Obama approves sending up to 1,500 more US troops to Iraq

WASHINGTON –  President Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, doubling the number being deployed to help Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State. 
The president also requested an additional $5.6 billion on Friday for the war against the Islamic State, in part to cover the additional deployments. 
The decisions reflect a deepening U.S. involvement in the region, though the White House again stressed that U.S. personnel "will not be in combat," but rather training, advising and assisting Iraqi forces near Baghdad and Irbil. 
Currently, there are about 1,400 U.S. troops in Iraq. 
The U.S. has been launching airstrikes on Islamic State group militants and facilities in Iraq and Syria for weeks, as part of an effort to give Iraqi forces the time and space to mount a more effective offensive. Early on, the Islamic State group gained ground across Iraq, as local Iraqi units threw down their weapons and fled or joined the insurgents. 
Lately, with the aid of the U.S. strikes, the Islamic State has suffered a number of losses in Iraq, where it is fighting government forces, peshmerga and Shiite militias aided by Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group. Last week, Iraqi forces recaptured the town of Jurf al-Sakher. ISIS also lost Rabia, Mahmoudiyah and Zumar, a string of towns near the Syrian border, last month. Besieged Iraqi troops have also managed to maintain control of Iraq's largest oil refinery outside the town of Beiji north of Baghdad, despite numerous attempts by the Islamic State group to capture it.
At the same time, some have warned the U.S. operation is insufficient. In particular, there have been calls to send troops to the western Anbar province, where extremists have been slaughtering men, women and children. 
A senior military official said one of the operations centers being set up by the U.S. will be in Anbar Province, and that it is likely that the bulk of the additional troops will be in Iraq by the end of the year. 
The White House troop request comes with a $3.7 billion price tag. Of that, $3.2 billion will go to the Department of Defense while $500 million will go to the State Department.
The money will also go toward “replenishing or replacing munitions expended while conducting air strikes against ISIL, including from Air force and Navy platforms” as well as “financing operations and maintenance costs for air, ground and naval operations, including: flying hours; ship steaming days; and fuel, supplies and repair parts,” according to the White House. 
CENTCOM Commander Gen. Lloyd Austin and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel were at the White House on Friday briefing a bipartisan congressional group invited by the president. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey had first hinted at the announcement during an Oct. 30 briefing at the Pentagon.
The increased number of troops will allow the U.S. to spread its forces to additional locations across Iraq.
U.S. Central Command will also “establish several sites across Iraq that will accommodate the training of 12 Iraqi brigades, specifically nine Iraqi army and three Peshmerga brigades,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.
He added, “Over the coming weeks, as we finalize the training site locations, the United States will work with coalition members to determine how many U.S. and coalition personnel will be required at each location for the training effort.” 
Earlier this week, British education secretary Nicky Morgan announced British military officers would also be heading back to Iraq to help fight ISIS. Morgan confirmed that a group of officers would be sent to a U.S.-led training camp in Baghdad.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said there would be no troops on the ground fighting ISIS.
Pressure has been mounting on western nations to provide more assistance to Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s new prime minister as forces try to reclaim towns and territories in the northern and western part of the country. U.S. and British troops were part of the 2003 Iraq invasion that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein.

For Hillary Clinton, an uncertain return to the campaign trail

She is the leading global voice championing the empowerment of girls and women, but of the eight Democratic women Hillary Clinton stumped for in the 2014 midterm cycle, only one was declared a winner.
She is the prospective frontrunner for her party’s presidential nomination in 2016, but of the 26 Democrats Clinton campaigned for in the midterms, 12 won, 13 lost, and one – Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana – lingers in uncertainty, facing a Dec. 6 runoff election against her Republican opponent.
This cycle marked Hillary Clinton’s return to the arena of electoral politics for the first time since her failed presidential bid in 2008 – secretaries of state traditionally abstain from partisan activity – and for those scouring the newly refashioned landscape for indications of how Clinton’s White House prospects may be affected, the results are decidedly mixed.
Supporters of the former secretary of state argue that, despite having eschewed the rough and tumble of politics for six years, she used her time on the stump this fall to good effect, forging new and strong ties with local party chieftains in states where such connections will prove valuable to a presidential run in two years.
“I think Hillary Clinton did yeoman's work in campaigning out there for Democrats,” said Patti Solis Doyle, a former Clinton campaign manager in 2008, in an interview with Fox News. “She did what she could to help her friends, and very strong Democrats out there. She raised money for them; she campaigned for them.” 
Solis Doyle emphasized that neither Clinton’s name nor her policies were on the ballot on Tuesday – but that hasn’t stopped some of her potential rivals from spreading the word that the big GOP gains marked a major setback for her aspirations. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the GOP’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that Tuesday’s verdict “tells you that she’s not inevitable. I think she’s very beatable.”
More pointed was Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who took to Twitter with unabashed glee to brand the 13 unsuccessful candidates Clinton stumped for “Hillary’s Losers.” “The 1990s was a long time ago,” Paul said on “Fox and Friends” on Friday morning. “I don't think there is such a Clinton cachet as there once was. ... There is a message here about Hillary Clinton as much as there is a message about the president.”
Doug Schoen, a former pollster for President Clinton, dismissed Sen. Paul’s suggestions that Mrs. Clinton remains, in the public imagination, tied at the hip to the unpopular incumbent in the White House. “This election was a repudiation, first and foremost, as every Republican I've heard say, of President Obama,” Schoen said on Fox News' “Happening Now” on Wednesday. “I think that the Clinton brand is separate and distinct from President Obama. I don't think this has an appreciable impact on her fortunes and future.”
With long memories of the central role that Florida and Ohio have played in recent presidential contests, Clinton and her Democratic colleagues cannot have looked favorably upon the Republicans’ success on Tuesday in holding onto the governor’s mansions in those critical battleground states. Some have argued that she will benefit from the GOP wave by being able to run against the GOP Congress.
Yet in the actual business of campaigning – the deployment of rhetoric and charisma to sway persuadable hearts and minds – Clinton’s performance again left some feeling as though she has still not worked out the kinks on display in her rocky book tour this spring. Perhaps Clinton’s most memorable statement as a surrogate speaker during this cycle was her assertion, during an Oct. 24 appearance in Boston on behalf of (doomed) Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley: “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”
That statement prompted criticism from Charles Lane, the left-leaning opinion writer for the Washington Post. “ I thought NBC created a job for Chelsea [Clinton], so there is at least one corporation that has created a job,” he quipped on the Oct. 27 edition of Fox News' “Special Report with Bret Baier.” “She has made quite a few gaffes now since this unofficial presidential campaign has gotten underway.”
Solis Doyle, who recalled chatting amiably with Clinton at a Georgetown event last month, thought her former boss effectively used the campaign cycle to regain her footing as a stump speaker after a long absence from the trail and the difficulties of the "Hard Choices" rollout. “There has been some criticism over the book tour,” Solis Doyle said. “But I think what was good about that is that it was able to get some of the, you know, not-great performances out of the way, and she’s sort of back in her game. ... I thought her performance on the stump during the 2014 midterm elections was pretty good.”

Obama urging Senate to confirm attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch quickly

President Obama chose Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., as his nominee to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder Friday.
Obama plans to announce Lynch’s nomination Saturday at a White House event. If confirmed, Lynch will become the first African-American woman in the job, succeeding Holder, who was the first African-American head of the Justice Department.
The ball is now in the new Senate’s court as to when Lynch’s confirmation will be. The White House has urged Senate officials to work out the timeline for her confirmation as soon as possible.
Democrats and Republicans have told the White House it would be difficult and damaging to the nominee politically to try to push her through while Democrats control of the Senate. Republicans will oversee her confirmation with the next Congress.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, has already indicated that he is unhappy Obama is making the nomination now, instead of during the new session, when Republicans will have the majority in both chambers.
“Democrat senators who just lost their seats shouldn't confirm (a) new Attorney General,” he tweeted on Friday. “(They) should be vetted by (the) new Congress.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, expressed "every confidence that Ms. Lynch will receive a very fair, but thorough, vetting by the Judiciary Committee."
"U.S. attorneys are rarely elevated directly to this position, so I look forward to learning more about her, how she will interact with Congress, and how she proposes to lead the department," Grassley said. "I'm hopeful that her tenure, if confirmed, will restore confidence in the attorney general as a politically independent voice for the American people."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who presumably will become the majority leader in the next session, issued a statement Friday night urging the Senate to wait until January to vote on the nomination.
"Ms. Lynch will receive fair consideration by the Senate," he said. "And her nomination should be considered in the new Congress through regular order."
Lynch, 55, is a Harvard Law School graduate and popular prosecutor who is currently serving her second stint as U.S. attorney for Eastern New York, which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island.
She received big praise from New York City mayor Bill De Blasio Friday as well.
“President Barack Obama has chosen a great New Yorker as the country’s highest-ranking law enforcement official,” he tweeted after learning the news about Lynch’s nomination.
"Ms. Lynch is a strong, independent prosecutor who has twice led one of the most important U.S. Attorney's offices in the country," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement. "She will succeed Eric Holder, whose tenure has been marked by historic gains in the areas of criminal justice reform and civil rights enforcement."

Obama, emboldened GOP leaders meet to chart course -- and clash over immigration

King Obama just can't understand that he's lost the throne.

And you can tell that the Jester sitting to his left is not happy about it. (Reid)

Senate Cartoon

Source says reported letter from Obama to Ayatollah ‘f***s up everything'

President Obama reportedly penned a secret letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month discussing their shared interest in fighting the Islamic State -- a development one congressional source told Fox News "f***s up everything."
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that, according to people briefed on the letter, Obama wrote to Khamenei in the middle of last month and stressed that any cooperation on dealing with the Islamic State, or ISIS, was tied to Iran striking a deal over its nuclear program. The U.S., Iran and other negotiators are facing a Nov. 24 deadline for such a deal.
A senior congressional source told Fox News that there is not anything definitive as to whether the letter even exists. But the source indicated they don't doubt that it's true because "we've seen [the president] do it before, so there is [a] precedent."
According to the Journal, Obama has written to Khamenei four times now since taking office.
The congressional source told Fox News that the letter would upset the inroads they've tried to make with "the Sunni league," noting that the president should have informed Congress of this back-channel if it was in fact going on.
"This f***s up everything," the source said.
Iran's government is Shiite-led, while the Islamic State is a Sunni terror group. The source was apparently referring to efforts to rally support among Sunni-led Arab states to confront ISIS.
Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina issued a joint statement Thursday night saying it was "outrageous that, while the cries of moderate Syrian forces for greater U.S. assistance fall on deaf ears in the White House, President Obama is apparently urging Ayatollah Khamenei to join the fight against ISIS.
Asked about the reported letter, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest would not confirm the report.
"I'm not in a position to discuss private correspondence between the president and any world leader," he said.
However, he said the U.S. policy toward Iran "remains unchanged."
"The United States will not cooperate militarily with Iran in that effort [against ISIS]. We won't share intelligence with them," he said. "But their interests in the outcome is something that's been widely commented on ... and something that on a couple of occasions has been discussed on the sidelines of other conversations."

Issa: Document dump shows Holder ‘at the heart’ of Fast and Furious debate

House oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa told Fox News on Thursday that a massive trove of emails handed to his office on the eve of the elections indicates Attorney General Eric Holder was “at the heart” of deliberations over the Operation Fast and Furious scandal.
More than 64,000 pages of documents were given to the committee Monday night, a move Issa, R-Calif., said was a ploy to make sure they didn’t sway the election. But he said his staff is starting to go through them – already, one email exchange has surfaced in which Holder in 2011 blasted Issa “and his idiot cronies” looking into the botched anti-gun trafficking operation.
In that email, published by The Wall Street Journal, Holder claimed Issa and others “never gave a damn about” the program “when all that was happening was that thousands of Mexicans were being killed with guns from our country.” He accused them of trying only to “cripple ATF and suck up to the gun lobby.”
Issa rejected the charges, saying on Fox News the culpability lies with higher-ups, not the ATF, anyway.
“This was an undercover activity that specifically cut out our allies in Mexico … so if there’s culpability, I think it really belongs with the attorney general,” he said.
The now-halted operation allowed firearms to be trafficked into Mexico so U.S. agents could track them. But many guns ended up in the hands of criminals and at multiple crime scenes, including the murder of U.S. border agent Brian Terry.
Issa said that while Holder has suggested before Congress that he didn’t know much about the program, “it looks very much like he’s CC’d on everything.”
“This is an example of where the attorney general is at the heart of this,” he said.
The documents were released to the committee in response to a court order. Issa’s office claimed the turn-over is proof the department never had grounds to withhold them in the first place through so-called executive privilege.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon, though, said the department has been willing to cooperate.
“We have long been willing to provide many of these materials voluntarily in order to resolve this matter outside of court, and believe that producing them now should bring us a big step closer to concluding this litigation once and for all,” he said.
According to the department, the latest delivery includes about 10,000 documents, bringing the total provided so far to 18,000. Some documents still withheld were deemed “deliberative,” and exempt.  
A DOJ official said nothing in the materials contradicts what the department has said before about the “flawed” operation, and said they affirm the finding that Holder was not aware of the tactics until February 2011.

Election results looked nothing like the polls -- what gives?

WASHINGTON –  Tuesday's midterm elections were supposed to be a night of nail-biters, from Sen. Mitch McConnell's re-election race in Kentucky to veteran Sen. Pat Roberts' battle in Kansas. The too-close-to-call refrain was expected to be heard throughout the night. 
Instead, when the dust settled, Republicans rumbled to one of their biggest victories in decades. 
How could so many polls get so many races so wrong? 
"I want an investigation of the polls in Virginia," University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato told Fox News. "They were completely wrong, just as they were in Georgia. They were also way off in Illinois. And I could go on and on." 
Virginia played host to one of the biggest surprises of the night, for anyone who had been basing their election predictions on the polls. In the same state where pollsters failed to predict then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's loss to economics professor Dave Brat in the primaries, they also misjudged the race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Republican Ed Gillespie. 
Many polls had Warner with a double-digit lead over Gillespie. Warner is currently clinging to a 1-point lead, with the ballot count ongoing. 
It's not just that candidates thought to be dark horses ended up winning, or coming close. A flood of polls also showed several races to be tight in the closing weeks -- but on election night, Republicans soundly defeated Democrats in those contests. Exhibit A is the race between Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky. Polls showed Grimes within single digits -- one even showed her within a point -- of McConnell. The powerful senator ended up winning by 15 points. 
The results have led to some self-reflection, as well as recriminations, over the state and accuracy of political polling. 
Sabato, who said the polling industry "needs some housecleaning," clarified to FoxNews.com on Thursday that he wants the polling business -- not the government -- to conduct an internal review of its practices and procedures. 
"The government is the last group you'd want conducting any inquiry. Not only would it become partisan, inevitably, but the best polling professionals are well capable of organizing this themselves," he told FoxNews.com in an email.
In Kansas, number-crunchers at FiveThirtyEight had forecast a big loss for Gov. Sam Brownback, but he won by a 4-point margin. Data from FiveThirtyEight also predicted Roberts would be defeated in Kansas -- and many polls showed him virtually tied -- but he won by more than 10 percentage points against independent candidate Greg Orman. Likewise, in Georgia, Republican David Perdue beat Michelle Nunn for an open Senate seat by 8 points, despite polls showing a much closer race. 
Sabato, who heads up the Center for Politics' Crystal Ball website, had his own share of misses Tuesday night. Sabato had nine races leaning Democrat. Of those, seven were won by Republicans including the gubernatorial races in Maryland, Maine and Illinois. Maryland was a huge upset, as most polls showed Democrat Anthony Brown well ahead, yet Republican Larry Hogan won comfortably. 
Real Clear Politics, an online site that compiles polls from various resources, posted polling averages that largely did not square with the results. In almost every contested Senate race, Republican candidates beat the Real Clear Politics polling data. 
Sabato believes that in many cases, pollsters failed to factor in how heavily Republican and conservative the electorate in a low-turnout midterm was going to be. 
"After the experience of 2012, when they undercounted Hispanics and young people, they were concerned about the same phenomenon happening again," he said. "Perhaps they over-compensated. I want them to tell us." 
Rasmussen Reports defended its polling data on its website, saying in a written statement that they got it right "most of the time." 
"It's interesting to note that in the races in which the spread was really off for us (and the Real Clear Politics average of all pollsters), most of the time we were spot-on for the Democratic number but wrong on the Republican number," the message stated. 
Rasmussen pointed to a number of unknowns. "If you add the percentage of voters 'not sure' to the GOP side, you will come very close to the final Republican number," the statement said. 
Rasmussen believes that the data "suggests the last-minute swing vote went to the Republicans, and while it did not necessarily change the game in terms of the winner, it very much changed the spread between the candidates." 
This is not the first time some off-base polling has prompted a review of the methods used by polling firms. After Gallup showed Mitt Romney ahead in the 2012 presidential race -- he lost -- the Gallup Poll reviewed its own methodology of selecting voters. 
"It's becoming a much more difficult, nerve-wracking business," Geoff Garin, the president of Hart Research Associates and a leading Democratic pollster, told Bloomberg News at the time.