David Martosko, US Political Editor @dailymail.com tells us that the “the GBU-43 bomb weighs 21,600 pounds, is 30 feet long, contains 11 tons of explosives and carries a mile-wide blast radius and can create a blast crater more than 300 meters wide after being dropped from a Hercules MC-130 cargo plane.”
While the event denotes a major shift in military policy by the very use of this type of weaponry, it’s also the result of a completely different attitude toward military leadership. Yesterday the POTUS suggested he’d not personally ordered the bomb strike but delegated authority to commanders in the field.
“Everybody knows exactly what happened. So, what I do is I authorize my military ... We have given them total authorization,” he said.
“The move marks the fulfilment of a 17-month-old campaign promise Trump delivered in Iowa, when he scoffed at ISIS terror forces and said he 'would bomb the s**t out of them' if he became president.”
“Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement about ISIS that 'as ISIS-K's losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense, This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against [ISIS-K].”
Talking about the subject, and the new POTUS’s performance in general, well-known commentator Ben Stein was extremely positive on the matter as he spoke to Fox News’ Stuart Varney this morning. Stein’s perception is that "Trump's outperforming expectations in a big way.”
The reason that the opinion’s important is the credential of Stein himself. The Columbia University and Yale Law School graduate is a writer, lawyer, actor, and commentator on political and economic issues. Wikipedia says he: “attained early success as a speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Later, he entered the entertainment field and became an actor, comedian, and Emmy Award-winning game show host. He is most well-known on screen as the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.”
As an actor he’s well known for his droning, monotonous delivery, while in real life he’s a public speaker on a wide range of economic and social issues.
“In 2005, Stein said in the American Spectator:
“Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POWs, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
“Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.
"That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton—a lying, conniving peacemaker.”It’s commentary such as the preceding that’s gained Stein popularity and respect for opinions delivered, which is why his thought that Trump's outperforming expectations bears considerable weight.
What Stein believes are Trump's strongest job qualities are the rapid pace at which he learns, his willingness to take advice from experts he’s chosen to help him, and his pragmatism that permits him to cut losses quickly while consistently growing into the job he now holds.
Moving away from the new POTUS’s continual job improvement brings us to two individuals quickly sliding in the opposite direction.
Back on Monday, April 10th, Dan Gainor made the case on Fox News.com that: “Susan Rice is a liar and that’s the truth. What’s amazing is that it has taken years for the major media to admit it, despite epic evidence. Even journalists have a breaking point -- in this case, false statements about deadly chemical weapons.”
To support his premise, Mr. Gainor quoted the consistently supportive Washington Post which changed course and “gave Rice four Pinocchios (out of four) in the paper’s liars scoreboard for bogus claims about removing Syria’s chemical weapons. The Post criticized her for comments she made during a Jan. 16, NPR interview. It looks bad for Rice that a paper so blatantly anti-Trump as the Post would criticize her for such willful deceit.
“The paper’s Fact Checker called Rice’s statement “problematic” before spending 1,400 words proving she lied. “She did not explain that Syria’s declaration was believed to be incomplete and thus was not fully verified — and that the Syrian government still attacked citizens with chemical weapons not covered by the 2013 agreement. That tipped her wordsmithing toward a Four,” wrote Glenn Kessler.”
Adding weight to the issue, “The New York Times mentioned the same NPR quote in a April 9 story about Obama’s failure to remove WMD from Syria. Here is Rice’s now famously false comment:
“We were able to find a solution that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished. … We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”
Furthermore: “Rice also drew fire for defending an Obama administration effort to spin the Iran deal. A Times profile of Ben Rhodes, whose brother David is CBS News president, detailed plans to deceive the public. Remember, this isn’t a conservative outlet. It’s The. New. York. Times.
“Here’s the Times’ quote:
“The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false.”
Thus, if two major media stalwarts of the previous administration have changed their opinions so forcefully it would seem that Rice is in for a very rude awakening. Which by itself would portend significant embarrassment ahead for those closest to her as well.
However, the future may be even dimmer whereas: “Two top Republicans asked the Justice Department on Wednesday to take a new look at the evidence against former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner to see whether charges should still be brought against her for targeting Tea Party groups and losing key evidence in the case. According to Stephen Dinan @washingtontimes.com.
While Lerner was cleared after an investigation by the Obama administration, Reps. Kevin Brady and Peter Roskam, respectively the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and the panel’s tax policy subcommittee, “say there are plenty of questions with how that probe was run, and said that a new look by the Trump administration’s Justice Department is warranted.”
All of which means that, while the protections of a complicit administration lasted eight long years for operators like Rice and Lerner, at present there’s a new Sheriff in town. Which by itself would be quite troublesome to deal with for both.
However, when the cover of friends in the MSM evaporates too, all bets are off as how far and wide the negative ramifications will eventually be for Rice, Lerner, and whomever else they implicate while attempting to make deals for themselves.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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