You can’t expect the IRS to keep good records, can you?

The New Neo Posted on by

More and more IRS emails gone missing: six more employees’ email records, to be exact.

Even before this new “accident” was announced, Sharyl Attkisson had a great comment on the loss of Lerner’s emails:

There is a responsibility on the part of government officials to retain the data, make sure that is and can’t be lost in the system. If it’s true that the emails are lost, that’s quite a story in itself.

“Quite a story” indeed. And one the MSM hasn’t been interested in telling. They know it would be worse than Watergate—a Watergate that would get their bad guys this time, so best leave it be.

If an administration commits a crime in the forest and the press doesn’t report it, does anybody hear it?

See, Obama is tough on terrorists!

The New Neo Posted on by

The Benghazi terrorism suspect Abu Khattala has been captured in a secret raid and is on his way to the US.

So, that’s one terrorist captured, five Taliban kingpins released from Gitmo, and an enormous army of other Islamicist terrorists triumphantly marching through an Iraq we abandoned. Sorry if I don’t think the math looks all that good for the administration.

And yes, I do question the timing of this arrest. All previous reports I had seen agreed with this one from the Times a month after the attack, which stated he was hiding in plain sight. Even today’s WaPo article announcing his capture by the US makes it clear that this has been the case:

Failure to make arrests in the Benghazi case was seen as an enormous frustration for the FBI and a subject of sharp criticism from lawmakers. Within weeks of the attacks, and sporadically thereafter, Abu Khattala was interviewed by American reporters in the open in Benghazi, where he said he did not participate in the initial assault on the Benghazi compound but came on the scene as it was ending.

I don’t think his apprehension at this point in time is any coincidence. He is most useful right now to the administration in terms of PR. And I guess he wasn’t any spontaneous demonstrator complaining about a video, was he?

This is an interesting fact which illustrates that nasty dictators such as Libya’s Gaddafi have their uses:

Believed to be in his 40s, Abu Khattala was imprisoned for many years by the Gaddafi regime for his Islamist views.

Others believed to have been involved in the Benghazi attack are being sought. One of them, Bin Qumu, “was released [in 2007] from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sent to Libya, where he was detained. Gaddafi’s government released him in 2008.”

That’s not Obama releasing him, that’s the Bush administration and then Gaddafi. I wonder why. Although I have yet to find a single article that gives the details as to the reason Bin Qumu was released, there is no question that Bush was under intense pressure from the moment of Guantanamo’s establishment to free its inmates.

At any rate, Bin Qumu has quite a history. Quite a history. Before he was implicated in the Benghazi killings, the NY Times pointed out his checkered past and the fact that in the fight against Gaddafi he had supposedly become our ally (protect your neck while you read the article or you might get whiplash trying to follow Bin Qumu’s twistings and turnings):

Today [April 24, 2011], Mr. Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, reportedly a leader of a ragtag band of fighters known as the Darnah Brigade…The former enemy and prisoner of the United States is now an ally of sorts, a remarkable turnabout resulting from shifting American policies rather than any obvious change in Mr. Qumu.

Remarkable indeed.

He was a tank driver in the Libyan Army in the 1980s, when the Central Intelligence Agency was spending billions to support religious militants trying to drive Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. Mr. Qumu moved to Afghanistan in the early 1990s, just as Osama bin Laden and other former mujahedeen were violently turning against their former benefactor, the United States.

He was captured in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, accused of being a member of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and sent to Guanté¡namo ”” in part because of information provided by Colonel Qaddafi’s government.

“The Libyan Government considers detainee a ”˜dangerous man with no qualms about committing terrorist acts,’ ” says the classified 2005 assessment…

When that Guanté¡namo assessment was written, the United States was working closely with Colonel Qaddafi’s intelligence service against terrorism. Now [April 2011], the United States is a leader of the international coalition trying to oust Colonel Qaddafi ”” and is backing with air power the rebels, including Mr. Qumu.

The classified Guanté¡namo assessment of Mr. Qumu claims that he suffered from “a non-specific personality disorder” and recounted ”” again citing the Libyan government as its source ”” a history of drug addiction and drug dealing and accusations of murder and armed assault.

In 1993, the document asserts, Mr. Qumu escaped from a Libyan prison, fled to Egypt and went on to Afghanistan, training at a camp run by Mr. bin Laden. At Guanté¡namo, Mr. Qumu denied knowledge of terrorist activities. He said he feared being returned to Libya, where he faced criminal charges, and asked to go to some other country where “You (the United States) can watch me,” according to a hearing summary.

Nonetheless, in 2007, he was sent from Guanté¡namo to Libya and released the next year in an amnesty for militants…

Mr. Qumu did not turn up for a promised interview last week, but Mr. Hasadi did…He denied that Mr. Qumu was in his group…Two of Mr. Qumu’s sons are in his brigade, he said.

“I don’t know how to convince everyone that we are not Al Qaeda here,” Mr. Hasadi said. “Our aim is to topple Qaddafi,” he added. “I know that you will never believe me, but it is true.”

For now, Western observers in Benghazi, the temporary rebel capital 180 miles from here, seem content to accept those assurances. “We’re more worried about Al Qaeda infiltration from outside than the indigenous ones” one said. “Most of them have a local agenda so they don’t present as much as a threat to the West.”

Reading that, you can see some of the reasons the Obama administration was so eager to ascribe the Benghazi murders to a nameless crowd whipped to frenzy by a video.

You can also see how incredibly difficult the task of fighting Islamic terrorists is whether an administration seems committed to the task or not. Shape-shifters.

The situation keeps presenting us with the dilemma of which bad-but-perhaps-less-bad guy to back against the other. And staying out of it doesn’t make them any less intent to harm us. After all, we weren’t doing all that much against them back in September of 2001, and you know where that got us.

Let’s listen to our ex-president, George W. Bush, on the subject of Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

That headline of mine was a trick. No, George Bush hasn’t commented on present events in Iraq, probably because he doesn’t believe it helpful for ex-presidents to criticize their successors.

But he already described the whole thing back in 2007, when he gave a speech explaining why he was vetoing a bill passed by the Democratic Congress which would have pulled troops out of Iraq (the first three minutes of the video are especially relevant):

For those who say “but Bush negotiated the agreement by which Obama ended up pulling out of Iraq,” there is no question that everyone involved in those Bush negotiations expected the next president would make a new agreement when the time came and that it would involve leaving some residual forces there. But it was clear that Obama had no interest in doing so; he barely participated in the talks and pulled out when the going got the least bit rough.

Contrast Bush’s speech in the video above with this speech of Obama’s which he made on the occasion of the complete withdrawal from Iraq. He justifies and celebrates that withdrawal by praising the accomplishments the US had made in Iraq up to then—including and especially those of the surge which he had bitterly opposed as a senator. Ironically and tragically, those achievements have evaporated now, although their loss might well have been prevented had he left a small residual force in the country.

If we had a real press, they’d all be pointing this out on the front page. But we don’t.

Nature—and geopolitics—

The New Neo Posted on by

—abhors a vacuum.

And so Iran rushes in where Obama fears to tread:

U.S. and senior Iraqi officials tell The Daily Beast that Iran is now offering the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki its army, its spies and highly trained irregular units from its revolutionary guard corps to root out the Sunni insurgency that now threatens Baghdad. Gen. Qassem Solaimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, arrived in Baghdad last week with an entourage of military advisers to begin preparations for such a counter-offensive. A member of the Quds Force has already allegedly been killed fighting in Iraq…

Lukman Faily, Iraq’s ambassador to Washington, in an interview declined to discuss any specifics of the Iranian offer to Maliki’s government. But he did say that his government faced a desperate choice.

“We face an existential threat ourselves. We cannot coexist with ISIS,” he said. “Unfortunately, when people are desperate, they will take desperate measures.”

He added, “We will go to whomever we can partner with to deal with the immediate threat.”

Meanwhile, while Iran gets to work, Obama gets out his irons:

The White House said Obama received regular briefings on the worsening crisis in Iraq during his golf weekend. “The president directed [National Security Adviser Susan Rice] to continue to keep him apprised of the latest developments,” said spokesman Josh Earnest, “as his national security team continues to meet through the weekend to review potential options.”…

“He has got to know our allies are sitting there saying, ‘Has this guy got the chops? Is he strong?’ ” says former top George W. Bush aide Karl Rove, just returned from a trip to Europe. “And for him to hold a news conference saying he’s thinking about what to do in Iraq and then head off for a weekend of fundraisers and golf – does he think this escapes international view?”

To answer Rove’s question: no, he doesn’t think this escapes international view. In fact, there is a good possibility that it is an intentional message to the nations involved in the Iraq mess that he is deeply, deeply disengaged and will do very little about it.

Don’t expect to see the MSM criticizing Obama for it, though. The NY Times coverage is typical—a lengthy 25-paragraph article where in the second paragraph there’s an oblique non-golfing reference to Obama’s California sojourn (“the White House’s emphasis, when Mr. Obama returns to Washington on Monday from a weekend in Southern California, will be on prodding Iraq’s leaders to form a new national unity government”) and the fact that he’s playing golf isn’t even mentioned until paragraph 13, and then in a very neutral way (see also this, essentially the same treatment).

Contrast with Bush, who was heavily criticized in 2002 for making a statement about an Israeli terrorist attack while on the golf course, and who in 2003 called an unannounced halt to his golf-playing in time of war.

Of course, we’re not at war anymore, says Obama. But war is interested in him.

One crisis after another

The New Neo Posted on by

Words seem exceedingly inadequate right now.

And yet as a blogger, that’s what I do. Just in the last few days I’ve written drafts or short notes for about 50 new posts that I haven’t even gotten around to finishing and publishing, in addition to the ones I have published. It’s a kind of blogger-ADD brought on by the intensity of my rage at the tsunami, not only of bad news, but of bad news where the “leadership” we have seems to either be passive in the face of it or actively encouraging it.

Washington DC seems surprisingly quiet, the reaction from Republicans muted, despite the fact that three of the erupting crises involve national security. Does anyone think that the release of the Gitmo Five, the young people and gang members and even possible terrorists streaming across our border and receiving a welcome mat rather than deportation, and the murderous Islamists “worse than al Qaeda” taking over huge swaths of Iraq, won’t be directly dangerous to us sooner or later?

Oh, maybe Republicans have been talking up a storm, but the MSM won’t report it. But even if that’s happening, what good is talk? Obama and his aides do (or don’t do) as they wish.

And what of the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona, Perry and Brewer? I realize the feds have jurisdiction over border security, but something more than some strong-worded letters are required, some act of more overt defiance and/or taking the case to the people.

Go to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and you’ll see conservatives sputtering with impotent rage at what’s happening. Why don’t you do something?” the comments scream. Why, indeed? Why does everyone seem like deer in the headlights, blinking in the glare? After all, it has been clear for a long time that Obama’s combination of malice, ideological leftism, Cloward-Priven strategy, and disengagement from dealing with Iraq at all (a disengagement that has been going on for his entire presidency) is a dangerous dangerous brew.

The are several reasons for the frozen reaction, I think. There is a general disconnect on the part of many in power from the concerns of ordinary people, and a habit of playing it safe. Also, way too many people on the right continue to see Obama as merely incompetent (the “fool” in the “fool or knave?” question), although events such as the release of the Gitmo Five are hard to fit into that narrative; no one is that incompetent. A small child could have figured out that this was a very bad move that compromises our security and that of Afghanistan. And so (as I said back in 2009 about Obama’s position on Honduras), there is simply no benign explanation for this move on Obama’s part.

Still another reason is the speed of it all. The fact that the crises at the border and in Iraq came right on the heels of the Bergdahl crisis (which of course followed other crises, such as the VA)—each one worse than the one before it, if such a thing be possible—is another problem for the Obama opposition, which is feeling stunned by the magnitude and rapidity of it all. And the only remedy—impeachment—seems politically impossible (not to mention slow even were it possible), because Democrat cooperation would be necessary and it just doesn’t exist at the moment, if ever.

I don’t think the framers ever envisioned anything quite like this—although perhaps they did; they were incredibly smart. Perhaps they just thought that if things were that far gone and yet the political will to impeach a president so destructive still could not be mustered, then the situation couldn’t be helped by any design they could have given us.

One more thing—I think we need to retire the old “fool or knave?” question. Now it’s down to “lunatic or traitor?” I know which one I choose.

[NOTE: Three more articles that will horrify you: this one about the border overload and this searing one and this, both by Richard Fernandez about Iraq. You can feel the depth of his outrage:

While earlier generations of policy makers might confidently have said that the United States would defend Kuwait ”¦ or Bahrain ”¦ or Qatar ”¦ or Oman ”¦ or Saudi Arabia, with Obama it is impossible to say with any certainty that he will defend anything. The United States, and in consequence the West, has suffered a catastrophic collapse of credibility.

Any line that can by hypothetically drawn is at best a wild-ass-guess. For only one person can draw any line of consequence: Barack Hussein Obama. We are witnessing not only a collapse but a capitulation.

If I had to guess I would say Obama will do nothing to stop the events in Iraq from playing out (although alliance with Iran is certainly possible). Perhaps he desires the victory of bloodthirsty terrorists, perhaps he wants Iran in charge, or perhaps he just wants a debacle so he can blame Bush; at this point, who knows? I think he is incapable of making a decision to resume the Iraq War in any way whatsoever. It would be too big a denial of several of his central belief systems, including these two: that his greatest foreign policy achievement was to leave Iraq without American military support, and that “dialogue” plus his own personal charisma can solve all conflicts.

By the way, a commenter on that Fernandez thread has this to say: “The presidential goal for the American Embassy in Iraq is to ensure that as many American hostages are taken as possible. Once they are taken, Obama will trade them for any remaining Jihadi’s we hold.”

It’s come to the point that such a thought no longer seems all that farfetched. But I don’t think so. After all, why would Obama need hostages for the trade? He could release Gitmo detainees just because he feels like it. What would stop him?]

Here’s a guy…

The New Neo Posted on by

…who predicted the whole trajectory of post-occupation Iraq back in December of 2011 when the SOFA deal fell through. Rick Francona gets to say “I told you so,” although I doubt that gives him much satisfaction at this point.

No, he didn’t specifically foresee the details of ISIS, but otherwise his predictions are spot on.

I know! Let’s send Joe Biden to Guatemala to iron this thing out

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, indeed, that’ll do it:

Vice President Joe Biden will visit Guatemala this week to discuss a recent rash of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. Southern border from three Central American nations.

Senior administration officials said Biden would meet with Guatemala’s president along with the president of El Salvador and a senior official within Honduras’ government to broach the matter of young children being sent to the United States as a way to flee unrest in those three nations.

The vice president will attempt to dispel a misperception among young immigrants that they would be eligible for deferred deportation under a rule President Obama enacted last year.

Oh, it may be a misperception that they would qualify under that rule. But there is a good chance that they are qualifying under other rules, and receiving services in the meantime. Nothing I have read or heard convinces me that any of them will be deported anytime soon, and perhaps not even anytime later, either. Word will get back to more people in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to come on up, the water’s fine.

And Biden—such a persuasive guy! No doubt his heart’s in the right place. From an article published on June 11:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden told a National Association of Manufacturers’ crowd this week that what the United States needed was more, not fewer, immigrants.

Specifically, he called for a “constant, unrelenting stream” of new immigrants ”” “not dribbling [but] significant flows,” to bolster the national economy, The Hill reported.

Maybe he’s going down to thank those countries.

Happy Father’s Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This a slightly edited version of a previous post of mine.]

It’s Father’s Day. A sort of poor stepchild to Mother’s Day, although fathers themselves are hardly that. They are central to a family.

Just ask the people who never had one, or who had a difficult relationship with theirs. Or ask the people who were nurtured in the strength of a father’s love and guidance.

Of course, the complex world being what it is, and people and families being what they are, it’s the rare father-child relationship that’s entirely conflict-free. But for the vast majority, love is almost always present, even though at times it can be hard to express or to perceive. It can take a child a very long time to see it or feel it; but that’s part of what growing up is all about. And “growing up” can go on even in adulthood, or old age.

Father’s Day—or Mother’s Day, for that matter—can wash over us in a wave of treacly sentimentality. But the truth of the matter is often stranger, deeper, and more touching. Sometimes the words of love catch in the throat before they’re spoken. But they can still be sensed. Sometimes a loving father is lost through distance or misunderstanding, and then regained.

There’s an extraordinary poem by Robert Hayden that depicts one of these uneasy father-child connections—the shrouded feelings, both paternal and filial, that can come to be seen in the fullness of time as the love that was always, always there. I offer it on this Father’s Day to all of you.

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Obama takes a break…

The New Neo Posted on by

…from taking a break.

Some buyer’s remorse from the comments section there:

“Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Obama golfed while Iraq imploded.” Mr. President I threw away my vote. In two years you will have your wish and be able to leave office after we elect someone who knows what they are doing. I have enough of your kind of “Hope.” You have some “Audacity” to think you know what is best for Americans. I just wish we had a vote of confidence now and could toss you out…..The VA the IRS 4 dead in Libya closing Gitmo 5 for 1 without congress(you will have protection from these vile men the average American will not!) transparent White house. I have never felt more violated then I do right now and we had a credible attack on American’s on American soil in Boston on your watch. Say what you want about Bush but I felt a lot safer.

Arms are pretty important things

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting article by Miles O’Brien about what it’s like living with only one arm after his had to be amputated.

Fortunately I haven’t had that experience. But readers of this blog may be aware that about 25 years ago I sustained serious nerve injuries to both arms, and underwent an arm surgery fifteen years ago that involved a very difficult recovery. I’ve written about the experience here, in case you missed it. But although I’m very lucky to have the use of both arms now, albeit with some restrictions and some pain and discomfort (especially if I exceed those restrictions), I well remember the years of extreme pain and disability, and the months of recovery when my right arm was nearly useless for most tasks.

It’s harder than most people might think. Even things you might not realize you need both arms for become very difficult—such as, for example, putting on one’s underwear. My elbow was completely frozen for several months, and in addition to terrible pain I couldn’t button my shirt or brush my teeth or touch my head or face with that arm or put deodorant under the other arm or…well, you get the idea. And my problem was merely temporary, although at the time it wasn’t clear that it wouldn’t be permanent.

Shortly after my surgery I had a vivid dream about my arm that I remember to this day. I dreamed it was a sort of Frankenstein-monster arm. In the dream it had been removed and another arm sewn on haphazardly, with those big jagged stitches you see in the movies. It was actually another person’s arm, not mine, and that was why it felt so alien and awful.

O’Brien had a different perception, one quite common among amputees: he had actually lost his arm and yet continued to feel it, and the sensations were often painful. This is the opposite of what happened to author and neurologist Oliver Sacks when he badly injured his leg: Sacks kept his leg but lost the feeling that he had it any more, or that it was attached to his body.

The mind is a funny thing, isn’t it? And yet these perceptions are not solely mental at all, they are interactions between mind and body after severe injury.

O’Brien also had the experience, post-amputation, of falling while running and then reaching out his phantom hand to break his fall. I’ll let him describe it:

It was nothing more than a slightly uneven sidewalk that took me down. No problem for a runner with two arms. In fact, this particular sidewalk is right behind my home, and I had negotiated it uneventfully for years. But here are two things you need to know about life after an arm amputation: First, your center of gravity changes dramatically when you are suddenly eight pounds lighter on one side of your body. Second, while my arm may be missing physically, it is there, just as it always has been, in my mind’s eye. I can feel every digit. I can even feel the watch that was always strapped to my left wrist. When I tripped, I reached reflexively to break my very real fall with my completely imaginary left hand. My fall was instead broken by my nose, and my nose was broken by my fall.

I’m not so sure it’s no problem for a runner—or walker—with two arms, either, because you may recall that something very similar happened to me about two years ago. It was an uneven sidewalk that took me down, too:

I was walking on a sidewalk that’s notoriously uneven, with periodic ridges where the blocks of pavement aren’t flush with each other, and then I was distracted by a group of four people walking nearby.

And so I tripped, with my toe catching on something-or-other. And for reasons I fail to understand even now””and probably wouldn’t be able to pinpoint unless I watched a slo-mo video of the proceedings””I fell hard and fast and was unable to effectively break my fall with my hands.

There was a strange moment when I sailed through the air, flailing a bit before I landed, knowing I was in a slight dive position with my head/face leading and probably likely to contact first. In that split-second, it was frightening to anticipate what might happen. My life didn’t flash through my mind, but questions like “will I have a concussion?” and “what will happen to my face?” certainly did.

I not only broke my nose but sustained other injuries to my face, most of which have healed better than I would have thought, although my already-deviated septum has departed even more than before from the straight and narrow. But although I fell with two arms, I completely failed to break my fall (except with my face), I think in part because I had to make a split-second decision and it is so deeply engrained in me over so many years not to put too much stress on my arms. My reflex now is not to use my arms, and I would have had to have somehow overriden that reflex.

But breaking your fall with your arms isn’t always such a hot idea, either. I have a friend who broke her fall—and her wrist—that way, and had to have surgery to repair the complex fracture and needed to wear a cast for many many months during her difficult recovery.

Best to be vigilant about those uneven sidewalks.

Lou Dobbs accuses Obama of purposely orchestrating the swamping of the US borders in cooperation with the governments of Central America

The New Neo Posted on by

A few years ago I might not credit this at all. Now it seems quite plausible to me:

But whether—as Dobbs asserts—Obama is actively co-operating with the governments of Central America in sparking this exodus or not, I have little doubt he is encouraging it in other ways and celebrating it as it happens. The obvious thing to do—sent these people back immediately, since we have them in custody, cannot deal with them, and will obviously have to provide them with services—will not be undertaken by this president. Nor can I imagine him calling out the Guard or instituting other measures to secure the border from the drug dealers and others who are sneaking across while the children are using up all the resources that would otherwise be devoted to the border itself.

[ADDENDUM: Fausta wonders, too.]

ISIS threatens

The New Neo Posted on by

Back in January, ISIS issued this threat to Iraq and to the US:

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), issued a rare audio message back on January 21 in which he flatly stated his group’s intention to march on Baghdad and move into “direct confrontation” with the United States.

“Our last message is to the Americans. Soon we will be in direct confrontation, and the sons of Islam have prepared for such a day,” Baghdadi said. “So watch, for we are with you, watching.”

Apparently, Obama didn’t even read about that one in the paper.

By the way, we had al Baghdadi in prison in Iraq for four years, then transferred him in 2009 to the Iraqi prison system as part of the drawdown plan. Then the Iraqis released him.

And we didn’t even get a Bergdahl in return.

Watch this video and hear what al Baghdadi said to the Americans as they handed him over:

Will ISIS ultimately overreach and finally wake the sleeping giant of the west? Or Israel, which is not a sleeping giant in the first place?