It has been almost six years since a brutal bombing in Beirut killed Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others on Valentine’s Day 2005. This week, the UN prosecutor overseeing the investigation finally submitted sealed indictments to the criminal court’s pre-trial judge as to who was responsible for the bombing. UN investigators and foreign intelligence over the last several years, however, have consistently pointed to senior Syrian and Iranian officials’ involvement. While the names of the indicted individuals are not expected to be known for eight weeks, the Obama Administration has known for quite some time that senior Syrian and Iranian officials are to blame for the brutal killings.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice has been on the job for 18 months now, but she doesn’t have much to show for it. Her record of accomplishments and performance on behalf of the American people is embarrassing. While Rice has been active in the social scene of Washington and The White House, a study released by the uber-serious non-profit group Security Council Report suggests that the past year has been the most inactive Security Council since 1991. Rice missed crucial negotiations on Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium, she failed to speak out when Iran was elected to the…

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It sounds as if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has had enough. Her new strong tone on North Korea is a welcome, albeit overdue, shift. The Obama Administration’s North Korea policy for the past 18 months has consisted of public relations ploys of pretending to get tough on the rogue state and a propensity to re-package the hard work of the Bush team and call it something new and improved. Her announcement that the Obama Administration will enforce the existing sanctions on nuclear related materials and luxury goods going in and out of North Korea is yet another example. While…

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the main stream media will try and tell you that tough sanctions on north korea started in 2009 with the obama administration…but they didn’t. the obama team re-packaged the bush team’s work. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/21/north-korean-sanctions-aim-luxury-items/

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is a campaign style spokesman who thrives on political spin. But after almost 18 months of acting as the official White House Spokesman, he shouldn’t be allowed to spin foreign policy facts on Meet the Press without pushback from David Gregory or other journalists. On Sunday, Gibbs tried to spin the Obama Administration’s policies on Iran and North Korea by misrepresenting the facts about the support the Obama team got at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Gibbs either doesn’t understand what happened at the UN or he is lying. Gibbs repeatedly referred to…

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After 17 months of diplomacy, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice was only able to get 12 of the 15 countries on the United Nations Security Council to vote to place increased sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons. Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, Rice jumped to defend the Obama Administration’s lackluster performance by claiming that previous Iran resolutions were not unanimous during the Bush Administration and that there were “abstentions”. Her strategy to minimize the Bush team’s performance in order to make her own poor performance look better isn’t factual. After so much hype about…

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Coming on the heels of not speaking out on Iran’s election last week to the Commission on the Status of Women and three other UN Committees, Susan Rice, the sometimes American Ambassador to the UN, today didn’t even mention Libya’s name when asked about the African country’s election to the UN’s Human Rights Council. It was a softball question to Rice from a veteran UN reporter: “Some human rights groups have complained about Libya joining the Council, do you share those concerns?” Rice said that sticking with diplomatic tradition, she wouldn’t reveal how America votes. And then she went on…

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al-jazeera/ a year of little change Barack Obama’s First Year in Foreign Policy This past year has not been a successful year for the 44th President of the United States. Although the Barack Obama Administration has had the incredible luxury of having its own political party – the Democrats – control the House of Representatives and the Senate by wide margins, there has been little progress on domestic and international issues. Obama and his team have the ability to pass any bill and create any new law they want without relying on a single Republican vote. And yet, the Obama…

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huff post – grenell on napolitano Janet Napolitano Is Doing a Heck of a Job. Remember when President Bush told FEMA Director Michael Brown he was doing a heck of a job with the Hurricane Katrina response? Now comes Janet Napolitano. Napolitano’s characterization and subsequent spin that “the system worked” in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab’s Detroit terror scare proves that she isn’t qualified to be the head of Homeland Security in a post-9/11 world. The Christmas Day terrorism scare over Detroit was a test and she failed it. Roughly eight years has passed since 2,973 people were killed…

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huffpost.com/grenell The Obama Team is Taking Credit for a Bush Policy The White House this week leaked intelligence information to the New York Times to suggest that their North Korea policy is working. And although David Sanger from the Times was all too quick to buy the Administration’s line, an honest assessment of the Obama team’s claims shows that the successful policy they highlight was designed and first implemented in the Bush Administration. Over the weekend, an airplane leaving North Korea with a cargo of illegal weapons was seized by Thailand. The Thai intelligence authorities worked with American officials to…

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http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/11/2009111694237666478.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/14/opinion/main5647410.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

http://advocate.com/news_detail_ektid68878.asp 12/20/08-12/22/08 U.S. Rejects U.N.’s Gay Rights Statement, Cites “Don’t Ask” A joint statement addressing homophobia and LGBT rights for the first time at the United Nations was tabled Thursday, without the backing of the United States. “We urge states to take all the necessary measures, in particular legislative or administrative, to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests or detention,” the draft document read. The unprecedented gay rights declaration was proposed by the French and read by Argentinean ambassador Jorge Arguello. The nonbinding statement is…

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http://newsmax.com/insidecover/grenell_resigns_un/2008/09/17/131871.html U.N. Spokesman Richard Grenell Resigns Wednesday, September 17, 2008 6:14 PM By: Stewart Stogel Richard Grenell, the longtime communications director and de facto press secretary for four U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, tells Newsmax he will conclude his eight-year U.N. term Sept. 29. Grenell plans to return to his California home to become a senior vice president and communications director at DaVita, a healthcare company based in El Segundo. But Newsmax also has learned that Grenell is on a short list for consideration as the next State Department spokesman if Sen. John McCain is elected president in November….

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