George Rebane
Forget the latest Obamacare website fiasco for a bit. A very surprising piece of news is making the headlines this morning about Obama’s reported ignorance that NSA was tapping the phones of certain world leaders. (more here) My surprise is not of the kind reported, and perhaps I’m the only one who is surprised by this “official’s” claim of yet another area of his administration’s activities about which this community organizer is also unaware. But what are we to make of the claim?
1. Obama is lying again, and he was fully aware, as he should have been, of NSA’s phone surveillance of peer world leaders and the relevant contents which were reported to him regularly.
2. Obama’s minions did tap friendly world leaders’ phones on their own (lower level) recognizance and purposely failed to report the policy and contents of such taps to their boss. If so, then how much more of such high level unawareness is going on in this administration?
The point here is that Obama’s ignorance of his regime’s monitoring of peer world leaders was disclosed as an official statement by a lower level lackey. Whether true or not, this does not project a good picture of our government being run by a cadre of competent leaders. (Lest some local liberals think that this view is again limited, check out Bob Woodward's asessment that this administration is "a rat's nest of concealment and lies.")
Now we are in danger of Obama doing the next sophomoric thing by issuing some ‘guarantee’ that we’ll never do it again. Or worse, that we’ll only do it again under the ‘guarantee’ that Obama is definitely not told about it. Or …?
For the bit of tricky logic involved here, I want to emphasize that I’m not advocating that we base our foreign policy on information made incomplete by purposely blinding ourselves to things we can see and should view. I question 1) how such surveillance policy is conducted within this administration (internal ignorance, incompetence, rogue agencies, …?), and 2) how we respond to charges of such surveillance from foreign leaders (further damage to our deteriorating image of being a trustworthy, strong, and competent ally).
[30oct13 update] H/T to RR reader.
[3nov13 update] I'm reminded of certain prescient readers who last spring assured us that all of the Obama scandals would be forgotten beyond recall by this time, most of all what happened in Benghazi on 11 September 2012. Reality is a bit different. Obama's job performance is so poor that he even invites the lamestream to start ressurecting the history of his administration's disasters. Last Sunday '60 Minutes' revived Benghazi with a re-examination of the events of that day and the treasonous response from Washington and the Snowden revelations. While today Sen Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has vowed to hold all remaining Obama appointments from Senate approval until Obama permits the Senate to hear from the Benghazi survivors before concluding its investigation. (Can you imagine the thinking that is going on in that puzzle palace to continue denying Congress that testimony?) Hillary should be scheduled for some industrial grade teflon treatments before all this is over. I think some reporters out there are beginning to smell one or more Pulitzers in the growing pile of garbage that continues to be buried in the Rose Garden.
rebanesruminations.com 
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