ByRowan Scarborough– The Washington Times – Thursday, October 20, 2016
Hillary Clintonhas aligned herself closely with a vision for America laid out by her benefactor — left-wing financierGeorge Soros, who talks of “international governance,” more open borders, increased Muslim immigration and diminished U.S. global power.
The phrase “American exceptionalism” is not part of his agenda. He wrote in 1998: “The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.”
“We need some global system of political decision-making. In short, we need a global society to support our global economy,”Mr. Soroswrote.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, he said, “Military power is of limited use in dealing with asymmetric threats such as terrorism.”
The Clinton-Sorossymbiosis came into clearer focus this month with WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of hacked emails from John Podesta,Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.Mr. Soros‘ name comes up nearly 60 times.
Let us count the ways: bald lies, lies of omission, mythography, amnesia, redaction . . .
By Victor Davis Hanson
We can usefully view the Obama administration’s chronic untruthfulness as a sort of multifaceted corporation of untruth, with all sorts of subsidiaries.
THE BALD LIES OF POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY Remember the al-Qaeda-is-on-the-run 2012-election talking point? It was mostly a lie. The administration deliberately released to sympathetic journalists only those documents from the so-called Osama bin Laden trove that revealed worry and dissension among the terrorists. Then it nourished essays by pet journalists trumpeting the decline of al-Qaeda. Disturbing memos that confounded that narrative, as Weekly Standard journalist Steven F. Hayes recently noted, were kept back. “On the run” was dropped after the 2012 election, when events on the ground made such an assertion absurd.
Recent disclosures by some of the combatants about the night of the Benghazi attack remind us that almost everything Jay Carney, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and President Obama swore in the aftermath of the debacle was knowingly false. A video did not cause the attack. The rioting was not spontaneous. A video-maker, an American resident, was soon jailed, while one of the suspected killers was giving taped interviews at a coffee house in Benghazi. There were ways of securing the consulate and the annex that were not explored, both before and during the assault. Talking points were altered. Again, the catalyst for untruth was reelection worries by an administration that believes its exalted ends of social justice allow any means necessary for reaching them.
Has anything the administration said about pulling our troops out of Iraq proven true? Was it really the Iraqis’ fault or George Bush’s? Was our leaving proof that Iraq might be one of the administration’s “great achievements”? Was the Iraq that we left without any peacekeepers really “stable”? On more than ten occasions the president bragged on the campaign trail that he alone had ended American involvement in Iraq. When Iraq predictably blew up after our departure, he snarled to reporters that he was angry that anyone would dare accuse him alone of being responsible for our precipitate departure.
Was there any element of “reset” with Russia that was accurate? Obama came into office lambasting the prior administration for alienating Russia — when all it had done was adopt some rather moderate measures to punish Russia for invading Georgia. Reset, in truth, was a remission of punishments — from missile defense with the Czechs and Poles to cut-offs of some high-level negotiations — and thus served as a signal to Putin and his subordinates that Obama believed America had been wrong to react to Georgia. And we know what followed from that.
Marine Corps Sgt. Brandon Morgan (right) greets his boyfriend with a passionate kiss at an on-base military-family homecoming. A friend photographed the embrace, which was posted on the “Gay Marine” Facebook page. (Courtesy of Facebook)
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Former Marine Lt. Ilario Pantano, who fought in the “Triangle of Death” in Iraq, said: “Repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was a mistake. I have been on record about this topic from the beginning of the debate, and I am deeply disappointed in both the lawmakers and the troops, from privates to generals, that know better but were silent or even complicit in the decay of our societal or military values.
“The mission of the military is to fight and win wars not appease special interests that have spent millions to lobby for DADT repeal and use the military to force social engineering,” the former lieutenant said.
If any event marks the day the military’s gay ban was really over, it came last week, when Marine Corps Sgt. Brandon Morgan, in uniform, jumped onto his boyfriend and the two engaged in a passionate kiss at an on-base military-family homecoming.
A friend photographed the embrace, which later was posted on the “Gay Marine” Facebook page and triggered an outpouring of support — and some dissent.
For the armed service’s most tradition-bound service, the one that most opposed lifting the ban last year, the transition seemed complete when a spokeswoman at Marine Corps Base Hawaii told a local TV station, “It’s your typical homecoming photo.”
Seven long years after he allegedly committed “premeditated murder,” Iraq war veteran Ilario Pantano, who gave up a comfortable life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to fight for his country following the September 11th attacks, has been thoroughly vindicated. Thus ends a saga highlighted by an unconscionable rush to judgement by the military, and the subsequent trashing of Mr. Pantano’s reputation by leftists who never miss an opportunity to denigrate American soldiers based on nothing more than unproven allegations.
By any reasonable measure, Mr. Pantano is an American patriot. A man born to poverty in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, Pantano managed to win a partial scholarship to Horace Mann, one of the top private schools in the nation. Students from Horace Mann routinely qualify to attend some of the best colleges in the nation and Pantano was no exception. Yet he made himself an exception, putting off college to join the Marines to fight in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein.
After that tour of duty he returned home, finished college at nights, and ended up working for Goldman Sachs. Thus we have someone who had served his country, re-entered civilian life and made himself successful. For most men, a tour of duty in a combat zone followed by the procurement of a good job and a promising future would have been more than enough reason to let “someone else” fight for this nation following the 9/11 atrocity. Ilario Pantano is made of sterner stuff. At age 31 he persuaded the Marines to take him back so he could once again take the fight to Islamic terrorists.
It was a fateful decision. In 2004, Lieutenant Pantano was leading his squad through an area known as the “Triangle of Death,” a Sunni-insurgent dominated region where some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq war was taking place. It was there that Pantano stopped two Iraqis who were driving a car away from what was discovered to be a terrorist ammo dump. When he ordered them to search their own car in case it was booby-trapped, the two men rushed Pantano. He opened fire, killing both. He reloaded his magazine and fired again, after which he hung a sign on the dead bodies saying “no better friend, no worse enemy.” It was intended as a message for other terrorists — according to both the prosecutor and Pantano who admitted to it. The sign was removed after one of his men told Pantano it was inappropriate.
Daniel Coburn, a disgruntled sergeant who had been disciplined by Pantano and subsequently demoted within the platoon, accused Pantano of shooting the men in the back. Despite the fact that all other testimony contradicted that claim, the Judge Advocate General’s investigating officer chose to believe Coburn and charge Pantano with premeditated murder. (more…)
Ilario Pantano, a former Marine who was wrongly accused of murdering two Iraqis in 2004, is looking to become the first Republican to represent North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District since Reconstruction.
Pantano has what might be the most unusual resume of any candidate running in 2012. The son of an Italian immigrant, he was raised in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, then a rough-and-tumble neighborhood that lived up to its name. He attended the prestigious Horace Mann prep school on a half-scholarship, and shocked classmates when he left for the Marine Corps after graduation.
“I would venture to say no one has ever enlisted in the Marines in the history of Horace Mann,” one classmate told New York magazine in 2005.
After serving in Operation Desert Storm, Pantano returned to New York and worked as a bartender as he made his way through New York University. He worked for a time at Goldman Sachs, but after his service in the Marines, he found the life of an investment banker boring.
“In 1998, I made a decision to walk away from Goldman and a lifestyle that wasn’t for me,” Pantano told The Daily Caller. “I didn’t want to be trading Enron and AIG. That’s not what I wanted to do with my life.”
Not yet 30 and already financially successful , he left to work for a technology company founded by Horace Mann classmates before launching his own media startup. He became engaged to his girlfriend, Jill, a former model, and prepared to settle down.
On September 11th, 2001, Pantano was in Manhattan. “I was on the street wondering why my cell phone wasn’t working, noticing the fire engines and the police cars blazing downtown,” he told TheDC. “But in the bustle that is New York, I was focused on me and my universe. I was caught up with my business and my job, as so many of us were. And in the moment that I heard a car door ajar with the radio playing, I think it was Howard Stern, somebody saying another plane has gone into the World Trade Center… I heard it and it literally snapped me out of my confusion.”
“I literally just had to turn my head,” Pantano said, “And there, not even two miles away, were the towers burning. And what was so amazing — the image that has never left me — is the millions of pieces of paper floating in the jet stream. They twinkle like giant dandelions, they had like a glow of all of this paper and the jet stream around them as they burned. … I knew right away we were at war.”
Pantano also knew what he had to do. Still in good shape from running marathons and Ironman triathalons, he got a crew cut, took his old uniform out of storage and prepared to re-enlist in the Marines. (more…)
Wilmington, NC: Ilario Pantano, Conservative Republican Candidate for North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District, announced today that he will be participating in National September 11th commemorations at Ground Zero this weekend including the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s 2nd annual Freedom Raleigh on Sunday afternoon.
“It is a real honor to be able to take part in these commemorations, to honor the memories of those who perished on 9/11 and those who survived but whose lives were forever changed, and to give my reflections on the impact of 9/11 on my life and on our nation,” Pantano said. “I look forward to personally meeting the 9/11 first responders who will be attending this rally. It is shameful that they along with clergy members and family members of 9/11 victims have been barred from the official ceremonies on Sunday morning. As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of that horrific day we must never forget what happened and we must remain vigilant and do our very best to make sure an attack of this magnitude never occurs again.”
The Pantano Path to Victory in 2012 has your name on it.
Heading into July 4th weekend, do you still believe your country is worth fighting for?
Do you still believe that America’s best days can be ahead of her?
For the Pantano family and friends, the answer will always be YES. We are committed to the battle for America’s future. We are committed to victory in 2012 for our region, our state and our country. We are committed for the sake of our children.
But we need your help.
After this brief electoral OVERVIEW you will find details on the 3 concrete steps that it will take to win our country back. You’ve never seen so much political detail and inside information made public like this before. Some may question if we have gone too far in making all of this public, but we have chosen to share this because we are a grassroots organization driven entirely by its supporters. You need to know the plan since you have a role in executing the plan. We are not taking any of that for granted we wanted you to know where we stand.
You are part of the team and we can’t achieve VICTORY in 2012 without you.
Here is our game plan for a conservative victory in 2012:(more…)
by Ilario Pantano, author of Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy
Thank you to the families, including my own.
‘Is this as close to victory as we are ever going to get?” I wondered aloud as I absorbed the headlines. I’ve been struggling with that question, and perhaps you have too. But I have drawn some conclusions: Today, we may all feel like SEALs, but the credit doesn’t go to our military or our politicians. It goes to the military families: the spouses, the children, and the parents who have made this long war possible.
We’ve been at war for a decade, and only 1 percent of this country has any idea of what that actually means. Neither Barack Obama nor George W. Bush has kissed his wife goodbye four, five, or six times to go into the unknown.
Last night, our friend Rachel was over for dinner with her two-year-old son Henry. My boys love to play with Henry, and when his daddy is away on a nearly year-long deployment, it’s nice for Henry’s mommy to have a few minutes of distraction. After my time in Iraq, my wife, Jill, could relate to Rachel’s struggles as a “single mom,” and we had a nice dinner talking about nothing and certainly not the family business. Henry’s dad is on his third “trip” to Afghanistan in three years, and for him, as a Marine infantry officer, the trips aren’t just long. They are dangerous.
With the news of bin Laden’s death, many friends have reached out to connect with Jill and me. “What do you think?” they ask. My friends know that like so many Americans, Jill and I were deeply impacted by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. With the air still thick with smoke and death, we almost cancelled our October wedding in lower Manhattan.
On Sept. 12, 2001, I started what would become a year-long process of reentering the Marine Corps. A part of me died on 9/11, and in the weeks that followed, I would have my first of many struggles with survivor’s guilt. Men from our neighborhood firehouse were killed, and friends from my days on Wall Street died, too.
One of the buildings where I had worked (4 World Trade Center) had been destroyed, and soon I would watch as my father’s tourism business shriveled and nearly died. Yes, it may be hard to remember, but between anthrax scares and jihadists, there was a time in 2001 when New York became a no-go for tourists.
My entire focus shifted from easygoing self-indulgence to national security. I don’t know how Jill put up with the transformation; it was never easy. I left the house on the morning of 9/11 with hair down to my shoulders as a media executive, and I returned home with a head shaved “high and tight.” She cried. We both cried. Our country had been attacked, and we were at war. (more…)
VIDEO: Pantano Gets Early Start on 2012 Campaign By Anthony Greco RALEIGH — Ilario Pantano is not taking any downtime after his narrow loss to U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-7th. Pantano filed campaign paperwork with the Federal Election Commission. He said he decided to keep his campaign active in order to meet as many potential voters as possible.
John Hood’s Daily Journal
The Perdue Predicament The best option Democrats have right now is for the governor to recover her footing and make a serious contest out of what now seems a foregone conclusion.