Through his State Department ventriloquist dummy, Barack Obama is denying that there is any truth to a Wall Street Journal article that Obama put a halt to ammunition shipments to Israel. The problem for Obama is that his credibility has long been shot so nothing he or any of his underlings asserts can be believed.
At some point, credibility matters and the lack of it can reach a point so low that the default position of those you’re trying to convince is justifiably that you’re lying.
Advantage, Netanyahu.
White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval.
Since then the Obama administration has tightened its control on arms transfers to Israel. But Israeli and U.S. officials say that the adroit bureaucratic maneuvering made it plain how little influence the White House and State Department have with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —and that both sides know it.
The munitions surprise and previously unreported U.S. response added to a string of slights and arguments that have bubbled behind the scenes during the Gaza conflict, according to events related by senior American, Palestinian and Israeli officials involved. (See photos and maps surveying the destruction in Gaza.)
In addition, current and former American officials say, U.S.-Israel ties have been hurt by leaks that they believe were meant to undercut the administration’s standing by mischaracterizing its position and delay a cease-fire. The battles have driven U.S.-Israeli relations to the lowest point since President Barack Obama took office.
Of course, the president who lied 36 times about Obamacare alone and about as many times when it came to ‘ending the war in Iraq’, has a cavernous credibility deficit. That didn’t stop Harf – the same Harf who insisted Bowe Bergdahl was not a deserter and that the soldiers who served with him were liars – from insisting that the Wall Street Journal piece was incorrect:
The Obama administration pushed back on the WSJ story.
“I would strongly disagree with the notion that some of us didn’t know what was going on,” said Marie Harf, State Department spokeswoman.
She insisted there’s no change of policy toward Israel, saying “it’s natural” to review shipments “in any crisis.”
Right. So Americans are supposed to believe that the most anti-Israeli, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, lying President the United States has ever had is to be believed.
Imagine if Obama was as mad about illegal aliens streaming across the southern border as he was with Israel acquiring weapons from the Defense Department.
ICE would start doing its job.