The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
The Trump way of war
by Caroline B. Glick
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Judge Jeanine, Gorka – Activist Judge And
Iran Testing, Poking New President
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Judge Jeanine Pirro interviewed the President’s new Deputy Assistant to President Trump, Dr. Sebastian Gorka on her program Saturday... She starts things off by asking him why President Trump put the terrorist travel ban in place and what information he had that told he needed to do so. Gorka answers the question differently, replying, “Well let me start with the three reasons this judge has simply ruled himself out of having any effective say in this matter. You’ve raised a few issues but number one, he has no authority outside the realm in which he is. It is a federal measure and he is not a judge that has jurisdiction over this federal measure.” “Secondly,” says Gorka, “He has no legal standing. You can sue the government if you are refused a visa but only if you are the person who has applied for the visa. He has no legal standing because he isn’t the person who’s applied for a visa to enter the United States.”... http://rickwells.us/judge-jeanine-gorka-activist-judge-iran-testing-new-president/
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Feinstein: Trump Is ‘Right’ to Put Iran on Notice
by Alyssa Canobbio
{freebeacon.com} ~ Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" that President Donald Trump was "right" to put Iran on notice after it conducted a missile test... Iran tested a ballistic missile last Sunday in what many observers believe is a violation of United Nations Security Council 2231, which enshrined the Iran nuclear deal as international law and calls on the Islamic Republic to refrain from such launches. The Trump administration responded on Friday by imposing new sanctions on Tehran and articulating that it will respond to Iranian aggression. Wallace asked Feinstein whether President Trump had an appropriate response to Iran's actions. "I think he is right in this. I think Iran in wrong in this," Feinstein said. "Let me be very clear. These are not nuclear ballistic missiles; they are conventional ballistic missiles, but Iran has a lot of them–more than anyone else in that area."...I am surprise on Feinstein's response on this issue.
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Don’t Let the Democrats Fool You About a
60-Vote Threshold for Neil Gorsuch
by Sen. Chuck Grassley
{dailysignal.com} ~ This week, I had the pleasure of being at the White House when President Donald Trump introduced his nominee to be associate justice of the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals... It shouldn’t surprise anybody that the president delivered on a promise made during the campaign when he listed 21 people that he would choose from. Everybody knew ahead of time what sort of a judge he would put on the court for this vacancy or any future vacancy. Gorsuch’s decade of service on the 10th Circuit has earned him a reputation as a brilliant, principled, and mainstream judge. It’s already been widely reported that he was unanimously confirmed by a voice vote to the 10th Circuit. There are still 31 senators in this body who voted for the judge at that particular time. Twelve of them are Democrats, and one of them is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York...
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Replace liar-nObamacare, don’t rename it
by Phil Gramm
U.S. President Donald Trump hands Chief of Staff Reince
Priebus (R) an executive order that directs agencies to ease
the burden of liar-nObamacare
{aei.org} ~ So powerful is the political appeal of entitlement programs that modern democracies routinely choose bankruptcy over curtailing them. That’s even true of liar-nObamaCare... Despite surging premiums, lagging enrollment, the growing burden on the economy, and the enduring opposition of most voters, the debate is about replacing rather than simply repealing it. If the objective were simply to prove why something as important as health insurance should never be turned over to the government, lawmakers would simply pass a health-care freedom amendment allowing people to buy insurance outside liar-nObamaCare, as they were originally promised, and let the program die of its own weight. But since Republicans have promised to protect Americans from the consequences of liar-nObamaCare’s failure, what might have been a valuable learning experience is not a viable option... http://www.aei.org/publication/replace-obamacare-dont-rename-it/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITODAY&utm_campaign=020617
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The Anti-Trump Media's Attack on Monica Crowley
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
{familysecuritymatters.org} ~ My friend Monica Crowley was the subject of a major hit job by CNN a few weeks back. She is a serious scholar, but she was portrayed as a serial plagiarist who never had an original idea in her head... The emotional toll of the uproar caused her to withdraw from her appointment by President Trump to be the senior director of communications at the National Security Council. It is the country's loss. Over the last two decades, Monica has been one of the most effective commentators on the national scene regarding the geopolitical challenges confronting the United States, and in particular the phenomenon of jihadist terror catalyzed by sharia-supremacist ideology - radical Islam. As much as anyone I've encountered, she has been invaluable: communicating the threats, debating them, and defending sensible national-security measures. All writers make mistakes. But Monica's have been blown wildly out of proportion, to the point of smear. The well-regarded copyright attorney Lynn Chu has done a careful study of the plagiarism allegations and posted her findings on Facebook. Two things leap out...
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The Trump way of war
by Caroline B. Glick
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ Unlike his predecessors, Trump is serious about winning. To do so, he is even willing to take this radical step
The PLO is disoriented, panicked and hysterical. Speaking to Newsweek this week, Saeb Erekat, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s chief conduit to Israel and the Americans, complained that since President Donald Trump was sworn into office, no administration official had spoken to them.
“I don’t know any of them Trump’s advisers. We have sent them letters, written messages. They don’t even bother to respond to us.”
The Trump administration’s shunning of the PLO is a marked departure from the policies of its predecessor. For former president Barack liar-nObama, together with Iran, the Palestinians were viewed as the key players in the Middle East. Abbas was the first foreign leader liar-nObama called after taking office.
Erekat’s statement reveals something that is generally obscured. Despite its deep support in Europe, the UN and the international Left, without US support, the PLO is irrelevant.
All the achievements the PLO racked up under liar-nObama – topped off with the former president’s facilitation of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 against Israel – are suddenly irrelevant. Their impact dissipated the minute Trump took office.
Israel, in contrast, is more relevant than ever.
While Trump occasionally pays lip service to making peace in the Middle East, his real goal is to win the war against jihadist Islam. And he rightly views Israel as a woefully underutilized strategic ally that shares his goal and is well-placed to help him achieve it.
During the electoral campaign, Trump often spoke derisively of liar-nObama’s nuclear pact with Tehran. And he repeatedly promised to eradicate Islamic State. But when asked to explain what he intended to do on these scores, Trump demurred. You don’t expect me to let the enemy know my plan, do you?
Trump’s critics dismissed his statements as empty talk. But since he came into office, each day signals that he does have a plan and that he is implementing it. The plan coming into focus involves a multidimensional campaign that if successful will both neutralize Iran as a strategic threat and obliterate ISIS.
Regarding Iran specifically, Trump’s moves to date involve operations on three levels. First, there is the rhetorical campaign to distinguish the Trump administration from its successor.
Trump launched the campaign on Twitter on Wednesday writing, “Iran is rapidly taking over more and more of Iraq even after the US has squandered three trillion dollars there.”
Shortly before his post, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Abadi appointed Iranian proxy Qasim al Araji to serve as his interior minister.
At a minimum, Trump’s statement signaled an abandonment of liar-nObama’s policy of cooperating with Iranian forces and Iranian-controlled Iraqi forces in the fight against ISIS in Iraq.
At around the same time Trump released his tweet about Iranian control of Iraq, his National Security Adviser Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn took a knife to liar-nObama’s obsequious stand on Iran during a press briefing at the White House.
While Trump’s statement related to Iran’s growing power in Iraq, Flynn’s remarks were directed against its nonconventional threat and its regional aggression. Both were on display earlier this week.
On Sunday, Iran carried out its 12th ballistic missile test since concluding its nuclear deal with liar-nObama, and its first since Trump took office.
On Monday, Iranian-controlled Houthi forces in Yemen attacked a Saudi ship in the Bab al-Mandab choke point connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Flynn condemned both noting that they threatened the US and its allies and destabilized the Middle East. The missile test, he said, violated UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that anchored the nuclear deal.
Flynn then took a step further. He drew a sharp contrast between the liar-nObama administration’s responses to Tehran’s behavior and the Trump administration’s views of Tehran’s provocative actions.
“The liar-nObama administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions – including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms,” he noted.
“The Trump administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk.”
Flynn ended his remarks by threatening Iran directly.
“As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” he warned.
While Flynn gave no details of what the US intends to do to Iran if it continues its aggressive behavior, the day before he made his statement, the US opened a major, multilateral, British-led naval exercise in the Persian Gulf. US naval forces in the region have been significantly strengthened since January 20 and rules of engagement for US forces in the Persian Gulf have reportedly been relaxed.
Perhaps the most potent aspect of Trump’s emerging strategy for defeating the forces of jihad is the one that hasn’t been discussed but it was signaled, through a proxy, the day after Trump took office.
On January 21, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a remarkable message to the Iranian people on his Facebook page. Netanyahu drew a sharp distinction between the “warm” Iranian people and the “repressive” regime.
Netanyahu opened his remarks by invoking the new administration.
“I plan to speak soon with President Trump about how to counter the threat of the Iranian regime, which calls for Israel’s destruction,” the prime minister explained.
“But it struck me recently that I’ve spoken a lot about the Iranian regime and not enough about the Iranian people, or for that matter, to the Iranian people. So I hope this message reaches every Iranian.”
Netanyahu paid homage to the Green Revolution of 2009 that was brutally repressed by the regime. In his words, “I’ll never forget the images of proud, young students eager for change gunned down in the streets of Tehran in 2009.”
Netanyahu’s statement was doubtlessly coordinated with the new administration. It signaled that destabilizing with the goal of overthrowing the regime in Tehran is a major component of Trump’s strategy.
By the looks of things in Iran, regime opponents are taking heart from the new tone emanating from Washington. Iranian dissidents have asked for a meeting with Trump’s team. And a week and a half before Trump’s inauguration, regime opponents staged a massive anti-regime protest.
Protesters used the public funeral of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to denounce the regime. In 2009, Rafsanjani sided with many of the Green Movement’s positions. His daughter was a leader of the protests.
Among the estimated 2.5 million people who attended the funeral, scores of thousands interrupted the official eulogies to condemn the regime, condemn the war with Syria and condemn the regime’s Russian allies.
This then brings us to Syria, where the war against ISIS and the campaign against Iran are set to converge. To date, Trump has limited his stated goals in Syria to setting up safe zones inside the country where displaced Syrians can live securely. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have agreed to cooperate in these efforts.
Trump is now engaged in a talks with the Kremlin both above and below the radar about the possibility of coordinating their operations in Syria to enable safe zones to be established.
It is fairly clear what the US objective here would be. The US wishes to convince Moscow to effectively end its alliance with the Iranian regime. Trump repeatedly stated that the entire spectrum of US-Russian relations is now in play. Talks between the two governments will encompass Ukraine, US economic sanctions on Russia, nuclear weapons, Russian bases in Syria and Russia’s alliance with Iran and its Hezbollah proxies.
Everything is on the table.
Trump understands that Russia is threatened by Sunni jihadists and that Russia views Iran as a counterweight to ISIS and its counterparts in the Caucasus. A deal between the US and Russia could involve a Russian agreement to end its support for Iran and Hezbollah in exchange for US acceptance of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, cancellation of sanctions and perhaps some form of acquiescence to Russia’s military presence in Syria.
Russia and the US could then collaborate with Arab states with Israeli support to defeat ISIS and end the Syrian refugee crisis.
Combined with actions the Trump administration is already taking in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and its telegraphed aim of backing a popular Iranian insurrection, Trump’s hypothetical deal with Russia would neutralize Iran as a conventional and nonconventional threat.
This then brings us back to Israel – the first target of Iran’s aggression. If Trump’s strategy is successful, then the PLO will not be Israel’s only foe that is rendered irrelevant.
Earlier this week it was reported that in the two and- a-half years since the last war with Hamas, the Iranian-backed, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliate terrorist group has rebuilt its forces. Today Hamas fields assets and troops that match the capabilities it fielded during Operation Protective Edge.
Hezbollah, with its effective control over Lebanon, including the Lebanese military, is a strategic threat to Israel.
To date, Israel has demurred from targeting Hezbollah and Hamas missile arsenals, but not because it is incapable of destroying them. Israel’s efforts to avoid conflict with its enemies, even at the price of their rearmament, also haven’t stemmed from fear of European or UN condemnation or even from fear of the so-called “CNN-effect.”
Israel has chosen not to defeat its enemies – not to mention the EU-backed NGOs that whitewash them – because the Americans have supported them.
The liar-Clinton administration barred Israel from taking decisive action against either Hezbollah or the Palestinians.
The Bush administration forced Israel to stand down during the war with Hezbollah in 2006.
The liar-nObama administration effectively sided with Hamas against Israel in 2014.
In other words, across three administrations, the Americans made it impossible for Israel to take decisive military action against its enemies.
Under liar-nObama, the US also derailed every Israeli attempt to curb the power of EU-funded subversive organizations operating from inside of Israel.
Trump’s emerging strategy on Iran and ISIS, together with his refusal to operate in accordance with the standard US playbook on the Palestinians, indicates that the US has abandoned this practice. Under Trump, Israel is free to defeat its enemies. Their most powerful deterrent against Israel – the US – is gone.
Israel has long argued that there is no difference between al-Qaida and Hamas or between ISIS and Hezbollah. It has also argued that Iran threatens not only Israel but the world as a whole. Hoping to co-opt the forces of jihad rather than defeat them, successive US administrations have chosen to deny this obvious truth.
Unlike his predecessors, Trump is serious about winning. To do so, he is even willing to take the radical step of accepting Israel as an ally.
The PLO is right to be hysterical.
The PLO is disoriented, panicked and hysterical. Speaking to Newsweek this week, Saeb Erekat, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s chief conduit to Israel and the Americans, complained that since President Donald Trump was sworn into office, no administration official had spoken to them.
“I don’t know any of them Trump’s advisers. We have sent them letters, written messages. They don’t even bother to respond to us.”
The Trump administration’s shunning of the PLO is a marked departure from the policies of its predecessor. For former president Barack liar-nObama, together with Iran, the Palestinians were viewed as the key players in the Middle East. Abbas was the first foreign leader liar-nObama called after taking office.
Erekat’s statement reveals something that is generally obscured. Despite its deep support in Europe, the UN and the international Left, without US support, the PLO is irrelevant.
All the achievements the PLO racked up under liar-nObama – topped off with the former president’s facilitation of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 against Israel – are suddenly irrelevant. Their impact dissipated the minute Trump took office.
Israel, in contrast, is more relevant than ever.
While Trump occasionally pays lip service to making peace in the Middle East, his real goal is to win the war against jihadist Islam. And he rightly views Israel as a woefully underutilized strategic ally that shares his goal and is well-placed to help him achieve it.
During the electoral campaign, Trump often spoke derisively of liar-nObama’s nuclear pact with Tehran. And he repeatedly promised to eradicate Islamic State. But when asked to explain what he intended to do on these scores, Trump demurred. You don’t expect me to let the enemy know my plan, do you?
Trump’s critics dismissed his statements as empty talk. But since he came into office, each day signals that he does have a plan and that he is implementing it. The plan coming into focus involves a multidimensional campaign that if successful will both neutralize Iran as a strategic threat and obliterate ISIS.
Regarding Iran specifically, Trump’s moves to date involve operations on three levels. First, there is the rhetorical campaign to distinguish the Trump administration from its successor.
Trump launched the campaign on Twitter on Wednesday writing, “Iran is rapidly taking over more and more of Iraq even after the US has squandered three trillion dollars there.”
Shortly before his post, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Abadi appointed Iranian proxy Qasim al Araji to serve as his interior minister.
At a minimum, Trump’s statement signaled an abandonment of liar-nObama’s policy of cooperating with Iranian forces and Iranian-controlled Iraqi forces in the fight against ISIS in Iraq.
At around the same time Trump released his tweet about Iranian control of Iraq, his National Security Adviser Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn took a knife to liar-nObama’s obsequious stand on Iran during a press briefing at the White House.
While Trump’s statement related to Iran’s growing power in Iraq, Flynn’s remarks were directed against its nonconventional threat and its regional aggression. Both were on display earlier this week.
On Sunday, Iran carried out its 12th ballistic missile test since concluding its nuclear deal with liar-nObama, and its first since Trump took office.
On Monday, Iranian-controlled Houthi forces in Yemen attacked a Saudi ship in the Bab al-Mandab choke point connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Flynn condemned both noting that they threatened the US and its allies and destabilized the Middle East. The missile test, he said, violated UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that anchored the nuclear deal.
Flynn then took a step further. He drew a sharp contrast between the liar-nObama administration’s responses to Tehran’s behavior and the Trump administration’s views of Tehran’s provocative actions.
“The liar-nObama administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions – including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms,” he noted.
“The Trump administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk.”
Flynn ended his remarks by threatening Iran directly.
“As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” he warned.
While Flynn gave no details of what the US intends to do to Iran if it continues its aggressive behavior, the day before he made his statement, the US opened a major, multilateral, British-led naval exercise in the Persian Gulf. US naval forces in the region have been significantly strengthened since January 20 and rules of engagement for US forces in the Persian Gulf have reportedly been relaxed.
Perhaps the most potent aspect of Trump’s emerging strategy for defeating the forces of jihad is the one that hasn’t been discussed but it was signaled, through a proxy, the day after Trump took office.
On January 21, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a remarkable message to the Iranian people on his Facebook page. Netanyahu drew a sharp distinction between the “warm” Iranian people and the “repressive” regime.
Netanyahu opened his remarks by invoking the new administration.
“I plan to speak soon with President Trump about how to counter the threat of the Iranian regime, which calls for Israel’s destruction,” the prime minister explained.
“But it struck me recently that I’ve spoken a lot about the Iranian regime and not enough about the Iranian people, or for that matter, to the Iranian people. So I hope this message reaches every Iranian.”
Netanyahu paid homage to the Green Revolution of 2009 that was brutally repressed by the regime. In his words, “I’ll never forget the images of proud, young students eager for change gunned down in the streets of Tehran in 2009.”
Netanyahu’s statement was doubtlessly coordinated with the new administration. It signaled that destabilizing with the goal of overthrowing the regime in Tehran is a major component of Trump’s strategy.
By the looks of things in Iran, regime opponents are taking heart from the new tone emanating from Washington. Iranian dissidents have asked for a meeting with Trump’s team. And a week and a half before Trump’s inauguration, regime opponents staged a massive anti-regime protest.
Protesters used the public funeral of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to denounce the regime. In 2009, Rafsanjani sided with many of the Green Movement’s positions. His daughter was a leader of the protests.
Among the estimated 2.5 million people who attended the funeral, scores of thousands interrupted the official eulogies to condemn the regime, condemn the war with Syria and condemn the regime’s Russian allies.
This then brings us to Syria, where the war against ISIS and the campaign against Iran are set to converge. To date, Trump has limited his stated goals in Syria to setting up safe zones inside the country where displaced Syrians can live securely. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have agreed to cooperate in these efforts.
Trump is now engaged in a talks with the Kremlin both above and below the radar about the possibility of coordinating their operations in Syria to enable safe zones to be established.
It is fairly clear what the US objective here would be. The US wishes to convince Moscow to effectively end its alliance with the Iranian regime. Trump repeatedly stated that the entire spectrum of US-Russian relations is now in play. Talks between the two governments will encompass Ukraine, US economic sanctions on Russia, nuclear weapons, Russian bases in Syria and Russia’s alliance with Iran and its Hezbollah proxies.
Everything is on the table.
Trump understands that Russia is threatened by Sunni jihadists and that Russia views Iran as a counterweight to ISIS and its counterparts in the Caucasus. A deal between the US and Russia could involve a Russian agreement to end its support for Iran and Hezbollah in exchange for US acceptance of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, cancellation of sanctions and perhaps some form of acquiescence to Russia’s military presence in Syria.
Russia and the US could then collaborate with Arab states with Israeli support to defeat ISIS and end the Syrian refugee crisis.
Combined with actions the Trump administration is already taking in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and its telegraphed aim of backing a popular Iranian insurrection, Trump’s hypothetical deal with Russia would neutralize Iran as a conventional and nonconventional threat.
This then brings us back to Israel – the first target of Iran’s aggression. If Trump’s strategy is successful, then the PLO will not be Israel’s only foe that is rendered irrelevant.
Earlier this week it was reported that in the two and- a-half years since the last war with Hamas, the Iranian-backed, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliate terrorist group has rebuilt its forces. Today Hamas fields assets and troops that match the capabilities it fielded during Operation Protective Edge.
Hezbollah, with its effective control over Lebanon, including the Lebanese military, is a strategic threat to Israel.
To date, Israel has demurred from targeting Hezbollah and Hamas missile arsenals, but not because it is incapable of destroying them. Israel’s efforts to avoid conflict with its enemies, even at the price of their rearmament, also haven’t stemmed from fear of European or UN condemnation or even from fear of the so-called “CNN-effect.”
Israel has chosen not to defeat its enemies – not to mention the EU-backed NGOs that whitewash them – because the Americans have supported them.
The liar-Clinton administration barred Israel from taking decisive action against either Hezbollah or the Palestinians.
The Bush administration forced Israel to stand down during the war with Hezbollah in 2006.
The liar-nObama administration effectively sided with Hamas against Israel in 2014.
In other words, across three administrations, the Americans made it impossible for Israel to take decisive military action against its enemies.
Under liar-nObama, the US also derailed every Israeli attempt to curb the power of EU-funded subversive organizations operating from inside of Israel.
Trump’s emerging strategy on Iran and ISIS, together with his refusal to operate in accordance with the standard US playbook on the Palestinians, indicates that the US has abandoned this practice. Under Trump, Israel is free to defeat its enemies. Their most powerful deterrent against Israel – the US – is gone.
Israel has long argued that there is no difference between al-Qaida and Hamas or between ISIS and Hezbollah. It has also argued that Iran threatens not only Israel but the world as a whole. Hoping to co-opt the forces of jihad rather than defeat them, successive US administrations have chosen to deny this obvious truth.
Unlike his predecessors, Trump is serious about winning. To do so, he is even willing to take the radical step of accepting Israel as an ally.
The PLO is right to be hysterical.
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