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May 17, 2024 20:01
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- Timmy Age 6
- Jul 23, 2011
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Lobster says "mrow?"
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Ramrod XTreme
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Somewhat related to the NSA picking up Israeli attempts at derailing the Iran deal, the WSJ also has a bit on McConnell and Boehner's invitation for Netanyahu to speak before Congress. Unsurprisingly, it was done as a deliberate "gently caress you" to the White House.
WSJ article posted:
It started off as a routine call between then-House Speaker John Boehner and the incoming Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, about ways Republicans in Congress could put the brakes on the nuclear pact President Barack Obama was negotiating with Iran. Then Messrs. Boehner and McConnell had a light-bulb moment: They could undercut Mr. Obama by extending an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress opposing the emerging deal.
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On Jan. 21, as planned, Mr. Boehner’s office formally sent the invitation to Mr. Netanyahu. A few hours before Mr. Boehner’s office released the invitation letter to the press, Mr. Boehner’s chief of staff, Mr. Sommers, called Katie Fallon, Mr. Obama’s top congressional liaison, to inform her. The initial call was cordial. Mrs. Fallon said she appreciated the heads up. The White House had yet to digest the news.
At the White House National Security Council, then-coordinator for the Middle East, Philip Gordon, reacted with disbelief when told Mr. Netanyahu would address a joint session of Congress on the Iran deal. “No he’s not,” Mr. Gordon said in response. “I talk to Dermer all the time.” In those discussions, Mr. Dermer never mentioned an impending speech, Mr. Gordon said.
An hour after Mr. Sommers told the White House, Mrs. Fallon called Mr. Boehner’s chief of staff back. This time she was not as understanding and scolded Mr. Sommers for going around the Obama administration’s back.
Senior officials demanded answers from their Israeli counterparts. Administration officials thought the idea was cooked up by Messrs. Dermer and Netanyahu, and then proposed to the Republicans in Congress. In fact, it was the other way around, congressional officials said.
The full story of the NSA spying on Israel is definitely worth a read, incidentally. It's behind a paywall, but you can get around that by Googling the title of the piece. For your copy-pasting pleasure:
U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress
Couple more excerpts from that:
U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress posted:When Mr. Obama took office, the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, Unit 8200, worked together against shared threats, including a campaign to sabotage centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies targeted one another, stoking tensions.
“Intelligence professionals have a saying: There are no friendly intelligence services,” said Mike Rogers, former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Early in the Obama presidency, for example, Unit 8200 gave the NSA a hacking tool the NSA later discovered also told Israel how the Americans used it. It wasn’t the only time the NSA caught Unit 8200 poking around restricted U.S. networks. Israel would say intrusions were accidental, one former U.S. official said, and the NSA would respond, “Don’t worry. We make mistakes, too.”
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Convinced Mr. Netanyahu would attack Iran without warning the White House, U.S. spy agencies ramped up their surveillance, with the assent of Democratic and Republican lawmakers serving on congressional intelligence committees.
By 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies determined Mr. Netanyahu wasn’t going to strike Iran. But they had another reason to keep watch. The White House wanted to know if Israel had learned of the secret negotiations. U.S. officials feared Iran would bolt the talks and pursue an atomic bomb if news leaked.
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NSA intelligence reports helped the White House figure out which Israeli government officials had leaked information from confidential U.S. briefings. When confronted by the U.S., Israel denied passing on the briefing materials.
The agency’s goal was “to give us an accurate illustrative picture of what [the Israelis] were doing,” a senior U.S. official said.
Just before Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress in March, the NSA swept up Israeli messages that raised alarms at the White House: Mr. Netanyahu’s office wanted details from Israeli intelligence officials about the latest U.S. positions in the Iran talks, U.S. officials said.
A day before the speech, Secretary of State John Kerry made an unusual disclosure. Speaking to reporters in Switzerland, Mr. Kerry said he was concerned Mr. Netanyahu would divulge “selective details of the ongoing negotiations.”
The State Department said Mr. Kerry was responding to Israeli media reports that Mr. Netanyahu wanted to use his speech to make sure U.S. lawmakers knew the terms of the Iran deal.
Intelligence officials said the media reports allowed the U.S. to put Mr. Netanyahu on notice without revealing they already knew his thinking. The prime minister mentioned no secrets during his speech to Congress.
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Dec 30, 2015 17:15
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- Timmy Age 6
- Jul 23, 2011
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Lobster says "mrow?"
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Ramrod XTreme
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Came across an otherwise-unremarkable article that makes an interesting comparison - Marco Rubio isn't the Republican Obama, he's John Kerry.
Rubio is not a Republican Obama. And that’s his problem posted:
In some cosmic way, Rubio must know that he probably owes his ascendance in national politics to Obama’s. Every party goes looking for its version of the latest model; just as George W. Bush seemed to be the boomer antidote to Bill Clinton, Rubio arrived on the scene just as Republicans were scrambling to find their own personification of youth and inclusivity.
But 2016 is turning out to be nothing like 2008, and Rubio’s candidacy isn’t really much like Obama’s. For one thing, Obama benefited from having the kind of clear foil, in Hillary Clinton, whom Rubio had hoped to face in a much smaller field — older, establishment-backed, shadowed by a sense of dynastic entitlement.
Obama was also fortunate in that he could tap into a powerful constituency inside the party. Clinton needed African-Americans voters, but after Obama proved himself capable of winning in Iowa, those voters swung heavily into his column, changing the electoral math of the primaries. There is no corresponding bloc of Latino voters in the Republican Party, other than in a handful of states.
More to the point, though, Rubio isn’t anything like the fluid politician Obama was in 2008. It’s true that both men are essentially cool characters, more comfortable talking about policy than sharing emotions. But where Obama has always exuded preternatural confidence (some call it arrogance) and an informal, self-deprecating style, Rubio telegraphs caution and uncertainty.
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Actually, if there’s a better analog for Rubio than Obama, it might be John Kerry in 2004. Like Rubio, Kerry was an elusive and insecure candidate, a senator who stepped through every conversation like it was a minefield from his youth in Vietnam.
But Kerry was also the perfect consensus candidate for a riven party — liberal enough to appease supporters of Howard Dean and establishment enough to reassure everyone else. He was both acceptable and electable.
It’s hard to think of any constituency in the Republican Party right now — evangelicals, libertarians, nativists — whose goal in life is to make Rubio our next president, as opposed to Cruz or Carson or Trump. But as I wrote last April, Rubio might still be the candidate who satisfies most of them.
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Jan 1, 2016 02:48
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Dec 1, 2015 13:32
