Bibi briefly said nice things about Obama, before trashing him and his intelligence for 45 mins.

[DonViejo]

Netanyahu’s shocking affront: What his stunning speech was really about

The Israeli PM briefly said nice things about Obama, before trashing him and his intelligence for 45 minutes

JIM NEWELL

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent a couple of minutes at the very beginning of his address to Congress — “the most important legislative body in the world,” he said, accurately and depressingly — praising the Obama administration. President Obama has always been there for Israel, he reassured. His administration blocks anything Israel wants it to block at the UN. Obama sends Israel all the military aid it needs. Netanyahu alluded to other, more classified moments when the President has come to the immediate help of the Prime Minister. “At each of those moments, I called the president and he was there.”

And this is how Netanyahu repays him: by going behind his back, at the invitation of John Boehner, to address the United States Congress about how the “very bad deal” that the administration hasn’t even finished negotiating with Iran, and is just as likely as not to reach.

This was a gross spectacle.

Where to begin? How about the section in the beginning where Netanyahu, patronizingly, delivers a history of the Iranian regime and its sponsorship of terrorism and insurgency against Americans in the region. Excuse me, but we don’t need to be told, by a foreign leader, how Iran has treated the United States. And then this: “Don’t be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn’t turn Iran into a friend of America.” Again, thanks, but we’ll figure out our foreign policy for ourselves.

Netanyahu went on to describe the outlines of the deal, as rumored in the press. If you’re really so thankful to the Obama administration for putting its neck on the line in the international community so many times to defend Israel, then the first thing you might want to do is reconsider commenting, before the U.S. Congress, on murmurs thrown around in the press. “While the final deal has not yet been signed,” he said, “certain elements of any potential deal are now a matter of public record. You don’t need intelligence agencies and secret information to know this. You can Google it.” Yes, and we all know that anything that’s Googled is reliable information and merits official denunciation from a “friendly” visiting head of state on U.S. soil, in a campaign speech. It would be much less insulting if Netanyahu commented in such incendiary fashion after a framework had been reached at the end of the month, but of course that, if it even got that far, would come after the Israeli election.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/03/03/netanyahus_shocking_affront_what_his_stunning_speech_was_really_about/

[WillyT]

1. K & R !!!