| US slams Russia, China at UN for failure to condemn embassy attack Posted: 06 Jan 2020 01:40 PM PST  The United States on Monday slammed Russia and China for their failure to condemn an attack last week on its Baghdad embassy by pro-Iranian demonstrators. "Not allowing the United Nations Security Council to issue the most basic of statements underscoring the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises once again calls the council's credibility into question," the US statement said. The attack on the Baghdad embassy, which did not result in any injuries, was meant to protest against a US airstrike against Ketaeb Hezbollah (KH), an Iranian-backed militia which the US blames for rocket attacks on its facilities in northern Iraq that resulted in the death of a US contractor.
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| Saudi Arabia Says ‘Very Keen’ to Avoid Regional Escalation Posted: 06 Jan 2020 04:22 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia's foreign minister hopes all actors involved in the recent Middle East flare-up take steps to avoid escalation."We are very keen that the situation in the region doesn't escalate any further," Prince Faisal bin Farhan said at a press conference in Riyadh Monday. "It's certainly a very dangerous moment and we have to be conscious of the risks and dangers not just to the region but to wider global security."Read: Iran Warns Those Who Supported Soleimani Killing 'Will Pay' (1)Prince Faisal was speaking days after a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed top Iranian and Iraqi commanders, raising prospects of a military confrontation in the Middle East.To contact the reporter on this story: Vivian Nereim in Riyadh at vnereim@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Shaji Mathew at shajimathew@bloomberg.net, Abbas Al Lawati, Claudia MaedlerFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| From Iran With Love: North Korean Drones Are Sure To Fight In Its Next War Posted: 05 Jan 2020 11:30 PM PST  North Korea will learn from Iran's experiences.
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| Jeffrey Epstein investigation finds letter in prison cell complaining about being locked in shower and 'giant bugs' crawling across his hand Posted: 06 Jan 2020 01:36 PM PST  A new investigation of the circumstances surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein has made public several new pieces of evidence, including photos of his jail cell showing a number of bed sheets, prescription medicine and an apparent note written by the convicted sex offender complaining about jail conditions before his death.The paedophile financier was awaiting trial in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Centre in downtown Manhattan when his body was found in his cell in August. The circumstances of his death, ruled a suicide by the New York medical examiner, have sparked considerable speculation, given the powerful company he kept that included Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew.
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| Fisker's Ocean electric SUV will sell for $37,499, include Karaoke mode Posted: 05 Jan 2020 03:41 PM PST  American automaker Fisker said consumers can purchase their electric SUV for $37,499, which drops to $29,999 with a federal tax credit.
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| Segway's New Egg-Shaped S-Pod Is a Futuristic People Mover Posted: 06 Jan 2020 07:39 AM PST  It's for theme parks, closed campuses, and anyone who wants to go pretty fast while sitting down, but Segway's latest scooter will remind everyone of the movie Wall-E.
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| Key Senate Republican wants to start impeachment trial Posted: 05 Jan 2020 09:52 AM PST  The head of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said on Sunday he wants the Senate to launch an impeachment trial of President Trump within days, even if it means changing Senate rules so the chamber can move ahead without receiving articles of impeachment from the House of Representatives.
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| How Many of These Tough Logic Puzzles Can You Solve? Posted: 06 Jan 2020 12:45 PM PST |
| U.S.-EU Trade Talks Vexed by Drums of a Real War Posted: 06 Jan 2020 04:00 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Want to receive this post in your inbox every day? Sign up for the Terms of Trade newsletter, and follow Bloomberg Economics on Twitter for more.The drums of war beating in Washington sound a lot more ominous than the kind accompanying tariff threats.That doesn't mean the escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran won't have consequences for other relationships or global trade. They could well contribute to the revival of trade conflicts that markets have convinced themselves are in the rear-view mirror now that 2020 is upon us.But no trade or strategic relationship is likely to be tested faster or harder than the already fragile one with Europe.The Trump administration's decision to abandon the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that European Union powers were co-signatories to was a pre-existing source of tension, with European companies caught in the sanctions crossfire. Now that Iran has pulled the plug as well in the wake of the killing of a top Iranian general, things are unlikely to get better. Also causing friction were Trump's now frozen plans to levy tariffs on imported cars and more live ones to target champagne and other French products over France's digital services tax. Duties imposed in relation to a long-running trade feud between Airbus and Boeing haven't helped either. Those issues look episodic compared to what seems a lot like a broader breakdown in trans-Atlantic relations. It doesn't take much digging to establish that many in the Trump administration view the powers in Europe and institutions of the EU with an instinctive contempt. Trump, after all, has repeatedly called the EU (officially a U.S. ally) worse than China (an officially designated existential rival) on matters including trade. What irks the president and people close to him most may be Europe's defense of technocratic multilateralism and EU officials' refusal to bow to Trump's tariffs and other efforts to pressure them into even pretending to make a deal on American terms (an art China may well have mastered). European officials, meanwhile, view Trump's attack on the World Trade Organization and other pillars of the rules-based order as a peculiar populist's tantrum. Spend any time discussing trans-Atlantic relations with European officials and the emotion you run into quickly is bemusement. They relay specific complaints about the U.S.'s refusal to engage in meaningful discussions about issues like reforming the WTO or the willingness of Washington to allow the withering of potentially substantive efforts to create a joint front to take on China over industrial subsidies and other common complaints. But hanging over it all like a thunderhead is a broader European perplexion with a one-time friend's life choices.None of that is likely to be improved by what is developing between the U.S. and Iran. Charting the Trade WarThe U.S. Chamber of Commerce is warning that American businesses and consumers are bearing the brunt of the trade war and is calling on the administration to change course. Crunching Commerce Department data, it concludes that more than half of U.S. states are facing retaliatory tariffs on at least 25% of their exports to the EU and China.Today's Must ReadsJust a phase | The Chinese trade delegation including Vice Premier Liu He plans to sign the first phase of its trade deal with the U.S. in Washington on Jan. 15. Service charge | The euro-zone economy edged gradually away from stagnation at the end of 2019 as services picked up to counter moribund manufacturing. Brexit countdown | Companies most exposed to the uncertainty surrounding the U.K.'s exit from the EU have reduced hiring and investment and lost a substantial fraction of their market value Change the channel | Turkey's president said warships will be able to use a planned multibillion-dollar canal bisecting Istanbul, possibly undercutting a 20th-century agreement. USMCA support | Some Democratic presidential candidates are supporting the USMCA agreement while at least one other is distancing himself from the new North American trade deal.Economic AnalysisChina boost | China's economy showed stronger momentum in December for the first time in eight months, according to a range of early indicators, and Bloomberg Economics expects growth to improve in early 2020. World in 2030 | Bloomberg Economics' 10-year growth forecasts paint a picture of continued weakness, with aging populations, barriers to immigration, and weak productivity capping growth potential.Coming UpJan. 7: U.S. trade balance Jan. 8: France trade balance Jan. 9: Germany trade balance Jan. 14-16: EU trade chief Phil Hogan plans trip to Washington Jan. 15: Trumps plans to sign phase-one deal with ChinaLike Terms of Trade?Don't keep it to yourself. Colleagues and friends can sign up here. We also publish Balance of Power, a daily briefing on the latest in global politics.For even more: Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access for full global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.How are we doing? We want to hear what you think about this newsletter. Let our trade tsar know.To contact the author of this story: Shawn Donnan in Washington at sdonnan@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Brendan Murray at brmurray@bloomberg.net, Zoe SchneeweissFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| At least two rockets hit near US embassy in Baghdad: witnesses Posted: 05 Jan 2020 04:07 PM PST  Baghdad (AFP) - Two rockets hit near the US embassy in Iraq's capital Sunday, witnesses told AFP, hours after the ambassador was summoned over a US strike that killed top Iraqi and Iranian commanders.
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| United flight delayed? The airline is changing how it handles delay payouts Posted: 06 Jan 2020 12:06 PM PST  United is making a change — it won't "proactively" give customers refunds for flights delayed less than six hours.
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| US to start collecting DNA from people detained at border Posted: 06 Jan 2020 12:26 PM PST ![US to start collecting DNA from people detained at border]( "US to start collecting DNA from people detained at border") The U.S. government on Monday launched a pilot program to collect DNA from people in immigration custody and submit it to the FBI, with plans to expand nationwide. The information would go into a massive criminal database run by the FBI, where it would be held indefinitely. A memo outlining the program published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security said U.S. citizens and permanent residents holding a "green card" who are detained could be subject to DNA testing, as well as asylum seekers and people entering the country without authorization.
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| This Is How Russia's Su-35 Became A Threat to Russia's Stealth Fighter Posted: 06 Jan 2020 09:00 AM PST  The Su-35 was meant to be a stopgap until the Su-57 arrived, but it has become much more.
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| Indonesia mobilizes fishermen in stand-off with China Posted: 06 Jan 2020 07:20 AM PST  Indonesia will mobilize fishermen to join warships in the South China Sea to help defend against Chinese vessels, the government said on Monday, as the biggest stand-off with China for years escalated off Southeast Asia's largest country. The stand-off since last month in the northern Natuna islands, where a Chinese coastguard vessel has accompanied Chinese fishing vessels, has soured the generally friendly relationship between Jakarta and Beijing. Indonesia's chief security minister, Mahfud MD, told reporters that around 120 fishermen from the island of Java would be sent to the Natuna islands, some 1,000 km (600 miles) to the north.
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| Trump's threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites is one of many times he's supported potential war crimes and atrocities Posted: 06 Jan 2020 10:37 AM PST  Trump has voiced his support for individuals charged with and even convicted of war crimes and has even proposed ordering such acts.
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| Aliens exist and they are living among us, says first British astronaut into space Posted: 05 Jan 2020 09:42 AM PST  Aliens exist and they could be living among us, the first British astronaut into space has said. Dr Helen Sharman, who went into space 28 years ago, said it is without a doubt that "all sorts of forms of life" are alive in the universe - but perhaps we "simply can't see them" as they are so different to humanity. "Aliens exist, there's no two ways about it," Dr Sharman told the Observer Magazine. "There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of forms of life. "Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It's possible they're right here right now and we simply can't see them." In 1991 Dr Sharman became the first Briton in space after hearing a call for astronaut applicants on the radio while driving home from work. Despite fitting the criteria she almost decided against applying for the programme, but decided to chance it. "Self-belief and a can-do attitude changed my life," explained Dr Sharman. "I ticked all the boxes, but thought they wouldn't choose me so I wouldn't bother. By the time I got home I'd realised that if I didn't actually apply, then they couldn't choose me." Dr Sharman beat over 13,000 others to earn a spot in Project Juno, which was partially designed to boost London-Moscow relations by sending a Briton to the Russian space station Mir. Dr Sharman beat over 13,000 others to earn a spot in Project Juno Credit: PA Her eight-day mission transformed the then 27-year-old into a national hero, yet according to Dr Sharman her achievement is sometimes forgotten. In 2013, the UK Space Agency released statements describing Tim Peake - who travelled to the International Space Station in 2015 - as the UK's first official astronaut, seemingly forgetting Sharman's own trip into space. Dr Sharman said: "When Tim Peake went into space, some people simply forgot about me. "I've never defined myself by gender, and I continue not to do so. People often describe me as the first woman in space, but I was actually the first British person. It's telling that we would otherwise assume it was a man." Throughout her life Dr Sharman has had to contend with the challenges often presented to females breaking the mould - but has always been adamant her gender "wasn't going to stop" her. Although 28-years have passed since Dr Sharman went to space, she said she will never forget the view of the Earth from the space station. "There's no greater beauty than looking at the Earth from up high. I'll never forget the first time I saw it. "After take-off we left the atmosphere and suddenly light streamed in through the window. We were over the Pacific Ocean. The gloriously deep blue seas took my breath away."
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| Australia’s Wildfire Crisis: Key Numbers Behind the Disaster Posted: 06 Jan 2020 02:05 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Australia is in the grip of deadly wildfires burning across the country, triggering an emotive debate about the impact of climate change in the world's driest-inhabited continent. The unprecedented scale of the crisis, and images of terrified tourists sheltering on beaches from the infernos, has shocked many Australians.With summer only just beginning and the nation affected by a prolonged drought, authorities fear the death toll will continue to mount as more homes and land are destroyed. Here are some key details of the crisis:How many people have died?Since the fire season began months ago during the southern hemisphere winter, at least 24 people have died. Among the fatalities are volunteer firefighters, including a young man who died when his 10-ton truck was flipped over in what officials have described as a "fire tornado." Australia's worst wildfires came in 2009 when the Black Saturday blazes left 180 people dead.How big an area has burned?Massive tracts of land have burned. More than 10 million hectares (25 million acres) have been destroyed -- that's about five times the size of Wales, or larger than Indiana. In New South Wales state alone, almost 5 million hectares of forest and bush has been destroyed, while more than 1.1 million hectares has been burned in Victoria. The fires are so large they are generating their own weather systems and causing dry lightning strikes that in turn ignite more. One blaze northwest of Sydney, the Gospers Mountain fire, has destroyed almost 512,000 hectares -- about seven times the size of Singapore.The scale of the blazes dwarfs the California wildfires in 2018, which destroyed about 1.7 million acres, and about 260,000 acres in 2019.How many homes have been destroyed?Some 1,400 homes have been destroyed in New South Wales alone this fire season and the tally is rising daily as the fires continue to burn and authorities assess damage. Scores of rural towns have been impacted, including the community of Balmoral about 150 kilometers southwest of Sydney, which was largely destroyed before Christmas.What's the economic impact?That's still to be assessed. The Insurance Council of Australia says 6,000 claims worth A$431 million ($299 million) have been lodged. Consultancy SGS Economics and Planning has estimated that Sydney's economy loses as much as A$50 million each day it is blanketed with a toxic haze from smoke billowing in from the fires. An inquiry into the Black Saturday fires estimated the cost at A$4.4 billion. More broadly, the economy faces pressure from increasingly severe heat and storms from climate change, threatening industries ranging from agriculture to property to tourism. Australia's Climate Council estimates cumulative damage from reduced agricultural and labor productivity might reach A$19 billion by 2030, A$211 billion by 2050 and a massive A$4 trillion by 2100.How has wildlife been affected?The University of Sydney estimates that 480 million animals have been killed by the bushfires in New South Wales alone since September. The "highly conservative figure" includes mammals, birds and reptiles killed either directly by the fires, or later due to loss of food and habitat. The fires have raised concerns in particular about koalas, with authorities saying as much as 30% of their habitat in some areas had been destroyed. Images of the marsupials drinking water from bottles after being rescued have gone viral on social media.\--With assistance from Jason Scott.To contact the reporter on this story: Edward Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Edward Johnson at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net, Jason ScottFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Iran, Again Posted: 06 Jan 2020 03:30 AM PST  Since 1979, no one in the United States has figured out a good way to handle the regime in Tehran. For 40 years, we've been having the same arguments, and no matter what we tried, the results were disappointing.It is hard to overstate just how spectacularly unprepared the U.S. government was for the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The House Intelligence Committee revealed in a January 1979 report that two CIA long-term analyses written in the late 1970s had left policymakers with the impression that the rule of American-aligned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was stable and strong. The House report cited a 60-page study from August 1977, titled "Iran in the 1980s," that predicted that "the Shah will be an active participant in Iranian life well into the 1980s" and "there will be no radical change in Iranian political behavior in the near future." The House also cited the CIA's separate assessment in 1978, in its report titled "Iran After the Shah," that "Iran is not in a revolutionary situation or even a 'pre-revolutionary' situation."Watching in horror as thugs grabbed our blindfolded embassy staff and paraded them before the cameras, Americans instantly learned that this was a regime that had no regard for any international law, traditional diplomacy, or morality. A revived relationship and summit meetings were unthinkable; anyone who met with Iranians on their soil was a potential hostage. The crowd of angry revolutionaries chanted "Death to America," and the Iranian parliament and other official government meetings and rallies routinely began with the chant. Not even the Soviets began their Politburo meetings like that. By 1987, the regime instituted "Death to America Day." Their Iranian prime minister introduced the national holiday by saying, "Tomorrow will be . . . a day of God on which America should tremble . . . the day when the arch-Satan will be placed under our feet."The odd thing is that no matter what happens between the U.S. and Iran, we keep repeating the same patterns and having the same debates. From the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon; to the "Tanker War" and the mines in the Straits of Hormuz in the late '80s; to the truck-bomb attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; to Iran's letting the 9/11 hijackers go through Iranian territory without stamping passports; to IEDs against our soldiers in Iraq . . .In their eyes, we've attacked them in unfair ways: We backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq war, imposed sanctions that squeezed the Iranian economy, and in 1988, our Navy blew up two of their oil platforms. That same year, we accidentally shot down one of their civilian airliners. The frustrating reality is that our actions rarely hurt the mullahs and ruling class. Our sanctions made life tougher for the average Iranian, but the mullahs still ate well.Our relationship with Iran has rarely been predictable. Somehow, during an administration when relations with Iran were openly hostile, when our president was seen as an implacable foe of the Ayatollah, we traded arms for hostages. Our alleged cowboy warmonger president, George W. Bush, avoided direct conflict with the Iranians. Barack Obama seemed to believe that a grand new era of peace, or at least nonconfrontation, was possible. He pushed through a generous deal in exchange for a (supposed) pause in Iran's nuclear-weapons program. Obama was so eager to get the nuclear deal that he even "derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah."And throughout it all, the leaders of the regime and at least some of the citizenry continued to chant "Death to America" -- even during ongoing talks with the United States about the nuclear program. In 2015, John Kerry told the Iranian government directly to stop the chant. It was particularly unhelpful, he said, in persuading Americans and the world that a deal could be reached and that Tehran would honor its terms. The regime continued using the chant anyway -- and in Iraq and elsewhere, the Iranian regime kept directing and financing efforts to bring real death to real Americans.You can find a lot of experts on the region who will assure you that the chant of "Death to America" is merely rabble-rousing nationalism or some sort of inconsequential gesture to placate "hardliners." They will assure you that Iran is in fact a sophisticated, multifaceted, democratic, modern society, and that far too many Americans simply can't understand the nuances of the real Iran. Many Americans apparently make the mistake of concluding that when crowds chant, over and over again, that they want America to die, they mean it.The American people looked at Iran and saw an implacably malevolent force in power. They were continually told by prominent voices that their perceptions were wrong -- as in Fareed Zakaria's 2009 Newsweek cover piece, "Everything You Think You Know About Iran Is Wrong." Zakaria has a sterling résumé when it comes to studying foreign affairs -- Yale, Harvard, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, adjunct professor at Columbia -- and he wrote, in what must have been a heavily researched piece, that Iran's regime might "be happy with a peaceful civilian [nuclear] program" and that "Iranians aren't suicidal." "Iran isn't a dictatorship," he declared, and it has a culture of "considerable debate and dissent." Newsweek's readers no doubt concluded that hyperbolic media coverage had obscured the reality of Iran, which was a sophisticated, multifaceted, modern state that is not so scary or brutal after all.Along with Zakaria, one of the loudest voices insisting that the Iranian regime had been misunderstood and unfairly demonized was New York Times columnist Roger Cohen.Cohen wrote many columns in early 2009 urging his American audience to "think again about Iran," and on June 10, 2009, he warned against the "dangerous demonization of it as a totalitarian state." At the heart of the problem was American policymakers' reflexive hostility to the Iranian regime: "Radicalism in the Bush White House bred radicalism in Iran, making life easy for Ahmadinejad. President Obama's outreach, by contrast, has unsettled the regime."A month after the Zakaria piece ran, the Iranian regime announced that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won reelection with 60 percent of the vote, a result that many Iranians believed was fraudulent. Thousands of ordinary Iranians took to the streets in protest, in what was described as the biggest uprising by the Iranian people since 1979: "Demonstrations swelled to throngs of hundreds of thousands on some days and were focused in Iran's main cities and provincial capitals, including Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz," the AP reported.And then the regime crushed them, violently and ruthlessly. More than 100 members of the political opposition were arrested. Government forces shot women such as Neda Agha-Soltan in the street. An estimated 110 people were killed: university students, professors, some killed in government detention centers.To his credit, Roger Cohen did something you almost ever see a prominent foreign-policy columnist do: He admitted he had been wrong. He had misjudged the Iranian government. "I've also argued that, although repressive, the Islamic Republic offers significant margins of freedom by regional standards," he wrote. "I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness." He had been on the ground in Tehran:> Majir Mirpour grabbed me. A purple bruise disfigured his arm. He raised his shirt to show a red wound across his back. "They beat me like a pig," he said, breathless. "They beat me as I tried to help a woman in tears. I don't care about the physical pain. It's the pain in my heart that hurts."> > He looked at me and the rage in his eyes made me want to toss away my notebook.He wrote that four days after warning about "the dangerous demonization" of Iran.As for the contention that Iran's regime might "be happy with a peaceful civilian [nuclear] program," in September 2009, within a matter of months of Zakaria's Newsweek cover story, President Obama announced that "the United States, the United Kingdom, and France presented detailed evidence to the IAEA demonstrating that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years."If you had previously seen Iran as a country dominated by a brutal, dangerously aggressive, regime that had nuclear ambition and that had already demonstrated a willingness to use children to clear minefields and embraced a bloody ferocity that shocked and appalled the West . . . it turns out everything you knew about Iran wasn't wrong. Everything Fareed Zakaria and Roger Cohen knew, or at least believed, was wrong.Zakaria and Cohen are not dumb men. But they saw what they wanted to see in Iran. The world would be a better, happier, nicer place if the Iran of 2009 or today lived up to the benign, reasonable portrait that Zakaria and Cohen painted in their reporting. But it's not. The regime has been clear about who they are, what they want, and what they stand for from the beginning: "Death to America."Last week, President Trump moved past the sanctions, exposure of their agents, and all the other measures that have hurt the Tehran regime on the periphery. He went after the chief architect of Iran's regional aggression and left Qasem Soleimani a corpse on the road to Baghdad International Airport. Maybe this strike will make things worse, in the sense of bringing this constant low-level conflict with the Iranian regime into high-level open conflict. But now everyone in the Iranian regime has a new factor in their calculations: If the Americans can find and kill Qasem Soleimani, they can probably find just about anyone up and down the chain of command. Maybe the audacity of this attack stirs the Iranian leaders into a frenzy -- or maybe it gets them to think twice and hesitate and face their own concerns about tit-for-tat escalation into all-out war. Such a war would undoubtedly hurt the United States, but it would devastate Iran.Nothing else has gotten the United States to the point it desires -- where the Iranian regime either drops "Death to America" as a slogan, a goal, and a philosophy, or everyone can genuinely rest assured that it is merely rote agitprop. The strike on Soleimani was something new -- an experiment of sorts to see if it can generate the results that 40 years of other approaches have failed to generate. Let's all hope that a new spirit of caution and prudence takes root in Tehran.
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| Potentially "catastrophic" issue with 737 Max wiring Posted: 06 Jan 2020 01:39 AM PST  It could theoretically put the plane into a nose dive but sources say it's not clear whether that could actually happen.
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| Good Samaritan stops man accused of trying to kidnap girl Posted: 06 Jan 2020 05:03 AM PST ![Good Samaritan stops man accused of trying to kidnap girl]( "Good Samaritan stops man accused of trying to kidnap girl") A North Carolina mother says she's thankful to the good Samaritan who stopped a man trying to kidnap her daughter. Timothy Jon Fry, 55, tried to grab the 8-year-old girl as she came out of a restaurant's bathroom Dec. 27, Greensboro police spokesman Ron Glenn told news outlets Sunday. The girl's mother, Heather Owens, told WFMY-TV she had suspicions about Fry from the moment she and her daughter sat down.
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| China Bought Russia's S-400 Missiles, Taiwan Now Needs More SAMs Posted: 06 Jan 2020 03:00 AM PST  Missiles over fighters.
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| Meghan McCain Praises Trump: ‘I’m Happy’ He Killed a ‘Big, Bad Terrorist’ Posted: 06 Jan 2020 09:30 AM PST  The View's Meghan McCain on Monday declared her surprise that people would fear war after President Donald Trump assassinated top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani—a decision she is unequivocally "happy" about.Returning from its holiday break on Monday, The View brought on ABC News political director Rick Klein to discuss the ongoing Iran crisis. While discussing concerns from Democrats that the president is escalating tensions with Iran to distract from impeachment, McCain seemed to come to the defense of the president she has often criticized."Yesterday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Soleimani was, quote, actively plotting against the American public and that Trump made the right decision," the conservative host said. "I was actually really surprised to see things like World War III trending, just given the fact that Soleimani was responsible for over 600 American deaths.""Why do you think people are reacting the way that they are?" McCain continued. "Do you think it's just because there is this trust gap, if you will, between the president of the United States and the American public? For me, when a big, bad terrorist gets blown up, I'm happy about it."Klein, meanwhile, said there were two things at play here: The trust gap Americans have with the president and the fact that the administration hasn't been able to explain how "imminent" the threat was of any attacks Soleimani was purportedly planning against the United States.In a later segment, McCain wondered why Trump was getting so much blowback over the attack on Iran since, in her opinion, other Republican presidents would have made the same decision."Iran has been escalating their attacks for months and months," the proudly hawkish pundit stated. "I mean, they were harassing our warships, firing rockets to American troops, orchestrated a rocket strike to killed a U.S. contractor and wounded four service members and obviously stormed the U.S. embassy.""I made the argument to a friend of mine yesterday that I don't think a President Marco Rubio or President Romney would have necessarily done anything different by taking out Soleimani," she added. "Why do you think people are reacting this way to Trump doing this?"Klein noted that much of it has to do with Trump's track record and "the way he's conducted himself and the fact that he's sitting under impeachment and would have reason to distract.""I also think if this was another president, a president Rubio or Romney, I think there would still be questions asked, which are the right questions to ask," the ABC reporter continued. "When you use military force to kill a guy, you want to know what was behind it."Fellow co-host Sunny Hostin, meanwhile, further stated that previous presidents had the opportunity to kill Soleimani but passed on it because "everybody knew that taking out someone who's not just a terrorist but also someone who's a member of a government, a sitting position in a government, that's a provocative action. It's actually tantamount to war."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Australia Counts Wildfire Devastation After Calamitous Weekend Posted: 05 Jan 2020 12:39 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of properties were destroyed across southeastern Australia after searing temperatures and strong winds exacerbated catastrophic wildfires Saturday in one of the worst days of the weeks-long crisis.Dozens of communities, from small towns on the south coast of New South Wales, to alpine villages in the neighboring Victoria state, were razed as fires grew so large they generated dry thunderstorms. Milder weather, including patchy rain, across scorched areas brought some relief Sunday, though flame-fanning wind gusts have frustrated efforts to quell about 200 blazes before conditions worsen later in the week, authorities said.Australia Fire Maps: Where the Devastating Wildfires Are BurningThousands of people, including tourists, heeded the advice of authorities and evacuated a 350-kilometer (217-mile) stretch of coastline as well as dangerous inland areas over the past few days to escape the intensifying infernos. But many remained, hosing down their properties to protect against falling embers as they anxiously waited to see if the winds would blow the fire front in their direction.The unfolding tragedy, that's blackened more than 5 million hectares (12.3 million acres) across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia alone, has prompted millions of dollars of donations and support from international celebrities, sports stars, and the British Royal Family.Australia's Wildfire Crisis: Key Numbers Behind the DisasterTwo people died in wildfires that destroyed more than a third of South Australia's Kangaroo Island, devastating the national park and farmland, and severely damaging the luxury Southern Ocean Lodge resort. Penrith, on the outskirts of Sydney, reached a record 48.9 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) Saturday, symbolic of the dangerous weather conditions that have fanned ferocious flames and sparked new blazes further south.Flights CanceledQantas Airways Ltd. canceled 27 flights Sunday afternoon arriving in and departing from Canberra, where air pollution was at least four times higher than the minimum threshold for "hazardous," prompting the release of particulate-filter masks from the national stockpile. Australia Post suspended mail deliveries to the national capital Friday, citing the impact of the poor air quality on the safety of its workers.Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Saturday an unprecedented level of military support to boost firefighting and recovery efforts as the national death toll since September rose to 23. A video set to electronic music posted on Morrison's Twitter and Facebook accounts outlining the additional measures sparked thousands of comments.Blind-SidedKey authorities in New South Wales and Victoria welcomed the news of the deployment of as many as 3,000 army reservists, but voiced disappointment that they weren't consulted ahead of the decision or briefed before Morrison detailed his response plans to the media.The AustraliaDefence Association lambasted the 50-second clip, which spawned mocking renditions and drew harsh criticism from Kevin Rudd, a former Labor party leader who served as prime minister twice from December 2007 to September 2013.Morrison, 51, defended the video, telling reporters Sunday that it was produced to "communicate as simply and helpfully" as possible what the government is doing to assist people. A link initially pinned to the post to donate to the leader's own Liberal party gave the appearance of a political advertisement, critics said."It came out as a Liberal party ad," said Stewart Jackson, a senior lecturer in the department of government and international relations at the University of Sydney. "It seems to have generated a certain amount of ire that the ad has been done before you've fully organized all the different branches of government to be able to work together."Political FalloutThe criticism adds to a backlash against Morrison for his handling of the wildfires -- highlighted by his curtailed trip to Hawaii just days after declaring a national disaster -- and tepid acknowledgment of the role of climate change in fueling them.The prime minister was heckled on Thursday by angry residents when he visited the fire-ravaged town of Cobargo, where two people died last week, while others declined to shake his hand and called for more resources to tackle the disaster."Morrison has been found considerably wanting in terms of his leadership," Jackson said. "You can't imagine previous prime ministers acting in what seems such a self-serving way."\--With assistance from Edward Johnson and Ben Bartenstein.To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Melbourne at j.gale@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Stanley JamesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Troops in Iraq have been reassigned from fighting ISIS to protecting US assets amid Iran conflict Posted: 05 Jan 2020 11:44 AM PST  A US-led coalition formed to fight the threat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been reassigned to protecting personnel and facilities in Iraq.
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| Ghosn took bullet train to Osaka en route to Lebanon - Kyodo Posted: 05 Jan 2020 09:00 PM PST  Former Nissan <7201.T> and Renault boss Carlos Ghosn began his astonishing escape from Japan with a bullet train ride from Tokyo to Osaka, possibly accompanied by several people, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported Monday. Japanese authorities also said on Monday they may still press for Ghosn's extradition from Lebanon to face multiple charges of financial wrongdoing, even though the country does not normally extradite its nationals. Security cameras captured Ghosn leaving his home on Dec. 29 at about 2:30 p.m. (0530 GMT) and arriving some hours later at Tokyo's Shinagawa Station, where he took the train to Shin Osaka Station, Kyodo said, citing a person familiar with the matter.
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| Plane carrying 107 passengers slidesoff taxiway at Wisconsin's Austin Straubel airport Posted: 05 Jan 2020 10:20 AM PST  No one was injured after a Delta plane carrying 107 passengers slid off the taxiway early Saturday at Austin Straubel International Airport in Wisconsin.
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| IKEA to pay $46M in boy's dresser tipover death, lawyers say Posted: 06 Jan 2020 03:25 PM PST  IKEA has agreed to pay $46 million to the parents of a 2-year-old boy who died of injuries suffered when a 70-pound (32-kilogram) recalled dresser tipped over onto him, the family's lawyers said Monday. Jozef Dudek, of Buena Park, California, died in 2017 of his injuries, and his parents sued the Swedish home furnishings company in a Philadelphia court in 2018. In the lawsuit, the Dudeks accused IKEA of knowing that its Malm dressers posed a tip-over hazard and that they had injured or killed a number of children, but that the company had failed to warn consumers that the dressers shouldn't be used without being anchored to a wall.
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| College students panic over FAFSA and the draft Posted: 05 Jan 2020 11:30 PM PST  Concerns over an active draft and FAFSA's role in the service even shut down the Selective Service System's website because of the sudden surge in traffic.
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| The Navy Wants Torpedo Boats To Help Deter Iran Posted: 04 Jan 2020 10:30 PM PST  Washington may need more of such warships to patrol contested waters.
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| Where Does Admiral Yamamoto Go to Get His Apology? Posted: 06 Jan 2020 03:30 AM PST  Before there was Qasem Soleimani, there was Admiral Yamamoto.In 1943, the U.S. targeted the exceptionally skilled Japanese commander and killed him in what constituted a precision attack for the time — with the P-38G Lightnings that intercepted him midair playing the role of the MQ-9 Reaper.If it was wrong to kill Soleimani, it was wrong to kill Yamamoto — just as barbaric and illegal, just as damnable an "assassination."Of course, no celebrities back in World War II apologized to Imperial Japan, as actress Rose McGowan did to Iran after the killing of Soleimani in a now-semi-retracted sentiment. There wasn't a debate about the operation's legality. Members of the opposition party didn't call it an assassination. No former sports star — and corporate brand ambassador — condemned it as a lamentable instance of American militarism.Indeed, if he's being consistent, Colin Kaepernick must view the killing of Yamamoto as yet another example of American authorities seeking to control and destroy the bodies of nonwhite men.Obviously, the targeted killings of Soleimani and Yamamoto aren't exactly parallel. We were in a declared war with Japan, a conflict on a much larger scale than that with Iran. But both men were commanders of enemy forces actively engaged in killing Americans, and both were taken out in a combat theater. Both of the targeted killings were fully justified legally and morally.What were considered the advantages of going after Yamamoto resemble those of hitting Soleimani.Like Soleimani, Yamamoto was vulnerable because he was on the move, on a visit to Japanese units. We intercepted a Japanese signal revealing his imminent whereabouts, on the periphery of the range of U.S. aircraft. Admiral Chester Nimitz made the call to target him.As Donald A. Davis notes in his book Lightning Strike, the fact that Yamamoto, who carried out the Pearl Harbor attack, was responsible for the deaths of so many Americans motivated us to go after him. "The blood of thousands of American and Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen had been spilled because of Yamamoto," he writes, "and here was an opportunity to eliminate him."The motive here wasn't subtle. The strike at Yamamoto was dubbed Operation Vengeance.The centrality of Yamamoto to the enemy war effort also played a role. "Yamamoto was the beating heart of the Japanese navy," Davis continues. "In his own country, he was seen as embodying the unwavering Bushido fighting spirit."It was hoped that his loss would stagger Tokyo, and so it did — after an amazing feat of U.S. airmanship downed Yamamoto's plane, which crashed in the jungle on the island of Bougainville.There was some worry when considering whether to kill him that Yamamoto's successor might be even more formidable. But it was brushed aside. Nimitz asked his exceptional intelligence officer, Edwin Layton, if he was confident that were none better who could replace Yamamoto. "Absolutely none," Layton replied, according to his later account. "Absolutely none."A comment at the outset of the Yamamoto operation could just as easily have applied to the Soleimani operation:"TALLYHO X LET'S GET THE BASTARD."
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| Billionaire Czech Premier Faces More Heat Over Conflict of Interest Probes Posted: 06 Jan 2020 04:46 AM PST ![Billionaire Czech Premier Faces More Heat Over Conflict of Interest Probes]( "Billionaire Czech Premier Faces More Heat Over Conflict of Interest Probes") (Bloomberg) -- Want the lowdown on European markets? In your inbox before the open, every day. Sign up here.The Czech Republic's billionaire prime minister is coming under increasing pressure over allegations of conflict of interest, which last year triggered the country's biggest anti-government protests in three decades.A European Commission audit said that Andrej Babis maintained control over his chemical, farming and media business empire, which continued to receive funds from the European Union's budget after he took power in 2017, news website Neovlivni.cz reported Monday, citing a person with knowledge of the findings.The audit focused on investment subsidies for agriculture companies and came to the same conclusion as last year's probe related to EU's development funds. Babis said he had no inflation about the farming audit.The prime minister rejected all allegations and said he obeyed the rules by placing his company Agrofert in trusts before taking office. Babis also expects the country to oppose any "senseless interpretation of the Czech law by Brussels," according to a statement to the public newswire CTK.Agrofert, which employs about 34,000 people in 18 countries and had sales of 158 billion koruna ($7 billion) in 2018, also said it had no information about the farming audit. The Czech Radio reported the company received 66 million koruna in such subsidies in 2018, half of which came from EU budget.The conflict-of-interest allegations were a chief trigger of a series of the biggest anti-government demonstrations since the fall of communism. The organizers of the rallies said they'll announce further protest actions against Babis on Tuesday.Despite the protests and the legal challenges, Babis remains the most popular politician in the country of 10.7 million. His ANO party has a wide lead in opinion polls about two years before elections following decisions to raise pensions and salaries of state employees.To contact the reporter on this story: Lenka Ponikelska in Prague at lponikelska1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Peter Laca, Andras GergelyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| 3 Americans were killed in an attack by the Shabab militant group at a Kenyan airfield used by US forces Posted: 05 Jan 2020 01:56 PM PST  One US service member and two Department of Defense contractors were killed Sunday in an attack by the African militant group al-Shabab.
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| Trump must now depend on 'Grim Reaper' McConnell to save him in Senate trial Posted: 06 Jan 2020 03:25 AM PST  As President Donald Trump girds for a U.S. Senate impeachment trial, he is entrusting the future of his presidency to someone widely known as a shrewd negotiator who also plays hardball politics at a level unusual even by Washington standards. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a self-proclaimed "Grim Reaper" who long has stood in the way of Democrats' initiatives, is embracing that role as he suits up for an impeachment trial. McConnell, the top Republican in Congress, has already said there is no chance Trump, his party's leader, will be convicted on charges that he abused his office and obstructed a congressional investigation into his conduct.
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| Diver killed in Australia shark attack Posted: 04 Jan 2020 11:53 PM PST  A man has been mauled to death by a suspected great white shark at a popular diving spot off Australia's southwestern coast, officials said Sunday. The man was attacked at Cull Island near the town of Esperance in Western Australia state, the state's primary industries department said in a statement. "A man received fatal injuries after being bitten by a reported white shark," the department said.
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| Police find body of a woman who texted 'I feel in trouble' before disappearing Posted: 06 Jan 2020 08:53 AM PST  Alabama police said Friday they found the body of a 29-year-old woman who had sent a concerning message to her co-worker before disappearing in December, CNN reported.
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| The myth of a new China Posted: 06 Jan 2020 02:45 AM PST  Dead center on the front page of The New York Times' last Sunday edition of 2019, a headline: "As it detains parents, China weans children from Islam." Its subheading, equally ready for distribution to newspaper stands in Beijing: "New boarding schools redirect faith from religion to party."The story itself, available online under a different — better — title, is compelling and well-reported. It effectively conveys Beijing's galling oppression of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other ethnic minorities, many of them Muslim, in China's western provinces. Yet even there, the language seems unduly circumspect. For example, facilities hedged by armed guards and barbed wire where children are forcibly isolated with an explicit intent of breaking up families and erasing their religious and cultural heritage are called "boarding schools" — which, I suppose, is technically not wrong, but neither is it right when the term conjures, for many Americans, visions of Harry Potter's Hogwarts and its real-life counterparts, elite educational institutions reserved for the most privileged children.Such strange descriptive treatment of perhaps the most systematic program of ethnic persecution on the planet today is hardly isolated to a single Times article. (In fact, the Times has published numerous important reports on the Uighurs' plight.) As The Week's Matthew Walther has noted, this despotism is too often downplayed or outright ignored in the narrative of a "new China," a prosperous, modern nation that has left behind the murderous communism of the last century. This narrative is not entirely groundless — China has changed, a lot, in recent decades — but in many ways that matter, it's a myth.The myth of a new China is useful to Beijing, but it is not purely a Chinese export. The American account of the Cold War quite naturally pairs the China of Chairman Mao with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, and that link makes it easy to forget that when the USSR dissolved, Beijing didn't.China never had a glasnost, despite years of Western expectation. Protests in Tiananmen Square did not produce a Chinese perestroika. There was no Chinese equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Three decades ago it may have seemed, as this 1989 Christian Science Monitor piece opined, that China's movement toward "economic modernization" would bring it "face to face with the inevitability of pressure for political liberalization." Now the connection of consumerism to social freedom looks far more tenuous."Socialism with Chinese characteristics" has produced a strange amalgam of autonomy and coercion. China's nail houses and gutter oil suggest a laissez-faire attitude unmatched anywhere in the United States, yet these small markers of economic liberty coexist with a terrifying surveillance state, public executions, and treatment of minority groups like the Uighurs for which "genocide" is not too strong a word. The "social credit" system is a waking nightmare. Reports indicate religious texts like the Bible and the Quran soon will be edited to "reflect socialist values," a throwback to Mao if there ever was one, and religious persecution more generally is spiking.Rising authoritarianism is a hallmark of the tenure of Xi Jinping, China's newly minted "president for life." Once cast as a potential Mikhail Gorbachev of Beijing, Xi has proven to be anything but. By his own account in a 2013 address, the "profound lesson" Xi learned from the fall of the USSR is the danger of allowing national leaders' "ideals and beliefs [to be] shaken." For Xi, reform means getting back to Mao, not away from him. Thus Xi's "presidency has been characterized by an insistence that all individuals in positions of responsibility devote more serious study of and adherence to Marxist-Leninist doctrine," explains Ted Galen Carpenter at The National Interest. Xi is "determined to enhance and perpetuate his dominant role," Carpenter continues, and he has used his growing power to move China "toward greater repression and regimentation, not greater liberalization."The Beijing of Tank Man is, in many ways, still the same Beijing. Likewise the Beijing of the Great Leap Forward (estimated death toll: 30 million) and the Cultural Revolution (estimated death toll: 1 to 10 million), and the Beijing that has violently repressed the Uighurs and sought to eradicate their culture since the end of World War II.This is not to suggest the China of 2020 is indistinct from the China of 1970. Far from it. Economic quality of life has enormously improved thanks to Beijing's qualified embrace of the open market (and it continues to improve under Xi). In 1981, 90 percent of the country survived on $2 or less per day; today fewer than 1 percent do. I lived in China's Shandong province for a year in the mid-1990s, and the contrasts I observed returning to the country a decade later were almost unbelievable. Signs of new wealth were everywhere, most visibly in the explosion of personal vehicle ownership. And despite Beijing's increasingly powerful censorship apparatus, the internet allows communication and information access at a previously impossible scale.Nor do I want to suggest this brutal statism in Chinese governance warrants U.S. antagonism, whether in the form of a break in diplomatic or trade relations or, God forbid, military conflict. The ethics here may be irreducibly complex — anyone who has a simple answer to whether it's better to buy Chinese goods or boycott them is a liar or a fool — but it is hardly disputable that isolating or attacking China would add to the suffering of many ordinary people. War doesn't gentle totalitarian regimes; foreign meddling may provoke a more severe tyranny; sanctions are like to do the poor and powerless more harm than good.There is no obvious route to ending Beijing's cruelties, among them its efforts to eliminate the Uighurs as a coherent community. And I can offer no conclusive argument for how our rejection of the myth of a new China will accomplish anything, practically. Still, I am certain it is necessary.The truth is that China has changed much in the last 50 years, but also that recording a history of only change obscures a great continuity. And though a modern Tank Man could not be expunged from national memory as the original was, he could still be disappeared, tortured, and killed. Half a world away, there is little to nothing we can do about this. But we can, at least, refuse to call the next Tank Man's prison a "re-education camp" and his children's brainwashing a "boarding school."More stories from theweek.com America is guilty of everything we accuse Iran of doing Border Patrol has started its 'small-scale' DNA collection program Pentagon mistakenly releases draft memo promising withdrawal from Iraq
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| Fact: Iran Is No Persian Empire (And Should Be Treated As Such) Posted: 04 Jan 2020 07:00 PM PST  America has more important priorities.
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| Aeromexico says it has deal with Boeing on grounded 737 Max Posted: 06 Jan 2020 09:15 AM PST ![Aeromexico says it has deal with Boeing on grounded 737 Max]( "Aeromexico says it has deal with Boeing on grounded 737 Max") Aeromexico has reached an agreement with Boeing on compensation over the global grounding of the 737 Max jet last year after two deadly crashes, the Mexican airline announced Monday. Aeromexico grounded its fleet of six 737 Max 8 jets on March 11, 2019. In both incidents a sensor malfunction led to the triggering of an automated system that pushed the planes' noses down, investigators determined.
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| Erdogan Says Warships May Bypass 1936 Treaty With Planned Canal Posted: 06 Jan 2020 12:57 AM PST ![Erdogan Says Warships May Bypass 1936 Treaty With Planned Canal]( "Erdogan Says Warships May Bypass 1936 Treaty With Planned Canal") (Bloomberg) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said warships will be able to use a planned multibillion-dollar canal bisecting Istanbul, possibly undercutting a 20th-century agreement meant to ensure stability and security in the Black Sea region.Instead of crossing the narrow Bosporus strait, Erdogan said military ships will instead be able to use Canal Istanbul, which will similarly link the Black and Marmara seas. The project is meant to ease shipping traffic and the risk of accidents in the Bosporus, which runs through the middle of Turkey's biggest city. It could create jobs for 10,000 people as well as a new city along its route.Speaking in an interview with CNN-Turk television late Sunday, Erdogan didn't elaborate on whether any limitations would be imposed on the passage of warships through Canal Istanbul.Turkey to Build Canal Through Istanbul to Bypass BosporusTurkey could be courting another controversy with one of the most ambitious projects of Erdogan's almost two decades in power. After years of work since it was first unveiled in 2011, the ruling party has said the canal has finally become ripe for a tender process.The option presented by the planned 45-kilometer (28-mile) canal for warships, including navies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, adds a significant political dimension to what Erdogan dubbed his "crazy project." It's already mired in questions over financing and its impact on the environment.Endangering Treaty?If Turkey uses it as an alternative route to assert more autonomy, it could potentially trigger an international debate on whether such a move would violate the 1936 Montreux Convention.The convention limits deployments in the Black Sea to 21 days for navies not belonging to Black Sea states. It also regulates the number and the maximum aggregate tonnage of all foreign naval forces that may pass the Turkish straits while barring the passage of all aircraft carriers.Erdogan said the convention was only "binding" for the Turkish straits and the Canal Istanbul project would be "totally outside Montreux."Responding to a question on whether warships will continue to cross the Turkish straits under the limits set down by the treaty, he said: "We would find a solution for them."Istanbul's New Mayor Takes On Erdogan's Pet Canal Project"If necessary, they may cross here, too," Erdogan said, referring to the passage of warships through the future channel.Turkey may charge ships passing through Canal Istanbul, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday. However, navigation through the Turkish straits is free, and it's not clear how Turkey would encourage ships to traverse the new waterway instead.Erdogan's 'Crazy Project' Prompts Warning of Environmental Ruin\--With assistance from Firat Kozok.To contact the reporter on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Paul Abelsky, Amy TeibelFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Biden Suddenly on the Defensive After Soleimani Killing Posted: 06 Jan 2020 01:45 AM PST  In the early hours after President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iran's top military official, the Democratic presidential field responded in lockstep that the operation had the potential to destabilize the region further and put the lives of Americans and their allies at risk of deadly reprisal.But as the potential blowback against the United States became clearer in the days following the death of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Quds Force and architect of Iran's war against ISIS across the region, candidates began to divide themselves into two camps: those who argue that only a steady, experienced hand can steady America's increasingly erratic foreign policy, and those who point to the past two decades of U.S. foreign policy to show the need for drastic change. Former Vice President Joe Biden, whose entire presidential campaign centers on the restorationist idea that his decades of Washington experience are the best guarantee to undo the Trump administration's mistakes, has been increasingly nudged closer to the fire by opponents pointing to his past support for the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation, a quagmire from which many of the current crises in the region emerged. As a former two-term vice president and a major figure in U.S. foreign policy during his decades in the Senate, Biden is particularly vulnerable to attacks on geopolitical orthodoxy as an example of what not to do.Iraq Tells Trump GTFO After Soleimani Strike"Age does not necessarily correlate with wisdom on foreign policy," one foreign policy adviser to a top-tier campaign told The Daily Beast. "Over the course of years, and in some cases decades, there is a track record that is extensive—and in some cases it is consistent—in pointing to flaws of judgement, and perhaps even a worldview that is not necessarily well-suited to what is required of a commander in chief."Leading the charge, unsurprisingly, is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who for years has trumpeted his 2002 vote against authorizing the use of military force in Iraq as a member of the House of Representatives as evidence that decades of foreign policy experience can't supplant good judgment. Even in the days before the strike that killed Soleimani when foreign policy was still very much on the back burner for most presidential hopefuls, Sanders had described Biden's support for the war as "a lot of baggage.""I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran," Sanders tweeted on Friday morning, alongside a video underscored by a trap beat in which he describes that war and the vote that authorized it as "the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.""People want to criticize me for that? Go for it, that's okay," Sanders said. "I don't apologize to anybody."Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, both of whom entered politics long after public opinion and political consensus turned against the invasion of Iraq, have been more implicit in their criticism, instead warning that Soleimani's death risks an escalation of military tensions with Iran that could result in another "endless war"—like the one Biden voted for."Every piece of this is about judgement," Warren said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, when asked whether Biden should be the most trusted candidate on foreign policy matters despite his past support for the Iraq War, as polls of likely voters have suggested. "There are people running for president who are willing to keep combat troops in the Middle East for five years, for 10 years… Staying pinned down and escalating our wars in the Middle East is not in the long-term interest of the United States."Warren has not been immune from criticism for her own response to Soleimani's killing. Her campaign's initial statement in response to the strike, calling the late Quds Force chief a "murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands," was criticized from the left as parroting the talking points of more hawkish Democrats. Warren on Sunday morning dodged the question of whether she still felt that Soleimani's death amounted to an assassination, responding that "the question that we ought to focus on is, why now?"On the same program, Buttigieg declined to directly question Biden's judgement on foreign policy matters, telling host Jake Tapper that the focus should be on Trump, his decision-making process ahead of ordering the operation, and as The Daily Beast reported on Saturday, his decision to gossip about impending military action with members of his private Palm Beach resort."I'll let the V.P. speak to his own judgment," Buttigieg said, noting that his judgement is informed by his experience as a naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan. But earlier in the week, before most Americans or candidates likely even knew who Soleimani was, Buttigieg had blasted Biden's vote as supporting "the worst foreign policy decision made by the United States in my lifetime.""You could also argue that we wouldn't be there if it weren't for the invasion of Iraq in the first place, which I still believe was a grave mistake," Buttigieg later told reporters in New Hampshire on Friday.Buttigieg and Warren's more abstract criticisms of Biden's judgement, the foreign policy adviser told The Daily Beast, harken back to a day when differences on geopolitics weren't marks of personal failure—so long as you learned from your mistakes."A lot of this has gone out the window, but there's a hope where we can get back to a point where these positions and approaches can transcend politics, where they're not personalized, not politicized, but based on principles and values," the adviser added.The Biden campaign, however, told The Daily Beast that they see the emergence of foreign policy matters as a central issue in campaign politics as a boon, rather than a burden."These events put into greater relief that we need a commander-in-chief who can, from the moment they're sworn in—and without needing on the job training—start repairing the severe damage that Donald Trump has done on the world stage," a campaign spokesperson told The Daily Beast.One campaign that has felt no compunction about explicitly personalizing Biden's past potential liabilities on the Middle East is that of Trump himself. In the hours after Soleimani's killing, Trump campaign officials declared that Biden's track record in the region was both too bellicose and too simpering."America's enemies in Iran rejoiced under Obama/Biden," tweeted Trump campaign director of rapid response Matt Wolking. "Under Trump, they are crying like babies."The Trump campaign also pushed out an old interview with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who served under President Barack Obama, in which he stood by saying that he thought Biden had been "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."Biden's response, as in other campaign moments when his buttons were pressed, has been defensive to the point of inelegance, refusing to respond to Sanders' comments about his "baggage" except to say that Sanders himself has more than his fair share.On Friday, Biden's response to a reporter's inquiry about his role in the 2011 operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden prompted further questions about whether his foreign policy experience is a help or a hindrance. In an exchange with Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, Biden said that he would be willing to use an airstrike to kill a terrorist leader, using the bin Laden operation as an example. When Doocy followed up by noting that Biden has previously said that he discouraged President Obama from authorizing the operation, Biden brusquely responded, "No, I didn't. I didn't."How Biden Kept Screwing Up Iraq—Over and Over and Over AgainThe exchange—which was almost instantly repackaged by the Trump campaign into an email titled "Joe Biden just lied about opposing the raid to kill Osama bin Laden"—sparked a flurry of fact-checking articles noting that by all accounts, including Biden's own in 2012, he had not backed the operation in a group meeting at the time. In 2015, Biden said that he did not offer a firm opinion in that group meeting, saying that "it would have been a mistake" to do so, but that he had privately encouraged President Obama to "trust your gut."A Biden campaign official confirmed to The Daily Beast that Biden had told Obama in a private conversation that he supported the president following his "instincts" on the raid, and noted that that aspect of Biden's story has never changed.Biden, for his part, is hoping to keep the focus on the more pressing matter of Trump's foreign policy, rather than his own."No president has a right to take our country to war without the informed consent of Americans—informed consent. And right now we have no idea what this guy has in mind, we have no idea," Biden told reporters before a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday evening. "He's going off on a tweetstorm on his own, and it's incredibly dangerous and irresponsible."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? 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