COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Donald Trump Had Nothing to do With Voting to Send US Troops to Iraq to be Killed and Maimed. Hillary Clinton Did. She Voted for it.



Khizr Khan and his wife allowed themselves to be used as political pawns by the Clintons. It was Hillary Clinton’s  vote that sent Capt. Khan to his death. It was Keizer Khan that attacked Donald Trump questioning his citizenship, right to free speech, understanding of the US Constitution and did in a public national televised event where Trump could not respond. 

Mr Khan, if  you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

Mr. Trump, Clinton Baited you and you fell for it, hook, line and sinker.

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Khizr Khan was tricked into smearing Donald Trump

By Charles Hurt, THE HILL

Khizr Khan is a fine American and the father of a true American patriot. But now he is also everything that is wrong with American politics today.

It is not entirely his fault, though he has only himself to blame for allowing his dead son to be used for the most hideous of purposes and dragged through the gutter of nasty and dishonest partisan politics.

Khan and his wife took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week to deliver an impassioned rebuke of Donald J.Trump that was universally celebrated by the media. Even Republican politicos swooned at the gambit. The Clinton campaign trotted out the Muslim couple because their son, Captain Human Khan, was killed by a car bomb in 2004 while guarding a base in Iraq.


“If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America,” said Khan, sliding easily into the political tradition of lying and distorting the position of one’s opponent.

“Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims,” he went on. “He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country.”

Despite all efforts by the media to distort Trump’s position about “banning” Muslims, he has made perfectly clear time and again that he does not want to ban all Muslims. He wants to simply perform thorough and complete background checks on all immigrants coming from countries presently in the grips of violent Islamic terrorism.

Yes, that means if you are a Muslim who wants to immigrate from Syria or Afghanistan, you are going to get a lot more scrutiny than if you are a Jew trying to immigrate from Canada. That is most unfortunate, but not nearly as unfortunate as innocents getting slaughtered by 10th Century savages killing in the name of Allah.

Anyway, this higher scrutiny should be no obstacle for the likes of Khizr Khan and his family, except for the additional hassle. 

So, why would Khizr Khan choose to insert himself into politics and demean his son’s sacrifice by lying at a political convention on national television?
The answer is simple: He allowed himself to be tricked into it. And the Clinton campaign was all too eager to take advantage of him and his family and Capt. Khan and use them for their own political partisan purposes.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself how exactly the Clinton campaign arrived at the decision to trot out the Khan family in the middle of their highly-choreographed, exhaustively produced convention?

Were they just looking to give voice to the parents of a soldier? That would be a first. Did they want parents of anyone who had died abroad in the defense of their country? Gee, why not pick the parents of one of the fallen warriors who died defending the U.S. consulate in Benghazi? Oh, that’s right. They would have called Hillary Clinton a liar. Can’t have that.

No. Politicians like Hillary Clinton do not see people like Capt. Human Khan as a soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice on a foreign battlefield in defense of his country. 

Politicians like Hillary Clinton see him only a demographic, a dispensable political pawn to be scooted around an electoral map, the way generals used to move armies across giant maps of the lands they were invading.

But instead of liberating Europe from evil fascists, politicians like Hillary Clinton use their long, worn croupier rakes to move their pawns about with the singular goal of advancing their own personal political careers. 

To her, Capt. Khan is not a just soldier who died defending his country in a foreign land. First and foremost, to her, he is a Muslim of Pakistani heritage and therefor is a perfect political pawn for just the right situation. 

For just about every American alive, Capt. Khan is an inspiring and unifying figure. To Hillary Clinton, he is a tool to be used to divide people. In her false promise of unifying America, she creates a national political Babylon. Her avaricious greed for more and more power knows no bounds.

It is an open secret in Washington that politics is the last bastion of rampant racial profiling. Both parties do it, but Democrats have taken it to a whole new scientific level.

Politicians like Hillary Clinton slice and dice people into racial and gender groups. Then they toot on all their little “dog whistles” to send all their little demographic pawns scurrying in various directions. That is how you wind up with Khizr Khan standing on stage beside his head-scarves wife, waving around the U.S. 
Constitution and distorting Donald Trump’s position on keeping radical Islamic terrorism at bay.

Perhaps a better testimony from Khizr Khan would have been for him to talk about how Hillary Clinton was in the U.S. Senate when she voted to invade Iraq. Years later, after that position became politically unpopular, she changed her mind and joined new political forces to vacate all the land across Iraq that so many great American patriots like Capt. Human Khan had died for.

It was her vote that sent Capt. Khan to his death. And then it was her decisions later to render that sacrifice worthless.

Try sticking that into your dog whistle and blowing it.

Hurt writes the "Nuclear Option" column for The Washington Times. A former D.C. bureau chief for the New York Post, he has covered the White House, Congress and presidential campaigns since 2001. Follow him on Twitter @charleshurt.

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

Gideon Levy: Only if we had more human Israelis like this honest man will we have a hope for a future in the Middle East

Stop Living in Denial, Israel Is an Evil State

Israel may not be Nazi, nor even a fascist state. Yet it is a member of the same terrible family, the family of evil states. Just consider these acts of evil perpetrated by the state...

Gideon Levy 

HARRETZ

After we’ve cited nationalism and racism, hatred and contempt for Arab life, the security cult and resistance to the occupation, victimhood and messianism, one more element must be added without which the behavior of the Israeli occupation regime cannot be explained: Evil. Pure evil. Sadistic evil. Evil for its own sake. Sometimes, it’s the only explanation.

Eva Illouz described its signs (“Evil now,” Haaretz Hebrew edition, July 30). Her essay, which challenges the idea of the banality of evil, considers the national group as the source of the evil. Using philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept, she finds a “family resemblance” between the Israeli occupation and history’s evil regimes. This similarity does not mean that Israel is Nazi, nor even fascist. And yet it is a member of the same terrible family, the family of evil states. It’s a depressing and brilliant analysis.

The evil that Illouz attributes to Israel is not banal, it cannot happen anywhere, and it has political and social roots that are deeply embedded in Israeli society. Thus, Illouz joins Zeev Sternhell, who warned in his impressive and resounding essay about the cultural soil out of which fascism is now growing in Israel (“The birth of fascism,” Haaretz Hebrew edition, July 7).

But alongside these analyses, we must also present a brief history of evil. We must present the instances that combine to create a great and horrific picture, a picture of Israeli evil in the territories, so as to stand up to those who deny the evil. It is not the case of the individual – Sgt. Elor Azaria, for example, who is being tried for the death of a subdued Palestinian assailant in Hebron – but the conduct of the establishment and the occupation regime that proves the evil. In fact, the continuation of the occupation proves the evil. Illouz, Sternhell and others provide debatable analyses on its origins, but whatever they are, it can no longer be denied.

One case is like a thousand witnesses: the case of Bilal Kayed. A young man who completed a prison term of 14.5 years – his entire sentence – without a single furlough, without being allowed to at least say goodbye by phone to his dying father; a clear sign of evil.

About six weeks ago, Kayed was getting ready for his release. A representative of the Shin Bet security service – one of the greatest agencies of evil in Israel – even showed him a photograph of the home his family had built for him to stir him up even more ahead of his release. And then, as his family waited impatiently for him at the crossing point and Kayed grew ever more excited in his cell, he was informed that he was being thrown into administrative detention for at least another six months, without trial and without explanation.

Since then, he has been on hunger strike. He is cuffed to his bed. His family is not allowed to see him. Prison guards never leave his room and the lights are not turned out for a moment. Evil.

Only evil can explain the state’s conduct toward Kayed – only an evil state acts this way. The arbitrary announcement, at the last moment, of a senseless detention is abuse, and the way he has been treated since then is also abuse.
Only evil can explain the detention last week of another young man, Hiran Jaradat, whose brother Arif (who had Down syndrome) was killed in June and whose father died two days ago. He is under arrest for “incitement on Facebook” and was not released to attend his father’s funeral. Evil.

The continuation of the detention of poet Darin Tatur – evil. The destruction of the tiny swimming pool that the residents of Khirbet Tana in the northern West Bank had built for themselves – evil. The confiscation of water tanks from a community of shepherds in the Jordan Valley in the July heat – evil.



A great many of the decisions of the occupation regime that decides the fates of individuals, families, communities, villages and cities cannot be explained without evil. The list is as long as the occupation. The extortion of sick people from Gaza to enlist them as collaborators, the blockades on cities and towns for weeks, the Gaza blockade, the demolition of homes – all evil.

Banal or not, its existence must be acknowledged and it must be recognized as one of the most influential values in Israel. Yes, there is an evil regime at work in Israel, and therefore it is an evil state.
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What sort of society feels absolutely nothing after killing hundreds of children?
'Reasonable suspicion' leads to death of Palestinian who went to buy cookies
U.S. strongly condemns 'accelerated, systematic' settlement activity by Israel
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.734309

Snake Oil Salesman, Phillip Karber and Strangelove Psycho, General Phillip Breedlove, Lying and Panting to Start a War with Russia

Hacked Emails Reveal NATO General Plotting Against Obama on Russia Policy

Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks.

Obama defied political pressure from hawks in Congress and the military to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian government, fearing that doing so would increase the bloodshed and provide Russian President Vladimir Putin with the justification for deeper incursions into the country.

Breedlove, during briefings to Congress, notably contradicted the Obama administration regarding the situation in Ukraine, leading to news stories about conflict between the general and Obama.

But the leaked emails provide an even more dramatic picture of the intense back-channel lobbying for the Obama administration to begin a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

In a series of messages in 2014, Breedlove sought meetings with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, asking for advice on how to pressure the Obama administration to take a more aggressive posture toward Russia.
“I may be wrong, … but I do not see this WH really ‘engaged’ by working with Europe/NATO. Frankly I think we are a ‘worry,’ … ie a threat to get the nation drug into a conflict,” Breedlove wrote in an email to Powell, who responded by accepting an invitation to meet and discuss the dilemma. “I seek your counsel on two fronts,” Breedlove continued, “how to frame this opportunity in a time where all eyes are on ISIL all the time, … and two, … how to work this personally with the POTUS.”
Breedlove attempted to influence the administration through several channels, emailing academics and retired military officials, including former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, for assistance in building his case for supplying military assistance to Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed separatists.
“I think POTUS sees us as a threat that must be minimized, … ie do not get me into a war????” Breedlove wrote in an email to Harlan Ullman, senior adviser to the Atlantic Council, describing his ongoing attempt to get Powell to help him influence Obama.
“Given Obama’s instruction to you not to start a war, this may be a tough sell,” Ullman replied a few months later, in another string of emails about Breedlove’s effort to “leverage, cajole, convince or coerce the U.S. to react” to Russia.
Breedlove did not respond to a request for comment. He stepped down from his NATO leadership position in May and retired from service on Friday, July 1. Breedlove was a four-star Air Force general and served as the 17th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe starting on May 10, 2013.

Phillip Karber, an academic who corresponded regularly with Breedlove — providing him with advice and intelligence on the Ukrainian crisis —  verified the authenticity of several of the emails in the leaked cache. He also told The Intercept that Breedlove confirmed to him that the general’s Gmail account was hacked and that the incident had been reported to the government.

“The last conversation I had about it with General Breedlove, he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been hacked several times,’” said Karber. He added that he noticed at least one of his personal emails appearing online from the leak before we had contacted him. “I turned this over to the U.S. government and asked them to investigate. No one has given me any answer.”

“I have no idea whose account was leaked or hacked,” said Powell, when reached for comment about the emails. Powell said he had no comment about the discussions regarding Obama’s response to the conflict in Ukraine.
In the European press, Breedlove has been portrayed as a hawkish figure known for leaning on allied nations to ditch diplomacy and to adopt a more confrontational role again Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. Breedlove, testifying before Congress earlier in February of this year, called Russia “a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies.”
Der Spiegel reported that Breedlove “stunned” German leaders with a surprise announcement in 2015 claiming that pro-Russian separatists had “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of the most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” sent to Donbass, a center of the conflict.

Breedlove’s numbers were “significantly higher” than the figures known to NATO intelligence agencies and seemed exaggerated to German officials. The announcement appeared to be a provocation designed to disrupt mediation effortsled by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In previous instances, German officials believed Breedlove overestimated Russian forces along the border with Ukraine by as many as 20,000 troops and found that the general had falsely claimed that several Russian military assets near the Ukrainian border were part of a special build-up in preparation for a large-scale invasion of the country. In fact, much of the Russian military equipment identified by Breedlove, the Germans said, had been stored there well before the revolution in Ukraine.

The emails, however, depict a desperate search by Breedlove to build his case for escalating the conflict, contacting colleagues and friends for intelligence to illustrate the Russian threat. Karber, who visited Ukrainian politicians and officials in Kiev on several occasions, sent frequent messages to Breedlove — “per your request,” he noted — regarding information he had received about separatist military forces and Russian troop movements. In several updates, Breedlove received military data sourced from Twitter and social media.

Karber, the president of the Potomac Foundation, became the center of a related scandal last year when it was discovered that he had facilitated a meeting during which images of purported Russian forces in Ukraine were distributed to the office of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and were published by a neoconservative blog. The pictures turned out to be a deception; one supposed picture of Russian tanks in Ukraine was, in fact, an old photograph of Russian tanks in Ossetia during the war with Georgia.

Breedlove stayed in close contact with Karber and other officials who shared his views on the Ukrainian conflict.

“Phil, can’t we get a statement to counteract the Russians on use of force? what can I do to help? If the Ukrainians lose control of the narrative, the Russians will see it as an open door,” wrote retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who forwarded on his messages with Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. He also passed along concerns from the Bulgarian president that Bulgaria might be Russia’s next target.

In other messages, Clark relayed specific requests for the types of military aid desired by Ukrainian officials. In addition to radar systems and other forms of military equipment, Clark recommended that Breedlove “encourage Ukraine to hire some first rate pr firms and crisis communications firms in U.S. and Europe.” He added, “They need the right tools to engage in information warfare.”
Ukraine did hire several D.C. lobbying and communication firms to influence policymakers. In June 2015, the government signed a deal with APCO Worldwide, an influential firm with ties to senior Democratic and Republican officials.
In an email in February 2015, Karber told Breedlove that “Pakistan has, under the table, offered Ukraine 500 TOW-II launchers (man-portable version) and 8,000 TOW-II missiles,” adding that deliveries of the anti-tank weapons could begin by the end of the month. “However,” Karber wrote, “Pakistan will not make these deliveries without U.S. approval; moreover they will not even request that approval unless they have informal assurance that it would be approved.”
Karber told The Intercept that the Pakistani arms deal never materialized.
Breedlove was most recently in the news explaining that he now thinks we need to talk to the Russian government to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. “I think we need to begin to have meaningful dialogue,” he said last week, while reiterating his views on the need for a strong NATO to militarily match Russia. “Russia does understand power, and strength, and unity,” he said.

The emails were released by D.C. Leaks, a database run by self-described “hacktivists” who are collecting the communications of elite stakeholders such as political parties, major politicians, political campaigns, and the military. The website currently has documents revealing some internal communications of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, among others.


Saturday, July 30, 2016

Clinton showing that she is a potential liability for world security. Trump appears relatively sane by comparison.

Hillary Clinton wants to review US strategy in Syria against Isis and Bashar al-Assad's 'murderous' regime

The political will to oust the Syrian President has waned since the rise of Isis

Hillary Clinton plans to order a full review of the United States’ strategy in Syria as one of her first priorities if elected President.
One of her foreign policy advisers, Jeremy Bash, said she would seek to end Bashar al-Assad’s “murderous” regime despite waning political will to oust the autocratic Syrian President.
He said dealing with Syria would be Ms Clinton’s “first key task” if elected and she would work to get President Assad “out of there”.
“A Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is,” he told The Telegraph.
“It is a murderous regime that violates human rights; that has violated international law; used chemical weapons against his own people; has killed hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children.”
Barack Obama, David Cameron and international allies were vocal with their criticism of the Syrian government’s human rights abuses and war crimes at the start of the conflict in 2011 and the UK almost launched an intervention against Assad two years later.
But following the rise of the so-called Islamic State and links between its Syrian bases and attacks in France and Belgium, calls for the President’s removal have been drowned out by a move towards co-operation in the fight against global terrorism.
In a mark of decreasing hostility, the US and Russia – Assad’s staunch ally – were drawing up an agreement on bombing Jabhat al-Nusra, which has since attempted a re-brand disassociating itself from al-Qaeda.
Statements from the British government have continued to call for all perpetrators of war crimes to be held to account and for a “political settlement” in the form of a new, inclusive, government to secure long-term peace. 
Echoing Angela Merkel and other European leaders, Ms Clinton has previously called for “safe zones” where displaced Syrian civilians can live without fear of attack, but methods of implementing them remain unclear. 
Her campaign website also outlines policy on defeating Isis’ strongholds in Syria and Iraq by intensifying the coalition air campaign, and support for Arab and Kurdish allies on the ground.
Donald Trump, her Republican adversary, has made national security and immigration a key part of his campaign to reach the White House.
He calls his approach “America first” meaning alliances and coalitions would not pass muster unless they produced a net benefit to the US, drawing rebuke from security officials after suggesting he may not defend some Nato members.
While Mr Trump has accused Ms Clinton of presiding over “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness” at the State Department, she has hit back by accusing him of “losing his cool at the slightest provocation”, adding: “Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” 
American voters will go to the polls on 8 November to elect the next President.

The Israeli Shuffle and The Hosing of American Taxpayers For The Next Ten Years: $40 billion in aid over that period, which the White House called “the largest pledge of military assistance to any country in U.S. history.” But that amount is not enough for the Israelis, who are demanding more.

Israel and U.S. are close to a deal on the biggest military aid package ever


A senior Israeli official will arrive in Washington next week for a final round of negotiations involving the largest military aid package the United States has ever given any country and that will last more than a decade after President Obama leaves office.

Brig. Gen. Yaakov Nagel, the acting head of Israel’s National Security Council, has been dispatched with instructions to meet with White House officials in hopes of signing an agreement “as soon as possible,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said this week.

That represents a striking about-face for Netanyahu, who angered the Obama administration when he mused during a February meeting with his cabinet that Israel might decide to wait and “reach an agreement with the next administration.”

Nagel’s visit signals that Netanyahu may have concluded that he won’t necessarily get a better deal than the one he can forge with Obama, with whom he has had a visibly testy personal relationship. Both countries are now eager to strike a deal before Obama’s term ends.

The Obama administration has said it is prepared to sign a 10-year “memorandum of understanding” that significantly raises the $3.1 billion a year the United States currently grants Israel under an existing agreement that expires in 2018. In addition, Congress has provided additional money for missile defense.

Over months of secret negotiations that picked up steam late last year, Netanyahu was holding out for as much at $5 billion a year, according to accounts in the Israeli news media. Israelis argued that they need to spend much more on defense in the wake of last year’s Iran nuclear deal, which is freeing up frozen Iranian assets that Israel fears may be used in part to fund Iranian aggression in the region.

One major obstacle to finalizing an agreement, however, is a dispute over where the funds can be spent.

According to U.S. and Israeli analysts familiar with the negotiations, the Obama administration is insisting on phasing out a special arrangement that has allowed Israel to spend 26 percent of U.S. aid on its own defense research, development and procurement. No other country receiving U.S. funds is permitted to do so, but it was carved out in the 1980s to allow Israel to build up its nascent defense infrastructure. With Israel’s defense industry now thriving, the administration wants to pare that back and require that more U.S. aid go to American companies providing goods and services.

The possibility that Israeli defense companies could lose hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts is already causing controversy. Critics say they fear it could impair Israel’s ability to maintain equipment that is the most advanced in the region, known as its qualitative military edge.

“It will be devastating to Israeli military industries,” said Reuven Ben-Shalom, the former head of the North America branch of the Israeli military’s strategic planning division. “It’s not only a matter of business. . . . This money, 26 percent, enables the sustainment of our qualitative military edge.”

Israelis are also said to be displeased with a U.S. position that whatever amount of money they agree on will be final and that Israel will not go to Congress requesting more money, according to reports in the Israeli news media.

As the talks have dragged on, Netanyahu started getting pressured to finalize an agreement soon so that the Israeli military could proceed with its long-term planning. Israel’s finance and defense ministers both complained publicly that the delay was creating uncertainty that made planning difficult, and they urged that the deal be completed and signed quickly.

Some analysts said there was also growing recognition that concluding the agreement with Obama carried strong symbolism.

“Though he has been a strong supporter of Israeli security throughout his term, there’s clearly a difficult relationship between Netanyahu and Obama,” said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “For them to agree on this would send a signal to the world that although their personal relationship is not great, here Obama is making a down payment on 10 years of deep U.S.-Israeli security cooperation. That’s a powerful message.”

David Makovsky, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Israelis are conscious that support for Israel is slipping in some liberal quarters and that a 10-year deal with a liberal president would make it “bulletproof.”

Makovsky also cited the “unpredictability factor” of Donald Trump as a potential successor to Obama.

“He professes his support of Israel,” Makovsky said of Trump. “But he’s also someone saying America’s broke. A bit of bird-in-the-hand would lock that in.”
The U.S. election season also has put a more subtle pressure on Netanyahu, as Israeli diplomats and advisers expressed concern that the bipartisan support Israel could always count on could erode in a super-politicized election.

“The security assistance to Israel should not become a political football, anytime, and especially during an election season,” said Sallai Meridor, who was Israel’s ambassador to the United States when the last memorandum of understanding was signed, in 2007. “It’s a prerequisite that it should be endorsed and supported by both parties. That’s very important.”

The arrival of Nagel suggests that an agreement is entering the homestretch. Netanyahu has said he hopes talks will be concluded “within a few weeks.” 
Ultimately, both Obama and Netanyahu would gain political benefits from a deal, analysts say.

“It’s an exclamation point on the case the Obama administration has been making for years, that he strengthened more than ever the U.S. commitment to Israeli security,” said David Halperin, director of the New York-based Israel Policy Forum. “And it helps Netanyahu rebut criticism in recent years that he has sometimes quietly, sometimes very bluntly, sided with Republican points of views.
“It helps a bit to restore balance,” Halperin said, “to return to the notion of bipartisanship when it comes to Israel’s security.”
Eglash reported from Jerusalem.

Read more:

COMMENTS ON WHAT REAL AMERICANS REALLY THINK
fxowen
Israel hasn't been in a real war since 1973, so what does it need $40 billion for? To keep a bunch of people living in dirt and rags in line? If these blood-thirsty ghouls want to kill innocent civilians, let them do it on their own shekel instead of mooching off the US taxpayer. 
fcomez
Another disappointing action by Obama administration and the most disappointing president. What a shame.
Talkeetna81
The only reason we went to war in Iraq was because of Israel. Bush was bow-beaten by the Israelis for fear of a few Scud missiles being shot their way by Saddam. Now the Jewish leaders in the US criticize our government and demand we give them more aid. Enough of this welfare already to Israel!!! Let them pay for their own defense. Since 1947, the US has given Israel over $1.5T (yes, that's a trillion) in military and economic aid for a country of over 7.5M persons. We are such fools in this country for giving in to the Jewish lobbyists.
SimpleJoe
How many sick, veterans, elderly and poor could be cared for in the US for that money?
MerrillFrank
1:42 AM EDT [Edited]
As a country we spend about a penny per dollar on foreign assistance, roughly 1% of the budget. It's one of the largest misconceptions in American life. When you ask the proverbial man on the street what we spend on foreign aid you get answers that are all over the map. 5% to 25% when the reality is, it's way less. 
 
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2014/08/12... 
 
I support Israel but an increase the amount of aid, even though it benefits U.S. defense contractors is beyond the pale. Foreign aid ought to be best used as "soft power". Girls education (65 million girls are not in school) water projects, combating disease etc.
OnStarboardTack
biggest welfare package EVER!
cents or sense
Israel . . .can't get its own house in order . . . but aggressively telling everyone else what to do about theirs . . .  
Is Netanyahu still talking about how the Iraq war will bring us peaceful reverberations in the region? 
 
Israel has no interest or intention of improving its human rights record. I cannot in good conscience work with such a country. 
Israel started in blood, has defecated on its treaties, and has undermined our policies in the region. 
Why reward them for that? 
forbetterworld
Just this one deal 6250 $ to each of the 8 million Israelis every year for 10 years ! 
The other 24 Billion $ deal is like 30000 ( Yes thirty thousand ) to each Israeli ! 
This is in addition to various other deals and private tax deductible dollars in millions more ! 
Way toooooo much !!!!!! for insulting the President !
cents or sense
1:29 AM EDT
Yup, meanwhile we are still paying for Iraq, which is a war that Netanyahu pushed for . . . 
j_alfred_prufrock
1:22 AM EDT [Edited]
I have no idea why we would give Israel anything. They continue to steal land from Palestinians and build settlements on land stolen from Palestinians--against international law. Netanyahu deliberately tries to shame our president and continues to thumb his nose at all Americans. Israel has no strategic value to the US and is not our friend. Let's get them off our welfare roll.
whocares666
Over a half a century has passed when President Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex and of Israel.