Report: Obama advisors have been meeting with Iran, Syria since before the election
posted at 2:50 pm on February 2, 2009 by Allahpundit
Ed asked this morning if any “preparations” have been made for that meeting of the minds Obama’s planning with Chavez. Given this bombshell, a better question might be just how long The One’s been “preparing.”
[E]ven before winning the November 4 election, Obama unofficially used what experts call “track two” discussions to approach America’s two foes in the region.
Nuclear non-proliferation experts had several “very, very high-level” contacts in the last few months with Iranian leaders, said Jeffrey Boutwell, executive director for the US branch of the Pugwash group, an international organization of scientists which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.
Former defense secretary William Perry, who served in Obama’s election campaign, participated in some of these meetings focused on “a wide range of issues that separate Iran from the West: not only their nuclear program but the Middle East peace process, Persian Gulf issues,” Boutwell told AFP.
The Pugwash official declined to name the other participants, except to say they had considerable clout.
Omri Ceren’s righteously outraged that Obama would undermine Bush by meddling in foreign policy, particularly during a campaign when he stood to benefit personally from the results. Fair enough; watch the short clip below from early January to see just how egregious The One’s hypocrisy here is. I’m not so sure, though, that talking to either country had the effect of undermining anything. In the case of Iranian nukes, they’ve been jerking the west around for years to buy time. How do you “undermine” that? It’s a transparent farce, neatly illustrated by the fact that even the guy in charge of keeping the bomb out of their hands can’t get his story straight about how long it’ll take them to build one. As for Syria, Omri notes that Assad’s willingness to chat with Israel sure did seem to Change after he met with emissaries from Hope, the implication being that Obama’s advisors might have promised him better concessions if he held out until The One was in office. Would Assad really need to be formally told that a Democrat would go softer on him than John McCain would, though? Every enemy regime had an incentive last year to hold out on Bush in hopes of a better deal from Obama. As stupid as Assad is, he’s not so stupid that he couldn’t figure that out.










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You’re talking about Newspapers… I’m talking about the entire industry… including TV.
Yes (according to my Brother in Law, who is the head sales guy for advertising for a major newspaper chain), the newspapers dynamics have really changed. Local sports coverage is now a major portion of why people are bothering with Print Papers. They cover the local Police Bloter, Local Sports… and get the rest from the AP, or rewrite articles from the majors (NYT and such).
But if you look at the current folks in the Whitehouse Press room… very few of those are Print reporters, and they are the ones starting to ask tougher questions.
With having to fill multiple 24 hour news channels with stories, they will have to do stories on the New Administration… and the fact is that good news, and support, does not make as good of a story as bad news or scandal.
IMO Honneymoon is going to be really short…
Romeo13 on February 2, 2009 at 5:23 PM
We now know how Obama plans to defeat Iran: BADMINTON
“Birdies, not Bullets!”
Oy.
Michael in MI on February 2, 2009 at 5:27 PM
I knew someone was going to nail me on that…
right2bright on February 2, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Yes, you are correct, the desire for the media to be on the air, surpasses the economics, that is where I got hung up, on the economics.
The media boys and girls want the “gotcha” question aired, it goes way beyond economics, and into pure narcissistic ego. And the way Obama has a problem handling the question, will the major “pull back” the reins of their prima donas (sp?).
Air time trumps all…
right2bright on February 2, 2009 at 5:32 PM
Candidates don’t get full intelligence briefings so him even discussing these things without all the information is circumspect.
Every day brings a new revelation.Been sober 4 years but this nut is going to drive me backto the Bottle!!
Kevin in Southern Illinois on February 2, 2009 at 5:32 PM
Better known as “ping-pong diplomacy”, following Nixon’s footsteps…
right2bright on February 2, 2009 at 5:33 PM
Silly me, I can’t remember the name of that silly law that is supposed to keep private parties (which Obama was at the time) from meddling in foreign affairs and leave that to the Dept of State.
Apparently Obama (and his lawyers) can’t remember either…
ElRonaldo on February 2, 2009 at 5:33 PM
Read the posts and you will see your “law” mentioned, and the answer to why it doesn’t apply.
right2bright on February 2, 2009 at 6:12 PM
I really hope this story is not true and that its source will change his description of what transpired. (Hey, that’s hope and change!)
DrStock on February 2, 2009 at 6:18 PM
Jimmy Carter II … Carter did this repeatedly, and look what he got for the effort.
tarpon on February 2, 2009 at 6:28 PM
Bush was such a lame duck HotAir was putting pictures of Obama under posts about the economy before he was even sworn in. It’s not surprising he took some initiative and did something when 43 wasn’t.
Nonfactor on February 2, 2009 at 6:34 PM
Sounds like a violation to ME.
uncivilized on February 2, 2009 at 6:34 PM
You know what? I really don’t care about YOUR opinion. Considering the Logan Act is pretty clear in its intent and meaning, my opinion is just as valid. As for international law, it doesn’t mean sh!t. Treasonous behavior is pretty damn easy to spot. You don’t need a lawyer’s convoluted brain to figure it out. Anybody that runs for president and makes end runs around the Constitutionally legal government is a traitor and should be frog-marched up to a brick wall and shot. That will prevent future fvcktards from doing the samething.
Andy in Agoura Hills on February 2, 2009 at 6:35 PM
Finally, we have some confirmation as to what was going on. The final years of Bush administration had some
extremely odd happenings. I always suspected internal sabotage for some of these. Putting two and two together, this is my theory:
Suddenly after the midterms, there is a widespread discussion of Bush being a lameduck in the press. The way it was spread, it was pretty clear somebody was pushing it from behind and giving out a loud siren to foreign potentates not to deal with Bush.
Paul Wolfowitz was ambushed out of office by a planned coup from Mulloch Brown and other Eurocrats( who seem to have close association with George Soros.) This was watched by near silence in the US press. We now know IMF head the similar allegations against him, but a mere apology sufficed from him. With the Paul Wolfowitz scandal, France and Britain try pretty hard to prise the control out of the World Bank(the power to nominate its President) out of the US. They tried to do the same thing during the initial stages of Lehmann collapse but somebody conveniently brought the complaint against IMF head at the right time. France got the message and backed down.
Many neocons are forced out of office and defenestrated one by one, either willingly or by bogus withchunts. Once the Chief of Staff asked for voluntary resignations, a lot of Bush-loyal staff resign leave him.
This particular defenstration is a logical result of the Dems taking control of the Congress but it created a vaccuum in Bush’s command which sets the stage for Obama’s arrival.
Stage 2. Obama’s candidacy just begins to take off and here’s where things suddenly begin to go wrong, very oddly, one after the other.
Turkey invades Kurdistan and according to a news item, someone from high was leaking information to Turkey.
Iraq’s PM begins to go rogue(according to a newsreport, even State Department was worried). This was during the Iraq-US agreement. We already have a report from Amir Taheri, that when Obama went there, he tried to undermine the administration. Not only that, he also has a lot of backchannels like Nadim Auchi which can take care of Iraq. During the visit, Iraq PM suddenly takes a position congruent to Obama during the campaign leaving Mccain looking like a fool.
Not to mention Lebanon(where the progress achieved by the neocons is reversed) or Palestine which is like Obama’s backyard.
Russia invaded Georgia( though I don’t know if Mccain people encouraged Georgia to provoke Russia or Russia decided to do this on its own, because Obama had a rare misstep on this occasion.)
More ominously, Obama takes the position that Pakistan should be attacked with with limited strikes, a position at odds with Mccain and not taken seriously anywhere else and suddenly when Obama starts talking about it during the campaign, drone strikes against Pak do happen cutting ground from underneath Mccain’s feet and making Obama look like a prescient thinker. We get to know later that the Administration signed a secret order for limited strikes but my theory is that Bush wanted to go after Syria and Iran and the CIA went after Pak( and to quell suspicion did one-off strike against Syria and leaked the order to press.)
After the Palin pick is announced and Mccain matches Obama in polls for the first time, Lehmann collapses and what do you know, the man who had the biggest hand it, Tim Geithner, is named the head of Treasury because of “continuity” without really explaining why he let Lehmann go, when AIG was propped up a week before. All he had to do was quietly squelch Lehmanns deals from happening from behind the scenes. We do know that Geithner’s father and Obama’s mother knew each other from Indonesia, so these two could know each other from childhood.
A couple of insane theories like “decoupling” and “Post-american world” are shot into cultural sphere encouraging bad behavior from power all around. For example,a number of EU club who belong to Soros set must have thought that this was a golden opportunity to throw off American yoke. So they take steps to put pressure on American economy as much as they can. remember US dollar was under severe pressure from Euro and Bush had to send an actual envoy to stop them. Their central banks and other financail institutions took a number of credit decisions which were described as insane by their commentators. I think I know what happened. They tried to put max.pressure on American economy blithely thinking their is chiefly decoupled. Hence, the joy expressed by German finance minsiter, immediately after lehmann collapses. After the immediate confusion, British PM steps in and proposes bank nationalisation which Paulson goes on to do. The eurocrats only find out later that nothing decoupled with anything at all. I don’t know what part Obama played in this instance with European powers but he seemed to be in the loop. He coolly stayed out of the mess and watched as Mccain flailed in strategy. The European powers back down from their campaign only when Obama announces he is not much intersted in US losing its control of the world financial system.
I am sure there are other things that passed me by. I am just an armchair dreamer but this is how things must have happened. Now, we know about these secret negotations with Iran and Syria, we already ahve Taheri’s story about Iraq( but I think Obama’s meddling was much greater), we have to look for evidence in other cases.
Don’t let this go with just mock outrage. Obama’s whole candidacy is one huge subterfuge.
promachus on February 2, 2009 at 6:54 PM
oh good. another usurpation to add to the list …
if it were you or I “preparing” … we would be in jail.
spot on.
AZ_Redneck on February 2, 2009 at 6:56 PM
Obama and the dems are desperatly trying to
Surrender to every dictator on the entire planet
While telling the Citizens that he supports our military by announcing the so called increase in military spending..
Obama is dupliciteous alright ..
he is doing one thing over here
and a completely opposite thing over their
trying to have it both ways..
Just like a liberal
they want to surrender to the islamists
but keep their freedoms intact (at least until they empty out whats left of the treasury)..
Both parties are making me ill now..
Republicans because they let in every theif and then handed them bailout money all the while every bank was on back of the train going over the cliff
The democrats because
a. they want to surrender
b. they forced the banks to loan to every illegal alien in the northern hemisphere
c. when that fiasco blew up all the dems like cockroaches
blamed then president Bush.
d. Now their up to their rotten necks kissing everyones ass
I hope we arent destroyed because of their folly
jcila on February 2, 2009 at 7:05 PM
I forgot to add the biggest subterfuge. The NIE’s clean chit to Iran saying Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons. How many bets that Obama had something do with it, especially now that we know that his enovys were talking with Iran.
promachus on February 2, 2009 at 7:13 PM
Was Hanoi Jane in on the talks?
Done That on February 2, 2009 at 7:21 PM
Twoface is not just a Batman badguy…
29Victor on February 2, 2009 at 9:31 PM
After reading this post, I don’t think Georgia was responsible for any part of this thing; I believe the reports that it was all Russia’s doing, and engineered by Russia, from the get-go:
The Truth About Russia in Georgia (Michael J. Totten)
Interesting read!
RD on February 2, 2009 at 9:33 PM
There is no such thing as “international law”. We have treaties that we have signed onto (which do not constitute any sort of “international law”, as they are just contracts), but when none of the signatories to these treaties actually follow them (as with the Geneva Conventions) they are just jokes that we are not bound to follow, either.
I wish people would stop spouting on about some illusory “international law”.
progressoverpeace on February 2, 2009 at 10:03 PM
I have finally accepted the conspiracy theory that Obama is not an American. He must be French. He just couldn’t wait to surrender.
SKYFOX on February 3, 2009 at 5:10 AM
Last time I checked we were bending over backwards to follow this one.
Disturb the Universe on February 3, 2009 at 8:51 AM
Don’t get mad at me, I didn’t write the diplomatic policies of the U.S. and of the international countries…this doesn’t fall into any where near violating the Logan Act.
If you remember, Bush knew Obama’s people had met with Iraq, and he understood it not to be a conflict.
When most talk of “international law”, it is referring to an international understanding.
If you went to Australia’s diplomatic core and talked about “track 2″ discussion, they would know exactly what you meant, as well as Sweden, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. It is internationally known, and written into the diplomatic “lingo” of every country. It is, in essence, part of international law…that is law and language that is consistant between countries.
Here is a little article for you guys to read and help you understand.
Examples:
Even this guy, who is seeking “inter-galactic” track 2, so he even takes it to a celestial understanding.
Class is dismissed, please take some time and do your reading assignments, if there are any questions, please see me after class.
right2bright on February 3, 2009 at 8:52 AM
Shameless interference.
FireBlogger on February 3, 2009 at 9:11 AM
The man whose handlers cleared every obstacle for him for 20 years thinks he did it himself. He thinks he’s a genius.
He thinks that his adolescent fantasies are reality.
He thinks he is such a genius that he can persuade the most dangerous thugs and rogues to hum kumbaya with him.
That’s why HE is the most dangerous man in the world.
He just may bring an end to civilization.
All because of an ego fed based on a looney premise.
notagool on February 3, 2009 at 10:14 AM
I’m sure that’s 100% true of every moonbat loser in every coffee shop in America.
But how could those rose-colored glasses stay on for even ten seconds into Obama’s first call to Abbas from the Oval Office?
I quit listening to Obama’s speeches a long time before everyone else finally did. But I would very much like to have heard that phone call. His autobiographies explained absolutely nothing about the man, but that one conversation would answer a thousand questions.
logis on February 3, 2009 at 10:53 PM
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