Hillary Wouldn’t Have Needed Two Phones

Arguing that she used private email for all of her State Department correspondence out of a desire for “convenience,” Hillary Clinton said that she would have needed two phones if she’d used a State Department account.

But that isn’t true.  When I worked on the 2008 presidential campaign, I had one BlackBerry.  It had the official campaign email on it, as well as a couple of email accounts I used for personal correspondence with family and friends.

Her claim that she didn’t want to carry two “devices” is BS.

Quote of the Day

An anonymous U. S. senior official, speaking about Israeli P. M. Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and Iran’s nuclear program,  quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic:

“It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”

Not to be confused with another senior U. S. official who called Bibi “a chickenshit.”

I would say it wasn’t just our pressure on Bibi, but also our assurances, which today look pretty hollow.

To me, the scariest thing right now is not Ebola or ISIS, but that we seem to be on the verge of doing a disastrous deal with Iran.

Gaza Truce

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a 72-hour humanitarian cease fire to begin on Friday morning.  They are also sending negotiators to Cairo to try to reach a longer lasting deal.

And Here We Go…

The Washington Post‘s conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin is calling for John Kerry to resign.

WTF, Malaysian Airlines?

Malaysian Airlines has re-routed its flight MH4 between London and Kuala Lumpur, which used to fly over eastern Ukraine  — the new flight path is over Syria.

Bad Writing of the Day

“Panic in Moscow is hard to spot, but even from 6000 miles away, it’s easy to smell, and the metallic stink of fear is rising off the palace offices of the Russian executive as if from the gurneys in a cancer ward on the morning of an operation.”

Tom Nichols, “Why the Russians Are Panicking Over Flight 17,” The Federalist

U. S. Spins Its Wheels, While Iran Spins Its Centrifuges

The deadline for nuclear talks with Iran was supposed to be tomorrow, July 20.  In exchange for holding off on further sanctions, President Obama swore up and down to Congress that this was a firm deadline.

Now the deadline has been extended till November 24, which means Iran blithely continues its path to a nuclear weapon.  What does Iran need most?  Time.  What did they just get?  Time.

Look, if they had a delay of a week or two, that would be one thing.  It would show they were close to a deal.  (Whether it would be a smart deal for us is a different issue, but not one we face today.)  But a four–month extension shows that we have nothing, that we’re just spinning our wheels, while they spin their centrifuges.

November 24 gets Obama past the mid-terms and to Thanksgiving when no one will be paying attention when they announce further failure and, God forbid, another absurd extension.

This Is Our NATO Ally?

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan says Israel is more barbaric than Hitler.

Not Getting the Message

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki announced today that he won’t be stopped from seeking a third term.  So efforts to form a government will now go on forever….

Maliki’s short-sighted, non-inclusive rule — pro-Shiite and anti-Sunni — created the conditions for ISIS to grab much of northern and western Iraq.  His refusal to go makes it easier for ISIS to stay.

It’s easy to say we backed the wrong guy all these years, but really, people, they’re all the wrong guy.

Talking Past Each Other

So John Kerry met Maliki in Baghdad.  Kerry pushed for Maliki to give more power to the Sunnis.  Maliki pressed for Obama to do airstrikes.

Meanwhile ISIS marches on.