Executive
Hot mike catches Obama talking treason
The hot mike, the microphone left “live” after a politician or other dignitary has made a speech, is the latest weapon in the arsenal of the Fourth Estate. Whether most members of that Estate appreciate it is another issue. But the value of the hot mike is indisputable. Case in point: the man now holding office as President, Barack H. Obama, told his nominal counterpart, Dimitry Medvedev, that after the election, he (Obama) will be able to give the Russians everything they ask for. That is treason.
What the hot mike caught
Obama is in Seoul, South Korea, for the Nuclear Security Summit. Yesterday, in a room full of microphones, in a break between speeches, he sat down for a head-to-head talk with Medvedev. Medvedev is now the President of the Russian Federation, but will give up that post to the assumed election winner, Vladimir Putin. (Yes, that Putin, as in “Takogo kak Putin!“)
Said Obama:
On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space.
Said Medvedev in return:
Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
Obama:
This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
Medvedev:
I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
Barack H. Obama. Photo: Pete Souza, January 13, 2009
What neither man realized was that a hot mike was already “transmitting that information” to any reporter who cared to pick it up. One did. He was Russian. But because this is not (yet) the Russia of the Second Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, this Russian reporter talked freely with other reporters. ABC News picked it up from him, and The Washington Times picked it up from both. (See also here.)
This is not the first time that a hot mike has caught Obama, or someone allied with him, saying what he really thinks of America and Americans. A hot mike caught Vice-President Joe Biden, two years ago, saying that the passing of the health care reform bill was “a big deal.” (Just how big, would not be safe-for-work for CNAV to repeat.) But this hot mike caught Obama talking treason.
Missile defense is not a “problem” to “solve.” If our country can stop a ballistic missile from landing on our soil without having to attack the missile base before the missile ever flies, how does that harm anyone? If anything, that should make war less likely, not more. It means that even starting a war is futile for the other side. The Russians know this. They know that they cannot develop a guided missile to fly past our shields. So they want us to take them down.
The latest hot mike moment clearly embarrasses Obama. Later, at a press conference, he tried to make a joke of it:
Is this mike on?
This is no joke.
What Obama really thinks
The hot mike once again tells us what Obama really thinks. As Erick Erickson of Red State put it most eloquently:
Without having to worry about losing an election, the President who has already gone to war against religious groups, dragged his feet on oil drilling expansion, and sought to destroy private health care for American citizens will be even more emboldened to bring his European style socialist vision for America to reality.
This goes far beyond giving away missile defenses to the Russians. This goes to UN Agenda 21, and the real purpose of Operation Fast and Furious. Those are only the prize examples.
To paraphrase an old proverb: It is better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you a fool (or a traitor), than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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Treason? Really? Please cite the statute he has contravened to qualify for treason. Is this desperation I see hanging before me?
How about negotiation? Planning his agenda for when he wins his 2nd term. Yes, when. Bush’s missile defence was a massive mistake, but hell, why should he care when all he’s doing is destabilising Europe.
Big picture, Terry – a “journalist” such as yourself should look at it sometime.
Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution reads: “Treason against the United States shall consist of levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” That’s what Obama proposes to do.
And you’re wrong about a missile defense system. No one has ever shown how a system for pure defense “destabilizes” a continent. If it does, that is only because too many countries in Europe have, in positions of leadership, a fine rogues’ gallery of quislings willing to sell out their own country to a New Russian Empire, or a New Warsaw Pact.
More raving right-wing paranoia.
1) Obama has not “gone to war against religious groups”
2) Obama has actually angered environmentalists by issuing ”more” drilling permits than Bush.
3) Obama is trying to ”fix” your broken healthcare system, in which tens of millions have no insurance
4) Obama is, at worst, a centrist. You evidently don’t understand what socialism is.
And latest, you have proved the point Obama was making to Medvedev: that every little thing he says before the election will be blown out of proportion by the right, in a desperate (and futile) attempt to beat him in November.
In any case, the missile defense system won’t work (they never do, and never can unless we develop full-on forcefield technology), and it is massively unpopular in the countries where the system will be based.
Personally, I’d call extracting concessions from Russia in return for being “flexible” about an expensive white elephant is good diplomacy. Calling it treason is simply more proof of the futility of right-wing ideology.
Except that this is not how you extract concessions from an adverse power. Ronald Reagan extracted his concessions from Mikhail Gorbachev by saying, “This is my final offer; take it or leave it.” And when Gorbachev plaintively asked Reagan what he, Gorbachev, could have done that he didn’t, Reagan famously said, “You could have said ‘Yes.'” Which is exactly what Gorbachev did say, later on.
Obama is not extracting concessions. He is giving away the store.
And “middle defenses never work”? Ask the Israel Defense Force whether missile defenses work. Their Iron Dome system has worked fairly well defending the city of Ashdod from brace after brace of rocket attacks from Gaza City.
Needless to say Iron Dome isn’t a missile defence system; it can intercept low-speed artillery rockets with about 90% effectiveness. We got better results at Basrah by simply mounting the Phalanx guns from decommissioned warships on a flatbed trailer.
Of course against an actual missile attack, with nuclear-armed missiles, 90% effective just isn’t good enough. At present the USA’s best ABM system is the SM-3 missile deployed on AEGIS ships. It has a land-based variant, but I imagine that keeping them at sea would be a good example of the “flexibility” Obama was talking about.
It also makes more sense in the context of defence against Middle Eastern threats; launched from ships in the Mediterranean they could destroy a SCUD, Fajr or Jericho missile in the boost phase, rather than attempting a much more difficult terminal phase intercept.
What is it that you liberals commenting on this have against the missle DEFENSE system? Do you want some rouge nation sending a missile over here? And our “broken” healthcare system? If you guys had your way, the government would be rationing food again, only giving us what they want us to have.
A “defensive” missile system is destabilysing since the country without one may well find it in it’s best interest to wage war to keep the country getting one from completing their own.
This is because the have-not country could well reason “since we don’t have such a system our neighbors could use theirs to defend themselves after having launched a first strike that we will only be able to respond in limited fashioned, (since their first strike will have taken out a substantial portion of our retaliatory capability).
The President is constitutionally empowered to make treaties, if it’s a poor treaty we leave it to the senate to deal with.
Accusing Obama of treason is just silly.
Keep up the entertainingly poor “thoughts”, it’s a joy to watch you sink further into the Dark side.
If that is a threat, then if I were President, I would quietly advise the other party to try it and see what happened.
And I would advise the Senate to reject any such treaty out-of-hand.
Finally: a diagnosis of paranoia is untenable in any subject having reasonable grounds for the suspicions he harbors. And such a diagnosis is never credible from the primary adversary or his allies.
Terry A. Hurlbut says:
March 27, 2012 at 7:50 pm
“If that is a threat, then if I were President, I would quietly advise the other party to try it and see what happened.
And I would advise the Senate to reject any such treaty out-of-hand.
Finally: a diagnosis of paranoia is untenable in any subject having reasonable grounds for the suspicions he harbors. And such a diagnosis is never credible from the primary adversary or his allies.”
Saber rattling is one thing…bluffing yourself (and your constituents) into nuclear war is quite another!
The senate (so far) has been relatively immune from pure partisanship and could rightly settle a bad treaty tout de suite.
Please forgive me if I do not rise to the bait: I neither think you mentally ill nor otherwise out of touch with reality. Nor do I think your worldview leads you to hold and defend irresponsible and dangerous opinions.
FWIW I applaud you for having the moxie for telling us like it is, in your view.
I merely repeat what Ronald Reagan did. He won. So would I. It’s that simple.
How exactly has Obama given “aid and comfort” to the “enemy”? last time I checked the US isn’t at war with Russia. Why are – once again – only the people who really, really hate Obama whingeing about it?
And the thing about Reagan winning the Cold War is complete baloney. The USSR collapsed under its own weight and inefficiencies, and also thanks to the processes started by Gorbachev. More than anything, their invasion of Afghanistan prompted the collapse. Of course, the US helped there, when they funded the Taliban and that other guy, Bin Laden.
And missile defense does not work – not forgetting all the ructions in the countries concerned when they wanted to install them. Simply put, if I have enough missiles to stop 10,000 incoming nukes, then all my enemy has to do is build 12,000 and I’m up a certain creek without a paddle.
That’s where your analysis fails. The Russians couldn’t build that many nuclear missiles. Gorbachev knew it. (That he even came to power might have had something to do with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union knowing that it was running out of money and time, as well as warm bodies to fill the slot of Party General Secretary.)
Then, too, you conveniently forget the relentless pressure that Reagan brought to bear on the Soviet Union. His boldest statement, of course, was:
In a post you didn’t see fit to post, I pointed out that missiles are largely irrelevant these days. Orbital bombardment from space is far more effective and impossible to defend against. This missile shield is a waste of time, money and effort.
Orbital bombardment? Funny—last time I checked, the Russians don’t have orbital bombers. Nor are they likely to develop any.
Orbital bombardment is an incredibly simple matter of dropping stuff from orbit. Yes, I’m oversimplifying here, but the simple approach would be to use a mass driver-type system with magnets accelerating a big chunk of metal with a rocky core to a high velocity: gravity helps too. You aim this wherever you want and there’s nothing to stop it.
The Russians are currently the only country with the capability of reaching the ISS, and modifying a Soyuz craft with the necessary launcher wouldn’t be hard.
What you also obviously don’t know is that the USSR actually had an orbital bombardment capability. Google “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System” – only their adherence to the Outer Space Treaty prevented them from launching actual weaponry into space. Presumably the blueprints are still around, and switching from nuclear to kinetic bombardment wouldn’t be a stretch. This system was phased out by 1979 – a year before Reagan became president.
In short, the missile defense system won’t work, will annoy Russia, antagonize Europe and generally do far more harm than good. And it won’t work. Why not use it as a bargaining tool to gain concessions from Russia? Obama has done the right thing here.
Well, I, for one, would gladly take that chance.
I don’t threaten well. Or haven’t you gathered that?
“I, for one, would gladly take that chance.”
It’s not a chance, Terry, it’s a certainty. Russia has a demonstrated FOBS capability dating back decades. FOBS is really just a matter of launching a satellite which at the appropriate point in its orbit suddenly turns into a reentry vehicle. If you point your missile shield at Russia they’ll just regenerate the capability to go over it, and in the meantime preposition cruise missiles to destroy it.
And those cruise missiles will explode on my continent, not yours, so I’d much prefer it if your congress didn’t have the deciding vote on whether to keep annoying Russia or not.
You realise Russia had nothing to do with the Berlin Wall coming down, right? You also realise it came down after Reagan was out of office?
How do you know what the Russians are capable of? Maybe not after a very expensive Afghan war. But they’ve had 20 years to pool their resources. The fact still remains – if your missiles can destroy x number of enemy missiles, then all you need is x+10 to win.
Also, why the obsession with Russia, when N Korea, Iran or Saudi Arabia (or maybe Israel if they have a bad day) are more likely to nuke you?
I realize no such thing. Gorbachev did kick the props out from under the Warsaw Pact regimes. But I doubt that he would have done that if Reagan had not acted as he did for all those years.
If the Russians were as capable as you say, then they’d just ratchet up the production line.
And in fact, those little guys you mentioned (not including Israel) are the real reasons for concern. Their industrial capacity is exceedingly feeble. If you can stop the one missile in a year that they can crank out, war is suddenly not worth the energy of issuing the mobilization order.
Terry A. Hurlbut says:
“If the Russians were as capable as you say, then they’d just ratchet up the production line.”
Yah but, you see they wouldn’t have needed nuclear warheads for all of the missiles. The scenario I’ve see suggest they would have sent their first wave in with about 30% nuclear tipped missiles. We, not knowing which were real, would have had to shoot the vast bulk of our defenses to ward off annihilation, the second wave would have come in unimpeded.
(You really need a preview and the ability to edit here…cut this as ye fit)
“They know that they cannot develop a guided missile to fly past our shields.”
Not only can they, they already have: cruise missiles, which Medvedev has said he will preposition in western Russia to destroy the missile shield in the event of a war.
Russia has no objection to a US missile shield. What they object to is a missile shield capable of stopping their ICBMs, because from their perspective this degrades the principle of Mutual Assured Destruction. They’re not happy with the USA having a shield that would let them attack Russia with impunity.
“told his nominal counterpart, Dimitry Medvedev, that after the election, he (Obama) will be able to give the Russians everything they ask for.”
No he didn’t, and you know it. He said he will have more flexibility. That isn’t quite the same thing, is it?
Yes, it is. Whether you want to admit it or not.
And don’t tell me again that you don’t like Obama any better than I do, because frankly, I dispute that notion.
“Yes, it is.”
No, it isn’t. What if he just means flexibility to reconfigure the planned missile shield so it meets Russia’s concerns? It’s perfectly possible to defend against missiles from the Middle East without locating the systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Russia has even offered in the past to cooperate with the system; having their own radars linked in, and their own people in the control centres, would reassure them and result in a more effective system. You do know that Russia has some fairly good antimissile systems of its own, don’t you?
WHen you consider what Russia really wants, “flexibility” can only mean to give Russia that which the American people would scarcely tolerate giving, could they prevent it.
What Russia really wants is not to have a missile shield capable of neutralising most of their ICBM force. And as the proposed location for this shield is in Europe it isn’t up to the American people to decide. WE will decide if we want it here or not and you will comply.
Talking of treason, where is your article on Haley Barbour’s links to Iran’s nuclear program?
You produce some better evidence than your brass-hat unfounded accusation, and I’ll answer.