Assessing Barack Obama

Barack getting more flak on the home front and vis-a-vis national security. At least one of Barack's foreign policy advisers is not a star-struck flake, or worse. At least one of his advisers in that arena is a serious, responsible person.

Former CIA official and head of the National Counterterrorism Center, John Brennan deliberately departs from the Barack Obama line.The interview reveals a devastating assessment of Barack Obama, from one of his key supporters, on his judgment as a potential commander-in-chief. Big HT to Ed Morrissey, HotAir. National Journal interview picked up by ABC's The Blotter:

In a new interview with National Journal magazine, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign broke with his candidate’s position opposing retroactive legal protection for telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with a dubious U.S. government domestic surveillance program.

"I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity," former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview. "They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context."

"I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that's the right thing to do," added Brennan, who is an intelligence and foreign policy adviser to Obama.

That wasn't just a personal opinion, Brennan made clear to Harris. "My advice, to whoever is coming in [to the White House], is they need to spend some time learning, understanding what's out there, identifying those key issues," including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he said -- the law at the heart of the immunity debate.

"They need to make sure they do their homework, and it's not just going to be knee-jerk responses," Brennan said of the presidential hopefuls.

You have to assume he is primarily talking about Barack Obama.

Recall also, that Obama conveniently or willfully misleads in at least one recent statement, implying that his supporter Sen. Jay Rockefeller voted against the war. Rockefeller voted for it. Sen. Rockefeller is also head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and warned on the floor of the Senate last month that we are at risk every day we go without a renewal of FISA.

The current Director of National Intelligence, who served as NSA director in the Clinton administration, Adm. Mike McConnell has warned of the danger, as has Homeland Security Sec. Chertoff and Gen. Renuart, charged with defending the US from attack. Matt Continetti, Weekly Standard on the Don't Protect America Democrats, for whom Obama is a standard bearer:

The last time U.S. spooks had to rely on FISA court approval to gather intelligence overseas--in the first half of 2007--the backlog of warrant applications quickly grew so thick that America's ability to hear what her enemies were saying was degraded by "70 percent," according to the director of national intelligence, Vice Admiral Mike McConnell. If FISA is not updated, it will be only a matter of time before we reach that point again. Something's gotta give, in other words. And soon.

More:

The left has been angry for years about Bush's secret program of foreign intelligence surveillance conducted between September 11, 2001, and January 17, 2007, when the president submitted such surveillance to the FISA court for approval. During this time, the government's foreign intelligence collection efforts were known as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." It was not "illegal." Just because the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation say it was doesn't make it so. Federal case law has long upheld the president's authority to gather foreign intelligence without warrant. FISA does not trump that authority.

You do not have to take our word for it, either. It was a Democrat, Carter attorney general Griffin Bell, who pointed this out when FISA was created in 1978. It was another Democrat, Clinton's deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, later a vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, who made the same point when FISA was amended in 1994.

Come on Lefties. Must corporations be all bad all the time--what a cartoonish view of the world is that? (Do you think the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is bad? How about Google--don't be evil. How about FedEx or UPS who save us from the indignities of the Post Office? And Wal-Mart--admit it, they were one of the saviors of people after Katrina.)

Do you have to treat these telecom corporate Good Samaritans in America's hour of need as pariahs?

Do you have to kowtow to the trial lawyer muckrakers who make the big bucks at our expense and peace of mind? Do you have to be willfully blind and stupid? Do you have to give terrorists the benefit of the doubt, but not our intel guys, who work all hours to protect us?

And recall this:

On Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, U.S. officials intercepted conversations among al-Qaida operatives boasting in Arabic such sentiments as “The match begins tomorrow” and “Tomorrow is zero hour.” Those conversations were not translated until Wednesday, the 12th.

What a difference a day makes.

3,000 American innocents died that bright, blue sky sunny September morning. Never again. Never.

A few more foreign policy questions for Barack Obama, and the MSM, on FARC and his other unsavory associations.

In a belated assessment of the paucity and liberal orthodoxy of Obama's record, the NY Times finally notes a few obvious truths that have eluded them and many liberals so far (David Ignatius in the Washington Post beat them to it last Sunday.):

Mr. Obama took few bold stands and diverted little from the liberal orthodoxy he had embraced in the Illinois Senate. His voting record in his first year in Washington, according to the annual rankings by National Journal, was more liberal than 82.5 percent of the Senate (compared with, for example, Mrs. Clinton’s 79.8 percent that year).

He worked with Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and one of the most conservative in the chamber, to establish a public database to examine government spending after Hurricane Katrina.

But for the most part, he stuck to party lines; there were few examples of the kind of bipartisan work he advocates in his current campaign.

Other Senators describe Obama as a "dilettante" and someone who "folded like a cheap suit" when the going got tough. Maureen Dowd offers toughening up advice, from her liberal political social butterfly perch at the courageous NY Times, "fighting for you". (Minor note to Maureen--it's Antoin Rezko, not Antonin.)

Sen. Barack Obama does not inspire confidence as a political leader, nor as commander in chief.

But he does inspire his believers. The Sunday Chicago Tribune has an OpEd on Obama--for some, one for the millenium:

"the Obama campaign is a new expression of an age-old millennial vision"

but the author wonders if "Perhaps the political hero compromises with opponents (or succumbs to the old political order)".

Drawing blood already. (Or maybe, per John Kass in the Trib, they might settle it the Chicago Way.) Perhaps the end is near, perhaps not. On the same page is a review of a new "documentary" of the trial of the anti-war Chicago 7, who disrupted the Democrat convention in 1968, "A dark, zany drama". Zany? This too, like it or not, is part of the assessment of Barack Obama.

America, like it or not, is the defender of last resort. And the number one target.

Freedom is on the line.

P.S. For those watching the below the radar stuff on Barack--the lurid rag at the grocery store checkout has him on the front page: National Enquirer, "Obama's Secrets". Mention of Rezko, "Big money deal with accused felon", Bill Ayers, "His close friendship with terrorist" and Rashid Khalidi. The rest is suspect.

P.P.S. Excerpt from Andrew Sullivan:

The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy. You can’t escape; you can’t hide; and you can’t win. And these days, in the kinetic pace of the YouTube campaign, they are like the new 28 Days Later zombies. They come at you really quickly, like bats out of hell. Or Ohio, anyway.

Now all this may seem a little melodramatic.

Enjoy.

And Barack may, or may not, have a new foreign policy adviser in his future:)

Will Hillary have the last cackle, cackle laugh? The Iron Lady--"sheer display of iron-pantsed discussion" etc, etc.