Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for March 2011

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Jimmy comes back empty-handed

Remember that Jimmy Carter was heading to Cuba? He was invited by the Cuban government, and supposedly was going to get Alan Gross released.

Well, he got there, dressed like the natives, kissed up to the Castro brothers, called Fidel “an old friend”,

asked the US to release five convicts,

Bypassing ancillary issues such as the lack of freedom on the island and the enslavement of 11-million Cubans, Carter instead demanded that the U.S. release the Cuban 5. Those are the same five convicted Cuban spies who are serving prison time for espionage and the murder of four innocent American pilots who were shot down over international waters by Castro MiGs.

met with Yoani Sanchez, her husband, Claudia Cadelo and Laritza Diversent, and Alan Gross remains in jail

when the 86-year-old ex-president flew off in the afternoon without Alan Gross on board, it dashed the hopes of Washington officials and relatives who had hoped Carter would be able to bring the Maryland native home.

The Obama administration missed the opportunity months ago when it eased restrictions on Cuba without demanding Gross’s released.

As Instapundit puts it,

And we probably have decades of similar stuff to look forward to once Barack Obama is an ex-president.

Indeed.

Cross-posted at The Green Room and Real Clear World.

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More hypocrisy on energy

Wednesday last week I posted on Hypocrisy on the fly: Obama does Latin America; Today Jennifer Rubin posts on Obama’s jaw-dropping hypocrisy on energy

It’s nice that he’s discovered the importance of domestic energy development, but his rhetoric overlooks his own policies over the past two years. Yesterday on the Senate floor Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blasted the president for comments he made in Brazil “when the President told the Brazilian president that the United States hopes to be a major customer in the market for oil that Brazilian businesses plan to extract from new oil finds off the Brazilian coast.”

Rubin notes,

Congress should test the president’s seriousness on energy development and put a bill on his desk that puts the breaks on the EPA and opens natural gas and oil fields.

The sooner, the better – gas prices have doubled under Obama.

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Obama authorized secret support to Libya rebels, gets award

Reuters reports that Obama authorized secret help for Libya rebels “two or three weeks” ago,

President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential “finding”, within the last two or three weeks, according to government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. This is a necessary legal step before such action can take place but does not mean that it will.

Well, it did: already C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels (emphasis added)

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

They are there in a rush to gather intelligence on the identities and capabilities of rebel forces opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.

When Jake Tapper asked, “What is going on behind closed doors?” White House press secretary Jay Carney asked back

“Who said anything was going on behind closed doors?”

What, indeed.

Andrew Sullivan simply cannot believe that president Obama has already ordered covert action in Libya on one side in a civil war, but he can believe that Sarah Palin didn’t give birth to her own child.

Yeah.

But fret not, Andrew. Obama got an award for “transparency”, which he accepted in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday. Since the meeting was not disclosed in Obama’s public schedule, and neither reporters nor photographers were allowed, it was awarded on hope for potential transparency

“And in that sense, one could say it resembles the award at the Nobel Peace Prize,” Aftergood said. “It’s not because Obama brought peace to anyone but because people hoped he would be a force for good in the world, and maybe that’s the way to understand this award.”

Perfect award, and meeting all the daily irony requirements.

Next thing you know he’ll get an award for “popular communication“.

UPDATE
Instapundit:

Prof. Stephen Clark writes: “By all means, rub their whole faces in the facts of this latest intervention. To be clear: if the left and Democrats generally do not savage this President in much the same manner they savaged Bush, if they are not out in the streets protesting, if they are not opposing his reelection, if they are not demanding his impeachment and trial, if they are not hoping for his very death, then they will have shown themselves to be every bit the craven hypocrites that many have long claimed.”

Rub it in!

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Cristina awards Hugo a prize for contribution to “popular communication.”

I guess those suitcases full of money are worth it – Reuters/HuffPo has the story,
Hugo Chavez Wins Journalism Award In Argentina

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who critics accuse of stifling press freedom, was given a prize by an Argentine journalism school on Tuesday for his contribution to “popular communication.”

Cristina Fernandez is actively working against Clarin, (related post and podcast here); Chavez’s attacks against Globovision are well documented. ABC News:

Chavez’s government forced the opposition RCTV channel off airwaves in 2007 by refusing to renew its broadcast license. The telecommunications agency then ordered cable companies to drop RCTV International last year for refusing to carry Chavez’s speeches and other mandatory programming. The government also cited licensing issues in forcing 32 radio stations and two small TV stations off the air.

The majority owner of Globovision, Venezuela’s only remaining anti-Chavez TV channel, fled the country rather than be jailed pending a conspiracy trial for keeping two-dozen new vehicles at one of his homes. Guillermo Zuloaga, who also owns several car dealerships, said Chavez ordered bogus charges.

Venezuela still has independent newspapers and web sites, including the newspaper El Nacional, which on Tuesday editorialized against the award.

“That a South American university doesn’t know about this grave situation and dares to honor this military leader with the Rodolfo Walsh Prize says much about the destruction of values that the Kirchners have imposed on the Argentine nation. Walsh was a victim of military repression and his example is now stained absurdly,” the paper wrote.

Hugo was given the award at La Plata University, where

He told a supportive crown of hundreds of students that Venezuela is promoting “a new dynamic of communication and popular information free from the media dictatorship of the bourgeois, and of the empire.”

Just like Pradva in the olden days.

UPDATE
Cristina praises Hugo for his support (in Spanish), saying Argentina wouldn’t be where it is now without his help. I kid you not.

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Mexican cartel guns coming from Central America, not USA

Howard Nemerov posts at the Tatler,
U.S. admits that Mexican cartels get military weaponry from Central America

Here’s a breaking story that’s only reported by Central American media and Fox.

“The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico’s drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published here Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper.”

Inventory includes grenades and rocket launchers, necessary items for beating the Mexican army.

This corroborates an LA Times report from early 2009, which catalogued “hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets…”

The U.S. still blames American gun owners, by asserting that American guns “fuel” Mexico’s drug war. Even President Obama asserts: “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States.”

“More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States”? That, of course is not the case. Stratfor looked at the data,

Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth

Last month I posted

The Stratfor report looks at the types of weapons and their sources. Go read the rest of the report – but the bottom line is this: “it is important to recognize that, while the United States is a significant source of certain classes of weapons and ammunition, it is by no means the source of 90 percent of the weapons used by the Mexican cartels, as is commonly asserted.”

However, Stratfor is not alone – FactCheck.org, back in 2009, was doing the same, along with the LA Times.

UPDATED
Also in 2009, Warner Todd Hudson.

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Krugman’s Freudian note

Economist Steve Hanke explains it, Prof. Krugman: Ace of the Ad Hominem Smear

Prof. Paul Krugman’s New York Times column of March 27th, “American Thought Police,” made this startling assertion: “the hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear.”  What would Dr. Freud say?  Well, after careful study of Prof. Krugman’s works and one trip to the couch, Dr. Freud diagnosed the patient and proclaimed, “projection bias.”  Yes, the ace of the ad hominem smear is simply projecting his own attributes and habits of mind and deed to others.

Speaking of “go for the smear”, read about The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics
The left’s obsession with the Koch brothers. A lengthy article which illustrates at what lengths the Left will go.

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Armed Taliban gunned down, Rolling Stone calls “murder”

Michael Yon calls it when he sees it,
Calling BULLSHIT on Rolling Stone

Seldom do I waste time with rebutting articles, and especially not from publications like Rolling Stone.  Today, numerous people sent links to the latest Rolling Stone tripe.  The story is titled “THE KILL TEAM, THE FULL STORY.”  It should be titled: “BULLSHIT, from Rolling Stone.”

Here’s what it’s about,

The online edition of the Rolling Stone story contains a section with a video called “Motorcycle Kill,” which includes our Soldiers gunning down Taliban who were speeding on a motorcycle toward our guys.  These Soldiers were also with 5/2 SBCT, far away from the “Kill Team” later accused of the murders.  Rolling Stone commits a literary “crime” by deceptively entwining this normal combat video with the Kill Team story.  The Taliban on the motorcycle were killed during an intense operation in the Arghandab near Kandahar City.  People who have been to the Arghandab realize the extreme danger there.  The Soviets got beaten horribly in the Arghandab, despite throwing everything including the Soviet kitchen sink into the battle that lasted over a month.  Others fared little better.  To my knowledge, 5/2 and supporting units were the first ever to take Arghandab, and these two dead Taliban were part of that process.

The killing of the armed Taliban on the motorcycle was legal and within the rules of engagement.  Law and ROE are related but separate matters.  In any case, the killing was well within both the law and ROE.  The Taliban on the back of the motorcycle raised his rifle to fire at our Soldiers but the rifle did not fire.  I talked at length with several of the Soldiers who were there and they gave me the video.  There was nothing to hide.  I didn’t even know about the story until they told me.  It can be good for Soldiers to shoot and share videos because it provides instant replay and lessons learned.  When they gave me the video and further explained what happened, I found the combat so normal that I didn’t even bother publishing it, though I should have because that little shooting of the two Taliban was the least of the accomplishments of these Soldiers, and it rid the Arghandab of two Taliban.

VIdeo below the fold,
(more…)

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Obama: “after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress, I authorized military action”

I was reading the transcript of President Obama’s speech last night (as long-term readers of this blog may recall, I almost never watch televised speeches, preferring instead to read them), and this jumped out,

And so nine days ago, after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress, I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.

Interesting turn of phrase, “after consulting the bipartisan leadership”. It implies that he went to Congress, when in fact he briefed them and then when ahead, when he was abroad.

And then Obama waited a full week to address the nation. James Jay Carafano,

This might have been an okay speech last week, when it was pretty clear that the right way forward was to minimize the commitment of the U.S. military, look after the best interests of Libya’s civilian population, and limit the spread of terrorism and instability throughout the region.

A week ago, too, the laundry list of what needed to be done was pretty clear: (1) Keep Qaddafi isolated until he is brought to justice; (2) establish a military presence to keep his forces from driving the opposition into the sea; (3) identify, support, and sustain a legitimate opposition that brings democracy to the country, rather than letting it become the next terrorist haven, and that looks after the humanitarian needs and the human rights of the people under its control.

If what needed to be done was common sense a week ago, hearing the president say it now hardly instills confidence.

All we really learned in last night’s speech is how that’s going to get done. The “international community” is going to do it.

Other than that,

it was yet another well-delivered, split-the-difference, mellifluous Obama speech that said essentially nothing of substance.

Cost of Libya Intervention $600 Million for First Week, Pentagon Says
Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, Precision Bombs, Crashed Jet Draw Millions from Pentagon Budget

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