Semper Fi - Ed! Interview of Arad - A Must Read!

Sent to me by one of my harshest Liberal critics, a friend, himself a decorated war hero and fellow memo reader. (See 1 below.)

Commentary regarding Obamaville and why many who voted with their feet are now beginning to reject the man they also voted for with their hearts and mind. (See 2 below.)

A college professor gives Obama credit for changing his posture and rhetoric vis a vis Iran but still has severe reservations about his principles, understanding of what being an America means and his willingness to measure up to former presidents who did. He looks at Obama and sees the ghost of Jimmy Carter. (See 3 below.)

We have another writer contrasting Obama's recent Moscow performance with that of Ronald Reagan's - both good communicators. The latter addressed the Russian people and students and spoke about religious freedom etc. Our current president took a different tack.(See 3a below.)

Then Jonah Goldberg writes that Obama's foreign policy is finally taking shape and what he concludes is Obama has an ideological problem understanding democracy.

Goldberg's conclusion is not difficult to understand if one dispassionately looks at Obama's family background, his formal education, his church affiliation, employment exprience and path, voting record ,such as it was, and even whom he chose to marry.

Obama has been exposed to the downsides of Democracy all the while benefitting from its blessings. He continues conflicted by the experiences of the two.(See 3b below.)

A fascinating and very revealing 'must read' interview with Dr. Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's closest confidant, right hand and national security advisor. Arad is a brilliant realist and mourns the fact that there are no Sadats and Mandellas among the Palestinians. (See 4 below.)

Iran's Foreign Minister is preparing a dossier of new issues for discussion with the West. (See 5 below.)

al Qaeda leadership frustrated by Predator and covert effectiveness. (See 6 below.)

From a dear English 'bloke' friend and fellow memo reader who I wish would come visit with his lovely wife. (See 7 below.)

Have a great week.

Dick


1)The New York Times was recently filled with page after page of accolades spewing forth about the greatness and complexity of Michael
Jackson.

The other day, they had a couple of paragraphs on Ed McMahon's Hollywood career and aptly noted he died a pauper.

Something wrong with American journalism? Same is wrong with America's ptiorities as we decend into the abyss of the National Inquirerization of N America!


COLONEL ED HAS DIED


He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was building up their military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy required all its potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college. So Ed started classes at Boston College.


When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy both dropped the college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines. His primary flight training was in Dallas and then he went to Pensacola , Florida . He was carrier qualified, which means he knew how to perform a controlled crash of his single engine fighter, onto the rolling deck of a Navy floating runway.


It took Ed almost two years to get through all the Navy flight training. His problem was he was a very good pilot and the Marines needed flight instructors. He had a great command presence and public speaking ability, which landed him in the classroom, training new baby
Marine pilots.


His orders to the Pacific fleet and the chance to fly combat missions off a carrier came in the spring of 1945, on the same day the Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima . Of course his orders where changed. He never went to sea and he was out of the Marines in 1946.


Ed stayed in the USMC as a reserve officer. He became a successful personality in the new TV medium, after the war. His Marine command presence helped. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He never got to fly his fighter aircraft, but he saw his share of raw combat. He flew the Cessna O-1E Bird Dog, which is a single engine slow-moving unarmed plane. He functioned as an artillery spotter for the Marine batteries on the ground and as a forward controller for the Navy & Marine fighter/bombers who flew in on fast moving jet engines, bombed the area and were gone in seconds. Captain Ed was still circling
the enemy looking for more targets, all the time taking North Korean and Chinese ground fire.


He stayed with the Marines as a reserve officer and retired in 1966 as a
Colonel.


The world knows Ed as Ed McMahon of the Johnny Carson, Tonight Show. One night I was watching the show when the subject of Colonel McMahon earning a number of Navy Air Medals came up. Carson, a former Navy officer, understood the significance of these medals, but McMahon shrugged it off, saying that if you flew enough combat m issions they just sort of gave them to you. McMahon flew 85 combat missions over North Korea ; he earned every one of those Air Medals. The casualty rate, for flying forward air controllers in Korea sometimes exceeded 50% of a squadron's manpower. McMahon was lucky to have gotten home
from that war.


Once a Marine, always a Marine.


When the public was spitting (taking their personal safety into their own hands) at Marines on the streets of Southern California during Vietnam , Colonel McMahon was taking Marines off the streets and into his posh Beverley Hills home. I spoke to a retired Marine aircrew
member the day Colonel McMahon died and he personally remembered seeing McMahon at numerous Marine Air Bases in California in the 1960s. He was known for going to the Navy hospitals and visiting the wounded Marines and Sailors from this country's conflicts, even in the last
years of his life.


Colonel McMahon presented awards and decorations to fellow Marines and attended many a Marine ceremony and the annual Marine Corps Birthday Ball. He stayed true to his Corps as a board member of the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund and as the honorary chairman of the National Marine Corps Aviation Museum.. After retiring from the Marine Reserve, one
night on the Johnny Carson show, members of the California Air National Guard came on stage.


Colonel McMahon was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Air Guard in front of millions of Americans who watched it happen live. You will not see anything like that on TV anymore.


The three core values of a United States Marine are; honor, courage and commitment. This is what a Marine is taught from the first day of training and this is what that Marine believes. That was Colonel Edward P. McMahon Jr. USMCR Retired. Before he was a national figure he was a true combat hero and a patriot the nation needed then and this country
needs now.

Your war is over. Thank you Colonel McMahon.

Semper Fi Sir.


Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
23 June, 2009

2) Obamaville City Limits
By Rosslyn Smith

As I read founder of Creators Syndicates Rick Newcombe's explanation of why he is moving his business out of the increasingly corrupt confines of Los Angeles and the anti growth policies of California in general, I had to wonder. Business aren't the only one who relocate to get away from high taxes and arbitrary, out of control bureaucrats.


Americans have been voting with their feet for decades now. During the last half of the
20th century, all across America, married people with children voted with their feet rather than take on the dirty job of trying to reform the nation's corrupt urban political systems and the seemingly impossible task of fixing urban school systems.

It was do that, or shell out a small fortune in local taxes and then pay private school tuition for your children's education on top of it.


Mayor Daley, a consummate political survivor, now rules Chicago from a much different power base than the largely white blue collar machine he inherited from his father. First he helped minority factions get their own share of the patronage spoils. Then he co-opted the white progressives faction that so actively opposed his father, and courted professional singles and empty nesters who wanted a clean, orderly and crime free Lakefront full of sidewalk cafes, median planters and wrought iron fences.


In the process, he encouraged real estate development that priced the working class families that were the backbone of his father's coalition out of many parts of the city. I suspect a great many of the children of the people who actively supported him in the 1983 election now live in the burgeoning exurb of Oswego. One sign of this change was when Daley himself in the mid 90s moved his official residence from a Bridgeport bungalow to a Lakefront townhouse. (A lot of detractors say both Mayors Daley may have spent more time in a family compound in the lovely little vacation hamlet of Grand Beach, Michigan than at their official residences.)


Whole states can seem to empty out when things get too bad. A headline in the Detroit News earlier this year noted: "Eight-year population exodus staggers state."


"Migration is good for the migrants but bad for the state they're leaving," said Mark Partridge, an economics professor at Ohio State University who specializes in the study of migration patterns. "It's a vicious downward cycle; the best and brightest leave; entrepreneurs don't come to the state because the best and brightest are elsewhere; as more people leave, that leaves fewer people to pay for services. Neither one will make Michigan a very appealing place."


This tendency to vote with one's feet can lull the politicians and bureaucrats who helped create the mess into a false sense of security, as those with the greatest stake in vigorously pursuing a different policy course can often be the first to leave for greener pastures. Our urban political machines have survived counterproductive policies of over-regulation and over spending largely because most people who don't like their methods find it easier to move to a community where like-minded people are clearly in the majority than to stand and fight. This includes politicians. For every Rudy Guiliani who has a genuine love for the city, there are many other Republican politicians who moved to the suburbs to begin their political careers in earnest after living in Americas cities for a while after college.


In Obama we have a President who is bringing the methods of the Daley political machine to national government. It is there in the transfer of power to "czars" to consolidate power in the White House. It is there in the move against the Inspectors General. It is there in the spending pattern of the so called stimulus bill, which benefits counties who elect Democrats two dollars to every one spent elsewhere.


Unfortunately for Obama, the nation's political base is largely in the suburbs. I recall reading an analysis many years ago that George H.W. Bush would have won in 1988 without a single vote from inside any of the nation's major cities. In 1992, it was the suburban voters, betrayed by Bush 41 on taxes and unsure of Clinton's Arkansas reputation for corrupt government and personal sleaze, that rallied to Ross Perot. Over the years, the Democrat Party had begun to make inroads among these voters, often because the Republicans had not lived up to their own rhetoric on smaller and more honest government. One reason John McCain selected Sarah Palin as a running mate is because she is the classic "go-gooer", the derisive term corrupt politicians and jaded reporters use for those who run on the platform of good government and then actually do try to reform the system.


Many suburbanites voted for Obama out of a mixture of white guilt and the hope that he meant what he said about a post racial world, honest transparent government and no tax increases. Such voters do not see themselves as racists for fleeing the cities in the first place. They see themselves as realists who were not willing to risk their own children's future on the social experiment of court ordered integration. They voted for what Obama promised, not what he is delivering. It's not just the rising unemployment and exploding deficit that bothers these people. They don't like what they are seeing in stimulus dollars going to prop up government employee unions. The support for a Supreme Court candidate who is definitely not color blind has plummeted among political independents.


In Barack Obama's world, married people with children regularly do pay $5,000 and $10,000 a year in property taxes, then shell out private school tuition at Francis Parker, the Latin School and the Lab School, all the while looking down their noses at the philistines who live in the suburbs. In unguarded moments on the campaign trail, you could see some of Hyde Park's disdain for suburban living.


Obama is starting to find out that suburban voters are going to balk at his proposals. It began with the Tea Parties, a small city and suburban movement. It is continuing with protests on health care reform. Protest marches are unusual activities for middle class people with private sector jobs, who as a rule do not like messy politics. But they will fight because unlike the situation Obama knew in Chicago, there is no alternative. No Henderson, Nevada, Oswego, Illinois or Derry, New Hampshire lies beckoning just across the city limits from Obamaville.

3) James Earl Obama?
By Paul Kengor

In one of numerous infamous moments during a disastrous presidency, President Jimmy Carter, in December 1978, was asked by reporters if he thought the Shah of Iran would survive the crisis that threatened to give birth to history's worst theocratic-terrorist-Islamist state.


"I don't know," offered Carter. "I hope so. This is something that is in the hands of the people of Iran. We have never had any intention and don't have any intention of trying to intercede in the internal political affairs of Iran. We personally prefer that the Shah maintain a major role in the government, but that's a decision for the Iranian people to make."


This statement of stunning passivity and ambiguity set off an earthquake. It was a fatal vote of no confidence in the Shah from the most important country in the world, from Iran's top ally, and from the Shah's longtime protector and benefactor. Iranians placed enormous stock in Uncle Sam's statements, and the American president had made it clear that the Shah's fate was no longer in America's hands. The situation was an Iranian "internal affair." America should not meddle.


It would be only weeks after that Carter statement that the Shah was finished, and Iran became a global nightmare.


I've thought of that moment often since Iran erupted a few weeks ago, and still continues to reverberate, even as America's news media has turned to higher priorities, like Michael Jackson. I registered my own vote of no confidence: in President Obama's initial responses to the historic opportunity in Iran, which were eerily reminiscent of President Carter.


After first saying nothing, Obama did worse when he issued a jaw-dropping, Carter-like appraisal on June 15:


"[W]e respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran."


The leader of the free world didn't want to meddle in Iran's internal affairs.


In this publication, I blasted President Obama for this inexcusable response to the Iranian freedom fighters, which was precisely the wrong approach.


To be fair, Obama, since then, has responded with much stronger rhetoric. This was clearly the result of sharp criticism from all sides, including some liberals. It was telling when even CNN, on the morning of June 22, led with a spot-on swipe at Obama by Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN), who trenchantly observed that when President Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate, he didn't say, "Mr. Gorbachev, this wall is none of our business."


CNN followed the Pence clip with an interview with a Democratic Party activist who wrote a critical piece on Obama for the Huffington Post.


Amid that negative reaction, there were two new polls (Gallup and Rasmussen), conducted during the Iran crisis, that showed notable declines in Obama's approval rating. The House of Representatives manned up in a way that Obama refused, passing a resolution supporting the Iranian freedom fighters by a margin of 405 to 1, and only after Democratic leaders had worked with the Obama White House to tone down the resolution. The pressure on the American president -- with the entire world begging him to stand for American principles -- mounted dramatically as footage rolled from Iran of beatings and shootings in the capital, including the cold-blooded execution of the woman known as "Neda."


Suddenly, in a blatant political turnabout suggestive of the soulless Bill Clinton more than the principled George W. Bush, Barack Obama turned on a dime and progressively ratcheted up his response to Iran's theocrat-terrorists.


The man who had first stood silent, and then stood aside Italy's leader on June 15 and muttered, "we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran," or who had stood beside South Korea's leader on June 16 and expressed his fears of American "meddling" in Iran, had transformed into a critic.


By June 26, a stoic Obama suddenly stood aside Germany's leader and condemned the "outrageous" "brutality" and "ruthlessness" and "violence" of the mullahs, against the "extraordinary bravery and extraordinary courage" of the "Iranian people."


Obama had made quite a change, from what Ralph Peters aptly described as "silent complicity" (June 18) to, alas, openly stating that he was "appalled and outraged" at the Iranian leadership (June 23).


So, kudos to President Obama for reevaluating mid-course, for whatever reason or motivation, and adopting a truly American approach to this cry for liberty. We must give credit where credit is due.


That said, Obama's handling of this crisis reveals some serious problems and questions going forward:


First and foremost, Obama hasn't cloaked his rhetoric in any sort of understanding of the American ideal or the inspiring Reagan concept of a March of Freedom that was invoked by George W. Bush. Rather than anchoring his worldview in the vision of the American Founders, Obama echoes a bland U.N.-speak about the "desires of the international community" and "universal norms" (June 26). That's not necessarily bad, on the face of it, but it reveals him as more the modern globalist -- an empty cupboard -- than the inheritor of the torch of freedom carried from Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson to the presidents who won the 20th century. It is America, not the United Nations and European Union, that has been the force for good -- for freedom.


In short, I fear that Obama still doesn't get it.


Second, as noted, Obama undoubtedly reacted primarily to criticism of his depressingly weak support of the Iranian people; he reacted to politics, and opinion polls, and popular sentiment, more than principle. While that's better than nothing, it is merely short-term improvement, even window-dressing, and does nothing for the crucial long haul. Indeed, tapping freedom's potential in Iran is a long-term prospect, as Reagan did with Poland, or as Bush has hopefully achieved in Iraq.


Think about this: In Poland, martial law was declared in December 1981, and Reagan reacted very strongly, very swiftly right away. Equally significant, however, he followed up with a sustained effort that lasted eight years, until finally freedom was unleashed the year Reagan left the presidency, with free and fair elections taking place in Poland in June 1989 -- the precursor to the fall of the Berlin Wall only months later.


Likewise, the increasing stability in Iraq in 2009 comes only after George W. Bush's obviously intense undertaking beginning in 2002.


If Obama really cares about advancing liberty in Iran, about carrying the March of Freedom throughout the Middle East, then he will follow his improved rhetoric with a concerted commitment -- overt and covert -- to help produce the fruits of liberty.


Judging by what I've seen thus far, I'm skeptical. We need a president who gets this in the gut, who doesn't need to learn these things on the job, when it's usually too late, and who doesn't -- like Jimmy Carter -- make embarrassing mistake after mistake. We need someone who understands what it means to lead the free world.


Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His recent books include The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

3a) From Russia -- Without Love
By Ken Blackwell

President Obama's recent trip to Russia contrasts sharply with Ronald Reagan's 1988 visit to Moscow. President Reagan reached out to the Russian people, too. He gave the first nationally televised speech ever delivered-uncensored-to the peoples of Russia.


Reagan made a point of speaking of religious freedom and invoking God's blessing on the Russian people.


Like Obama, Reagan also spoke to elite students. But unlike Obama, Reagan made a point of telling students at Moscow State University in the most civil terms why despotism was wrong. The Information Age then in its dawn was physically based, he told the sons and daughters of the Communist Party's nomenklatura, on the silicon dioxide chip. This chip is the same material substance as sand. But, Reagan emphasized, in order for the computer revolution to succeed, there must be freedom.


His bright listeners could read between the lines. He was telling them Marxism was wrong, that Communism was a failure. He was saying you cannot compete in the computer revolution if you have to station a KGB agent at every computer terminal.


Watching President Reagan delivering these liberating truths-under a scowling statue of Vladimir Lenin-you half expected the old Bolshevik's bald bust to fall off its pedestal. In a few months, Lenin statues would be toppling all over the Soviet empire.


Obama's approach was completely different. Most unwisely, Obama showed disrespect for Vladimir Putin while showing elaborate courtesy to Dmitri Medvedev. Obama spoke about "setting the reset button" in U.S.-Russian relations. (I don't know how to spell "reset" in Russian, but apparently Hillary Clinton's State Department can't spell it, either.)


Anyone who has followed post-Cold War Russia knows that it is Putin and not Medvedev who is calling the shots. Obama's failed attempt to jolly up Medvedev while giving the cold shoulder to Putin is like hugging the monkey while dissing the organ grinder.


Imagine if FDR had insisted on meeting with President Kalinin instead of Joe Stalin during World War II. Everyone then knew that if you wanted to deal with Russia, you had to deal with Russia's real boss.


President Reagan set the bar for dealing with Russians. There is no more Soviet Union, largely because Reagan helped bring down an evil empire-without war. He never got a Nobel Peace Prize, of course. Those are reserved for the likes of Yasser Arafat, the inventor of air piracy. But Obama could learn a lot from Ronald Reagan. What part of his success would we want to "reset?"


Ken Blackwell is a former US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.

3b) Obama's Democracy Problem
By Jonah Goldberg

The Obama Doctrine is finally coming into focus.

It's been hard to glean its form because for so long it seemed the president's most obvious guiding principle was "not Bush," particularly when it came to the Iraq War. Indeed, his anti-Bush stance has led him to stubbornly refuse to say the war has been won or to admit that he was wrong to oppose the surge. In the past, this unthinking reflex has caused Obama to take some truly repugnant positions. In July 2007, Obama said that he would order U.S. forces out of Iraq as quickly as possible, even if he knew it would lead to an Iraqi genocide. This makes Obama the first president in modern memory to have suggested that causing a genocide would be in America's national interest.

Obama himself insists that he's guided by nothing other than a cool-headed pragmatism. Indeed, Obama has a grating habit of describing any position not his own as "ideological," as if his is the only sober, practical understanding of the problems we face. Just days before he was inaugurated, he gave a speech in Baltimore in which he proclaimed, "What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives - from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry - an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels."

So ideologues - i.e. millions of Americans who disagree with his policies on principle - belong in a list along with bigots and dim bulbs. At home, this attitude has allowed him to dismiss opponents of socialized medicine and the government takeover of various industries as "ideologues," and critics of trillions in debt-fueled spending as small-minded cranks.

Joshua Muravchik, a scholar at Johns Hopkins University and a leading advocate of democracy promotion around the globe, demonstrates in the current issue of Commentary that Obama has a similar attitude toward those who say America should advance the cause of liberty and democracy worldwide. Again and again, the administration has made it clear that spreading freedom is so much ideological foolishness. Before the inauguration, he told the Washington Post that he was concerned with "actually delivering a better life for people on the ground and less obsessed with form, more concerned with substance." There's merit to this view in principle, though Obama seems to be thinking about "economic justice" more than a free society. But in practice, when American presidents say they don't care about democracy, tyrants rejoice.

In April, at a news conference following a meeting of the Organization of American States, Obama proclaimed, "What we showed here is that we can make progress when we're willing to break free from some of the stale debates and old ideologies that have dominated and distorted the debate in this hemisphere for far too long." Hillary Clinton was more pithy: "Let's put ideology aside," the secretary of state said. "That is so yesterday." It's worth recalling that those old ideological debates often involved America championing democracy against those who pushed for socialism. One wonders which ideological stance Obama thinks is stale.

Obama supporter and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne writes that the Obama Doctrine involves restoring America's alliances and working with the international community so we can all do great things together. That's why Obama and Hillary Clinton have been so eager to apologize for America around the globe. One problem with such an approach is that it - so far at least - buys us nothing save the appearance of weakness. Another problem is that quite often, the international community is wrong.

Hence, according to the Obama administration, it's foolishly ideological to resist the U.N.'s accommodation of tyrants and fanatics, while it is "pragmatic" to placate human-rights abusers. It is ideological to show disdain for Venezuela's would-be dictator Hugo Chávez; it is "pragmatic" to stamp as "democratic" his effort to overthrow term limits. It is ideological to sustain sanctions against Burma and Sudan; it's pragmatic to revisit them, even if it disheartens human-rights activists across the ideological spectrum. American exceptionalism is ideological, while seeing America as just another nation is realistic.

The past four weeks show how ideological Obama's un-ideological view really is. In response to the revolutionary protests in Iran, Obama initially favored stability and preserving the fantasy of negotiations with the Iranian clerical junta. Not "meddling" was his top priority. Over time, the rhetoric improved, but the policy remained just as cynical.

Then, events in Honduras revealed that Obama really has no problem with meddling when a left-wing agenda is advanced. Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras and a Hugo Chávez wannabe, illegally defied the Honduran Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution in an attempt to repeal term limits (which help sustain democracy in Central America by preventing presidents-for-life). The Supreme Court ordered the military to remove Zelaya from office and expel him from the country. A member of Zelaya's own party replaced him, and elections were announced. But suddenly, Obama - taking much the same position as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez - thought America should join the coalition of the meddlers demanding Zelaya's return to power. In Iran, Obama was terrified to do anything that might lead to a coup to bring about democracy. In Honduras, Obama was unwilling to let stand a coup that preserved democracy.

It sure seems like Obama has an ideological problem with democracy.



4) There is no Palestinian Sadat, no Palestinian Mandela'
By Ari Shavit



I began with the personal questions. You are short-tempered, I hurled at him; you have fits of rage. It's true that I am short-tempered, Uzi Arad replied, but I lose patience because of the importance I attach to things. Because I am not cynical. It is important for me to have a high level of professionalism in the Prime Minister's Office and for high standards to be the criterion. I am not a born elitist, but it is important to me that we have a government that sets criteria of superb achievement.

You are an advocate of brute force, I threw at him. Me? Brute force? He smiled. I thought I was actually sensitive. In national and international issues, force is also a language. But I do not like wars between Jews. I prefer to direct the brute-force energies within me at enemies of Israel.

You are a technocrat, I lashed out. This time I hit the mark. The national security adviser was offended. Maybe so, he replied candidly, reflectively. But there are technocrats and there are technocrats. The political party I supported as a youth was Rafi [a party formed by David Ben-Gurion in 1965 after he broke with Mapai, the precursor of Labor; its members included Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres]. The Rafi ethos was security activism: to get results. On a number of matters I also did things that were innovative and constituted breakthroughs. In any event, I am a proud technocrat. I always strive to do the best for my country.


Arad was born in 1947 in Kibbutz Zikim, just north of the Gaza Strip, and attended the Tichon Hadash high school in Tel Aviv. An outstanding student, he went to Princeton and the most important American research institutes. He served in the Mossad espionage agency for more than 20 years. Afterward he was the national security adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter's first stint as prime minister (1996-99). He initiated and managed the annual Herzliya Conference on national policy. He specialized in nuclear strategy, a subject he also taught. He was a pioneer in the realm of risk-management policy. In varied and diverse ways, he has been a player in the Israeli security and intelligence drama. A hundred days ago, Dr. Uzi Arad returned to the center of power, as national security adviser.

Arad holds tremendous power. He holds the Iranian portfolio, he conducts the sensitive dialogue with the United States and he is the closest person to the prime minister. Some observers say that Arad has become the strongman of current Israeli policy.

Arad does not say so explicitly, but he believes that his whole professional life has prepared him for this post. As a control freak, he does not rely on others. As a perfectionist, he is highly critical of the work of others. But, being very loyal to the boss, he finds no flaws in him. According to Arad, Netanyahu is a talented, efficient person; no one is better suited to be prime minister. Imbued with a deep sense of mission, Netanyahu and Arad feel they are the right people in the right place at a tough time. It is incumbent on them to be the salvation of the State of Israel.

Do you see any prospect that the conflict will come to an end in the coming years?

Regrettably, we have not so far been successful in bringing about Arab internalization of our right of existence. The Arab and Muslim refusal to recognize Israel's legitimacy is sometimes suppressed and amorphous, at other times sharp and violent, but it is all-embracing. I have not yet encountered an Arab personage who is capable of saying quietly and clearly that he or she accepts Israel's right of existence in the deep historical and conscious sense. Accordingly, it will be difficult to reach a true Israeli-Palestinian agreement that does away with the bulk of the conflict. I don't see that in the coming years it will be possible to forge that different reality which so many Israelis want.

Will a Palestinian state be established on the watch manned by you and Netanyahu?

That is a different story. I don't see among the Palestinians a process of truly drawing closer to acceptance of Israel and peace with Israel. I also do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian regime but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions. But possibly someone might come along and say I am an engineer of events; the depth doesn't interest me - I am going to produce an event. And within three years - presto - four Annapolises, two disengagements, global pyrotechnics. And then suddenly, in 2015, there is a Palestinian state. Stamps, parades, carnival. That could happen. A fragile structure, yes; an arrangement resting wholly on wobbly foundations. But it could happen. There could be a Palestinian state.

What you are saying is that there will not be true peace, but there might be an American peace event with Hollywood trappings.

Everyone with eyes to see, sees that there is a failure of Palestinian leadership. There is no Palestinian Sadat. There is no Palestinian Mandela. Abu Mazen is not vulgar like Arafat and not militant and extreme like Hamas. There could be worse than him. But even in him I do not discern the interest or the will to arrive at the end of the conflict with Israel. On the contrary, he is preserving eternal grievances against us and intensifying them.

After Olmert offers him almost everything, he says wide gaps remain. And then you reach the conclusion that there really is a receding horizon here; The more Israel moves toward the Palestinians, the more they move away. And they do that because even the moderates among them do not really want a settlement. At most, they are striving toward a settlement in order to renew the confrontation from a better position.

What you are saying is that there is no Palestinian partner for a true peace.

At the moment, there is no one on the map. There are no true peace leaders among the Palestinians. But I am not deterministic. I do not think this is part of the Palestinians' genetic makeup. I want to believe that in the future a different type of leadership will arise. I hope that a Palestinian - woman or man - will emerge who is able to recognize that there is some justice on the Israeli side, too. Because, you know, in Israel there are so many who see the justice of the Palestinians' cause and write about it and make a living from it. Read the paper you work for, for example. But true peace will come when Palestinians emerge who recognize there is also Israeli justice - that there is also a little Israeli justice. At the moment there are none.

Can peace with Syria be achieved during the Netanyahu government?

Here we have a different problem. The majority of Israel's governments insisted that Israel would stay on the Golan Heights. That is also the position of the majority of the public and most MKs. The position is that, if there is a territorial compromise, it is one that still leaves Israel on the Golan Heights and deep into the Golan Heights.

From your point of view, is that the right position to take? That this must be the essence of a settlement - a compromise deep into the Golan Heights? That even in peace we must ensure that a large part of the Golan Heights remain in our hands?

Yes

Why?

For strategic, military and land-settlement reasons. Needs of water, wine and view.

So you say unequivocally: Peace yes, Golan no?

Correct.

What about the "deposit" of Yitzhak Rabin, in which he undertook to leave the Golan Heights?

There is no such thing. In 1996, Netanyahu asked [Secretary of State] Warren Christopher to have the deposit returned to Israel, and so it was. In his letter, Christopher pledged that the deposit was not valid.

What about the concessions made by Netanyahu himself in the negotiations he held with the first President Assad at the end of the 1990s?

Netanyahu's position was that Israel should remain on the Golan Heights at a depth of a few miles. A few miles translates into a lot more kilometers. If you draw a line from Mount Hermon to Al Hama at a depth of a few miles, you will see this leaves a great deal of the Golan Heights, from the south to the north.

Is this still the position of the government today?

The government's position is readiness to resume the negotiations with no prior conditions and with each side aware of the other's position. The Syrians are certainly aware that the Netanyahu government and the majority of the public will not leave the Golan Heights.

Will the Americans accept that? Won't they try to impose a different approach?

The impression is that there are deep differences between Israel and the United States. Israel is saying, first Iran, then Palestine, whereas the United States is saying, first Palestine, then Iran.

Both cases need treatment. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and freeze one issue in order to deal with the other. From the Americans' viewpoint, the achievement that is required in the Israeli-Arab dimension is the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The achievement required in the Iranian dimension is not to allow Iran nuclear capability that will enable it to produce nuclear weapons. When Israel says that it feels a more acute need to deal with the Iranian problem, it is right on three counts. First, because the urgency there is overriding; second, because if we succeed there, it will be easier here; and third, because if we do not succeed there, we will not succeed here. If Iran goes nuclear, everything that might be achieved with the Palestinians will be swept away in a tidal wave and go down the tubes overnight.

You have not been able to persuade the Americans of this. On the Palestinian question they have appointed a high-profile senior envoy who is engaging in intensive activity. But in regard to Iran, nothing is happening. As Washington sees it, Ramallah is more urgent than Tehran; the settlements are more dangerous than the centrifuges.

Dov Weisglass [former adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon] built the first stage of the Road Map well, but created catastrophes in the second and third stages. He did so because he was certain that the first stage was a dam in the face of the coming stages. But then came the disengagement which undermined the Road Map on the ground. And then Annapolis undermined the Road Map politically. Olmert and Livni acted contrary to Weisglass's logic and jumped straight to the third stage. So what we had was a series of typical Israeli makeshift exercises. Every two years they came up with a move that completely contradicted the previous move. The result, of course, was the policy debacle that Netanyahu and I had warned against. The Netanyahu government inherited scorched earth from its predecessors.

Do you feel that as a result of Israeli mistakes, the international attitude toward Israel today is extremely unfair?

Completely unfair. I say this in English openly: "extremely unfair." If you want to enforce the clauses of the Road Map, you have to enforce all of them. And security violations are more serious than building violations: Qassam rockets kill people, settlements do not. But I am a formalist. I am in favor of formalism. The thing is, that if they come to us and count every settlement, they have to apply the same indices and the same principles to the Palestinians. Anyone who does not do this is behaving unfairly, but he is also behaving unwisely. He is not advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace that he would like to see.

Maybe the real problem is the settlements have made Washington fed up with us. Maybe the problem is that Obama and Clinton have lingering issues concerning Netanyahu, hence their chilly behavior toward him.

Isn't the alliance between Rome and Jerusalem wobbly? Don't you have the feeling that just as de Gaulle terminated a 15-year French alliance with Israel after the war in Algeria, Obama will terminate a 40-year American alliance with Israel after the war in Iraq?

Each of them has an interesting potential from our point of view. We must also strive to join NATO and to conclude a defense alliance with the United States. If there is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement that will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, membership in NATO and a defense alliance with the United States should be part of the quid pro quo that Israel will receive.

There are some in Israel who fear such developments.

They fear the loss of Israeli freedom of action and that essential elements of [Israel] will be put at risk. But I think that just as France and Britain possess capabilities even within the NATO framework, the same can be true in regard to Israel. Membership in NATO is a logical step and can provide us with a guarantee of mutual security and even add a layer to our deterrence if the Middle East goes nuclear. It is possible that membership in NATO or a defense alliance with the United States will be a condition of a regional settlement.

Point of no return

Your main front as national security adviser will be the danger of a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Middle East. But as far as we know, Iran has already crossed the point of nuclear no-return and has enough fissionable material to assemble a first nuclear bomb.

The point of nuclear no-return was defined as the point at which Iran has the ability to complete the cycle of nuclear fuel production on its own; the point at which it has all the elements to produce fissionable material without depending on outsiders. Iran is now there. I don't know if it has mastered all the technologies, but it is more or less there. However, the term "no-return" is misleading. Even if Iran has fissionable material for one bomb, it is still at a low grade of enrichment. And if it wants to conduct a test, it will not have even one bomb. It follows that Iran is not yet nuclear and not yet operational. Serious obstacles still lie in the way. The international community still has enough time to make it stop of its own volition.

Still, looking back, we see a dramatic failure here. A red line was defined and Iran crossed it.

I told you that the Netanyahu government inherited scorched earth. That is true in any number of spheres. The tragic and heartbreaking story of Gilad Shalit is one example. It was not resolved in any way, shape or form. The same holds true for the Second Lebanon War and for Operation Cast Lead [in Gaza], which caused a great decline in our political status, particularly in Europe. Annapolis got us nowhere, nor did the disengagement. But most serious of all, by far most serious, is Iran's progress toward nuclear capability. I am not saying that nothing was done. Things were done. But if at the end of the day it turns out that Iran is drawing closer to its goal, obviously not enough was done. And what was done was too late, too little and too feeble.

What you are actually saying is that the national leadership in Israel over the past six or seven years understood about Iran and talked about Iran but did not address the Iranian issue with the prioritization, intensiveness and concentration of forces needed?

That is exactly what I am saying. In one case, because the leadership scattered its efforts and resources instead of concentrating them. It preoccupied itself with other issues, such as the disengagement and Annapolis. In a second case, because it did not home in on the main issue - Iran. I will give you an example. Look at how many speeches were delivered here about a democratic Jewish state, democratic and Jewish. The subject was discussed until it was coming out of people's ears. In contrast, look at how many moves were made to curb nuclear Iran by political and diplomatic means. There is no comparison between what the previous government devoted to the two issues. I want to tell you that Javier Solana [the European Union official in charge of foreign policy] racked up more kilometers traveling around the world to address the Iranian issue than the Israeli foreign minister did. Western statesmen did more to prevent Iran from going nuclear than their Israeli counterparts.

Are you contending that there was a monumental political failure here?

A gross failure. Between 2003 and 2007, it was far easier to contain Iran. The Iranian program was lagging behind. American power was more blatant. Various big powers were inclined to cooperate. Iran was more cautious and more vulnerable. But what preoccupied us in 2005? The disengagement. And what preoccupied us in 2007? Annapolis. We mobilized our national resources for empty moves. We wasted political assets on nothing. We talked about the red line of the point of nuclear no-return in Iran, but in practice we were committed only to the artificial red line that stipulated arbitrarily that there would be no more Jews in Gaza by the end of 2005. I tell you that if those mental resources and the determination and tenacity that were displayed in regard to the disengagement had been devoted to preventing Iran from reaching the point of nuclear no-return, Iran would not have got there.

And now that point is behind us?

Yes - in the technological sense, it has been crossed. I believe that in practice we will be able to block Iran. But the line that was termed a "red line" has been crossed.

Was there a policy eclipse here?

Certainly. The Winograd Committee exposed the functional eclipses in the Second Lebanon War. But even though it was a painful and costly event, the limited war of 2006 bore no historic significance. In regard to Iran, if history develops badly, the failure is liable to turn out to be of historic proportions.

I am confident that Netanyahu will know how to cope with the harsh reality he inherited. He is the first Israeli leader to identify and understand in depth the Iranian threat. He is the first who did not talk about a publicity campaign or about military action but about applying levers of economic pressure. Contrary to others, he did not talk about moves involving force and did not issue threats. Netanyahu understands that Iran is the great challenge of this period. He is dealing with the challenge intelligently, responsibly and with the state's interests uppermost.

Isn't it too late? Isn't it time to accept that Iran will be a nuclear power?

I am not at liberty to say what the government of Israel thinks. Nor will I tell you what the U.S. administration thinks. But I will tell you the opinion of professionals from serious research institutes in the United States and Europe. The major fear among professional circles is that a nuclear Iran will burst the dams and cause nuclear proliferation in the region. According to these experts, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey have certain capabilities. Syria, Libya and Algeria have already tried. Therefore, if Iran goes nuclear, those countries will consider following suit. There is already evidence of this. Those who understand are aware how baseless is the argument that one can extrapolate from the reality of the Cold War to the reality in the Middle East. It is wrong to say that just as we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and with a nuclear China, we will also be able to live with a nuclear Iran. The subject is not just a nuclear Iran; the subject is a multi-nuclear Middle East. A Middle East in which there are quite a few countries that resemble Pakistan.

Serious experts who are not Israelis look at the Middle East and say that if Iran is nuclear in 2015, the Middle East will be nuclear in 2020. And a multi-nuclear Middle East is a nightmare. Five or six nuclear states in a jumpy and unstable region where the world's energy resources are located will not create nuclear quiet but nuclear disquiet. A nuclear Middle East will be exactly like a pyramid that stands upside down.

It's unlikely that the Iranians will stop after the dialogue that the Americans will perhaps hold with them in the months ahead. The probability of containment without pressure is low.

Unquestionably.

If so, three possibilities remain: them with the bomb, them getting bombed or a maritime blockade.

I hear about a maritime blockade from unofficial American analysts - no one enters or leaves. Iran is very much dependent on the importation of oil distillates and on the export of unrefined oil. So an effective blockade could threaten Iran with bankruptcy within months. In that case, Iran might yield. But it might also decide to challenge those who are cutting it off. From there the road to escalation is short.

So this scenario says that the only way to prevent Iran from getting the bomb is to impose a closure on the country.

Again I want to introduce a cautionary note: what I am saying here does not reflect official Israeli policy or American policy. But there are those in the West who believe that this is the way. The prospect is to confront the Iranian government with a dilemma: Going nuclear or flourishing, going nuclear or survival of the regime. If that will be the dilemma, Tehran might conclude that regime survival is more important than the nuclear project.

What will the West do if there is no maritime blockade or if there is one that fails? In that case, will there be any choice but to prevent the bomb by bombing Iran?

Balance of terror

I was fascinated by Robert Oppenheimer, the Jew who created the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Another figure who riveted me was Henry Kissinger, one of the first nuclear strategists. But above all I was drawn to Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute.

Kahn is the original Dr. Strangelove. He was a Jewish-American genius who was a salient nuclear hawk and dealt with the planning and feasibility of nuclear wars. Kahn was a towering figure. He was a beacon of intelligence, knowledge and pioneering thought. He combined conceptual productivity, humor and informality. He attracted a group of devotees of whom I was one in the 1970s. But he also had bitter rivals who criticized him for even conceiving of the idea of a nuclear war. In the Cold War it was precisely those who talked about defense and survival who were considered nuclear hawks. The doves talked about "mutual assured destruction," which blocks any possibility of thinking about nuclear weapons. Like Kahn, I was one of the hawks. One of my projects was a paper for the Pentagon on planning a limited nuclear war in Central Europe.

On the face of it, what is the point of this? Why execute the enemy after deterrence has failed? But according to Dror, it is important to ascertain that the deterrence will work, even if you yourself have been destroyed. He sees this as a contribution to the repair of the world [tikkun olam]. When we say "never again," this entails three imperatives: never again will we be felled in mass numbers, never again will we be defenseless and never again will there be a situation in which those who harm us go unpunished.

Is the Holocaust relevant to our strategic thought in an era of a nuclear Middle East?

Look at the way memory guides people like Netanyahu, who refers time and again to the 1930s. Bernard Lewis also said a few years ago that he feels like he is in the late 1930s. What did he mean? On the one hand, an imminent threat, rapidly approaching, and on the other, complacency and conciliation and a cowering coveting of peace. When I visited Yad Vashem [the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem] not long ago, I could not bear the psychological overload and left halfway through. I don't think there is an Israeli or a Jew who can be insensitive to the Holocaust. It is a painful black hole in our consciousness.

When you look around today, what is your feeling? Are we alone?

We are always alone. Sometimes we have partners and lovers and donors of money, but no one is in our shoes.

I still remember Roosevelt and all the wise and enlightened types of the American security hierarchy in the period of Auschwitz, and I have retained the lesson. In Jewish history and fate there is a dimension of unfairness toward us. We have already been alone once, and even the good and the enlightened did not protect us. Accordingly, we must not be militant, but we must entrench our defense and security prowess and act with wisdom and restraint and caution and sangfroid. Never again.

5) 'Iran preparing new package of issues to present to West'


Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Saturday announced that Teheran is preparing a new package of "political, security and international" issues to put to the West, and downplayed the criticism of Iran by world leaders at the G8 summit.

"The package can be a good basis for talks with the West. The package will contain Iran's stances on political, security and international issues," Reuters quoted Mottaki as telling a news conference.

In Iran's first reaction to warnings from world leaders at the G8 summit on Friday that the Islamic Republic could face tougher sanctions over its nuclear ambitions in September, Mottaki said Teheran had not received "any new message" from the summit.

"We have not received any new message from the G8. But based on the news we have received, they had different views on different issues which did not lead to a unanimous agreement in some areas," the minister reportedly said.

on Friday, US President Barack Obama said the world would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, a day after a senior Iranian official vowed his country would not back down "even one step" over its nuclear work.

"We're not going to just wait indefinitely and allow for the development of a nuclear weapon... and wake up one day and find ourselves in a much worse situation and unable to act," Obama said at the close of the G8 summit.

Obama however stressed that he and others were not looking for their summit partners to embrace sanctions at this week's meeting.

Instead, he said, "What we wanted was exactly what we got - a statement of condemnation about Iran's actions in the wake of its disputed presidential election."

In comments published Thursday, Ali Akbar Velayati, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's top adviser on international affairs, said Western countries did not want the Islamic state to have peaceful nuclear activities.

Obama said Friday that G8 leaders voiced their concern about what he called the appalling events surrounding the recent elections and the violence that followed.

"The leaders assembled at L'Aquila also addressed the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran," he said, "with a strong statement calling on Iran to
fulfill its responsibilities without delay."

"This notion that we were trying to get sanctions or that this was a forum where we could get sanctions was not accurate," the president said.

"I think the real story here was consensus in that [G8] statement, including Russia, which doesn't make statements like that lightly," he said. "Now the other story there was the agreement that we will reevaluate Iran's posture towards negotiating the cessation of a nuclear weapons policy."

"We'll evaluate that at the G20 meeting in September," Obama said. "I think that what that does is, it provides a time frame. The international community has said, 'Here's a door you can walk through that allows you to lessen tensions and more fully join the international community.'"

He added: "If Iran chooses not to walk through that door, then you have on record the G8 to begin with and, I think, potentially a lot of other countries."

Obama said his hope is that the Iranian leadership will recognize that world opinion is clear.

6) New Al-Qaeda Book Betrays Panic Over Predator Strikes, Covert Operations



On June 29, 2009, jihadist websites posted a new 150-page book by senior Al-Qaeda commander Abu Yahya Al-Libi titled Guide to the Laws Regarding Muslim Spies. The book's two introductions, one by Ayman Al-Zawahiri and one by Abu Yahya himself, make it clear that it was written in an attempt to find a means of dealing with the recent campaign of Predator strikes and other covert operations against Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Waziristan. The two Al-Qaeda commanders, and Abu Yahya in particular, betray deep distress at the devastating effectiveness of the shadow war against Al-Qaeda, as well as paranoia regarding the ubiquity of hidden enemies.


To view the full report, visit http://www.memrijttm.org/content/en/report.htm?report=3403¶m=GJN.

7) Logging it all in!

1. Teaching Maths In 1970
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price.
What is his profit?

2. Teaching Maths In 1980
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is 80% of the price.
What is his profit?

3. Teaching Maths In 1990
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is £80.
How much was his profit?

4. Teaching Maths In 2000
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is £80 and his profit is £20.
Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Maths In 2005
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and
inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habit of animals or the
preservation of our woodlands.
Your assignment: Discuss how might the birds and squirrels feel as the
logger cut down their homes just for a measly profit of £20.


6. Teaching Maths In 2009
A logger is arrested for trying to cut down a tree in case it may be
offensive to Muslims or other religious groups not consulted in the
felling licence. He is also fined a £100 as his chainsaw is in breach of Health &
Safety legislation as it deemed too dangerous and could cut something. He
has used the chainsaw for over 20 years without incident however he does
not have the correct certificate of competence and is therefore considered
to be a recividest and habitual criminal. His DNA is sampled and his
details circulated throughout all government agencies. He protests and is
taken to court and fined another £100 because he is such an easy target.
When he is released20he returns to find Gypsies have cut down half his wood
to build a camp on his land. He tries to throw them off but is arrested,
prosecuted for harassing an ethnic minority, imprisoned and fined a
further £100. While he is in jail the Gypsies cut down the rest of his wood and
sell it on the black market for £100 cash. They also have a leaving BBQ
of squirrel and pheasant and depart leaving behind several tonnes of rubbish
and asbestos sheeting. The forester on release is warned that failure to
clear the fly tipped rubbish immediately at his own cost is an offence. He
complains and is arrested for environmental pollution, breach of the peace
and invoiced £12000 plus VAT for safe disposal costs by a regulated
government contractor.


Your assignment: How many times is the logger going to hav e to be
arrested and fined before he realises that he is never going to make £20 profit by hard work, give up, sign onto the dole and live off the state for the rest of his life?


7. Teaching Maths In 2010
A logger doesn’t sell a lorry load of timber because he can’t get a loan
to buy a new lorry because his bank has spent all his and their money on a
derivative of securitised debt related to sub- prime mortgages in Alabama
and lost the lot with only some government money left to pay a few million
pound bonuses to their senior directors and the traders who made the
biggest losses.

The logger struggles to pay the £1200 road tax on his old lorry however,
as it was built in the 1970s it no longer meets the emissions regulations
and he is forced to scrap it.

Some Bulgarian loggers buy the lorry from the scrap merchant and put it
back on the road. They undercut everyone on price for haulage and send
their cash back home, while claiming unemployment for themselves and their
relatives. If questioned they speak no English and it is easier to deport
them at the governments expense. Following their holiday back home they
return to the UK with different names and fresh girls and start again. The
&nbs p; logger protests, is accused of being a bigoted racist and as his name is
on the side of his old lorry he is forced to pay £1500 registration fees as a gang master.

The Government borrows more money to pay more to the bankers as bonus's
are not cheap. The parliamentarians feel they are missing out and claim the
difference on expenses and allowances.

You do the maths.


8. Teaching Maths 2017
أ المسجل تبيع حموله شاحنة من< /font> الخشب من اجل 100 دولار. صاحب تكلفة الانتاج من
الثمن. ما هو الربح له؟