Targeted by Iran – did you know about it?
OBAMA SWEPT IRAN TERROR PLOT UNDER THE RUG — Powerline
“The duty officer at his (Gen. Mattis’s) Tampa, Florida, headquarters on Oct. 11, 2011 told him that the attorney general and FBI director had held a press conference to announce the arrest of two Iranians who had planned a bomb attack on Cafe Milano, a high-end restaurant in Washington that was a favorite of the rich and famous, including Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir.”
This story should be read by all those “Never Trumpers” and the weak kneed establishment Republicans in congress.
Mattis is no friend of Trump’s but apparently his book, just based on reports so far, is not ‘payback’ attack on the president.
As never a big fan of Mattis, I had thought that he went from a true ‘warrior soldier’ to a “political general’ even beforeTrump chose him as SecDef. Since he left the Pentagon, however, I’ve altered my opinion. I think “Mad Dog’ is just a very strong-minded, rather self-centered individual who probably has never much respected the judgment or decisions any of his superiors.
His observations on Obama and his administration’s actions, however, need to be taken very seriously. This piece from PowerLine suggests part of the reason.
To me, this passage from Mattis’s book is especially important but only hints at the larger, most dangerous aspect of the Obama presidency and where his sentiments and loyalties really were during his time in the Oval Office:
“I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House…”
“In my view, we had to hold Iran to account and strike back when attacked. But there was a reason for the administration’s restraint. The administration was secretly negotiating with Iran, although I was not privy to the details at the time.”
“Those negotiations would lead to the Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015. Mattis is critical of the agreement, which President Trump withdrew from last year. “In my military judgment, America had undertaken a poorly calculated, long-shot gamble. At the same time, the administration was lecturing our Arab friends that they had to accommodate Iran as if it were a moderate neighbor in the region and not an enemy committed to their destruction,” Mattis writes. “As long as its leaders consider Iran less a nation-state than a revolutionary cause, Iran will remain a terrorist threat potentially more dangerous than Al Qaeda or ISIS.”
I don’t believe for a minute that this episode Mattis describes was due to an “incompetent President Obama”.
I think Obama was a lot of dreadful, unappealing things, but incompetence was not his worst characteristic.
Obama was fully committed to advancing every aspect of Iran’s agenda. The agreement and everything surrounding it…the ‘secret’ negotiations, the sneaky, huge payoff ($1.5 to $150 billion) to finance Iran’s Mid-east terrorist activities, the violation of US Constitution provisions which required Senate approval of such a momentous treaty (“agreement”), the persuasion of America’s European allies to go along with that atrocity, calling it a path to preventing a nuclear-armed Iran…that wasn’t “incompetence”.
That was something far more unthinkable for a US president…and the word for it starts with a “T”.
The “mullahs in Teheran” were celebrating all right. But it wasn’t Obama’s “incompetence” they were enjoying! DLH
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By John Hinderacker at Powerline:
OBAMA SWEPT IRAN TERROR PLOT UNDER THE RUG
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis has a book coming out in which he is harshly critical of President Obama. Among other things, he recalls his dissent from Obama’s decision to pull troops out of Iraq prematurely, which had nearly-disastrous consequences. But this less well-known story about Iran is also noteworthy:
Mattis was CENTCOM commander at the time, responsible for our military posture vis-a-vis Iran.
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“Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House,” he writes. “Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”
Within the Obama administration, Mattis argued forcefully that the president needed to inform the public of this act of war and mobilize opinion in favor of strong action against Iran. But his advice went unheeded.
Mattis later learned why Obama had gone so easy on the mullahs:
It is painful to think how much hilarity the mullahs in Teheran must have enjoyed at the expense of the incompetent President Obama.
