John McCain Hires Syria Analyst Who Puffed Up Her Credentials
New John McCain motto: “F[vowel deleted]ck all of you.”
Sen. John McCain has hired a controversial Syria analyst who recently was fired by one D.C. organization and resigned from another after it emerged that she inflated her academic credentials.
The Republican senator’s office confirmed to Fox News that Elizabeth O’Bagy was hired as a legislative assistant, and will start work next week.
“Elizabeth is a talented researcher, and I have been very impressed by her knowledge and analysis in multiple briefings over the last year. I look forward to her joining my office,” McCain said in a statement.
I have a feeling he mostly thinks she’s attractive. Elections have consequences, and so do things that rhyme with elections.
Regardless of his reasoning, this is a thumb in the eye of everything that makes sense. This woman not only “inflated” (meaning “lied about”) her credentials, but she posed as a neutral observer when she was being paid by a Syrian rebel front group. Her piece in the Wall Street Journal was cited by McCain and John Kerry as influential, before she was exposed as a fraud and shill by a friend of this blog, Charles C. Johnson. She deserves to be cast out of public life for the foreseeable future, not embraced and given a position of influence.
So says this wacko bird.
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 9/28/2013 @ 10:46 amGreat. Everybody in DC is thinking with their little head.
Steve57 (52f0df) — 9/28/2013 @ 10:47 amSmart Diplomacy!
Steve57 (52f0df) — 9/28/2013 @ 10:48 amApparently it wasn’t just her academic credentials she was inflating.
What a couple of weenies McCain and Kerry are.
Dana (6178d5) — 9/28/2013 @ 10:50 amWell, she did the obligatory “I’m sorry I got caught, but I’m still right” apology. McSenile is pathetic. Please retire, Juan.
Amalgamated Cliff Divers, Local 157 (f7d5ba) — 9/28/2013 @ 10:51 amHas Meghan weighed in yet? (I mean on her dad’s hire.)
elissa (491145) — 9/28/2013 @ 10:55 amI suspect he fails at things that rhyme with elections, too.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 9/28/2013 @ 10:58 amWell that would be what Katherine Parker would say,
it’s an inapt choice at this time:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/25/world/meast/syria-rebels/index.html
narciso (3fec35) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:00 amHe’s doing someone a favor, and/or covering for someone else’s failure (one or more of her connections).
I’m sure this is safer than a burn notice.
McCain is completely corrupt.
Sarahw (b0e533) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:01 amBy the way, Allahpundit yesterday had a long, rather comprehensive and balanced post up about Chris Christie. Embedded in it was a short video of CC’s response when some person on the radio asked him to comment on Meggie McCain’s recent criticism of him. His reply went about as you would have expected.
elissa (491145) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:06 amThere are no consequences in DCville.
Lie about your PhD? McCain hires you.
Get four Americans killed? Become the prospective 2016 Dem nominee.
Fail to secure embassies? Get a couple of months off at full pay.
Target conservative groups? Nothing.
Steve57 (52f0df) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:10 amSarah W,
Claiming he’s doing someone a favor gives McCain way too much credit.
Dana (607632) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:11 amPerhaps but I think he’s doing so all the same.
What an embarrassment.
Sarahw (b0e533) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:12 amShe didn’t merely puff, or lie, she lied her way out of her first lie, gradually stepping down to the truth only as being flat busted as a total liar demanded.
And in light of the above, one can only suspect that Janine di Giovanni’s caution and criticism aboout O’bagy is pretty near the truth:
“Those of us who work in Syria, as reporters or researchers, are a very small group of people,” di Giovanni said. “We’re all incredibly cautious. We’re all protective of each other. It’s a very difficult job and difficult war to work in. It’s not a war to cut your teeth in. A lot of people were quite shocked when a 26-year-old Ph.D, so-called Syria expert who appeared to have never worked in the region, and whom no one had heard of, appeared on CNN and other networks as a Syrian expert.”
O’bagy was someone’s useful pet, and of all things no one can know whose she was and why.
Sarahw (b0e533) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:23 amThere’s always the possibility that having married himself to the notion that we must arm the Syrian rebels, he’s just hired the paid spokeswoman of those same rebels to feed him the talking points to justify that position.
John McCain is never wrong on national defense.
When wrong, he keeps fixing things until not wrong.
Hence hiring the fraud.
Steve57 (52f0df) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:25 am26 year old wunderkind experts and policy wonks like O’Bagy seem to appear out of nowhere with questionable credentials and be taken seriously in D.C. all the time. Take Ezra Klein for example. As SarahW suggests @14, it’s almost like they got cast and planted to perform a specific part in a drama or something.
Of course in a different D.C. context, until the magic day they turn 26, they are mere helpless children who are allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies.
elissa (491145) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:54 amAs I mentioned elsewhere, I think McCain being blackmailed/i.e. doing someone a favor, makes more sense than most alternatives,
with the leading alternative being he did it just to spite the people he wants to spite.
Remember, he also came to the defense of Hillary’s Muslim Brotherhood contact assistant.
Of course, if it is a decision that just doesn’t make sense, then it is what it is.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 9/28/2013 @ 11:58 amHunnypot isn’t just something instructive in Winnie the Pooh books, Mr. MD.
elissa (491145) — 9/28/2013 @ 12:03 pmWell it’s instructive the outfit, she previously came from, the sETC, shared the same founder as the Libyan operation, Mustafa,
narciso (3fec35) — 9/28/2013 @ 12:23 pmIt’s curious that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama seem to have much sense when it comes to foreign policy advisers or decisions. Here’s a similar example of a poor staffing decision made by Barack Obama: Retired Air Force General Scott Gration, one of Obama’s first national security advisers, recently resigned as Ambassador to Kenya after being “ranked dead last among dozens of ambassadors reviewed in recent years.” There’s also Obama’s favorite general, James “Hoss” Cartwright, who has been stripped of his security clearance in connection with an investigation into national security leaks.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 9/28/2013 @ 12:53 pmsort of a pun on his name;
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/the-ingratiator
narciso (3fec35) — 9/28/2013 @ 12:59 pmwait. Is Meghan’s coward daddy using our tax monies to hire a lying whore?
I’m not comfortable with this.
happyfeet (8ce051) — 9/28/2013 @ 1:07 pmI’m just jealous.
nk (dbc370) — 9/28/2013 @ 1:10 pmI don’t imagine that Ted Cruz has been so bold as to offer a public assessment of how Ms O’Bagy’s new job reflects on Senator McCain’s judgment, or what message it sends to other ambitious young women.
But I’m sure he’s had a private chuckle or two.
ropelight (605a23) — 9/28/2013 @ 1:29 pmSo we are supposed to be skeptical of her claim that she traveled all over Syria speaking with all the different rebel groups, only because she lied about her PhD? If her PhD had checked out, or if she had never claimed to have one, then everything would have been just fine?
Her WSJ op-ed was absurd on the face of it.
LTEC (15879e) — 9/28/2013 @ 1:34 pm“Her WSJ op-ed was absurd on the face of it.”
Granted.
But being as exposed as a phony with regard to her undisclosed associations, and then a worse phony, and then, irredeemable phony with regard to her highly touted credentials, and also called out for being a phony by non-phonies really doing all sheclaimed to have done only heightens the effect of her op-ed.
Sarahw (b0e533) — 9/28/2013 @ 2:07 pmI s*** you not, as the saying goes. From June 2008.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/2139573/Barack-Obama-aide-Why-Winnie-the-Pooh-should-shape-US-foreign-policy.html
Other people can talk about broken campaign promises if they like. As far as I’m concerned he’s delivered.
Steve57 (52f0df) — 9/28/2013 @ 4:54 pmWe had fair warning about this jerk. And how did the GOP respond?
By telling us it would be suicide to confront him. He’s a nice guy. Plus he’s black. Just in over his head.
I’m not voting for one more &%$^ing GOP $#*hole that tells me some Democrat’s a nice guy. They’re not. I don’t give a rat’s $## how much they love their own kids. They’re still scum.
Steve57 (52f0df) — 9/28/2013 @ 5:03 pmDid not Winnie the Pooh negotiate on Syria? And is not Winnie the %$#@ing Pooh sucking up to Iran?
And did we not all know this in 2008?
Steve57 (52f0df) — 9/28/2013 @ 5:10 pmMccain is a despicable piece of crap.
Jim (145e10) — 9/28/2013 @ 5:27 pmI regret the gas I used to make it to the polls to vote for this excuse of a man. Regret. And shame.
Em (382825) — 9/28/2013 @ 6:09 pmWhat’s the old adage “Politics is hollywood for the ugly”.
She’s too pretty for DC. She should be working in Hollywood somewhere, perhaps a co-satr on a reality show or something. She’s too day-yam for DC.
Come on. That’s what most of ’em on the Hill are thinking. Though it does prove that the old geezers are as human as the rest of us.
It’s just like that girl, young intern, who worked w/Weiner’s campaign this summer and quit after only a month and caught flack about writing an article for the New York Post about it.
Her name escapes me at the moment, though Patterico did blog about the incident at the time.
The face though? She was like a Ralph Lauren modelish, Julia Styles look. And she was hot.
This O’baggy chick is the same thing. ‘cept why waste time in DC? Unless she’s trying to land a rich lobbyist.
She ought to be out in Hollywood. Way to pretty for DC.
“And that’s all I have to say about that”.
Kenneth Simmons (88736a) — 9/28/2013 @ 8:08 pmHerein why this is no mere policy dispute;
http://leestranahan.com/exclusive-inside-job-muslim-neighbors-were-part-of-attack-on-christians-in-syria/
narciso (3fec35) — 9/28/2013 @ 9:16 pmOh, come on. I rate her a 5, maybe a 6 because she’s young. Do you guys really believe that she is McCain’s manipulator? She was a tool put out by McCain and his cabal, or whatever cabal is behind McCain and his cabal, to sell McCain’s kooky Mid-East policy. Now she’s being rewarded (or compensated), for having had her phony bridges burned in the selling, with a patronage job. Think of her as Sandra Fluke GOP Edition, it’s closer, a lot closer, than Mata Hari.
nk (dbc370) — 9/29/2013 @ 5:16 amMy opinion might maybe change if it turns out that her daddy owns a beer distributorship. But even then, she’s not blonde.
nk (dbc370) — 9/29/2013 @ 5:18 amComment by narciso (3fec35) — 9/28/2013 @ 9:16 pm
I have friends who are Christians from Pakistan. They said that in general the average Muslim neighbor was polite and friendly enough on a typical day, but they didn’t believe for a moment that their Muslim friends would come to their aid in the event there was a fundamentalist uprising. They thought President Bush’s “religion of peace” was naïve and mistaken.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 9/29/2013 @ 6:21 am18.Hunnypot isn’t just something instructive in Winnie the Pooh books, Mr. MD.
Comment by elissa (491145) — 9/28/2013 @ 12:03 pm
I guess if not McCain himself perhaps one of his underlings,
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 9/29/2013 @ 6:25 ambut then after Samson and Delilah just about anything is possible.
nk,
I don’t think of her as a Mata Hari, either, but I wonder how susceptible McCain is to flattery at this point in his life. He seems to care about being perceived as influential and important, especially in the foreign policy field. He might give special attention to anyone who credibly reinforces that image.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 9/29/2013 @ 6:37 amHer conclusions were wrong, but McCain so earnestly wanted to believe them, and apparently he wasn’t the only one,
narciso (3fec35) — 9/29/2013 @ 6:40 amDRJ–Indeed. Just remember how susceptible to flattery from a younger woman John Edwards was. And look where it got him. I think it is naive to assume this does not happen a lot. (Both in politics and in business.) Gen Petraeus could write a chapter about this, too.
elissa (491145) — 9/29/2013 @ 7:01 amHer conclusions were wrong, but McCain so earnestly wanted to believe them, and apparently he wasn’t the only one,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 9/29/2013 @ 6:40 am
And I’m saying that he gave them to her. Or his real handlers did.
Ladies, flattery/shmattery. I’d like a bite, too. I wish I had a job paid for by the taxpayers to give to a pretty young thing.
nk (dbc370) — 9/29/2013 @ 7:13 amNo, her handler, at the syrian emergency task force,
narciso (3fec35) — 9/29/2013 @ 7:21 amSo, basically, he hired himself a spin doctor to help him push for arming the rebels. Great! (Oh, I mean “Akbar!”)
Icy (30cc9d) — 9/29/2013 @ 7:35 amEgo First.
Rodney King's Spirit (5afc40) — 9/29/2013 @ 4:44 pm