Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category

Watch Obama wait impatiently for Bill Clinton on Air Force …

Family members walk behind Peres' coffin at the start of his funeral procession on September 30.

The flag-draped coffin arrives at Mount Herzl, where several eulogies were given by politicians and family.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at Peres' funeral. He said that Peres had "lived a life of purpose. ... He was a great man of Israel, he was a great man of the world."

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin touches Peres' coffin. In his tribute, Rivlin said that Peres was "the man of whom we thought time could never stop."

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton spoke of his great friendship with Peres: "He started off life as Israel's brightest student, became its best teacher, and ended up its biggest dreamer."

Clinton touches Peres' coffin. Clinton spoke fondly of Peres, adding in his eulogy: "He knew exactly what he was doing in being overly optimistic. ... He never gave up on anybody, I mean anybody."

US President Barack Obama stands alongside Netanyahu as both men pay their respects.

Obama also gave a eulogy. He commented on Peres' desire for peace. "Out of the hardships of the diaspora, he found room in his heart for others who suffered," Obama said.

Obama touches Peres' coffin after speaking at the funeral.

Israeli soldiers hold wreaths before making their way to the graveside.

Prince Charles represents the British monarchy at the ceremony.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson attends the funeral. Former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron were also in attendance.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Jerusalem to offer his respects.

The funeral included world leaders and dignitaries from 70 countries.

Members of the Knesset Guard salute around the grave.

Mourners gather beside the grave.

A portrait of Peres is displayed at the Knesset plaza in Jerusalem, where his body laid in state on Thursday, September 29.

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Watch Obama wait impatiently for Bill Clinton on Air Force ...

Obama says Congress made a ‘mistake’ overriding his veto …

"It's an example of why sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I wish Congress here had done what's hard," he said in a CNN town hall before a military audience set to air at 9 p.m. ET.

"If you're perceived as voting against 9/11 families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's a hard vote for people to take. But it would have been the right thing to do ... And it was, you know, basically a political vote," Obama said, adding that Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the legislation was a bad idea.

The override is the first of Obama's presidency -- and was supported by lawmakers from both parties. The Senate approved the override on a 97-1 vote with Minority Leader Harry Reid the lone member to sustain the President's veto. Hours later, the vote in the House was 348-77, with one Democratic member voting "present."

"I understand why it happened. Obviously all of us still carry the scars and trauma of 9/11. Nobody more than this 9/11 generation that has fought on our behalf in the aftermath of 9/11," he said.

Obama said the victims deserve support and compensation, which is why the administration set up a victim's compensation fund. But he said he doesn't believe the ability to sue Saudi Arabia will be good for the long term future of the US.

"What this legislation did is it said if a private citizen believes that having been victimized by terrorism -- that another country didn't do enough to stop one of its citizens, for example, in engaging in terrorism -- that they can file a personal lawsuit, a private lawsuit in court," he said. "And the problem with that is that if we eliminate this notion of sovereign immunity, then our men and women in uniform around the world could potentially start seeing ourselves subject to reciprocal laws."

He added that the US has set up what is called "status of forces agreements" that ensure that when the US deploys troops, they're not vulnerable to these kinds of private lawsuits. And other countries agreed to do that because the US reciprocated with them.

"The concern that I've had has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia per se or my sympathy for 9/11 families," Obama said. "It has to do with me not wanting a situation in which we're suddenly exposed to liabilities for all the work that we're doing all around the world."

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Obama town hall: What to watch – CNNPolitics.com

The "CNN Presidential Town Hall: America's Military and the Commander in Chief" comes as Obama enters the waning days of his administration. He will be looking to frame the national conversation on security and military issues that have shaped his presidency and will, in time, define his foreign policy legacy -- particularly as his would-be successors battle it out ahead of the November 8 vote.

Obama's nearly eight years in the White House have played out against a background of wars. He campaigned on a promise to extract the US from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he's been roundly criticized for failing to intervene more actively in Syria's civil war. During his tenure, he's launched a new offensive against ISIS and instituted policies to deal with the growing threat of cyber warfare.

These and other aspects of his service as commander in chief are currently being hashed out on the campaign trail, notably in Monday night's first presidential debate.

At Wednesday's town hall, active duty service members, veterans and the military community in Fort Lee, Virginia, will have the chance to ask their own questions of the President. Here are six things to watch for.

Politics seems nearly unavoidable in this ugly campaign season. The White House said ahead of the town hall that Obama wants to keep the event focus on troops and away from politics. But in previous appearances, the President has welcomed the opportunity to push back against Donald Trump and make the case for Hillary Clinton -- his former secretary of state and the candidate he's betting on to safeguard his legacy.

"The attendees are welcome to ask about any topic or issue they would like, but the President's view is that there is plenty of time for politics this season, including time he will spend on the campaign trail next month," said White House Communications Director Jen Psaki.

"His objective today is to put that aside and instead to focus on thanking the families and active duty military on the base for their sacrifice, and to hear from them on challenges they have faced and anything else they want to talk about during his visit," she added.

The President could also face awkward moments if he's asked to weigh in on policies on which he and Clinton have taken different approaches, such as Syria. Clinton has called for a no-fly zone there despite Obama repeatedly panning the idea.

He's acknowledged their differences of approach in the past, however, particularly over the uses of American power. Clinton has sometimes advocated for a more interventionist approach to global problems in places such as Libya. Even so, Obama said this month in Pennsylvania that "she's got the judgment and the temperament and the experience to meet any threat."

And, he said, "She's prepared to be the next commander in chief."

In stark contrast, the President has flatly called GOP nominee Donald Trump unfit for the job. Obama has questioned the Republican nominee's admiration for repressive autocrats such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and said the real estate mogul isn't "offering any real policies or plans, just offering division and offering fear."

Obama's political foes on and off the campaign trail have charged that military spending under his administration has been inadequate and have put the country at risk.

Sequestration, which took effect in 2013, puts $1.2 trillion in automatic across-the-board cuts in effect over 10 years, with half of them targeting defense. The issue is one that has particular resonance for the military members in the audience concerned about how the defense cuts affect them and their families.

Trump has accused Obama and Clinton of undermining the military with the cuts, saying, "The generals have been reduced to rubble," at an NBC Commander in Chief Town Hall on September 7.

"I'm going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to mess with us," Trump said.

Economics experts have said it's hard to reconcile that goal, however, with Trump's claims that he would "do it for a lot less."

Obama is likely to explain that the process known as sequestration wasn't meant to target the military for cuts, it was supposed to give Congress a strong incentive to find a compromise on deficit reduction measures -- and that Congress failed to do so. Obama is also likely to point out that despite the cuts, the US military is the most powerful and well-funded in the world by far.

Obama recently acknowledged that the five-year-old war in Syria "haunts" him, and there is perhaps no foreign policy challenge that has earned him more criticism. The right has assailed him for not taking a harder line there, allowing the civil war to spiral and create a safe haven for ISIS. The left has taken issue with an epic humanitarian crisis and called on the US to do more. Allies such as Saudi Arabia have argued that the US should have gotten more involved, or at least armed moderate opposition groups, early on.

Wednesday night will be one of Obama's last chances to defend his approach and argue that he has always acted in America's best national security interests in Syria after years of Middle East conflicts that have brought the US grief. And he'll be able to point to recent battlefield successes against ISIS to make the case that his policy toward the extremist group is succeeding, even as its global terror campaign grows.

Obama famously derided 2012 competitor Mitt Romney for naming Russia as America's "number one geopolitical foe," but four years later, some of the President's own Pentagon advisers have started saying the same thing. Not coincidentally, Russian President Vladimir Putin has assumed a starring role in the 2016 campaign.

Moscow has unsettled US allies in Europe with its annexation of Crimea. It's violated arms control treaties with the US. It's providing military support for the Syrian regime, which targets its own people with barrel bombs. And Russia didn't enforce a Syrian ceasefire that would have allowed for close US-Russian military cooperation if it had succeeded. US officials and lawmakers also say Russia is the chief suspect behind cyberattacks on US election systems and the Democratic National Committee.

Though Obama might have some vulnerabilities of his own on Russia, any mention of Putin will provide him a political opening to criticize Trump for saying positive things about the increasingly autocratic ruler and suggesting that he could have a more productive relationship with him. At the same time, Obama will also likely concede that, on certain issues, Washington has to work with Moscow.

A cornerstone of Obama's foreign policy has been his pivot to Asia, where he's tried to reassure allies concerned about a rising China by demonstrating American commitment and strength in the region. But even as he is likely to tout the successes of this policy, he faces a harsh regional reality in the form of a nuclear North Korea that has only become more aggressive.

The isolated rogue regime has escalated its tests of nuclear weapons and missiles in the last 18 months, leading most experts to conclude that it is intent on building the capability to deliver a weapon to US allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan, if not to the US itself.

When asked about Pyongyang after its most recent nuclear test on September 9, Obama said that he'll be deploying missile defense systems to protect South Korea and rallying the international community to apply existing sanctions and craft new ones. And he has also called on China to do more to rein its ally in, even though Beijing is perturbed by the pledged missile defenses so close to its shores.

The many veterans and their family members in the audience on Wednesday night will have the opportunity to ask Obama about efforts to reform the dysfunctional veterans' health system and provide more support for wounded warriors or others returning from active duty overseas.

The Veterans Affairs system has been strained badly as older veterans age and face declining health. At the same time, over 2.5 million soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 -- and they request help at a greater rate than earlier generations.

Obama's first secretary of Veterans Affairs, retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, resigned in 2014 after it was discovered that employees throughout the VA hospital system were lying about months-long waits for veterans seeking care.

"The misconduct has not been limited to a few VA facilities, but many across the country," Obama said at a May 2014 press conference. "It's totally unacceptable."

Obama, who quietly pays regular visits to Walter Reed Medical Hospital just outside DC to visit wounded servicemen, will likely point to increased access to care for veterans, success at reducing the backlog of veterans' disability compensation claims and efforts to reduce veterans' homelessness while improving their access to jobs and education.

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Obama town hall: What to watch - CNNPolitics.com

Barack Obama at Benjamin Netanyahu meeting: ‘He is always …

Speaking before their session, Obama said he was aiming to ascertain the prospects for peace in the region as he prepares to end his presidency.

"Our hope will be that in these conversations we get the sense of how Israel sees the next few years, what the opportunities are and what the challenges are in order to ensure we keep alive the possibility of a stable, secure Israel at peace with its neighbors," Obama said. "These are challenging times. One thing that I would say about Prime Minister Netanyahu is that he is always very candid with us."

That candor has become a hallmark of the relationship between Obama and his Israeli counterpart, whom the White House has accused of being less-than-diplomatic in expressing his opposition to US policies like the nuclear agreement with Iran. Obama's 30-minute meeting Wednesday with Netanyahu was likely to be their final opportunity for face-to-face consultations before a new president enters the Oval Office in January.

Obama is intent on conferring solid ties with Israel upon his successor, despite the personal animus that developed between him and Netanyahu, as he looks to boost the relationship during the homestretch of a presidential campaign in which he hopes to see Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton prevail.

Obama took a step toward solidifying the alliance this month by completing a long-term, $38 billion security aid package for Israel, the largest such agreement ever for a US ally.

The aid, Obama said, "allows the kind of certainty in a moment where there's enormous uncertainty in the region. It is a very difficult and dangerous time in the Middle East and we want to make sure Israel has full capabilities to keep the Israeli people safe."

In their talks, Obama said he and his Israeli counterpart would discuss challenges in Syria, and said he would get Netanyahu's assessment of conditions in Israel and the West Bank.

"Clearly there is great danger of not just terrorism but also flare-ups of violence," he said. "We do have concerns about settlement activity as well."

Obama hopes to take steps in his final days in office to promote renewed talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians on peace, though his previous efforts toward reconciliation in the region have fallen short.

"My hope is we can continue to be an effective partner in Israel in finding a path to peace," Obama said.

But the White House remains opposed to Israel's expanded settlement activity in the West Bank, and has expressed disappointment at Netanyahu's occasional skepticism about the viability of a two-state solution in the region.

In the meeting Wednesday Obama raised "profound US concerns about the corrosive effect that that is having on the prospects of two states."

"They've never papered over their differences," another senior administration official said of Obama and Netanyahu.

The passing remark was in stark comparison to the large amounts of time Obama spent on the issue during addresses to the UN earlier in his tenure. The shift reflected the now-frozen peace negotiations, which moved in spurts during Obama's presidency but never materialized into a workable solution.

The White House has conceded that talks aren't likely to resume while Obama remains in office but has remained open to the possibility the President could take steps in the next months to ramp up pressure on both sides to work toward a two-state solution.

"With respect to Middle East peace, I wouldn't rule out the President taking any particular step on the issue," Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said Tuesday. "What I would say is his test has always been, can I make a positive difference by engaging on the Israeli-Palestinian issue? We've tried multiple tactics, none of them have succeeded, given the fact that the parties themselves have been unable to come together."

Obama's talks with Netanyahu Wednesday capped a tumultuous personal history, though both displayed a businesslike camaraderie during their photo-op.

Netanyahu returned to Washington last November in an attempt to repair the relationship, meeting with Obama in the Oval Office and addressing both the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the left-leaning Center for American Progress, the think tank with ties to Clinton.

Netanyahu on Wednesday invited Obama for a round of golf in Israel once he departs office in January, saying warmly that Obama's "influential voice" on international politics would remain a force "for many decades."

"Our alliance has grown decade after decade, through successive presidents, bipartisan Congresses and with the overwhelming support of the American people," he said. "It is an unbreakable bond."

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Barack Obama at Benjamin Netanyahu meeting: 'He is always ...

Obama to deliver his final speech to the UN – CBS News

President Obama conceded Tuesday that the United States and other world powers have limited ability to solve the most profound challenges facing the world, while calling for a course correction for globalization to ensure that nations dont retreat into a more sharply divided world.

We are seeing the same forces of global integration that have made us interdependent also expose deep fault lines in the existing international order,Mr.Obama said, in his final speech to the U.N. General Assembly.In order to move forward..., the president said,we do have to acknowledge that the existing path to global integration requires a course correction.

Heacknowledged that the extremist and sectarian violence wreaking havoc in the Middle East and elsewhere will not be quickly reversed. Still, he stuck faithfully to his insistence that diplomatic efforts and not military solutions are the key to resolving Syrias civil war and other conflicts.

If we are honest, we know that no external power is going to be able to force different religious communities or ethnic communities to co-exist for long, Mr.Obama said. Until basic questions are answered about how communities co-exist, the embers of extremism will continue to burn. Countless human beings will suffer.

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., September 20, 2016.

REUTERS/Mike Segar - RTSOLRV

In a less-than-subtle jab at Donald Trump, the Republican running to replace him, the presidentsaid, The world is too small for us to simply be able to build a wall and prevent (extremism) from affecting our own societies.

The president was unabashed in his critique of Russia as he laid out his diagnosis of the worlds ills. Mr.Obamas longstanding differences with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his actions in Ukraine have accompanied intense disagreement over Syrias future and a series of failed attempts by Russia and the U.S. to resolve the civil war there together.

In a world that left the age of empire behind, we see Russia attempting to recover lost glory through force, Mr.Obama said.

The tough talk about Russia illustrated how little progress has been made in reconciling the diverging interests among the two powers that has allowed the Syria crisis to continue to fester. A year ago, Mr.Obama stood at the same podium and declared anew that Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave power, while Putin gave a dueling speech warning it would be a mistake to abandon Assad.

In the year since, Moscows leverage in the conflict has strengthened significantly. Russias military intervention in Syria has helped bolster Assads standing without pulling it into the military quagmire that Mr.Obama had predicted.

The presidentsought to use his last appearance before the global body to define how his leadership -- as well that ofpast presidents --had put the world on a better trajectory..

I believe America has been a rare superpower in human history insofar as it has been willing to think beyond narrow self-interest; that while weve made our share of mistakes over these last 25 years -- and Ive acknowledged some -- we have strived, sometimes at great sacrifice, to align better our actions with our ideals, he said.And as a consequence, I believe we have been a force for good.

At the heart of that approach, the presidentsaid, is the notion that the biggest conflicts are best solved when nations cooperate rather than tackle them individually, adding that he knows we cant do this alone. Its a theme that Democrat Hillary Clinton has put at the forefront of her campaign for president,casting herself as thenatural continuation of Mr. Obamas legacy.In anapparent reference to Trump, Mr.Obama bemoaned how terrorist networks had spread their ideology on social media, spurring anger toward innocent immigrants and Muslims.

Working together, he told the leaders, meansaccepting some constraints.

Sometimes Im criticized in my own country for professing a belief in international norms and multilateral institutions, Mr. Obama said.But I am convinced that in the long run, giving up some freedom of action -- not giving up our ability to protect ourselves or pursue our core interests, but binding ourselves to international rules over the long term -- enhances our security.

He pointed to Iran as a positive example of thisfor having accepted constraints on its nuclear ambitions in order to enhance its ability to work with other nations.

Mr.Obama saidthat the world has become safer and more prosperous -- the integration of the global economy has made life better for billions, he pointed out. Butat the same time,nations are struggling with a devastating refugee crisis, terrorism and a breakdown in basic order in the Middle East. He said governing had become more difficult as people lose faith in public institutions and tensions among nations spiral out of control more rapidly.

This is the paradox that defines the world today, the presidentsaid. We must go forward, and not backward. That will involve continuing the pushto make the global economy work better -- not just for those at the top.

While open markets, capitalism have raised standards of living around the globe, Mr. Obama lamented, globalization, combined with rapid progress and technology has also weakened the position of workers and their ability to secure a decent wage.

The president cited his administrations outreach to former adversaries Cuba and Myanmar as key examples of progress, along with global cooperation to cut emissions blamed for global warming. At the same time, he said he sought not to whitewash challenges across the globe, some of which he attributed to deepening anxieties about the profound shifts inflicted by technology and growing international interdependence.

The president also recalled the words of Martin Luther King, who wrote,Human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and he exhorted the U.N. to join him in being co-workers with god. Our identities do not have to be defined by putting someone else down, but can be enhanced by lifting somebody else up, he said.They dont have to be defined in opposition to others, but rather by a belief in liberty and equality and justice and fairness.

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Obama to deliver his final speech to the UN - CBS News