Was Obama Fixer Ben Rhodes behind Obama's 'Fact-Sheet' on the Iran?
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americanthinker.comby Ed Lasky April 9, 2015
Wherever Ben Rhodes goes, lies follow.
Obama’s foreign policy is cooked up by a very small group of people, among them Ben Rhodes, his deputy national security adviser. This should trouble Americans. I have been writing about Rhodes for years. He has a pattern of twisting the truth to serve his masters. All of 37 years old and untrained in diplomacy, he pontificates omnisciently on Obama’s mastery of world politics.
He was the drafter of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. This report was criticized for deviating from its main goal to analyze the Iraq War under George W. Bush. Instead, it advised outreach to Iran and distancing from Israel. Some of the witnesses called were suspect because of their lack of expertise as well as their biases. Other witnesses were shocked by the report upon its publication because they said it did not reflect their testimony, and in fact distorted what they had conveyed. In other words, their testimony was fictionalized. Who was the principal drafter of that report? Ben Rhodes.
Later, Rhodes became an Obama speechwriter. He wrote, for example, Obama’s Cairo speech, widely criticized for mistakes.
Rhodes has been promoted by Obama to be a key player, Deputy National Security Adviser, in formulating foreign policy. He was, for example, instrumental in Obama’s historic policy concessions to the Castro regime in Cuba. He was out front criticizing Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
Ben Rhodes had no diplomatic, military, intelligence or national security experience and therefore was perfect for the Obama White House. Previous experience is not required to get a job under Barack Obama. His education was in fiction-writing and he washed up in that career and somehow landed in Washington (no doubt helped by the fact that his brother is president of CBS News).
He was widely suspected of being one of the officials involved in whitewashing the Benghazi scandal to protect the White House from blame for that disaster. There is nothing that Barack Obama values more than a willingness to show an elastic definition of truth on behalf of Barack Obama and his reputation.
Every president has had a fixer and Ben Rhodes seems suited for the job. That fiction-writing seems to have helped. Back in 2010, he admitted he always wanted to be a fiction writer and, as Jim Geraghty wrote in the National Review, Barack Obama has given him that chance .
Now Barack Obama has released a “fact-sheet” about what was agreed to with Iran regarding their nuclear program. The version Barack Obama has been peddling to Congress and to America is very sharply at variance with the one the Iranians have been presenting as the “fact-sheet.”
The American version conveys assurances regarding sanctions, inspections, uranium stockpiles, and enrichment capabilities that the White House has been boasting is a “historic” deal, the “best bet” to stop a nuclear Iran, and the only alternative to war.
The Iranians are boasting that none of these assurances are correct, that the White House is engaging in spin and that they “won” in these negotiations. (see Amir Taheri’s “Iran’s Persian statement on ‘deal’ contradicts Obama’s claims.”)
Now even the French are stating that their fact-sheet also differs from the version being broadcast by Obama’s team. And of course their version shows -- as does the Iranian one – that major concessions were made by the White House. These concessions are not what the American people are hearing from the White House, and they will likely lead to the number one terror-supporting nation on Earth (one with much American blood on their hands) in possession of nuclear weapons.
Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama have clearly invested much of their energy and time in achieving what they claim is a historic agreement. As Mathew Continetti wrote in the Washington Free Beacon last year:
Deputy National Security Adviser and MFA in creative writing Ben Rhodes likened an Iranian nuclear deal to Obamacare in a talk to progressive activists last January, according to audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The remarks, made at a since-discontinued regular meeting of White House personnel and representatives of liberal interest groups, reveal the importance of a rapprochement with Iran to President Obama, who is looking to establish his legacy as his presidency enters its lame-duck phase.
“Bottom line is, this is the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve the Iranian issue diplomatically, certainly since President Obama came to office, and probably since the beginning of the Iraq war,” Rhodes said. “So no small opportunity, it’s a big deal. This is probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy. This is healthcare for us, just to put it in context.”
Rhodes made the comparison as the White House was reeling from the botched rollout of the $2 billion Healthcare.gov. Polls continue to show that the health law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, remains unpopular.
Rhodes also said the White House wants to avoid congressional scrutiny of any deal.
“We’re already kind of thinking through, how do we structure a deal so we don’t necessarily require legislative action right away,” Rhodes said. “And there are ways to do that.”
That is similar to what an unnamed senior administration official told David Sanger of the New York Times last week for a piece headlined “Obama Sees an Iran Deal That Could Avoid Congress”: “We wouldn’t seek congressional legislation in any comprehensive agreement for years.”
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