tvshow:fox news sunday

North Korea war not ’imminent,’ Trump aides say
▻https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/13/north-korea-war-not-imminent-trump-aides-say/562957001

Top Trump administration officials sought to assure Americans on Sunday that the nation is not on the brink of nuclear war with North Korea, despite the president’s recent threats.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster and Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo said an attack by North Korea does not appear imminent, and that the threat of war is no closer today than it was last week.

“I think we’re not closer to war than a week ago, but we are closer to war than we were a decade ago,” McMaster said on ABC’s This Week. “The danger is much greater and is growing every day, with every missile test, with the consideration of possibly a sixth nuclear test. And so what we can no longer do is afford to procrastinate.”

“I’ve heard folks talking about [the U.S.] being on the cusp of nuclear war,” Pompeo said on Fox News Sunday. “I’ve seen no intelligence that would indicate that we’re in that place today.”

McMaster said President Trump’s references to the U.S. military being “locked and loaded” is an effort to maintain peace, not provoke war. The military has made no significant movement of troops or equipment in recent days to prepare to fight North Korea.

“The United States military is always locked and loaded, but the purpose of capable, ready forces is to preserve peace and prevent war," he said. "George Washington said it: The most effective way of preserving peace is to be prepared for war.”

Tout est bon pour rétropédaler, même attribuer l’antique si vis pacem para bellum au pater conscriptus George Washington…
 :-D

▻http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/12/skipping-daily-briefings-trump-shows-ambivalence-toward-intel-agencies/95103092

Donald Trump’s reluctance to receive daily intelligence briefings — and his blunt rejection of the CIA’s assessment of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election — suggest a rocky start to the president-elect’s relationship with intelligence agencies.

Since the election, Trump has received the President’s Daily Briefing only four times, amid meetings with potential cabinet secretaries and other transition business. And on Sunday, the president-elect suggested that the rate of briefings won’t change once he’s sworn in next month.

“I get it when I need it,” Trump told Fox News Sunday. “I’m a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”

#Kerry caught criticizing Israeli killings in #Gaza
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/kerry-caught-criticizing-israeli-killings-gaza

US Secretary of State John Kerry criticized #Israel in candid remarks caught on an open microphone between television interviews Sunday. Kerry was heard talking about Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza to a State Department official identified as Jonathan Finer just before appearing on the “Fox News Sunday” political talk show. “I hope they don’t think that’s an invitation to go do more,” Kerry says. “That better be the warning to them.” read more

#palestinians

Edward Snowden is a ’traitor’ and possible spy for China – Dick Cheney | World news | theguardian.com
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/16/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-traitor-cheney
16 JUIN 2013

Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush and a key figure in the post-September 11 revamping of US national security, also defended the system. He told Fox News Sunday that it was needed to “gather intelligence on your enemies and stop the attack before it is launched”. He went on to condemn the man behind the series of explosive leaks regarding. Having described Edward Snowden as a “traitor”, Cheney went on to cast aspersions over the 29-year-old’s decision to travel to Hong Kong, suggesting that he could be a spy for China.

“I’m suspicious because he went to China. That’s not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth,” Cheney said, adding: “It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.” Cheney suggested that Snowden could still be in possession of confidential data and that the Chinese would “probably be willing to provide immunity for him or sanctuary for him in exchange for what he presumably knows or doesn’t know”.

The Leadership Trait That Barack Obama and Dick Cheney Share - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic
▻http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-leadership-trait-that-barack-obama-and-dick-cheney-share/276916

How is it that President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who appeared on Fox News Sunday defending the NSA’s vast surveillance program, find themselves on the same side of so many highly controversial national security debates? They subscribe to different ideologies, belong to opposing political parties, and differ dramatically in background and temperament.

Their grassroots supporters are deeply at odds. They see America’s role in the world differently, speak about it differently, and made dramatically different judgment calls on the Iraq War, perhaps the most consequential foreign-policy decision undertaken in the years after 9/11 (certainly the most costly). So what explains the once surprising number Cheneyesque national-security policies Obama has, by now, embraced?

There is, of course, no single explanation: policies adopted by the Bush Administration constrained Obama in certain ways, and everyone who heads the executive branch shares some incentives.

But I do think a significant explanation is underappreciated.

For all their substantial differences, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama share one leadership trait: they trust their own judgment so thoroughly, and value it so highly, that they recklessly undermine all institutional and prudential restraints on their ability to exercise it whenever they see fit. Indeed, like Kobe Bryant at the end of a playoff game, they both harbor a barely suppressed, supremely arrogant belief that behaving in this way is their responsibility, or even their burden.

Exactly Which “Terror Plots” Are Relevant to the Bulgarian Bombing?
►http://www.fpif.org/blog/exactly_which_terror_plots_are_relevant_to_the_bulgarian_bombing

So an arrest of a “suspected” Hezbollah operative who is “suspected” of a plan to kill Israeli tourists is the equivalent of an actual terrorist attack that has killed Israeli tourists? Bibi Netanyahu talked about the case on Fox News Sunday as though the Lebanese man arrested in Cyprus had done everything that was done in Burgas except actually detonate the bomb. So has the Israeli press.

But as I reported earlier this week, the Cyprus case is far murkier than Netanyahu and those U.S. officials have been suggesting. A senior Cypriot official told Reuters, “It is not clear what, or whether, there was a target in Cyprus.” Furthermore, the Cypriot investigators believe the Lebanese they suspected of planning to harm Israeli tourists was acting alone, which doesn’t make it sound like a Hezbollah operation at all. And perhaps most significant of all, there has no sign of a bomb or even of materials with which to make a bomb in conjunction with the Lebanese detainee. The Cypriot government has not yet decided whether there is enough evidence to prosecute the man on any violation of Cypriot laws.