and we'll see you next sunday. this week, on the journal editorial report, president obama green lies air strikes in iraq, telling suffering civilians that america is coming to help, but can the u.s. prevent a strategic and humanitarian disaster? 40 years after watergate and the resignation of richard nixon, has the people's faith in the federal government reached new lows. and if you're headed to the beach, watch out. a new fda ban on sunscreens is leaving you exposed. when the lives of american citizens are at risk, we will take action. that's my responsibility as commander in chief. and when many thousands of

innocent civilians are faced with the danger of being wiped out, and we have the capacity to do something about it, we will take action. that is our responsibility as americans. the hallmark of american leadership. that's who we are. >> welcome to the journal editorial report. i'm stuart varney. that was president obama thursday night announcing he has authorized targeted attacks against isis as well as humanitarian aid to help save some 40,000 civilians trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death. the announcement comes as islamic extremists make gains, threatening erbil. wall street journal columnist and foreign affairs columnist.

to you first. too little, too late for the president? >> back in april he gave a talk in which he defined his policy as singles and doubles and it adds up. he's doing singles and doubles when he needs a grand slam home run. what they have done so far does not reflect the reality on the ground. it is an extremist jihadist group that we have threatened so far. they are threatening kurdistan, the city of erbil. christians being cleaned out of northern iraq. now why is nobody fighting back? that's because isis is heavily, heavily armed, often with american equipment that they have stolen there. both the iraqis and kurds have said we will fight back if we get sustained u.s. air cover to help us. and so far, the president has

not committed himself to an operation that would allow our allies, if we can call them that, to fight back against isis. and unless we do that, i think the situation there is going to continue to disintegrate. >> i think dan is being too generous to the president. this isn't singles and doubles. this is bunts and foul balls. this is a president who came to office saying i am going to go after al qaeda. i'm not going to fight these side wars against, you know, saddam hussein. now you have al qaeda plus. isis is a group that broke away from al qaeda because they thought al qaeda was too moderate, okay. they are now establishing a caliphate in northern iraq. they are armed with actually heavy armor. they have an actual army. it's not just a bunch of ragtag fighters. so to suggest that the only reason we should be intervening in this minor way is the protection of americans or the protection of this religious group, that's fine enough.

but the reason we need to be going in there is because we cannot allow a caliphate to be established in the heart of the muslim world. it's fundamental threat to american security. >> explain to me the delay in taking any kind of action at all? we've seen this coming at us. why the delay? >> i think he started in his statement thursday night for the last five years we've hit al qaeda in yemen with drones. obama had no problems in pakistan going after al qaeda there. he, himself, has an issue with iraq. and it's really all about him. it's a very -- he didn't want to go into syria or iraq, because he didn't want to do what george bush did. because as he said in his speech, i was elected to end the war in iraq, but it's a very juvenile behavior as commander in chief. >> is it possible the president has a real problem using american military power? >> i think that's part of it. >> we would love him to do that. >> that's obviously a part of it.

but he has used it elsewhere. he used it even in lick yeah. but he has an iraq issue, because that, for him, is back to 2007 how out of nowhere he got to the white house, stunning himself, i'm sure. but americans, what's really fascinating now is americans are said to be, you know, tired of war, but they're also, as the polls show, they're also very tired of a feckless commander in chief. and they're very worried about the world going up in flames >> you hear it among top democrats, jim feinberg was quoted in the times, just kind of aghast and bee wiwildered by president's comments. it's completely adrift. jimmy carter's national security

advi advisor. this is not a sense amongst the president's traditional critics. this is across the political spectrum that this is a president who doesn't know how to conduct foreign policy. >> you've got to explain to my, why has the president been death silent on the issue of christians and the slaughter of christians? the ethnic cleansing of christians? >> the underlying reason has to be understood. in 2011, barack obama placed a risky bet, something the united states has never done at the end of the wash. that left a the iraqi army with no support, no ears on the ground. no way to influence prime minister maliki. iraq is now disintegrating. but to the extent he commits to helping them again he's going to repudiate his own policy. and for the reasons mack was articulating, he is simply,

personally, very reluctant to do that, come what may. >> we're talking about the anniversary of watergate, but really we should being thinking about the anniversary of april 1975, the last helicopters to leave saigon. this is the visible collapse of american power that is just as devastating as that tragic pull back and will have consequences as serious for the people of northern iraq as they did for the people of vietnam. >> those were sharp edge blast words. it has been 40 years since the resignation of richard nixon. and the public's trust is reaching watergate lows. what's behind this cynicism? next. teh. heartburn. did someone say burn? try alka seltzer reliefchews. they work just as fast and are proven to taste better than tums smoothies assorted fruit.

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i have never been a quitter. to leave office before my term is completed is of harm to every instinct in my body. but as president i must put the interests of america first. therefore, i shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. vice president ford will be sworn in at that time in this office. >> richard nixon resigning the office of the presidency 40 years ago this week. the culmination of a scandal that not only brought down an administration but shook america's faith in government to core. and that faft is once again being tested with one poll showing that 19% of the public agreeing that the government

does the best thing almost always. dorothy, america, 1974. the same america as 2014? >> oh, no. and, of course, we cannot blame this on richard nixon, but it's a point from which weigh see the america of richard nixon's time as the beginning of what we have now. they were then, facing richard nixon, a counter culture. they don't want to read about dead white men and literature like shakespeare. they're burning draft cards, essentially thinking that the unts is the enemy of all that is good and true. what was the kwoun ter culture is now the reigning culture, the central culture. >> and that's the difference? >> that is the difference. now this is the norm. it is the norm to go into a university, for example, and

find out that every group has been separated into little victim studies classes instead of reading the great canon in literature. in a sense, that america, which was once celebrated for example in history, people went to school, the west ward expansion is now a trail of blood. it's now a -- >> different culture. sfwra different culture. >> i just want to read to the audience what you wrote in the wall street journal, linking today's america and the irs scandal. the irs audit story isn't watergate, it's worse than watergate. it was the professionals of party going after the professionals out of power. >> well, the thing that hants changed, stuart is that the politicians themselves haven't

changed. back then when richard nixon had the plumbers, they were attacking the offices at watergate, trying to find out what was in their files. the irs attacks were on groups of normal citizens, i mean the obama administration clearly sicked the most powerful agency on people just doing politics. from bumper cars to total war now. the irony is that in neither case was it really necessary. richard nixon beat george mcgovern in 1972 in an overwhelming landslide of victory. it really wasn't necessary for him to find out what the democrats were doing. and as for attacking the tea party groups, the obama campaign had a well-oiled machine using social media, but they were so crazed with the idea that they had an organized opposition that

they couldn't stand it and went after them. that is the abuse that existed then and exists now. >> but they thought what they were doing within the irs was entirely legitimate to keep president obama in power. they thought that was a legitimate thing to do, to wield the machinery of government against the president's political opponents. >> if you live in a bubble of your belief, yes, they did, if you study nixon's plumbers, yes, we have to get this done. some part of them says no, if i listen to this plan to break in to headquarters, this government will come down, but they went ahead anyway, because -- and that's the same as what is going on among, in obama. >> you are profoundly disappointed, aren't you? >> well, i look back at the history of the nixon era, and you've seen there, the growth of everything that produced barack obama. the left tenured, radical product of harvard law school,

with all the assumptions that i just outlined before about american power, bad thing. american culture needs to be fixed. all of that, we've produced it. it is an inexorable growth from that time. >> as i said, you are profoundly disappointed, dorothy. yes. >> well, i tell you one thing we should remember about richard nixon. for all of his status, you know, kevin spacey, the actor asked who did the most for the arts, he said i know you'll be surprised that it was richard nixon who did the most for the arts, he produced something called title ix that changed every girl as professional athlete senate tatus. he made it possible for girls to do all that.

>> that is what led the government to grow to the scale it is now. the people in the opinion poll have lost faith in washington because it simply doesn't perform any more. >> dan, dorothy, thank you very much. when we come back, just in time for that august, beach vacation, a rising rate of skin cancer is a public health crisis. so why are regulators banning better sunscreens in america? ♪ abe! get in! punch it! let quicken loans help you save your money. with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze! thanks, g. why let erectile dysfunction get in your way? this is the age of knowing what you're made of.

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well, if you're headin well, if you're heading to the beach this weekend, listen up, please. the surgeon general declared skin cancer a growing public health crisis, with more cases

annually than breast and colon cancer combined. you're not getting the best protection out there. despite superior products available almost everywhere else in the world, the food and drug administration hasn't approved a new sunscreen for use in america in a whopping 15 years. joe rego is here to tell us why. why? go ahead. tell me. >> we've seen a huge explosion in scientific knowledge in terms of what causes the mutations that lead to skin cancer. and we have products to prevent them from being absorbed into the skin. the fda has safety concerns. they say the manufacturers of these sunscreens have to prove the negative, that they won't lead to long-run harm. they refuse to accept the world consensus that these are safe. look, they've been used everywhere around the world, in

europe, asia, south america, mexico. the u.s. is the only place where you are legally barred from buying these superior technologies. >> why does the fda drag its feet like this, in the face that obvious evidence that this is a beneficial product. >> the fda has been regulating drugs like these since at least the mid 1960s. and the idea is that you have to prove to the fda, to the inth degree that these things are safe, and they get to define what's safe. their process, if i may use this word, metastasized into a growth that smuggles into the u.s. it takes at least $5 billion to get a new drug approved. and people think, yes, we should ensure that drugs are safe. the process ensures that new

products do not reach the american public for a timely way. >> did you day $2 billion to $5 billion to reach the public? >> yes. >> i can go to europe, buy sunscreen, real good stuff, but i can't get the same product in america. and you've not told me why i've got to wait all this time to get a better product. >> the fda has a culture of political control. they are the masters of medical progress. >> it's deliberate, joe. >> absolutely. >> you can't have that because we don't want you to have it. >> protecting their regulatory status is more important to them than getting new products to the public. they think if they let something through and it turns out to be dangerous they're going to get blamed. so they're very risk averse. and they want to protect that culture of control. that's why the fda exists. >> with something like

sunscreen? isn't public pressure enough to say come on, lift the floodgates, let us have it? >> the national reaction to be to monitor these products like sunscreen after they are released. sun clean, obviously is not a dangerous drug. if there were side effects that we had to worry about, you could determine that in a post-marketing regime. the fda wants all that resolved before the product is sold, which is why it's so expensive and time-consuming. >> it's not going to change? >> i don't think so. >> the congress has passed bills that says you must approve these sunscreens? i think the fda would rather reject them than take them onto the market. when we come back, our hits and misses of the week.

it's he time for our h it's time now for our hits

and misses of the week. and brett, you are up first. >> this is a hit for the european space agency, which just in the last few days has placed a satellite, what they call a row set at that satellite within a short distance of a comet and will be sending a probe to a comet. it's been on a journey to do fundamental science. we spend a lot of our time criticizing the europeans, but this is a magnificent accomplishment for all of humankind. it's going to bring back information about our universe, and i want to give a hit to the scientists who made that happen. >> here's a miss to the ncaa, which, this week said that five richest conferences can basically play by their own rules. meaning the five athletic conferences.

think can give higher scholarships, provide better health care and allow agents to work with athletes. this goes against everything the ncaa should stand for. it shows how corrupt our colleges have become. if our professional sports leagues want a development league, they should pay for it the way european soccer does. you remember cash for clun kerrs, a new study suggests that the program subtracted from car revenues. this is a myth for the government. they can't even subsidize a

program without harming. we hope to see you next week. network. paul is back next week, and we hope to see you then. americans evacuated as new air strikes hit iraq. the fight against those islamic fight. the pentagon using a mixture of war planes and drones in what is now the fourth round of attacks against islamic militants. president obama is keeping an eye on the situation from martha's vineyard.