http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378513/Seize-Iraqi-oil-fields-Donald-Trump-talks-tough-trails-Barack-Obama-latest-poll-results.html#ixzz1K2KuQnX2

'We'll have fun together': Trump talks up presidency, but still trails behind Obama in latest poll results
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:31 PM on 19th April 2011
Trump polls 34% Vs. Obama on 49%
Tycoon calls for seizing Iraqi oilfields to compensate U.S.
'The Donald' hits out at Karl Rove: 'He gave us Obama'
Trump proving popular with GOP members
'I'll release tax returns when Obama releases birth certificate'
Donald Trump would loose to Barack Obama by a massive 15 percentage points in a presidential election, a poll suggests.
But while the president would theoretically win against Trump, who polled 34 per cent, he is still unable to break the 50 per cent barrier, and is instead stuck on 49 per cent - even against a candidate many still consider a rank outsider.
The Rasmussen poll results come as The Apprentice star hit out at former Bush Jr. advisor Karl Rove before telling the Boston Herald: 'I really believe that we would all have lots of fun together'.
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Outspoken: Donald Trump has called on the U.S. to seize Iraqi oil fields in compensation
In an interview with America's Morning News, Mr Trump hit back at Mr Rove calling him a 'joke', saying: 'Honestly, Karl Rove ought to go back and start thinking about other things because what he did is, he gave us, indirectly through President Bush, he gave us Barack Obama.'
And in another interview, the outspoken businessman declared the U.S. should seize Libyan and Iraqi oil fields to reimburse the country for the '$1.5 trillion' spent removing Saddam Hussein.
Speaking on ABC last night, he said: 'Look at what’s going on with your gasoline prices.
President of Your Bathroom
In a more bizarre twist, the will-he-wont-he candidate has found the time to patent a new line of bath products called 'Success by Trump'.
A patent application, filed on April 7 read: 'SUCCESS BY TRUMP for use in selling 'cologne; perfume; fragrances; after-shave lotions; skin moisturiser; shampoo; conditioner; deodorant; soaps for hand, face, and body; body powder; bath oil; bath gel; bath salts; [and] bubble bath.'
They’re going to go to $5, $6, $7 and we don’t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, 'Fellas, it’s time. It’s over. You’re not going to do it any more.
'I don’t know if you saw yesterday, Saudi Arabia came out and said very strongly there’s plenty of oil.
'They wouldn’t even be there if it wasn’t for us. If it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t be there. These 12 guys sit around a table and they say, 'Let’s just screw the United States.'
Trump went on to suggest the U.S. should threaten to remove key military assets from countries such as Saudi Arabia in order to force them to produce more oil, thus lowering the domestic gasoline price.
On the subject of Iraq, the billionaire was even more outspoken, declaring the U.S. should station troops to seize oil fields as compensation for the money America has spent 'liberating' the country.
He said: 'We go into Iraq. We have spent thus far, $1.5 trillion. We could have rebuilt half of the United States. $1.5 trillion.
'And we’re going to then leave. So, in the old days, you know when you had a war, to the victor belong the spoils. You go in. You win the war and you take it.
Action: Along with seizing oil fields, Trump has also called for a removal of U.S. military assets from countries such as Saudi Arabia to help reduce the oil price
The latest Rasmussen survey of 1000 potential voters found that the president earned support from 49 per cent nationwide, while Trump attracted a respectable 34 per cent.
Given that choice, 12 per cent would vote for some other candidate, and five percent are undecided.
The results come as GOP activists in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina appear deeply intrigued by, and open to, a run by Donald Trump - despite the fact he perpetuates falsehoods about Obama's citizenship and questions the legitimacy of his presidency.
Glenn McCall, Republican Party chairman in South Carolina's York County, said: 'I hear more and more people talking about Donald Trump.
'He is saying on the national stage what other people won't talk about.
'That includes holding forth on trade, China and oil dependency.
Shadow: trump's success has come at the expense of more established candidates such as Sarah Palin
'But Trump's biggest buzz stems from his embrace of the claim that Obama wasn't born in the United States, and therefore is constitutionally barred from being president.
'He's got people fired up.'
Trump's rising star comes at the expense of the more established Republican candidates Sarah Palin and former governors Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.
A CNN nationwide poll of adult Republicans showed Trump tied for the presidential lead with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, at 19 percent each.
Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee, was third at 12 percent.
Continuing the 'birther' debate, Trump also declared to ABC he would, 'release his tax returns when Obama releases his birth certificate.'
The businessman has previously refused to release the details of his finances.
Explore more:People: Saddam Hussein, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump Places: Washington, China, Iraq, America Organisations: Republican Party Print this article Read later Email to a friend Share this article: Twitter Digg it Newsvine Delicious MySpace Nowpublic Reddit Fark Ads by Google:

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Donald Trump's Middle East Policy?

Does anyone know what Donald Trump's Middle Eastern Policy is?

Please send me an E-mail if you know.

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

BENGHAZI, Libya — With the rebels’ battlefield fortunes sagging, the three men in charge of the Libyan opposition forces were summoned late last week by the ad-hoc leadership of their movement to a series of meetings here in the rebel capital.
Rebels waited on Sunday for dinner to be served at their makeshift camp in Ajdabiya. The inexperienced opposition movement is still trying to assert its authority.

The Libyan RebellionInteractive map of the major clashes in Libya, day by day.


The rebel army’s nominal leader, Abdul Fattah Younes, a former interior minister and friend of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi whom many rebel leaders distrusted, could offer little explanation for the recent military stumbles, two people with knowledge of the meetings said.

Making matters worse, the men could hardly stand one another. They included Khalifa Heftar, a former general who returned recently from exile in the United States and appointed himself as the rebel field commander, the movement’s leaders said, and Omar el-Hariri, a former political prisoner who occupied the largely ceremonial role of defense minister.


“They behaved like children,” said Fathi Baja, a political science professor who heads the rebel political committee.

Little was accomplished in the meetings, the participants said. When they concluded late last week, Mr. Younes was still the head of the army and Mr. Hariri remained as the defense minister. Only Mr. Heftar, who reportedly refused to work with Mr. Younes, was forced out. On Sunday, though, in a sign that divisions persisted, Mr. Heftar’s son said his father was still an army leader.


As the struggle with Colonel Qaddafi threatened to settle into a stalemate, the rebel government here was showing growing strains that imperil its struggle to complete a revolution and jeopardize requests for foreign military aid and recognition.

In an appearance Sunday on “State of the Union” on CNN, Gen. James L. Jones, President Obama’s former national security adviser, said that the United States “is buying space for the opposition to get organized.”

But a White House official said last week that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was extremely reluctant to send arms to the rebels “because of the unknowns” about who they are, their backgrounds and motivations.






“It’s a moment in time where there is no real clarity,” said General Jones, who is now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “But the things being worked on are being worked on to get that clarity.”






The meeting on the faltering military effort was a study in the struggles of an inexperienced rebel movement trying to assert its authority, hold on to its revolutionary ideals and learn how to run a nation on the job. In a country where politics was dominated for decades by the colonel, his family and his loyalists, the rebels have turned for leadership to former government figures and exiles they seem to know by reputation alone, and whose motives they do not always trust.






There have been several hopeful signs. Experts on oil and the economy have joined the rebel ranks, and a spokesman prone to delusional announcements was quietly replaced. Police officers appeared on the streets of Benghazi this week, in crisp new uniforms. Despite the dismal progress on the battlefield, thousands of Libyan men still enthusiastically volunteer to travel to the front every week.






Still, many decisions remain shrouded in secrecy and are leaked to Libyans piecemeal by a few rebel leaders who seem to enjoy seeing themselves on Al Jazeera, the satellite news channel. And with each day that Colonel Qaddafi remains in power, the self-appointed leaders of the rebel movement face growing questions about their own legitimacy and choices.






After the Benghazi meetings, a screaming match broke out when Mr. Heftar’s supporters berated a rebel leader for choosing Mr. Younes to lead the army. A young lawyer, Fathi Terbil, who helped start the uprising, was reduced to running around trying to separate people. Watching the argument, Wahid Bugaighis, who was recently appointed to oversee oil interests, said the tumult was the inevitable result of Colonel Qaddafi’s long dictatorship.






Even so, he was cautiously hopeful. “At least they’re not shooting each other,” he said, before security guards escorted a reporter away from the scene.






On Sunday, the military shake-up seemed to be under review again. An adviser to the rebels said they were now consulting field commanders as a way of determining who should lead the army.






The location of the meetings last week, in a hotel conference room, signified how the rebel movement has evolved from its earliest days. The courthouse by the Mediterranean where the rebels started their protests now often seems empty, more of a shrine to a popular movement than its headquarters.


It has become increasingly difficult to locate the center of rebel power.

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Lybian rebels rest outside of Ajdabiyah.


Remember "Comical Ali," the Iraqi Information Minister who claimed that Saddam Hussein's troops were winning the war even as U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad? Meet his Benghazi cousin, Khaled al-Sayeh. It's three days into Operation Odyssey Dawn, and the military spokesman for the Libyan rebels is brimming with bravado. Thanks in part to the allied aerial campaign, with sorties flown by seven nations, he tells journalists that rebel forces have regained control of two of the four main entrances to the strategic town of Ajdabiyah, which they lost to Muammar Gaddafi's troops the previous week. Now, he says, the rebels are bypassing the enemy and cutting off its supply route. Soon, he promises, the government troops will run out of ammunition. "We are surrounding Gaddafi's forces," he says.
Consulting no notes, al-Sayeh rattles off a string of statistics that suggest the war is going against the tyrant in Tripoli: Rebels and allied airpower have destroyed all but 11 of the 80 tanks that had been moving on Benghazi; 10 have been captured intact, along with 20 pickup trucks, two armored vehicles and another fitted with radar gear. Anywhere from 400 to 600 government troops have been killed.
It all sounds most reassuring, until you drive to the front line between the rebels and government forces. There, 6 miles (10 km) from Ajdabiyah, the mood among rebel fighters is more tentative than triumphant. They are poorly armed. They have AK-47s, a few heavy machine guns mounted on trucks and some rocket-propelled-grenade launchers. Buffeted by a desert wind that whips sand into their eyes, young men in cars and pickup trucks stage impromptu cavalry charges toward the enemy, only to fall back in panic when fired upon. For all al-Sayeh's boasting, Gaddafi's loyalists still have plenty of tanks and artillery.
"We went about three or four kilometers forward ... but then we came back because they were bombarding us," says Ayman Salem, 27, an unemployed laborer from the port of Shahat who is clothed in camouflage fatigues and perched next to an antiaircraft gun lashed to a truck bed. His comrades-in-arms are a 26-year-old auto mechanic and a 21-year-old day laborer, both from Benghazi. Their truck is among the scores of rebel vehicles parked at odd angles along the highway, waiting.


Waiting for what, exactly? Not for a command from higher authority: there is none. There are no radioed instructions from headquarters in Benghazi and no senior officer on the spot to devise a battle plan. The next attack will take place when the driver of one of the vehicles gets a rush of blood to his head and roars off in the direction of Ajdabiyah. Perhaps others may feel inspired to follow.
Salem, however, won't be among them. He's discovered the futility of such charges. While their guardian angels at 30,000 ft. (9,100 m) have the best missiles and bombs money can buy, the rebels are woefully outgunned on the ground. Pointing to his gun, Salem says, "There is no comparison between this and [the enemy's] Grad missiles." He didn't bother to fire it on his brief foray forward, because the Gaddafi loyalists were far out of range. "We launched a rocket. We had one," he says, with a desultory shrug.


The Ragtag Army


Operation Odyssey Dawn is meant to stop Gaddafi's advance and give his opposition the opportunity to regroup and resume its march to Tripoli. But on the evidence from opposition headquarters in Benghazi and from the front line, it will take a great deal more to turn the ragtag rebels into a fighting force capable of taking Gaddafi down. Although the assault on Benghazi has been halted, government troops have lost little ground and continue to pound key towns like Misratah and Zintan. In Tripoli, allied aerial attacks on military installations and the dictator's compound have curbed some of the pro-Gaddafi demonstrations. Residents venture outdoors less often. But the attacks have not curbed Gaddafi's bellicose rhetoric. After dropping out of sight for the first few days, he made a public appearance on March 23, proclaiming before a small group of loyalists, "I am here. I am here. I am here."


(Comment on this story.)


Gaddafi's defiance stems mainly from his confidence that the rebels — or "germs," as he calls them — are no match for his troops. That assessment is shared by Western experts. "What we have, basically, are rebels that have a great deal of enthusiasm and who are willing to risk their lives but don't have discipline or structure," says Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Even the swaggering al-Sayeh knows this. A day before his triumphal press conference, he painted a far more dismal picture of the rebels' capabilities. "The officers and commanders have no control over the youth who are pushing the front line," he said bitterly. "They don't take orders from anyone."


The problem is not that the rebels are "outgunned." The Wehrmacht was woefully outgunned and outnumbered time and again throughout the first two years of its Soviet campaigns, and yet time and again, it crushed Soviet forces. The Viet Cong were outgunned but won the war.


The fact is that these fools have no discipline. They are self-styled warriors who have no inclination to fight a war. We have legitimized their clueless buffoonery by letting them believe *they* are winning something, when in fact they can only walk forward when twenty-first century airpower blasts their opponents aside.


We've destroyed the planes. That's what they said they needed, and then they'd take it from there. Yet here they sit, showing off their rifles and doing nothing. They're a rabble of thugs and if you think they're ineffective now, wait until we finish destroying the Libyan Army for them. Then you'll see: they'll be very, very effective at rounding up and killing everyone who opposes them.


[COMMENTS???]

Editorial from KSL on Libya

The reality of another deployment of U.S. military force in yet another part of the Middle East is disturbing. The reality of what might happen without intervention is more disturbing.

The civil upheaval in Libya has left the Obama Administration with no easy course of action, and no real option for a course of inaction.

Either way, the potential political liabilities are enormous. Once the commitment is made, there is no looking back, and any turn of events that leads the U.S. into a deeper or prolonged involvement will not be well-received here or abroad.
It is entirely in our best interest to have a role in what history may reveal as one of the most significant social and political uprisings in the past century. Likewise, failure to protect Libyan civilians against a vengeful Qaddafi would open us up to the charge of having allowed the inevitable atrocities the dictator would wreak on his people.
Once again, the U.S. is confronted with a foreign entanglement that goes to the ultimate question of just exactly what our role in the current world is, or should be.
As protector of the oppressed, we are compelled to act, and it is comforting to know at this juncture that we do so with the support of strong allies, and the consent of most of Libya's Arab neighbors.
As for American self-interest, there is an argument to be made that at this moment in time: It is entirely in our best interest to have a role in what history may reveal as one of the most significant social and political uprisings in the past century.
If what we have seen in Egypt and Tunisia is the beginning of a tidal surge toward democratic government in a region that has long been the province of autocrats and dictators, should we stand in the way? Should we actively nurture it along? And, if we don't nurture it, is that tantamount to standing in the way?
A generation ago, another American president demanded another authoritarian regime tear down a wall in Eastern Europe. The circumstances are different, and in the Middle East, the final landscape is still very far from taking form.
But as it does take form, the consummate question will be whether American interests in the region -- indeed, world interests in the region -- can be protected without the course of intervention we have now embarked on, for better or worse.
Email: cpsarras@ksl.com

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jordanp.richman@gmail.com

90,000 Classified Documents Leak

On July 25, Internet-based watchdog organization WikiLeaks posted more than 90,000 classified military accounts of the war in Afghanistan. The website's founder, Julian Assange, had shared the documents with several newspapers weeks before publishing them, on the agreement that they not report any of the information until after it appeared on WikiLeaks. The papers consist primarily of secret reports from troops in the field covering local intelligence and recounting clashes — including a number of missives detailing civilian casualties often at the hands of coalition forces. Most notably, some of the numbers noted are not in line with what the military had reported during the near decade-long conflict in Afghanistan. Another important — though not altogether surprising — revelation was that members of the U.S. military suspect what many have long said: that Pakistan's military intelligence agency has secretly helped the Afghan Taliban insurgency.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has come under fire recently for failing to properly combat terrorist activity in his country, responded with this statement: "The recent documents leaked out to the media clearly support and verify Afghanistan's all-time position that success over terrorism does not come with fighting in Afghan villages, but by targeting its sanctuaries and financial and ideological sources across the borders. Our efforts against terrorism will have no effect as long as these sanctuaries and sources remain intact."