WHO’S YOUR DADDY, BAGHDADI?

The Reason Intelligence Matters

In 2011, businessman Donald Trump felt the need to comment about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, “Any president sitting there when the generals come in and say we have him, who’s going to say, oh, let’s leave him alone?” Trump was attempting to lessen any credit President Obama might receive for the raid and killing. Trump also complained about it taking so long, an early slap at military intelligence.

President Trump doesn’t understand that the type of decisions all modern presidents had to make, are now his to make. He gets credit for his good moves and, as he knows, he will get harshly slayed by the press, Congress and his critics when things go wrong. Donald Trump has made no friends with his critical personality.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a main character in my book If God Could Cry, and I was delighted by his killing. My historical novel portraited the so-called leader of the Caliphate based on the many books and articles I read about him. His location in my book was in northern Syria, quite near where he was finally found. This seemed logical to me when I was writing.

The boogie man Trump attempted to create during his “mission accomplished” Sunday morning presentation to the nation probably made some people feel good, but this line about Baghdadi, “Died like a dog, died like a coward,” might be better for someone doing a movie pitch. It was so un-statesman-like. How can there be joy in the murder of an enemy when the “achievement” included the killing of three innocent children? This gloating is a giant turn-off and it’s just more of the “all about me” attitude that constantly seeps out of Trump like puss.

I have always been skeptical about generalizations because they are often used to put down an entire race, religion or culture. Trump uses a bit of undocumented hearsay or obvious racial tropes to make people doubt groups of people. For example, he said that the Kurds “are no angels,” meaning what? The facts suggest that the Kurds provided the information that helped find Baghdadi. Why are we pushing them away?

Trump is also desperately trying to justify his embrace of Putin and Russia as it pertains to Syria, Turkey, the Kurds and what is happening in that part of the world. He paints his personal relationships with non-democratic demigods as something that will help America. I hate to say it, but Donald J. Trump has now drawn a giant target on himself because he personalized the kill. His overt taking of credit for the operation while shaming the terrorist with his graphic description will cause other terrorists to see Trump as the true “infidel.” I am sure the Donald loves his characterization of the whole thing being like a movie, but movies have endings.

Terrorist movements are not motion pictures. They tend to reconstitute, and the next version is always much more heinous. It’s clear that Donald Trump doesn’t have any idea about how people in that part of the world think. He has no training in or knowledge of foreign policy, and probably couldn’t explain how a parliamentary system works. If only he had followed the advice of those in the government who know that area, he might have stayed in the game to gain long-term stability.

Trump would rather have a friendship with Kim Jong-Un, even if pushes aside the grief and sorrow of a family from Cincinnati who lost their son at the hands of that monster. Otto Warmbier is person who didn’t have to die. Trump doesn’t care about him, though. He got his mileage and has accepted Kim’s denials.

Because of a U.N. investigation and report, we know how Saudi agents plotted to kill and dismember Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi., Trump, however, is more interested in selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. Killing people is okay for Trump if it involves a transaction favorable to him. Trump has accepted the Crown Prince’s denial.

The suggestion that our military will remain in Northern Syria to protect the oil refineries does not mean that Trump will use such military intervention to get the oil of a sovereign nation. The U.N. clearly states, “…in conflict and post-conflict situations, the importance of cooperation in shared responsibility, among source, transit and destination countries in preventing and combating trafficking, illicit trade and illegal exploitation of natural resources.” It would be against international law for us to exploit the resources of any nation. Plus, we really don’t need the oil, according to Trump we have tons of it.

Trump may say he doesn’t respect the United Nations, but he falls all over himself to address that body. He needs to follow the rules in war and conflicts, unless he wants to spend his later years sitting in front of a war tribunal. That’s on him.

The intelligence community and the lifetime experts who work for the federal government are NOT petty people like Trump. They are mission-oriented folks who are totally loyal to the Constitution and the Commander-in-Chief. When difficult times come, Trump needs to turn to those same intelligence people for information that will keep our country safe. When he maligns them on Twitter for political purposes, he not only disrespects those hard-working Americans he stains the presidency. He comes off as trite and burdened by information.

Trump will take the credit for the death of an enemy, but that doesn’t mean he alone can determine who the real enemies are. He needs to stop being so judgmental without facts and evidence. The saddest point concerning the take down of ISIS’ number one man is the glorification of his death could incite “true believers” to do more harm to people who look like us. But then, Trump has all the answers and we hope his guesses work because failure could be terrible for our country. When he’s wrong, we always lose big time.

Read About The Country We Love

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs shows how we’ve wasted our GOLD on bad wars and corruption. While GOD is there for many people as a spiritual enrichment and the provider of glowing feelings, the truth is just praying and believing will not change our major arc. We don’t determine who gets a GUN. We aren’t sure if we have paramilitary groups ready to storm the White House or a White Castle. There is no control of weapons. The GOOFBALLS with the power constantly try to manipulate us into spending more money on bombs and tanks and wars. When all of our institutions are infected with neglect and fall in disrepair, we will only have ourselves to blame. This book is not an antidote for the left or right, it’s an accelerant to move the middle off their collective asses to go do something positive for America.

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.

SANCTIONS & CEASEFIRE

Trump’s Illogical Foreign Policy

There is something so disturbing about President Donald J. Trump that makes me wonder if he has the cognitive ability to think in linear form. We don’t know what was said and heard on the call with Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but the two leaders’ comments and actions seem to be totally out of sync. If you want a leader to not invade a country, perhaps you should tell them BEFORE THEY ATTACK!

Donald Trump says he told Erdoğan that moving his troops and talking land in Northern Syria would be a bad idea. However, the text of the Turkish side of that call leads one to believe that Trump gave Turkey permission to land grab with the intent of resettling refugees avoiding the wrath of Bashar al-Assad, the evil president of Syria. In April of 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria estimated that 400,000 people died in the war.

Speaking from the Oval Office on 10-16-2019, President Trump said that Turkey’s incursion into Syria is their problem. The exact quote was, “They have a problem at the border; it’s not our border,” and that “they’ve got a lot of sand over there. There’s a lot of sand they can play with.” What a dingbat remark. He has no idea how uncaring and distorted his comments are. Not only is it our problem, it’s a snag we created by our actions. We started a war by pulling fewer than 50 soldiers out of a place that had been experiencing relative calm. Trump refuses to admit he is wrong while being played by another ruthless world leader who has become nothing short of a sultan in Turkey.

While both Republicans and Democratic Congresspeople are highly critical of Trump’s bizarre plan, the President demanded a stop to the invasion and called for a ceasefire. Erdoğan has Russia and Putin on his side and he doesn’t give a whit about Trump’s babbling. The man is under impeachment investigation and he thinks that his opinions are the only things that matter about the law, a war, and the world. He’s a complete buffoon with no mental acumen and no talent for foreign policy and world events. The Donald is harming America, right in front of everyone’s eyes. Someone needs to step up and STOP HIM NOW.

VP Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveling to Turkey for an emergency ceasefire negotiation with Erdoğan is almost comical. Why didn’t Trump make his position clear on the phone call? Fox News reported that, “President Trump ‘went off script’ during his call on Sunday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, before he announced that the U.S. would withdraw all troops from northeast Syria ahead of a Turkish military operation in the region.”

Trump was supposed to say, “Tell Erdogan to stay north of the border,” but he ignored some of his own points. I swear, this man has a chip in his brain controlled by Putin controlling him to do dirty deeds which affect the very security of our nation.

Trump claims that the Kurds are “no angels,” but what exactly does that mean? He spouts about the cost of the transaction, ignoring the fact that the Kurds fought against ISIS for us and captured more than 10,000 terrorists. This idiot president fails to comprehend they lost more than 10,000 men and women in the fight against ISIS. He’s simply blocked it out to cover his lies and bad judgment.

Trump believes that some ISIS fighters were released from prison to lure America back into a war in the Middle East. Has he forgotten that ISIS, and Al-Qaeda before them, were trained in those areas and attacked the United States on 9-11? He doesn’t care if ISIS prisoners get released, claiming they will go to Europe. Why is that good for America and the world? How lame is it for the President to tell the American public that Syria is 7,000 miles from us and so what happens there is not that important to our country and people.

Trump abuses his power by waging economic war with sanctions. He threatens to raise tariffs on Turkish products, thinking President Erdoğan will bend to his will. Actually, he is forcing Turkey and other fringe countries into the arms of Russia and Putin. If Trump keeps going, we will lose face and the support of our international allies.

As the world gets worse, Trump continues to praise himself and gloat on the false premise that he knows what he is doing. The United States is being run by a lunatic who believes his unitary executive position cannot be challenged by equal branches of government. If we do not stop him now, we might have to fight for our democracy for decades to come.

The mistake in Syria proves Trump is unfit to be President of our country, or any country. He repeats himself endlessly while those who believe in him are guilty of a strange idol worship. They will be judged by a higher power. For now, however, we must get rid of this presidential idiot who is damaging America more and more every day. Donald Trump won’t learn any lesson, even when his two stooges, Pence and Pompeo come back from Turkey with their tails between their legs with nothing accomplished in Syria. This is a failure of epic proportions.

Read About The Country We Love

The book that tells it like it is…

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DRAMATIC RETREAT

Trump Pulls Out of Syria

When the Donald J. Trump Foundation “charity” was forced to closure by New York State, our orange president bearing the same name suddenly announced that all US Troop would be withdrawn from Syria. Did the President of the United States make a major policy decision just to push his foundation problems off the front page. OMG!

Could this decision be part of the promises Trump made behind closed doors to Putin in Helsinki? Our president confuses his campaign promises to his misguided and unhealthy love of the Russian leader. This administration’s Foreign Policy is based on Trump’s myopic viewpoints with no input from experts.

The Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, have become very vocal about this snap decision and some, like Lyndsey Graham, have said this rash move is Obama-like. You cannot present a greater criticism of Trump than comparing him to Obama. So what will Trump do now?

Even Fox News presenters are criticizing our esteemed leader. Rush Limbaugh has declared Trump’s declaration a mistake since he got nothing in return from the other leaders. For once, Rush is making sense.

What a colossal political mistake. Trump just executed a “Mission Accomplished” moment. Putin backs Trump’s move to withdraw US troops from Syria, but only goes as far as saying the Islamic State has been dealt “serious blows.” Even Putin doesn’t believe ISIS is defeated. Trump may have done a deal with the leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who convinced him that the Kurds are terrorists and moving troops out of Syria would help the world. How naïve Trump must be.

What we have said here from the beginning is that Trump’s use of Twitter will create a major problem to this country, our security and the world order. He’s not mature enough to have a Twitter account. If I was a millionaire, I would sue Twitter and Trump and seek an injunction against them. There must be a restraining order against the President. TRUMP IS WRONG, and every Republican knows it.

Add this to the impeachment case against Donald J. Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to stand up for America!

GREAT CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA

These daily diatribes from a delusional blogger give you a day by day overview of the 45th President’s first two-hundred days in office. Follow Donald Trump through the tough times on his way to impeachment. Kindle Version HERE, or Get the printed book now, CLICK HERE.

“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”

Three Strikes and We’re Out!

There is a wonderfully appropriate lyric from the Lynyrd Skynyrd song Simple Man that goes, “Forget your lust for the rich man’s gold, all that you need is in your soul. And you can do this, oh baby, if you try. All that I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied, and be a simple kind of man.”

I am sure the Generals who consulted Donald Trump on the Syrian crisis were cognizant that they had to keep it simple for our Great Orange Leader. Perhaps when Trump played with his little toy soldiers as a young boy, he wanted to command that green plastic army having total world power. Still, he is a simple man.

His telling tweet after those “precision strikes” on known chemical research facilities and factories in Syria clearly showed this president’s lack of sophistication, “A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!”

Maybe the Donald lives in an alternative universe with his “alternate facts,” but it’s clear that by using the words “Mission Accomplished” he has seriously damaged his brand. Could Trump have forgotten the George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” speech, which took place on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003? Does our President not remember Bush’s monumental screw up? It remains one of our country’s great punchlines.

Whatever, that didn’t prevent President Donald from using the term after three sites in Syria were targeted, bombed and taken out in retaliation for Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Douma, a town south of Damascus. Now we must deal with the reality that Trump believes this maneuver is a total fix for what has ailed Syria and the world for the last eight years.

The far-right conspiracy theorists quickly latched onto a strange idea. They felt that the chemical attacks were not perpetrated by Assad and the Syrian army but were a photo opportunity and invention of a rebel group or, worse, Russia bating the U.S. into war. I’m not sure why Alex Jones of InfoWars would adopt such a wacko position, but then there is little he does to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

During my research while writing the book If God Could Cry, I was nose down for two years on about a dozen tomes about Islam and the Middle East. I discovered a diverse group of opinions about the challenges on the ground, and I developed a better understanding of the region’s people and what drives their conflicts. My study revealed a never-ending string of decisions and mistakes pushed onto the Middle East nations. Each move was a big foot stomping a tube of toothpaste. What looked like a quick way to solve a problem was simply making a mess.

Back to Syria, aside from the baked-in conflict of the Sunni and Shia family argument that has been going on for 1400 years, we have the geo-political problem of two varieties of leaders in the Levant.

One is the supreme leader based on Sharia Law, basically a theocracy. The other is the totalitarian leader, with fascist and dictator leanings, who applies Sharia to the people they rule. Nowhere in this mix is a democracy. And, make no doubt about it, Bashar al-Assad is that kind of total dictator who was appointed to the position by his late father, Hafez al-Assad, a despicable blood-thirsty king.

There are probably very few people in America who believe the reports from Douma and have seen the video of poisoned children, who would argue that the actions taken by the joint efforts of British, French and American troops were unjustified. But that brings us to the next step in this process. What is our strategy and what happens now?

The Lynyrd Skynyrd song urges the simple people to beware of “lust for the rich man’s gold.” If you believe campaign-Donald, this is the oil living underground in the Middle East. The lyric references that which resides in the simple man’s soul, and here is where Donald Trump gets confused and vague. It makes one wonder if this simple man even has a soul.

He wants the satisfaction of the world thinking he is good, but he dodges the heavy lifting of understanding the true nature of the problem. He never mentions that Assad and his war machine have killed 500,000 people using big bombs and guns – no gas was needed. Politically and morally, our Orange Leader doesn’t want to think about the five million people who left Syria and are now refugees. He has openly classified such exiles as UNACCEPTABLE and DANGEROUS to America.

The real mission in Syria should be regime change, highly unlikely to be accomplished by any country or leader. Israel doesn’t want an Ayatollah in Syria, Iran does. Russia would like to take the place over, like they did in Crimea, but that would cause major problems for the West and would cost the Russian people a mountain of rubles.

So, here we go again. It’s another example of other countries trying to “do what is right” by changing the world when, deep down inside, they know that they cannot go too far without upsetting the apple cart. It would be nice for five million people to return to a peaceful home country. One could say the same thing about the expatriates of Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela or El Salvador.

Donald Trump is finding out the hard way that he cannot be an “America First” president and please all its citizens. He cannot be an isolationist and anti-globalist, while claiming he wants to help the children of the world. Trump doesn’t stay on his own message, and when he uses someone else’s, he looks foolish. Mission Accomplished? Really Donald? You should have run that one by someone smarter than you.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

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TWO WARS AT ONCE

Trump – Comey – Trump – Assad

There are times in every presidential administration when someone writes a book that is critical of the present occupant of the White House. We now have two books, Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty. Both of them are direct hit jobs on President Donald J. Trump and the way he does business in Washington.

As President Trump was trying to decide what to do about HIS red line in Syria, the talking heads on TV were reading excerpts from the leaked Comey book. How fitting.

What has happened here is that the clearer, more informed minds of our Generals and Commanders in the field have temporary talked Trump off the ledge of war.

An important aspect of the Syrian conflict is the teaching moment it presents to our naïve and misinformed leader. The stakes involve a decision to go face to face with Russia and Trump appears to have blinked. We may never know if Trump used a communication channel to the Kremlin to find out how serious Putin was with his warnings, but the net result is that Trump can use Nikki Haley to work some magic at the United Nations to get the support of other nations.

We already have buy-in from the U.K. and France, but what about bringing Assad to the world court and charging him with war crimes? Why not figure out a way to get him out of control? Oh, that’s right, those are the same things Obama did and all he accomplished was a promise from Russia that the chemical weapons would be destroyed. That didn’t work. And when Trump was so emotionally overtaken by pictures of kids who were poisoned by Bashar al-Assad, he wasted 59 tomahawk missiles scorching an airfield that was up and running again in a few days. That didn’t’ work.

What the Donald is finding out is that all the things he thought he could fix with his big, round mouth are more difficult than he ever imagined. In fact, they are just as tricky as they were for Obama, two Bushes and Bill Clinton. While all this is going on, James Comey’s book is about to drop and the sound it will make will surely drive this ego-maniac more insane.

Comey could be painted as a just another fired, disgruntled employee arguing his case to the world, but what his book will do to this administration could be harmful to our country. While Trump and his team should be focusing on the Middle East, they will be diverted into a war posture against Comey, which they will expand to include the slandering and defiling Robert Mueller. Word on the street is that the RNC, a political party, will buy ads to discredit the investigation into Russian meddling in our election.

Chemical weapons are against the law, so is torturing a captured enemy, but that didn’t stop Dick Cheney and his neo-con war machine. It would be highly unlikely that anyone in the World Court would be convinced that America was a creditable witness to these high crimes and misdemeanors, but you still have that red line that both Obama and Trump painted in the sand. If the Armed Forces of the United States were thrown into a conflict in Syria, Trump’s premise that we wasted money and got nothing in Iraq and Afghanistan goes out the window.

There was a window of opportunity for Trump to maintain America’s leadership role in the world, but that has closed. When Turkey, Russia and Iran met to divide Syria, two messages became clear. First, the U.S. was not at the table, meaning we didn’t care. Second, we didn’t care about Assad’s thoughts. Putin wants a warm-water port and Iran wants to force Syria into their version of Islam. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei of Iran, has a goal of maintaining religious and political power over Syria, no matter who the leader might be.

All this is way over Donald Trump’s head. He doesn’t get the nuances and intricacies of the Middle East. He jobbed out that responsibility to Jared Kushner, who has remained invisible and silent through this and most other matters. What does this person do and why is he there?

Trump has been handed a Rubik’s cube which has been tortuously turned and worked by previous administrations. There are no secret codes, no money that can be paid to release us from this quagmire. Even if we were to remove Assad from power, there is no plan for handling the resulting vacuum. If the RNC spends millions to discredit the Special Counsel, the investigation will at least show that James Comey’s observations are more credible than false.

But the President has his bully-pulpit, a.k.a. Twitter, and he soon responded to his very own personal war, “James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst “botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!” TRUMP ONLY CARES ABOUT HOW HE’S VIEWED, NOT WHAT IS RIGHT.

The on-the-job training of our Great Orange Leader is utterly tiresome and unproductive. If only someone would step up and take the wheel of this runaway train. Why do we have to wait four years? We don’t need to be fighting more wars. It’s time we give peace and order a chance.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

Now available on Amazon.

GAS KILLING ANIMAL AND THE CLOWN

Trump’s Lack of Gravitas in Foreign Affairs

In the last 500 days, I have written over 150,000 words about Donald Trump, his reactionary behavior and his small mindedness. I never said I would be objective and have openly admitted that I never respected him, and I hated his TV show.

I lived in New York for 16 years and had a front row seat for the Donald Trump show, before he was a political candidate or president. Most of the time I cast aside his actions and opinions as the raves of a rabies infested mind. He rarely made sense, and it was obvious that each of his statements either made himself look better or discredited someone else. I never sensed a drip of reason from this headline-making rich guy. He was a simplistic fool, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The metal must have leaked into his frontal lobes.

Anyone in the world can read any tweet that is posted to @realDonaldTrump. Now that the Donald has been sworn in as the President of the United States, we have more than just a reality TV series cliffhanger to consider. This man can now curtail justice in our courts, run up our country’s debt or, worse, get us into another war.

There should be someone filtering his emotional, unreasonable and unresearched viewpoints. But that is a stupid pipedream that will never happen. He will tweet us into a trade war or a real war, and no one will stand up to him. Trump is addicted to social media with the same reckless abandon of a 14-year girl or the local high school bully.

Trumps Tweets of April 11, 2018, “Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it! Our relationship with Russia is worse now than it has ever been, and that includes the Cold War. There is no reason for this. Russia needs us to help with their economy, something that would be very easy to do, and we need all nations to work together. Stop the arms race? Much of the bad blood with Russia is caused by the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama. Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein who signed FISA & Comey letter). No Collusion, so they go crazy!”

Some people use the phrase, “Bull in a china shop.” I prefer to employ a visual of the direction a full balloon takes when let loose. Trump is all over the place, and when he receives any criticism he tries to fix the story, change the narrative or cast disparagement on people or institutions.

His misplaced ridicule may make him feel better, but it clouds the discussion and comprehension of what is really happening. This was the tweet he sent today (4-12-2018), “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our “Thank you America?”

This is exactly the reason he should NOT be allowed to tweet. Sorry, but all this yak-yak, throw-up-in-my-mouth justification that the President needs to tweet so he can communicate his thoughts directly to his “base” without the “censorship” of the mainstream media is a false narrative. And, really, why would the leader of the free world need a “thank you?” Insecurity reigns supreme.

Our Great Orange Leader needs the instant gratification of his inner thoughts blasting out on a social media platform. He seems to be trying out policies or thoughts on the internet, testing them in a sense. Sometimes his staff, cabinet and experts will tell him that there may be possible misinterpretation of what he has said, then he tries to repair the damage. He demands his underlings to lie daily, then throws them away when he is bored. Trump may think he is declaring opinions, but he doesn’t realize that what he types on Twitter, is policy. Those are legal documents.

Syria using chemical weapons is not a good thing. The bashing of Obama for creating what appeared to be a red line in the sand has pushed Trump to be less thoughtful and more aggressive than necessary. The Donald has painted his own red line because of this. He over-reacts to critics and ignores any semblance of diplomacy.

The posturing and flamboyant language of threating Russia and blaming the investigation on Russian interference as the catalyst for a bad relationship with Putin is, once again, the balloon uncontrollably flying around the room. Congress is limp and ineffective, failing their Constitutional responsibility to pull this president away from his warlike actions.

Unfortunately, the 9-11 attacks created a more liberal viewpoint of the president’s powers of waging war and “defending” our country. It’s time to revisit this and define the exact powers of war a president holds, and to determine the difference between defending our country and taking pre-emptive actions on foreign soil.

A true hawk on this Syrian crisis would call for regime change, but who wants to deal with Russia? It’s the one country we cannot trust Trump to handle properly.

Trump’s mouth has gotten himself into trouble and we are on the edge of war because this jerk of a president tweets before he thinks. On the campaign trail, he warned that if America voted for Hillary Clinton she would draw the country into war. Well, look who’s getting us into war now.

Trump is a liar and an unfocused human being. His picadilloes of vanity, narcissism and needy stage performances can be ignored, but his addiction to power, sex, love for his “base” above the rest of the country and a false belief that he knows better than anyone else is hurting America. He is known to have bribed his way out of problems. His morality can be and should be questioned by the evangelicals and conservatives in this country.

Trump needs to get the fuck out the White House before we are thrown into another unending war. Mike Pence is not a suitable replacement but, for now, President Pence will at least listen to the people and God more than the almighty dollar. Trump is a loser, a bum, and it’s time for us to get rid of him.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

New Book about Terrorism

Now available on Amazon.

PAIN & BIG PRICE TO PAY

Trump’s Premature Pull-out

We knew it was going to happen. People warned us that it was going to happen. But now we see the result of someone who doesn’t calculate his comments or comprehend the weight of his words. Let us review.

Just last week, seemly out of the blue, President Donald Trump said, “I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home.” And he added the snarky comment, “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”

It reminds me of a wild New Year’s Eve party I had one night at my home where there were so people they could hardly move. A woman dropped her plate of food on the carpeting and started to walk away from her mess. I suggested she clean up the dropped plate, she turned to me and said, “They have people to take care of that.”

For most of Trump’s life, someone else has always taken care of things. When he wanted to keep someone from talking about him, he would have someone else write and execute a Nondisclosure Agreement. When he was tired of the woman he married, he would call in some lawyers to clean up the mess.

But now, Trump is the President of the United States and the words he uses, whether out loud or online, have major consequences. There isn’t a fixer to call. Clearly, he was suggesting an almost “mission accomplished” moment when he said, “We are knocking the hell out of ISIS and that once that’s done we’ll be coming out.” The assumption that ISIS is anywhere close to giving up shows this man’s inability to follow the intelligence and understand fundamental facts from the front line.

One of the things that makes Trump so effective with his base is his way of talking in simple terms and use of generalizations. He makes bold, naïve statements, and the bobblehead dolls of the heartland nod and believe in their Great Orange Leader. He discounts basic facts, like we have fewer troops in Syria than Mr. Trump is sending to the Mexican-U.S. border: 2,000 vs. 4,000. Does that mean ISIS is less dangerous than women and children in the “caravan” coming from Honduras? These facts don’t matter in Trumpworld.

Something happened right after Trump made his careless statement about Syria. The ruthless dictator, Bashar al-Assad, once again dropped chemical bombs on his own people. John McCain was quick to suggest that Assad did that because of Trump’s premature pullout statement. Wow, the senior Senator from Arizona is suggesting culpability on Trump’s part.

The last time Assad used chemical weapons, Trump finished his second large piece of chocolate cake and launched an airstrike on an airbase in Syria.

This time, Trump was quick to Tweet this reaction: “Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”

In just days, we’ve gone from pulling out soon, rubbing our hands and saying basically our work is done here, to the realization that ISIS is only part of the problem. It’s a complicated civil war with three or four factions, interference coming from Russian and Iran and the desire to push the Hezbollah party into power. Both Russia and Iran will not take any aggression sitting down.

Not only are the Russians warning Trump not to retaliate in Syria, they are reacting to an early Monday morning bombing of a major air base in central Syria. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that two Israeli F-15 jets launched eight guided rockets from Lebanese airspace into Syria. Will Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu upstage Trump and take the frontline for him in this war?

If Trump would have just slowed down and gathered advice from his experts first, he would have avoided this kind of embarrassing international blunder. There is clearly no diplomatic filter on the @realDonaldTrump twitter account. We knew it was going to happen; people warned that it was going to happen, but this vain and uncontrollable man doesn’t care what smart people think. He cannot separate the smart from the loud.

The Donald told us that we might feel a little pain with his Trade War that he is conducting against China, Canada and Mexico, but he’s now asking us to pay more for his imaginary long-term gain. It’s a giant trickledown con job. The price increases will wipe out any gains people achieved with the tax cut.

Trump cares more about putting down Obama’s Syria “red line” comment than acknowledging that, no matter what he does, someone will have to pay a price in Syria. If our President gets involved and starts to drop bombs, he will piss off his boyfriend Putin. If he does nothing, he will look weak and all the Trump haters will accuse him of hypocrisy. There are no right choices here. We need, and don’t have, a president who puts America First, not his ego and shallow knowledge of the political landscape in the Middle East.

Gee, where is Trump’s big Middle East peacekeeper Jared Kushner? I guess a person who owns properties on the West Bank in Israel would not be that objective in this discussion. I’m not sure why Jared Kushner is even a part of this story.

The cunning military intellectual, General McMaster, is gone. Now Trump gets to test his brand-new security adviser, John Bolton, on his first day at work. To bomb or not to bomb? Action or inaction? As Trump says when he is befuddled and flustered, “We will see.”

Whatever the Russian spy network has on Donald Trump, or whatever embarrassing bank entanglements he is keeping from the American public, they probably don’t mean anything now. Trump is trying to figure out whether he wants to go up against Russia on the world stage. Putin could release what he knows about Trump, but that is too obvious for a former spy.

With Syria in Bashar al-Assad’s grip, nothing is going to change. Like his father, he will bomb and poison his people until they bow to his authority. Trump best be wearing his big-boy pants this week. He might also want to have a few spare trousers on call. When he finally hears the truth about Syria from Bolton, he will be losing more than his credibility.

The First 200 Days Of Trump – ONLY ONE MILLION LEFT

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THE RISK OF NOT READING

Donald’s Devilish Details

When White House advisors wanted to brief the President of the United States on what had happened in Syria, they decided that they should use few words and show more pictures to tell the story of the use of chemical weapons.

Everyone learns differently and it has been established that one of the key components of our fearless leader is that he doesn’t read.

The art of brevity is not a sole providence of this president. Ronald Reagan asked the bureaucrats to reduce all memorandum to one page. Even though we now know that President Reagan toward the end of his command was losing certain memory functions, the memo reduction requirement was a genuine way to get more done. In short, most people over-write.

By showing Trump pictures of the results of the bombing of innocents, including babies, he was moved to not only act, but change his Middle East strategy entirely. Much to the chagrin of the far right and hard line populists, he did what needed to be done. Perhaps this President will eventually move to a moderate position, if only there was a picture we could show him for that result.

The danger of course in not reading is that you don’t ever consume well-thought out research and important intelligence because of the “burden” of actually reading it. We would love to have Donald Trump read Richard Haass’ book A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, but it is unlikely that our President could get through the 348 pages.

In one sense, it’s good that Trump is not influenced by so-called experts or those who have been in power before him, but that assumes they have nothing to contribute. The fear we should have is how an advisor could distort the truth to get their end result rather than a thoughtful answer to a complex question. We all know that photographs can be doctored and some people have even seen WMDs where there were none.

In the case of the invasion of Iraq, it was just as much Saddam Hussein’s stone-walling UN inspectors as the trumped-up charges of the intelligence community that led us to war. We need to keep in mind our country wasted $1 trillion dollars and ended up killing more than 134,000 civilians in the Iraq War. This mistake was based on some expert’s misinterpretation of facts or suspicious miscalculations or just plain not enough information.

There are certain qualifications we apply to most jobs, but for the leader of the free world we take what the electoral college gives us. In terms of Syria, the insiders just had to put the pictures of the dying children in Trump’s hands and he felt compelled to ask his generals, “What can we do about this?”

Did Donald not see the other dead baby washing up on the beach? That was the son of a mother and father, you know, refugees of Syria who were trying to escape a land where the leader drops bombs filled with chemicals on them. Did the President’s advisors not show him those pictures? TV covered this sad event, but that image never helped forge any campaign rhetoric.

Now that those around Donald Trump know that all they have to do is show him pictures to elicit some Pavlovian reaction, save us from the misdeeds of a few with influence. Judging by how he reads a teleprompter, we can assume that if we asked for more reading from Trump, we would bring the country to a stand-still.

What candidate Trump said he knew, even “more than the generals”, he obviously doesn’t know. Sorry to crush the feelings of those hardcore Trump fans, but this guy is just a narcissistic builder turned reality TV star who, in his new capacity, is learning on-the-job. Have patience and keep checking your paystub. Has he reduced your co-pays and deductibles yet? Has he made your roads better? Has he decreased your taxes? Has he made America great yet? What is taking this man so long to get going? Sad!

The Smell of Tomahawks in the Morning

Trump Huffs and He Puffs

Finally, the President of the United States has made a statement to the world that he’s just like the movie character, John Shaft. Donnie may think he’s a bad (shut your mouth), but he should remember one of Shaft’s great pieces of advice, “Next time, you mutha, don’t bite off more than you can chew!”

Yes, we get it, you saw the pictures of the babies, the innocents of war being poisoned by a chemical that is banned by the Geneva Convention and other treaties and you had to act. You had to bomb the airbase in Syria where the sorties began, but do you have the next step planned? We know that you aren’t going to tell anyone what you are going to do, we get your secret military tactics, but did you tell Congress? You told the Russians you were going to bomb, so much for your big secret plan.

And now that you have decided to teach Assad a lesson, have you considered what happens now with the rebel insurgency and more importantly, what ISIS is thinking right now? Mostly likely, they consider your actions part their plan, not yours. Once again, a U.S. President has been drawn into the Middle East.

When you play the screaming pumpkin head at rallies you can talk about how regime change in Libya was bad and blame Obama and Hillary for the way the Middle East turned out. But this is real life now and you indeed have inherited a mess. That damn Eisenhower, propping up the Muslim Brotherhood in order to fight communism.

Stop saying you alone are going to fix it. You might want to stop that rhetoric and start to think about who else will be there to help you fix it. Remember why we call certain countries allies. You will have to get into bed with some strange dogmatic dudes in order to keep the peace in the Middle East. Ask your son-in-law.

What a coincidence that King Abdullah II was sitting in the White House while Donald J. Trump was agonizing over an answer to the age-old question created by a blast of human consciousness. At one point, Jordan was accepting 3,000 refugees a day from Syria and it’s likely the last person to speak to Trump on the matter of what to do with Syria was the King, a real king. Abdullah got what he wanted, someone else to mess with Assad. And Israel will be happy, too. Sounds like a tribal win-win to moderate Muslims and Zionists everywhere.

Are things looking up for the Donald? He even asked God to bless the whole world. Boy, that sounded like globalism to me. Steve Bannon was probably throwing up out of his limo window on the way home. With so many ex-Goldman people around this president and of course, the Democrat Kids, are we seeing the turn toward global awareness? Can climate change be next? Baby steps.

A spokesperson for the Kremlin said Putin believes the attack was done under a “trumped-up pretext” and that Vladimir denounced the US strike against a Syrian government airbase as an “aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law.” OMG, has your buddy has turned against you? Can that tape of whatever happened in St. Petersburg be far behind? And did they actually use the phrase, “trumped-up?” Is that a word in Russian?

Now we get to see what you are really made of Mr. Know-It-All, as we all sing along with the Shaft theme, “Who is the man that would risk his neck for his brother, man? (Trump), Can ya dig it? Who’s the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about? (Trump), Right on!

They claim six people were killed at the base in Syria. Are you counting Mr. President? We know why you did what you did, like George W. going back to Iraq to finish the job his father started. If seems like you are trying to fix all the things you think Obama did wrong, does that make Barack your daddy? Sad!

Dictators and Dead Babies

The Donald Trump Doctrine of Offensive Remarks

We have a President who defies gravity. He claims he can leap from tall building to tall building in a single bound, which we all know, makes no logical sense. There was this religion he proposed during the campaign. It was simple really: Nationalism vs. Globalism and that any dealings with another nation could be simplified down to a deal.

He keeps telling us and of course, the rest of the world, that he and he alone has inherited a mess that he now will fix. Imagine what was going through the mind of Abdullah II of Jordan standing mere feet from Superman. Abdullah, a man who actually puts on a military uniform and fights along with his soldiers. Here is a ruler who has been dealing with the Middle East and radical Islam for almost 20 years. Hearing the words, “I have inherited a mess” must have sent shockwaves through his royal body.

The drip, drip of dictators and the blood being shed in all parts of our earth has finally changed the way our President views certain bad actors on the world stage. Suddenly, he sees that powerful dictators are not deal makers; they are ruthless killers.

Just yesterday he blamed Obama for something that happened yesterday, but today, he said, “It crossed a lot of lines for me,” and added, “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal that people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines.” And then, he blames Obama again today, huh?

Was the last time Assad used chemicals on his own people okay, but now it’s time to do something? Trump lets us in on his big revelation, “My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much!” Oh, really Trump, what was the big tipping point?

According to the United Nations, since the war began in 2011, an estimated 400,000 Syrians have been killed. And yes, we know that the video of lifeless children being washed down in an attempt to keep them from succumbing to the lethal poisons and the horrible pictures of children gasping their last breath makes a difference, but there is a giant missing piece to this puzzle. And just maybe Trump is about to place that piece into a giant map of the world.

Has the great Donald finally figured out that the reason there are so many refugees, the ones he disdains and fears, running away from this repulsive dictator and the ghastly reality of dead babies?

You see, you can talk about ISIS and brag about how you are going to eradicate them from the face of the earth, which not only makes a great campaign slogan for you, but a dandy recruitment clip for them, but that is only one piece of the enigma.

Dictators who kill people when they get in the way are just as bad as ISIS. If you thought domestic healthcare was complicated, the Middle East is ten times as tough.

Remember, if Assad is as depraved as you think he is and now believe he should be stopped, you are going to have to face Putin. You will have to tell the Russian leader that you want him to help you STOP ASSAD, not the rebels. The rebels – or as they are also known as – the Syrian people, are being killed by Russians and Assad’s troops. And Assad gets aid from Iran, another Russian ally. Who knew it was so complicated?

We all know, that Obama was tricked by your buddy Putin into believing that all the chemical weapons were taken out of Syria. We also know that Putin is now trying to fool you into believing that the rebels gassed their own people. Really? Does that make any sense?

The world is waiting for the President of the United States to get his focus back on important issues and stop with the stupid tweets about TV shows and Bill O’Reilly.

America First is a nice chant, but the world is a big place. You say you need $54 billion more dollars for the military, but what you need a damn strategy and well-thought-out policy for what you plan to do with that much might.

This on-the-job training is fatiguing. Sad!