Ten National Security Questions for President Obama

Below is a list of topics on national security President Obama should address:

• Debt: When Admiral Mike Mullen was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he said our national debt was the greatest threat to our national security. Mr. President, you promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of your first term. Instead you have had four years of deficits more than a trillion dollars each year, adding more than $5 trillion to our national debt since you took office. Your budgets are projected to add more to the debt than every other President in our history combined. As commander in chief, how do you explain having so exacerbated the greatest threat to our national security?
• Sequestration: Mr. President, your Secretary of Defense has said the sequester would be “devastating” and would inflict “severe damage on our national defense.” In a report to Congress just last month your Administration continued to describe the sequestration as “bad policy, and that Congress can and should take action to avoid it.” Do you still stand by your November 21, 2011, promise to “veto any effort to get rid of” the sequester?
• Sequestration/WARN Act: The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires businesses with 100 or more employees to give at least 60 days’ notice to workers or their union representatives before laying off a substantial number of workers. The current state of the law is that sequester is scheduled to take place, and you have promised to veto any effort to alter it. In November 2011, your Secretary of Defense wrote to Congress saying “contract personnel would be cut” under the sequester. Why did your Administration recently issue guidance to contractors saying they could ignore the law and should not issue WARN Act notices? Is it because those notices would come due November 2?
• Libya: Mr. President, you claim you called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror the day after it happened. You and your Administration then proceeded to blame a film for that attack for the next two weeks. The State Department, via press leak, finally admitted there never was a protest about the film outside the Benghazi consulate. When will you level with the American people personally about what you knew about the murder of Ambassador Stevens and when you knew it?
• Israel: Seven months ago, Mr. President, you boldly said to an Israeli advocacy organization “I have Israel’s back.” What does that mean when you refuse to meet with the prime minister of Israel but have time to go on the daytime talk show The View? Moreover, during that same gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, you did not meet with a counterpart head of state. Scott Pelley of CBS News noted, “Our research shows it’s been 20 years since a President has been to that meeting and not met one-on-one with a foreign leader.” Why did you not meet with a single world leader?
• Iran: In 2008 you promised your personal diplomacy would “pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior.” A White House conference call this summer claimed “sanctions are having a significant impact on Iran.” But your own Director of National Intelligence testified to Congress earlier this year that it “is precisely the Intelligence Community view or assessment that to this point, the sanctions, as imposed so far, have not caused [Iran] to change their behavior or their policy.” Furthermore, the International Atomic Energy Agency recently found Iran has doubled its underground nuclear enrichment capability just this past summer. How has your diplomacy pressured Iran to change its behavior?
• Russia reset: Your Administration continually claims one of its signature foreign policy achievements is the “reset” in relations with Russia. Russia has vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions pertaining to the slaughter in Syria, has armed the Assad regime there, serves as the protector at the United Nations for Iran’s illicit nuclear program, held a parliamentary election in 2011 your own Secretary of State assessed to be “neither free nor fair,” and recently terminated all USAID programs in Russia. What exactly was reset with Russia?
• North Korea: On your watch, North Korea sunk a warship of ally South Korea, murdering 46 South Korean sailors. It tested a nuclear weapon in May 2009 and in April 2009 conducted tests of a missile specifically directed at threatening the U.S. homeland. It then tested the missile again in April 2012. Your Administration on numerous occasions promised Congress it would not reward North Korea for taking actions it had already agreed to take. Why did you offer massive amounts of food aid to North Korea to do what it already has an international obligation to do, which is not test long-range missile technology? 
• Iraq: Senior Hezbollah operative Ali Mussa Daqduq orchestrated a 2007 attack in which terrorists, posing as U.S. soldiers, killed one U.S. soldier in a grenade attack, and abducted four others, who were later shot. Last year you transferred Daqduq to the Iraqis out of U.S. custody. An Iraqi court later ordered him released. Why did you transfer a murderer of U.S. soldiers out of our custody instead of bringing him to justice?
• Terrorist detention: Mr. President, you sought to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and the other 9/11 conspirators to the United States to receive all the constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen in a criminal trial. You in fact did that with the East Africa embassy bomber, who was acquitted on all but one of the 285 charges brought against him. What would you do if we captured Ayman al-Zawahri (head of al Qaeda) or Mullah Omar (head of the Taliban) tomorrow?