Posts Tagged ‘Samantha Powers’

Lindsey Graham is in the tank for Samantha Power – naturally

by Mojambo ( 23 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Eric Holder, Headlines, Progressives, United Nations at June 8th, 2013 - 2:00 pm

Raise your hand if this surprises you? Yeah I thought so.

by Bridget Johnson

The senator who led the charge to block UN Ambassador Susan Rice from filling the role of secretary of State has no problem with the person President Obama selected to fill Rice’s role.

[……..]

Moving into Rice’s role at the world body with a sad track record of preventing atrocities will be the first leader of Obama’s Atrocities Prevention Board created in 2012, Samantha Power.

Power called Hillary Clinton a “monster” during the 2008 campaign and had to step down from Obama’s team then, only to rejoin his transition team after his victory. Since then, she’s moved through positions at the State Department and National Security Council.

When she left her role as a special assistant to Obama this February, the White House said it was so Power could spend more time with her two small kids. She is married to Obama’s former regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein; they met working on Obama’s first presidential campaign.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) today called Power “a solid choice” to lead the U.S. delegation at the United Nations.

“She has the background, intellect, and toughness to fill this important diplomatic post at a time of great conflict and rising danger throughout the world,” Graham said.

“As United Nations Ambassador, she will aggressively represent the United States interests in an increasingly hostile body. She will also be a strong supporter of our close friend and ally Israel,” he added. “I hope the Senate will expeditiously consider her nomination.”

Although the Power nomination doesn’t come without controversy, there seems to be little will to try to hold up the nomination.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was asked yesterday on CNN if the GOP might try to block Power in order to wrest answers about Benghazi out of Rice.

[……..]

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at the Brookings Institution that he has “some hopes” for Power.

But House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) made clear that there will be opposition to Power, and not linked to Rice.

“I think Mrs. Power, the opposition will stand on its own in terms of her — you know, you want an U.N. ambassador that’s going to advocate for the United States, not apologize for the United States,” McCaul said on CNN.

“She’s compared our recent American foreign policy to that — those of the Nazis. This is a horrible rhetoric. And it’s not the kind of messenger I want to be sent to the United Nations to speak on behalf of the United States. So we have some serious problems with this nomination.”

Read the rest – Fervent Rice opponent Graham is A-ok with Power

Tags: Samantha Powers, Sen. Lindsey Graham
Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Eric Holder, Headlines, Progressives, United Nations | 23 Comments »

Disastrous News For Israel, With Coldest Regards From Barack Obama; Addendum: To Israel’s dismay, Obama administration leaks details of a missile base built in Israel

by Flyovercountry ( 114 Comments › )
Filed under IDF, Israel at June 6th, 2013 - 11:30 am

Following is a video clip of Samantha Power, the woman Barack Obama just nominated to be our diplomat to the United Nations. For those who argue that this was the result of some youthful idiocy, for which she is now repentant, she made these statements in September of 2008, roughly two months prior to Barack Obama being elected as our 44th President.

She manages to hit it all here, making the paranoid claim that our nation is secretly controlled by those nefarious joooooooooos, pulling out the canard of, “no more aid for those evil Zionists,” because without our military support they would never exist on their own, hits a new one with a suggestion that we actually invade Israel and establish Palestine via fiat, labels the Israelis, and not the so called Palestinians as genocidal maniacs, and reaches a level of moral equivalence so thoroughly disgusting that it could only have resulted from the bowels of an Ivy League Educative process.

Watch this video on YouTube.

I was never able to understand how my liberal friends could look at the actions of our current President and declare him to be a friend of Israel. Now, I must take this further. If you believe Barack Obama to be a friend of Israel, you have shown a level of stupidity that reaches weapons grade status, or even dare I say it, museum grade. You have reached the Coexist level of idiocy, and perhaps it is time for you to go and seek an afternoon of electro-shock-therapy, just to put yourself back into some semblance of coherency.

These are scary times my friends, and we have 42 months of this idiocy left to go. I pray Israel survives our moronic decision to make this clown and his minions our chief executive and support team.

Hat tip to mskelly.

Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.

Speranza Addendum:

To Israel’s dismay, Obama administration leaks details of a missile base built in Israel

The Obama administration just cannot keep its ignorant mouth shut when it comes to Israel’s and America’s security.

hat tip – Boker Tov, Boulder!

by Sheera Frankel

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s military fumed Monday over the discovery that the U.S. government had revealed details of a top-secret Israeli military installation in published bid requests.

The Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state-of-the-art facility to house a new ballistic-missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls.

“If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility,” said an Israeli military official who commented on the publication of the proposal but declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the facility. He declined to say whether plans for the facility have been altered as a result of the disclosure.

[……..]

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller said he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the Arrow 3 base, but he said the United States routinely published the details of its construction plans on a federal business opportunities website so that contractors could estimate the costs of jobs. He said such postings often might be revised after contracts were approved.

Israeli officials appear to have been well aware of the danger of outsourcing building projects to the United States. In an interview with the Reuters news agency in March, Lt. Col. Peleg Zeevi, the head of the bidding process at Israel’s Defense Ministry, justified Israel’s long history of relying on the United States to help build military installations by saying that Israel needed “a player that has the knowledge, ability and experience.”

[………]

It appears, however, that Israeli officials were caught by surprise that details of the facility at Tel Shahar, classified so top secret that Israel’s military won’t officially confirm its location between Jerusalem and Ashdod, would be made so public.

[…….]

According to the bid requests, the Arrow 3 system will include six interceptors in vertical launch positions to be placed in the facility, and a gantry crane would need to be erected for further missiles. The structures encasing the interceptor system are to be constructed from high-grade concrete reinforced with steel mesh grids. They’ll have steel blast doors and a system to protect electrical wiring from the pressure created by a launch.

Israeli officials had announced that they were fast-tracking the Arrow 3 system because of their fear that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

“We want to reach a situation in which Israel has a ready defense for any threat, present or future,” said Col. Aviram Hasson, […….]

The Arrow 3 is capable of intercepting missiles at a range of up to 1,500 miles and can maneuver in midair to chase them. Last February, Israel conducted the first test of the Arrow 3 in space. That test was overseen by the United States.

The new facility won’t be the first military installation the U.S. government has built in Israel. [………] In addition to bases in southern Israel, including the Nevatim air base, the U.S. has built command centers, intelligence offices and underground hangars to protect Israel’s jet aircraft.

Last year, U.S. defense contractors began constructing an air force base just outside Tel Aviv – known as the “site 911” – that will cost up to $100 million. Israel’s military hasn’t revealed the purpose of the site, but it’s widely thought that Israel is trying to move some of its military headquarters from high-value real estate in Tel Aviv to the outskirts of the bustling city.