News. Klein just can’t accept the fact that the bubble which he inhabits with his left-wing colleagues in the media has burst. With cable news, talk radio and the 24/7 Internet, these pompous would-be opinion-makers are rapidly losing their influence. In fact, one of the 2010 stories that Joe should be most concerned about was the sale of Newsweek for $1. Will Time , with its stable of columnists like Joe Klein, be the next magazine to be sold for what it is worth – say, about 50 cents? Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam .

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