Europe is finished - and neck and neck!

Dame Maggie Thatcher possessed something anatomically that Tony Blair apparently may not have. The EU caved on Blair because of their commercial interests with Iran. Europe is finished. It is only a matter of time - say around 2040 - when the EU will have become overrun by radical Muslims and will have abdicated their Western ideals. Political correctness will be their undoing.

A retired State Department friend tells me he believes America's involvement in the kidnapping matter is more likely to impede progress for Britain in terms of getting their hostages back and he believes Blair probably asked Bush to go slow.

Then, Cal Thomas sees it his way.Either way this has not bee a good week for Britain and an even worse one for Jimmy Carter as it reminds us what a pathetic president he was. (See 1 below.)

If 2 and 3 below is correct, Pelosi and entourage should go out to the airport and see for themselves. (See 2 and 3 below.)

Newt Gingrich recently appeared before a group of Republican Ladies and proved, again, his ability to make telling points through focused humor. He asked his audience to think about the immigration problem and compare two models - the government one and the NGO one. In the case of the government we have 12 million acknowledged untracked illegals. He then asked the audience had they ever sent a package through UPS and or Parcel Post and queried could they track the article from the time is was given to the time it was received? He suggested we immediately send 12 million packages to the nation's untracked illegals.

Newt then stated he favors a guest worker program and card be issued by Visa, American Express and or Master Charge. He reminded his listeners an illegal use of a credit card could be checked in less than 11 seconds whereas in Texas there was an instance of 49 times when an illegal SS card number has been used and nothing was done.

He concluded by stating the Lyndon Johnson model of government was broken, we faced a national crisis of monumental proportions and needed another Lincoln-Douglas type Debate and said he was going to campaign by demanding the nominees of the two major parties engage in such. The debates would begin in September and last until the month of the campaign. The debates would would each be 1 1/2 hours in length. The format would be pure debate, no panels or contrived questions etc.

Newt is right about the broken government model. It needs fixing and certainly a meaningful debate between the two major candidates would be constructive. Whether this would result in a resolution of our nation's ill's is problematical but it is worth a try. Sacrifice, common sense and intelligence is what is called for and politicians are not likely to engage in anything approaching sacrifice when their necks are exposed and as for common sense and intelligence, well, you figure that one out for yourselves.

As I noted above, it is only a matter of time, before Europe is finished, and frankly we are not too far behind unless we reverse course in so many tough areas. The last Millennium may been been the age of Aquarius but the next one belongs to the Muslims who are out to overwhelm us with their radical beliefs and fecundity.

The fate of our nation lies somewhere between our politicians and Muslims and who is screwing us faster. At this point it is neck and neck!

Clear headed "Uncle Tom Sowell" tells it like it is but the Democrats can't listen because their heads are , well you know. (See 3 below.)

Dick



1) Britain: Then and Now
By Cal Thomas

Belfast, Northern Ireland - Twenty-five years ago, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher forcefully and decisively ordered British troops to the Falkland Islands to liberate them from an invading Argentine force. It was a military and political triumph widely supported by the public, leading to conservative victories at the polls for another 15 years.

Today, Tony Blair presides over a much different Britain. After Iran seized 15 British soldiers and sailors in what it says were Iranian, not Iraqi waters, the Daily Mail called it "a humiliating week for Britain: a week that saw Iran get away with piracy, kidnap and blackmail, a week fanatics played cat-and-mouse with (Britain); a week exposing feebleness at home and impotence abroad."

In 1980, Jimmy Carter's failed rescue of American diplomats held hostage by Iranian religious fanatics added to the perception of American weakness, as has America's inability to bring a quick end to the conflict in Iraq, thanks in part to Iran's support of terrorists there.

The one calculation made then is the one Iran is making now: the West is weak and will allow itself to be humiliated before Muslim states in order to preserve the lives of and win freedom for its citizens, and that it doesn't have the staying power to persevere in Iraq and other places should its nose get bloodied.

The Falklands victory is being used by much of the British media to mark Tony Blair as weak and indecisive. Blair, who has been a stalwart supporter of American efforts in Iraq and the battle against Muslim fanatics in Britain, is pilloried in the Sunday Telegraph for his "unquestioning support of the United States," which has "made us the easy target for Middle Eastern countries who want to take action against America, but fear that country's military might."

This gets it exactly backward. Britain is not an easy target of fanatics because of Blair's support of the United States. Britain is a target because it is Britain, just as France, Germany and the rest of Europe are targets for their openness, freedom and democracy. For not banding together as free people, we all risk hanging individually; as Tehran and others prepare the noose from which the weak and indecisive will hang. This is not a war any of us can escape. It is a war that can only be won or lost.

The need for a strong response to Iran is underscored in a recent London Sunday Times editorial, which calls for Britain to return to the United Nations to ask for tougher sanctions. In addition, the paper says, "We know (Iran's) people are divided. If Germany and France will not end the valuable export credits for Iran, perhaps Britain and America can give them a helping nudge. Those companies that trade so profitably with Iran might suddenly find a chill breeze in their relations with London and Washington."

British ministers are said to be preparing a compromise offer this week to allow Iran to "save face" by promising it will never "knowingly" enter Iranian waters without permission. But why should Iran stop there if its intention is the continued humiliation of the West? Why should Iran, which extracted maximum propaganda value from holding Americans hostage for 444 days, give up British hostages after less than two weeks?

The Iranian leadership understands the power of coercion and military might. It is prepared for people to die en masse for its apocalyptic beliefs, concluding the West is not. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons in hopes of increasing its ability to withstand pressure from other countries when it engages in outrageous acts, such as kidnapping.

Britain and the United States had better get the support of all of Europe, or Iran will conclude it can get away with anything. It also would help if the United States and Europe united in an effort to become energy independent, which we can do if we are willing to make the commitment. Starving the Iranian regime of oil and gas profits would be the fastest way to sink it. Anything less will prove, in Iranian eyes, that today's Britain is nothing like the Britain of 1982 and will encourage Iran to pursue strength while Britain and much of the West embrace weakness.
CalThomas@tribune.com



2)According to military and intelligence sources, in the last several weeks, Damascus international airport main has become the main transport hub for a stream of Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists heading for Revolutionary Guards installations in Iran. Hence Israel military intelligence chief’s pessimistic briefing to the Israeli cabinet Sunday, April 1. (See separate item on this page) Damascus airport is also the transit point for returning terrorists to gather and pick up their assignment for various Middle East countries, as well as Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Syrian military intelligence and Iranian RG officers have set up a joint depot at the Syrian airport for directing the incoming and outgoing traffic - much of it ferried by Syrian Airways.

A high-ranking Western intelligence source in the Middle East told DEBKAfile that the number of such terrorist-trainees commuting between Damascus and Tehran has grown to more than three times the volume of Muslim and al Qaeda fighters heading out from Syria into Iraq. This source calculates Iran is running a crash program to prepare an army of trained terrorist strength to retaliate for a potential US attack on its nuclear installations. That will be the signal for these men to ignite a regional war of terror across Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and out to Sinai and Egypt.

Four Iranian command centers have been set up at home, in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, to coordinate the movements of fighting men and the arms consignments that are being shipped through marine smuggling routes to their various destinations.

According to our intelligence and military sources, new training methods are employed for the new intake of terrorists. They are no longer being trained at special facilities provided for them at the camps run by the Al Quds Brigades, the RGs international branch. From the beginning of 2007, they have been integrated in regular RG training facilities and are taking basic training along with Iranian recruits in line with a revised Iranian military doctrine. The entire Middle East is deemed henceforth a single integrated line designed to defend the ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran in case of American attack. This line will be manned entirely by units which underwent training in the same combat tactics and operate the same weapons systems and communications.

Syria’s high command and military intelligence are pivotal to the construction, administration and control of this new fighting-terrorist machine. The personal say-so of president Bashar Assad would have been necessary for this project. Damascus airport facilities are a pivotal link in the mechanism wiring Tehran to the terrorist groups and transporting them from training centers to operating bases ready to fight for the Islamic Republic. Without Damascus’ aid, the operation would have taken much longer.

Israel’s AMAN chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin views this burgeoning war-cum-terror machine as a dangerous element that could tip the region over into a full-blown conflict without prior warning. No one outside Iran, even seasoned military intelligence observers, can know for certain when, why or for which location, some high-up in the wildly-radical Revolutionary Guards will decide to push the button to activate it.

3) Democrats Playing With Fire
By Thomas Sowell

Congressman Tom Lantos, who is a member of the delegation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading to Syria, put the mission clearly when he said: "We have an alternative Democratic foreign policy."

Democrats can have any foreign policy they want -- if and when they are elected to the White House.

Until Nancy Pelosi came along, it was understood by all that we had only one president at a time and -- like him or not -- he alone had the Constitutional authority to speak for this country to foreign nations, especially in wartime.

All that Pelosi's trip can accomplish is to advertise American disunity to a terrorist-sponsoring nation in the Middle East while we are in a war there. That in turn can only embolden the Syrians to exploit the lack of unified resolve in Washington by stepping up their efforts to destabilize Iraq and the Middle East in general.

Members of the opposition party, whichever party that might be at a given time, knew that their role was not to intervene abroad themselves to undermine this country's foreign policy, however much they might criticize it at home.

During the Second World War, the defeated Republican presidential candidate, Wendell Wilkie, even acted as President Roosevelt's personal envoy to British Prime Minister Churchill.

He understood that we were all in this together, however we might disagree among ourselves about the best course to follow.

Today, Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats are stepping in to carry out their own foreign policy and even their own military policy on troop deployment -- all the while denying that they are intruding on the president's authority.

They are doing the same thing domestically by making a big media circus over the fact that the Bush administration fired eight U.S. attorneys. These attorneys are among the many officials who serve at the pleasure of the president -- which means that they can be fired at any time for any reason or for no reason.

That is why there was no big hullabaloo in the media when Bill Clinton fired all the U.S. attorneys across the country -- even though that got rid of the U.S. attorneys who were conducting an on-going investigation into corruption in Clinton's own administration as governor of Arkansas.

So much hate has been hyped against George W. Bush that anything that is done against him is unlikely to be questioned in most of the media.

But whatever passing damage is being done to George W. Bush is a relatively minor concern compared to the lasting damage that is being done to the presidency as an institution that will still be here when George W. Bush is gone.

Once it becomes accepted that it is all right to violate both the laws and the traditions of this nation, and to undermine the ability of the United States to speak to other nations of the world with one voice, we will have taken another fateful step downward into the degeneration of this society.

Such a drastic and irresponsible step should remove any lingering doubt that the Democrats' political strategy is to ensure that there is an American defeat in Iraq, in order to ensure their own political victory in 2008.

That these political games are being played while Iran keeps advancing relentlessly toward acquiring nuclear weapons is a fateful sign of the utter unreality of politicians preoccupied with scoring points and a media obsessed with celebrity bimbos, living and dead.

Once Iran has nuclear weapons, that will be an irreversible change that will mark a defining moment in the history of the United States and of Western civilization, which will forever after live at the mercy of hate-filled suicidal fanatics and sadists.

Yet among too many politicians in Washington, it is business as usual. Indeed, it is monkey business as usual, as Congressional Democrats revel in the power of their new and narrow election victory last year to drag people before committee hearings and posture for the television cameras.

It has been said that the world ends not with a bang but with a whimper. But who would have thought that it could end with political clowning in the shadow of a mushroom cloud?