Free Republic

For the past 20 years, the best minds in Washington and Jerusalem treated Hamas as a pragmatic political operator whose leaders were satisfied living in the same world as the rest of us. Their charter, first adopted in 1988, endorsed a set of bloodcurdling millenarian goals. But despite the open madness and world-making ambitions of their public pronouncements, Hamas remained a semi-legitimate player, treated as just one unremarkable thread in the Middle East’s rich tapestry of mildly threatening, gun-toting political dreamers. Even to the most hardened Israeli security officials they were a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot whose extreme rhetoric and regrettably...

Joe Biden is bringing aboard Elliott Abrams – a regime change-obsessed neoconservative twice convicted of lying to Congress – to act as his new foreign propaganda chief. (snip) While in Ronald Reagan’s admin, Abrams became embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair. President Trump initially blocked Abrams from joining his government as Deputy Secretary of State in 2017, but he was eventually brought in by fellow hawk Mike Pompeo as a special envoy with responsibility for Venezuela.

Iran and Venezuela have grown closer in recent years, as both countries seek to counter the intense pressure campaign that the US has mounted against them. US officials have said that Iran's military presence in Venezuela is growing and that if Iranian missiles start to arrive in the South American country, then the US could step in. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. US officials have watched warming ties between Iran and Venezuela with concern, expressing alarm over what they say are Iran's military presence in and arms sales to the South American country.The Trump administration's special representative for...

Architect of Occupy Wall Street does.

President Donald Trump's top Russia expert on the National Security Counsel is reportedly on leave pending a security investigation. Andrew Peek, the NSC’s senior director for European and Russian affairs, was escorted from the White House grounds on Friday, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Peek had been in the NSC role for just two months, after most recently working as a deputy assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Iran and Iraq. Peek had been expected to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week with Trump and other top aides. However, he is currently...

President Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination on May 3, 2016, when he crushed a final “Never Trump” effort to stop him in the Indiana primary. At the GOP Data Trust, a voter outreach organization based in Washington, the mood was bleak. It was clear Trump was heading for a blowout victory. When Trump had delivered his victory speech shortly after 9 p.m., Data Trust staffer Courtney Mullen invited her colleagues to attend an “end of the world” happy hour to mark Trump’s triumph, which the party establishment had watched in horror.

(BREAKING NEWS: Pakistan is saying it shot down two Indian jets in its airspace in Kashmir today. Pakistan says it bombed open ground but did not bomb six military targets it identified in the region. Pakistani Prime Minister Imram Khan says "We shot down two of their Migs. The pilots are with us". Khan has asked for dialogue with India.... A Saudi Arabian man, accused off the hit and run death of a 15-year-old in Oregon, is unlikely to face justice in the US. Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah was bailed out of jail in Oregon and surrendered his passport, but was...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams got into a fiery exchange on Wednesday that began with her wondering why anything he said could be considered credible after his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. One reason people can get away with taking cheap shots at Elliott Abrams is because there arenÂ’t a dozen people in DC, and zero reporters, who know a thing about US policy in Latin America in the 1980's. LetÂ’s decipher what Ms. Omar said: She went on to recount his 1982 congressional testimony about U.S. policy toward El Salvador, where...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams got into a fiery exchange on Wednesday that began with her wondering why anything he said could be considered credible after his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. Abrams testified in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the U.S. response to the crisis in Venezuela, which has collapsed under far-left policies that have decimated its economy and caused hyperinflation, starvation and medical shortages. The Trump administration is supporting Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido and said authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro must step down and leave the country....

Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams discussed relations between the US and Central American countries. Longish but amazing. Worth every bit.

Former U.S. diplomat Elliott Abrams will lead U.S. efforts on Venezuela, where Washington has recognized an opposition leader as the legitimate president, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday. “Elliott will be a true asset to our mission to help the Venezuelan people fully restore democracy and prosperity to their country,” Pompeo said in announcing Abrams’ appointment. He said Abrams would accompany him to the United Nations on Saturday for a Security Council meeting on Venezuela where the U.S. will press other countries to support opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim head of state. Abrams, appearing...

As a card-carrying neoconservative, I am usually a critic of realpolitik. But in judging the Trump administration’s current response to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I find myself thinking that more realpolitik would lead to better policy. Here’s what I mean. The president has made two statements, both of which refuse to break with Saudi Arabia or its crown prince: his formal White House statement and his comments to reporters when about to get into Marine One and depart the White House. Both constitute a kind of realpolitik. The formal statement begins this way: “The world is a...

Mark R. Levin ‏@marklevinshow 4 hours ago Flynn resigns, the attacks on the administration will now intensify 94 replies 186 retweets 367 likes

Wow. Talk about a blast from the past. Tillerson expected to pick Elliot Abrams as Deputy at State. Former Reagan State Dept official experienced conservative knows the Dept— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 4, 2017 And I can’t resist:For the youngsters out there, Elliott Abrams began his diplomatic life as Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. He achieved fame, however, for pleading guilty to some misdemeanor charges of lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra witch hunt. However he achieved immortality in the left’s Pantheon of boogeymen for his work killing commies in Central America.He was...

In a statement released on March 17, the campaign of presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced “a high-profile national security coalition that will advise Cruz (shown) on foreign policy issues.” The announcement spotlighted three members of the team — former Senator Jim Talent (R-Mo.), former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, and former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams.Of these, Abrams is the most problematic for constitutional conservatives, who are Cruz’s staunchest supporters, since Abrams is the very personification of the “Washington establishment” that Cruz has frequently condemned.The biographical information for Abrams offered in the Cruz announcement notes:Elliott Abrams was an assistant...

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be found on Abrams' blog "Pressure Points" here. The New York Times, whose hostility to Israel is visible in both its news and its editorial ‎pages, was at it again this week. In an editorial (about the symbolic vote in the U.K. ‎parliament backing Palestinian statehood) titled "A British Message to Israel," The ‎Times's editorial board unloaded yet again with a barrage of advice, opinion -- and untruths.‎ Here are some of the key words:‎ "The...

As Independence Day celebrations were winding down Tuesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a guest appearance on Channel 2's left-wing satire show Eretz Nehederet. One of the final questions that the show's host Eyal Kitzis asked the premier was how he would like to be remembered after he leaves office. Netanyahu thought a moment and said, "I'd like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel's security." On the face of it, Netanyahu's stated aspiration might seem dull. In a year he'll be the longest-serving prime minister in the state's history, and all he wants is to...

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regimeÂ’s chemical weapons and whether SyriaÂ’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after AssadÂ’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on SyriaÂ’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not. Relations between the United States and Israel had grown rocky after IsraelÂ’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006, for Secretary of State Condoleezza...

A group of anti-Israel activists and journalists are engaged in a coordinated campaign to stifle criticism of controversial secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel by attacking the former Republican senator’s critics, according to emails obtained by the Free Beacon. Fenton communications chief executive officer David Fenton, the Atlantic’s national correspondent James Fallows, former diplomat Charles ‘Chas’ Freeman, Just Foreign Policy director Robert Naiman, and American Conservative founding editor Scott McConnell participated in a recent email exchange dedicated to silencing Hagel’s critics, the emails reveal. The emailers targeted recent comments made by Elliott Abrams, a former Bush administration National Security Council...

Ronald Reagan’s eldest son Mike Reagan has issued a statement lambasting Mitt Romney and his supporters for claims that Romney’s Republican presidential rival Newt Gingrich was a strong critic of President Reagan. Reagan says such claims are false. Even Rush Limbaugh, shocked by the Romney claims, chimed on his Thursday radio broadcast to say "This is obviously a coordinated attack to take Newt out here in Florida." Rush slammed the Romney-backed smear campaign against Newt. “That kind of stuff is why people hate Romney so much," Limbaugh said. Limbaugh added that Newt has always been a conservative from his early...