Hillary Clinton is Seriously Dangerous

[seemslikeadream]

you should quit spamming this board with face palms

and then there's Rory

what no mention of trump and Epstein?
of course not
Rory takin the high road while lecturing me

[Elvis]

That video is BRILLIANT. Thanks for posting it!


For those who might think that discussion of Hillary Clinton needs to shamed and shouted down, here's some advice:

I will post what I want when I want and as much as I want and there is NOTHING you can do about it so stop bitching

[Morty]

Africans are being sold at Libyan slave markets. Thanks, Hillary Clinton.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds Nov. 27, 2017

'We came, we saw, he died,' she joked. But overthrowing Gadhafi was a humanitarian and strategic debacle that now limits our options on North Korea.

Black Africans are being sold in open-air slave markets, and it’s Hillary Clinton’s fault. But you won’t hear much about that from the news media or the foreign-policy pundits, so let me explain.

Footage from Libya, released recently by CNN, showed young men from sub-Saharan Africa being auctioned off as farm workers in slave markets.

And how did we get to this point? As the BBC reported back in May, “Libya has been beset by chaos since NATO-backed forces overthrew long-serving ruler Col. Moammar Gadhafi in October 2011.”

And who was behind that overthrow? None other than then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Under President George W. Bush in 2003, the United States negotiated an agreement with Libyan strongman Gadhafi. The deal: He would give up his weapons of mass destruction peacefully, and we wouldn’t try to depose him.

That seemed a good deal at the time, but the Obama administration didn’t stick to it. Instead, in an operation spearheaded by Clinton, the United States went ahead and toppled him anyway.

The overthrow turned out to be a debacle. Libya exploded into chaos and civil war, and refugees flooded Europe, destabilizing governments there. But at the time, Clinton thought it was a great triumph — "We came, we saw, he died,” she joked about Gadhafi’s overthrow — and adviser Sidney Blumenthal encouraged her to tout her "successful strategy" as evidence of her fitness for the highest office in the land.

It’s surprising the extent to which Clinton has gotten a pass for this debacle, which represents a humanitarian and strategic failure of the first order. (And, of course, the damage is still compounding: How likely is North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons after seeing the worthlessness of U.S. promises to Gadhafi?)

Back during his brief stint in the Democratic primary, former senator James Webb raised the issue, saying America "blew the lid off of a series of tribal engagements. You can't get to the Tripoli airport right now, much less Benghazi." But as the Libya disaster continues to unfold, Clinton’s role in it gets surprisingly little attention.

Maybe it’s buried under the other Clinton/Obama debacles in the Middle East, such as the botched Syrian policy that The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt called ”a humanitarian and cultural disaster of epochal proportions.” Remember President Obama’s “red line” that Syria crossed, and that Obama didn’t enforce?

That led to a destabilizing flood of refugees hitting Europe, too.

And, of course, there’s the Yemen policy, which Obama bragged about as a model for the war on terror. But now Yemen is another war-wracked humanitarian and strategic disaster.

Still, Libya is in a class of its own. In Syria and Yemen, at least, the situation was already bad. Libya, before Clinton got involved, was comparatively stable and no strategic threat to the United States or its allies. Now it’s a shambles, with people literally being sold in slave markets.

Back in the 2012 presidential campaign, Vice President Biden told a group of African Americans that the GOP was going to "put you all back in chains." But it turned out that it was Clinton’s policies that led to black people being sold. As some ponder another Hillary Clinton run in 2020, that’s worth pointing out.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @instapundit.

Sounds like he's saying "Military intervention in Libya was a HUGE mistake...and avoiding military intervention in Syria was a HUGE mistake." This is the real modern day Nazi attitude that we all need to fear and fight. White nationalists are like kids in a sandpit compared to the larger culture which condones mass-murderous regime change wars without batting an eyelid.

[Jerky]

I find it hilarious that Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds - an infamous long-time right-wing blogger and former booster of both Preznit Dubya and the invasion of Iraq - should now be so worried about those poor people in the middle east. Never mind the fact that he appears not to know what went down, and how it went down, in Libya, leading up to, during, and in the immediate aftermath of Gadaffi's deadly ouster. Here's a little tidbit for you: If you think Hillary woke up one morning, called Obama out of the blue and said "Let's invade Libya!", you're a fucking idiot. If anything, things would probably have gone WORSE if the US (and regional partners) hadn't stepped in when they did. And even if they hadn't, Gadaffi would still be dead, and Libya would still be a basketcase.

Wikipedia is your friend.

YOPJ

[Morty]

Yes, others wanted to do over Libya too, and would have done something with or without Clinton, but Clinton was champing at the bit to be involved, and elbowed her way in to manage the operation, and even before it was over was rehearsing how she would make sure her "leadership" role was sufficiently acknowledged. (For all the rehearsal, "We came, we saw, he died [haw haw haw haw haw]" was a stunningly ham-fisted response when the day finally came.)

.
.
Another email chain recently turned over by the State Department shows how Mrs. Clinton took under consideration Mr. Blumenthal’s public relations advice to her in anticipation of the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

“First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” Mr. Blumenthal said in an Aug. 22, 2011, memo to Mrs. Clinton with the subject line “Your statement post-Q.”

“When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation home,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote. “You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.”

He added: “The most important phrase is: ‘successful strategy.’ “

Mrs. Clinton forwarded the advice to one of her closest aides at the State Department, Jake Sullivan.

“Pls read below,” she wrote. “Sid makes a good case for what I should say, but it’s premised on being said after Q goes, which will make it more dramatic. That’s my hesitancy, since I’m not sure how many chances I’ll get.”

Mr. Sullivan responded that he and another senior State Department official “thought it might make sense for you to do an op-ed to run right after he falls, making this point,” and that a draft was already being written.

“You can reinforce the op-ed in all your appearances, but it makes sense to lay down something definitive, almost like the Clinton Doctrine,” Mr. Sullivan said.

That same day, though, it was a White House aide who credited the administration’s strategy, and President Obama who triumphantly declared that Libya’s future was “in the hands of its people.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/us/p ... .html?_r=0

TICK TOCK ON LIBYA

[Sounder]

Jerky wrote...

If anything, things would probably have gone WORSE if the US (and regional partners) hadn't stepped in when they did.

I love it, the stock rationalization/explanation of the western exceptionalist for failure.

Short quiz; who is better off, the people of Donbass and Lugansk where the imperialists intervened, or Crimea where Russia intervened?

I do have to wonder about people willing to be flack catchers for psychopaths.

[DrEvil]

^^For someone so obsessed with the rights of nation states you don't seem particularly concerned with the forceful breakup of a nation state by another country.

[mentalgongfu2]

This is the real modern day Nazi attitude that we all need to fear and fight. White nationalists are like kids in a sandpit compared to the larger culture which condones mass-murderous regime change wars without batting an eyelid.

Ummm.. white nationalists, by the very nature of white nationalism, condone mass-murderous regime change wars without batting an eyelid.... I fail to see what relevant distinction you are drawing.

Is it that hard to acknowledge both that the Clintons are warmongering pieces of shit and the current administration is also made up of warmongering pieces of shit?
Any time Donald Trump lets out a nasty fart, someone feels the need to point out that Hillary Clinton also has nasty farts.
One is currently in power, and the other is not, at least as far as the public arena goes. I'm all for cleaning up American war crimes and international con games of the past, but that shouldn't exclude dealing with the ones facing us most immediately.

The current infowar against Hillary wrt Uranium One seems rather opportunistic and hypocritical, coming is it does coincident with Trump's own Russia scandal and his clear inability or unwillingness to actually govern in the USA. The "Lock Her Up" crowd seems to be rather focused on attacking Hillary Clinton merely as a defense for Donald Trump. Both of them are likely guilty of similar crimes, which begs the conclusion that most of the Clinton attacks are partisan in nature, and makes it hard for serious people to take seriously. It cuts both ways, as there are plenty of partisans willing to defend Clinton and attack Trump, but again, one is a former secretary of state, and the other is the current president. "Hillary was bad, too" should not be an acceptable retort to criticisms of Trump for anyone with half a brain.

[Elvis]

^^For someone so obsessed with the rights of nation states you don't seem particularly concerned with the forceful breakup of a nation state by another country.

Assuming you mean Crimea, Russia did not unilaterally "annex" Crimea; Crimeans voted it so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014
Crimean status referendum, 2014
...
The referendum requested local populations whether they wanted to join Russia as a federal subject, or if they wanted to restore the 1992 Crimean constitution and Crimea's status as a part of Ukraine. As a result of the events of Euromaidan, the referendum was held directly after a Russian military takeover of Crimea.[3][4]

Let's stop right there: "Russian military takeover of Crimea." The first of two sources is Business Insider whose reporters are hacks. We can get into that later if you like. The second is Reuters, "Putin Admits Russian Forces Were Deployed"—which hardly paints a picture of a "Russian military takeover."

The "Russian military intervention in Ukraine" Wikipedia article begins,

In 2014, Russia made several military incursions into Ukrainian territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_m ... %93present)

That's it, and a big 'so what?' in my opinion. The Reuter's bit is a two-sentence report:

MOSCOW, April 17 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said Russian forces had been active in Crimea in order to support local defence forces, the first time he has admitted deployment of Russian troops on the Black Sea peninsula.

“We had to take unavoidable steps so that events did not develop as they are currently developing in southeast Ukraine,” Putin said in a televised call-in with the nation. “Of course our troops stood behind Crimea’s self-defence forces.”

https://uk.reuters.com/article/russia-p ... 1H20140417

And we know that much if not most of the "evidence" for "massive incursions" turned out to be recycled old aerial photos and plainly made-up news stories. The usual propaganda, following the U.S.-arranged coup in Kiev, which the networks and State department would have you believing that Ukrainians wanted to overthrow the government they'd just elected.


Getting back to the referendum, Crimea was not an ordinary province of Ukraine:

The 1992 constitution accords greater powers to the Crimean parliament including full sovereign powers to establish relations with other states; therefore, many Western and Ukrainian commentators argued that both provided referendum choices would result in de facto separation from Ukraine.[6][7][8]
...

The official result from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was a 96.77 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83.1 percent voter turnout.[a][1] The Mejlis Deputy Chairman Akhtem Chiygoz felt that the actual turnout could not have exceeded 30–40 percent, arguing that to be the normal turnout for votes in the region.[19]

Following the referendum, The Supreme Council of Crimea and Sevastopol City Council declared the independence of the Republic of Crimea from Ukraine and requested to join the Russian Federation.[20] On the same day, Russia recognized the Republic of Crimea as a sovereign state.[21][22]

Hope that helps.

[Sounder]

Dr. Evil wrote...

^^For someone so obsessed with the rights of nation states you don't seem particularly concerned with the forceful breakup of a nation state by another country

Curious, a false accusation paired with a odd characterization of a forceful breakup. (While at the same time being non-responsive to what was said, impressive.) Do you mean Russia breaking up Ukraine? Because that seems more connected to the US. As was the dismantling of Yugoslavia, Libya, and others, so what the hell, let's move those Wahabbists on to the Philippines and Indonesia. Maybe they can be better proxy killers over there.

[seemslikeadream]

hey Sounder Paul Manafort really really tried to help you out with all of that and got paid a bunch of money to boot!

Do you mean Russia breaking up Ukraine? Because that seems more connected to the US.

but Paul did his very best to help out with that

maybe he should have gotten ELECTED to office...ya know that pesky democracy thing... ..I think that is a prerequisite or it used to be..kinda

Ukraine .....Philippines...... Indonesia ......Russian Oligarchs......HOUSE ARREST .....oh my

I suppose Americans should leave foreign affairs to anybody that FEELS like deciding what is best....best for Pauly's pocketbook

Paul Manafort
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40370

Clinton should have never picked him for campaign manager.....oh wait

she really needs to stop retweeting Britain First tweets that is seriously dangerous

[Sounder]

SLAD, did you just graduate from pretzel logic class? If so, congratulations; there is a big market out there for those qualifications.

[seemslikeadream]

Was Manafort on the side of Russia Putin or not? ...I do need to stop using Russia when I actually mean Putin...sorry about that

Did he collect lots of money for his efforts or not?

He is sitting in his house eating pretzels with an ankle bracelet for something

[The Consul]

There seems to me scant persuasive argument to be made for the legitimacy of the Crimean referendum from the viewpoint of established democracies.
But from the vantage point of the Kremlin, sure, it was great.

[DrEvil]

^^For someone so obsessed with the rights of nation states you don't seem particularly concerned with the forceful breakup of a nation state by another country.

Assuming you mean Crimea, Russia did not unilaterally "annex" Crimea; Crimeans voted it so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014
Crimean status referendum, 2014
...
The referendum requested local populations whether they wanted to join Russia as a federal subject, or if they wanted to restore the 1992 Crimean constitution and Crimea's status as a part of Ukraine. As a result of the events of Euromaidan, the referendum was held directly after a Russian military takeover of Crimea.[3][4]

Let's stop right there: "Russian military takeover of Crimea." The first of two sources is Business Insider whose reporters are hacks. We can get into that later if you like. The second is Reuters, "Putin Admits Russian Forces Were Deployed"—which hardly paints a picture of a "Russian military takeover."

The "Russian military intervention in Ukraine" Wikipedia article begins,

In 2014, Russia made several military incursions into Ukrainian territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_m ... %93present)

That's it, and a big 'so what?' in my opinion. The Reuter's bit is a two-sentence report:

MOSCOW, April 17 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said Russian forces had been active in Crimea in order to support local defence forces, the first time he has admitted deployment of Russian troops on the Black Sea peninsula.

“We had to take unavoidable steps so that events did not develop as they are currently developing in southeast Ukraine,” Putin said in a televised call-in with the nation. “Of course our troops stood behind Crimea’s self-defence forces.”

https://uk.reuters.com/article/russia-p ... 1H20140417

And we know that much if not most of the "evidence" for "massive incursions" turned out to be recycled old aerial photos and plainly made-up news stories. The usual propaganda, following the U.S.-arranged coup in Kiev, which the networks and State department would have you believing that Ukrainians wanted to overthrow the government they'd just elected.


Getting back to the referendum, Crimea was not an ordinary province of Ukraine:

The 1992 constitution accords greater powers to the Crimean parliament including full sovereign powers to establish relations with other states; therefore, many Western and Ukrainian commentators argued that both provided referendum choices would result in de facto separation from Ukraine.[6][7][8]
...

The official result from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was a 96.77 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83.1 percent voter turnout.[a][1] The Mejlis Deputy Chairman Akhtem Chiygoz felt that the actual turnout could not have exceeded 30–40 percent, arguing that to be the normal turnout for votes in the region.[19]

Following the referendum, The Supreme Council of Crimea and Sevastopol City Council declared the independence of the Republic of Crimea from Ukraine and requested to join the Russian Federation.[20] On the same day, Russia recognized the Republic of Crimea as a sovereign state.[21][22]

Hope that helps.

The Russian support was meant to help chase out the Ukrainian forces, which they accomplished. They then immediately held a referendum of questionable legality with only two choices (become independent and join Russia, or become de-facto independent by reinstating the 1992 constitution. No option for keeping their current status within Ukraine), which was made possible by Russian military support, so yes, a forceful breakup.

Russia having their largest Black Sea naval base in Sevastopol surely had nothing to do with it either.

I fully support the people of Crimea's right to self-determination, but the way it happened was, shall we say, not ideal.

I don't like it when the US mucks about with covert military support in Latin American countries, and I don't like it when Russia does it in Eastern European countries either. Imperialists of all stripes can go fuck themselves.