Dr. Bill Warner of Political Islam talks about the word “Kafir”. It is the Muslim word for all who are not Muslim. It connotes inferiority and filthiness, and conveys Muslim scorn, disgust and enmity. Dr. Warner suggests that non-Muslims should wear the label with pride.

… in feeling for his country’s enemies.

Continuing our posts on the nauseating story of Obama’s release of five Taliban leaders from Gitmo on the excuse of a “prisoner exchange” for a US army “captive”, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl: –

Bob Bergdahl, father of Bowe Bergdahl whose desertion from the US army in Afghanistan was the the indirect cause of at least six soldiers being killed by the enemy, choked up when he spoke of his son’s desire to “help the Afghan people”. He was deeply moved by the thought of his own and his son’s goodness.

Watch the video to be disgusted.

Former Army Special Forces Officer Michael Waltz, under whom Sergeant Bergdahl served, in the course of telling Bret Baer of Fox News Special Report that Bergdahl was a deserter, related two incidents as examples of the monstrous deeds the Afghans perpetrated.

Summing up Major Waltz’s words, they –

Machine-gunned to death all the girls in a girls’ school.

Hanged a little boy of seven when they found a few dollars in his pockets.

Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl pitied these monsters, so he taught them ambush techniques, and how to adapt cell phones to become bomb-triggering devices.

Watch this video to be impressed by Michael Waltz – both by what he says and the quality of the man himself.

To add another scandalous detail to the post immediately below (Trading with the Taliban – as fellow Muslims?), here’s our Facebook one-paragraph summary of a Jihad Watch article:

A former U.S. officer who served in Afghanistan with Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl claims that soldiers were threatened by U.S. authorities if they questioned his story. After he was captured, Bergdahl said on a video from his captors that he lagged behind on patrol, although other sources in the military suggested anonymously that he walked away from his post. Not only has this nebulous non-story been put out for years but soldiers of 4th Brigade 25th Infantry Division were threatened with legal repercussions if they spoke about Bergdahl. Many of Bergdahl’s fellow troops signed nondisclosure agreements agreeing to never share any information about Bergdahl’s disappearance and the efforts to recapture him. But Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down. Its probably  unlikely that Bergdahl will face a court martial – because it would cast doubt on the deal the United States made with the Taliban to secure his release.

*

Still more sickening facts –

Mark Tapson writes (in part) at Front Page:

Let’s get this clear about Bergdahl – he didn’t “wander” off base that June day in 2009, as the media so often put it, like a lost toddler; if reports from the ground are to be believed (and they are), he intentionally and premeditatedly deserted.

In the wake of that, at least six good American soldiers died or were wounded in search attempts. Their names:  Staff Sgt. Clayton Bowen, Pfc. Morris Walker, Staff Sgt. Kurt Curtiss, 2nd Lt. Darryn Andrews, Pfc. Matthew Michael Martinek, and Staff Sgt. Michael Murphrey. Their families and friends have suffered a far greater loss than the Bergdahl parents.

As Jake Tapper reports, “other operations were put on hold while the search for Bergdahl was made a top priority… Manpower and assets – such as scarce surveillance drones and helicopters – were redirected to the hunt. The lack of assets is one reason the closure of a dangerous combat outpost, COP Keating, was delayed. Eight soldiers were killed at COP Keating before it was ultimately closed.”

What punishment will Bergdahl face? An anonymous senior Defense official [said] that he will not likely face any: “Five years [in ‘captivity’] is enough.”

Meanwhile our enemy rejoices. Five more dangerous Guantanamo terrorists are back in the field to plot havoc against American infidels, to kill and wound more American soldiers, soldiers who are already fatally hamstrung by Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan that don’t even allow them to engage unless they’re already under attack – and sometimes not even then.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar rightfully declared the trade a “great victory.” It will result in more Americans – and not just soldiers – being targeted for hostages, because terrorists everywhere now know that that will pay off.

On Saturday May 31, Obama triumphantly announced that he had procured the release by the Taliban of a captured American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, “the only known American prisoner of war in Afghanistan”.

When terrorists hold hostages, the worst thing a government can do is bargain with them. If a ransom of any sort – money or release of prisoners – is paid to hostage holders, an industry begins. If the US government starts giving terrorists what they want in exchange for one American life, more Americans will be taken hostage. Can a government give ransom for one hostage and refuse to give it for others? On what grounds would such discrimination be made? One immorality will be compounded by another, either by the government’s continuing to bargain or refusing to continue to bargain.

It was and should be a firm policy not to deal with terrorists. Obama broke that rule when he started negotiating with the Taliban years ago. Negotiating with terrorist organizations legitimizes them.

Not only has Obama let the Taliban win the war in Afghanistan, but he has also made himself their creature. All the  American lives lost in that ghastly country have been spent for Obama to preen himself as a hero for “ending” the war – ie surrendering – and for getting back one hostage in exchange for five Taliban leaders* freed from Guantano military prison. They should have been shot long ago. Keeping them alive was always a bait for their terrorist comrades to capture Americans and hold them as bargaining chips.

Obama broke the law again when  he traded five jihadis held in Guantanamo for Sergeant Bergdahl. Federal law requires Congress to be notified before prisoners are transferred. (He breaks the law so often it is becoming habitual. How weak is the Republican House of Representatives that they let him get away with it over and over again?)

And of course, the five released Afghan prisoners will rejoin the Taliban.

What Obama has done, on all these counts, is bad. Very bad.

But the story gets even worse.

It looks highly probable that Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was not being held as a hostage. He may well have been a deserter and collaborator. He may have been released because he converted to Islam – and gave positive help to the terrorists.

From the Washington Post:

Bergdahl, 28, is believed to have slipped away from his platoon’s small outpost in Af­ghanistan’s Paktika province on June 30, 2009, after growing disillusioned with the US military’s war effort. He was captured shortly afterward by enemy ­forces and held captive in Pakistan by insurgents affiliated with the Taliban. At the time, an entire US military division and thousands of Afghan soldiers and police officers devoted weeks to searching for him, and some soldiers resented risking their lives for someone they considered a deserter.

Bergdahl was recovered Saturday by a US Special Operations team in Afghanistan after weeks of intense negotiations in which U.S. officials, working through the government of Qatar, negotiated a prisoner swap with the Taliban. In exchange for his release, the United States agreed to free five Taliban commanders from the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. …

Disappearing from a military post in a war zone without authorization commonly results in one of two criminal charges in the Army: desertion or going absent without leave … Desertion is the more serious one, and usually arises in cases where an individual intends to remain away from the military or to “shirk important duty,” including a combat deployment such as Bergdahl’s.

One Afghan special operations commander in eastern Afghanistan remembers being dispatched.

“Along with the American Special Forces, we set up checkpoints everywhere. For 14 days we were outside of our base trying to find him,” he told The Washington Post …

But U.S. troops said they were aware of the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance — that he left the base of his own volition — and with that awareness, many grew angry.

“The unit completely changed its operational posture because of something that was selfish, not because a soldier was captured in combat,” said one U.S. soldier formerly based in eastern Afghanistan … “The problem came of his own accord.”

The search in Paktika was eventually called off, after US officials acknowledged that Bergdahl had been taken to Pakistan.

The “deaths and woundings of several US soldiers” happened in the search for Bergdahl. And “the frequency of enemy ambushes and improvised explosive devices increased after he was gone”.

“The Taliban knew that we were looking for him in high numbers and our movements were predictable,” [a soldier who was there commented]. “Because of Bergdahl, more men were out in danger, and more attacks on friendly camps and positions were conducted while we were out looking for him … His actions impacted the region more than anyone wants to admit.”

Those sentiments were underscored in a long series of tweets that were posted Saturday night and went viral online. … The writer said he was on base at the time and believes that Bergdahl planned his escape for days, leaving between 3 and 4:30 a.m., when there was the least amount of light. The following day, the troops there questioned Afghan children nearby, who said they had seen an American crawling through weeds.

“While searching for him, ambushes and IEDs picked up tremendously,” one of the tweets said. “Enemy knew we would be coming.” …

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking to reporters Sunday in Bagram, Afghanistan, declined to talk about any possible action by the military against Bergdahl. A senior defense official indicated that punitive action was unlikely, no matter what the circumstances were. “Five years is enough,” he said.

Justice is of no interest or concern to the Obama regime, and prosecuting Sergeant Bergdahl for desertion and endangering his fellow American soldiers would spoil the aura of kudos with which Obama has surrounded himself over this “rescue”.

Current and former service members also questioned whether the United States should have released five members of the Taliban in exchange for Bergdahl. Former Sgt. Aaron King, who deployed to Iraq twice as part of the 101st Airborne Division, said that … US troops join the military knowing that they could be kidnapped. He also said that troops accept that although their fellow service members will search for them, they are not to be used in negotiations.

“We’re giving up too much for this individual,” said King … “Five guys are getting back out into the world to probably conduct terror operations and harm others.”

And we have no idea what Obama did to get this evil bargain agreed and implemented. We are told that “Qatar” was the go-between. Who in Qatar? Why? What did the negotiator say, and to whom? Was much made of Bowe Bergdahl’s conversion to Islam?

Has his father, Bob Bergdahl, converted to Islam? If so, was it a cause or effect of his son’s conversion and betrayal? And was it a help in getting his release?

Bob Bergdahl triumphant: if he looks like a Muslim, and talks like a Muslim, and prays like a Muslim ….

Former  Army Lieutenant Col. Allen West caught a tweet by Sergeant Bergdahl’s father, Bob Bergdahl, before it was deleted:

I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!

Which happened first – Bob Bergdahl becoming a Muslim and learning to speak Pashto, or Bowe Bergdahl joining the Taliban? Who affected whose decisions?

The plain fact is that we are at war with Islam, because Islam is actively at war with us. And out of this dark event, yet again the question arises: On whose side is the president of the United States, Barack Obama?

* The five Taliban prisoners released in the illegal, immoral, and dangerous exchange: Mohammed Fazl – head of the Taliban army. He commanded the main force fighting the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in 2001. Mullah Norullah Noori – governor of Balkh province in the Taliban regime,  helped coordinate the fight against the Northern Alliance. Mohammed Nabi Omari – the Taliban’s chief of communications, helped al Qaeda members escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Khairullah Khairkhwa – governor of Herat province from 1999 to 2001, said to have been “directly associated” with Osama bin Laden. Abdul Haq Wasiq – deputy chief of the Taliban regime’s intelligence service. His cousin was head of the service.

*

More pieces of apposite information come from the Daily Mail:

Bowe Bergdahl joined the military so he could help Afghans. He told   his parents he was ‘ashamed to even be American’. He mailed home boxes containing his uniform and books. His father, Bob, has grown a long, thick beard and learned to speak the Afghanistan tribal language Pashto. His parents said their son had joined the military so that he could help the Afghan people.

“The 24-year-old has converted to Islam and now has the Muslim name Abdullah,” according to one of his captors, a Taliban deputy district commander in Paktika, who called himself Haji Nadeem. He said that Bergdahl taught him how to dismantle a mobile phone and turn it into a remote control for a roadside bomb. Nadeem also claimed he received basic ambush training from the US soldier.

Desertion in a time of war can carry the death penalty. But as Congress never passed a declaration of war in respect to Afghanistan, the maximum penalty Bergdahl would face is five years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, if it’s proved that he deserted with the intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service. If a charge of absence without leave –  ended by the US apprehending him – is brought against him, there would be no requirement of proof that he intended to remain away permanently. The maximum punishment for that would be a dishonorable discharge and 18 months’ confinement.

*

And yet more fascinating information and speculation on The Bergdahl Mysteries come from Michael Ledeen at PJ Media:

I will confess to a dark suspicion that when Robert Bergdahl, standing next to President Obama, said in Pashto to Bowe Bergdahl, “I am your father,” it was some sort of coded message.  I mean, what in the world was that all about?  Does any father have to say such a thing to a son?  Did he think Bowe didn’t know who his father was?

But then I started to ask questions of people who had followed the Bergdahl saga, and they calmed me down a bit.  The elder Bergdahl seems a bit odd.  Look at the pictures.  “A hippy,” one of my best sources said.  A guy who’d gone to Idaho to pursue a lifestyle reminiscent of the romantic sixties:  love, peace, and the expansion of the mind.  …  And it connects well with the story of Bowe, leaving his base in an “intoxicated state,” which, if true, can’t mean alcohol, which is forbidden in such places.  It might mean pot, or hashish, however.  Berkeley, California, on the plains of Afghanistan. …

Forget about the Taliban, they weren’t holding Bowe.  He was a captive of the Haqqanis … What did the Haqqanis get for Bergdahl?  … Four of the Guantanamo terrorists were indeed Taliban, and hence low priority for the Haqqanis.  …

So we need to ask how much money the Haqqanis got, or how many weapons …  something of value had to be given to the Haqqanis.  I don’t believe they turned over Bowe as a favor to the Taliban.

It is also possible that the Iranians were involved …. They have trained both the Haqqanis and the Taliban, and they are eager to extend their control over Afghanistan as we retreat. … One of the released Taliban was in cahoots with them, planning anti-American operations as we prepared to invade in 2001. …

As we sort out the real facts from the abundant background noise, we will discover several disconcerting things: first, that control over the efforts to recover Bowe often shifted between US government agencies. Second, that it is misleading to say that the negotiations were underway for five years; the final push came in the last six weeks, when the Qataris told the U.S. that a deal was now possible. Third, that the list of Guantanamo terrorists to be “paid” shifted continuously.  And fourth, who were the key intermediaries?  I suspect we will find some relatively unknown academics involved in the talks.  It wasn’t entirely the work of Qatari diplomats and U.S. officials by any means.

Finally …  why the sudden urgency at the end, when talks had often collapsed in the past? … We’re missing a key element, something separate from the Bergdahl saga.

For once, I think we have a good chance to find out.  There are lots of angry people out there, from military guys who despise Bowe and think he’s worthless, to members of the various agencies who fought one another to get control and glory and will now tell very different versions of what actually took place.

The people I wouldn’t trust on this one – aside from top decision makers who likely have a lot to hide – are the Bergdahls.  They’re very odd people, to put it mildly.

He walked Independence Square in Kiev, the site of months of turmoil, and spoke with leaders of the protest movement, many of them college-aged. He visited a hospital in Tzfat, Israel, where he saw Israeli doctors provide free medical care to Syrians gravely wounded in the civil war there.

Despite his god-botheriness (an infection of irrationality from which no American politician known to us is free), and at risk of attracting the disapproval of some of our highly valued readers, we confess that we like Ted Cruz. We think he might make a good president.

Here’s an account of his current travels abroad issued by the Heritage Foundation, with the views he has expressed on issues of foreign affairs:

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, visited Israel, Ukraine, Poland and Estonia this week and detailed his travels in a conference call today …

Cruz gave a personal account of how those countries perceive American leadership during a turbulent time in the region. …

[He] reaffirmed his contention that Israel is America’s strongest ally and one that requires support to buffer peace talks with the Palestinians.

“The U.S. needs to stand with Israel,” Cruz said on the conference call. “No one wants to see peace more than Israel. But consistently, the Obama administration has criticized and attacked the leadership of Israel. Over the last five years, America is receding from leadership in the world, and Russia, Iran, and China have stepped into that vacuum and made the world a more dangerous place.”

Cruz emphasized the U.S. has no business dictating terms of a peace agreement, but he criticized the Palestinians for recent failures in the talks, and established basic requirements he said any agreement must have.

“The Palestinians need to renounce terrorism and to declare that Israel has the right to exist,” said Cruz, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If not, negotiations will fail.”

Similarly, after meeting with Ukraine protest leaders in Maidan Square and later on with Ukrainian Jewish and Catholic leaders, Cruz described a country eager for help, in any form it can get.

Help also means deterring the force of Russia, by imposing tougher sanctions than the Obama administration has applied, he said.

“One thing I took away from the Ukrainian leaders is that the military lacks basic equipment, such as armor, communication tools and night-vision goggles,” Cruz said. “The leadership in Ukraine is looking for help wherever it can find it. And it’s in our interest to help. We ought to be using all the tools of soft power to impose significant sanctions on Russia.” …

Cruz declared the nuclear threat of Iran the biggest hindrance to peace and the largest test of American credibility.

He criticized the Geneva interim agreement, a pact between Iran and the P5+1 countries officially titled the Joint Plan of Action, which decreased economic sanctions on Iran as the countries work at a long-term agreement.

Cruz said sanctions should be lifted only when Iran disassembles its centrifuges and hands over its enriched uranium.

“The current deal is a very, very bad deal and a historic mistake,” Cruz said. “In the best-case scenario, we leave Iran to the threshold of a nuclear breakout. There’s concern in Israel that the U.S. deal with Iran exacerbates the problem. Every leader I met viewed the prospect of Iran getting a nuclear weapon as the strongest threat facing Israel and the U.S.”

We agree with these views of his. (Only we don’t think there should be any “peace process” involving Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians should be integrated into some of the 21 Arab states, and Israel should set its borders.)

As always, we invite comment.

Robert Spencer writes at Jihad Watch:

It has already been a busy Memorial Day weekend. Stories reported at Jihad Watch over the last two days:

Saturday

Tunisia: Muslim screaming “The nation of Muhammad returns for vengeance” stabs Jew, is released

Sharia Egypt: Christian gets four years prison, $1400 fine for insulting Islam by drawing cartoon of Muhammad on Facebook

Somalia: Islamic jihadists murder at least 10 in jihad attack on parliament

Yemen: Islamic jihadists murder at least 27 people in raid on city

Pakistan: Islamic jihadists murder seven in three separate blasts

Thailand: Islamic jihadists murder three, injure 55 with series of blasts

Nigeria: Islamic jihadist murders two in bungled jihad/martyrdom suicide bombing

Iraq: Islamic jihadists murder seven people with car bomb at alcohol shop

Uganda: Churches step up security after threats from Islamic jihad group

Sunday

Australia: Jihad fundraiser and brother of convicted terrorist preaching in mosques

Iran’s Supreme Leader: Jihad will continue until America is no more

Syria: Sharia enforcers disrupt wedding party, detain women for un-Islamic dress

Authorities suspect Islamic jihadists behind murder of four at Brussels Jewish Museum

Djibouti: Islamic jihadists murder three with bomb in restaurant filled with Western soldiers

Today

Nigeria: Islamic jihadists of Boko Haram murder 24 people in attack on crowded market

In the face of all this, the Pope calls a man who has just partnered with a jihad terror group vowed to the destruction of the Jewish State a “man of peace” … The President of the United States has said, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”, even to the point of removing all mention of Islam and jihad from counter-terror training material, acceding to the demand of Muslim groups with links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood — and thereby forbidding law enforcement agents from studying and understanding the motives and goals of those who have vowed to destroy us.

And so on Memorial Day, we remember when we had leaders to defend us. We still have strong individuals who have vowed the defense of our nation, and for that we can be grateful, but they are being led by a political class so willfully ignorant of prevailing realities, and so deeply compromised, that they make misstep after misstep, endangering us all — while a likewise compromised media does everything it can to cover for them and defame those who sound the alarm about this problem. …

We remember that in our nation’s darkest days, there arose strong, rough men — the ones to whom Churchill referred when he noted that “we sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us”. For that we pause today to offer our gratitude [to them], and our hope that there still remains enough of them to see us through this present darkness.

Our resolve to remain free is iron; now all we need are some leaders with similar resolve.

We like that idea immensely. But we know there are many among us whose resolve to subjugate us to the will of over-mighty government, and even to the domination of savage Islam, is also iron.

Their idea of a desirable leader is Hillary Clinton. Judging by appearances and her record, the Benghazi disaster in particular, we would not describe her as a strong rough man ready to visit violence on those who would harm us. We dare to hope for someone stronger, rougher, masculine, and militant.

As usual, Pat Condell speaks the truth – this time about Sweden.

And this is from the New American, by Selwyn Duke:

You’re free in Sweden to be critical of immigration, those in power, or people identifying as “LBGT” [not lettuce, bacon, gunge and tomato as in a British commercial sandwich, but lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender – ed] – at least within the confines of your mind. But dare express those views, even on the Internet, and you can now be more easily prosecuted under a new law …

The crime of ‘insult’ will be prosecuted … for giving offense to immigrants, LGBTQ persons or authorities … immigration in particular enjoying sanctified status in Sweden.

As CBN reported earlier this month in a piece entitled “Soviet Sweden? Model Nation Sliding to Third World”:

Sweden’s leftist establishment and media believe a cornerstone of their perfect society is multiculturalism — large-scale immigration from some of the poorest, most backward nations on Earth — and Swedes who disagree with that plan risk being labeled racist, fascist, even Nazi. …

This is despite the fact, say critics, that wide-scale Third World immigration is threatening Sweden’s future.

As CBN also reported:

Sweden’s immigration model is failing miserably … test scores in Swedish schools are plummeting … [and] crime in some areas has skyrocketed. Immigrants burned the Stockholm suburb of Husby for over a week last year.

Many Jews now live in fear of attacks by Muslim immigrants and are leaving. Amun Abdullahi, a journalist for Swedish radio, left last year and returned to her native Somalia after she was attacked in the Swedish media over her news report about radical Muslim immigrants in Sweden. She told Swedish television that Mogadishu was safer than immigrant areas in Stockholm.

Frontpage Mag’s Daniel Greenfield … provides even more perspective:

Sweden’s population grew from 9 million to 9.5 million in the years 2004-2012, mainly due to immigration from ‘countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.’ 16 percent of all newborns have mothers born in non-Western countries. Employment rate among immigrants: 54 percent. Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States.

Note that 77 percent of these rapes are perpetrated by “foreigners”, most of whom are Muslim, while their victims primarily are native Swedes. And these figures may very well be artificially low estimates, as the government would prefer to make the headlines go away.

And Western governments have long aimed to make politically incorrect criticism go away with tyrannical hate-speech laws.

For example, LifeSiteNews.com reports:

Chapter 15, Section 8 of Sweden’s criminal code prohibits the expression of ‘disrespect’ towards favoured minority groups. The law carries a penalty of up to four years of imprisonment. It requires no evidence of incitement to violence and lacks any objective standard for identifying ‘disrespect’.”

 …  Sweden’s new law [is]   designed to target näthatare, which, I understand, translates into “net haters.” Yet … “Sweden’s Free-Speech Charade,” hate is whatever the Swedish thought police say it is — at the particular moment in question. Here’s one example he provides:

In January 2002 … a district court sentenced neo-Nazi Fredrik Sandberg to six months in prison for publishing a Third-Reich-era pamphlet (“The Jewish Question”). But four years later, the official who initiated that case (Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz) discontinued an investigation into the Stockholm Central Mosque regarding its distribution of tapes that encouraged Muslims to kill Jews, described therein as “the brothers of apes and pigs.” His legal justification? “[Such statements] should be judged differently — and therefore be regarded as permissible — because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict.”

So what is an aspiring hater to conclude? If you’re going to hate, make sure it’s habitual? Or is it something else? It appears, critics might say, that some haters are more equal than others.

Chloé Valdary, a student leader at the University of New Orleans, speaks for justice, for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the oppressed women she champions, against the savagery of Islam, and against the narrow-mindedness, dogmatism, and heartlessness of political correctness in general and certain academic feminists at Brandeis University in particular.

Islam IS a savage ideology.

Feminism IS nugatory.

Political correctness IS bigotry.

Most non-Western peoples ARE culturally backward.

Hillary Clinton has an uninteresting mind, to judge by what she expresses in her public utterances and how she expresses it. She also has a disreputable past, and she is manifestly dishonest and  incompetent. The Benghazi disaster alone  supplies enough evidence of that. If she is elected to the presidency, it will be for no better reason that that she is a woman: a sexist reason. Disaster would follow for the nation and the world if someone so unsuitable and unqualified were to head the executive branch of government – as it has followed the election of Barack Obama. He too is unsuitable and unqualified for the office, and the only reason he was elected to the presidency was, for many millions of voters, his ethnicity: a racist reason.

About Hillary Clinton, Bryan Preston writes at PJ Tatler:

Not only is Hillary Clinton not an inspiring candidate, with no compelling backstory to fuel her run. Not only is Hillary Clinton a lousy stump speaker whose cadence and style careen between the wooden and the clownish. Not only did she prove to be a terrible campaign manager in 2007-08, elevating incompetent loyalists to positions of power when seasoned professionals were needed. Not only is Hillary Clinton all of that. … She’s a lousy, blundering oaf when it comes to policy.

Hillary Clinton’s political career is filled with major, damaging mistakes.

The most current example of Hillary’s follies is Boko Haram. That terrorist group is currently holding about 220 girls hostage in Nigeria, and is almost surely doing unspeakable things to its captives. This morning broke with news that the Islamic terrorists are planning to use the girls as bargaining chips to get hundreds of its own jihadists released from prisons in Nigeria and probably elsewhere. Islamist groups across the world have been angling for a way to get the blind sheikh, the Santa-hatted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack, released from prison in the United States. In fact, getting him released motivated the attacks on September 11, 2012, including the one in Benghazi, Libya, that Hillary Clinton later blamed on a YouTube movie.

That’s a theory we hadn’t thought of. It may be true.

It would not be a shock at all if Boko Haram demands the blind sheikh’s release in exchange for letting one or more of the captive girls go. If that happens, what do the #BringBackOurGirls brigades do?

Hillary Clinton’s role in all this?

Well, first, she appears to have started the sad-faced hashtag campaign that raised awareness of the girls’ plight but has in fact done frack all to actually win their freedom. What the tweet campaign did do, probably, is alert Boko Haram enough to split the captives up and make it all but impossible for any special forces to go get them without risking a bloodbath.

Worse than that, though, Hillary Clinton had the chance to help nip the Boko Haram problem in the bud to some extent. When Hillary reigned as secretary of State, she had the chance to label Boko Haram a terrorist group. Law enforcement including the FBI even pleaded with her to do that. She refused.

Slapping the terrorist group label on Boko Haram would not have destroyed them, of course. It takes drones and bombs and the occasional boots on the ground to do that. But it would have harmed the group’s ability to collect funds from sources in the United States and around the world. It would have empowered Interpol and other law enforcement agencies to pick up members of the group traveling internationally. It would have cut off some of their funds traipsing around the Islamist funding networks. It would have made it easier to go after them, and it would have made it harder for them to operate. Plus, it would have sent a strong signal that Boko Haram are personas non grata.

Hillary refused. Boko Haram kept on going, kept on killing, and is now subjected to a withering barrage of frowns and tweets.

But what difference will all that make (to recall a famous shout of Hillary Clinton’s at a Congressional hearing) to an ill-informed, sentimental, left-leaning electorate?

Here’s a video, from PJ Media via Hot Air, about Hillary’s “accomplishments”. It should never be lost as long as there are beings in the world who enjoy laughing. 

Peter Wehner, at Commentary, discusses the administration’s “red lines”. His article is titled The Obama Presidency Descends Into Farce.

He starts by quoting a Washington Post report:

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Thursday that he has seen “raw data” indicating that the Syrian government
has used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in a “number of ­instances” in recent months.

“There will be consequences” if evidence of new chemical use is confirmed, Kerry said, but “we’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise date, time, manner of action”. …

“I’m not going to discuss what specific weapons or what country may . . . be providing or not providing” the arms, he said. “I will say that out of today’s meeting, every facet of what can be done is going to be ramped up. Every facet.”

Poor John Kerry cannot use language to express the vague ideas that float in his skull. He grabs at words like a drowning man grabbing at flotsam.

Exactly how do you “ratchet up a facet”? 

We have now reached the farcical stage in the Obama presidency.

Does Secretary Kerry understand how much of a joke it is for him to threaten “consequences” if evidence of new chemical weapons by the Assad regime turns out to be true? Given the Obama administration’s track record on Syria – with “red lines” drawn and erased, with its refusal to arm opposition groups early on, with agreeing to negotiations that have empowered the Syrian regime – it is better that Mr. Kerry keep his mouth shut than to speak and provoke ridicule.

The president and his secretary of state’s words long ago were emptied of meaning. So please, for your sake and ours, give up on the bluster. It only makes a shameful situation worse.

And here is Daniel Greenfield writing about the same subject:

Kerry was then questioned by a reporter about the possible responses if the evidence eventually proves that chemical weapons were indeed used again:

QUESTION: Thank you. Secretary Kerry, to follow up on your last point, if it is proven that chlorine was used as a chemical in war, which is prohibited, what will the Syrian Government face? What steps can be taken?

SECRETARY KERRY: …With respect to the CW and what the consequences are, it has been made clear by President Obama and others that use would result in consequences. We’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise time, date, manner of action, but there will be consequences if it were to be proven, including, I might say, things that are way beyond our control and have nothing to do with us. But the International Criminal Court and others are free to hold him accountable. And as you know, we have a resolution that will be in front of the United Nations with respect to culpability for crimes against humanity, atrocities in the course of this conflict. So one way or the other, there will be accountability.

Let’s translate that from Diplomatese into English. There will be no consequences whatsoever except for a meaningless resolution somewhere.

Putin and Iran won. Obama lost.

After having set a red line, Kerry is withdrawing the red line while still insisting that there will be consequences … including consequences “beyond our control”.

He doesn’t mention the use of force, which is smart since he has no intention of using it, and instead babbles about the UN and the ICC which are threats to make any dictator laugh himself to death.

To summarize

1. Obama set a red line for Syria

2. His bluff was called

3. There is now no more red line

This is the pathetic foreign policy of Obama Inc. This is what they’ve done to American power and credibility.

Meanwhile, down in Foggy Bottom, servants of the state are trying to find out how to ratchet up those facets. When they know how, and do it, Assad will be taught a tremendous lesson. Just wait and see. And while we’re waiting, good old John Kerry will mix us some more metaphors.