Pew and Spew!

Ed Lasky recently wrote an article pertaining to what direction Sen. Obama's foreign policy might take. Based on what Mr. Obama has said, to date, it is nothing short of scary because it reveals not only his inexperience but also his lack of judgment. If by change, the Senator means, we are going from the problems caused by GW's tough and often mistaken stance against terrorism to bigger ones caused by his own naivety and lack of experience, I seriously doubt that is the change most voters have in mind when they hear that word.

While on the subject of judgment the press and media continue to avoid Obama's church affiliation and connection with Minister Wright. For almost twenty years Sen. Obama and his wife were members of a church whose minister frequently attacked this nation blaming it for most of the world's ills from Aids, to causing 9/11, excessive jailing of black offenders, to wanton killings in WW 2 and a foreign policy seeking world domination among others.

Certainly Sen. Obama has a right to belong to any church he so chooses but continuing to sit in a pew while his minister spews, suggests to me the Senator either lacks judgment or condones this man's depravity.

Once again I submit Sen. Obama has snowed the public and Ms. Geraldine Ferraro is correct in suggesting he has been given a pass because of our nation's desire to embrace affirmative action to rectify past acts of immorality. It would be very unwise if we let our hearts and misplaced guilt elect a president who is seemingly unqualified simply because he is Black rather than use our heads and judge him critically as anyone else seeking the presidency - on his own merits.

GW was attacked for being incompetent, for his drug indiscretions, evading military service, being unable to accomplish anything without Papa's friends, for being inarticulate and dumb. These same attackers willingly overlook GW's successful tenure as Governor of one of the largest states, the Ivy League schools he attended and his own various BA and MBA degrees but without a second thought, give Sen. Obama a pass on his youthful pot smoking, lack of military service whatsoever, no real executive experience, his paltry Senate voting record limited to three year's service in the Senate.

Wake up America - get realistic! (See 1,2, 3, 4 and 5 below.)

A memo reader's response: "Yes, yes and yes again. It begins to be apparent that Obama is in truth an alienated radical, that his wife is an extremist, and that his pastor is a wacko of the fever-swamp, hallucinating-bigot variety. It is unthinkable that such a man can be president. Perhaps the shine is beginning to wear off the man from Audacious Hope. I ardently hope so. Well, try to set all this aside and have a good weekend. Cheers,..."

Arthur Herman offers some advice on how to deal with Iran. Is anyone listening? (See 6 below.)

Dick

1) The Wright Problem
By Ross Douthat

Andrew Sullivan declares the Wright issue "not out of bounds."

Video emerged of Barack Obama's pastor's saying that the U.S. invited the September 11 attacks with its support for state terrorism abroad.

Ever since the rise of the religious right, conservative politicians have attempted a delicate two-step with conservative Christianity's more extreme elements, simultaneously welcoming their support and keeping their more outlandish positions at arm's length. Now it's Barack Obama's turn to try the same trick -- except that the extremist in question is the pastor of his church, a spiritual mentor, and the man who married him and baptized his children.

For a time, it looked like the controversy surrounding the Reverend Wright would be confined to his connection to Louis Farrakhan and his Afrocentric gloss on Christianity. But the new video footage takes things a step further: The problem is less that Wright sounds Malcolm X than that he sounds like Jerry Falwell crossed with Ward Churchill, calling down God's vengeance on a corrupt U.S.A., but for leftist instead of right-wing reasons.

So far, Obama has attempted to laugh off Wright's penchant for inflammatory rhetoric, comparing him to "an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," and suggesting that this is "what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor." But as Wright's America-bashing gets more airtime -- and as his Obama-boosting sermons put his church's tax exemption at risk -- Obama may have to go further down the road to explicitly disavowing his pastor. His connection to Wright isn't the equivalent of John McCain's going to Liberty University to make nice with Jerry Falwell. It's the equivalent of John McCain taking his wife and children, most Sundays, to Jerry Falwell's church. And the disconnect between Obama's studied moderation and his congregation's radicalism requires more of an explanation than he's offered so far.

In an election when many expected that Mitt Romney's fate would be determined by how he talked (or didn't) about his Mormon faith, it may be Obama whose candidacy ends up riding on how he addresses the relationship between his politics and his church.


2) The Likeable Side of Bush
By Carl Leubsdorf

Once a year, normal Washington political antagonism is suspended, and leaders of the two parties, plus their critics in the press, join in showing what unites them, rather than what divides them.

It's the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, an organization of Washington journalists, a white-tie affair that pokes fun at politicians and themselves. To some, it's an embarrassing, all-too-cozy relic; to others, it's an oasis of civility and fun in an often-uncivil political world.

From the vantage point of the head table, where I presided Saturday night as the club's 119th president, the mood was one of civility and good fellowship, exemplified by the approach of the night's top guest and most surprising performer, President Bush.

Mr. Bush displayed an ingratiating manner, both in his public moments and as a dinner companion. It reminded everyone why he was elected in the first place and was so popular a governor in Texas.

For four hours, he happily signed autographs from well wishers – including some Democrats – made pithy comments about political allies and rivals and spoke of his hopes for his presidential library at Southern Methodist University.

As a person, the president is engaging and congenial and, in my dealings with him, always proper and polite. As a Texan might say, he shows his mama raised him right.

That personal manner helped him win the presidency, not to overlook the Supreme Court's role in affirming the outcome.

But it often seemed subordinated when the cocky new president was riding high from his intrepid response to the 9/11 attacks and the initial acclaim for his decision to oust Saddam Hussein.

As time went on, he seemed less appealing. A growing backlash prompted by mounting difficulties in Iraq and domestic political missteps eroded his public support and exacerbated an already partisan atmosphere.

More recently, tempered by experience, his engaging side has been more evident in encounters with reporters, although it has yet to enhance his low job approval rating, which continues to reflect opposition to his policies.

That engaging side certainly was present Saturday, both in his manner and in his bold decision to risk displaying a rather shaky baritone voice by singing from the Gridiron stage.

That turn, the first by a president, was his idea. He performed with panache, delighting the audience with lyrics that, in the best Gridiron tradition, poked fun at himself and his colleagues:

"Down the lane I look

Dick Cheney's strollin'

With documents he's been withholdin'...

Yes, you're all gonna miss me

The way you used to diss me,

But soon I'll touch the brown, brown grass of home."

At the head table, chances for bipartisanship were limited.

Since Republicans control the executive branch, the only Democrat amid Cabinet members and military chiefs was House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, whom I'd hurriedly recruited with the considerable help of Bloomberg's Al Hunt to speak for his party when Rep. Charles Rangel fell ill.

Mr. Bush praised Mr. Hoyer for taking on the task at short notice, prompting Mr. Hoyer to respond, "I'm a fool." Still, he performed well.

So did Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom I'd asked a year ago to serve as the Republican speaker. She took some digs at fellow Republicans, including the party's all-but-certain presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain. Nor did she spare Sen. Larry Craig or even Mr. Bush.

"They say the office of president ages a man," she said, before adding an evident reference to the Arizona senator:

"Why not elect the one who has a head start?"

Mr. Bush seemed to enjoy the barbs directed at Mr. McCain, both by the speakers and in a song describing him to the strains of a Bruce Springsteen favorite, Born in the Fourth Estate.

In the end, the president took full advantage of one of his last opportunities to tell the press what he thinks of it – institutionally and personally.

"You can't have a true democracy without a free press," he said after his musical turn. But he quickly added, "I'll admit that sometimes you do get on my nerves."

He even planted a kiss on the cheek of Hearst's venerable Helen Thomas, though no fan of her sometimes pointed questioning.

In the end, both sides know Mr. Bush will be judged by the success or failure of his policies and their ultimate impact on the nation and the world. But a night like this shows that, even after all the criticism, often justified, he understands the press' essential role in our democracy.

3) Adventures In Identity Politics
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Elections can be about policy, personality or identity. The race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is surely not about policy. The differences between the two are microscopic.

It did not start out that way. Last year, when Hillary was headed toward a coronation, she deliberately ran to the center. She took more moderate views on Iraq, for example, and voted to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

When she began taking heat for these positions from the other candidates and the Democratic Party's activist core, and as her early lead began to erode, she quickly tacked left and found herself inhabiting precisely the same ideological space as Obama.

With no substantive differences left, the Obama-Clinton campaign was reduced to personality and identity. Not advantageous ground for Hillary. In a personality contest with the charismatic young phenom, she loses in a landslide.

What to do? First, adjust your own persona. Hence that New Hampshire tear and an occasional strategic show of vulnerability to soften her image. It worked for a while, but personality remakes are simply too difficult to pull off for someone as ingrained in the national consciousness as Clinton.

If you cannot successfully pretty yourself, dirty the other guy. Hence the relentless attacks designed to redefine Obama and take him down to the level of ordinary mortals, i.e. Hillary's. Thus the contrived shock on the part of the Clinton campaign that an Obama economic adviser would tell the Canadians not to pay too much attention to Obama's anti-NAFTA populism or that Samantha Power would tell the BBC not to pay too much attention to Obama's current withdrawal plans for Iraq.

The attack line writes itself: Says one thing and means another. So much for the man of new politics. Just an ordinary politician -- like Hillary.

That same maladroit foreign policy adviser is caught calling Hillary a monster. A resignation demand nicely calls attention to the fact that the Obama campaign -- surprise! -- hurls invective. And a strategic mention of Tony Rezko, the Chicago fixer who was once Obama's patron, nicely attaches to Obama a whiff of corruption by association.

These attacks have a cumulative effect. Obama mania is beginning to wear off. Charisma is intrinsically transient. But Hillary's attacks have succeeded in hastening its dissipation.

So if there are no policy issues between them and the personality differences have been whittled down, what's left? Identity. Race, age and gender. Is this campaign about anything else?

Nationally, the older white woman -- Clinton -- carries the senior vote, the white vote and the women's vote. The younger black man -- Obama -- carries the youth vote, the black vote and the male vote. This was perhaps inevitable in the first campaign in which a woman and an African-American have a serious chance at the presidency. But it received a significant gravity assist from Bill Clinton's South Carolina forays into racial politics.

Did Bill Clinton deliberately encourage racial polarization by saying before South Carolina that one expects women to vote for Hillary and blacks for Obama? Or, after the primary, by dismissing Obama's victory with: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice"?

With Bill Clinton you never know. And there is no proving cause and effect, but the chronology is striking. Two weeks before the South Carolina primary, Obama was leading Hillary among blacks by only 53 percent to 30 percent. Ten days later, Obama was ahead 59 to 25. On Election Day, he got 78 percent of the black vote. By the time the campaign trail reached Mississippi on Tuesday, Obama was getting 92 percent of the black vote. And only 26 percent of the white vote.

The pillars of American liberalism -- the Democratic Party, the universities and the mass media -- are obsessed with biological markers, most particularly race and gender. They have insisted, moreover, that pedagogy and culture and politics be just as seized with the primacy of these distinctions and with the resulting "privileging" that allegedly haunts every aspect of our social relations.

They have gotten their wish. This primary campaign represents the full flowering of identity politics. It's not a pretty picture. Geraldine Ferraro says Obama is only where he is because he's black. Professor Orlando Patterson says the 3 a.m. phone call ad is not about a foreign policy crisis but a subliminal Klan-like appeal to the fear of "black men lurking in the bushes around white society."

Good grief. The optimist will say that when this is over, we will look back on the Clinton-Obama contest, and its looming ugly endgame, as the low point of identity politics, and the beginning of a turning away. The pessimist will just vote Republican.

4) What Foreign Policy Agenda?
By Andrew Kohut

Issues have hardly played a dominant role in the nominating races, especially on the Democratic side. Still, the public has a clear domestic agenda for the next president. Fix the economy, reduce health care costs, improve the environment, reform education, deal with rising energy costs and so on. This hearty appetite for an assertive domestic approach arises in no small part from the discontent that large majorities have with the Bush administration’s handling of nearly all of these issues.

This disapproval holds true with respect to foreign policy, too — just 30 percent approve of President Bush’s stewardship of it. But the public is far less clear as to what it wants with respect to foreign policy.

Opinion surveys show that American views about the world will not only challenge the presidential candidates of both parties in the general election, but will force the winner in November to deal with a citizenry that is downbeat about the world and fractured along partisan lines.

Disillusionment with the Iraq war has ushered in a rise in isolationist sentiment comparable to that of the mid-1970s following the Vietnam war. Pew surveys have found as many as four in 10 Americans saying the United States “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.”

This is a significantly higher percentage of people than subscribed to this view at the beginning of the decade. A rise in isolationism has signaled a diminished public appetite for the assertive national security policy of the Bush years and, in general, a less internationalist outlook. For example, in the summer of 2006, polls found majorities of Americans saying the United States was not responsible for resolving the conflict between Israel and other countries in the Middle East during the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

American public opinion is also extraordinarily partisan. Consider, Iraq. It remains number one on the public’s foreign policy issue agenda, yet there is hardly a consensus as to what to do next. While a late February Pew poll found a continuing majority of respondents (54 percent) saying the war was a mistake, opinions were evenly divided about how and when to extract United States forces.

About half of those surveyed (49 percent) said they favored bringing troops home as soon as possible, but most (33 percent) favored gradual withdrawal over the next year or two, rather than immediate withdrawal. Similarly, just under half (47 percent) said that the United States should keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized. But those who wanted to “stay the course” were divided too, with 30 percent saying that no timetable should be set and 16 percent favoring a timetable.
Chart: Keep Troops in Iraq Pew Research Center

What the candidates say about Iraq in the general election will be further tested by the huge partisan gap in responses: a 54-percentage-point divide between Democrats and Republicans about keeping troops in Iraq.

With rising concerns about the economy and jobs in particular, trade is a prime example of a tricky issue for the candidates, let alone the next president. While most Americans continue to think that global trade is a good thing, the number feeling this way is sharply lower than it was in the past. Just 59 percent of Americans say trade with other countries is having a good effect on the United States, down sharply from 78 percent in 2002.

Opinions about free trade are far less positive than views about trade in general. In December 2006, even before the economy went into its current slide, only 35 percent of respondents in a Pew poll said that free trade agreements like NAFTA had helped their financial situation — 36 percent believed those agreements had hurt them.

Trade is a tougher challenge for John McCain than it is for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama because a key element in the Republican base — the business class — remains heavily pro-trade. This may explain why, as of this writing, Senator McCain’s official web site does not name trade as one of the 15 issues “of focus.”

While the American public is divided on Iraq, and increasingly wary about trade, it also remains divided on the so-called war on terrorism. A narrow majority (52 percent) continues to say it is right for the government to monitor the communications of suspected terrorists without first getting court permission; 44 percent say this is wrong.

The use of torture is a similarly divisive issue, with about half saying it can be justified often or sometimes when used against suspected terrorists to gain important information. A modest majority (52 percent) believes that the detainees the United States is holding at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being treated fairly.
Chart: Partisan Divide Over Major Anti-Terrorism Policies Pew Research Center

But again there is a wide partisan divide on these issues. Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats believe it is right for the government to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists without court permission (74 percent versus 39 percent). The partisan differences in the treatment of Guantanamo detainees are nearly identical: 73 percent of Republicans say the government’s policies toward detainees are fair, compared with 39 percent of Democrats.

Obviously, on these — and just about all other foreign policy questions — Senator McCain and his Democratic opponent will be confronted with the daunting task of appealing not only to their bases, but also to independents, who have decidedly different opinions about these issues. And as we have already seen, both campaigns will be drawn into foreign policy, nonetheless, because Senator McCain will run on his experience and Senators Clinton and Obama will attempt to tie him to President Bush’s record. In turn, each side will work hard to show that the opposition’s way of thinking about foreign policy is out of touch with a moderate point of view.

5) Obama and Iraq
By Michael Gerson

WASHINGTON -- The economy is a rising issue in presidential politics, but Iraq still overshadows this election.

John McCain's nomination was assured by the success of the surge he had consistently advocated, against intense opposition.

If Barack Obama eventually wins the Democratic nomination, his extraordinary rise may be traced to a speech on Oct. 2, 2002, at an anti-war rally in downtown Chicago. That day Obama -- then an obscure state senator -- said: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."

For many Democrats, this prescience has given Obama the aura of a prophet. And this early opposition lends credibility to his current promise: to swiftly end the U.S. combat role in Iraq.

Recently, this pledge was called into question by Obama's now-former adviser, Samantha Power: "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan -- an operational plan -- that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground."

The proper response to such a statement is: One would hope so. Power's "gaffe" happens to be an obvious truth. Would Americans expect a president to keep campaign pledges that he later determines would undermine the national interest?

But it is not only the future of Obama's anti-war commitment being questioned; it is also his past consistency. In a new article on Commentary magazine's Web site, Peter Wehner undertakes a thorough examination of Obama's Iraq record. It is, shall we say, complex.

More than a year after the initial success of the invasion, Obama explained, "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." And he was correct. In July 2004, he argued that America had an "absolute obligation" to stay in Iraq until the country stabilized. "The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died."

Two months later, Obama criticized Bush's conduct of the war, but repeated that simply pulling out would further destabilize Iraq, making it an "extraordinary hotbed of terrorist activity." And he signaled his openness to the deployment of additional troops if this would make an eventual withdrawal more likely.

In June 2006, Obama still opposed "a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops." "I don't think it's appropriate for Congress," he said, "to make those decisions about what happens in the field."

By late 2006, as public support for the Iraq War disintegrated and his own political ambitions quickened, Obama called for a "phased withdrawal." When Bush announced the surge, Obama saw nothing in the plan that would "make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that's taking place there" -- a lapse in his prophetic powers.

When Obama announced his presidential candidacy on Feb. 10, 2007, he stated, "I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008." Then in May and again in November, he voted against funding American forces in Iraq.

Wehner concludes that Obama is guilty of "problematically ad-hoc judgments at best, calculatingly cynical judgments at worst." And he notes that while McCain has been consistently right about Iraq in the years since the invasion -- highly critical of the early strategy and supportive of a successful surge -- Obama has been consistently wrong in supporting the early, failed strategy and opposing the surge, even as its success became evident.

Obama did indeed oppose the war early on. But he did not become an anti-war leader in Congress. He is not Dennis Kucinich -- and thank goodness. Obama's initial foreign policy instincts -- refusing to tie the hands of the military with arbitrary deadlines -- were not radical. I find this reassuring.

But there is little doubt that Obama has gained in political support among Democrats as his positions on Iraq have become progressively anti-war. His March 2008 withdrawal deadline -- which is up now -- would have undone the Anbar Awakening, massively strengthened al-Qaeda and increased civilian carnage. And Obama will find -- as John Kerry found in 2004 -- that Americans are suspicious of a prospective commander in chief who votes against funding U.S. troops in the field.

The Iraq War determined the paths for McCain and Obama. But there is a large difference between them. McCain eventually won his nomination because he showed political courage in the face of overwhelming pressure. Obama may eventually win his nomination because he surrendered to that pressure.

6) HOW NOT TO DEAL WITH IRAN: APPEASEMENT MAKES WAR MORE LIKELY
By ARTHUR HERMAN


WEDNESDAY'S retirement of Adm. William Fallon may mean we're finally moving toward the right policy for dealing with Iran and its nuclear program before it's too late.

Fallon leaves as head of CentCom, which oversees US operations in the Middle East. He's a fine officer and former Vietnam naval aviator. But his approach to the Middle East's most dangerous rogue state has been to avoid confrontation (as when Revolutionary Guard speedboats buzzed American warships in the Gulf and met no response) and to reassure Tehran that we have no plans for taking military action against its ongoing nuclear-weapons program - which is, of course, exactly what the regime likes to hear.

In fact, Fallon's approach, and that of our State Department recently, has been to make that action more, not less, likely.

In dealing with rogue states, diplomacy can never be a substitute for, or even the alternative to, force. It can only be effective as the extension of force - force that is a credible threat because it will be decisive if unleashed, and because it plainly will be unleashed should diplomacy fail.

The pointlessness of "pure diplomacy" was on display last week, with the new UN "sanctions" against Iran's nuke builders.

The White House and State Department have been pushing for these new sanctions for nearly a year - even though the UN's own International Atomic Energy Agency has revealed that none of the sanctions adopted so far have even slowed Iran's progress toward developing nuclear weapons.

Yet these new "sanctions" turn out to be nothing more than a call for "vigilance" in dealing with the two Iranian banks involved in the country's nuclear program. Oh, the UN also calls for inspection of ship and air cargos to Iran that might include bomb-making materials that are banned under existing sanctions - but only if those goods are being shipped under Iranian colors.

This means that Iran's two main nuclear enablers, Russia and China, can still send whatever Iran needs to complete its uranium-enrichment efforts.

In other words, the Bush administration's long drive to bring diplomatic (as opposed to military) pressure to bear on Iran - to stop the nuclear program before it destabilizes the Middle East or worse - has been a complete waste of time. Worse, while we've diddled with diplomacy, Tehran has had five years to forge ahead with its plans.

Again, this drive explicitly abjured any use of military force. Secretary Condoleeza Rice has been reassuring the world that the United States wants a multilateral, diplomatic solution to the Iran "problem" rather than a unilateral military one, while Adm. Fallon was making similar pacific noises from Centcom.

Some have hoped Israel would do the job, but Israeli strikes would probably only delay, not halt, Tehran's program. That leaves the United States armed forces as the one power with enough muscle and will to enforce the world community's rules, and (we hope) protect that community from the results of its own irresponsibility.

If you feel like you were here once before, you were. In 2002, this same world community confronted Saddam Hussein about his supposed weapons of mass destruction - an issue made more urgent by the specter of another, even more destructive 9/11.

Then, as now, the United Nations declared the situation intolerable. Then, as now, it refused to pull the trigger on its own resolutions: in the case of Iraq, 14 of them. Then, as now, the US military was left to deal with a problem that the rest of the world refused to confront.

This is not surprising. A manifestly divided and corrupt United Nations, a feckless and gun-shy intelligence establishment and an administration trying to use a kinder, gentler approach in the face of a gathering threat - that is a formula for trouble, if not disaster. Together, it all signals to any would-be aggressor that there will be no real consequences for defying the world, that Western-style diplomacy is only a fig leaf for weakness and indecision.

Force without diplomacy is sheer brutality, the law of the jungle. But diplomacy without force, or the threat of force, is an invitation to chaos - no law at all.

It's the lesson Western democracies learned in the 1930s. It's the lesson Israel is now learning in dealing with Hamas in Gaza. It's the lesson we all should have learned dealing with Saddam Hussein in the '80s and '90s, but didn't.

Five years after Operation Iraqi Freedom, people wonder how we ended up going to war with Iraq in the first place. The answer is: a decade or more of trying to use the United Nations to ward off a threat to regional stability until war was the only option left. Future historians will show this is where we are heading with Iran, as well.

Perhaps Adm. Fallon's departure is a sign that we're moving in the right direction at last. But when we use diplomacy without the threat of force, formal resolutions instead of genuine resolution, half-way measures instead of effective action - then we are drawing disaster down on our heads.



And US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilizad recently went so far as to state, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, that "if Iran respects its international obligations it will have no better friend than the United States" - a strange message to send to a nation that's a top sponsor of international terrorism and virtual police state.

In January, the US intelligence elite joined the appeasement chorus by releasing a National Intelligence Estimate that essentially white-washed Iran's nuclear program - sending a clear signal to the Iranians and everyone else that any preemptive US military strike against Iran, like the one against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, was off the table.

Meanwhile, the IAEA's latest (Feb. 3) report revealed that Iran isn't only forging ahead with its uranium-enrichment program but is also working on key components for detonating a nuclear device. These include high-voltage detonation equipment; wiring for multiple exploding "bridgewire" detonators, and a 1,300-foot underground shaft in which to set off those detonators - once Tehran has enriched enough material to make a test bomb.

Nothing in the current sanctions will prevent this from happening. Only a full-scale military confrontation will now do that - the confrontation the United Nations, our intelligence elite and State Department thought they were working to avoid, but which they've made even more inevitable