The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

https://www.businessinsider.com/trum...tunned-2018-11

Foreign-policy veterans were floored Thursday following a bombshell report that the White House considered extraditing one of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's top enemies to get Ankara to back off the investigation into the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

NBC News reported that the White House was looking for legal ways to boot out Fethullah Gulen — an exiled Turkish cleric whom Erdogan accuses of orchestrating a failed coup against him in 2016 — in exchange for Turkey easing pressure on the Saudi government, which is responsible for Khashoggi's killing.

Gulen is a legal US resident and a green-card holder who's been living in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s.

When the White House first floated the idea of extraditing Gulen, career officials at top federal agencies thought it was a joke but became "furious" when they learned it was a serious request, according to NBC News.

Foreign-policy veterans were similarly shocked. 'This is the Trump administration seeking to barter away a US resident'


Ned Price, the former senior director of the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, said the reported move was "hugely significant."

"This is the Trump administration seeking to barter away a US resident who has lived here legally for years," Price told INSIDER.

Diplomatic, immigration, and law-enforcement officials during the Obama administration determined that Turkey's case for Gulen's extradition did not meet the required threshold.

Price said it now seems "that the Trump White House, in order to make life easier for the Saudi Crown Prince, is seeking to skirt the rule of law by pressuring officials to return Gulen to Turkey, even without a sufficient evidentiary basis."

Randa Slim, the director of conflict resolution at the Middle East Institute, echoed that view.

"The question to ask is can the Trump administration legally do it?" Slim told INSIDER, emphasizing Gulen's status as a legal resident as an impediment for the White House.

"If the White House seriously considered it, it shows to what lengths the [Jared] Kushner camp was willing to go to protect their young protege in Riyadh," she added.

Slim was referring to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who once reportedly bragged that he had Kushner, a senior White House adviser, "in his pocket."

The crown prince is largely believed to have played a key role in carrying out the Khashoggi killing last month, but the Saudi government denies this, and Trump has mostly accepted this narrative. 'The process of extraditing Gulen would be complicated and fraught with controversy'


Legal experts also weighed in, saying it would be extremely "complicated" to extradite Gulen to Turkey.

"Under current US law and the applicable extradition treaty, the process of extraditing Gulen would be complicated and fraught with controversy," Bradley P. Moss, a DC lawyer specializing in national security, told INSIDER. "To this day, the specific crimes(s) for which Gulen would actually be prosecuted if returned to Turkey remains unclear."

But Moss said there was a "political offense" exception in the 1979 extradition treaty between the US and Turkey that "Gulen's lawyers would almost certainly argue is applicable here and which they would argue justifies preventing the extradition."

"Ultimately, any extradition effort would hinge on the level of detail provided by the Turkish government regarding Gulen's purported criminal offenses and the particular nature of the crime(s) regarding which he is alleged to have committed," Moss added.

Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer in Memphis, said the language of the extradition treaty "would certainly seem to open up a line of defense" for Gulen given Erdogan's case against him appears to be "politically motivated." Khashoggi's killing has put an uncomfortable spotlight on America's relationship with the Saudis and Turkey


Riyadh's story on Khashoggi's slaying has shifted several times over the past month amid increased international pressure to bring his killers to justice.

Though the Saudi government initially denied it had any role in the killing, the Saudi public prosecutor's office on Thursday said 11 people had been indicted in connection to Khashoggi's death and that the death penalty had been requested for five of them.

The public prosecutor added that 21 people had been detained overall. Riyadh said last month that it detained 18 people.

The White House's reported effort to extradite Gulen sheds light on US President Donald Trump's attempt to ease rising tensions with Turkey — which is said to be furious over the fact that Saudi officials killed Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Turkey — while providing some cover to the crown prince, with whom Trump has touted a close alliance.

Trump has also consistently emphasized America's strong strategic partnership with the Saudis, as well as the economic benefits of US arms sales to the kingdom.

Erdogan has called for Gulen's extradition for years, saying after the 2016 coup attempt that Turkey had never turned back any extradition request for "terrorists" by the US.

A Turkish official told NBC News that the government did not link its concerns about the Khashoggi murder with Gulen's extradition case.

"We definitely see no connection between the two," the official said. "We want to see action on the end of the United States in terms of the extradition of Gulen. And we're going to continue our investigation on behalf of the Khashoggi case."

Similarly, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert rejected the report from NBC News on Gulen. "The White House has not been involved in any discussions related to the extradition of Fethullah Gulen," Nauert said. 'Washington has given Erdogan the greatest gift'


Regardless of the Gulen situation, Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish parliament and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Erdogan has come out on top.

"Today's developments have provided Erdogan yet another opportunity to claim the moral high ground in the Khashoggi case," Erdemir told INSIDER. "As the world's top jailer of journalist, the Turkish president has already presented himself as a champion of press freedoms and human rights."

Erdemir added that Erdogan — who he said has "destroyed the justice system" in Turkey — could also "claim the moral high ground on the rule of law and due process."

The former Turkish politician also said the Trump administration's relatively toothless approach to the killing has strengthened Erdogan's position.

"Washington has given Erdogan the greatest gift — that is, the ability to reframe the debate by airbrushing his egregious violations of human rights and freedoms in Turkey while also refashioning himself as a champion of justice and righteousness," Erdemir said.
 
How else would a deal maker try to handle such a thing? :rolleyes:
 
How else would a deal maker try to handle such a thing? :rolleyes:
 
How else would a deal maker try to handle such a thing? :rolleyes:
 
Are you double- or triple-clicking the Post button? I would assume the new software is to blame, but it always seems to be you that multi-posts.
 
kunedog;n3554895 said:
Are you double- or triple-clicking the Post button? I would assume the new software is to blame, but it always seems to be you that multi-posts.

I have the same thing. You get the Error message, then you klick submit again - and you get multiple posts. As a workaround I always open the forum/discussion in a new tab again to see if my post has 'made it' and then if it has, I don't klick "post reply" again. But yeah, this Forum is like a classic car at this point - you sort of need to know how some tricks to get it working ;)
 
I just accept the error message and then refresh. The message is always there.
 
I have tried looking for the post to be there, and have tried to refresh to see what I get... Tis a bit frustrating, to say the least. I have even let it go until the next day. Sometimes it shows up, but it won't appear on the main forum page, so it doesn't look like it posted. When this happens, I just re-post.
 
I get that she probably will never see classified information, but it still against the rules. Her saying she doesn't know all the rules does not cut it here either. She just spent a year listening to her father chant lock her up about Clinton using a private email server.(No, I don't want her locked up)
 
Oh, where have the cries about the caravan gone?
 
GRtak;n3554978 said:
Oh, where have the cries about the caravan gone?

[video=youtube;-FbmhxMDwcA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FbmhxMDwcA&t=0s[/video]
 
GRtak;n3555013 said:
And yet, they will be removing troops before the caravan gets there. Hmmm, if there was so much danger, why would they be pulling them out?

Personally, I always assume issues are more complicated than the hyperpartisan editorialists in our media let on.

Mattis has repeatedly defended the deployment, which launched just a week before the U.S. midterm elections.

"We don’t do stunts in this department, thank you,” Mattis told reporters earlier this month after he was questioned about the timing.

Mattis visited the border briefly last week and used the opportunity to stress that he considered the deployment as a training opportunity, that the forces would not be in a law enforcement role, and that they would modify how they communicated the mission since they were still on U.S. soil.

Smith’s calls to send troops home occurred after Politico reported that Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the commander of the border deployment, was set to begin sending some forces home in the next few days.

After letting the story sit without comment overnight, U.S. Army North issued what one DoD official called a “clarifying statement” — that the troops may be reallocated, and perhaps not headed home.

“We are continually assessing our resources and refining requirements in close coordination with [the Department of Homeland Security]" U.S. Army North said in a statement. "We may shift some forces to other areas of the border to engineering support missions in California and other areas. No specific timeline for redeployment has been determined. We will provide more details as they become available.”

Initial orders for the deployment had troops coming home by Dec. 15, and Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Rob Manning on Monday told reporters that the work of securing the major border crossings in Texas was complete.

Unless they were directed otherwise, those troops would depart Dec. 15.

“At some point in time, when the work is done, we’ll start downsizing some capability or shift capability elsewhere,” Manning said Monday.

Smith’s call to send troops home was joined by Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who sent a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Monday to get the troops home in time for Thanksgiving — after the Pentagon also revealed it was shipping turkeys to the border to serve to forces who would not be allowed to go home.

“From its commencement, this operation has elicited rightful concern over the use of active-duty personnel for the purpose and support of domestic law enforcement," the senators wrote. "We believe you understand our concerns and take these issues seriously. Therefore, we urge you to allow these service members to return to their homes in time to spend Thanksgiving with their families.”

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...racially-motivated-stunt-new-hasc-chair-says/
 
GRtak;n3554978 said:
Oh, where have the cries about the caravan gone?

Midterms are over, Caravan is now irrelevant.
 
LeVeL;n3555016 said:
[...] she didn't send a ton of classified info and then lied about it, [...]
Do we know what she send because she handed those email over? Or are you taking her word for it? Yeah, we know Hilary send classified information because she admitted it - but we know Ivanka didn't because ...?
I mean, I don't know - but you seem awfully sure about it without no (apparent) reason.

[...] she didn't secretly build an unsecured private server in her bathroom
Apart from not wanting to go into the "bathroom" vs "basement" discussion - but maybe you can verify that you are saying having your emails on your own phisical server at home is less secure than having your emails on a server in the data-center of a private company with countless non-security cleared employees having physical access to it?

[...] or tell her cronies to smash hard drives with hammers.
Source?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cl...e-destruction/ ?
 
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