Cheney has trained Chicken Hawk Lieberman very well. Lieberman is doing this now to assist John McCain's presidential election as McCain's only issue poll that's positive is that he would do a better job protecting us from terrorist than Obama. Obama scores higher on just about every other issue. Of course, Lieberman's real deep-down reason is that he gets MORE attention and television time!
Yesterday on ABC's This Week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I- CT), chief surrogate for Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) presidential campaign, complained that the "Iranians have consistently" refused to suspend its uranium enrichment. When host George Stephanopoulos asked if Israel should then attack Iran, Lieberman said: "That's up to Israel obviously, but I would say that obviously Israel is first in the line of Iranian fire. And it represents an existential threat to Israel. But you know who is next? The Arab countries in the Middle East and they're worried about the Iranian program and want us to ask strongly to stop it. And we're next! Because Ahmadinejad in Tehran constantly leads the mobs in shouts of death to America. And they mean it.
The Chairman's responsibilities and Jurisdictions will include real oversight concerning failures of the Bush administration in providing security to our nation during times of war, illegal invasions, ongoing occupations, and natural disasters, as well as overseeing the bloated budget and operations of the largest branch of government ever to be created in the US governments' history through legislation authored under the Republican controlled Senate and House, and signed by the Republican pResident of the time.
Your main and immidiate responsibilities will include holding the needed hearings, directing sub-commitees and legislation needed to avoid repeating the previous disasters, corrupt practices, and failures that will be found with the propper direction and oversight of a NON-PARTISAN and ethical Senate leader.
(1)Minorities such as moderate Republicans having no ties to far-right-wing radical organizations like the Neoconservative movement, the American Enterprise Instute, The Heritage Foundation, Energy Corporations, or the Bush administrations most recent policy proposals that are doomed to failure, are encouraged to apply to Senator Harry Reid for any consideration concerning this soon to be available position.
(2)Note to applicants: Please mark the subject of the Email as "Homeland Security" and refer to this x-posted Blog diary in the opening paragragh of the application. You will be contacted shortly before I post an "I told you so!" diary covering the flawed positons, election statement lies, and propaganda of the far-right-wing radical Neoconservative Joe Lieberman.
Ever wonder how much your heating bill goes up each time Joe Lieberman threatens an attack on Iran? Or what happens to gas prices when Chris Shays greenlights a Turkish attack on the Kurds?
Since January of this year, crude oil prices have jumped 40%, and they have more than quadrupled since 2002. While oil producers like Russia, Venezuela, and Middle East countries experience enormous windfall profits, we consumers pay more for heating oil and gasoline, as do American businesses.
The Turkish government has sought parliamentary authority to launch attacks against Kurdish militants, who have long sought their own independent homeland. ...But it is fears that the dispute may escalate and threaten oil output in the wider region - Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia between them account for 20% of global supplies - which have fanned the price rises.
[..] The situation in northern Iraq is just one of a number of geopolitical factors which are causing uncertainty in the market and helping to push prices up.
Iran's push to acquire nuclear power and, many believe, nuclear weapons has sparked concerns it could use its own oil supplies as a bargaining chip in any future showdown.
Barely-veiled threats from the US, suggesting that military action remains a live option, have further accentuated fears.
Many factors account for price increases, including the Iraq War itself, violence in Nigeria, rising energy demands, and a devalued dollar. But as the Washington Post reports, the Iran War risk premium alone may be as high $15 a barrel.
Considering that tension in the Middle East makes oil-producing countries like Russia and Venezuela stronger while sucking money from the American economy (excluding the U.S. oil and arms industries), you would think that our political leaders would try to ease those tensions. But not Lieberman, Shays and the Bush Administration.
Instead of taking measures to end the war and stablize the Middle East, Lieberman, Shays and Bush do the opposite, by voting against, or vetoing, withdrawal timelines and advocating wider-scale attacks. Even worse, these men continue feeding the tensions and funding the war with U.S. tax dollars and American lives.
This amount of stupidity is hard to express in words. But Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess champion, does a nice job of it, below the fold...
On Monday I attended an Edwards event at Exeter Town Hall in NH. It was NH Retail at its very best.
The Edwards stump has taken a major step forward since I saw him two weeks ago, the content has changed and the tone has shifted to that of an urgency in his current speech. The distinctions are now razor sharp between John Edwards and the rest of the field, "you have choices in this election and you need to be aware of them." The reality of where we are as a country today and the vision for where we all want to be as a people are now painted in excruciating and moving detail on one issue after another: universal health care; corruption; disenfranchisement of the citizenry; economic fairness; our two unequal school systems; global warming and conservation the list goes on ...
And it's only about 23 minutes so you can imagine, man. Follow me below the fold for the full video and the antidote.
On Thursday's Hardball Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) talked with Chris Matthews about the strong push from Dick Cheney and some members of the Senate - namely Kyl and Lieberman - to move closer to invading Iran. Matthews gets it, by passing amendments condemning Iran, they're tying to get other legislators on the record so they can come back later and use it to make the case for war.
Matthews: "…But these guys, Kyl - Kyl and Lieberman are not diplomats, they're hawks.
Webb: "Well, the Cheney element of the administration is well represented in the United States Senate."
A dedicated, life-long Democrat, I am not alone in being thoroughly disgusted with my Party. We won the 2006 elections but might as well have lost: Congress continues to enable the Bush-Cheney crime family in all of its worst endeavors; and, increasingly, it appears that Democratic voters may fall into line and nominate the right-wing's first choice (and best hope) for our standard bearer in 2008. How dumb can we get?
As I wrote earlier [in "Not Hillary"], Republicans are licking their chops at the chance to batter Hillary Clinton a second time around; in fact, they aren't even waiting until she's been nominated. The Republican debates already have produced numerous examples of the stampede to beat up the presumed Democratic front-runner; and the media, predictably, has followed suit by beating up on her Democratic challengers. When I mentioned recently to a largely apolitical friend - and registered Republican - that Rupert Murdoch has been making large contributions to Hillary's campaign, he said: Well, her candidacy represents Republicans' best chance of retaking the White House in 2008.
As if the prospect of a Republican victory in 2008 were not enough, there are many more reasons for Democratic voters to hold their representatives accountable for the jobs they were elected to do. In this context, it should be reasonable to expect any Democratic Presidential candidate to demonstrate a willingness to address the country's most important challenges. After two terms of Bush-Cheney, the country's "To Do list" has become a very long one - including numerous intractable problems. I have generated a Starter List below, which includes just a few of the most serious challenges we face; it is by no means comprehensive . . .
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL reports on the politically powerful group Christians United for Israel (CUFI), whose leader, Pastor John Hagee, advocates for a preemptive strike against Iran. A certain Connecticut Senator figures prominently in their plans.
Recently Joe Lieberman and his friends at Freedom's Watch have been comparing Iran's President Ahmadinejad to Adolph Hitler. In an interview with Neal Cavuto, Lieberman criticized Columbia University for inviting Iran's leader to speak, asking: "Would they have invited Hitler?"
And in Monday's NY Times appears this comment from the president of the pro-war propaganda group Freedom's Watch:
"If Hitler's warnings were heeded when he wrote 'Mein Kampf,' he could have been stopped," said Bradley Blakeman, 49, the president of Freedom's Watch and a former deputy assistant to Mr. Bush. "Ahmadinejad is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region - he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel."
The neocon argument is this: Had the Allies rose to stop Hitler in the 1930s, we might have prevented WWII, and likewise, if we bomb Iran now, we can prevent its future rise to power. The flaws in that logic are obvious. Given the weakened state of the U.S. military, the thousands of Iranian and American casualties that would likely follow, and the very small probability that dropping a few bombs on a nation of 65 million people would ever deter it from anything, there's not much of a chance that this course of action would cause anything but a disaster.
[U.S. General] Abizaid suggested military action to pre-empt Iran's nuclear ambitions might not be the wisest course.
"War, in the state-to-state sense, in that part of the region would be devastating for everybody, and we should avoid it - in my mind - to every extent that we can," he said.
Given all the arguments against military action in Iran, one has to question the judgment or the sanity of those who would recommend it.
Which brings us back to the Hitler comparison. Before Neville Chamberlain could appease Hitler, the citizens of Germany had to acquiesce first. Had the people of Germany refused to heed the ravings of lunatics like Hitler and the Nazi Party leaders, WWII would not have happened.
In the 1930s, the German people abandoned basic rights, such as habeus corpus, and disregarded their own constitution, enabling Hitler's rise to power:
Having become Chancellor, Hitler foiled all attempts to gain a majority in parliament and on that basis persuaded President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again. Elections were scheduled for early March, but on 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire.[36] Since a Dutch independent communist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a Communist plot to which the government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus. ...
Campaigning continued, with the Nazis making use of paramilitary violence, anti-Communist hysteria, and the government's resources for propaganda. On election day, 6 March, the NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, remaining the largest party ...
... Because of the Nazis' failure to obtain a majority on their own, Hitler's government confronted the newly elected Reichstag with the Enabling Act that would have vested the cabinet with legislative powers for a period of four years. Though such a bill was not unprecedented, this act was different since it allowed for deviations from the constitution...
Now when you consider Joe Lieberman's recent vote against habeus corpus and other challenges to the U.S. Constitution by the Bush Administration, along with anti-Islamofascist hysteria and Freedom's Watch's propaganda to sell the war, it elicits a number of ugly comparisons.
Can we prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Maybe. If so, it won't happen by bombing Iran. More likely, it will be by using our diplomatic and economic resources, listening to reasoned arguments like General Abizaid's, and by exposing the warped logic of Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney and other right wing extremists for what it is.
Here's today's Greenwich Time column, and guess what! On Thursday it's supposedly also going to run in the Stamford Advocate, increasing Saramerica's readership to a circulation of 37,500. Woo hoo! Next stop...SYNDICATION! Well, maybe someday.....*sighs*
Sen. Graham was on the floor this morning talking up the Iran amendment. It still might come up for a vote today. Unlike the situation in July, when the language was pushed through with Levin's help at the last minute, at least we've gotten a few dozen hours of a heads-up on this.
It's clear where this resolution is going. The Council for a Livable World, one of the more astute peace groups in Washington, says it "could wind up being another in a long line of blank checks provided to the Executive Branch in the mold of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the authorization to use force in Iraq." The line advocating the "prudent and calibrated" use of US power is "a loophole is big enough to drive an aircraft carrier or a fleet of planes through."
The Lieberman-Kyl Amendment asserts "[i]t is increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps Qods Force, seeks to turn the Shi'a militia extremists into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq''.
In fact, the Iraqi state is dominated by a political party (SIIC formerly SCIRI) that was founded by Khomeini in Tehran in 1982.... It was the Bush Administration that installed Iran's best friends as the Government of Iraq and it is wrong to use our mistake a pretext for an open ended declaration of hostility to Iran.
Reading through the Kyl-Lieberman amendment (hat tip Laura Rozen), you'd think that the Ryan-Crocker dog and pony show was designed to justify war on Iran. And you might be right. The amendment cites four Petraeus statements about Iranian influence in Iraq and four Crocker statements. And intersperses those with cherry-picked citations to create the illusion that Iran is the only outside force causing trouble in Ira[q]....
Voila! Carte blanche to extend the war to Iran and Lebanon!!
U.S. Senator Chris Dodd:
Tel: (202) 224-2823
Tel: (860) 258-6940
(800) 334-5341 -CT only
Update: TPM TV today looks at the Lieberman amendment and how "the supporters of going to war against Iran are using exactly same strategy with this amendment that they did to lay the ground work for the Iraq War":
On the Senate floor today, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) made an impassioned appeal to his fellow senators, declaring that the Lieberman-Kyl amendment on Iran should be "withdrawn" because the "proposal is Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream." Webb cautioned that the "cleverly-worded sense of the Congress" could be "interpreted" to "declare war" on Iran....
He also slammed the lack of debate and examination that was accompanying the amendment, saying "this is not the way to make foreign policy":
"We haven't had one hearing on this. I'm on the Foreign Relations Committee, I'm on the Armed Services Committee. We are about to vote on something that may fundamentally change the way the United States views the Iranian military and we haven't had one hearing. This is not the way to make foreign policy. It's not the way to declare war."
Webb also stated with deep concern:
"We as a government have never identified an organization that is a part of a nation-state as a terrorist organization.... by categorizing this organization as a terrorist organization, this isn't our present policy of keeping the military option on the table, it is for all practical purposes mandating the military option..."
Update 3: The amendment is being "modified", according to Reid this afternoon. Word is a vote could come as early as 5:30pm today. Looks like it's either going to be later tonight or tomorrow.
"We need to turn down the fiery rhetoric and turn up the smart pressure. The current legislation proposed in Congress, including the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment, moves the U.S. further away from stabilizing the Middle East and finding a diplomatic solution to the region's problems. Such legislation also cracks the door for the Bush administration to take military action against Iran, something no one wants."
Update 5: ThinkProgress has been on top of this all day. Reid apparently now says negotiations on the language are continuing, that "there will be no votes tonight," and that it "will not have a vote in the near future."
Dick Durbin also spoke out forcefully against the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, saying "I think it is dangerous language," and pledging not to vote for the amendment as it currently exists.
Carah Ong has posted the slightly changed text of the "revised" Amendment as it was being circulated this afternoon (PDF):
One of the original concerns with the amendment was that it could be construed as an authorization for the use U.S. military force against Iran. The new language allows for the use of U.S. military instruments inside of Iraq for dealing with Iran, but it still does not contain a measure to prevent a conflict from spilling beyond Iraq's borders.
Of note, paragraph 5 - urging the State Department to designate a unit of the Iranian military as a "terrorist organization" - remains unchanged.
Lieberman's latest warmongering "sense of the senate" language against Iran may come up for a vote in the Senate tomorrow, on the same day that Ahmadinejad speaks to the General Assembly in the UN:
Today the Senators Lieberman and Kyl presented arguments in favor of Amendment No. 3017 to the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill. According to John Isaacs, the Senate is expected to continue consideration of the Defense Authorization bill this week, but it will also break for other bills, including a Continuing Resolution to keep the government going after October 1 because no appropriations bill have passed. Senators Lieberman and Kyl predicted that their amendment could come up for a vote tomorrow if there are votes on the Defense Authorization bill.
The text of the amendment is available here, and the relevant language is this:
(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
(5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and
This is clearly meant to threaten and escalate matters, as was Lieberman's July amendment on Iran which passed the Senate by an astounding 97-0 margin.
Will this amendment also pass without opposition?
As chance would have it, Sen. Dodd wrote to Bush on Iran last week, saying:
I am extremely concerned that your administration's failure to employ robust diplomacy in dealing with the challenges posed by Iran could lead us down the same disastrous and ill-conceived path that has produced a failed policy in Iraq that has made us less secure. While I would never advocate taking the military option off the table as a policy option under any circumstance, I am convinced that at this time military action against Iran would be extremely dangerous and costly and would pose even more serious dangers to our interests and the interests of our friends and allies throughout the region.
Well, this amendment does absolutely nothing legislatively to curb Bush/Cheney on Iran, or to promote diplomacy. Indeed, it's passage clearly makes war with Iran that much more likely.
I don't expect Dodd to speak out on this. But it will be interesting to see how he votes.
U.S. Senator Chris Dodd:
Tel: (202) 224-2823
Tel: (860) 258-6940
(800) 334-5341 -CT only
Update: Lieberman was just on CNBC talking about this amendment and how it is necessary due to the failure of diplomacy with Iran (yes, all that diplomacy Bush has been doing) and therefore the Administration needs to consider "hitting them militarily." He's pretty clear about this. It's a precursor to military action against Iran.
Council for a Livable World and Open Society Policy Center Urge "No" Vote
The Council for a Livable World and Open Society Policy Center oppose the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment No. 3017 to the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill as a provocative measure that will only undermine efforts to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy.
Jonathan Schwartz over at A Tiny Revolution, via Iran Nuclear Watch covers yet another troubling Lieberman story. There's not much I can add to this as it speaks for itself.
Amazingly, no one anywhere in the US media seems to have noticed that yesterday Jon Kyl (Arizona) and Joe Lieberman filed an extremely threatening amendment on Iran to the FY 2008 Defense Authorization bill. I guess all their time was taken up with the earth-shakingly important issue of newspaper ads.
It's a "Sense of the Senate" resolution, which means it has no legal force, but as the Congressional Research Service will tell you, "foreign governments pay close attention to [such resolutions] as evidence of shifts in U.S. foreign policy priorities." If you want you can read it yourself (.doc), but here are the most important paragraphs:
(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.
If something like this passes both the House and Senate, I think Bush could legitimately argue that between it, the War Powers Act and the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations to Use Military Force, he has all the authority he needs to attack Iran.
In light of Joe Lieberman's vote to keep U.S. troops on 15-month tours of duty in Iraq, and Chris Shays' stubborn insistence on keeping American soldiers there indefinitely, it's worthwhile to see precisely why American troops are fighting and dying in Iraq, and where their next battlefield will likely be.
In this video, try to figure out which of these elected officials, bureaucrats, pundits and newspeople are outright lying, which are merely spreading lies, and which just shouldn't be allowed next to sharp objects. Be sure to put your BS-o-meter at full strength.
From C&L "Watch HolyJoe practically beg General Petraeus to attack Iran at yesterday's briefing. Lieberman looks like he's about to cry when Petraeus rebuffs him."
Update by tparty: Find out what happens when "serious" people in a Senate hearing room stop being polite... and start getting real:
(The Senator, by the way, expressed his displeasure yesterday with what I've been writing about him, even though he claimed not to have read it. He said I had attacked him personally. I told him my recollection was that I'd attacked him for the calumnies he had directed at his fellow Democrats, especially the use of the word "surrender" to describe their position. And for finding common cause with lunatic, literalist Christian Bible-crazies who believe in the rapture. I can now attack his foolish anti-Iranian warmongering. That's not a personal attack though: I just find his position very dangerous and prohibitively wrong-headed.)
In the story, Michael Gordon and John Burns report:
Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman here, said an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, a force under the control of Iran's most powerful religious leaders, had used veterans of the Lebanese Islamic militia group Hezbollah as a ''proxy'' to train, arm and plan attacks by an array of Shiite militant cells in Iraq.
What the story didn't tell you was that the U.S. Army issued a report on FEBRUARY 27 claiming that Iraqi police were responsible for the attack.
A previously undisclosed Army investigation into an audacious January attack in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers concludes that Iraqi police working alongside American troops colluded with insurgents.
General Bergner never mentioned the role of the Iraqi police in his report, or the Army's concerns that the Iraqi police were being infiltrated by insurgents. This raises a whole mess of disturbing questions...
On June 10, Senator Joe Lieberman said on CBS Face the Nation that he had seen incontrovertible evidence that Iran was training and equipping Iraqi extremists to kill American soldiers and that we should prepare for military strikes against these training bases in Iran.
Leslie Angeline, a member of the peace group CODEPINK who had just returned from a citizen diplomacy delegation to Iran, was appalled by the Senator’s remarks. The next day, she began a sit-in at his DC office and decided to fast until the Senator agreed to meet with her and other activists. We also alerted our CODEPINK supporters to call Lieberman’s office, and the phones were ringing off the hook. By the afternoon, the Senator had agreed to a meeting on Thursday, June 14.
On Thursday, a group of 60 people—including members of the Iranian community–showed up for the meeting. The group’s anger only deepened when we were told by Lieberman’s staff that the Senator had changed his mind and was no longer willing to meet.
Tensions mounted in the packed office as the group insisted on seeing the Senator and the staff called the police, who gave a warning that everyone would be arrested if they refused to leave.
Leslie Angeline now on the fifth day of her hunger strike, broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. “I MUST talk to the Senator,” she pleaded. “He has to know that the Iranians are beautiful, warm, kind people, that 70 percent of them are under 30, that they love Americans, that they have never attacked another country in 200 years and have no intention of attacking the United States.” Leslie took out stunning photos of Iranian children that she had taken on her trip. “These are the children who would die if we bombed Iran. We’ve already killed so many Iraqis; we just can’t do this to the people of Iran,” she cried.
The Iranian women in the group began hugging Leslie and crying as well. The emotional exchange, being filmed on camera, must have embarrassed the Senator’s staff. They backed down from the threat of arrests and instead agreed to have their chief of staff, legislative director and Middle East aide meet with three of our team while the others waited in the hallway.
(East Hartford-WTNH) _ Senator Joseph Lieberman is refusing to back down from his tough talk on Iran. Earlier in the week, he called for military action against Iran and that opinion is not sitting well with some traditional Lieberman supporters.
Added the Fox61 report by Shelly "Samantha Bee" Sindland as well. YouTube picture seems quite apropos.
The Chairman's responsibilities and Jurisdictions will include real oversight concerning failures of the Bush administration in providing security to our nation during times of war, illegal invasions, ongoing occupations, and natural disasters, as well as overseeing the bloated budget and operations of the largest branch of government ever to be created in the US governments' history through legislation authored under the Republican controlled Senate and House, and signed by the Republican pResident of the time.
Your main and immidiate responsibilities will include holding the needed hearings, directing sub-commitees and legislation needed to avoid repeating the previous disasters, corrupt practices, and failures that will be found with the propper direction and oversight of a NON-PARTISAN and ethical Senate leader.
(1)Minorities such as moderate Republicans having no ties to far-right-wing radical organizations like the Neoconservative movement, the American Enterprise Instute, The Heritage Foundation, Energy Corporations, or the Bush administrations most recent policy proposals that are doomed to failure, are encouraged to apply to Senator Harry Reid for any consideration concerning this soon to be available position.
(2)Note to applicants: Please mark the subject of the Email as "Homeland Security" and refer to this x-posted Blog diary in the opening paragragh of the application. You will be contacted shortly before I post an "I told you so!" diary covering the flawed positons, election statement lies, and propaganda of the far-right-wing radical Neoconservative Joe Lieberman.
Lieberman goes into more detail on Neil Cavuto's show, suggesting a "a strike to send a message to the Iranians" because they "have taken a belligerent act against us...and if they feel they can get away with that, they'll just keep doing it, not only in Iraq, but elsewhere throughout the Middle East and here in the United States of America."
Lieberman also manages to slag the negotiating of Bill Richardson as just "talk", which isn't enough, and then Ret. General and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO Wesley Clark's assessment of Iraq as "not grounded in reality." In some ways you've got to admire the chutzpah of a man who never served a day in his life in the military, who got enough deferments to rival Dick Cheney for draft dodging even challenging some of the frank assessments of men with lifetimes of expertise.
(Also, note the flashing red ALERT by Fox News. Subtle these guys are not.)