On "Meet the Press" this morning, Todd asked Hillary if she believes that the rise of Isis would

[Akamai]

happened if we had not invaded Iraq, and her answer was, Al Qaeda existed before we invaded Iraq. He was pressed a bit more about this by Todd and she answered (in words much like these), "There is no clear line between the invasion and rise of Isis."

Wow! What an achilles heel, being responsible in part for the rise of Isis. How many other terror groups, enemies can we create, embolden if we have a muscular foreign policy?

Go, Bernie!

[daleanime]

1. So in addition to Climate Change Deniers.....

we now have Foreign Policy Deniers.

[Akamai]

2. Trust Hillary -- her foreign policy insights are absolutely keerect!

[daleanime]

3. Well, if all you're looking for....

is business opportunities.

[tecelote]

22. +1 Exactly.

Cheney is the evil genius. He sold us in to war and Halliburton is still profiting from it today.

Hillary is an enabler continuing these immoral wars that the American people want to end.

[LW1977]

27. I really can't wait for the primaries are over!

So childish posts like that ^^^ can go down a notch!

[tecelote]

33. What is not true?

I happen to care about the wars. You can go back to pretending we are not fighting immoral wars if you want. Now is a time we can affect change. I'll take it.

[roguevalley]

41. She is hopeless. She is losing this election all by herself.

what a terrible terrible mess she is in. Thank god.

[gvstn]

42. +1000

Afghanistan and the Taliban, I will give them (even though it was really about some sort of pipe line Cheney envisioned) but Iraq is definitely immoral and against every rule of law. If they had gone against Saudi Arabia, I might have supported that since it appears they financed 9/11, if not engineered it.

Let's get the hell off oil and out of the Middle East!

[Akamai]

58. Even Afghanistan is dubious. The Taliban had offered George Bush Osama bin Laden to be tried

in a neutral country if we supplied proof that he was involved. But George Bush wanted his war in Afghanistan and he got it. This certainly helped him when the 2004 election, as he painted Democrats as being weak-kneed.

Go Bernie!

[gvstn]

65. I have a thing against the Taliban for desroying 2000 year old statues.

It just disgusts me, destroying art work.

Bush was awful. Go! Bernie is what everyone should be saying.

Thank you!

[Helen Borg]

23. Kissinger has her back. No worries...

[Kip Humphrey]

4. experience vs. judgement.

[Jefferson23]

5. No clear line? She has got to be kidding. Obama has been falsely blamed for not continuing Bush's

asinine war by Republicans. He was in no position to force Iraq's leaders to keep
American soldiers when they made clear to Obama, no immunity for them any longer.

No US president was going to put our soldiers at risk like that but to suggest there
is no clear line as to the rise of ISIS as Clinton has attempted is a complete break
from reality.

[ancianita]

6. Yeah, this was not an answer that shows awareness of post invasion dynamics in Iraq.

[newthinking]

45. I think she knows clear well. She advocated for Victoria Nuland at D. of State.

Nuland’s husband is "historian" Robert Kagan, Council on Foreign Relations member, and co-founder of the think-tank "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC)." PNAC was the force behind President Bush's foreign policy and the war in Iraq.
Our foreign policy continues to follow the PNAC footprint even though Bush is out of office. PNAC has changed names and methods but they still have their hands all over our foreign policy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Font size=3]A Family Business of Perpetual War[/font]
March 20, 2015

Exclusive: Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia – and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.

This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks.

Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)

Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.

Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (which doesn’t disclose details on its funders), used his prized perch on the Washington Post’s op-ed page on Friday to bait Republicans into abandoning the sequester caps limiting the Pentagon’s budget, which he calculated at about $523 billion (apparently not counting extra war spending). Kagan called on the GOP legislators to add at least $38 billion and preferably more like $54 billion to $117 billion:

Continued:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/


[Font size=3]Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit[/font]

[blockquote {margin: 50px 200px 100px 150px;}]The Ukraine crisis – in part stirred up by U.S. neocons – has damaged prospects for peace not only on Russia’s borders but in two Middle East hotspots, Syria and Iran, which may have been exactly the point
by Robert Parry

You might think that policymakers with so many bloody fiascos on their résumés as the U.S. neocons, including the catastrophic Iraq War, would admit their incompetence and return home to sell insurance or maybe work in a fast-food restaurant. Anything but directing the geopolitical decisions of the world’s leading superpower.

But Official Washington’s neocons are nothing if not relentless and resilient. They are also well-funded and well-connected. So they won’t do the honorable thing and disappear. They keep hatching new schemes and strategies to keep the world stirred up and to keep their vision of world domination – and particularly “regime change” in the Middle East – alive.Sen. John McCain appearing with Ukrainian rightists at a rally in Kiev.Sen. John McCain appearing with Ukrainian rightists at a rally in Kiev.

[blockquote {margin:130px 150px 10px 250px;}]

Now, the neocons have stoked a confrontation over Ukraine, involving two nuclear-armed states, the United States and Russia. But – even if nuclear weapons don’t come into play – the neocons have succeeded in estranging U.S. President Barack Obama from Russian President Vladimir Putin and sabotaging the pair’s crucial cooperation on Iran and Syria, which may have been the point all along.

Though the Ukraine crisis has roots going back decades, the chronology of the recent uprising — and the neocon interest in it – meshes neatly with neocon fury over Obama and Putin working together to avert a U.S. military strike against Syria last summer and then brokering an interim nuclear agreement with Iran last fall that effectively took a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran off the table.


MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/20

[grasswire]

53. thank you

important information

[dreamnightwind]

55. +1, extremely important. Know your neocons. Hillary certainly knows them. - nt

[ancianita]

56. Thank you. When I first read the text of PNAC, I knew oligarchs were proclaiming their

special brand of fight-to-the-death imperialism. A Monroe Doctrine write large.

But secular imperialism is just one of at least two other kinds.

I don't think Nuland and Kagan are under Kerry now because Obama, I believe, is transitioning out of the PNAC mindset.

I suggest you read "Putin's Dragon" from the latest Feb. 8 issue of The New Yorker. The author, Joshua Yaffa, lives in Moscow as a New American Fellow, one of a Soros' projects to 'keep our enemies even closer.' (I wonder if he ever runs into Snowden.)

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/putins-dragon

His very long piece on the bloody and beloved Ramzan Kadyrov and Putin's relationship indicates two things for this country -- why the Establishment is so concerned about Putin's return to claiming old soviet land bases, and how his behavior with the Islamic head of Chechnya can inform American foreign policy. The Saudis are watching Putin, too. His military expansion isn't to threaten us, as neocons like to have us think.

I offer this to you because, even though the Clintons seem tainted with the neocon pro-war plans, there are other imperialisms at play on the world stage. I think Secretary of State Clinton keeps her knowledge of those plans fairly close during this election. I think the US military appreciates her knowledge, as well, and that's why she was in the room with Obama, et. al., when Bin Laden went down.

If Sanders wins a path to the presidency and actually beats, say, a Trump -- which he wouldn't -- the foreign policy gap in his experience will force attention from him more and more of each and every day. Competing imperialisms are going to wear on a Sanders' high priority domestic agenda, good as it is.

If President Sanders' attention to domestic battles keeps him from clearly seeing other global players, our CIA/military will serve for him, and sorry, the decisions will be pretty similar to those made by a Clinton.

I just don't want either a baited Clinton nor Sanders to be suckered into land base resource acquisition wars. Resource independence is what they both want. But I think Clinton has a better read on the global map that Obama's seeing right now. Obama thinks so, too. I have a feeling that his and Sanders' meeting might have touched on that, among other things.

As I speculate aloud here, I'm keeping my radar out because the PNAC has been in play for decades. Americans flatter themselves that Putin's or China's actions are about the US.

Thank you for providing context to our thoughts here. Sorry if my reply was slow.

[newthinking]

61. I have seen Obama as a more moderating force

The Neocons appear to have a LOT of power and influence, especially since they allied in many ways with Neoliberal institutions.

The Republican party has built a very powerful international institution (International Republican Institution, etc) and had a very heavy influence on the MIC and leadership in the Military. MCCain has seemed to be a large part of what has kept them in play.

It's not only PNAC, but Moneyed corporate players are allied with this consortium. The Financial elite were in the middle of pillaging Russia. It is not quite true that the oligarchy there was simply a "Russian" phenomenon. The "rules of the game" in the 90s there were brought into play by the players of Disaster Capitalism. The Russians were very naive to how modern capitalism worked and they allowed these players to come in and direct, having been convince that they would be "the land of milk and honey" that they had been convinced represented the American way. But instead they were brought Disaster Capitalism upon a foundation of libertarian taxes. Many westerners became VERY rich (or richer) but they know better how to stay in the shadows.

Larry Summers was part of the team that encouraged and benefited from the plunder of the 90's there. This is well understood in Russia. Summer's is one of the reasons that Putin is in power.

Those players are very angry that their easy plundering program was halted. Russia is still the largest landmass of untapped natural resources left in the world.

Oh, and by the way, Soros is not at all a neutral party. He has also been paying the media to print outright propaganda. His influence has practically destroyed The Guardian (His "New East Outlook" is subsidizing the Guardian) which used to be a fairly reliable media site.

[kcjohn1]

7. Hillary judgment is similar to Republicans

How anyone thinks foreign policy is her strength I will never understand. Has she being right about anything? Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran (Kerry saved that), etc.

[Dragonfli]

13. Kissinger believes she served better as SOS than most, that might explain few things about her.

It certainly explains why DAESH doesn't concern her, Pinochet didn't concern Kissinger after his little overthrow party either, hell they were even buds. It is a type of leadership on foreign policy with a clear tradition.

[oberliner]

20. Daesh doesn't concern her?

What a ridiculous thing to write.

[Dragonfli]

21. Not concerned with what many said would fill the vacuum in both Iraq and Libya is apt

And tragic rather than silly. But what would one expect of one that learned foreign policy at Kissinger's knee?

[oberliner]

24. She is definitely concerned about Daesh

It is preposterous to suggest otherwise.

[Dragonfli]

25. Her poor judgement allowing their rise is what is preposterous /nt

[newthinking]

54. So she sees the connection between Al-Qaida and ISI but does not have a problem

with supporting and arming a "moderate rebel" coallation that is largely made up of Al-Nusra (a branch of Al-Qaida)?

Our foreign policy is nuts in the ME.

[Dragonfli]

62. At least Kissinger is proud /nt

[roguevalley]

44. she won't even acknowledge that with Saddam as a firewall

Taliban and the others were kept out of Iraq. She helped destroy that with her vote and they moved in. Her vote led to Abu Ghraib and the birth of ISIS. For her to deny it or dance around it not only shows a deep lack of character, it erases any lie that she would be better about foreign policy than Bernie. She is a liar and has no character to deny this when the whole fucking world was watching at the same time.

[ancianita]

59. Actually, the Establishment's thinking is aligned with the military's. The military is in the

shadows of this election.

Our foreign policy is technically, officially, demonstrated by the commander-in-chief. When he doesn't give it a name, we've got more room to play without international judgment on the world stage.

We pay attention to what everyone in the party says is wrong about Hillary's activities, but her alignment with Obama and the military show that diplomacy is has been cover and distraction for either military planning or oligarchic planning.

If Sanders comes up with an explicit framework for foreign policy that shows knowledge of realities abroad, he'll find a path to the nomination.

[kath]

8. So she's protecting Bush on his invasion of Iraq (that she voted for) so that she can get elected?

What kind of brilliant foreign policy acumen does she have, to say that the invasion had nothing to do with the rise of Daesh?
What. the. Holy. Fuck.
:bangnead:

[R B Garr]

9. Did you also hear Bernie name a Reagan advisor

when asked who he would contact about foreign policy?

[in_cog_ni_to]

10. Thanks to her and many other war hawks, the entire ME is a disaster that didn't need to be!

She owns it and she will never be able to live it down...because we won't let her!

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

[amborin]

15. this sums up her scary foreign policy "experience"

[in_cog_ni_to]

17. Exactly. Iraq, Syria, Libya, ISIS...and on her wish list, Iran. <------Clinton's Foreign Policy

Disasters.

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

[newthinking]

47. Know your NeoCons: The Kagans - A Family Business of Perpetual War

I was gobsmacked to learn that Hillary advocated and brought on Victoria Nuland into the Department of State. She is part of the family business of NEOCON war strategy. Married to one of the founders of Project for a New American Century (where the Iraq war plan was detailed in **1999*** and who's members made up a "who's who" of Bush's war cabinet).

[font size=3]A Family Business of Perpetual War[/font]
March 20, 2015

Exclusive: Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia – and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.

This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks.


Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)

Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.

Continued:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/

[polly7]

11. The majority of recruits for IS came from Libya ...

I really wish someone would question her on her opinion of that, not to mention Boko Haram in Africa burning people alive.

[Binkie The Clown]

12. "...a difficult relationship with the truth."

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” legendary journalist and former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein reiterated that newly-announced Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a “difficult relationship with the truth.”

[basselope]

14. Wow! For someone with her experience, that was a novice answer.

Does she not remember that we basically CREATED and armed Al Qaeda???

To use them as an example... just ... WOW.

[polly7]

16. Hussein had kept Al Qaeda out of Iraq. Did she forget that part? nt.

[MisterP]

18. she probably thinks Hussein met with Atta in Prague!

[polly7]

34. Could be.

I remember reading Hussein had been warned the U.S. might try to make up links to Al Qaeda for propaganda purposes. He was right.

Additionally, there was no credible evidence whatsoever that the secular Baathist Iraqi regime had any ties to the hardline Islamist group al-Qaeda, yet Clinton distinguished herself as the only Senate Democrat to make such a claim. Indeed, a definitive report by the Department of Defense noted that not only did no such link exist, but that none could have even been reasonably suggested based on the evidence available at that time.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/01/27/five-lamest-excuses-hillary-clintons-vote-invade-iraq

[Jack Rabbit]

19. She sounds like a refugee from the Bush administration

That is simply denying the obvious.

[Jarqui]

26. WOW "There is no clear line between the invasion and rise of Isis." is right

So endeth the debate on who has the better judgment for foreign policy.

Congratulations Bernie!

She's a pandering piece of work.

[LiberalLovinLug]

28. Another example of establishment Dems refusing advantage

I guess she answered this way to cover her butt on her vote, but FFS that is shallow. She has already claimed she made a "mistake" with her war authorization vote.....NOW OWN IT! All Dems should be pounding home the point of how terrible Republicans are with foreign policy and national security. Even those that once voted for the war and are now regretful. Oh...unless they are secretly NOT regretful.

[shadowmayor]

29. Just one word

Horseshit!

Anybody who doesn't acknowledge our invasion of Iraq with the ongoing civil war in that region, the rise of al qaeda in Iraq where they previously had no foothold and the metastasis of al qaeda into ISIS is either lying or delusional. I expect this kind of bullshit from repukes and military brass, but not from our democratic candidates. I think she actually knows better. Not sure why she would answer the way she did. It does make those who were against the invasion from the get go have a much more solid footing when it comes to our foreign policy.

[NRaleighLiberal]

30. Shocking....well, not really.

[SHRED]

31. Does she truly believe this??

WTF??

[ViseGrip]

32. Hillary's history of experience shows very poor judgment, right up to today, on MTP

[Spitfire of ATJ]

35. Not surprising....

This is the accepted position of the Bush Crime Family.

[Jed28]

37. Essentially, they belong to the same club...

[Hydra]

68. Same family actually

The Clintons have been adopted into the 1%, and on top of that into the Bush Family itself. One of the great elephants in the room right now since Jeb! is getting no traction at the moment.

[elleng]

36. Oh gee!

JUDGMENT determines votes for me, and sorry to say it appears hers is damaged.

[George II]

38. Considering that Sanders claims that attacks by ISIS are caused by global warming....

....I'd say Clinton is correct in not connecting the Iraq invasion and ISIS.

Here's what Sanders said on "Face the Nation" in November:

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/sanders-on-climate-link-to-terrorism/

Sanders, Nov. 15: Well, that’s not only my observation, John. That is what the CIA and the Department of Defense tells us. And the reason is pretty obvious. If we are going to see an increase in drought and flooding and extreme weather disturbances as a result of climate change, what that means is that peoples all over the world are going to be fighting over limited natural resources.

If there is not enough water, if there is not enough land to grow your crops, then you’re going to see migrations of people fighting over land that will sustain them. And that will lead to international conflicts.

I think, when we talk about all of the possible ravages of climate change, which, to my mind, is just a huge planetary crisis, increased international conflict is one of the issues that we have got to appreciate will happen.

Dickerson: But how does drought connect with attacks by ISIS in the middle of Paris?

Sanders: Well, what happens, say, in Syria, for example — and there’s some thought about this — is that, when you have drought, when people can’t grow their crops, they’re going to migrate into cities. And when people migrate into cities, and they don’t have jobs, there’s going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment. And people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now. So, where you have discontent, where you have instability, that’s where problems arise. And, certainly, without a doubt, climate change will lead to that.

[polly7]

39. He's 100% right on that, also. nt.

[Lordquinton]

49. He's not wrong

the drought in Syria has made the problems much worse, causing people to flock to the cities in a time that was already very unstable.

Climate change leads to instability which leads to war. That we clutter it up with buzz words like "Terrorism" and the fact that there are a lot of folks in high places who want to pretend that climate change effects everything doesn't change what's actually happening.

[newthinking]

50. No. He did not say that ISIS was formed due to global warming at all

He simply was agreeing with the report that Global warming is a threat and will make people in the middle east more vulnerable. And that will make fertile ground for extremists to recruit.

[SoapBox]

40. She has to spin, spin, spin.

Camp Weathervane!

[lastone]

43. Possibly the

Biggest fucking lie she's ever uttered. There is a direct line between the invasion and the formation of isis, anyone saying anything but is a fucking liar.

[SHRED]

48. Here's the actual transcripts to judge for yourselves

CHUCK TODD:

I'm curious. Do you believe if it wasn't for the Iraq War, we wouldn't have ISIS today?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Well, I think that's a hard conclusion to draw, because remember, we had Al Qaeda before we had ISIS. Al Qaeda attacked us in New York, Al Qaeda attacked our embassies in Africa.

CHUCK TODD:

But the argument is that the instability in Iraq is what has created this. And that if Saddam Hussein were still there, we wouldn't have ISIS.

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Well, I think that's a lot of jumps in logic that to me doesn't really add up. The Iraq War, there's no doubt contributed to instability. I'm not going to in any way deny that. But you cannot draw a direct line. What you can do is to say that jihadist terrorism, starting with Al Qaeda, and moving onto its latest incarnations, most particularly ISIS, is in response to a number of forces in factors that are roiling up the Middle East and certainly fighting for what Islam means and how it's going to be presented and what people are going to mean when they talk about it. So yeah, we've got a much bigger set of problems.

http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-february-7-2016-n513266

[polly7]

51. "But you cannot draw a direct line."

Oh yes, you sure as * can!

[Akamai]

60. shred--Thanks for posting this!

I didn't find this earlier and really appreciate your giving us the exact words.

Go Bernie!

[SHRED]

64. You're welcome and yes GO BERNIE

[Broward]

52. This is another major liability for her in a general election.

Aside from all of the other disastrous consequences, there is no ISIS without the Iraq War. Are any of the leading Repub contenders on the record publicly for supporting the Iraq War?

[firebrand80]

57. She's right

ISIS is simply the current most popular version of radical Islam. It wouldn't exist in the exact same form had we not invaded Iraq, but we'd still be dealing with it.

[Akamai]

66. I'm not sure Republicans believe Isis is the same as all other forms of radical Islam. Rubio calls

Isis "an existential threat" and the Republican candidates in general view it similarly.

Hillary and others chastise Bernie for not wanting any American boots on the ground to fight Isis, believe that with the two attacks -- in Paris and California -- suddenly we should be very, very afraid of Isis. A lot of nonsense, for sure. (e.g., 520,000 Americans are dead each year from smoking.) But I sure applaud Bernie for being very reluctant to get the country involved in military entanglements abroad, and so does the majority of the country.

But the Republicans and Hillary cannot have it both ways -- either Isis is the greatest threat ever or it is not. So far they, and the main stream media, is exaggerating the danger of Isis.

[Ferd Berfel]

63. Her Judgment just sux in so many areas

Iraq
TPP
DLC
Allowing herself to become a corporate puppet

[Martin Eden]

67. ISIS is now rising in Libya

Would that have happened without US intervention to help topple Gaddafi?

[Hydra]

69. Money says she'd shrug that off too

"These things just happen! No one can be sure why..."