Obama: The Irrational President - A Wary Encounter

from The Spectator.co.uk
by Melanie Phillips

In remarks made after his meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama said:

I suggested to the Prime Minister that he has an historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure. That means that all the parties involved have to take seriously obligations that they have previously agreed to. Those obligations were outlined in the road map...

But the first obligation in the Road Map was laid upon the Palestinians -- to dismantle their infrastructure of terror. It was their failure to meet that first obligation, without which the rest of the Road Map could not be implemented, which led to its collapse as a strategy. Yet Obama appears to think that the only obligations which must be met are those which apply to Israel, with the Palestinians apparently getting a free pass.

This is of course all of a piece with his belief that Israel is the cause of the Middle East impasse which would be solved by the creation of a state of Palestine. The fact that even now Fatah states explicitly that it won’t accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, let alone Hamas repeatedly restating its intention to destroy Israel and kill every Jew, is not, in Obama’s mind, the real obstacle to a solution. Not only does Obama not see the creation of ‘Hamastan’ in the West Bank as an obstacle -- he sees instead the refusal to treat Hamas as part of the solution as an obstacle. Accordingly, he presents as the obstacle not the people continuing to wage war but the country that is the victim of that war – which he blames for not agreeing to destroy its own security.

The irrationality and injustice of this is manifest on every level. But what cannot be stressed enough is the way both Obama and the ‘progressive’ legions behind him have made as their rallying cry support for a proposed racist and religiously exclusionary state that denies civil rights for all. Those screaming ‘apartheid’ at Israel are demanding the establishment of a putative Palestine state which would allow no Jews to live there, let alone enjoy the equal civil and human rights afforded to Arab citizens of Israel. As the former CIA Director James Woolsey is reported to have observed earlier this month:

...the world has a tendency to ‘define deviancy down for non-Jews.’ As a result, governments around the world, including the Obama administration, never even mention the possibility that Jews should be able to enjoy the same rights and privileges in any future Palestinian polity that Israeli Arabs exercise today in the Jewish state.

So, instead of what amounts to a Hitlerian program of Judenrein in any prospective Palestinian state - meaning, as a practical matter, if not a de jure one, that no Jews can reside or work there, there could be approximately twice the number of Israeli Jews as currently reside in so-called ‘settlements’ on the West Bank. They should be free to build synagogues and Jewish schools. And newspapers that serve the Jewish population in any future state of ‘Palestine’
should be permitted to flourish there.

Jews should also have a chance to elect representatives to a future Palestinian legislature. They should be able to expect to have representation as well in other governing institutions, like the executive and judicial branches. In order for the foregoing to operate, Jews in the Palestinian state must be able to live without fearing every day for their lives. In Mr. Woolsey`s view, ‘Once Palestinians are behaving that way, they deserve a state.’

On all these essential preconditions for a solution that pass the basic test of civilised values, Obama is silent. Quite apart from the injustice of his approach to the Middle East impasse and the irrationality of linking it with the Iran crisis, his policy of ‘engagement’ with Iran is hardly making him popular in the Arab world. He agreed with Netanyahu that there was a new and more promising mood in the Arab world. But he seems unable to grasp that what’s behind that new mood is terror of Iran getting the bomb – and despair at the way the US is resorting to the policy of appeasement. Accordingly, Obama is actually squandering the opportunity to enlist those Arab states in the fight against a common enemy of Iran. As John Hannah writes in the Washington Post:

Notably, the administration’s approach is increasingly at odds with that of U.S. allies in the Middle East that seek to maximize pressure on Tehran. For the past month, Egypt has mounted a courageous public effort to rally America’s Arab friends in opposition to an Iranian campaign of subversion that stretches from Iraq to Morocco. Instead of rushing to the defense of distressed allies, Obama has largely remained silent, instead opting to reiterate his interest in reaching some sort of accommodation with Tehran, the source of the region’s problems.

This was amplified by this telling exchange at the press conference after his talks with Netanyahu:

Q : Thank you, Mr. President. Aren’t you concerned that your outstretched hand has been interpreted by extremists, especially Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, Meshal, as weakness? And since my colleague already asked about the deadline, if engagement fails, what then, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it’s not clear to me why my outstretched hand would be interpreted as weakness.

Q: Qatar, an example.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m sorry?

Q: The example of Qatar. They would have preferred to be on your side and then moved to the extremists, to Iran.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Oh, I think -- yes, I’m not sure about that interpretation.

On the face of it, the evidence that has emerged from this meeting between Obama and Netanyahu could not be more stark -- as David Horowitz observes -- that the Obama administration is set upon a strategy that would effectively throw Israel to the Islamist wolves. The worst fears of Israel’s government and friends appear to have been amply confirmed.

And yet and yet; notwithstanding all this, sanity might eventually still prevail. A small hope indeed – but it may just happen.

Consider. The fact that Obama is making this lethally false linkage between creating a state of Palestine and tackling the problem of Iran should not blind us to the fact that the overriding issue is indeed not Palestine but Iran. That is the issue which will define Obama’s presidency. The great question is whether Obama has concluded that, when push comes to shove, America will have no option but to ‘live with’ a nuclear Iran. My understanding is that, while there are those in his administration for whom the answer is ‘yes’, there are others for whom the answer is ‘no’. In his post-meeting remarks, Obama himself acknowledged the danger a nuclear Iran poses not just to Israel but to America and the whole of the Middle East. Certainly, he thinks ‘engagement’ can defuse that danger. But what will he do when it becomes apparent that it will not?

Obama has already demonstrated that, when brought up sharply against the suicidal consequences of his naivety, he can shift his position. We saw this in recent days by his twin retreats from publishing more pictures of ‘enhanced interrogation’ in Iraq and from his previous opposition to military tribunals for al Qaeda suspects. He has stated that if Iran hasn’t unclenched its fist by – variously – the autumn/end of the year he will introduce ‘tough sanctions’. This is not altogether reassuring, both in the vagueness of the timetable, the weakness of any sanctions regime and the fact that he is still giving Iran the greatest gift of all – time -- to progress towards its nuclear goal. But it may just be that he really does think in his liberal hubris that making nice with Iran will draw the poison – and when he realises it has not done so, he may not be too keen on becoming the President that allowed Iran to go nuclear on his watch.

A further point about Obama is this. He is a man of the left. The left is not merely Manichean, but insulates itself from any possibility of heresy by surrounding itself only by those with whom it agrees. It is therefore rarely forced to follow through its reasoning and thus see its patent falsehoods and idiocies exposed. From his history and past associations, it’s a fair bet that Obama has thus never had his assumptions properly challenged by exposure to rationality and evidence. In recent years, Israel has been led by politicians who were either incapable, for various reasons, of properly articulating that rationality or themselves subscribed to many of the false premises of post-modern, post-moral, ahistorical thinking that characterises ‘progressive’ opinion in the west. Netanyahu breaks that mould. By simply talking to him, Obama may have heard for the first time an argument that is intellectually capable of puncturing at least one or two of his illusions.

We have no way of knowing whether any of that took place; or, if it did, whether it had any significant effect at all. No-one should take too much notice of the public show of relaxation and relative harmony with which this meeting was subsequently spun. Nor should we believe the counter-spin that Netanyahu returned to Israel a grimmer and wiser man. He knew the score about Obama well before he set out on this trip; and he would indeed be a fool if he were not therefore playing a carefully thought-through diplomatic and strategic game. Let’s hope he is; because if ideologue Obama does indeed turn out to stifle pragmatic Obama over the issue of Iran, Israel really will be on its own.
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Netanyahu to the White House: "What the hell do they want from me?"

from Jihad Watch
May 29, 2009

"The official said that the basis of the Obama White House's resolve is the conviction that it is in the United States' as well as Israel's interest to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Does it not ever occur to anyone in the Obama White House that however much it might be in the interests of the United States and Israel to "end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," it may not be within the power of the United States or Israel to "end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"? The Obama White House seems to be unshakably committed to the proposition that the Palestinians are just passive reactors to Israeli aggression, and that peace will come as soon as the Israelis decide to get on with it.

The Obama White House does not ever seem to consider the proposition that the Palestinians might fight on until they achieve the total destruction of Israel, and that the jihad doctrine of Islamic supremacism mandates that they pursue no other course.

Quotes from "Netanyahu: 'What the hell do they want from me?,'" from Foreign Policy, May 28
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Abbas expects Obama pressure to push out Netanyahu

from The Jerusalem Post
By JPOST.COM STAFF
May 29, 2009

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will not resume negotiations with Israel unless the Netanyahu government agrees to a complete settlement freeze and publicly accepts a two-state solution, Abbas has told the Washington Post in an interview.

And since he does not believe Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will lift his opposition on these issues, Abbas and his leadership expect American pressure to gradually force Netanyahu out of office, the paper reported on Friday. "It will take a couple of years," it quoted one of Abbas's officials as saying.

Abbas was interviewed the day before his Thursday meeting at the White House with President Barack Obama.

Setting out what the newspaper called "a hardline position," the Palestinian leader conditioned a resumption of talks with Israel on Netanyahu's agreement to a halt in all settlement building - a demand being repeatedly stressed by Obama, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other senior US officials - and formal Israeli government acceptance of Palestinian statehood.

Abbas added that he would not even assist Obama's special envoy, George Mitchell, in trying to encourage Arab states to begin warming relations with Israel until Israel accepted these conditions. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognizes the two-state solution," Abbas was quoted saying. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."

However, the Washington Post went on, "Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze - if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while US pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. 'It will take a couple of years,' one official breezily predicted."

Abbas, the article continued, "rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession - such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees."

The upshot, wrote Diehl, is that "in the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian."

The Palestinians, under Bush, knew that "until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel," wrote Diehl.
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All the worries about Obama and Israel are about to become true...

from The Lid
Friday, May 29, 2009

Obama's Call To Stop Settlements - Its Different This Time, MUCH DIFFERENT

In her press conference on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration "wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions."

On Thursday, President Obama stood with the "Moderate" Terrorist Leader Mahmoud Abbas calling for Israel to stop all settlement building including "Natural Growth." As I have pointed out many times before, both President Bush and Secretary of State Rice have made similar statements over the past eight years. After talking to some of my contacts within Israel and those with intimate knowledge of what is happening within Israel, the reports are not good. This time it is different.

When Bush demanded that Israel stop all settlement activity, there was always a wink, wink at the end of it. The Bush administration would never protest too loudly as long as it was "natural growth." Meaning contiguous adding on to existing settlements was OK. So if someone's child got married, they could live in the same area as their parents...etc. My sources tell me that there is no "wink, wink." Obama wants Israel to stop all settlement building PERIOD.

As Gary Ackerman (D-L.I.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, told Stewart Ain of the NY Jewish Week:

“Internal [natrual] growth is not an obstacle — it is life,There is no moral equivalence between settlements and terrorist activity,” he said by phone shortly after leaving a 90-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv.

“Bibi mentioned settlements,” Ackerman continued, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “He pointed out that unlike previous administrations that said they would not build them but built them, he is not building new settlements. But he has a position that you cannot stop people on the issue of internal growth.”

Ackerman said he subscribed to the position of a Kadima Knesset member, Otniel Schneller, who was quoted as saying: “I will not lend a hand to a dictate preventing my daughters from giving birth to my grandchildren.”

Sources say that Senator George Mitchell Obama's Mideast envoy and national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones -- see the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, home to some almost 300,000 people, as a key obstacle to getting a peace settlement. Of course this ignores the fact that the Palestinians including President Abbas still reject recognizing Israel as a Jewish State and that President Abbas is the leader of Fatah, who's Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade is still committing terrorist attacks within Israel. Even if he wanted to make peace (which he doesn't) Abbas does not have the legitimacy from his own people to sign an agreement. If he did there would have been an agreement with Prime Minister Olmert, who some sources offered Abbas an agreement that was even more favorable than the one Yassir Arafat was criticized for turning down.

Here's the real problem for the Jewish State, in past when Israel has faced problems with a sitting President they have taken their appeal to Congress. But this congress is not likely to go to bat for Israel for two reasons, President Obama is very popular and they are not likely to fight him on this issue especially when you consider that research and anecdotal evidence show the Democratic Party voter is no longer pro-Israel.

So Israel is left with a White House that will continue to pressure her toward one-sided concessions and a Congress that doesn't have the political chops to stand up to the President.

The question is will Netanyahu stand up to Obama? That is still unknown. On one hand the composition of his coalition will demand that he does, but on the other hand one of the major reasons he was voted out of office in 1999 was his poor relationship with Bill Clinton. In fact, Bill Clinton sent James Carville to Israel to help Ehud Barak take the Prime Minister position away from Netanyahu.

Where all this will lead is unknown. What Is known is the era of "good feelings" between an Israel Prime Minister and a US President is ending. And all the worries that many of us had about Obama and the Jewish State, are about to become true.
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THE DEATH OF ISRAEL - Courtesy of Barack Obama

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
from DickMorris.com
May 24, 2009
image by rees

From Caroline Glick, deputy editor and op-ed writer for the Jerusalem Post, comes alarming news. An expert on Arab-Israeli relations with excellent sources deep inside Netanyahu's government, she reports that CIA chief Leon Panetta, who recently took time out from his day job (feuding with Nancy Pelosi) to travel to Israel "read the riot act" to the government warning against an attack on Iran.

More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, "...we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran's nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the US will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy."

She goes on to write that the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing that "as far as the [Obama] administration is concerned, if Israel could just leave Iran's nuclear installations alone, Iran would behave itself." She notes that American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel's doing, not Iran's.

In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb.

Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for Iranian talks aimed at stopping its progress toward nuclear weapons is just window dressing without the threat of military action. As Metternich wrote "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments." By warning only of possible strengthening of economic sanctions if the talks do not progress, Obama is making an empty threat. The sanctions will likely have no effect because Russia and China will not let the United Nations act as it must if it is to deter Iranian nuclear weapons.

All this means is that Israel's life is in danger. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference. One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death. Nor can one deter a theocracy bent on meriting admission to heaven and its virgins by one glorious act of violence. Iran would probably not launch the bomb itself, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. And Israel will be dead and gone.

Those sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that we, as Jews, are witnessing the possible end of Israel. We are in the same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler rise but did nothing to pressure their favorite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country. If we remain complacent, we will have the same anguish at watching the destruction of Israel that our forebears had in witnessing the Holocaust.

Because one thing is increasingly clear: Barack Obama is not about to lift a finger to stop Iran from developing the bomb. And neither is Hillary Clinton.

Obama may have held the first White House cedar, but he's not planning to spend next year in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu: "Jerusalem will never again be partitioned and divided"

from Joshua Pundit
May 21, 2009

Today is יום ירושלים‎, Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day in Israel.

It's a national holiday commemorating the reunification of David's City by the IDF during the Six Day War.

It's odd to reflect that it only happened by chance. The Israeli government had appealed to Jordan's King Hussein, who had illegally occupied the eastern part of the city in 1948 to stay out of the fighting.

Had he done so, Jerusalem would not have been reunited on that day. Instead Hussein listened to Egypt's dictator Gamel Abdul Nasser, who told him that the Israeli Air Force had been destroyed and that Egyptian troops were marching on Tel Aviv. Not wanting to miss out on the jihad against the Jews and the anticipated plunder, Hussein treacherously sent Jordan's Arab Legion into battle - where they were decisively defeated.

The battle for Jerusalem took place on Ammunition Hill, where the Jordanians had a military base. The Israelis didn't want to bomb it because of the risk of civilian casualties, so they stormed it with ground troops belonging to the Israeli 3rd company of the 66th Battalion, paratrooper's brigade. The battle took about 4 1/2 hours over rugged terrain, and 37 Israeli soldiers were killed in the battle in one of the bloodier battles of the war. Ten of the soldiers who fought at Ammunition Hill were given citations, and the site is a national memorial today.

It's also the site where the traditional Jerusalem Day Ceremony is held.

Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, just back from Washington had a few things to say to mark the event:

"Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided," Netanyahu said at the official state ceremony marking Jerusalem Day and the reunification of the capital during the Six Day War 42 years ago.

"Only under Israeli sovereignty will united Jerusalem ensure the freedom of religion and freedom of access for the three religions to the holy places," he added.

As I mentioned yesterday, I think the rumors about Obama Administration officials promising half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians are a case of the Arabs hearing what they want to.

While President Obama might like the ideas, he's at least intelligent enough to understand that there's no way Netanyahu would agree to it, nor would the members of his coalition...or the Israeli public. it's a red line, and trying to force Israel to yield it up would pretty much be the end of any kind of harmonious relationship between the Obama administration and Israel, and end any leverage Obama might have on Netanyahu.Even Shimon Peres wouldn't acquiese to it - although Tzipi Livni probably would, in a heartbeat.

The only way Obama could get Israel to give up Jerusalem would be to use US troops to try and conquer it, and while an attempt to do that is not totally out of the realm of possibility with this president and his pro-Arab appointees, I don't see it happening.

Why are the Jews so unwilling to let the Arabs have any control over Jerusalem? Maybe because they've seen how that works in the past.

After the Jordanians took over the Eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948, they killed or drove out every Jew who lived there - which is how it became, in that phrase so beloved by al-Reuters, the AP and the BBC, 'traditionally Arab East Jerusalem'.Many of th e'Palestinians who claim they've 'lived in Jerusalem for generations' are squatters who appropriated Jewish homes after the residents were killed or exiled.

The Jordanians demolished half of the Old City's fifty-eight synagogues, and the historic Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was plundered for its tombstones, which were used as paving stones and building materials. Some of the synogogues were turned into public latrines. The area around the Western Wall, Judaism's most sacred site, was turned into a public dump.

Since Arafat took over, the Palestinians have made a point of defiling or destroying any Jewish Holy sites that are in the areas of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West bank) that they occupy, like the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron or Joseph's tomb.

And, oh yes..that was just another of those pesky Oslo requirements Arafat agreed to and never even bothered to look like he was fulfilling.

Any other country but Israel would have driven him and his friends over the borders an ddispoosed of th eproblem once and for all. As a matter of fact, a lot of Arab countries like Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq did just that.

No, the Israelis are going to be hanging on to Jerusalem. It's theirs, no matter how much some of the thieves around them might want to steal it and desecrate it.

Selah.
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Obama is Neville Chamberlain on steriods...

Iran tests missile with range that can hit Israel

image by rees

from Breitbart.com
May 20, 2009
By Ali Akbar Dareinia
Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran test-fired a missile capable of striking Israel, U.S. Mideast bases and Europe on Wednesday—a show of strength touted by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he battles for re-election next month against more moderate opponents.

The U.S. responded by saying Iran must choose between destabilizing the Middle East or accepting the dialogue offered by President Barack Obama. The U.S. leader threatened earlier this week that Iran could face further international sanctions if it does not respond positively by year-end to U.S. attempts to open negotiations on its nuclear program.

Israel said the test appeared to be Iran's response to a positive meeting on Monday between Obama and new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

U.S. officials confirmed the launch and Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in Washington that Iran is at a crossroads and must choose its course.

"They can either continue on this path of continued destabilization in the region or they can decide that they want to pursue relationships with the counties in the region and the United States that are more normalized," said Whitman. "Our concerns are obviously based on nuclear ambitions and the implications that long- and medium-range missiles have with respect to that," he added.

Alex Vatanka, a senior Middle East analyst at Jane's Information Group, said the test "does not change the strategic equation" in the region because Iran has had the ballistic missile capability to hit Israel and much of the Middle East for more than a decade with its Shahab missiles.

It was likely intended to send a message to the Obama administration that Iran cannot be bullied into talks and also to show the country's strength in hopes that would boost Ahmadinejad's popularity among voters in the June 12 election, Vatanka said.

Iran says its missile program is merely for defense and its space program is for scientific and surveillance purposes. It maintains that its nuclear program is for civilian energy uses only.

Tehran said the solid-fuel Sajjil-2 surface-to-surface missile has a range of about 1,200 miles. It is a new version of the Sajjil missile, which the country said it successfully tested late last year and has a similar range. Many analysts said the launch of the solid-fuel Sajjil was significant because such missiles are more accurate than liquid fuel missiles of similar range, such as Iran's Shahab-3.

"Defense Minister (Mostafa Mohammad Najjar) has informed me that the Sajjil-2 missile, which has very advanced technology, was launched from Semnan and it landed precisely on the target," state radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. He did not name any targets for the missile when he spoke during a visit to the city of Semnan, 125 miles east of the capital Tehran, where Iran's space program is centered.

Najjar said the Sajjil-2 differs from the Sajjil missile because it "is equipped with a new navigation system as well as precise and sophisticated sensors," according to Iran's official news agency.

Two U.S. officials confirmed the missile launch, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

"It appears the test was a success," one official said. "It appears they launched a medium-range missile."

Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense minister who trained in the U.S. as an aerospace engineer, said Wednesday's test was apparently part of Iran's broader quest to develop more advanced missiles and nuclear capability.

"They're increasing their abilities to launch rockets of longer and longer range that go beyond Israel and into Europe and eventually will carry nuclear weapons," he said. "They're troublemakers and you have to deal with troublemakers."

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's elimination, and the Jewish state has not ruled out a military strike to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. The Israeli government has been skeptical of U.S. overtures to Iran, which have received a mixed response from Ahmadinejad.

The launch came just weeks before the vote that could influence Iran's response to the U.S. outreach. Two of the three candidates approved by Iran's constitutional watchdog to run in the June election are reformists who favor improving ties with the West.

The hard-line president has been criticized by his opponents and others for antagonizing the U.S. and mismanaging the country's faltering economy. On Wednesday, the constitutional watchdog approved three candidates to challenge Ahmadinejad, setting up a showdown between reformists and hard-liners.

Associated Press Writers Pamela Hess in Washington and Steve Weizman and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Obama will be responsible for the next attack on the U.S.

from The National Review
May 19, 2009

The CIA's Methods Have Changed; Will the Results?

Tucked in the bottom of page A4 of the Washington Post, about the CIA "worrying about its future":

Another intelligence official, who also asked not to be identified, said waterboarding and other harsh techniques "were meant to get hardened terrorists to a point where they were willing to answer questions." That capability, the official said, "is now gone."

As a nation, we are placing our bet that these techniques are not necessary to get useful intelligence about al-Qaeda and the attacks it plans. If nothing happens, then the critics of these techniques will be vindicated; the proof will be in the pudding, so to speak.

But if there is another attack on American soil in the coming years, people will notice that we had no successful attacks on U.S. soil for more than seven years. And then we changed to a new administration, which changed the way our intelligence agencies operate. And then the results changed.

The public would not be unreasonable to conclude that there is a correlation there.

Europeans See No Need For Missile Defense Shield

article from Cheat-Seeking Missiles
image from Cheat-Seeking Missiles
by Laer
May 19th 2009

A Rousing Endorsement Of Experts

Europeans must be a happy bunch this morning because a team of Russian and American “experts” have determined that their continent needs no missile shield, and those apocalyptic Iranians and their full-bore nuclear development programs pose no risk to Europeans from Budapest to Bath.

The experts’ first finding, reported by WaPo is that the planned defense won’t be effective against the type of missiles the Iranians are likely to use. The second: It’ll be more than five years before the Iranians would be read to nuke Europe. Two questions: How long will it take to install the missile defense. And why not hire some other experts to use those five years to make the system effective against the kind of missiles the Iranians would use.

The experts then analyzed the Iranians’ crappy missiles, derived from crappy North Korean knock-offs of seriously outdated Russian sub-launched missiles, and conclude it would take six to eight years for the Iranians to get a launchable bomb and put it on a missile capable of hitting a European city. So no missile defense is needed, natch! Especially since the experts don’t think any U.S. system could knock out an Iranian - North Korean - Russian missile dating from the 1950s.

But the entire discussion is moot because of the experts’ final point: that the Iranians won’t nuke Europe anyway because it will ensure their self-destruction. How odd. Saner nations than Iran - the US and Russia - pursued or feared missile defense systems, even though the doctrine of mutually assured destruction was firmly in place between them, so why should the Europeans not have an insurance policy against Iranian lunacy?

I don’t think the Iranians are likely to try to hit Europe with a missile because so many other scenarios make more sense, not the least of which is simply providing a nuclear umbrella for its operatives in the Middle East. But if I were a European, I’d be more comfortable staking my future on a real missile defense than the opinions of experts.
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Khamenei: Don't vote for pro-Western candidates

This basically ensures that Ahmadinejad will be re-elected and that the threats to wipe Israel off the map will continue.
Rees

from The Jerusalem Post
May 18, 2009
By Associated Press
Teheran, Iran

Iran's supreme leader on Monday urged Iranians not to vote for pro-Western candidates in the June 12 presidential election, though he gave no clear indication of whether he was supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holds ultimate power in Iran, at the top of the clerical hierarchy above elected figures. His position is crucial for any candidate to win the vote, though he has never made his choice public. While he has strongly praised Ahmadinejad in the past, he has at times rebuked him publicly.

He spoke Monday in a televised speech.

Three others are challenging Ahmadinejad in his bid for re-election. They include a conservative former Revolutionary Guards commander and two reformists.
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Liz Cheney vs. Norah O’Donnell: “The tactics are not torture”

You MUST view the entire clip. Liz Cheney asks a great question regarding what Obama did, or did not know.



Was Obama aware that the interrogation efforts had been effective? Did he make a decision to release those incredibly sensitive memo's without adequate information? If Obama chose to release the memo's before educating himself regarding all sides of the issue, it is at a minimum shameful on his part. He has basically destroyed the ability for our intelligence services to gather information.

This is a great article from Hot Air.com.
Rees

April 26, 2009
by Allahpundit
from Hot Air.com

A few days old but we’ve had a steady stream of requests for it. Hotline has the transcript; don’t quit before the end or you’ll miss her thoughts on Palin and Meghan McCain. Speaking of McCains, Maverick may differ with Cheney about whether waterboarding constitutes torture but they agree that a “truth commission” would be a very bad idea. A good question: “[Enhanded interrogation] was bad advice. But if you criminalize bad advice on the part of lawyers, how are you going to get people to serve, and what sort of precedent does that set for the future?”

Actually, here’s a better question: If we all know it’s going to happen anyway in certain circumstances, why not legalize it? Kathleen Parker, unsurprisingly, doesn’t get it:

In his book “Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age,” Dershowitz proposes that since torture is a given under those certain circumstances, then “torture warrants” should be issued by a judge.

He is right that most of us would do whatever necessary to save our child, possibly even torture a kidnapper. Likewise, if we stumbled upon someone trying to harm a loved one, we would kill the attacker if necessary to stop him.

But those are both darkly impassioned environments. It is by the cool light of day that we devise our laws. And it is by that same light that we judge our actions.

The law would protect you if you had to kill an attacker to stop him from killing, which is to say, it’s those “darkly impassioned environments” that law is most concerned with. Why leave a CIA agent in legal limbo if, however likely or unlikely it may be, he finds himself with a detainee in a ticking-bomb scenario?

Do yourself a favor after you watch the clip. Go listen to the archived audio here. Three minutes. Click to read the article and comments

A word about the soldiers - Could apply whether British, American or Israeli

This is great commentary. Could apply whether British, American or Israeli.
Rees

US should tell UN to shove it - UN laws do not trump US laws

from Breitbart.com
By VERONIKA OLEKSYN
Associated Press Writer

UN torture envoy: US must prosecute Bush lawyers

VIENNA (AP) - The U.S. is obligated by a United Nations convention to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who allegedly drafted policies that approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects, the U.N.'s top anti-torture envoy said Friday.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama left the door open to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations. He had previously absolved CIA officers from prosecution.

Manfred Nowak, who serves as a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, said Washington is obligated under the U.N. Convention against Torture to prosecute U.S. Justice Department officials who wrote memos that defined torture in the narrowest way in order to justify and legitimize it, and who assured CIA officials that their use of questionable tactics was legal.

"That's exactly what I call complicity or participation" to torture as defined by the convention, Nowak said at a news conference. "At that time, every reasonable person would know that waterboarding, for instance, is torture."

Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said it was up to U.S. courts and prosecutors to prove that the memos were written with the intention to incite torture.

Nowak also said any probe of questionable CIA interrogation tactics must be independent and have thorough investigative powers.

"It can be a congressional investigation commission, a special investigator, but it must be independent and with thorough investigative powers," Nowak said.

On Thursday, Obama's press secretary suggested Obama does not care for an independent panel.

Last week, the Obama administration released secret CIA memos detailing interrogation tactics sanctioned under Bush.

The memos authorized keeping detainees naked, in painful standing positions and in cold cells for long periods of time. Other techniques included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family also were used.

Nowak said Saturday that Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates the same U.N. convention. But at that point he did not specifically address the issue of how the convention would apply to those who drafted the interrogation policy and gave the CIA the legal go-ahead.
Click to read the article and comments

Nancy Pelosi Knew about Waterboarding

Americans have to decide now - We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets

from The Washington Post
By Porter J. Goss
Saturday, April 25, 2009

Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.

A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

-- We understood what the CIA was doing.

-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Circuses are not new in Washington, and I can see preparations being made for tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. The CIA has been pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. After Sept. 11, the general outcry was, "Why don't we have better overseas capabilities?" I fear that in the years to come this refrain will be heard again: once a threat -- or God forbid, another successful attack -- captures our attention and sends the pendulum swinging back. There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.

Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day "I have your back" only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its foundation.

We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.

The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we operate. The terrorists captured by the CIA perfected the act of beheading innocents using dull knives. Khalid Sheik Mohammed boasted of the tactic of placing explosives high enough in a building to ensure that innocents trapped above would die if they tried to escape through windows. There is simply no comparison between our professionalism and their brutality.

Our enemies do not subscribe to the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury. "Name, rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably, the only question this administration wants us to ask. Instead of taking risks, our intelligence officers will soon resort to wordsmithing cables to headquarters while opportunities to neutralize brutal radicals are lost.

The days of fortress America are gone. We are the world's superpower. We can sit on our hands or we can become engaged to improve global human conditions. The bottom line is that we cannot succeed unless we have good intelligence. Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us.

The writer, a Republican, was director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006 and was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to 2004.
Click to read the article and comments

Obama just got played by Iran's Ayatollah - you live by the sword, you die by the side

Wow! That one had to hurt!

Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just dropped the "Anti-CIA" card on Obama. Yes, Obama. You bad-mouthed the CIA. You've convinced many Americans and the world that we are the bad guys and guess what happened? Low and behold, Khamenei tells the world that US Intelligence (CIA) is responsible for the attacks that killed Iranian Pilgrims.

How do you dispute that charge Obama? You can't. You've already made it so that all of our intelligence services and military are now "guilty until proven innocent."

Yes Obama, you own it! One more time. "YOU OWN IT!" Any questions before you slither back into the White House?

Thanks for the way you've been treating all the Patriots who are defending and protecting our Nation. (sarcasm) They are Americans who are Proud of Our Country (something you and your wife are not familiar with) and serve us honorably. You crapped all over them. Of course, what does it matter to you? They're not the type of people you hang with anyway are they are.
Rees

Ali Khamenei charges US military in Iraq, Israeli intelligence with attacks that killed Iranian pilgrims

DEBKAfile Special Report
April 25, 2009

"The main suspects in this crime and crimes similar to that are American security and military forces," said Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Satuday, April 25, of the string of deadly bombs that left 155 dead in Iraq including dozens of Iranian pilgrims.

"The growth of the poisonous grass of terrorism in Iraq will definitely be written in America's criminal record and US and Israeli intelligence bodies are the first suspects of that," he said.

DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report that the all-powerful ayatollah was not just accusing the US security and military forces in Iraq of the suicide attacks of the last 48 hours but of "similar" crimes.

The ayatollah's attack shortly after Hillary Clinton's unannounced arrival in Baghdad seems to signify a sudden sharp cooling in Tehran-Washington relations - hardly a hopeful starter for the dialogue sought by President Barack Obama.

Two suicide bombers struck separate targets Friday, April 24, killing at least 65 people at the important Shiite shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad as people gathered for Friday prayers; seven died at a car dealership in Diyala. At least 149 were wounded in both incidents. Thursday, a suicide bomber killed 55 people, including 53 Iranian pilgrims, also in Diyala, while a female suicide bomber killed 28 people in Baghdad. More than 100 were wounded in both attacks.

Khamenei may have been irked by the encounter in Tokyo between US special envoy Richard Holbrooke and Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki at a donors' conference for Pakistan. What exactly happened between them is not known. When asked about a meeting, Holbrook said curtly: "No dialogue. I ran into the foreign minister as we were milling around and we said 'hello' and chatted for about a minute or two."
Click to read this and other great articles at the Debka File

Here is additional information from an article in The Jerusalem Post:
Iran blames Israel, US for Iraq attacks

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed Israel and the United States on Saturday for recent suicide attacks in Iraq that have killed dozens of Iranian Shiite Muslim pilgrims.

"Dirty hands and evil brains that founded this blind and uncontrolled terrorism in Iraq should know that the fire will burn them, too," Khamenei said in a statement broadcast on state television.

"The American and Israeli intelligence services are the prime suspects," state television quoted the Iranian leader as saying.

Khamenei's comments come as US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Iraq and the Obama administration has said it wants to engage Iran after a 30-year diplomatic deadlock.

Clinton responded to Khamenei's allegations, saying it was "disappointing for anyone to make such a claim since it is clearly traced to the al-Qaida remnants and other violent groups who wish to disrupt the progress of Iraq."

"I condemn these violent recent efforts to disrupt the progress that Iraq is making," Clinton said, claiming the attacks were a sign that extremists are afraid Iraq's government is succeeding.
But she said the response by the government and its people was "firm and united in rejecting that violence and refusing to allow it to set Iraqi against Iraqi, which is obviously one of its intended goals."

Iran has sent mixed messages to Washington in response to President Barack Obama's overtures.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran was ready to forget the past and start a new relationship - but he also called Israel a racist country and blamed the US invasion of Iraq on a Zionist conspiracy.

US president Barack Obama has been trying a different approach to Teheran by offering to engage in dialogue with the Iranians, who have sent conflicting signals back to Washington.

On Monday at a UN anti-racism conference, Ahmadinejad called Israel the "most cruel and repressive racist regime," prompting diplomats from every European Union country to walk out. Click to read the article and comments