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Senate Gets It Wrong on Yemen

Harold Hutchison

Fed holds interest rates steady and indicates

no more hikes are coming this year

by Joseph Lawler

{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ Federal Reserve officials announced Wednesday that they had held their interest rate target steady and signaled that they wouldn't raise rates at all this year... They also announced plans to stop shrinking the Fed's balance sheet by September, concluding the effort to reverse crisis-era stimulus. The decision, announced following a two-day meeting in Washington, represents the central bank moving toward looser monetary policy for longer. Stocks rose sharply following the announcement. In a statement, the officials noted that economic growth "has slowed from its solid rate in the fourth quarter." Accompanying projections showed the monetary policy committee marking down its expectations for economic growth, with GDP projected to come in at 2.1 percent this year, down from a previous estimation of 2.3 percent. And officials projected that the interest rate target would end the year at the same level it is now. Chairman Jerome Powell and Fed officials have taken a dramatic about-face since December, when they raised their short-term interest rate target to a range of 2.25 percent to 2.50 percent, the highest it had been since early 2008, and forecast that they would raise rates twice more in 2019... https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/fed-holds-interest-rates-steady-turning-further-away-from-rate-hikes?utm_source=WEX_Breaking%20News%20Alert_03/20/2019&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_Breaking%20News

Did Peter Strzok Lie, Or Was There

A Spy Targeting The Trump Campaign?

by Margot Cleveland

{thefederalist.com} ~ Last Thursday, Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, released the committee’s transcript of its interview of disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok... During the day-long questioning, Strzok sought to explain away the more deleterious text messages he sent to his mistress and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. When one considers Strzok’s explanation of his reference to an “insurance policy” in light of Page’s testimony, which Collins also released last week, and other previously known facts, there seem to be only two possibilities: Strzok was lying or an unknown spy was targeting the Trump campaign. Strzok sent the “insurance policy” text to Page on August 15, 2016, just two weeks after the FBI’s launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” the former deputy assistant director wrote to Page. When questioned on the meaning of this text by members of the House Judiciary Committee, Strzok testified that “we had received information from a very sensitive source alleging collusion between the Government of Russia and members of the Trump campaign.” “So my use of the phrase ‘insurance policy’ was simply to say,” Strzok continued, that “while the polls or people might think it is less likely that then-candidate Trump would be elected, that should not influence—that should not get in the way of us doing our job responsibly to protect the national security.” “As is frequently the case in counterintelligence investigations and any national security investigations,” Strzok added, “there’s a tension between the protection of a sensitive source and method of pursuing the investigation related to that information.”...

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/19/peter-strzok-lie-spy-targeting-trump-campaign/

UNIFIL Confirms Existence

of Six Tunnels in South Lebanon

by Anna Ahronheim

{jpost.com} ~ The UN Interim Force in Lebanon has confirmed the existence of six tunnels in southern Lebanon, two of which violated the Blue Line and crossed into Israeli territory... While UNIFIL said it could not determine who built the tunnels or when, they were recorded by UNIFIL in the region of Kafr Kila after UNIFIL engineers used verification tools such as laser range finders to confirm their existence. Though the IDF reported the existence of six cross-border tunnels, UNIFIL was able to visit only five of them, as one was destroyed by Israel’s military before it notified UNIFIL. UNIFIL is said to have requested to enter one disused brick factory across from Metulla, after Israel filled it with liquid concrete, but the government of Lebanon refused to give it access, as it was private property. The property was said to then be completely covered in blue tarpaulins within 24 hours of UNIFIL’s request. Israel launched Operation Northern Shield in early December and destroyed at least five cross-border tunnels, either by explosives or by flooding with liquid concrete. The tunnel underneath the brick factory was the first one to be discovered by the IDF and stretched some 40 meters into kiwi and apple orchards belonging to the community of Metulla. According to the military, the tunnel, which stretched a total of 200 meters, took Hezbollah around two years to build... https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/UNIFIL-confirms-existence-of-six-tunnels-in-South-Lebanon-584078

Washington Examiner hires

Fred Barnes as Senior Columnist

by washingtonexaminer.com: The Washington Examiner is delighted to welcome Fred Barnes as a Senior Columnist. Barnes, who will start work on March 18, was executive editor of The Weekly Standard, which he co-founded in 1995... Editorial Director Hugo Gurdon says, “It’s of course great news that Fred will be joining the Washington Examiner. He is a superb journalist with boundless energy and a great instinct for news and politics. I could not be more pleased that he is coming on board as Senior Columnist. From 1985 to 1995, Barnes was senior editor and White House correspondent for The New Republic. He covered the Supreme Court and the White House for the Washington Star before moving to the Baltimore Sun in 1979. He served as the national political correspondent for the Sun and wrote the "Presswatch" media column for the American Spectator. Barnes appears regularly on the Fox News Channel. From 1988 to 1998 he was a regular panelist on the McLaughlin Group. He has also appeared on Nightline, Meet the Press, and Face the Nation. Barnes graduated from the University of Virginia and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/press-release-washington-examiner-hires-fred-barnes-as-senior-columnist

Kellyanne Conway Picks Trump Over Hubby

by Betsy Rothstein

{dailycaller.com} ~ On Wednesday afternoon, Kellyanne fiercely defended her boss, who called her hubby—conservative lawyer George Conway—a “total loser.”... Conway has been pushing a narrative that Trump is a narcissist who has lost his marbles. In a new, brief phone interview with Politico‘s Daniel Lippman, Kellyanne sided with Trump, saying he could fire her for her husband being such a distraction and tell her to go home and be with her kids. Instead he isn’t. Instead, her boss is just calling her husband a “whack job” and a “husband from hell.” Trump told reporters Wednesday on the White House grounds, “I think he’s doing a tremendous disservice to a wonderful woman.” “You think he should take that sitting down?” Kellyanne asked of Trump, sounding like she was rooting for her boss to successfully clobber her husband. She said her husband — “respectfully” — is no psychiatrist. It’s the only time where she uses the word “respect” in association with her husband. The couple have four children and have been married for 18 years. Kellyanne’s characterization that this is a “distraction” might be putting it mildly. By backing Trump’s smack-down of her own husband, isn’t she basically agreeing with Trump that her husband is a loser?...

https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/20/kellyanne-conway-trump-hubby-george-conway/?utm_medium=email

Senate Gets It Wrong on Yemen

Harold Hutchison: The recent vote in the Senate to end American support for Saudi military actions against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen is a huge mistake. It’s such a mistake that President Donald Trump should make this the subject of another veto threat.

First of all, as we have mentioned before, there aren’t very good options in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia has been very oppressive when it comes to women’s rights, and the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi shows the House of Saud has little regard for freedom of the press. But the alternatives are the mullahs of Iran (who openly have vowed to wipe Israel off the map) and Turkey (run by Recip Tayyip Erdogan, a friend of Hamas and no champion of democracy, either, regressing toward an authoritarian Islamist regime). So, the Saudis, who are making some steps forward, seem to be the best option.

Second, if this resolution goes through, it would be yet another time America abandoned allies. The Hmong and Montagnards in southeast Asia (Vietnam War), Carlos Castano and Los Pepes in Colombia (the hunt for Pablo Escobar), and the Kurds (War on Terror) have all felt the sting of America turning its back on them. In addition, turning our backs on Hosni Mubarak or the Shah of Iran did not improve things for America. We shouldn’t add Saudi Arabia to the list of these mistakes.

Next, Yemen does occupy some key strategic real estate. It sits on the Bab el Mandab, a maritime chokepoint that controls access to the Red Sea. This means it can cut off a maritime lifeline for Israel. Now, given that the Houthis are backed by Iran, and Iran has vowed to wipe Israel from the map … well, it seems obvious that ending support for the Saudis would only make it easier for Iran to achieve the objective that the mullahs have repeatedly voiced.

Then, there is also a bit of a more “personal” factor: The Houthis fired missiles at a U.S. Navy ship. On multiple occasions in October 2016, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87) dodged Iranian-built copies of the C-802 anti-ship missile. The skill of that ship’s crew in using the onboard defense systems (missiles and jammers) and luck kept the ship from being hit. Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s response? Three Tomahawks fired days later. It was typical of his fouled-up foreign policy. Three Tomahawks would have been nice right after the first salvo of missiles, but the repeated ones warranted something far stronger.

Don’t get us wrong — we’re all for peace, but there needs to be some serious disincentives to take potshots at our troops, planes, and ships. The fact is, with the departure of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, we lost one of our primary behavioral motivators. With Mattis in office, no other national leader in his right mind would think of taking potshots at us. Without Mattis, the behavioral motivation will have to be more direct and involve making examples of those who do take potshots at our ships and troops. We think even Tulsi Gabbard would be willing to shoot back in such cases.

In any case, the fact is that we often do not get to choose between good, great, and so-so outcomes in the world. Often, the choices are between slightly bad, bad, really bad, and horrendous. Trying to pick the least bad option means we have to accept some things that are pretty ugly. But we should remember that many of the other outcomes are far worse than what we’re dealing with from friends. ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/61836?mailing_id=4142&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4142&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

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