Russia's Putin selling out to terrorists

Following recent terror attacks in Russia, Valdimir Putim vowed he would eradicate the terrorists.

Evidently that was just posturing and a lie. What he is in fact doing is negotiating a deal to provide billions of dollars each year to the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism:

LONDON/ANKARA, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Iran and Russia are negotiating an oil-for-goods swap worth $1.5 billion a month that would let Iran lift oil exports substantially, in defiance of Western sanctions that helped force Tehran to agree a preliminary deal to end its nuclear programme.

Vladimir Putin is outflanking the west at every turn

Nick Cohen in The Guardian:

This has been the year of Vladimir Putin's ascendancy. The Russian president has made Barack Obama look like a conman's stooge – a lame duck president so weak that he can barely waddle to the pond. Putin has managed to protect his client dictatorship in Syria – even after it broke one of the few taboos limiting man's inhumanity to man by using chemical weapons. He has Edward Snowden, perhaps the most damaging leaker in recent history, under the vigilant eyes of his secret police in Moscow. He has out-manoeuvred the pro-European demonstrators in Kiev and bought off the Ukrainian government.

At home, his control over the state and civil society is so complete that he can afford to play the merciful tsar and release dissidents and his former rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Forbes magazine was not making a mistake when it called Putin the world's most powerful person in 2013....

More at The Guardian 

h/t Terry Glavin

The emasculation of the American Presidency: Syria hails 'victory' in chemical arms deal, Assad forces attack in Damascus

Syria's government hailed as a "victory" a Russian-brokered deal that has averted U.S. strikes. President Barack Obama, meanhwile, defended a chemical weapons pact that the rebels fear has bolstered their enemy in the civil war.

More HERE 

and as a special bonus, a recap of  the trailer for "President Flexible":

Obama's best solution for Syria: Blast the living shit out of Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guards

Who would have thought that a wretched, backwards little country about which few in the west ever think, let alone care about, could trigger one of the world's great conflagrations?

There are no good guys in Syria's civil war. We are at the deplorable point in world affairs that the despotic Russian President Putin has more credibility than US Secretary of State Kerry, when the latter has said "moderates" are in charge of Syria's rebellion and the former called him a liar.

A world war is not going to break out if the US bombs Syria to punish it for using chemical weapons against rebels. But it's worth remembering that just under 100 years ago, the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Serbia triggered a war which was responsible for history's greatest loss of life of soldiers in battle. The point being, these things have a way of getting out of hand when national leaders don't know what they are doing.

Barack Obama is not a President whose leadership inspires great confidence on the world stage. It is for that very reason that he does need to keep his word and launch a punitive strike in Syria. Not to teach Bashar al-Assad a lesson, but to keep the world from spiraling into the even more chaotic state of instability that would worsen if miscreant nations realized that American threats carry no weight.

Because of Obama's dithering and then mishandling of the Syrian file, he now has to strike.

But strike whom?

The west has nothing to gain and much to lose if the scales are tipped too far in either direction in Syria. However one of the reasons Syria is a linchpin in its region is its close relationship with Iran and its influence in Lebanon with the Iranian-proxy terror group Hezbollah.

Both Iran and Hezbollah have sent fighters to support Assad in the civil war.

American military intelligence knows precisely where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah fighters serving Assad's cause are stationed.

It is they whom the US should strike, and it should be done decisively.

Syrians would not be infuriated at the deaths of foreigners that insinuated themselves into their domestic affairs. Assad would not be toppled by the loss of the Iranians and Hezbollah auxiliaries. But a clear message would be sent, both to the reprobate Mullahs in Tehran, who have terrorized the Middle East since the Khomeini revolution in 1979, and to their subordinate stooges who maintain a stranglehold over domestic affairs in Lebanon through thuggery and intimidation.

Obama could accomplish a great deal if he has the resolve to push through the measure. It would restore him as a world leader, help stave off the collapse of American credibility, and even give the US President an opportunity to provide a "teachable moment" to the world's most vile rogues.

Foreign policy debate shows a smug, glib Obama is willing to weaken America

The notable moment when Republican Presidential nominee's charge of  Barack Obama weakening the US Navy by allowing the number of vessels to diminish to its lowest levels since the First World War was answered by the president, "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets..we have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them, we have these things that go under water, nuclear submarines.."

What may have escaped President Obama's military planning genius is that America's adversaries also have those technologies. Obama's unsurpassed arrogance doesn't seem to have allowed for the notion that his desire to reduce the massive trillion dollar debt he racked up by diminishing America's security capabilities is short sighted, both financially and by risking American lives.

As former US Ambassador to the United Nations put it last week, "it's American weakness, not strength, that America's enemies find provocative."

Obama is making the United States weaker than it has been at any time since Jimmy Carter was president. Carter's weak, inept handling of Iran in 1979 didn't save any American lives, it only deferred death which came back to haunt the United States with interest. Carter's weakness emboldened Iran, through its ally  Hezbollah, to murder 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, to support the insurgency in Iraq and the Taliban in  Afghanistan. Together, these Iranian-sponsored acts have cost the lives of thousands of American military personnel and which would not have happened if Carter had effectively managed Iran.

There is a reason the Iranian mullahs want Obama to defeat Mitt Romney in the election next month. They see weakness in Obama.

Obama desperately wants America to be likes, but more damaging, he does not see the United States as a force for good in the world, which is why is keeps impairing its global power and influence. His promise conveyed to Vladimir Putin to be more flexible after his presumed reelection was a concession to Russian demands that America not have an effective missile defense.

Among the many foreign policy concerns Obama evidently doesn't understand is the difference between a geo-political adversary, which Romney correctly identifies and a terrorist threat, which Obama apparently thinks is the same thing.

When Obama said to Romney last night, "the 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back" he should have taken his own advice. American missile defense is not aimed at Russia but at smaller rogue states. Russia, like Obama still thinks in terms of 1980's era mutually assured destruction scenarios.  But warfare and strategy have moved past the dilettante who currently occupies the Oval Office.

At his Toronto talk last week, Ambassador Bolton joked that whenever they want to cheer themselves up at the Kremlin, they play the Obama "flexible" tape over and over to remind themselves what a weak adversary they have in the White House. It's no wonder that Vladimir Putin has endorsed Obama's reelection hoping to meet opposite a spineless American leadership for the next four years.

But with Iran rapidly moving towards nuclear weapons capability, the Muslim Middle East in turmoil, Russia looking to reassert itself by giving diplomatic cover to North Korea, Syria and Iran at the expense of American influence and China building up its military, a second Obama term is something both America and the free world can ill afford

Obama gets Putin endorsement..guess why!

Russian President Vladimir Putin has endorsed Barack Obama's re-election bid for the US Presidency.

Now there's a shock, eh?