Tag Archives: Lindsey Graham

Lindsey Graham’s Blank Check. Why a Defense Agreement With Israel Would Be a Disaster for Americans, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on August 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

Why should the US should give Israel or any other nation the power to determine its foreign policy? From Philip Giraldi at strategic-culture.org:

Two world wars began because of unconditional pledges made by one country to come to assistance of another. On July 5, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany pledged his country’s complete support for whatever response Austria-Hungary would choose to make against Serbia after the June 28thassassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist during an official visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia. This fatal error went down in history as Germany’s carte blanche or “blank check,” assurance to Austria that led directly to WW I.

In September 1939, World War II began when Great Britain and France came to the assistance of Poland after the German Army invaded, fulfilling a “guarantee” made in March of that year. What was a regional war, and one that might have been resolved through diplomacy, became global.

One would think that after such commitments were assessed by historians as the immediate causes of two world wars, no one would ever consider going down that road again. But that would be reckoning without Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who has been calling for a “defense treaty” with Israel since last April. In his most recent foray, Graham announced late in July that he is seeking bipartisan support for providing “blank check” assurances to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is hoping to be able to push a complete defense treaty through the Senate by next year.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History

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Jamal Khashoggi: Where The Road to Damascus & The Path to 9/11 Converge, by Kristen Breitweiser

Posted on October 18, 2018 | 1 comment

Politicians’ worst nightmare: someone who remembers their every word. From Kristen Breitweiser at washingtonsblog.com:

By Kristen Breitweiser, one of the four 9/11 widows – known as the “Jersey Girls” – instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks. Follow Kristen Breitweiser on Twitter: .

Road to Damascus Conversion: Derived from the Biblical story of Paul, the term “Damascus road conversion” is commonly used to refer to an abrupt about-face on a serious issue of religion, politics or philosophy. In this type of change, a single, dramatic event causes a person to become aligned with something he or she previously was against or support a position that he or she previously opposed. https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-damascus-road-conversion.htm#didyouknowout

As a 9/11 widow who has spent the last 17 years fighting for accountability with regard to the 9/11 attacks that killed my husband and 3,000 others, I find the recent uproar over Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance and alleged murder interesting and out of character for many of those decrying his disappearance and demanding an investigation and accountability.

Frankly, 9/11 Family members keep a running list of all those in Washington who have proved by their past actions to be against U.S. victims of terrorism and in support of nations like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a nation with a long history of supporting global Wahhabist terrorism. As victims of terrorism, we are ever vigilant and watchful about all those named on our lists. We follow these folks actions, their speeches, their legislation, because we know that they are never looking out for our best interests as U.S. victims of terrorism. As a group, our institutional memory is broad and long. And we never forget.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Law, Politics

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The “Magnitsky Trio” Pushes For War With Russia with New Sanctions, by Tom Luongo

Posted on August 5, 2018 | Leave a comment

What if a story that was the justification for heavy US sanctions against Russia has gaping holes? From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

If half of what I have come to understand about the Curious Case of Bill Browder is true, then the “Magnitsky Trio” of Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Ben Cardin are guilty of espionage, at a minimum.

Why?  Because they know that Browder’s story about Sergei Magnitsky is a lie.  And that means that when you tie in the Trump Dossier, Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, the Skripal poisoning and the rest of this mess, these men are consorting with foreign governments and agencies against the sitting President.

As Lee Stranahan pointed out recently on Fault Lines, Cardin invited Browder to testify to Congress in 2017 to push through last year’s sanctions bill, a more stringent version of the expiring Magnitsky Act of 2011, which has since been used to ratchet up pressure on Russia.

Cardin knew there were problems with Browder’s story about Magnitsky’s death and yet brought him into Congress to testify to secure the vote.

That’s suborning perjury, as Lee points out.

Just the holes in Browder’s story about Magnitsky’s death are alone enough to warrant a perjury charge on him.  If you haven’t read Lucy Komisar’s detailed breakdown of Browder’s dealings then you owe it to yourself to do so.

I’d read it a few times, because it’s about as murky as The Swamp gets. And, still my eyes glaze over.

The Magnitsky Act and its sequel have been used to support aggressive policy actions by the U.S. against Russia and destroy the relationship between the world’s most prominent militaries and nuclear powers.

The new bill is said to want to put ‘crushing sanctions’ on Russia to make ‘Putin feel the heat.’   In effect, what this bill wants to do is force President Trump to enforce sanctions against the entire Russian state for attempting to do business anywhere in the world.

The new financial penalties would target political figures, oligarchs, family members and others that “facilitate illicit and corrupt activities” on behalf of Putin.

It would also impose new sanctions on transactions tied to investments in state-owned energy projects,  transactions tied to new Russian debt, and people with the capacity or ability to support or carry out a “malicious” cyber act.

To continue reading: The “Magnitsky Trio” Pushes For War With Russia with New Sanctions

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Lindsey Graham, The Uninvited Guest, by Ann Coulter

Posted on January 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

Why does a guy who could barely get a vote have any say at all on immigration policy versus the guy who actually won the election? From Ann Coulter at anncoulter.com:

Why does Sen. Lindsey Graham have a seat at the table on immigration? Are Jorge Ramos and Vicente Fox unavailable?

Graham’s claim to fame is: 1) having twice negotiated a voluntary surrender for the GOP on immigration; and 2) winning 0.00 percent of the vote when he ran for president two years ago.

You could run for president on the platform that we should kill babies and eat them, and you’d get more votes than Lindsey Graham. Who designated this most remote of back-benchers, thoroughly rejected by the American people, as the principal negotiator on Trump’s central campaign promise?

Graham’s thought process seems to be: We had an election, I ran for president; literally no one voted for me, so my views should prevail over the guy who won an Electoral College landslide.

How about getting Dennis Kucinich in there? Has anyone asked Martin O’Malley for help in the “DACA” negotiations?

To a rapturous media, Graham has been peddling the lie that President Trump blew up a beautiful bipartisan deal on immigration. It wasn’t “bipartisan,” except in the sense of being “angrily rejected by the voters.”

It’s the same deal that has gone down in flames at least twice before. It’s the same deal that has already destroyed the careers of Sens. John McCain, Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Kelly Ayotte, Mark Kirk and Gov. Jeb! Bush.

It’s the same deal President Bush tried to push through Congress in 2006 — with Graham’s support! — leading directly to the Republican wipeout in the midterm elections later that year. (Innumerable polls showed that the public hated Bush’s proposed amnesty even more than it hated the Iraq War.)

It’s the same deal that voters repudiated for approximately the 87th time when they made Donald Trump president (and — again — gave Lindsey Graham zero votes).

To continue reading: Lindsey Graham, The Uninvited Guest

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Posted in Government, Immigration, Uncategorized

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Crisis for Mueller: Lindsey Graham calls for new Special Counsel to investigate Trump Dossier and FBI, by Alexander Mercouris

Posted on January 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

Lindsey Graham, no friend of President Trump, wants a special counsel to investigate the Trump Dossier. From Alexander Mercouris at theduran.com:

Strong Republican critic of Donald Trump ‘dismayed’ by confidential information about the Trump Dossier he has seen

Senator Lindsey Graham, previously one of President Trump’s most trenchant critics who back in July 2017 actually proposed a law to prohibit President Trump from firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has now made the extent of his disillusionment with the FBI’s conduct and with the whole Russiagate investigation crystal clear.

In an interview with Fox News Lindsey Graham says that after having reviewed confidential information about the Trump Dossier provided at the insistence of Congressional investigators he is filled with dismay and believes that a new Special Counsel must be appointed to investigate the FBI’s conduct and the Trump Dossier.

Here is how Byron York of the Washington Examiner reports Lindsey Graham’s comments

I’ve spent some time in the last couple of days, after a lot of fighting with the Department of Justice, to get the background on the dossier, and here’s what I can tell your viewers: I’m very disturbed about what the Department of Justice did with this dossier, and we need a special counsel to look into that, because that’s not in Mueller’s charter. And what I saw, and what I’ve gathered in the last couple of days, bothers me a lot, and I’d like somebody outside DOJ to look into how this dossier was handled and what they did with it.

Host Brian Kilmeade asked Graham, “So, you’ve found out something you did not know?

“Yes,” Graham answered.

Kilmeade asked whether Graham was disturbed by the contents of the dossier or how the Justice Department used it in the Trump-Russia investigation.

“I’ve been a lawyer most of my life, a prosecutor, and a defense attorney,” Graham began. He continued:

And the one thing I can say, every prosecutor has a duty to the court to disclose things that are relevant to the request. So any time a document is used to go to court, for legal reasons, I think the Department of Justice owes it to the court to be up-and-up about exactly what this document is about, who paid for it, who’s involved, what their motives might be. And I can just say this: After having looked at the history of the dossier, and how it was used by the Department of Justice, I’m really very concerned, and this cannot be the new normal.

(bold italics added)

To continue reading: Crisis for Mueller: Lindsey Graham calls for new Special Counsel to investigate Trump Dossier and FBI

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Investigations

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He Said That? 11/13/14

Posted on November 13, 2014 | Leave a comment

From Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, addressing a top-level Defense Ministry meeting, announcing aerial missions over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, according to a ministry statement:

In the current situation, we are obliged to ensure our military presence…and also conduct aerial reconnaissance with long-range aircraft of foreign military forces and shipping.

The Wall Street Journal, “Russians Dial Up Military Threats,” 11/13/14

The US has not been invaded since the 1800s (Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were attacks, but not invasions). Russia, on the other hand, has been invaded countless times, most often from the west, with Poland and Ukraine the usual doorsteps. During World War II, the USSR sustained more dead, around 18 million, than all the other Allied nations combined (the US lost 300 thousand). Most of those deaths were on the Eastern Front, fighting the German invasion (about 30 million total died on the Eastern Front).

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO and the EU have incorporated eleven nations that were part of the USSR or within its sphere of influence. Now the western alliance is on Russia’s doorstep, Ukraine, after deposing a democratically elected ruler and installing a western puppet. If a foreign power had invaded the US through Canada and killed 18 million Americans, we would be understandably touchy if Canada ever fell under the influence of a hostile nation. Professed US “mystification” at Russian touchiness over Ukraine is mystifying. Assurances that the western alliance is devoted to military defense and economics, posing no threat to Russia, ring hollow to Russian ears. The USSR had a nonaggression pact with Hitler, until his invasion through Poland and Ukraine.

So Russia is going to give the US a tiny sip of its own medicine by flying over our “sphere of influence.” Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor has it ever been considered a vital US interest. However, it looks like one of the lines our newly assertive, more muscular foreign policy is going to draw in the sand runs through Ukraine. John McCains and Lindsey Grahams rush in where angels fear to tread.

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