FACT CHECK: Contrary to Hillary Clinton's faulty memory, her husband, Bill, was the person who couldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons and put America at risk of nuclear annihilation when he lost his nuclear ID card which remained 'lost' for at least a few months and possibly 2 years. The Clintons and insiders kept this secret from the public until well after they were out of office and making millions to try and get themselves back in the White House for another 8 years-Ronald Kessler, Daily Mail, August 2016

No "button" exists to order nuclear attacks. Nor do "nuclear codes." It begins with a Presidential ID card and a large briefcase containing phone equipment with which to call the Pentagon. It was Bill Clinton who risked nuclear annihilation when he lost his ID card containing authentication codes required to communicate with the Pentagon. "The president may authorize launches by talking with the Pentagon and using codes to verify his identity after the case has been opened." In 2010, when asked about losing his personal identification code, Bill Clinton's office had no comment: "Former President Clinton's office declined to comment today on reports that he managed to lose the personal identification code needed to confirm nuclear launches and never told anyone about it." If a president called the Pentagon and begged them to commence a nuclear attack, they wouldn't be able to do so unless the president had his ID card.

Nuclear briefcase

Aug. 4, 2016, "EXCLUSIVE: Hillary fears Trump 'having his finger on the nuclear button' but 1. There is no button (it's a 'football') and 2. It was Bill Clinton who risked nuclear annihilation when he lost the authentication codes," Daily Mail, Ronald Kessler

"Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the New York Times bestselling author of The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents and In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire" 

• The 'nuclear football'  has secure phone capabilities and options for launching nuclear strikes
• The president may authorize launches by talking with the Pentagon and using codes to verify his identity after the case has been opened
• Bill Clinton once lost the authenticatin codes for months, risking nuclear annihilation of America
• In case the president is incapacitated or has died, an identical nuclear football is assigned to the vice president 
• Military aides who carry the satchels are supposed to accompany the two leaders wherever they go, including flights and hotels 
• The military aide sleeps in an underground bunker at the White House 
• Under what is called the National Security System, five military aides rotate the duty of carrying the nuclear football for the president....
• Another five military aides take turns traveling with the vice president 

"Those who don't want Donald Trump's finger on the nuclear button may be in for a surprise: The nuclear button does not exist. Trump 'shouldn't have his finger on the button', Hillary Clinton said about the Republican presidential candidate in Columbus, Ohio, in June. 

But not only is there no button to allow the president to unleash nuclear weapons, contrary to popular myth, there are no codes used by the president to accomplish such a strike.

Instead, the president is supplied with what is known as the nuclear football. A leather-covered titanium business case that weighs 40 pounds, the nuclear football is secured with a cipher lock. 

The case contains a variety of secure phone capabilities and options for launching nuclear strikes that the president may authorize by talking with the Pentagon. 

Ironically, in view of Hillary Clinton's claim that Trump should not have his finger on the nuclear button, it was her husband Bill Clinton who risked nuclear annihilation of America by losing the authentication codes.

At one point during his second term, Secret Service agents tell me, President Clinton managed to lose the plastic authenticator card with the codes he would need to verify his identity to launch nuclear weapons.

In his book Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, retired general Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that in Clinton's last year in office, his required codes for launching a nuclear strike were missing for months. 

'This is a big deal - a gargantuan deal - and we dodged a silver bullet,' Shelton said. 

'If our survival depended on launching a preemptive strike, without the president's having [the football and authentication codes], such a strike would be impossible.' Shelton said. 

The president authenticates his identity with codes found on a small plastic card he carries with him. In case the president is incapacitated or has died, an identical nuclear football is assigned to the vice president.

Since President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden would likely have 15 minutes or less to respond to an impending attack from a country like China, Russia or North Korea before the United States could be wiped out by nuclear-tipped missiles, the military aide who carries the satchel is supposed to accompany the two leaders wherever they go.

When they board Air Force One or Air Force Two, the military aide carrying the football can be seen right behind them. Staying over at hotels, the military aide sleeps in a room adjoining the president's or vice president's room.

When Secret Service agents script an arrival or departure from a hotel or office building, they make sure the military aide rides the elevator with the protectee. In motorcades, the military aide travels in the vehicle right behind the president's or vice president's limo. 

In the event the president or vice president comes under attack during a public appearance, Secret Service agents have standing instructions to evacuate the military aide together with the protectee. 

'Whoever has the duty as military aide to the president is responsible for physical custody of the football and ensuring its access to the president 24/7, within a matter of seconds,' says retired Navy vice admiral John Stufflebeem, who was the military aide to President George HW Bush....

Stufflebeem revealed how the nuclear football works for my book The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents. 

After President Harry Truman ordered the release of the first atomic bomb, President Dwight Eisenhower, as a former general, recognized the need to provide the president with a mechanism for ordering an immediate nuclear retaliatory strike from any location.

Under what is called the National Security System, five military aides rotate the duty of carrying the nuclear football for the president. The Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army, and Coast Guard each assign an aide. Another five military aides take turns traveling with the vice president. 

When the president is in the Oval Office, the military aide with the nuclear football remains just outside, ready to rush in if the National Security System signals an alert through phones contained in the football. 

The encrypted voice communications may be transmitted by satellite, microwave relay transmission, cell phone, landline, or shortwave radio.

At night, the military aide sleeps in workout clothes in an underground bunker at the White House. If an alert comes, he can rush to provide the president with the football in his bedroom at the residence.

The vice president has the same arrangement at his offices in the West Wing and in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and at the vice president's residence on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory in northwest Washington. 

Only the president - or if he has died or is incapacitated, the vice president as his constitutional successor - can order the release of nuclear weapons.

The National Military Command Center provides both leaders with an authenticator card with codes that verify the president's or vice president's identity.

Because what is called the Sealed Authentication System is so highly classified, all of the information that has appeared in the press about it has been wrong. 

A recent Washington Post article pointed out that the nuclear football contains no button for unleashing a nuclear counterstrike but never explained how the football actually works."

Image caption: "A 'nuclear football' carried by a military aide accompanies the president wherever he goes," getty via Daily Mail

================ 
 ........... 

"“We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and [Bill] finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen them,” Patterson said (in 2003)." 

===================

2010, The Atlantic: "Former President Clinton's office declined to comment today on reports that he managed to lose the personal identification code needed to confirm nuclear launches and never told anyone about it."
.......  
2010 article:
.......
Oct. 22, 2010, "Why Clinton's Losing the Nuclear Biscuit Was Really, Really Bad," The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder 
.......  
"Former President Clinton's office declined to comment today on reports that he managed to lose the personal identification code needed to confirm nuclear launches and never told anyone about it. Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the last few years of Clinton's term, writes about the episode in his new autobiography. Shelton is especially sensitive to the proper authentication procedures, having served as deputy commander of the National Military Command Center (NMCC), through which all nuclear launch progression action chains are processed. The National Command Authority (NCA), as the process and the person of the commander in chief is called, passes from the President to the Vice President to the Secretary of Defense. (In the absence of the SecDef, the Deputy Secretary of Defense can stand in.) 
........ 
In effect, without Clinton's "biscuit," as the personal identifier is called, the President would not have been able to initiate a launch order or confirm a launch order executed by someone else. The football itself, which contains code authenticators, a transceiver, targeting menus, and continuity of government options, was always with the military aide.

A former military officer with knowledge of NCA procedures helps fill in some of the details.

Let's say that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) detects an inbound air warning; the NMCC immediately calls the Sit Room or the military aide, which plugs in the President, who then provides an alpha-numeric code to verify his identity. Once verified, the President can (to invoke ICBM language) execute or terminate sorties. The military aide--known as the Milaide--goes everywhere with the President. Even when the President travels in a hotel elevator, the Milaide (and the president's doctor) accompany him. (Yes, every POTUS elevator trip is monitored.)

So what happens if the President doesn't have his identifier?

The commander in chief of NORAD resorts to the next person the NCA list, the Vice President.

This is a survival mechanism built in during the Cold War, in the event that Washington was decapitated without warning in a nuclear strike. NORAD continues down the list until it finds a capital P-Principle, who provides that identifier and assumes the duties of the Commander in Chief.

Sounds like no big deal, right?

Here's the reality: Losing that identifier card had the potential to create a vast disruption in nuclear command and control procedures.

So Al Gore gets "the call" because Clinton can't properly ID himself. Gore is confused, lives in Washington, knows the President is fine. He tells NORAD to hold while he tracks down the President, who can't verify his own identify anyway. Precious minutes (and I do mean precious, seconds count in the nuke business) are lost while civilian and military leadership sort things out.

And that says nothing of the fact that the President would be in gross violation of his duties by allowing the VP to execute an order that is lawfully the President's to make. Once a strike is authorized by the NCA, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pass the order to the U.S. Strategic Command through the NMCC, or through an alternate command site, like Site R in Liberty Township, PA, or through an airborne platform known as TACAMO, which stands for "Take Charge and Move Out."

TACAMO's fleet, operated by the Navy, consists of tricked-out Boeing E6-B aircraft pre-positioned at six locations across the country. They're on constant stand-by, ready to fly within 10 minutes of an alert. During the Cold War, the code name for these missions was "Looking Glass," and at least one airplane was in the air at all times. TACAMO planes are in 24/7 contact with America's fixed ballistic missile silos, its nuclear subs, and its nuclear-weapon-equipped airplanes.

Don't confuse these aircraft with the NAOC, or "Kneecap," four Air Force planes designed to physically transport the NCA -- POTUS or whomever -- to safety in an emergency. Wherever the President travels, a Boeing E4 is not far behind. The planes also ferry other members of the NCA, including SecDef, to international locations where they know they can secure their communications if they need them.

If there's a catastrophic attack on the seat of the United States government, the planes, their crews, and special mission units are responsible for ensuring that the surviving constitutional officer "becomes" the NCA until the emergency is over. The NAOC planes keep in constant contact with the NMCC, the White House's Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the HMX-1 squadron that the President uses for helicopter traffic, and various classified alternate command and control centers worldwide. (Yes, worldwide.)

On 9/11, according to Shelton, a NAOC plane was in the air, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was evacuated to Site R, and various other continuity of government measures were put into effect in case they were needed. That day, they were not.

But the emergency would convince the Bush administration to significantly retool and expand the secret programs designed to ensure constitutional government."


==================

August 2016: "Though Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump “is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons," she might want to take a closer look at her husband, who is being accused of once leaving the U.S. open to attack after losing the nuclear codes."

August 16, 2016, "Bill Clinton Once LOST Nuclear Launch Codes, DC Insider Claims," RadarOnline, staff

"Find out how the former President almost destroyed the U.S." 

"Bill Clinton almost destroyed the United States by losing the launch codes! At least that’s what one retired U.S. general says. 

Though Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump “is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,” she might want to take a closer look at her husband, who is being accused of once leaving the U.S. open to attack after losing the nuclear codes.

Journalist Ronald Kessler reported, an actual nuclear button does not exist. Instead there is a “nuclear football,” a “leather-covered titanium business case that weighs 40 pounds,” he wrote. The football is secured with a cipher lock. Bill Clinton had access to this “nuclear football” while serving as president and in his second term in the White House, as retired U.S. general Hugh Shelton claimed, Bill’s required codes went missing…for months!

Shelton emphasized in his book, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, this was “a big deal” and that the United Stated dodged a “silver bullet” when nothing went wrong.

“If our survival depended on launching a preemptive strike, without the president’s having [the football and authentication codes], such a strike would be impossible,” Shelton said. 

Vanity Fair reported that retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Robert Patterson also recalled Bill losing the codes. “We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and [Bill] finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen them,” Patterson said.

Clinton specifically lost the personal identification code needed to confirm nuclear launches, also known as the “biscuit.” Without the “biscuit” the president cannot initiate a launch order or confirm one from someone else. As The Atlantic reported, “losing that identifier card had the potential to create a vast disruption in nuclear command and control procedures.” 

Shelton insisted that losing these codes is just as severe as it sounds. “Without the football and the appropriate codes, it doesn’t matter if we’ve got a thousand missiles verified inbound to the United States, we would be unable to launch a retaliatory strike,” he wrote."
.........
================

Oct. 2010: "The codes were actually missing for months. That's a big deal--a gargantuan deal." -

10/21/2010, "Bill Clinton 'lost vital White House nuclear codes'," UK Telegraph 

"For several months during Bill Clinton's administration, a former top military officer says the White House lost the card with a set of numbers for opening the briefcase containing the codes for a nuclear attack."

 "Gen Hugh Shelton, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, said in his new memoir, "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior" that "the codes were actually missing for months. That's a big deal--a gargantuan deal."

A similar claim was made by Lt Col Robert Patterson, a former aide, in a book published seven years ago (2003). He was one of the men who carried the briefcase, known as the "football", and he said that the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that he made a routine request of the president to present the card so that he could provide an updated version. 

"He thought he just placed them upstairs," Lt Col Patterson recalled. "We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and he finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn't recall when he had last seen them.

He said the President lost the card holding the codes, which is known as the biscuit, in 1998, but according to Gen Shelton, the card went missing in 2000."....
.......................
........
Added: WE DON'T HAVE TO "DARE IMAGINE," Mrs. Clinton, we already know--no thanks to you. Your husband is dangerously incompetent and dishonest and should never be allowed in the White House again. Purely by luck, we're still alive and able to know that Bill lost his nuclear ID card, that it remained lost for an extended period of time, and that he never publicly admitted his actions: 

July 2016, Hillary Clinton speaking at the Democrat convention says how scary it would be if Trump was "entrusted" with nuclear weapons. No mention how scary it was that we "entrusted" nuclear power to her husband Bill and were betrayed. Instead of admitting Bill's gross incompetence and dishonesty to the American people and retiring from the public stage, he and Mrs. Clinton have gone on to make millions and to push for a total of 16 years in the White House:

Hillary, July 2016: "Imagine, if you dare" Trump in the Oval Office facing a crisis and entrusted with nuclear weapons:

July 28, 2016, "Clinton on Trump: "A man you can bait with a tweet" can't be trusted "with nuclear weapons" Vox.com, Updated by Andrew Prokop
 
Hillary at Democrat convention: "Imagine, if you dare, imagine — imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."...
........................

In 1980, Democrats said Ronald Reagan was  a "cowboy" who couldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons because he might blow up the world:

7/30/16, "Hillary's Recycled Speech," Cal Thomas, Townhall 

"Putting aside the theatrics designed to make Hillary Clinton appear to be something she is not...we've heard it all before.
.......
First there was the charge that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes. The same was said about Ronald Reagan in 1980. Democrats called him a "cowboy" who might blow up the world. Instead, he rebuilt America's military, as Trump has promised to do, and helped bring down the Soviet Union.
.......  
Can Hillary be trusted with classified documents?"...

....................

Man electrocuted while trying to steal booby trapped Trump sign-WDBO Orlando, Florida

9/30/16, "Man electrocuted while trying to steal booby trapped Trump sign," WDBO, Orlando, Fla., news965.com, Samantha Jordan

"A very annoyed Donald Trump supporter has built a wall of electricity to protect his campaign sign from thieves.

A video posted to YouTube shows a neighbor attempting to steal the Trump sign from a yard. The owner says his signs have been stolen and vandalized in the past, so he decided to booby trap his newest one.

Surveillance video captures the hoodie-wearing neighbor trying to take the sign...and he's instantly shocked! He then turns and runs away.

The homeowner claims that the man has been charged with trespassing. Watch the video HERE."





.........

Trump takes 5.6 lead over Hillary in USC Dornsife LA Times Presidential Poll through Sept. 29, 2016

Trump 47.3
Hillary 41.7

9/30/16, USC Dornsife LA Times Presidential Daybreak Poll
 

"About the Survey✝

The USC Dornsife/LA Times Presidential Election "Daybreak" Poll is part of the ongoing Understanding America Study: (UAS) at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research, in partnership with the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and the Los Angeles Times. Every day, we invite one-seventh of the members of the UAS election panel to answer three predictive questions: What is the percent chance that… (1) you will vote in the presidential election? (2) you will vote for Clinton, Trump, or someone else? and (3) Clinton, Trump or someone else will win? As their answers come in, we update the charts daily (just after midnight) with an average of all of the prior week’s responses. To find out more about what lies behind the vote, each week we also ask respondents one or two extra questions about their preferences and values. The team responsible for the USC Dornsife/LA Times Presidential Election Poll four years ago developed the successful RAND Continuous Presidential Election Poll, which was based on the same methodology."



...............

Estero, Florida rally for Trump, Sept. 19, 2016

Above, 9/19/16, Trump rally in Estero, Florida, Germain Arena, near Fort Myers,"Sopan Deb ‏@SopanDeb 47m47 minutes ago #sopanorama from Estero, Florida. It's hot down here." SopanDeb twitter, CBS News. https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/777957398862376960. Crowd: 8500

Above, 9/19/16, Trump rally in Estero, Florida, Germain arena, David Martosko twitter, via Sharyl Atkisson. 8500 capacity

Above, 9/19/16, Trump rally near Ft. Myers, Florida, "Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 6h6 hours ago Amazing rally in Florida - this is a MOVEMENT! Join us at http://www.DonaldJTrump.com, Dan Scavino twitter 

Above, 9/19/16, Trump rally in Estero, Florida, "Deplorable Suzi ‏@suz_stone 30m30 minutes ago OMG this is AWESOMENESS right here. .. Go Florida.. and God Bless @realDonaldTrump," Fort Myers, Germain Arena

.......................

Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Obama all promised to 'get tough' with Communist China on issues from human rights to trade, then did the opposite. Obama promised to stop China currency manipulation and renegotiate NAFTA but did neither, backing out on his NAFTA promise almost immediately-UK Telegraph, Washington Post. (For a quarter century the Clintons have lied to Americans on life and death issues for the country including free trade deals made in back rooms and have been rewarded with great wealth for it. Other countries therefore assume US citizens can be stolen from)

Feb. 2009 UK Telegraph:

"Recent American presidents, her husband Bill Clinton included, began their terms of office promising to "get tough" with China over issues from human rights to trade." Mrs. Clinton "offered a conciliatory hand of friendship to...China, contradicting hostile policies both she and President Barack Obama promised during their presidential campaigns last year."

...........

Feb. 2009 Washington Post:

2/19/2009, "NAFTA Renegotiation Must Wait, Obama Says," Washington Post, Michael D. Shear 

"President Obama...said his election-year promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement on behalf of unions and environmentalists will have to wait."...

...............

Feb. 20, 2009, "Hillary Clinton: Chinese human rights secondary to economic survival," UK Telegraph, Richard Spencer in Beijing

"Hillary Clinton has told China that the US considers human rights concerns secondary to economic survival."

"Arriving in China on her first visit as US secretary of state, Mrs Clinton promised a new relationship between the two countries, one she considers to be the world's most important of the 21st century.

Mrs Clinton landed in Beijing from South Korea, where she lashed out at the North Korean "tyranny" of its leader Kim Jong-il.

But in contrast she offered a conciliatory hand of friendship to Mr Kim's ally China, contradicting hostile policies both she and President Barack Obama promised during their presidential campaigns last year. 

She said she would continue to press China on issues such as human rights and Tibet, but added: "Our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."...

[Ed. note: Not stated what's meant by "the security crisis" ] 

(continuing): "Recent American presidents, her husband Bill Clinton included, began their terms of office promising to "get tough" with China over issues from human rights to trade.

Mr Obama's campaign pledges to protect American jobs from competition from low-wage economies and to force China to revalue its currency were received badly in Beijing.

But in advance of her trip, Mrs Clinton called the US-China relationship the world's most important of the 21st century.

"Some believe that China on the rise is, by definition, an adversary," she said last week. "To the contrary, we believe that the United States and China can benefit from and contribute to each other's successes."

Washington has been left with little choice but to improve ties in the wake of the financial crisis, which has seen the huge trade imbalances between the two explode in a debt crisis in the US and an export crisis in China....

China now owns more than $600 billion (£420 billion) of US government debt, and will be called on to buy more as President Obama's stimulus package inflates the budget deficit. 

Jim McGregor, who runs the JL McGregor research company in Beijing and used to head the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said that where US leaders once came to Beijing to hand out lectures, now they came to "kiss up"
.
"The power relationship between the United States and China has shifted greatly over the last ten years and dramatically over the last three months," he said. "America needs China badly right now."

China announced in advance that it was willing to resume the military dialogue with the Pentagon it suspended over US arms sales to Taiwan last October.

Mrs Clinton is also expected to discuss a joint approach to climate change.

Her harsh words for North Korea may be intended to reassure America's closest regional allies, South Korea and Japan.

Some Japanese officials are uneasy at the growing rapport with Tokyo's old rival China, while even Washington's stance on Pyongyang has recently sounded more conciliatory than either Japan's or South Korea's.

In 1995, when Mrs Clinton attended an international women's conference in Beijing, she offended her hosts by criticising their one-child policy, among other human rights complaints."...

............. 

Comment: The Bushes, like the Clintons and Obama, believed that "Americans came last" if at all: "The elites of both parties are, as if by rote, extreme globalists:"

6/27/16, "Why Trump Wins," "He knows border wars have replaced culture wars." The American Conservative, by Scott McConnell

"The elites of both parties are, as if by rote, extreme globalists....Trade and immigration policies,...it is increasingly obvious, do not favor the tangible interests of the average American....

In foreign policy, the liberal interventionists who would staff a Hillary administration line up seamlessly with neoconservatives in support of continued American "hegemony."... 

Opposition to this establishment consensus has been advancing, by fits and starts, and is now too large to be ignored.... 

On the triad of trade, immigration, and foreign policy, these voters are nationalist, not globalist—they would limit America’s intervention in foreign conflicts and subject the importation of products and people from the rest of the world to a more rigorous is-it-good-for-us test. (And by “us” they mean themselves, not the Fortune 500.) By nominating Trump, the Republican Party has finally been forced to come to terms with these sentiments, choosing a candidate who is largely disdainful of the globalist consensus of GOP donors, pundits, and think-tank experts. For Trump and his voters, the “Reaganite” basket of so-called “conservative” issues—free trade, high immigration, tax cuts for those with high incomes and entitlement cuts for the middle class—was irrelevant or actually undesirable.

Meanwhile the Democrats under Hillary Clinton have solidified their identity as a party of America’s top and bottom, revolving around the dual axis of urban coastal elites who benefit from their ties to a global economy and poorer ethnic minorities. The Clinton wing of the Democrats defends the free trade deals and has now joined much of the hard left in opposing meaningful enforcement of America’s immigration laws. (Before his campaign started, Bernie Sanders assailed open-borders advocacy as a right-wing “Koch Brothers” argument, but the logic of his party’s politics drove him to embrace amnesty and non-enforcement.) On the left, the argument that national boundaries are themselves, like racism or sexism, an arbitrary and unjust form of discrimination is made with growing frequency. During their debates, both Clinton and Sanders expressed support for an amnesty-based immigration reform and opposed the deportation of migrants who had not committed crimes here.... 

“Border wars” have replaced “culture wars” as the critical dividing line between the parties.... 

In one form or another, this nationalist-versus-globalist division is being reproduced in almost every country in the West facing the pressure of working-class decline and mass immigration. Given the opportunity, most European voters have consistently resisted ceding greater powers to the EU, but their votes have had little impact. Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader who now heads most French presidential polls, mocks France’s President Hollande by referring to him as Angela Merkel’s vice chancellor, a functionary permitted to administer “the province of France.” Throughout Europe, right-wing nationalist parties are rising in the polls against establishment coalitions unable to preserve either the economic gains won by past generations or public safety in migrant-dominated urban areas. 

Trump is obviously part of this pan-Western nationalist/populist wave, and may be the first to break through in a major Western country. But even if he loses, he will have transformed the Republican Party. Because the Democratic coalition, perhaps now best exemplified by the twin poles of Goldman Sachs and Black Lives Matter, is inherently unstable, there is every likelihood that a more conventional politician, making use of Trump’s basket of issues, will again win the GOP nomination and eventually the presidency."...







................

TV debate proved election is about getting Trump to take the bait so he uses precious time to talk about himself instead of the issues. Trump wins when he talks about issues, loses when he talks about himself. The election isn't about Trump, it's about taking back our government from an arrogant plutocracy-Ann Coulter

9/29/16, "How to Avoid Immigration, Terrorism, and Health Care for 90 Minutes," Ann Coulter, Front Page Mag

"What Trump needs to do to trounce Clinton in the next presidential debate." 

"Note to the Trump campaign: While it may seem studly that Hillary's best performance versus Trump's worst ends in a draw, on Nov. 9, no one wants to say: We almost won -- and our guy didn't prepare! 

The media's excitement over Hillary successfully "baiting" Trump is revealing -- of the media, of what this election is really about, and of what Trump needs to do now. 

The definition of Trump "taking the bait" was getting him to talk about himself, not about issues. This from a media that claim to be aching for "policy specifics." 

Hillary -- with assists from the moderator -- "baited" Trump on how rich he is, the loan from his father, a lawsuit in 1972, the birther claims, who he said what to about the Iraq War from 2001 to 2003, and so on.

For the media, their gal was winning whenever precious minutes of a 90-minute debate were spent rehashing allegations about Trump. Ha ha! We prevented Trump from talking about issues that matter to the American people! That was scored as a "win."

Nothing illustrates more clearly that this election is about the people versus the elites than the fact that the media run from Trump's issues like Dracula from the sun.

 Trump wins whenever he talks about issues; he loses whenever he talks about himself.

Trump was winning when he talked about the heinous trade deals that have shipped jobs abroad and immiserated millions of Americans -- which Hillary supports. He was winning when he talked about bringing order and safety to black neighborhoods overrun with crime; Hillary’s with the criminals. He was winning when he talked about rebuilding our inner cities, instead of saying, "Vote for me!" then, "See you in four years!" -- as Hillary does.

 Unlike the media, ordinary people don't care about Trump's taxes or net worth or the things he said as an entertainer. Trump will be dead and gone in 30 years. But whether America continues to exist or becomes some dystopian blend of Guatemala and Afghanistan will be determined by this election.

 It's almost impossible not to correct a lie, especially about yourself, which is why Hillary and Lester Holt's "baiting" strategy was to make outrageous claims about Trump. 
Hillary, for example, criticized Trump for not releasing his tax returns, saying, "maybe ... he's paid nothing in federal taxes."

This is exactly what Sen. Harry Reid stated as hard fact about Romney in 2012 -- on the Senate floor, so he couldn't be sued. After the election was over, Reid was asked about this obvious falsehood. He laughed it off and said, "Romney didn't win, did he?"

This is the game they play.

Trump has got to learn to ignore it. The voters have. They don't care about his taxes. They want jobs, they want a wall and they'd like fewer Muslims showing up, collecting welfare, then killing Americans. 
Trump doesn't have to do formal debate practice, standing at a podium, facing off against a shorty in pantsuit. But he does need Pavlovian training to stop responding to irrelevancies.

This isn't about him! It's about a movement of the people to take back their government from an arrogant plutocracy.

From now until the next debate, every single person who works for Trump should personally insult him several times a day.

Good morning, sir -- your business is a total fraud.

Here are those trade stats you wanted -- oh and you lied about opposing the war in Iraq.

The Cincinnati airport needs a tail number -- why did you "fat-shame" that poor girl?

If he starts to respond, they should say, "No one cares, sir. Tell me how you're going to stop Mexican drugs from pouring across our border."

The proof that voters don't care about the personal attacks on Trump is that, even after his lazy and self-indulgent debate performance, he won nearly every online poll.

Evidently, the American people have sized up the candidates and decided they want Trump. But there's just one last formality: He needs to pass some minimum threshold, a basic job requirement – like proving he has a drivers license.

Everybody agrees he’s got the job. It's too late for Hillary to be sucking up to the hiring committee, reminding them, but I took driver's ed seven times -- yes, there were mistakes, but I was grilled for 11 hours about that vehicular homicide. Also, the Russians hacked my GPS.

Trump showed up at the debate with his driver's license. That's all anyone needed to see."

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TV debate #1

Above image from Frontpagemag tells the entire story. Not what you want to see when your country is slipping away. George Soros, who gleefully roots for violence in US streets ("Yes, yes, yes"), is standing there in the body of Mrs. Bill Clinton. Trump's last words in the "debate" were that he'd "absolutely" support her if she wins. Who'd "absolutely" support anyone who wishes violence in our streets? Trump is effectively saying he'd "absolutely" support George Soros.

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Hillary's new plan will grow ISIS, not defeat it, ISIS should send her a thank you note. Hillary helped formulate U.S. Mideast policies that fueled growth of jihadism. She's repeatedly assured Americans that everything is fine but now concedes US 'friends' the Saudis are funding forces trying to kill Americans in the streets. Voters are asked to say thanks by giving her 16 years in the White House-Consortium News, Daniel Lazare

"Since U.S. foreign policy directly affects 20 times more people than domestic – i.e. seven billion versus 322 million – then there's no doubt as to whom the "lesser-evilism" award goes to. It goes to Trump."

 9/27/16, "(Hillary) Clinton’s Faulty New Scheme to ‘Fight’ ISIS," Consortium News, Daniel Lazare

March 30, 2012, State Dept. photo

"Exclusive: Even as Hillary Clinton pushes a new scheme for defeating ISIS, the reality is that contradictory U.S. policies in the Mideast that she helped formulate are fueling the growth of jihadi extremism, writes Daniel Lazare."

Hillary Clinton has unveiled a two-part plan to defeat the Islamic State, and just as critics might expect, it’s a doozy. One part calls for an “intelligence surge” to combat the group both at home and abroad while the other urges that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, simply be knocked off.

Both are indicative of why the disaster in the Middle East can only get worse. The problem with an “intelligence surge” is twofold: (1) it’s not clear what it’s supposed to do beyond undermining civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism and (2) whatever information it turns up will only be as good as the people who use it. Stalin had excellent sources warning him in 1941 that a German attack was imminent. But since some said the attack would occur in April, he was able to ignore them once April came and went and stick with his original conclusion that Hitler would not attack at all.

Since the U.S. is unwilling to examine how its policies have contributed to the growth of the Islamic State, stepped-up intelligence will undoubtedly do the same, i.e. confirm all of Washington’s preconceived notions and allow it to continue on the same disastrous course.

Moreover, considering that U.S. authorities received advanced warnings not only about Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old Afghan-American charged with last week’s bombings in New York and New Jersey, but also about Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, it would seem that what’s needed is not a super-sophisticated intelligence “surge” so much as old-fashioned police work like knocking on doors and following up leads. Instead of “big data,” the FBI needs to do a better job with “little data.”... 

As for part two of Clinton’s anti-Islamic State plan – knocking Al-Baghdadi off – it’s simply a medley of her greatest hits, i.e. the murder of Muammar Gaddafi (“We came, we saw, he died") and the assassination of Osama bin Laden (“I was one of those who recommended the President launch what was a very risky raid”). Since Clinton seems to think her ratings go up every time she kills an Arab leader, she figures it can’t hurt to kill more. 

But what she ignores is that doing so only makes matters worse. The record is clear. Seventeen days after killing Bin Laden in May 2011, Barack Obama bragged about the “huge blow” that Al Qaeda had just suffered, saying: “even before his death, Al Qaeda was losing its struggle for relevance, as the overwhelming majority of people saw that the slaughter of innocents did not answer their cries for a better life. By the time we found Bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s agenda had come to be seen by the vast majority of the region as a dead end, and the people of the Middle East and North Africa had taken their future into their own hands.”

But as the world now knows, the mujahedeen were just taking a break. By August 2012, which is to say a scant fourteen months later, the Defense Intelligence Agency was reporting that Al Qaeda was among “the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” that the West, the Arab Gulf oil states and Turkey were backing such forces to the hilt, and, even more astonishingly, that the rebels were seeking to establish a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria…and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

Al Qaeda was stronger than ever. The only thing killing Bin Laden accomplished was to remove a leader who was a bit out of touch and allow even more aggressive jihadis to take his place. Gaddafi was a bit different: rather than a holy warrior, he was an anti-mujahedeen who, in a February 2011 phone call, tried to warn Great Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair that the pro-Al Qaeda forces seeking his ouster “want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe.”

Needless to say, he was ignored. The only thing killing him did, therefore, was to remove the last barrier to a Salafist offensive bought and paid for by Qatar, which the U.S. had recruited to join the anti-Gaddafi effort and which promptly paid Washington back by distributing some $400 million to fundamentalist forces. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Entangled’ Foreign Policy.”]

By 2014, the former “Al Qaeda in Iraq” had spun off into the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) and was claiming large swaths of Iraq and Syria, even as Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Nusra Front, was taking over other areas of Syria and bringing U.S.-backed “moderate” rebel groups under Al Qaeda’s command structure.

Al Baghdadi is a bad guy whom no rational person would miss. But bumping him off will be just as ineffective as killing bin Laden. Indeed, we already have an idea of who his successor would be, and it’s not pretty.

According to an article by Giorgio Cafiero in the well-informed Al-Monitor website, it’s Turki al-Binali, an influential 32-year-old cleric from the island kingdom of Bahrain who is seen as a rising force within ISIS and who may have authored the bizarre fatwa allowing ISIS soldiers to take captured Yazidi women as sex slaves.

If al-Binali takes over, Cafiero says that it “would mark a major transfer of authority from the old vanguard of global jihadists to a younger and more puritanical one.” The changeover would have a particularly “toxic effect” on Bahrain and other Arab Gulf states where young people are “vulnerable to the dark trap of radicalization.”

Instead of radiating outwards from the Persian Gulf in other words, al-Binali’s accession could conceivably cause jihadism to reverse course so that it flows back in. The upshot could be an eruption of ISIS-style terrorism right under the nose of the U.S. Fifth Fleet anchored at a $2-billion naval base on Bahrain’s Manama Harbor.

U.S. policies make this more likely than not. Bahrain is a deeply polarized society, torn between a 60-percent Shi‘ite majority that has suffered some 15,000 arrests since the government called in Saudi troops in March 2011 to help crush Arab Spring protests and a Sunni minority that enjoys a virtual political monopoly under the al-Khalifa family dictatorship. 

What makes matters even worse is the monarchy’s policy of importing Sunnis from places like Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Pakistan – an estimated 100,000 over the last decade – granting them citizenship, and then using them to staff its security forces and bolster the Sunni population in general.

Since the “New Bahrainis” are recruited for the express purpose of bashing Shi‘ites, the effect is to strengthen Sunni militancy and drive up tensions another notch. Since the island kingdom is dependent on U.S. military protection, it has tried to ingratiate itself with Washington
by sending jet fighters to bomb ISIS positions in Syria. 

But when Islamic State launched a blitzkrieg across eastern Iraq in mid-2014, top officials could barely contain their glee. Finally, they said, militant Sunnis were striking back at an Iraqi government in Baghdad that, with typical sectarian paranoia, they see as an arm of the international Shi‘ite conspiracy no less than the Baathist regime in Damascus, Syria.

Even while denouncing ISIS as a “deviated cult,” Foreign Minister Khalid al-Khalifa therefore tweeted his suspicion that America was using the group as an excuse to attack Sunnis. Minister of Information Sameera Rajab chimed in that rather than an eruption of terrorism, the ISIS offensive represented a Sunni uprising against Shi‘ite oppression.

“ISIS is a name,” she said, “that is being thrown around in the media as a cover-up to silence the will of the Iraqi people for freedom and dignity.” What the U.S. called terrorism was really “a revolution against the injustice and oppression that has reigned over Iraq for more than ten years.”

Rhetoric like this is common in the Persian Gulf where Saudi Arabia’s longtime foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, told Secretary of State John Kerry around the same time that “Daesh (ISIS) is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa,” the pro-Shi’ite party that rose to power in Baghdad on the heels of 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. As much as Persian Gulf Sunnis dislike ISIS, they dislike Shi‘ites even more and therefore can’t help applauding when Islamic State deals the Shi’ites another blow....

ISIS despises the (Bahrain) al-Khalifa family not only because the monarchy bombs their positions in Syria, but because it allows alcohol and other sinful Western practices and merely jails Shi‘ite protesters rather than killing them outright. The more the regime tries to meet ISIS halfway, the angrier the group grows.

The U.S. contributes to the same vicious cycle by turning a blind eye to Bahraini sectarianism. Hillary Clinton ventured a few mild criticisms at the height of the crackdown. But she welcomed Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa to the State Department a few months later and then, in May 2012, announced that the administration would go ahead with a range of weapons sales.

The tone changed even more markedly in 2014 as Bahrain leaped upon the anti-ISIS bandwagon by bombing Syria. Now it was as if a crackdown had never occurred....

Jan. 27, 2016, WH photo

The West not only ignores such conditions, but contributes to them by backing Sunni sectarianism to the hilt. This is the case not just in Bahrain but in Syria where Riyadh is attempting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad not because he’s a dictator – as if the Saudis could care about anything so paltry – because he is an Alawite, a variant of Shi‘ism. It is also the case in Yemen where at least 10,000 people have died as a result of a Saudi campaign aimed at crushing an uprising by Houthi Shi‘ites.

The more the U.S. assists in such crusades, the more bigotry will grow. The more it grows, the more arch-sectarian outfits like Al Qaeda and ISIS will prosper. Thanks to her (Hillary's) close ties to the Sunni Gulf states – Persian Gulf interests have contributed as much as $75 million to the Clinton family foundation – Clinton’s new plan is not a strategy for defeating ISIS, but a recipe for helping it grow. ISIS should send her a letter of thanks." 

"Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace)."

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Below is June 2016 article linked above re: Hillary's close ties to Sunni Gulf states whose interests have given the Clinton Family Foundation as much as $75 million.

"Since she (Hillary entered the Senate, Al Qaeda has grown from a tiny band of conspirators to a major military force wreaking havoc from Indonesia to California. Yet now she expects voters to show their thanks by propelling her into the White House."...

"Since U.S. foreign policy directly affects 20 times more people than domestic – i.e. seven billion versus 322 million – then there's no doubt as to whom the "lesser-evilism" award goes to. It goes to Trump."

 Donald Trump said, "“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate. I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them (Saudi Arabia) for the Clinton Foundation!” 

Actually, the problem is worse since, if one includes other Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well as high-ranking businessmen, the amount of Persian Gulf money flowing to the Clinton family foundation is not $25 million, but anywhere from $51 million to $75 million."... 

6/24/16, "The ‘Safe’ Risk of Hillary Clinton," Consortium News, Daniel Lazare

"The U.K.’s “Brexit” vote underscores the power of this year’s anti-establishment politics, a warning to Democrats as they nominate status-quo candidate Hillary Clinton, a “safe” choice who may prove very risky, says Daniel Lazare."

 "She (Hillary) is a hawk through and through. Her rhetoric was every bit as ferocious as George W. Bush’s in the days after 9/11, if not more so. 

She voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force, which gave the go-ahead for the invasion of Afghanistan, and also for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She persuaded President Obama to pursue “regime change” in Libya and spent much of March 2011 recruiting ultra-rich Qatar to join in the effort. But she said nothing when Qatar then poured $400 million into the hands of Islamist rebels who proceeded to spread chaos throughout the country. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Entangled’ Foreign Policy.”]

Clinton has been no less reckless with regard to Syria. She beat Obama to the punch in calling for Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow, she’s consistently pushed for stepped-up support for the rebels, and, as recently as April, she reiterated her call for a “no-fly zone” even though it would require massive military intervention and would almost certainly mean a confrontation with Russia....

Since U.S. foreign policy directly affects 20 times more people than domestic – i.e. seven billion versus 322 million – then there’s no doubt as to whom the “lesser-evilism” award goes to. It goes to Trump....

Rather than polls, what matters at this point are politics, i.e. a sense of the candidates’ relative ideological strengths and weaknesses. And it’s in this regard that Clinton is more vulnerable than her backers apparently realize.

Clueless Candidate

Her speech in Cleveland following the June 12 Orlando massacre is a good example why. She began – inappropriately in view of the tragic circumstances – with the usual glib shout-outs to local pols:

“I want to thank your extraordinary senator, Sherrod Brown, for his leadership. …I want to thank your congresswoman, Marcia Fudge, who is both indomitable and indefatigable….I want to acknowledge the mayor, Mayor Jackson, who was here, County Executive Budish….”

It’s the kind of thing that Clinton can do in her sleep, and it sounds like it too, i.e. robotic and impersonal. When she got to the serious stuff, the clichés only multiplied:

“This is a moment when all Americans need to stand together … we must attack it [i.e. terrorism] with clear eyes, steady hands, unwavering determination, and pride in our country and our values…the barbarity that we face from radical jihadists is profound…”

Once again, the effect was thoughtless and frozen. But then came something truly bizarre: 

“Now, the third area that demands attention is preventing radicalization and countering efforts by ISIS and other international terrorist networks to recruit
in the United States and Europe. For starters, it is long past time for the Saudis, the Qataris and the Kuwaitis and others to stop their citizens from funding extremist organizations. And they should stop supporting radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism.” 

Why bizarre? Simply because Clinton has been a national figure for two decades as First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State, yet this was a rare recognition that there was something wrong with the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Otherwise, there has been almost nothing but praise. When the State Department negotiated a record $60-billion arms deal with Riyadh in 2010, for instance, her officials stated (somewhat redundantly) that the sale would benefit the Middle East “by deepening our security relationship with a key partner with whom we’ve enjoyed a solid security relationship for nearly seventy years.”
 
How do you have a solid security relationship with a country that funds extremist mosques that function as a terrorist breeding ground?

When King Abdullah died in January 2015, she and her husband put out a statement praising the Saudi monarch “for his support of efforts for peace in the Middle East” and “the kingdom’s humanitarian efforts around the world.” Since when do you advance the cause of peace by funding Al Qaeda?

To be fair, Clinton was surprisingly frank – once.  In December 2009, she wrote in a State Department memo:

“While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) takes seriously the threat of terrorism within Saudi Arabia, it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority. Due in part to intense focus by the USG over the last several years, Saudi Arabia has begun to make important progress on this front and has responded to terrorist financing concerns raised by the United States through proactively investigating and detaining financial facilitators of concern. Still, donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” 

Double-Talk about Saudis

The language was tough and unsparing. But the memo is the exception that proves the rule since it was a secret in-house communication that only saw the light of day when Wikileaks put it on the Internet – a disclosure, by the way, that Clinton assailed as “an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.” (Full quote here starting at 1:34.)

If it’s long past time now for the Saudis to cease funding extremist organizations, why wasn’t it long past time then? Why has Clinton repeatedly assured the American people that everything is fine when, as she now concedes, America’s “friends” are funding extremist forces that are trying to kill Americans in the streets?

Trump can be counted on to hammer at such themes, and the more he does, the more voters will want to know. Indeed, Trump followed up her remarks in Cleveland by posting a few hours later on Facebook: “Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate. I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”

Actually, the problem is worse since, if one includes other Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well as high-ranking businessmen, the amount of Persian Gulf money flowing to the Clinton family foundation is not $25 million, but anywhere from $51 million to $75 million. That’s a lot of dough.  So voters will want to know whether Clinton intentionally held off criticizing the Gulf monarchies because she wanted them to fork over as soon as she stepped down as Secretary of State and that she is only doing so now because the money is in the bag and there is nothing to lose. 

Trump plays the politics of fear, as everyone knows. But he also thrives by citing examples of corruption, hypocrisy and incompetence, and Clinton exemplifies all three. Since she entered the Senate, Al Qaeda has grown from a tiny band of conspirators to a major military force wreaking havoc from Indonesia to California. Yet now she expects voters to show their thanks by propelling her into the White House."...
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Following article about donations to Clinton Foundation is linked above:

4/19/16, "The $70 Million Reasons Why Hillary Is Playing Dumb And Mum On Saudis And 9/11," by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

"Here’s a list of Saudi donations to the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees to Bill Clinton from the Saudi government and business interests close to the King:

Saudi Donations To The Clinton Foundation	Amount
Saudi Arabia	$25 Million*
Friends of Saudi Arabia	$1-5 Million**
The Zayed Family	$1-5 Million
Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi	$1-5 Million
Walid Juffali	$1-5 Million
State of Qatar	$1-5 Million
Nasser Al-Rashid	$1-5 Million
Hamza B. Al Khol	$100,000-$250,000
MIDROC (Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi’s company)	$20 Million
Speaking Fees To Bill Clinton	Amount
Tanmiah Commercial Group, Saudi Arabia	$300,000 (1/25/11)
The Dabbagh Group, Saudi Arabia	$300,000 (1/20/02)

* Published reports confirm $25 million, which was the largest single gift for a long time.

** The Clinton Foundation only gives ranges of donations, not the exact amount.

Now, it makes sense why Hillary suddenly has nothing to say about 9/11 and the Saudis — there’s millions of reasons."...


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Additional source: 9/12/16, Hillary as Sec. of State urged Obama to use US taxpayer dollars to fund and arm Islamic terrorists in Syria fighting Pres. Assad:

"As Secretary of State, Clinton supported a more robust campaign to arm “moderate” factions opposing Syrian President Bashar al Assad while Obama resisted."...

Comment: The US has been funding both "sides" in Syria for some time--forcing each side to shoot at the other. The ultimate for Neocons is forcing taxpayers to fund both sides of endless wars in third world hell holes. As normal people know, there are no "moderate" Islamic terrorists in Syria:
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"CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other." 

3/27/16, "In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA," LA Times, Nabih Bulos, W.J. Hennigan and Brian Bennett

"Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.

The fighting has intensified over the last two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other while maneuvering through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed.

In mid-February, a CIA-armed militia called Fursan al Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, was run out of the town of Marea, about 20 miles north of Aleppo, by Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces moving in from Kurdish-controlled areas to the east....

The attacks by one U.S.-backed group against another come amid continued heavy fighting in Syria and illustrate the difficulty facing U.S. efforts to coordinate among dozens of armed groups that are trying to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad, fight the Islamic State militant group and battle one another all at the same time.

“It is an enormous challenge,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who described the clashes between U.S.-supported groups as “a fairly new phenomenon.”

“It is part of the three-dimensional chess that is the Syrian battlefield,” he said....

President Obama this month authorized a new Pentagon plan to train and arm Syrian rebel fighters, relaunching a program that was suspended in the fall after a string of embarrassing setbacks which included recruits being ambushed and handing over much of their U.S.-issued ammunition and trucks to an Al Qaeda affiliate....

The CIA, meanwhile, has its own operations center inside Turkey from which it has been directing aid to rebel groups in Syria, providing them with TOW antitank missiles from Saudi Arabian weapons stockpiles.

While the Pentagon's actions are part of an overt effort by the U.S. and its allies against Islamic State, the CIA's backing of militias is part of a separate covert U.S. effort aimed at keeping pressure on the Assad government in hopes of prodding the Syrian leader to the negotiating table....

“Fighting over territory in Aleppo demonstrates how difficult it is for the U.S. to manage these really localized and in some cases entrenched conflicts,” said Nicholas A. Heras, an expert on the Syrian civil war at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington. “Preventing clashes is one of the constant topics in the joint operations room with Turkey.”...

The clashes brought the U.S. and Turkish officials to “loggerheads,” he added. After diplomatic pressure from the U.S., the militia withdrew to the outskirts of the town as a sign of good faith, he said.

But continued fighting among different U.S.-backed groups may be inevitable, experts on the region said.

“Once they cross the border into Syria, you lose a substantial amount of control or ability to control their actions,” Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official, said in a telephone interview. “You certainly have the potential for it becoming a larger problem as people fight for territory and control of the northern border area in Aleppo.”" map, LA Times Graphics

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