Another exhausting trip to Schiffville...

Where’s Waldo whistleblower?

Scott Johnson, Powerline 

In his presentation on behalf of President Trump in the Senate impeachment trial yesterday, White House Deputy Counsel Patrick Philbin raised the question of Adam Schiff and the whistleblower. Why have we not heard from him? Why has Schiff deep-sixed the testimony about him? RealClearPolitics has posted video of Philbin’s remarks along with this (lightly edited) transcript:

PHILBEN: I want to touch on one last point before I yield to one of my colleagues. That relates to the whistleblower. The whistleblower who we haven’t heard that much about who started all of this. The whistleblower we know from the letter that the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community sent that he thought that the whistleblower had political bias. We don’t know exactly what the political bias was because the Inspector General testified in the House committees in an executive session, and that transcript is still secret. It wasn’t transmitted up to the House Judiciary Committee. We haven’t seen it. We don’t know what’s in it. We don’t know what he was asked and what he revealed about the whistleblower. Now you would think that before going forward with an impeachment proceeding against the President of the United States that you would want to find out something about the complainant that had started all of it because motivations, bias, reasons for wanting to bring this complaint could be relevant, but there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

Recent reports, public reports, suggest that potentially the whistleblower was an Intelligence Community staffer who worked with then Vice President Biden on Ukraine matters, which if true would suggest an even greater reason for wanting to know about potential bias or motive for the whistleblower. At first when things started, it seemed like everyone agreed that we should hear from the whistleblower including Manager Schiff. I think we have what he said.

SCHIFF (tape): Yes, we would love to talk directly with the whistleblower.

We’ll get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower.

We don’t need the whistleblower.

PHILBIN: What changed? At first Manager Schiff agreed we should hear the unfiltered testimony from the whistleblower, but then he changed his mind and he suggested that it was because now we had the transcript. But the second clip there was from September 29th which was four days after the transcript had been released. But there was something else that came into play, and that was something that Manager Schiff had said earlier when he was asked about whether he had spoken to the whistleblower.

SCHIFF (tape): We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.

PHILBIN: It turned out that that statement was not truthful. Around October 2nd or 3rd, it was exposed that the Manager Schiff’s staff at least had spoken with the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed the complaint and potentially had given some guidance, some sort to the whistleblower. After that point it became critical to shut down any inquiry into the whistleblower. During the House hearings, of course Manager Schiff was in charge. He was chairing the hearings. That creates a real problem from a due process perspective, from a search for truth perspective, because he was an interested fact witness at that point. He had a reason, since he had been caught out saying something that wasn’t truthful about that contact, he had a reason to not want that inquiry. It was he who ensured that there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

Now this is relevant here I think because as you’ve heard from my colleagues, a lot of what we’ve heard over the past 23 hours, over the past three days, has been from Chairman Schiff. He has been telling you things like what’s in President Trump’s head, what’s in President Zelensky’s head. It’s all his interpretation of the facts and the evidence trying to pull inferences out of things. There’s another statement that Chairman Schiff made that I think we have on video.

CHUCK TODD (tape): But you admit all you have right now is a circumstantial case.

SCHIFF: Actually, no Chuck. I can tell you that the case is more than that and I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now. Again, I think —

TODD: So you have seen evidence of collusion.

SCHIFF: I don’t want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of investigation.

PHILBIN: That was in March of 2017 when Chairman Schiff was ranking member of HPSCI was telling the public, the American public, that he had more than circumstantial evidence through his position on H that President Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia. Of course, the Mueller Report, as Mr. Sekulow pointed out, after $32 million and over 500 search warrants or roughly 500 search warrants, determined that there was no collusion. That wasn’t true. We wanted to point these things out simply for this reason. Chairman Schiff has made so much of the House’s case about the credibility of interpretations that the House Managers want to place on not hard evidence but on inferences. They want to tell you what President Trump thought. They want to tell you don’t believe what Zelensky said. We can tell you what Zelensky actually thought. Don’t believe what the other Ukrainians actually said about not being pressured. We can tell you what they actually thought. That it is very relevant to know whether the assessments of evidence he’s presented in the past are accurate. We would submit that they have not been and that that is relevant for your consideration.

Collective Denial on Iran

Collective Denial on Iran

Col Mike Walker, USMC (ret)

All,

Love to listen to the pundits from all perspectives sidestep the real crisis with Iran.

It is the most impressive example of collective denial of reality I have ever witnessed -- and it has been going on for decades.

It is a second and much more severe case of this type of infective mental disorder.

The first case dealt with North Korea where (as now) all the "best and brightest" minds were in complete denial that North Korea would get nuclear weapons.

But that pales in comparison to the collective denial about Iran's nuclear arms objectives.

In that sense, the JCPOA was a manifestation of schizophrenia.

It gave Iran a clear pathway to build nuclear weapons while denying Iran would follow it to build nuclear weapons.

You can't make this stuff up.

I listen over and over again to an endless stream of politicians, government officials, and media talking heads (literally from across the globe) drone on about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons as if it is not going to happen -- as if these opining poobahs have the "power" to prevent it.

That is a true mental disorder.

As with North Korea, Iran decided decades ago to get nuclear weapons and like Norht Korea, it will get them.

The only question is the one never addressed: What is the plan when Iran builds its weapons?

We have had decades to prepare but if you deny reality, you always wind up unprepared when reality eventually slaps you in the face.

That virtually assures us that we will be in a true global crisis when the Ayatollahs go nuclear.

I do not look forward to that day but I know who to blame: Ourselves.

Iran’s Options in a Showdown with America Are All Bad

Iran’s Options in a Showdown with America Are All Bad

By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

Trump governs the tempo of the confrontation.

After losing its top strategist, military commander, and arch-terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian theocracy is weighing responses.

One, Iran can quiet down and cease military provocations.

After attacking tankers off its coast, destroying an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, shooting down a U.S. drone, and being responsible for the killing and wounding of Americans in Iraq, Iran could now keep quiet.

It might accept that its strategy of escalation has failed to lead to any quantifiable advantage. Trump did not prove a passive “Twitter tiger,” as his critics mocked. Instead, he upped the stakes to Iran’s disadvantage and existential danger.

The chances, however, for such a logical and passive readjustment by Iran are nil.

Iran believes that Trump’s beefed-up sanctions have all but destroyed its economy and could now extend to secondary boycotts of nations trading with Iran. U.S. sanctions have also squeezed Iranian expeditionary efforts to forge a permanent hegemony and a Shiite crescent extending to the Mediterranean.

If unchecked, American economic pressure could eventually lead to a popular rebellion that would topple the theocracy. In sum, a return to the status quo is unlikely.

Two, Iran can agree to reenter talks about its nuclear program and offer a few concessions.

Iran could concede that the prior agreement was designed to bank Iranian cash and nuclear expertise that would eventually lead to its developing nuclear weaponry after a period of feigned good behavior.

Yet a return to direct negotiations with Washington is also unlikely, especially since Iran once enjoyed a lopsided gift from the United States. Renegotiating anything less would be too humiliating for the revolutionary regime to endure.

Three, Iran can escalate its military operations and its use of terrorist surrogates. The death of Soleimani is Iran’s most grievous setback in decades, and Iran seeks vengeance.

The theocracy will view his death not just in terms of a strategic loss, but as a humiliation that cannot stand. Governments elsewhere in the Middle East are gloating over Soleimani’s killing, and especially over the thought of Iran’s inability to do much about it.

In reaction, Iran could strike American bases and allies in the region. The possibilities are endless. It might send more drones and missiles against other nations’ refineries. Hezbollah could shower Israeli cities with missiles. Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz in hopes of seeing the rest of the world suffer as it has.

Iran could also unleash its terrorist appendages to stage attacks on American and Israeli assets throughout Europe and the U.S., including military bases, airliners, and soft civilian targets.

Yet this choice is also unlikely.

The U.S. would not have to invade Iran to end it as a modern state. A strike against the U.S. or its overseas military installations would result in a devastating response. The theocracy knows that in hours, U.S. airpower could take out all of Iran’s oil refineries, power stations, and military bases while suffering few if any causalities.

Given U.S. oil independence and the global adjustments to existing sanctions on Iranian oil, the near-permanent loss of Iran’s oil would not greatly damage the world economy.

Iran will bluster and threaten, but waging an all-out war with the U.S. would be suicidal, and Iran knows it.

Fourth, Iran can continue its periodic attacks on U.S. allies and on troops and contractors in the region.

Constant provocation is not a good alternative, but it’s probably seen as preferable to the other poor choices. The strategic aim in such endless tit-for-tat would be to wear down the patience of the U.S. public in an election year.

Given the quick criticism of Soleimani’s killing from Trump’s progressive domestic opponents, and given the Obama administration’s past appeasement in response to Iranian provocations, Tehran might conclude that a hit-and-pause strategy is preferable.

It could incite Trump’s political opponents to brand him a warmonger who acted illegally by “assassinating” Soleimani.

Iran’s hope would be that Trump would lose the support of the anti-war members of his base in key swing states.

If such periodic attacks continued until Election Day, Iran might hope for President Elizabeth Warren or President Bernie Sanders. Either one would likely resurrect the flawed Iran deal and ignore Iranian aggression in Syria and Iraq.

Iran’s goal might be something like re-creating the melodrama of the 1979–81 hostage crisis, Saddam Hussein’s rope-a-dope strategy, or Bill Clinton’s three-month bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. Tehran hopes for American strategic ossification that could prove politically toxic.

But that scenario, too, is unlikely. As long as Trump replies with airpower disproportionate to any Iranian attacks, he, not Tehran, governs the tempo of the confrontation.

Iran created the current crisis. It has choices, but for now, they are all bad.


NRO contributor VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump. @vdhanson

Qasam Solemani was fair game

Qasam Solemani was fair game

Col. Mike Walker, USMC (ret)

All,

Every member of the US and Allied armed forces I served with in the Middle East was fair game for the enemy to kill at any time and at any place.

If Solemani's Iranian forces could kill or, even better, capture and torture us to death for information then they would have done so in a heartbeat.

Solemani was a uniformed soldier on active duty in the Middle East directing active military operations against the United States and our Allies.

Just like all of us active duty US and Allied personnel who served or are serving in the Middle East, we were and are fair game.

So too was Qasam Solemani. He fought, he killed, and in turn he was killed. So sad -- too bad.

The Media Is Lying...

The Media Is Lying About The Attacks On The Embassy In Baghdad

Media figures are lying about Tuesday's attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Why?

Erielle Davidson, The Federalist

You can tell that the Obama administration’s legacy in the Middle East is in danger because the media, as the self-appointed janitors of that legacy, have gone into overdrive obfuscating the timing, context, and significance of this week’s attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad. Although President Donald Trump has gone a long way to dismantling Obama’s legacy in the region, much more remains to be done, including a halt to American taxpayer money that has been flowing into Iranian-controlled governments in Iraq and Lebanon.

Earlier this week Iran-backed militias stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, chanting “Down, down USA!” and hurling water bottles and smashing security cameras. The attackers breached parts of the embassy and were only disbursed the next day, after Trump deployed Marines to ensure the safety of our embassy personnel and property.

The attacks have been building for months, including roughly a dozen attacks on U.S. assets by these militias and American retaliatory strikes against five locations in Iraq and Syria belonging to the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah. The group represents an ongoing replication of the “Islamic revolutionary model” that Iran first “exported” to and “perfected” in Lebanon in the early 1980s. 

The New York Times has labeled the attackers “mourners” responding to the U.S. strikes, while the front page of the first Washington Post edition of 2020 labeled them “protesters.” The latter is a particularly pernicious mislabeling. The media has done its best to conflate the attacks with anti-Iran protests that have been happening across Iraq for the last three months, but of course, those actual protesters are pro-Iraqi sovereignty demonstrators fed up with the corruption and the broad perception that the Iraqi government is controlled by Iran.

Confirming exactly that accusation, the Iraqi government has repeatedly attacked the anti-Iran protesters, killing hundreds and wounding thousands, while giving a free pass and ready access to the Iran-backed fighters who stormed our embassy.

The media’s goal is to characterize the protests as a wholesale rejection of Trump’s policies in the region, hence the wall-to-wall disinformation about mourning and protesting. What’s actually at stake is Obama’s legacy. The Iran Deal was a bargain in which Iran would be handed control over the Middle East in exchange for some temporary limitations on nuclear activities.

As Obama said, the Saudis — by which he meant Sunnis across the region — would just have to learn to “share the neighborhood” with Iran. The attack on our embassy shows what sharing the region actually means, and the anti-Iran Iraqi protesters are saying they reject it.

Trump has partially withdrawn from the Iran deal, and Tehran is feeling the pressure. Behnam Ben Taleblu, a scholar from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, recently said the “Death to America” chants are a “dead giveaway” that these protests are being orchestrated by Iran as an effort to shore up its position. “These are pro-Iran and pro-militia sympathizers that appear to be out of touch with the thousands of Iraqis who have been chanting ‘Iran, out!’”

Other parts of Obama’s legacy, however, persist. One of the most glaring in the aftermath of the attack on our embassy is that we continue to pour money into countries like Iraq and Lebanon that are outright dominated by the mullahs in Iran through proxies like the Hezbollah militias in those countries. 

Inside the administration, Trump loyalists have sought to cut that aid the Deep State has rushed in to preserve those policies. In Congress, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently sent around a two-page bill titled the “Stop Sending American Taxpayer Money to Governments Controlled by Terrorists Act.” The bill smartly proposed halting assistance to any Lebanese administration that is improperly influenced by Hezbollah.

Cruz’s bill should be expanded to include any government that is under Iranian control, not just Lebanon, as Iran has made attempts to establish proxy regimes in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Given Iran is interested in expanding its hegemony in the region by reproducing the Islamic Revolution in neighboring countries, there is no realm in which American aid should facilitate such activities. 

Cruz’s proposal, and likewise an expansion of it, would amount to a full condemnation of what Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Tony Badran has labeled the Obama Realignment Doctrine, or. Obama’s strategy to restore a power “balance” in the Middle East by empowering Iran and disfavoring our long-term allies. Such an approach achieved its heyday in the Iran Deal and its repudiation in Trump’s withdrawal.

For those on the left, the current desire to salvage the remnants of Obama’s legacy has come at the expense of revealing the true nature of Iraqi unrest. It’s not only irresponsible but further reveals the level of perpetual dishonesty needed to sustain popular support (or at minimum, acceptance) of the Iran Deal. If your strategy requires lying to justify its existence, perhaps it’s not such a fantastic approach.

Erielle Davidson is a Staff Writer at the Federalist and a law student at Georgetown University Law Center. Find her on Twitter at @politicalelle.