Obama Choked on Russia Long Before the 2016 Election by Eli Lake
So why did Putin believe he could treat America like it was Estonia?
The answer is that Obama spent the first six years of his presidency turning a blind eye to Russian aggression. In his first term, Obama pursued a policy of “reset” with Moscow, even though he took office only five months after Russia had occupied two Georgian provinces in the summer of 2008. In the 2012 election, Obama mocked his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, for saying Russia posed a significant threat to U.S. interests. Throughout his presidency, Obama’s administration failed to respond to Russian cheating on arms-control agreements. His diplomacy to reach an agreement to temporarily suspend progress on Iran’s nuclear program made the U.S. reliant on Russian cooperation for Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.
In the shadows, Russian spies targeted Americans abroad. As I reported in 2011 for the Washington Times, Russia’s intelligence services had stepped up this campaign of harassment during the reset. This included breaking into the homes of NGO workers and diplomats. In one case, an official with the National Democratic Institute was framed in the Russian press on false rape charges. In 2013, when the Obama administration appointed Michael McFaul to be his ambassador in Moscow, the harassment got worse. McFaul complained he was tailed by cameramen from the state-owned media every time he left the Embassy for an appointment. He asked on Twitter how the network seemed to always know his private schedule.
This lax approach to Russia was captured in the memoir of Obama’s former defense secretary, Robert Gates. He wrote that Obama at first was angry at his FBI director, Robert Mueller, and his CIA director, Leon Panetta, for recommending the arrest in 2010 of a network of illegal Russian sleeper agents the FBI had been tracking for years.
“The president seemed as angry at Mueller for wanting to arrest the illegals and at Panetta for wanting to exfiltrate the source from Moscow as he was at the Russians,” Gates wrote. He quoted Obama as saying: “Just as we’re getting on track with the Russians, this? This is a throwback to the Cold War. This is right out of John le Carré. We put START, Iran, the whole relationship with Russia at risk for this kind of thing?” Gates recounts that the vice president wanted to ignore the entire issue because it threatened to disrupt an upcoming visit from Russia’s president at the time, Dmitry Medvedev.
After some more convincing, Obama went along with a plan to kick the illegal spies out of the country in exchange for some Americans. But the insight into the thinking inside his Oval Office is telling.
“Send It To Lake Right Away!” | The Atlantic – Nov. 2009 |
In all this, a figure like NIAC’s Trita Parsi is dangerous. Charismatic, telegenic, close to the Obama administration and yet a man whose credentials during the Green Revolution are impeccable: he suggests that neocon Manicheanism is far too crude to understand let alone resolve this crisis. Parsi opposes sanctions, for example, as do Karroubi and Mousavi. And, more relevant with respect to the neocons, he opposes war. And so if you want to understand the motives behind the leaked documents behind Eli Lake’s recent fair story, you need look no further. Smearing the non-neocon Green opposition as essentially pro-Khamenei solidifies the neoconservative war project.
This is pretty obvious but we now have some rare and clear proof of how the neocons operate.
An email error gives the entire game away:
The central neocon smear of Parsi was that he was actually an agent for Kamenei. The absurdity of this is underlined by the fact that Eli could find no evidence for it whatever in his expose. But the origin of the story came from the neocon right, engaged in a defamation suit with NIAC and Parsi. And we now have, via Josh Rogin, the details of the strategy:
Previously unreported documents provided by NIAC to The Cable show that Daioleslam was working with neoconservative author Ken Timmerman as early as 2008 and that their moves on Parsi were part of a larger effort to thwart Obama’s Iran policy.
“I strongly believe that Trita Parsi is the weakest part of the Iranian web because he is related to Siamak Namazi and Bob Ney,” Daioleslam wrote in one e-mail dated April 2, 2008, “I believe that destroying him will be the start of attacking the whole web. This is an integral part of any attack on Clinton or Obama.”
Namazi is a fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy with whom Parsi has worked. The e-mails show that Parsi and Namazi coordinated efforts to make recommendations to administration officials.
Tim Kapshandy, a lawyer for Sidley Austin LLP, came to represent Daioleslam in 2009. Upon seeing the e-mails about Parsi and Namazi, he accidentally sent a note to both of them. The note read, “Send it to [Washington Times reporter Eli] Lake right away!”
“This is not as much targeting us, the end objective seems to be, according to these e-mails, to bring down Obama,” Parsi said of the emails in an interview with The Cable.
In another previously unreported memo, it appears that Parsi tried to start an official lobbying organization on Iran, back when he was an unpaid advisor to now disgraced former Rep. Bob Ney. Sent by Parsi from his congressional e-mail account to ex-Bush aide Roy Coffee and former Ney chief of staff David Di Stefano, the memo talks about a “strategic partnership” between the new lobbying organization and NIAC and says that Parsi would be the lobbying group’s executive director.
The memo was entitled, “Towards the creation of an Iranian-American lobby.”
It’s just a rare and small glimpse of how neocons operate. It is warfare abroad and warfare at home. It is a philosophy of attack and force, not dialogue and thought. And if we are to find a sane way through our current perilous global environment, it must be exposed and resisted as thoroughly and as relentlessly as we try to resist its mirror image among the extremists within the Iran coup regime.
- In the December 2002 e-mail, Halpern advised Abramoff to end his $3,560 monthly stipend to Shmuel Ben Zvi, a Jewish settler, and to stop buying “spy equipment,” including night vision goggles and camouflage, which Ben Zvi was using to equip paramilitary units in the West Bank.
[Source: A Lobbyist’s E-Mail Trail of Billing, Status, Charity ]
The neocons operate hand in glove with the right-wing fascist state of Israel under Benyamin Netanyahu. A whole army of bloggers from the right to the “progressive” left are willing to take the bait and run with their false stories. The war parties need an “enemy” for their warmongering. The Democrats fold and participate for the sake of winning the next election.
○ Michael Weiss, Iranian-U.S. Hardliners Led Iranian-American Family to Evin Prison | Tikun Olam |
○ Bob Ney, Trita Parsi and pro-Tehran activities in Washington
○ Corrupt politician Bob Ney installing Israeli wireless network in Congress by Oui on Nov. 24, 2005
○ Circle Closed :: Neocons – AIPAC – Shill Reporter ¶ Laurie Mylroie – Benador Associates by Oui on Oct 17, 2005
