Former National Security Council Staffer Mike Doran: I Know, For a Fact, That Members of the Obama Administration Sent Personal Letters to Iran's Terror Chief Qassem Suleimani

Are you curious what Obama told the terror chief?

WW III Didn't Happen, But Something Else Did

Soleimani killed thousands upon thousands, both Americans and others over the years. But secret war is never real until you put a face to it. Soleimani was the man, the Islamic Republic was the regime that no one was supposed to anger lest they turn their baleful glare on us instead of passing by to kill someone else.

That fact can't be hidden anymore, not even by the nuclear deal.

The end of the secret war phase has left Iran with the strategic problem of continuing a campaign it cannot afford to wage openly. But it also left Washington with a situation they can neither continue to deny nor fob off with nonbinding congressional resolutions. We have yet to learn how to survive in our globalized world with the monsters. As Andy McCarthy put it: "25 years ago today we started jury selection in the Blind Sheikh trial against jihadists who were making war on our country. The long war is not over, but our divisions are more threatening than our enemies. I wish I’d understood that better."

Reality Show Star Destroys Some Illusions

There are people who mock real Americans for electing the star of a reality show as president. But many of those same people seem to hang on to really bizarre illusions in the face of reality. For those who have eyes to see, many illusions have been shattered by Donald Trump's presidency. Does anybody here feel the same way about the bureaucracy in Washington D.C. as they did before Trump took office?

Recently, more illusions about the nature of the long war have been destroyed. Doesn't mean the media can't make up some new ones:

If anything may be gleaned from the recent hyperbolic reporting about Iran, it is that our media betters, particularly those reporting on national security issues, are deeply and inexorably challenged at providing reasonable and thoughtful analysis due to a blinding animus towards President Trump.

Nothing evinces this phenomenon more succinctly than the recent days in which supposedly serious national security reporters waxed poetic about the likelihood of World War III, while sharing unverified reports about tens of killings of Americans from Iranian state media. . . .


The level of breathless misinformation and disinformation spread after Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani's killing by the individuals we rely on supposedly to report facts and offer analysis in a responsible and undramatized manner was stunning. But this isn't their first rodeo.

No, such grossly hyperbolic reporting for the sake of convincing people that Trump may have created an epically destructive policy quagmire has become the new calling card of the media. The media has shown that they cannot eviscerate Trump with factual, state-of-affairs reporting because those affairs are never quite dire enough for the media. Similarly, for the sake of avoiding flat-out lying entirely (although it is entertaining to watch the "mistakes" go in one direction), the media is forced to cabin their criticism in fantastic projections.

Trump almost started World War III. Trump almost catalyzed the entire destruction of the Kurds. Trump almost started war with North Korea. Trump almost started a full-blown war between the Palestinian-Arabs and the Israelis. Trump almost devastated the economy by slapping tariffs on Chinese goods. See how much heavy-lifting the word "almost" is doing? It's utterly bizarre, because these predictions never happen. . . .

How did this situation come to be?

Well, for one thing, the press has been allowing itself to be fooled for a long time.

Correction: the press was in cahoots with the mythmakers who wanted to fool the American people.

This week in pictures

What BF Skinner and Richard Feynman Can Tell Us about Iran

So now we have new excitement over Iran prompted by the killing of Qasem Soleimani. Some reminders: Soleimani had been responsible for the Iranian attempts at taking over Iraq, which killed thousands, and for bringing in the tactic of using IEDs in Iraq, which killed more than 600 Americans and maimed thousands. And, Soleimani was under UN sanctions and was — in theory — not permitted to travel outside Iran; clearly he had and was meeting with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Hashd al-Shaabi, the insurrectionist militia that had killed thousands of Iraqis.

Soleimani was an active duty military officer in theater; this wasn't an assassination.

There are thousands and thousands of words available explaining why Soleimani was a bad guy and a worthy target; I just wanted to summarize them for context.

I think there's a larger point here, something that BF Skinner showed with pigeons but that goes for people too: when you reward a behavior, you get more of it.

The Ghosts of Charlie Hebdo

The cowards in the press pretend to be brave. Here's a really brave man.

Instead of sharing the risk, the bigfoot media behaved exactly as they had a decade earlier. At my old London home The Daily Telegraph some gutless pansies decided that their reporting on the story could only be accompanied by carefully blurred images of the late cartoonists' work in order to avoid giving offense - turning Mohammed into a perpetually pixelated prophet, as if (to reprise a gag I did in 2005) poor ol' Mo's entered the witness protection program.

Which is in fact the precise opposite of what's going on: cowardly media pixelate Mohammed as a way of fast-tracking themselves into the witness protection program, or so they hope. On TV, one of the few surviving Charlie Hebdo staffers attempted to hold one of the offending covers on screen, only to have the camera lurch away. Around the world, the dead cartoonists' professional colleagues, almost to a man, agreed that the preferred response was some or other limpid, evasive, self-flattering variant of "the pen is mightier than the sword".

But that line doesn't work if your pen's filled with White-Out. Five years ago I quoted Andrew Stiles:

Journalists: These French journalists are so brave!

Readers: What did they do? Can I see?

Journalists: It's our policy not to show you.

But I see Mr Stiles' Tweet has somehow managed to disappear from the Internet. George Clooney held up a pencil and Dame Helen Mirren wore an exquisite pencil brooch pinned to her splendid embonpoint and thousands of tilty-headed wankers with sorrowful expressions marched through the streets of Paris waving pencils. But none of them was willing to do the one thing that mattered - and show what Charb et al had drawn with those pencils. By the following day I was good and sick of it:

To be honest, it makes me vomit to see people holding these Princess Dianafied candlelit vigils, and using the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie - I am Charlie -and in effect appropriating these guys' sacrifice for this bogus solidarity. It makes me sick to see all these 'the pen is mightier than the sword' cartoons that have appeared in newspapers all over the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Australia, everywhere, from other cartoonists, again expressing solidarity with these very brave men - but not doing what they did...

I've been on enough events in Europe with less famous cartoonists than these who live under death threats, live under armed guard, have had their family restaurant firebombed - it's happened to a Norwegian comedienne I know - have come home and found their home burned, as a Swedish artist I know happened to. And all these people doing the phony hashtag solidarity, screw your phony hashtag solidarity. Let's have some real solidarity - or if not, at least have the good taste to stay the hell out of it.

That would have been asking too much. In the days that followed almost all those who claimed to be expressing solidarity with Charb were, in fact, signaling very clearly that they preferred to live on their knees.

The Washington Post — message board for the Deep State

At Power Line, we sometimes refer to the Washington Post as an adjunct of the Democratic Party. To an even greater degree, the Post is an adjunct of official Washington — the cadre of career bureaucrats and former officials who consider it their God given right to set policy, regardless of what elected officials desire. (There is, of course, considerable overlap between official Washington and the Democratic Party).

Thus, it’s not surprising that a few minutes after I read Steve’s post called “Trump’s sin: Conducting foreign policy without permission,” I read this Washington Post story called “Trump is short on advisers, allies as he faces Iran crisis.” In this article, the Post argues, in essence, that Trump is committing the sin of conducting foreign policy without permission.

The Post’s article is silly. A president who lacks good foreign policy instincts can have all the advisers in the world. It won’t help. Similarly, a president with good instincts doesn’t need many advisers....

The Post attacks Trump for having criticized the CIA. But much of Trump’s criticism has been of its leadership, not of the rank and file employees who collect and analyze intelligence.

To be sure, Trump continues to remind the public of the CIA’s erroneous assessments regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He’s right to do so. This was an enormous mistake.

But this doesn’t mean, as the Post suggests, that Trump was wrong or hypocritical to rely on the CIA’s intelligence indicating that Soleimani was planning attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Soleimani had been orchestrating such attacks for years. It’s who he was and what he did. The CIA’s intelligence was consistent with everything we know about the terrorist. (So even if the CIA was wrong in thinking that Soleimani was planning more attacks last week, we can think of the assault that took him out as a well-deserved lifetime achievement award.)

In any case, the Post’s article about Trump not having enough advisers is nothing more than an airing of grievances of official Washington — the Deep State, if you prefer. And that’s true of much of what one reads in the Post’s news and op-ed sections.

To an unhealthy degree, the paper is the Deep State’s message board.

Near as I can tell, Soleimani was to be the keynote speaker at the DNC convention this summer. The struggle is real.

The headline is from a comment following this column:

American Trump Derangement Syndrome Is An Iranian Strategic Asset

What strikes me is how Trump Derangement Syndrome has overwhelmed the Democrat and media responses. This cannot be lost on the Iranians.

While the pleas for Mullah mercy from the likes of Rose McGowan and Michael Moore, and the woke rants of Colin Kaepernick, may be laughed off by the Mullahs as typical western weakness, the reaction of Democrat politicians is more serious and may lead to Iranian miscalculation that Americans will turn on Trump before they turn on the Mullahs.

It’s clear that Democrats are doing to the killing of Soleimani, who has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands, what they did to Russia Collusion and every other anti-Trumpism that motivates their throbbing Trump-hating base.

If Iran is successful in attacking a U.S. target or targets, Democrats and the media will blame Trump, not the regime that has been chanting for our death since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. It’s not unreasonable to believe based on their behavior that Democrats and the media are hoping Iran gives us a bloody nose or worse so that it can be used against Trump in the 2020 election.

Read the whole thing.

Strength and faith.

Richard Fernandez: The low chance of war with Iran

The war's no longer hidden and WWIII is not going to come because we killed the head snake.

With everyone wondering if Iran and the US will go to war it's pertinent to understand both nations are already in an undeclared conflict going back more than 40 years. "And often, it’s been a war that our political and intelligence elites have denied exists."

It began on November 4, 1979, when “radicals” loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran ... On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon ... Iran has also targeted U.S. soldiers on the battlefield, killing more than 1,000 U.S. troops with specialized improvised explosive devices in Iraq, placing a bounty on U.S. service personnel in Afghanistan, and most recently targeting U.S. forces in Syria.

The obvious question is why this conflict, which has claimed thousands of lives has remained in a state of limbo and why elites are at pains to deny it exists. One possible answer is that the combatants prefer it that way. Iran for its part is heavily engaged in proxy war with Saudi Arabia in far flung theaters including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the Bahrain uprising, Lebanon and even Afghanistan. It can scarcely afford the additional cost of open conflict with the United States if it is to escape over-extension. It is in Iran's interest to keep its war with America undeclared so that it can pick and choose when to engage.

For analogous but different reasons Washington preferred it secret too. Undeclared conflicts are the only way to fight "forever wars" where the object is not the destruction of the enemy but rather its management and containment in such a way that the global public and markets don't notice.....

Hidden wars allows Western politicians to avoid World War 2 type political choices that might lead to binary outcomes like victory or defeat in favor of a chronic conflict flying just beneath the media radar. That way deal-making can continue with minor interruptions. From this perspective the really disruptive effect of Donald Trump's decision to kill Iranian IGRC chief Qassim Suleimani was not the kinetic act itself but in forcing what past administrations and Iran wanted hidden out into the open.

All of a sudden the issue of Iran can no longer be locked up in a dark closet. To the question: "What will the IRGC do now that it has not already done? Kidnap foreigners? Strike military bases? Sack embassies? Assassination attempts? Target GCC oil interests? Send out militias to crackdown on adversaries?" the answer is simple. They have to own up to it.....

Whether intentional or not Trump's actions have eliminated secret war with Iran as an alternative. "President Trump has warned the US is 'targeting' 52 Iranian sites and will strike 'very fast and very hard' if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets." If Iran tries to dive into the murky waters of deniable conflict again the Donald has 52 depth charges to bring it to the surface. This puts enormous pressure on Tehran to either open another front against America or negotiate a ceasefire in its secret war against the US. As Shadi Hamid of the Atlantic put it, nobody really wants open war but Iran can stand it least of all.

Babylon Bee: Democrats Call For Flags To Be Flown At Half-Mast To Grieve Death Of Soleimani

Is it satire or too much of the truth?

WASHINGTON, D.C.—At a press conference held on Capitol Hill Friday, mourning Democrat leaders called for flags to be flown half-mast to honor the death of Qasem Soleimani.

Flags were spotted flying at half-mast around the country, notably at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and in front of several celebrities' homes. The celebrities went out and bought an American flag for the first time just to fly it at half-mast for this important time of grief.

"The grieving process is painful but necessary," said Rep. Ilhan Omar. "As a nation, we need to stop and grieve this great, austere, revered religious scholar. He was one of the good ones."

In a rare moment of unity with The Squad, Pelosi gave each of the girls a hug, telling them to just "let it all out" in their time of sadness.

Ocasio-Cortez didn't seem to know what was happening but adjusted her glasses to look smart.

A teary-eyed Barack Obama was also seen solemnly lowering the flag in front of his seaside mansion. "To think, this all could have been prevented with a few pallets of cash." He sighed and stared off into the distance, a look of pain and regret on his face. "If only Trump had targeted a U.S. citizen with a drone strike instead."

The Reason for Killing Soleimani

Watching The Five last night when it occurred to me that the reason for killing Soleimani: - he was planning a major attack - was a distraction.  The Democrat on the panel said she wanted to see evidence as if the evidence would make her an ally in the fight against Radical Islam.  That's bullshit and a distraction.  In her universe, if Trump is for it, she's against it.  If Trump did it, it's evil.

The reality is that he was a major leader in the war between radical Islam and America and we killed him. He was responsible for thousands of dead and tens of thousands of maimed. He was evil and deserved to die.

Of course he was planning attacks; that's what he did, and he was good at it. Now he's dead and the world is better for it.

Ugly Lady Gives Birth, News Outlets Pretend She’s a Man

This is a woman.

With the sensational headline, Transgender Man Gives Birth to Non-Binary Partner’s Baby with Female Sperm Donor, the UK Mirror acted as though something novel happened. In reality, the story is that a woman with self-induced hormonal problems gave birth as a surrogate to a baby conceived by her lesbian lover and male sperm donor.

Of course, men don’t have wombs and women don’t have sperm. In fact, the reality that the woman has a womb should clarify she is, in fact a woman. And the fact the man has sperm should, in fact, clarify he’s a man.

What happened to sex education in the public school system? Has it failed us that poorly?

If a woman has a beard, but still has an womb, ovaries, and not least of all, XX chromosomes, that’s a woman.

An ugly woman giving birth is not news. It literally happens all the time. The Mirror’s reporting is fake news.

Read the rest of the story.

USA Today tries to diss the Texas church parishioners who drew their guns to deter the killer

In fact... pic.twitter.com/hEy087T7R2

— Fletch (@JBFletcher10) January 1, 2020

NYT Suppressed This Interview

Fascinating.  Svetlana Lokhova and her ordeal by the press.

Q. Describe the circumstances under which you met Lt. Gen. Flynn. Where were you, what was the scene like, how many people were there? Most important: What did you and General Flynn discuss, and how long did your conversation last?

A. I am a British author and historian. My specialization is Soviet espionage undertaken in the 1930s.

Back in Feb 2014, I was a fellow of an organization called the Cambridge Security Initiative. It was one of many groups consulting on long-term global security issues with amongst others the DIA and other Western intelligence agencies. I was a Russian expert.

General Flynn, was head of the DIA at the time was to co-host a conference with Sir Richard Dearlove in Cambridge in 2015 for the DIA. To honor Flynn’s official visit to Cambridge, CSI hosted a formal dinner at Pembroke College.

There were perhaps at most twenty guests at the dinner who were all pre-cleared in advance with the DIA. I sat on the opposite side of the table away from the guest of honor.

Towards the end of the evening, I was asked by Professor Andrew to ...

Read the whole thing.  The WSJ is the villain of the piece.

America really did have a Manchurian Candidate in the White House

From July 1, 2018, but still true.

After returning from a tour of some of the war zones in the Middle East — which ended with the Free Iran Gathering 2018 in Paris — I am struck by the realization that America really did have a Manchurian Candidate in The White House for eight years. If you look at the evidence, there really is no other conclusion. The calamitous consequences of the Obama presidency will be felt for the foreseeable future.

Anti-Gun Activists Can’t Stand That Armed Citizens Stopped The TX Church Attack

This weekend’s shooting in Texas has once again made it clear that no matter how much Moms Demand, Everytown, and other gun control groups might proclaim they’re not opposed to the Second Amendment but just want a few commonsense gun safety measures, they simply can’t say anything positive about owning or using a firearm in self-defense. Since that’s the core purpose of the Second Amendment, it’s impossible to take them seriously when they pretend to support the right to keep and bear arms or care about your safety and that of your family.

Experts Warn Global Outrage Levels May Reach Point Of No Return In 2020

Outrage levels previously reached dangerous highs during the Bush administration, but Obama was able to reverse the trend. He didn't change much about the way Bush was handling things, but he was a Democrat, so outrage levels went back down as the press stopped reporting on scandals and corruption.

However, in 2016, global outrage reached record highs, especially among Democrats. Republicans had been mildly outraged during the Obama years but mostly had to go to work so didn't have much time to spew toxic, harmful outrage into the environment. Libertarians have generated almost no outrage since they are high all the time.

Experts believe the reelection of Trump in 2020 would be "catastrophic," catapulting outrage levels well into the stratosphere.

"If we do not cut our anger emissions immediately, the world will be consumed by fiery outrage by the end of next year," said outrage expert Dr. Hal Gourd, pointing to a hockey-stick graph. The audience responded by getting really mad, shaking their fists at the sky and making loud grunting noises.

Kermit Gosnell To Attend State Of The Union As Pelosi's Special Guest

Babylon Bee has the scoop:

"Bringing this brave man along to the State of the Union sends a powerful message to the anti-choice bigots," Pelosi said in a press conference. "When state law forbade him from aborting late-term infants, he did so anyway. He is a strong, brave freedom fighter who was simply ahead of his time."

"We Democrats are just now catching up to him when it comes to late-term and post-birth abortion policies," she added.

Ralph Northam, (D, VA) winner of the coveted KKK dress-up contest, applauded the move.

Buttigieg Calls For Decriminalizing Crime

From the Paper of Record, the Babylon Bee:

"We need to fix this unjust system that imprisons murderers, rapists, drug dealers, human traffickers, and other people following their dreams. America was built on the values of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. If we tell criminals they can't commit a crime, we are telling them not to be who they are just to save a few 'innocent' people. We have to stop putting society before individuals."