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RUSSIAN DENVER
Stale ideas, with a whiff of scandal.
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Robert W. Merry
When Bill and Hillary Clinton
arrived in Washington as president
and first lady in 1993, the
Wall Street Journal editorial page
ywent on the attack, suggesting they
brought with them from Arkansas
a brand of politics that was inherently
corrupt, with personal gain
routinely and consistently factored
into official decision making. The
paper took a lot of heat for this line
of editorial criticism in the absence
of definitive proof of mendacity on
the part of the new president and
his wife.
Then came the cattle-futures
scandal, in which Hillary hauled
down a $98,540 profit in cattle futures
in less than a year of trading
on a $1,000 investment, without
maintaining the normally required
fund reserve to diminish
the risk of leverage. Further, she
was advised on the matter by an
outside lawyer for Tyson Foods, a
giant Arkansas company with big
interests before the state government,
where Bill Clinton served
as attorney general and then governor.
Thus began a pattern that has
led us to Hillary Clinton now
yas the Democratic presidential
nominee even as multiple polls
indicate that fully two thirds of
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Hillary Clinton? Never.
Americans consider her dishonest
and untrustworthy. During the
Clinton White House years, following
the cattle-futures scandal,
came»travelgate,» «filegate,» and
the Whitewater land investment
scandal, in which a box of missing
papers, under subpoena for
two years, miraculously appeared
in the White House living quarters–but
only in copy form; the
originals were never recovered.
It seemed that the Clintons were
constantly mired in scandal or
hints of scandal, always struggling
to stay ahead of nettlesome little
revelations that raised persistent
questions about their ethical rectitude.
There can be no doubt that
these episodes from the distant
past, combined with Hillary Clinton’s
more recent ethical lapses
related to her doing public business
on a private email server, have
contributed to her reputation as a
person who can’t be trusted to tell
the truth or conduct herself strictly
on the up and up.
Does it matter? That’s for the
voters to decide. But every voting
booth decision requires a multidimensional
analysis that includes
an assessment of the favorable
and unfavorable attributes of each
candidate. Herewith an assessment
of Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable
attributes, constituting a case
against her. This isn’t designed to
be definitive for any voting decision
but rather a warning that all
candidates have downsides, and
Clinton’s are significant.
One could argue, in fact, that
the Democratic Party was reckless
in granting her the nomination,
given her past embroilment
in scandal and prospects that
new revelations could catch up
with her during the campaign or
through her presidency. Although
FBI Director James Comey didn’t
recommend an indictment against
her related to her email server, he
said she was «extremely careless»
in her handling of «very sensitive,
highly classified information.»
Thus, he declined to take actions
to destroy her candidacy and left
it to voters to assess the magnitude
of her lapses.
But the recklessness of her behavior
is reflected in questions
now being raised about whether
damaging new revelations about
her could be forthcoming from
hackers, foreign or domestic, who
gained knowledge of her activity
via her unprotected server. Security
experts have suggested there
is a strong likelihood that China,
Russia and other hackers gained
access to all 63,000 emails on Clinton’s
private, unprotected server–
including the 33,000 she destroyed
under the contention that they
were merely personal and had
nothing to do with her official actions
and decisions.
But if those emails contain evidence
of questionable actions, as
the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon
Crovitz has argued, Russian President
Vladimir Putin «will have the
capacity to blackmail her at will»
should she become president.
What kind of evidence of questionable
actions could be found
there? We don’t know, but it would
be imprudent to dismiss the possibility
that it could be related to
the Clinton Foundation, that international
good-works institution
created by Bill Clinton that doubles
as a repository of political/financial
power for the Clintons. It has
served as a lucrative way station for
Clinton cronies waiting for Hillary
Clinton’s next campaign. It has positioned
Bill Clinton to collect huge
speaking fees from major overseas
and American corporations and
from foreign governments–some
$105 million for 542 speeches between
the time he left the White
House and the time Hillary left her
job as secretary of state, according
to the Washington Post. It has rewarded
Clinton friends and political
allies within a Clinton network
that constitutes a potent political
force.
The foundation, we learn
(through not from the Clintons),
continued to receive money from
foreign governments even during
Hillary’s tenure as secretary of
state, although she had promised
that no such money would be accepted
during her public service.
The money flowed in from such
countries as Algeria, Kuwait,
Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Swiss
bank UBS contributed some
$500,000 after Secretary Clinton
helped settle an IRS problem
dogging the bank. The Associated
Press reported that Hillary
Clinton excised from her official
State Department calendar some
seventy-five meetings she held
with «longtime political donors,
Clinton Foundation contributors,
and corporate and other outside
interests.»
Was there actual corruption going
on here in the form of quid pro
quos, or merely the appearance
of corruption? We don’t know,
though those 33,000 emails may
hold the key to that question. But,
in any event, we see a pattern that
first came to light with the cattle
futures scandal–big sums of money
flowing to the Clintons as they
conducted official business to the
23
benefit of the individuals and organizations
providing the money.
Leaving aside the corruption
question, the Clinton Foundation
represents a giant stride toward
American oligarchy–the flow of
power from the people at large to
clever and connected elites who
know how to game the system to
their political and financial advantage.
It is noteworthy that, in this
year of seething political anger directed
against the country’s elites,
Hillary Clinton is emerging as the
likely next president even as she
projects herself as the embodiment
of what is stirring all that national
anger.
Which brings us to another
major element in the case against
Hillary Clinton. She will give us,
as many have suggested, Barack
Obama’s third term. The country
is deeply divided on the Obama
presidency, and it’s appropriate
that Americans should debate his
legacy as his departure nears after
White House eight years. But,
whatever one may say about him,
it can’t be denied that he failed to
solve the country’s crisis of deadlock.
When the country needed a
new paradigm of governmental
thinking to break the deadlock
and move the country in a new
direction, he doubled down on the
stale old politics perpetuating the
political stalemate of our time.
There is no reason to believe
Hillary Clinton would break the
deadlock. She represents the politics
of old when the country desperately
seeks something fresh,
capable of scrambling up the
old political fault lines and forging
new political coalitions that
can give propulsion to a struggling
America. Hence, under
her leadership, we likely will see
the continuation of the current
deadlock crisis for another four
years. That’s a long time for that
kind of crisis to fester, generating
ever greater anger, frustration and
civic tension.
2 Benghazi victim parents sue Hillary Clinton, claiming emails caused children’s
deaths
Peter Weber
On Monday, two parents of
Americans killed in the Sept. 11,
2012, terrorist attack on the U.S.
diplomatic outpost in Benghazi,
Libya, filed a wrongful death lawsuit
against Hillary Clinton in federal
court, alleging that Clinton’s
Colorado Russian Newspaper published in English 720-436-7613 www.gorizont.com/rd
«’extreme carelessness’ in handling
confidential and classified information»
while she was secretary
of state helped lead to the deaths of
Sean Smith and Tryone Woods, and
that their murder «was directly and
proximately caused, at a minimum»
by Clinton’s use of a private server.
The parents, Patricia Smith and
Charles Woods, also accuse Clinton
of «false and defamatory statements»
regarding the attack.
Both parents have publicly
criticized Clinton before, with
Smith saying at the Republican
National Convention, «I blame
Hillary Clinton personally for the
death of my son.» The Benghazi attack
has been scrutinized numerous
times by Congress and other
government panels, including a
special House committee, a point
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill
brought up in responding to the
suit: «While no one can imagine
the pain of the families of the brave
Americans we lost at Benghazi,
there have been nine different investigations
into this attack and
none found any evidence whatsoever
of any wrongdoing on the part
of Hillary Clinton.»
U.S. has hit ISIS with 9,400 airstrikes in Iraq over 2 years. Here’s what that has
accomplished.
Peter Weber
On Aug. 8, 2014, the U.S.
began bombing the Islamic
State around Sinjar in northern
Iraq, beginning what has
become a larger U.S.-led air
campaign against ISIS in Iraq
and Syria. In the two years
since, the U.S. has conductedmore
than 9,400 strikes
on ISIS in Iraq and another
4,700 in Syria (while 12 coalition
countries have hit ISIS
with 3,018 strikes in Iraq and
249 in Syria). These anti-
ISIS airstrikes have cost the
U.S. $11.9 million a day, or
$8.4 billion as of July 15, and
three U.S. service members
have been killed in combat
in Iraq and Syria. The U.S.
says since Operation Inherent
Resolve began two years
ago, ISIS has lost more than
40 percent of its territory in
Iraq and Syria.
When announcing the operation,
President Obama said
that he will «not allow the
United States to be dragged
into fighting another war in
Iraq,» and «American combat
troops will not be returning
to fight in Iraq.» That has
meant an air war, supporting
the Iraqi army and various
militias, most notably the
Kurdish peshmerga and YPG
forces, though the U.S. has
about 3,800 military personnel
stationed in Iraq, plus hundreds
more on temporary duty,
according to the Pentagon. The
use of U.S. air power has been
a major driver in ISIS’s losses,
but as The Associated Press
notes, the airstrikes have «also
leveled entire neighborhoods,»
leaving «in many cases... a ruined
prize.»