Nancy Okail

SCOOP: The Pentagon asked the White House today for more than *$200 billion* for the Iran war supplemental, sources say Some White House aides think Congress won't support b/c it's so big Will tee up giant battle in Congress

Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country.  The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions.  After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.

NEWS -- Pelosi won't rule out emergency military funding for Trump's war in Iran. “I think that approval for more funding depends on what the purpose of it is," she tells me, emphasizing that she'd need details. "We don't ever want to abandon our troops who are in harm’s way.”

Samantha Power, at last, addresses Gaza's Problem from Hell "I don't just get up and decide today what US foreign policy is," she told the University of Notre Dame this week. "That is the price of being in government." The comments were perhaps the most in-depth to date on why the Pulitzer-winning author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide stayed on in the Biden administration throughout the Gaza catastrophe, which many have documented as a genocide. Biden's former USAID administrator spoke at the 32nd Annual Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy, hosted by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Notably she did not discuss Gaza or Palestine during her prepared remarks, but a student posed a question to her in the Q&A. Here is my quick transcription of this remarkable exchange. Student: In your book, A Problem from Hell, you criticize US's passivity in watching genocide unfold. You also recognize the power of using the word genocide, the G-word, in recognizing genocide. Yet, as you yourself held a position of power in government, you failed to call out the genocide in Gaza, referring to it more as a humanitarian crisis. Given the importance of recognizing genocide and acting on genocide, I'm wondering why you did not name the genocide in Gaza and when you were in a position of power and if you continue to hold that. SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, Gaza was the most difficult humanitarian crisis I worked in, certainly at USAID and probably my whole career. My job was to get food and medicine to the people who were living in Gaza, who were not getting access to clean water, to electricity, to adequate medicine, and of course, were suffering in many cases from acute severe malnutrition. While I know that there's an impulse on the outside for any official, especially a senior official who has the privilege that I had, to make my own foreign policy, that's not what happens when you go into the government. I don't just get up and decide today what US foreign policy is. I certainly as somebody who wasn't then, and I'm not now, looking at evidence as a lawyer, and I'm trying to get food from Point A to Point B with my men, and above all I'm supporting my teams, who are doing God's work 24-7 to do that, and failing by the way a lot of the time, because of the obstruction by the Israeli government. But when you are in government, that is the price of being in government. It was a very different, analogous circumstance, but on Syria, I had lots of debates and discussions with President Obama on the "red line" and what to do, and this and that. Once I have failed to convince someone within the Situation Room about a course of action that I might favor, then I'm out there representing the administration's position. And for some of you, that is just going to be too big a price to pay. For me to have the opportunity every day to get food from Point A to Point B, it was worth all of the understandable criticism that comes from outside. Like I totally respect your position, your frustration… But for me to have resigned and not be doing that work, also not be doing energy repair—not that I was doing it personally—but supporting energy repair in Ukraine when Putin's taking out the energy, not supporting girls education online for the Afghan girls and women who'd been taken out of classrooms by the Taliban. We were doing so much every day that seemed really significant and impactful. The price of being part of a team that can do that great work, an administration that can do that great work, is you are going to be part of what the president ultimately decides the policies and the positions are. So other people might have handled it differently, could have decided that it was better to be back in academia and criticizing from outside, or again mustering evidence as a lawyer even to judge intent and whether the intent rose to the level of genocide. My view was I had the greatest job in the world to try to do as much good as I could in the fleeting time that I had in that position.

SECRETARY RUBIO: There was absolutely an imminent threat. We knew that if Iran was attacked, even by someone else, they would immediately come after us and we were NOT going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.